Australia commences work on electronic surveillance law reforms | Executive at Swiss tech company said to operate secret surveillance operation | Peng Shuai and the real goal of Chinese censorship
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The Australian government has commenced work to reform the country's electronic surveillance laws that have been labelled as overly complex, inconsistent, and incompatible with the current technology landscape. The federal government committed to reforming these laws earlier this year after a review into Australia's intelligence community found comprehensive legislative changes were required, specifically in repealing existing powers and combining them to avoid duplication, contradictory definitions, and any further ad hoc amendments to existing laws. ZDNet
The co-founder of a company that has been trusted by technology giants including Google and Twitter to deliver sensitive passwords to millions of their customers also operated a service that ultimately helped governments secretly surveil and track mobile phones, according to former employees and clients. Bloomberg
This censorship is fundamentally about the dismantling of social resources. Content takedowns not only address the shorter-term problem of text or images that government actors want to remove, they also weaken activists' ability to rebuild by isolating them and dampening their ability to create new resources. WIRED
ASPI ICPC
‘Tech diplomacy’: Quad nations must cooperate on critical tech
Innovation Aus
Denham Sadler
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) also urged the Quad nations, including Australia, to establish a critical technologies fund to which participating countries would pledge funds which are then disbursed to address current and emerging critical technology gaps. “Co-investment approaches between Quad government agencies and private investors should be considered in order to leverage government funding more effectively than simply through grants or incentives,” the report said. The pilot project by ASPI focuses on the biotech and energy sectors, comparing the Quad nations with China.
You can read our new report: Benchmarking Critical Technologies: Building an evidence base for an informed critical technologies strategy here
Benchmarking critical technologies in an era of strategic competition
The Strategist
Samantha Hoffman
Technology policy formulation has gained a renewed importance for governments in the era of strategic competition, but contextual understanding and expertise in deciding where to focus efforts are lacking. A new pilot project at ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre focuses on a handful of critical technologies in the context of strategic partnership and strategic competition. Specifically, we focus on the biotechnology and energy technology sectors in China and in the Quad countries of Australia, India, Japan and the United States.
World
Private space stations are coming. Will they be better than their predecessors?
The Conversation
Philippe Starck
A new era of space stations is about to kick off. NASA has announced three commercial space station proposals for development, joining an earlier proposal by Axiom Space. These proposals are the first attempts to create places for humans to live and work in space outside the framework of government space agencies. They’re part of what has been called “Space 4.0”, where space technology is driven by commercial opportunities. Many believe this is what it will take to get humans to Mars and beyond.
At ASPI’s inaugural Sydney Dialogue, Quad space leaders discussed ways to collaborate in the new ‘golden age’ of space and discussed the role of commercial actors in space.
Australia
Australia commences work on electronic surveillance law reforms
ZDNet
Campbell Kwan
The Australian government has commenced work to reform the country's electronic surveillance laws that have been labelled as overly complex, inconsistent, and incompatible with the current technology landscape. The federal government committed to reforming these laws earlier this year after a review into Australia's intelligence community found comprehensive legislative changes were required, specifically in repealing existing powers and combining them to avoid duplication, contradictory definitions, and any further ad hoc amendments to existing laws.
The Department of Home Affairs has released a discussion paper on the proposed reforms which you can access here
Global cyber criminals to be targeted under new Australian sanctions regime
Innovation Aus
Denham Sadler
Global cyber criminals will be hit with new targeted sanctions, such as travel bans and the freezing of assets, from the Australian government under Magnitsky-style reforms passed on the last sitting day of Parliament for the year. Both houses of Parliament on Thursday – the last sitting day of 2021 and potentially before the next federal election – passed reforms to the 2011 Autonomous Sanctions Framework, in effect implementing Magnitsky-style sanctions.
Foreign influence laws ‘failing’, says one of the architects of the laws
The Australian
Ben Packham
One of the architects of Australia’s foreign interference laws says their inability to tackle Chinese government meddling in our public life has been an “abject failure of enforcement”. Daniel Ward, a former senior adviser to prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, has urged parliament’s intelligence and security committee to require an urgent overhaul of the laws to target undeclared Chinese influence-peddling.
