Beijing has 'diverse' ways of interfering in votes, Taipei warns | US defeats Russia to head UN telecoms agency in fight for internet’s future | AI 'supercharges' online disinformation and censorship
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The Daily Cyber & Tech Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cybersecurity, critical technologies, foreign interference & disinformation.
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China has "very diverse" ways of interfering in Taiwan's elections set for January — from military pressure to spreading fake news, including manipulating opinion polls — a senior Taiwanese security official said Wednesday. Ahead of elections, Taiwan routinely flags the risk of interference from Beijing — which claims the democratically governed island as its own — saying that China seeks to sway the outcome to benefit candidates who may be more favorable toward the country. The Japan Times
A top U.S. official won a massive majority to lead the United Nations agency that sets global standards for telecoms and tech infrastructure. 139 countries voted for U.S.'s Doreen Bogdan-Martin against 25 casting their ballots for Russia’s Rashid Ismailov, choosing the American to lead the International Telecommunication Union for the next four years. Organizers won't disclose which country voted for which candidate in the election on Thursday in Bucharest. POLITICO
Rapid advances in artificial intelligence are boosting online disinformation and enabling governments to increase censorship and surveillance in a growing threat to human rights, a U.S. non-profit said in a report published on Wednesday. Global internet freedom declined for the 13th consecutive year, with China, Myanmar and Iran having the worst conditions of the 70 countries surveyed by the Freedom on the Net report, which highlighted the risks posed by easy access to generative AI technology. Reuters
ASPI
Security experts warn foreign actors are tampering with the Voice referendum to sow division
ABC News
Albert Zhang
Researchers at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute have found that fake social media accounts linked to Chinese Communist Party have been spreading misinformation about the Voice. Albert Zhang, an Analyst at ASPI, said that “Over the past few months when we’ve been looking at online conversations around the Voice referendum, especially on social media, we’ve actually identified a small network of coordinated inauthentic accounts which were trying to amplify division around the debate as well as amplify negative posts about the Voice referendum.
Open-source intelligence has arrived
Observer Research Foundation
Manoj Joshi
So far, a great deal of OSINT analysis relating to India is being done abroad. A notable name in this regard is Nathan Ruser of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute who has put out reports and analyses based on satellite imagery relating to the Sino-Indian clash in Galwan in 2022 and the more recent one in Yangtse near Tawang. Ruser is also the analyst who showed, through OSINT methods, how the IAF bombs missed their targets in Balakot.
US army shake-up provides challenges for Australia
The West Australian
Dominic Giannini
The army shake-up reflects the changing nature of warfare and a bid to counter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific. The Australian army also needs to adapt to work with its allies, ASPI said in a new report. "Australia's defence strategy rightly prioritises our national defence but this does raise questions about the capacity of an integrated ADF to meet the future strategic needs of the alliance," the think tank said. While the review focused on deterring threats by denying any attacks and making adversaries think twice about targeting Australia, it did not explicitly rule out "deterrence by punishment" against mainland China, ASPI found. This means there was a large incentive for the defence force to boost hypersonic missiles, which is a key component of the second stage of the trilateral AUKUS alliance that includes the US and UK. Stationing hypersonics in Australia "would send a purposeful signal to Beijing", the report said.
Australia
Crypto class action against Meta, Google dropped due to ‘conflict of interest’
The Australian
Angelica Snowden
A self-described “serial technology entrepreneur” and cryptocurrency trader has lost his fight for compensation from Meta and Google after arguing their short-lived ban on cryptocurrency advertising sunk the value of his investment platform. Federal Court judge Elizabeth Cheesman permanently stayed the class action — which accused the companies of breaching competition law by prohibiting virtual money advertising in 2018 — because its main applicant, Andrew Hamilton, was also funding the case.
China
Beijing has 'diverse' ways of interfering in votes, Taipei warns
The Japan Times
China has "very diverse" ways of interfering in Taiwan's elections set for January — from military pressure to spreading fake news, including manipulating opinion polls — a senior Taiwanese security official said Wednesday. Ahead of elections, Taiwan routinely flags the risk of interference from Beijing — which claims the democratically governed island as its own — saying that China seeks to sway the outcome to benefit candidates who may be more favorable toward the country.
China rebukes EU after formal launch of EV subsidy probe
Reuters
Chen Aizhu and Philip Blenkinsop
China complained on Wednesday about the "very short" time provided by the European Union to engage in consultations for the bloc's inquiry into subsidies for electric vehicles. The remarks came as the European Commission formally launched the investigation into whether to set tariffs to shield EU producers from a "flood" of imports of cheaper Chinese electric vehicles it says benefit from state subsidies.
