Online Rights Group Sends Open Letter to Condemning UK’s Online Safety Bill
The latest variant of the crypto wars is happening right now, as British and European governments attempt to force backdoors into end-to-end encryption (E2EE). This is the latest attempt to prevent criminals from ‘going dark’ through E2EE. The battlefield for this war in liberal democracies is the EU’s Child Sexual Abuse Regulation and the UK’s Online Safety Bill, or OSB. Unfortunately, the main source of collateral damage in this war could be every law-abiding citizen in all other liberal democracies around the world.
On June 26, 2023, the Online Rights Group delivered an open letter to Chloe Smith, the British government minister guiding the OSB through parliament. Their biggest concern was the likely requirement for an encrypted message scanning capability, warning:
“The scanning software would have to be pre-installed on people’s phones, without their permission or full awareness of the severe privacy and security implications. The underlying databases can be corrupted by hostile actors, meaning that individual phones would become vulnerable to attack.”
Within days of this letter, Apple sent a separate statement to the BBC, saying: “End-to-end encryption is a critical capability that protects the privacy of journalists, human rights activists, and diplomats. It also helps everyday citizens defend themselves from surveillance, identity theft, fraud, and data breaches. The Online Safety Bill poses a serious threat to this protection, and could put UK citizens at greater risk. Apple urges the government to amend the bill to protect strong end-to-end encryption for the benefit of all.”
Matthew Hodgson is the co-founder of Matrix.org, an open protocol for secure, decentralized communications, and the CEO/CTO at Element, a UK-based E2EE company set up by Hodgson partly to help fund Matrix. Hodgson is adamant that Element will not introduce a government backdoor or scanning capability. “We are willing to be blocked in markets where the government mandates that there must be some kind of intercept capability or scanning capability on communications. To have an alien blob of code reading all the unencrypted messages, and doing God knows what depending on the predilections of OFCOM or the government of the day would be catastrophic.”
Read: https://www.securityweek.com/apple-civil-liberty-groups-condemn-uk-online-safety-bill/
Musk’s Tweet Limits Attempt to Fight AI Censorship Tools
Last Saturday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced that the social media platform would now limit how many tweets users can read due to “extreme” system manipulation and data scraping levels. Musk said in a statement that the daily restrictions would eventually be raised to 8,000 posts for verified users, 800 for unverified accounts, and 400 for new unverified users.
When the social media platform’s users clapped back with accusations of free speech suppression, Musk responded that this decision had been made because hundreds of organizations were “extremely aggressively” scraping Twitter data, negatively impacting user experience.
There may, however, be more to this than a deteriorating user experience or a sneaky effort by Musk to force the app’s monetization. In fact, Musk hinted at the other reason himself in April when he threatened to sue Microsoft for using Twitter data to train its OpenAI software.
“They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time,” he tweeted on April 19.
According to Mike Benz, the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, “AI censorship is where all of the magic happens.” In a video posted yesterday, Benz notes how, according to the Twitter Files, whereas the FBI might censor 22 tweets, artificial intelligence is an excellent tool for IEP (and other 3rd-party censorship groups) to censor a whopping 22 million tweets.
Before 2016, Benz explains, you could not “control” the internet, however since then, an “AI Censorship Deathstar” has been under construction, which “relies on massive scraping of Twitter data to track trending narratives to systemically surveil, build intelligence dossiers, and track and turn down communities online.”
Twitter is the best social network for this massive data scraping effort since all of its consumers are also its creators. Thus, data scraping has emerged as an extremely important tool for early narrative detection, countering “wrong think” via fact-checking, Google Ad suppression, and adding political pressure.
“You are going to see the censorship industry howl over this,” Benz concluded, adding, “whether Musk knows it or not, he has stepped on a rattlesnake.”
Read: https://zerohedge.com/technology/musks-tweet-limiting-move-prevent-completion-ai-censorship-death-star
Federal Privacy Bill Sparks Controversy over Illinois’ BIPA Law
Several advocacy groups and Democrats are drawing attention to an Illinois bill as an example of how certain elements can result in important revisions as lawmakers on Capitol Hill continue to discuss federal privacy laws.
The Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) requires businesses to notify individuals beforehand and seek their written agreement before collecting or obtaining a resident of Illinois’s biometric identifier, such as fingerprints, faceprints, or iris scans.
BIPA, according to Szabo, vice president of NetChoice, has been the subject of more than 750 lawsuits, making it one of the most challenged laws ever. According to him, BIPA prevents Illinois citizens from using biometric identification technologies, such as doorbell cameras.
Read: https://therecord.media/illinois-bipa-law-at-the-center-of-congress-debate-on-federal-privacy-bill
Researchers Demonstrate ChatGPT’s Ability to Generate Windows 10 and Windows 11 Keys
The well-known artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT is the subject of debate after users discovered a possible security flaw. ChatGPT has become one of the AI services with the quickest rate of growth in the world because of its many features.
When a Twitter user with the handle @immasiddtweets claimed to have successfully created Windows 10 Pro keys by interacting with OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT (their Twitter account has since been terminated, but here is the archived link to their now-deleted tweets).
Windows Central claims that when its researchers attempted to use Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot to produce Windows keys, the chatbot failed to do so and instead provided advice on how to avoid product piracy and where to purchase such items legally.
Read: https://www.hackread.com/chatgpt-generating-windows-10-windows-11-keys/
Congress Considers Amendment to Stop Government from Buying Private Data
An amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) may be introduced to stop the government from buying information on Americans without a warrant. This amendment has bipartisan support and follows a report revealing that intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been buying data on Americans that the US Supreme Court sought to protect against warrantless searches and seizures.
Representatives Warren Davidson (R-OH) and Sara Jacobs (D-CA) submitted the amendment, which seeks stronger warrant requirements for data accumulated by cell phones. The amendment focuses on web browsing and internet search history, GPS coordinates, and other location information. It would prevent law enforcement agencies from exchanging anything of value for information that would typically require a warrant, court order, or subpoena.
The amendment contains an exception for anonymous information that is reasonably immune to being de-anonymized. However, the Federal Trade Commission’s Privacy and Identity Protection Division has noted that claims of anonymized data are often deceptive and that it is often trivial to reidentify anonymized data.
Read: https://www.wired.com/story/ndaa-2023-davidson-jacobs-fourth-amendment/
Elsewhere Online:
A privacy concern has halted Instagram’s launch of its Twitter alternative, Threads, in Europe
Read: https://thehackernews.com/2023/07/instagrams-twitter-alternative-threads.html
Macron Urges Online Platforms to Remove Riot-Related Content
Read: https://reclaimthenet.org/macron-wants-platforms-to-delete-riot-content
European Lawmakers Sign Off World’s First Set of Comprehensive Rules for Artificial Intelligence
Read: https://www.securityweek.com/how-europe-is-leading-the-world-in-the-push-to-regulate-ai/
Streamlining Your Productivity: How ClickUp is Transforming Task Management for Teams
Read: https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/chinese-hackers-targeted-g7-summit-through-ms-office-flaw-a-22344
Hackers from Ukraine are allegedly responsible for taking down a Russian railway site
Read: https://therecord.media/russian-railway-site-taken-down-by-ukrainian-hackers
Previously on #AxisOfEasy