Scanner deal must not give China’s spies an easy entree
The Australian
Security agencies, information technology professionals and the administrators of hospital and medical systems know the health sector is a prime target for hacking and cyber espionage. Australian intelligence officials are rightly indignant that the University of Sydney could put the security of NSW government health data at risk if it unwittingly provides a Chinese government-funded company with easy access to the system.
China
Peng Shuai and the real goal of Chinese censorship
WIRED
Rui Zhong
This censorship is fundamentally about the dismantling of social resources. Content takedowns not only address the shorter-term problem of text or images that government actors want to remove, they also weaken activists' ability to rebuild by isolating them and dampening their ability to create new resources. Censors can ensure that these groups stay silent. Conceptualizing censorship in a solely piecemeal way neglects the damage that destroying the foundations of organizing and civic society components can do.
How TikTok reads your mind
The New York Times
Ben Smith
There are four main goals for TikTok’s algorithm: 用户价值, 用户价值 (长期), 作者价值, and 平台价值, which the company translates as “user value,” “long-term user value,” “creator value,” and “platform value.” That set of goals is drawn from a frank and revealing document for company employees that offers new details of how the most successful video app in the world has built such an entertaining — some would say addictive — product. The document offers a new level of detail about the dominant video app, providing a revealing glimpse both of the app’s mathematical core and insight into the company’s understanding of human nature — our tendencies toward boredom, our sensitivity to cultural cues — that help explain why it’s so hard to put down. The document also lifts the curtain on the company’s seamless connection to its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, at a time when the U.S. Department of Commerce is preparing a report on whether TikTok poses a security risk to the United States.
Read our report: TikTok and WeChat: Curating and controlling global information flows here
Alibaba overhauls e-commerce businesses, names new CFO
Reuters
Brenda Goh
Alibaba also announced that deputy chief financial officer Toby Xu will succeed Maggie Wu as CFO from April, describing his appointment as part of the company's leadership succession plan. Xu joined Alibaba from PWC three years ago.
USA
Pro-Trump news site targets election workers, inspiring wave of menace
Reuters
Peter Eisler & Jason Szep
The Gateway Pundit, which started as a tiny opinion blog, saw readership surge to nearly 50 million views a month as it amplified Donald Trump’s false stolen-election claims. Reuters documented the impact: 25 election workers targeted by more than 100 violent threats or hostile messages citing the Pundit.
Facebook’s struggle with Gateway Pundit highlights challenge of containing disinformation
Reuters
Peter Eisler
The Gateway Pundit, a far-right news site, has used its Facebook page - with more than 630,000 followers - to post bogus stories alleging the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Some commenters responded with threats of violence.
Investigating Facebook: a fractious relationship with academia
Financial Times
Madhumita Murgia, Cristina Criddle & Hannah Murphy
Last March, Orestis Papakyriakopoulos, a researcher at Princeton University, applied to use a special data access tool that allows academics to do research on Facebook. His goal was to investigate political campaigning on the social network. The data set contained information on ads related to elections, how they were distributed, to whom and at what cost. But Papakyriakopoulos withdrew his application when he saw what he viewed to be draconian controls on access written into the contract, which he was required to sign.
U.S. military has acted against ransomware groups, General acknowledges
The New York Times
Julian E. Barnes
Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the head of Cyber Command, said a new cross-functional effort has been gathering intelligence to combat criminal groups targeting U.S. infrastructure.
Biden expected to nominate first woman as Army Cyber chief
The Record
Martin Matishak
President Joe Biden is expected to pick Maj. Gen. Maria Barrett to be the first female leader of U.S. Army Cyber Command, according to two people familiar with the decision.
Inside the scramble to fix Biden’s plan for the future of the internet
Protocol
Issie Lapowsky
The White House is set to announce plans this week for its much-anticipated Alliance for the Future of the Internet, a bid to rally a coalition of democracies around a vision for an open and free web. But behind the scenes, digital rights advocates, foreign governments and even other U.S. officials have spent the last month scrambling to push the White House to rethink its initial plans, leaving the fine points of the proposal in flux with days to go before the big reveal.
