Vort3x | Cybersalon | Aug 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
10th October – New Big Fundraiser party for our colleagues at Newspeak House and celebrations of their 10 years Anniversary! UK Democracy is under threat, please support Newspeak squad with generous donations so they can keep doing their foundational work! Tickets here
NEWS
Age Verification Comes Into Force in the UK
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Since age verification rules came into force on July 25 under the UK’s Online Safety Act and thousands of sites have begun age-verifying users, VPN use has soared, Tim Bradshaw reports at the Financial Times. At the Parliamentary petition site, nearly 500,000 people have called on the government to repeal the Act. At the Guardian, Rowena Mason and Dan Milmo report that in an interview on Mumsnet technology secretary Peter Kyle apologized to a generation of children he said politicians had failed to protect from toxic online content. At the BBC, Kate Whannel reports that Reform leader Nigel Farage, who has called for the Act’s repeal, is demanding that Kyle apologize for saying on Sky News that those calling for the Act’s repeal are on the side of sexual predators. The BBC also reports that the Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a judicial review of the Online Safety Act, fearing it will be placed in “Category 1”, which would force it to verify everyone who writes or edits the encyclopedia, compromising their privacy, security, and safety. At the Daily Telegraph, Matthew Field reports that Ofcom is paying celebrity influencers to promote the age-checking rules. Finally, at The Gist, Simon McGarr calls Ireland’s adoption of age verification rules, which began for social media sites on July 21 an “epic fail”, and analyzes the privacy implications. As the EU home for many US technology companies, Ireland will play an important role as age verification develops.
Comment: The UK is offering itself up as a test case for age verification in practice. Politicians suggesting VPNs should be either banned or age-gated may be missing that for many adults it’s simply more convenient to use a VPN than to deal with the friction that age-gating adds.
UK Government Cracks Down on Ransomware
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The UK government plans to ban public organizations such as schools, councils, and the NHS from paying up after they’ve been hit by ransomware, Sergiu Gatlan reports at Bleeping Computer. Besides the fact that paying these criminals costs the public purse millions of pounds every year, doing so encourages the criminals to keep doing it. At the BBC, Richard Bilton reports that by cracking just one password a ransomware gang was able to destroy the 158-year-old Northamptonshire trucking company KNP.
Mandatory Digital ID System is a-coming to UK
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The Labour government is making serious moves towards creating a digital ID system with the goal of tackling illegal immigration and improving the delivery of public services, Rachel Sylvester reports at The Observer. While nothing is immediately proposed, Syvester says that Number 10 believes there are no philosophical obstacles, only practical ones such as how to server those without mobile phones. Pressure to adopt a digital infrastructure is being applied by the Tony Blair Institute. In a paper, Labour Together lays out the case for the card, which it calls “progressive”, estimating the cost at £140-400 million. A poll conducted in 2024 found 53% of people in favor of digital IDs. The Sociable discusses a report from TBI advocating a national data library, of which digital IDs would form a part.
Comment: Proposals to bring back a national ID card have surfaced regularly ever since it was abolished after the end of World War II, each time with a different set of problems it was supposed to solve, a clear indicator of a technological solution in search of a problem. The last such effort, which began in 2006 and ended when Labour was voted out in 2010, was supposed to prevent benefit fraud and improve access to public services; an earlier attempt was going to prevent future disasters like Hillsborough. This time, the stated goal is to limit immigration. Proponents frequently cite positive polls in favor of ID cards, but closer analysis usually shows that the public supports the goals rather than the identification system itself and wanes when faced with the reality of the proposals. Also unlike last time, proponents are saying upfront the ID card would be mandatory. Last time it was going to cost £6 billion.
Un-Greatful Dead? Spotify Publishes AI Songs and Attributes Them to Dead Artists
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Spotify is publishing new, AI-generated songs on the official pages of long-dead artists such as Blaze Foley, Guy Clark, and Dan Berk without permission from their estates or record labels, Emmanuel Maiberg reports at 404 Media. New songs attributed to those creators bear a copyright mark from a company called Syntax Error.