Chinese-owned TikTok to stop sales in Indonesia after social media transaction ban
South China Morning Post
Short video app TikTok will from Wednesday halt transactions on its platform in Indonesia following the country’s new ban on e-commerce trade on social media, it said on Tuesday. “Our priority is to remain compliant with local laws and regulations. As such, we will no longer facilitate e-commerce transactions in TikTok Shop Indonesia,” the company said, adding that it will coordinate with the Indonesian government for its next steps. TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance said it will stop sales at 5pm Jakarta time on October 4.
USA
US defeats Russia to head UN telecoms agency in fight for internet’s future
POLITICO
Clothilde Goujard
A top U.S. official won a massive majority to lead the United Nations agency that sets global standards for telecoms and tech infrastructure. 139 countries voted for U.S.'s Doreen Bogdan-Martin against 25 casting their ballots for Russia’s Rashid Ismailov, choosing the American to lead the International Telecommunication Union for the next four years. Organizers won't disclose which country voted for which candidate in the election on Thursday in Bucharest.
What to know about Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud trial
The New York Times
David Yaffe-Bellany
Federal prosecutors have charged Mr. Bankman-Fried with orchestrating a vast scheme to siphon billions of dollars of FTX customer money into political contributions, real estate purchases, charitable donations and venture investments. He is also accused of lying to his venture capital backers and to the companies that lent FTX money. The scheme was exposed in November when a run on deposits forced FTX to shut down withdrawals, with more than $8 billion in customer funds missing.
The Supreme Court cases that could redefine the internet
The Atlantic
Caroline Mimbs Nyce
In the aftermath of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, both Facebook and Twitter decided to suspend lame-duck President Donald Trump from their platforms. That same year, Florida and Texas passed bills to restrict social-media platforms’ ability to take down certain kinds of content. In particular, they intend to make political “deplatforming” illegal, a move that would have ostensibly prevented the removal of Trump from Facebook and Twitter. The constitutionality of these laws has since been challenged in lawsuits—the tech platforms maintain that they have a First Amendment right to moderate content posted by their users. As the separate cases wound their way through the court system, federal judges (all of whom were nominated by Republican presidents) were divided on the laws’ legality. And now they’re going to the Supreme Court.
Threat of US Government shutdown fuels concerns about cyber vulnerabilities
VOA News
Jeff Seldin
As the U.S. government seemed headed for a possible shutdown last week, cybersecurity firms began picking up on an alarming trend: a spike in cyberattacks targeting government agencies and the U.S. defense industry. It has some analysts concerned that U.S. adversaries and criminal hackers might have been preparing to take advantage of weaker-than-usual cybersecurity if lawmakers had not been able to reach a deal to keep U.S. agencies open past September 30.
U.S. regulators made Huawei's chip 'breakthrough' possible
Nikkei Asia
Douglas Fuller
Last month, Chinese state media proclaimed that the microchips at the core of Huawei Technologies' flashy new flagship Mate 60 Pro smartphone showed how Chinese companies were ingeniously breaking through America's blockade on advanced chipmaking technologies. The chips, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp, are based on what is known as 7-nanometer technology -- despite Washington's attempts to restrict access by Chinese companies to technologies to produce chips below the threshold of 14 nm, or in some cases 16 nm.
China is suffering a brain drain. The U.S. isn’t exploiting it.
The New York Times
Li Yuan
Chinese — from young people to entrepreneurs — are voting with their feet to escape political oppression, bleak economic prospects and often grueling work cultures. Increasingly, the exodus includes tech professionals and other well-educated middle-class Chinese. “I left China because I didn’t like the social and political environment,” said Chen Liangshi, 36, who worked on artificial intelligence projects at Baidu and Alibaba, two of China’s biggest tech companies, before leaving the country in early 2020.
Americas
Statement: Canada’s Privacy Commissioner welcomes Federal Court of Appeal decision that Google’s search engine service is subject to Canada’s federal privacy law
Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Tanvi Nair
I welcome the Federal Court of Appeal decision upholding the Federal Court’s decision that Google’s search engine service is subject to federal privacy law. The court agreed with my Office’s position that Google is not exempt from the Personal information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, Canada’s federal private sector privacy law, under the journalistic purposes exemption. The court’s decision brings welcome clarification to this area of the law.
North Asia
Chip industry hub grows in southwestern Japan with TSMC's arrival
Nikkei Asia
Nami Matsuura and Kosuke Kondo
A cluster of semiconductor investment is taking shape on the southwestern Japanese island of Kyushu, as TSMC's construction of a chip plant spurs new moves by some of Japan's biggest suppliers in the industry. Massive buildings have risen up in Kikuyo, a town in Kumamoto prefecture where Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's biggest contract chipmaker, is constructing a chip foundry.
South Korea targets “fake news” over online opinion poll during soccer game
Korea Pro
South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo announced the formation of an inter-ministerial task force aimed at curtailing potential manipulation of public opinion on South Korea’s online portals. This decision followed a report from the Korea Communications Commission which indicated that approximately 80% of online users supporting the Chinese soccer team during the Asian Games men’s quarterfinal against South Korea originated from overseas.