Vast majority of our Network cyber experts favor mandates to report hacks
The Washington Post
Joseph Marks & Aaron Schaffer
The government should require companies in critical sectors like energy and transportation to alert the government when they’re hit with online incidents, cyber professionals surveyed by The Cybersecurity 202 agree. A whopping 93 percent of our Cybersecurity 202 Network experts group said they favored such mandates, which are currently being debated in the House and Senate. That’s a nearly resounding endorsement for the biggest expansion of government cyber requirements for industry in years. It's effectively a vote of no confidence in the government's years-long effort to get companies to share such information voluntarily.
White House announces US diplomatic boycott of 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing
CNN
Allie Malloy & Kate Sullivan
The Biden administration will not send an official US delegation to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing as a statement against China's "ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday. Earlier this year, the Biden administration announced it was blocking the import of certain materials that are used in solar panels from a company in Xinjiang over allegations of forced labor. The administration also moved to restrict exports of five Chinese companies over alleged human rights abuses against Xinjiang's Uyghur population and other ethnic and religious minorities. The Xinjiang region is a major production hub for many companies that supply the world with parts needed to build solar panels.
Read our report: Uyghurs for sale: ‘Re-education’, forced labour and surveillance beyond Xinjiang here
Russia
Companies linked to Russian ransomware hide in plain sight
The New York Times
Andrew E. Kramer
Cybersecurity experts tracing money paid by American businesses to Russian ransomware gangs found it led to one of Moscow’s most prestigious addresses.
Americas
Canadian spy agency targeted foreign hackers to ‘impose a cost’ for cybercrime
Global News
Alex Boutilier
Canada’s electronic spy agency acknowledged Monday it has conducted cyber operations against foreign hackers to “impose a cost” for the growing levels of cybercrime. It is the first time the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) has publicly acknowledged the use of “foreign cyber operations” — a category of operations that can include both “active” (offensive) or defensive cyber tools.
Europe
Executive at Swiss tech company said to operate secret surveillance operation
Bloomberg
Ryan Gallagher & Crofton Black
The co-founder of a company that has been trusted by technology giants including Google and Twitter to deliver sensitive passwords to millions of their customers also operated a service that ultimately helped governments secretly surveil and track mobile phones, according to former employees and clients.
Elon Musk being allowed to ‘make the rules’ in space, ESA chief warns
Australian Financial Review
Peggy Hollinger & Clive Cookson
The head of the European Space Agency has urged the continent’s leaders to stop facilitating Elon Musk’s ambition to dominate the new space economy, warning that the lack of co-ordinated action meant the billionaire was “making the rules” himself.
Events
ASPI Presents: Benchmarking Critical Technologies: Building an evidence base for an informed critical technologies strategy
Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Join report author Dr Samantha Hoffman for a discussion on the report's findings, including opportunities that could emerge from increased strategic collaboration on critical technology capabilities and policy formulation.A new report by ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre - ‘Benchmarking Critical Technologies: Building an evidence base for an informed critical technologies strategy’ - examines the development of four key critical technologies across some of the world’s leaders and emerging leaders in critical technologies; Australia, China, India, Japan and the United States. This event will be held in a hybrid format allowing for virtual and in-person attendance on 14 December 2021 5.30pm - 6.30pm.
Research
Unravelling the killing of Colombian protester Lucas Villa
Bellingcat
Carlos Gonzales
A new investigation by Bellingcat and partners Forensic Architecture, Cerosetenta and Baudo AP has sought to fill in the gaps of what happened on the evening of May 5. Further analysis by Bellingcat has also disproved disinformation around the killing and identified possible new leads for exploration. The investigation examined hours of social media footage from the scene as well as the official autopsy of Lucas Villa to create a timeline and 3D model of exactly what happened at the César Gaviria Trujillo viaduct.
Jobs
ICPC Senior Analyst or Analyst - China
ASPI ICPC
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has a unique opportunity for exceptional and experienced China-focused senior analysts or analysts to join its centre. This role will focus on original research and analysis centred around the (growing) range of topics which our ICPC China team work on. Our China team produces some of the most impactful and well-read policy-relevant research in the world, with our experts often being called upon by politicians, governments, corporates and civil society actors to provide briefings and advice. Analysts usually have at least 5 years, often 7-10 years’ of work experience. Senior analysts usually have a minimum of 15 years relevant work experience and, in addition to research, they take on a leadership role in the centre and tend to be involved in staff and project management, fundraising and stakeholder engagement.