Comment: It’s one thing to use AI to generate music-like sounds and front them with fake musicians and bands, quite another to attribute those sounds to a real musician without permission. Doing so arguably invokes the (UK) offense of “passing off”, which applies when a business freeloads on another’s success.
Jury Convicts Meta for Intercepting Period Tracker Data – colour us surprised
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A jury in a class action case in a US federal court has found Meta guilty of violating the California Invasion of Privacy Act against wiretapping when it collected data from a period tracker app made by Flo Health without its users’ consent, Jon Brodkin reports at Ars Technica. The case began as an action against Flo Health in 2021, and later added Meta, Google, and the analytics company Flurry as co-defendants. The plaintiffs other than Meta settled before the trial began. Financial damages have not yet been decided. Meta is likely to appeal. Meta says that the technical details meant that it did not know the significance of the “limited” data it received.
Comment: This case raises two issues: the dangers of leaked data from period tracker apps, and the difficulties of protecting privacy in complex systems like smartphones, where vendors interact in ways users can’t necessarily discern. Meta’s sole intent in collecting user data may have been to show ads, but
FEATURES & ANALYSIS
Water is the new gold as Data Centers Threaten Water Supplies
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In this article at the New York Times, Eli Tan examines the connection between local residents’ dry taps and the Meta data center complete in 2024 in Newton County, Georgia, where construction began in 2018. Municipal water rates have soared, and the county is at risk of facing permanent water shortages by 2030. Data centers tend to prioritize saving on electricity when choosing locations, but water is harder to manage and replenish. Nine more companies have applied to build data centers in Newton County, often asking for more water than residents use. Similar problems are found across the US and the rest of the world.
Uncontrollable Washing Machines – Belkin Bricks Wemo Smart Home Devices
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In this article at Ars Technica, Scharon Harding writes that companies like Belkin, which recently announced it would withdraw support and software updates for its Wemo smart home devices at the end of January 2026, are getting “far too comfortable” bricking devices customers have bought and paid for. On sale since 2015, Wemo devices will no longer work with home assistants such as Alexa, or be controllable via an app, though seven will continue to work if they have been configured to work with Apple’s HomeKit. According to the US Public Interest Research Group, at least 130 million pounds of electronic waste has been “created by expired software and canceled cloud services” since 2014. At Techdirt, Karl Bode uses the Belkin announcement to remind readers that you never own Internet of Things devices.
Comment: Smart homes have not really taken over the world as predicted ten to 20 years ago, and the many stories like this one are a deterrent. “Smart” devices appear to be more often bought because people have little other choice than because they actively want the technology. Few have the technical ability to constrain what data these devices collect or where they send it. And what’s the benefit? Why control a washing machine from an app, for example, when you still have to physically load and unload it? Today’s push to incorporate “AI” into everything feels similar: it’s something the technology companies want to sell us rather than something we’ve been clamoring for.
New tribe of Cultural Christians invades Silicon Valley
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In this article at Vanity Fair, Zoe Bernard examines the rise of Christianity in Silicon Valley, which was long seen as a hostile environment for the faithful. Mark Andreessen has advocated a return to traditional values; Peter Thiel has long promoted evangelical beliefs, and Elon Musk has begun calling himself a “cultural Christian”. As venture capitalists become responsive, young entrepreneurs are playing up their beliefs. Bernard goes on to consider the implications for Silicon Valley’s shift to military technology and its output more generally.
President Donald Trump Issues AI Executive Orders
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In this article at the Guardian, Nick Robins-Early and Lauren Gambino outline the three executive orders covering AI signed by US president Donald Trump in late July. One aims to eliminate “woke Marxist lunacy” from AI models funded by the federal government; the other two deregulate AI development, expedite the process of obtaining federal permits for data centers, and promote exporting AI models. Informally, Trump also suggested replacing the term “artificial”. At Tech Policy Press, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Costa Samaras, and Cole Donovan, who worked on AI policy during the Biden administration, say that although Trump”s new Action Plan sounds promising, a closer look shows policies that conflict with each other and with government actions. It ignores concerns about AI safety in favor of innovation and will burden the US with higher costs, higher pollution, and lower competitiveness. Meanwhile, Trump’s decision to raise taxes on renewable energy and favor fossil fuel use will impede building out the massive increase in electrical supply necessary for all those new data centers while increasing costs and emissions.
