Vort3x | Cybersalon | May 15, 2025
Vort3x, published on the 15th of each month, aims to pick out significant developments in the intersection of computers, freedom, privacy, and security for friends near and far. The views expressed in these stories do not necessarily reflect those of Cybersalon, either individually or collectively.
Prepared by Wendy M. Grossman.
Contents: Cybersalon events | News | Features | Diary
Cybersalon Events
26th June, Portculis House, HoC, 6.30pm
Banking on Bancor – new currency for Multipolar world
Panel discussion with John McDonnell MP (Labour), Prof Radhika Desai (Manitoba University) and others – chaired by Dr Richard Barbrook (Cybersalon.org)
Very Limited Tickets – DM for Guest List
NEWS
Déjà Vu as Google Found Guilty of Monopolistic Behavior – are we fighting the last war?
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Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled on April 17 that Google has a monopoly in AdTech, adding to Judge Amit P. Mehta decision in August 2024 that Google is a monopoly in search, Matt Stoller writes at BIG. At Ars Technica, Ryan Whitwam sums up the remedy phase of the Mehta trial, which has considered options such as forcing Google to divest the Chrome web browser and barring the company from making payments to others such as Apple and Mozilla for making its search engine the default choice. Mehta is expected to issue his decision in August.
From Poland to California – Israel’s NSO owner of infamous Pegasus spyware found guilty
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A California jury has found that Israel’s NSO Group should pay $447,719 in compensatory damages and $167,254,000 in punitive damages for targeting WhatsApp’s infrastructure with its Pegasus spyware, Access Now reports. The US District of Northern California judge found the company guilty in January of violating federal and state hacking laws. Access Now adds that after numerous allegations that the company’s software has been used to attack on journalists, activists, and dissidents, this is the first time NSO, has been required to pay damages for hacking operations.
The Terminator postponed as US-China Trade War Slows Manufacture of Humanoid Robots
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We should be thankful for a small delay in the inevitable as cybernetic assassin launch has just got delayed. The trade war over tariffs between the US and China is complicating the production of humanoid robots, which are being built with American AI software and chips and Chinese hardware sensors and manufacturing, Kinling Lo reports at Rest of World. Several companies were hoping to begin mass production this year. Among them are US-based Figure AI and Tesla, which hoped to produce 5,000 humanoids by the end of this year, and Hong Kong-listed Ubtech.
Retail hack causes shopping Armageddon as top High Street brands are hit in severe cyberattacks
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Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre has stepped in to help Harrods, Marks and Spencer, and the Co-op as all three have been hit by attempted or successful cyberattacks since mid-April, Connor Jones reports at The Register. M&S had to take down its online ordering. It is not clear if the attacks are linked. At the BBC, Joe Tidy reports that the anonymous attackers have warned there will be further attacks soon. Humans as always were the weakest link. NCSC is also warning organizations that criminals are impersonating IT help desks to break in, and urges them to review their password reset processes to reduce their chances of being hacked.
Unethical study as Researchers Violate Ethics with Reddit Study
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In a widely condemned ethical violation, researchers at the University of Zurich for months posted messages from dozens of chatbot accounts powered by large language models on the Reddit subforum r/ChangeMyView in order to study how AI could be used to change people’s minds on contentious topics, Jason Koebler reports at 404 Media. CMV moderators told the subreddit’s 3.8 million subscribers that they had been unaware of the experiment until researchers revealed its existence after it ended, having that generated more than 1,700 comments. The researchers, who insist on remaining anonymous, told CMV in public answers that although they acknowledge that the subreddit’s rules ban bots, they believe their human oversight means their 34 accounts weren’t really bots. Reddit is considering legal action against the researchers and is issuing formal legal demands to both the university and the research team, and that it will continue improving its “inauthentic content detection capabilities”. Retraction Watch reports that the researchers ignored recommendations from the university’s ethics committee, which has now issued a formal warning to the study’s principal investigator and will implement a more rigorous review process for future research. The study has not been published.
FEATURES & ANALYSIS
Mystery of AI ChatGPT-3 as Scanning Errors Poison Scientific Papers
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In this article at The Conversation, Aaron J. Snoswell et. al explore the reasons for multiple appearances of the phrase “vegetative electron microscopy” in published papers. This “digital fossil” appears to have originated when scanning errors in two papers from the 1950s led to a translation error in two Iranian scientific papers in 2017 and 2019. Today, Google Scholar locates the term in 22 papers. A study of AI contamination shows the error exists in OpenAI’s GPT-3, GPT-4o, and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 and suggests it may now be impossible to eradicate. At The New York Times, Cade Metz and Karen Weise report that AI chatbots are producing more incorrect information as they get more powerful, but the companies that build them don’t know why.