South & Central Asia
Why a tiny Indian state defied the national government to defend refugees’ biometric data
Rest of World
Durga M Sengupta
The fifth smallest state in India, with a population of barely over 1.1 million (at least 30 Indian cities are more populous), has stood up to the central government and refused to collect the biometric data of refugees from Myanmar. Mizoram is among the Indian states that share a border with Myanmar, and reportedly houses around 35,000 refugees from the country. Recording migrants’ biometric information can help them receive the support and resources they need, but such data collection drives can also put this vulnerable group at risk, according to cybersecurity expert Joseph K. Nwankpa.
Ukraine - Russia
Rules of engagement issued to hacktivists after chaos
BBC
Joe Tidy
The International Committee of the Red Cross has, for the first time, published rules of engagement for civilian hackers involved in conflicts. The organisation warns unprecedented numbers of people are joining patriotic cyber-gangs since the Ukraine invasion. The eight rules include bans on attacks on hospitals, hacking tools that spread uncontrollably and threats that engender terror among civilians. But some cyber-gangs have told BBC News they plan to ignore them.
Ukraine's parliament taunts Elon Musk after meme mocking Zelenskiy
Reuters
Max Hunder
Ukraine's parliament and its speaker taunted billionaire Elon Musk on Monday after he posted a meme on his social media platform mocking President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's pleas for wartime assistance from the West. Musk owns SpaceX, which provides Starlink satellite communication services that are vital for Ukraine's defence effort, but his statements have sometimes angered Kyiv since the full-scale invasion launched by Russia in February last year.
Russia’s FSB requests online services be required to collect and provide users’ geolocation and payment information
Meduza
In a draft decree, Russia’s Federal Security Service has proposed adding users’ geolocation and payment information to the list of data that “organizers of information dissemination” (virtually any website or online service) are required to store and to provide to law enforcement agencies on request. The document states that a lack of clear legal guidelines concerning the storage and provision of this information to federal security agencies “reduces the effectiveness of operational investigative activities [and] negatively affects the security of the Russian Federation.”
Europe
Deepfakes in Slovakia preview how AI will change the face of elections
Bloomberg
Daniel Zuidijk
Something didn’t add up in an alleged conversation between Progressive Slovakia’s leader, Michal Simecka, and a local journalist that circulated in the run-up to Slovakia’s elections on Saturday. The speech was stilted and their voices flat even as the leader of the country’s main pro-European party seemed to slag local voters, discuss buying votes from the Roma minority and joke about child pornography. If it sounded off, it’s because it was. AFP fact checkers concluded the recording was a hoax synthesized by an artificial intelligence tool trained on samples of the speakers’ voices.
EU to assess export controls on sensitive tech to China
The Financial Times
Andy Bounds
The EU is to examine bloc-wide export controls in sensitive technology as part of its attempt to “de-risk” its relationship with China and other authoritarian regimes. The European Commission has identified four areas — semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and biotechnology — in which to assess whether the bloc should ban the transfer of some goods and services to other countries.
UK
MrBeast and BBC stars used in deepfake scam videos
BBC
Tom Gerken
The world's biggest YouTuber, MrBeast, and two BBC presenters have been used in deepfake videos to scam unsuspecting people online. Deepfakes use artificial intelligence to make a video of someone by manipulating their face or body. One such video appeared on TikTok this week, claiming to be MrBeast offering people new iPhones for $2 (£1.65).
Big Tech
Glitch in the code: Google, Meta, and the fight over news in Canada and Australia
The Interpreter
Tanvi Nair
This year, Canada enacted Bill C.18, The Online News Act. The rather perfunctory name for the legislation belies the massive change it embodies. That law would require digital platforms such as Google and Meta to pay news media outlets to host links to their articles. Google and Meta have both strongly opposed the Bill, with Meta turning off news services for Canadian users in the midst of severe wildfires. Australians watching this stoush unfold will have an eerie sense of deja vu. In 2021, the Australian government introduced the News Media Bargaining Code, which required platforms including Google and Meta (then Facebook) to pay news media outlets for hosting links to news articles on their sites. This code was enacted to resolve the commercial power imbalance between platforms and news media outlets, and to help improve the sustainability of traditional news media outlets. The platforms, of course, were opposed to the Australian code. They used the same tactics that we see playing out in Canada.
Meta debuts generative AI features for advertisers
TechCrunch
Sarah Perez
Meta announced today it’s rolling out its first generative AI features for advertisers, allowing them to use AI to create backgrounds, expand images and generate multiple versions of ad text based on their original copy. The launch of the new tools follows the company’s Meta Connect event last week where the social media giant debuted its Quest 3 mixed-reality headset and a host of other generative AI products, including stickers and editing tools, as well as AI-powered smart glasses.