Colombian Schools Struggle with Generative AI
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In this article at Rest of World, Laura Rodríguez Salamanca explores the arrival of generative AI in rural Colombian classrooms, where it’s become pervasive via Meta’s Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram apps. Colombia already struggles with education; only 54 of 100 children finish secondary school, and of those 54 only 11 have reached acceptable levels in critical reading, mathematics, and natural sciences. AI provides a tempting shortcut to completing assignments and students using it provide higher-quality work, but many more are failing exams and, teachers say, don’t learn to think and analyze. Teachers are beginning to come up with ways to counter the trend.
Comment: Conversations with a tiny sample of British educators and students indicate that AI copying is common in the UK, too, and is extremely hard to detect. It seems clear that teaching will need to evolve, but many ideas for changes would add to teachers’ workload. Ultimately, the underlying problem is that for many kids education is merely a hoop to be gotten through in order to get a job; value for education itself has waned under economic pressure.
DIARY
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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 7-8, 2025
Bolzano, Italy
For over two years, FediForum has been bringing together the people who move the Fediverse and broader Open Social Web forward in a series of online events with global participation. FediForum is now expanding the conversation by hosting the first in-person event, in partnership with the international free software conference SFSCON.
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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.
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November 10-13. 2025
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.
Chaos Communication Congress 2025
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December 27-30, 2025
Leipzig, Germany
Europe’s largest hacker conference, the Congress, now in its 39th year, has become a Europe-wide renowned event with more than 17,000 participants annually, drawing an ever-growing group of international guests.
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February 23, 2026
Washington, DC, USA
The State of the Net Conference Series is hosted by the Internet Education Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public and policymakers about the potential of a decentralized global Internet to promote communications, commerce and democracy. IEF works closely with leaders on Capitol Hill and in the private sector to host the most important debates in Internet policy. IEF’s board of directors comprises public interest groups, corporations, and associations representative of the diversity of the Internet community.
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March 3-5, 2026
Berkeley, CA, USA
The fifth ACM symposium on computer science and law is the flagship conference for the emerging field of computer science and law. It brings together a community—scholars, practicing lawyers, and computing professionals—who are fluent both in computational thinking and its rigorous mathematical formalisms and in legal scholarship and thought with its equally rigorous yet human-centric set of principles, methodologies, and goals. Central to the study of “computer science and law” is the creation of a body of scholarship aimed towards the co-design of law and computing technology to promote social goals. We seek papers that combine rigorous technical computer-science reasoning with rigorous legal analysis to integrate the two disciplines.
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April 13-16, 2026
Boulder, CO, USA
For over 75 years, the Conference on World Affairs (CWA) has brought together global leaders and experts from a wide range of fields to spark lively, thought-provoking conversations on the most pressing issues of our time. Free and open to all—whether in person at CU Boulder or via livestream—CWA is designed to inform, inspire, and engage diverse audiences.
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April 25-26, 2026
Manchester, UK
OggCamp is an unconference celebrating Free Culture, Free and Open Source Software, hardware hacking, digital rights, and all manner of collaborative cultural activities and is committed to creating a conference that is as inclusive as possible. If you’ve got a story to tell, no matter your background or current status, whether it’s your first talk or you’ve loads of experience, as long as the talk is connected (somehow) to our theme then we want to know about it.
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May 5-8, 2026
Lusaka, Zambia and online
Our goal for RightsCon 2026 is to strike a balance between a clear, familiar structure and the flexibility to respond to a rapidly changing digital landscape. At a time when the digital rights sector is facing unprecedented pressure and uncertainty, from political volatility to disruptive emerging technologies, we want to ensure that the program is able to address urgent, time-sensitive issues, while maintaining a stable foundation for participants to prepare and engage meaningfully.