US Retreat from UN Consensus Endangers Internet Governance
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In this article for the Atlantic Council, Konstantinos Komaitis examines the impact of the United States’ decision to call for a vote rather than work with other countries to find a consensus in the process the Commission for Science, Technology, and Development uses to produce its annual resolution on sustainable development goals, gender equality, and ways to address climate change. The US lost the vote 33 to one, but Komaitis believes damage has been done that will affect Internet governance going forward.
Are AI Assistants a risk to our Privacy, Security, and Trust
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In this blog posting at Privacy International, executive director Gus Hosein examines the data – and the trust – that the next generation of AI assistants will need in order to act on your behalf, calling it a “nightmare in the making”. From his analysis of the privacy and security dynamics of these systems, he derives a set of requirements that must be met if our trust in them is to be well-placed. At the Washington Post, Joseph Menn looks at the techniques Russia is using to automate the spread of false information to game AI chatbots, whose accuracy is dependent on the content fed into them, into pushing conent meant to inflame, influence, and obfuscate. Menn notes that anyone can do this; you don’t have to be a well-resourced state actor.
Crypto futures – forging a hard path to proper decentralization
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In this article at The Register, Iain Thomson writes that at a panel at the RSA conference cryptography pioneer Adi Shamir stated that in his opinion the world would have been better off without cryptocurrencies and that their early promise of decentralization has been wasted. They have become increasingly controlled by a small number of very large exchanges, and are primarily used for speculation and crime, not payments. Ed Felten argued by contrast that governments are still working out the rules and it’s early days. In a podcast at Planet:Critical, Rachel Donald interviews Molly White on tech bros’ influence on the US government after donating heavily during the election cycle.
Buyer beware as humans develop “Spiritual” Relationships with AI Chatbots
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In this article at Rolling Stone, Miles Klee tells the stories of numerous individuals whose partners have provoked into religious fervor, spiritual mania, supernatural delusion, and arcane prophecies by the use of AI chatbots. Some influencers and content creators exploit this for their own benefits. Unlike therapists, the bots don’t have the user’s best interests at heart.
DIARY
Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection
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May 21-23, 2025
Brussels, Belgium
CPDP is a non-profit platform carried by 20 academic centers of excellence from the EU, the US and beyond. As a world-leading multidisciplinary conference, CPDP offers the cutting edge in legal, regulatory, academic, and technological development in privacy and data protection, gathering academics, lawyers, practitioners, policy-makers, industry and civil society from all over the world in Brussels to exchange ideas and discuss the latest emerging issues and trends. This unique multidisciplinary formula has served to make CPDP one of the leading data protection and privacy conferences in Europe and around the world.
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May 29-30, 2025
Los Angeles, California, US
PLSC started in 2008 to bring privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world together to discuss current issues in information privacy law and policy. The conference is, first and foremost, a paper workshop. Authors, commentators, and participants all work together to discuss ideas contained in the drafts. PLSC is conducted under the Chatham House Rule.
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May 26-28, 2025
Berlin, Germany
The motto for the 2025 festival for digital society is “Generation XYZ”. The program will once again bring the most important topics relating to the Internet and its communities, and the opportunities and challenges that lie in the digitalization of society to the stages.
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June 5-7, 2025
Online
FediForum brings together the leading thinkers and doers who build the new Open Social Web. Open protocols, not closed platforms. The Fediverse, Mastodon and ActivityPub. Bluesky and AtProto. Human connections, not AI bots, nor fake news nor manipulative algorithms. New funding models. New forms of governance. Better trust and safety. Direct relationships to stakeholders and customers. Interoperability across social platforms everywhere, and so much more.
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June 10-11, 2025
Mechclen, Belgium, and online
TICTeC 2025 will bring together people working on defensive technology against threats to democracy, and those who are using technologies constructively to enrich and strengthen the heartbeat of civic and democratic life. With a distinctive mix of tech practitioners, civil society leaders, and academic researchers, TICTeC isn’t just about showcasing cutting-edge pro-democracy tech innovations, at TICTeC you can learn about everything from combating corruption and misinformation to empowering communities and enhancing civic participation. It is a unique platform where attendees connect and collaborate.
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June 11, 2025
Washington, DC, USA
Join the Future of Privacy Forum for the second annual DC Privacy Forum: Governance for Digital Leadership and Innovation. This event will be held live, in person-only.