Meta to lay off employees in metaverse silicon unit on Wednesday
Reuters
Katie Paul
Meta is planning to lay off employees on Wednesday in the unit of its metaverse-oriented Reality Labs division focused on creating custom silicon, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday. Employees were informed of the layoffs in a post on Meta's internal discussion forum Workplace on Tuesday. The post said they would be notified about their status with the company by early Wednesday morning, one of the sources said.
Sam Bankman-Fried's father, ex-Trump staffer among possible trial witnesses
Reuters
Jody Godoy and Luc Cohen
Sam Bankman-Fried's father and brother, as well as Donald Trump's former spokesman Anthony Scaramucci, are among possible witnesses at the cryptocurrency exchange founder's fraud trial, according to a list read by a prosecutor in court on Tuesday. Scaramucci, Bankman-Fried's father Joseph Bankman and his brother Gabriel Bankman-Fried were on a list of potential witnesses prosecutor Danielle Sassoon read in court during jury selection at the outset of Bankman-Fried's trial in order to see if any prospective jurors knew them.
Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire Was ‘Built on Lies,’ Prosecutor Says
The New York Times
The FTX founder’s trial opened with allegations that he looted billions of dollars in customer money to fund his lavish lifestyle. A defense lawyer told jurors the crypto mogul made mistakes but acted “in good faith.”
Artificial Intelligence
AI 'supercharges' online disinformation and censorship, report warns
Reuters
Rina Chandran
Rapid advances in artificial intelligence are boosting online disinformation and enabling governments to increase censorship and surveillance in a growing threat to human rights, a U.S. non-profit said in a report published on Wednesday. Global internet freedom declined for the 13th consecutive year, with China, Myanmar and Iran having the worst conditions of the 70 countries surveyed by the Freedom on the Net report, which highlighted the risks posed by easy access to generative AI technology.
SoftBank’s Son says AI will surpass human intelligence in a decade, urges Japanese firms to adopt it
Associated Press
Ayaka McGill and Mari Yamaguchi
Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son on Wednesday said he believes artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence within a decade, urging Japanese companies to adopt it or be left behind. Son, speaking at a corporate conference in Tokyo, said “artificial general intelligence will surpass the total intelligence of humankind by 10 times in 10 years.”
Microsoft CEO says tech giants battling for content to build AI
Reuters
Diane Bartz
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said Monday tech giants were competing for vast troves of content needed to train artificial intelligence, and complained Google was locking up content with expensive and exclusive deals with publishers. Testifying in a landmark U.S. trial against its rival Google, the first major antitrust case brought by the U.S. since it sued Microsoft in 1998, Nadella testified the tech giants' efforts to build content libraries to train their large language models "reminds me of the early phases of distribution deals."
Global internet freedoms fell again last year as the threat of AI looms
The Record by Recorded Future
James Reddick
The internet was less free and open for users around the world last year, the human rights advocacy organization Freedom House said Wednesday — a trajectory that has the potential to worsen if artificial intelligence tools are used in undemocratic ways. The organization’s 13th annual Freedom on the Net report is a worldwide survey ranking digital rights in 70 countries, based on metrics such as the prevalence of censorship, disinformation campaigns, surveillance, punishments for online speech, and more. This iteration of the report covered June 2022 through May of this year.
Tom Hanks warns of dental ad using A.I. version of him
The New York Times
Derrick Bryson Taylor
Tom Hanks and Gayle King, a co-host of “CBS Mornings,” have separately warned their followers on social media that videos using artificial intelligence likenesses of them were being used for fraudulent advertisements. “People keep sending me this video and asking about this product and I have NOTHING to do with this company,” Ms. King wrote on Instagram on Monday, attaching a video that she said had been manipulated from a legitimate post promoting her radio show on Aug. 31.
Are artificial intelligence and democracy compatible?
The New York Times
Chen Aizhu and Philip Blenkinsop
During the Athens Democracy Forum, Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs for Meta, discussed how artificial intelligence can be used to combat hate speech.
Research
The Repressive Power of Artificial Intelligence
Freedom House
Allie Funk, Adrian Shahbaz and Kian Vesteinsson
Advances in AI are amplifying a crisis for human rights online. While AI technology offers exciting and beneficial uses for science, education, and society at large, its uptake has also increased the scale, speed, and efficiency of digital repression. Automated systems have enabled governments to conduct more precise and subtle forms of online censorship. Purveyors of disinformation are employing AI-generated images, audio, and text, making the truth easier to distort and harder to discern. Sophisticated surveillance systems rapidly trawl social media for signs of dissent, and massive datasets are paired with facial scans to identify and track prodemocracy protesters. These innovations are reshaping an internet that was already under serious threat.
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