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June 12-15, 2025 (TBC)
Athens, Greece
The eighth annual ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency will have a cross-disciplinary focus that brings together researchers and practitioners interested in fairness, accountability, and transparency in socio-technical systems.
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June 19-21, 2025
Boston, MA, USA
State of the Map US is the largest gathering of OpenStreetMap community members from across the country. In 2025 we will spotlight the successes and challenges of mobility mapping with the theme “Charting the Course”. The event will connect mappers, businesses, academics, government agencies, and nonprofits, who all collaborate around the free and editable map of the world.
Workshop on the Economics of Infosecurity
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June 24-25, 2025
Tokyo, Japan
For more than 20 years, WEIS has been the leading forum for interdisciplinary scholarship on information security and privacy, combining expertise from the fields of economics, social science, business, law, policy, and computer science.
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Lillestrom, Norway
The IGF is a global multistakeholder platform that facilitates the discussion of public policy issues pertaining to the Internet. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the World Summit for the Information Society.
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July 8-11, 2025
Geneva, Switzerland
Organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in partnership with 40 UN sister agencies and co-convened with the government of Switzerland, the AI for Good Global Summit is the leading UN event on AI. It brings together top names in AI with a high-level lineup of global decision makers. Our goal is to identify practical applications of AI, accelerate progress towards the UN SDGs and scale solutions for global impact.
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July 21-23, 2025
San Francisco, CA, USA
TrustCon is the global conference dedicated to trust and safety professionals who are responsible for the challenging work of keeping our platforms and communities safe. This conference will create an enduring and supportive community; offer workshops and presentations focused on the practice of trust and safety; and explore successes, lessons learned, and the future of the field. Attendees have the opportunity to collaborate, hear from trust and safety thought leaders, and connect with peers from all over the world.
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July 31-August 3, 2025
Portland, OR, USA
Software Freedom Conservancy hosts Free and Open Source Software Yearly to focus on the creation and impact of free and open source software. The event includes community-led tracks with talks and workshops over four days. Previous topics have included community building, education, development and legal and licensing issues. We will use free software to run our conference and reduce the amount of proprietary software that is treated as default.
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August 7-9, 2025
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Since 2006, Netroots Nation has hosted the largest annual conference for progressives, drawing thousands of attendees from around the country and beyond.
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August 06-09, 2025
Nairobi, Kenya, and online
Wikimania is the annual celebration of all the free knowledge projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation with four days of conferences, discussions, meetups, training, and workshops. Hundreds of volunteers and Free Knowledge leaders from around the world gather to discuss issues, report on new projects and approaches, and exchange ideas.
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August 7-10, 2025
Las Vegas, Nevada, US
Def Con is one of the world’s largest hacker conventions.
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August 15-17, 2025
New York, NY, USA
HOPE 16 will welcome hackers of all types: makers,
artists, educators, experimenters, tinkerers, and more – anyone who is interested in playing with technology, coming up with new ideas, learning from others, and sharing knowledge. Now an annual event.
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September 26-29, 2025
Brussels, Belgium
The annual self-organized conference on digital rights and data protection draws people from across Europe and beyond to come together to advocate for freedom in the digitalized world, plan actions against attacks on civil liberties and increasing surveillance, and seek discussions with decision-makers.
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September 30, 2025
Brussels, Belgium
Privacy Camp is organised by European Digital Rights (EDRi), in collaboration with its partners the Research Group on Law, Science, Technology & Society (LSTS) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Privacy Salon vzw, the Institute for European Studies (IEE) at Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, the Institute of Information Law (IViR) at University of Amsterdam and the Racism and Technology Center.
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October 4, 2025
Boston, MA, USA
Instead of hosting one LibrePlanet conference in 2025, the Free Software Foundation is planning a jam-packed anniversary year, filled with several new and exciting activities in 2025, culminating in a final celebration in Boston in October.
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November 7-9, 2025
Barcelona, Spain
Mozilla Festival is where passionate individuals unite to build a better Internet. Reclaiming the Internet starts with all of us. At the Mozilla Festival, participants unlearn defaults, rethink power, share bold ideas and have thoughtful discussions that drive real change. Join us in shaping a digital future that’s more open, inclusive, and firmly grounded in fundamental rights.
November 10-13. 2025
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Lisbon, Portugal
“The world’s largest technology conference.” Founded in 2009, Web Summit focuses on Internet and emerging technologies, marketing, and venture capitalism. Partners range from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups, and attendees represent all levels and sectors of the global technology industry.
