BGI’s testing in Middle East raises new U.S. tensions / FEMA tells states to hand public health data over to Palantir / Labor wants to name & shame poor Commonwealth entity cyber posture
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The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency urged health officials in “all states and territories” to provide “daily” updates on ventilator availability for the novel coronavirus directly to the data mining giant Palantir, according to emails shared with The Daily Beast and confirmed by FEMA. The Daily Beast
While the U.S. struggled to come up with enough tests to manage the world’s largest coronavirus outbreak, Chinese genetics company BGI took less than a month to build testing centers thousands of miles away in the Middle East. Bloomberg
The federal opposition has raised concerns with the lack of transparency from Commonwealth entities where cybersecurity is concerned. During a hearing held by the Joint Committee on Public Accounts and Audit on Tuesday, representatives from the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) were probed on the reasons why Commonwealth entities are continually performing low in audits of cybersecurity resilience. ZDNet
ASPI ICPC
ASPI Senior Analyst Dr Jake Wallis spoke about China’s increasing willingness to blend diplomacy with disinformation and economic coercion on a live-streamed panel event for NATO STRATCOM COE.
Australia
ZDNet Australian government justifies decision to go with AWS for COVIDSafe
ZDNet
@ashabeeeee
The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has provided further detail on the federal government's COVIDSafe coronavirus trace tracking application, including around the procurement of the solution from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Is your health data safe as My Health Record hacking revealed
The Australian
@swan_legend
The government's My Health Record platform was the target of an attempted hack last year, Australia's national health information officer has revealed. In a session of the Joint Committee on Public Accounts and Audit on Tuesday, Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) CIO Ronan O'Connor said that My Health Record had suffered two potential data breaches since July 2019, requiring it to notify the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).
Australia needs volunteers to be ready for a cyber conflagration
The Strategist
@KMansted @finnrobinsen
Australia’s ‘black summer’ of bushfires and the Covid-19 pandemic caught authorities and citizens off guard, but they shouldn’t have. Experts were warning about catastrophic fires from mid-2019, while national security agencies have worried about a global pandemic for decades. In each case, the sheer scale of the crisis appears to have made it difficult to imagine and plan for ahead of time.
Australia lashed by angry Chinese netizens over Covid inquiry push
The Australian
Heidi Han
Australia has been lashed on social media by thousands of Chinese netizens amid ongoing trade tensions.
Bold new plan to sniff out coronavirus cases in Australian cities
Yahoo News
A fast and efficient technology which can identify somebody with a fever could become part of Australia’s “new normal” as the country slowly starts easing coronavirus restrictions. In a Nine News report, it was stated nursing homes, shopping centres, offices, hotels and airports are some of the industries considering installing thermal imaging cameras to identify potentially risky people during the pandemic. The report featured a Chinese-based video surveillance company called Hikvision, which offers the technology and sells it as a “flexible product choice for a multitude of scenarios” on their website.
Read more about Hikvision in ASPI ICPC's Mapping China's Technology Giants
Labor wants to name and shame poor Commonwealth entity cyber posture
ZDNet
@ashabeeeee
The federal opposition has raised concerns with the lack of transparency from Commonwealth entities where cybersecurity is concerned. During a hearing held by the Joint Committee on Public Accounts and Audit on Tuesday, representatives from the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) were probed on the reasons why Commonwealth entities are continually performing low in audits of cybersecurity resilience.
Toll Group data dumped on dark web
Information Age
Hackers who delivered Australian logistics company Toll Group its latest ransomware attack have leaked corporate data on the dark web.
China
China has new US$1.4 trillion plan to seize the world’s tech crown from the US
SCMP
Beijing is accelerating its bid for global leadership in key technologies, planning to pump more than a trillion dollars into the economy through the roll-out of everything from next-generation wireless networks to artificial intelligence (AI)..The new infrastructure initiative is expected to drive mainly local giants, from Alibaba Group Holding and Huawei to SenseTime Group at the expense of US companies. As tech nationalism mounts, the investment drive will reduce China’s dependence on foreign technology, echoing objectives set forth previously in the “Made in China 2025” programme.
Read more about Alibaba, Huawei and SenseTime in ASPI ICPC's Mapping China's Technology Giants
Hikvision Chairman Targeted For Sanctions As Federal Watchdog Calls Out Hikvision "Serious Religious Freedom Violations"
IPVM
The US government's religious freedom watchdog has criticized Hikvision for being "credibly implicated in serious religious freedom violations". Meanwhile, three US Congressmen have requested Hikvision chairman Chen Zongnian be sanctioned over Hikvision's "complicity in human rights abuses" in Xinjiang.
USA
“High alert”: After suing China over coronavirus, Missouri braced for retaliation, records show
St Louis Post Dispatch
@JackSuntrup
Members of Gov. Mike Parson’s administration, in the days after the lawsuit was filed, expressed concern about cyberattacks and disruptions in shipments of personal protective equipment, or PPE, from China, according to emails obtained by the Post-Dispatch through an open records request.
FEMA Tells States to Hand Public Health Data Over to Palantir
The Daily Beast
Aggregated COVID-19 information matters to public health, but it’s also a big economic opportunity. Now a Trump-aligned company gets that data daily from all 50 states.
Facebook to Shift Permanently Toward More Remote Work After Coronavirus
The Wall Street Journal
Jeff Horwitz
The social-media giant plans to become a substantially remote workforce over the next decade, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, as it moves to embrace the dispersed structure made necessary by the pandemic.
One of the first contact-tracing apps violates its own privacy policy
Washington Post
One of the first contact-tracing apps violates its own privacy policy North and South Dakota’s Care19 coronavirus app sends your location data to more than just the government
UK
Europe
Grandmother ordered to delete Facebook photos under GDPR
BBC
A woman must delete photographs of her grandchildren that she posted on Facebook and Pinterest without their parent's permission, a court in the Netherlands has ruled.
Middle East
Chinese Genetics Firm’s Testing in Middle East Raises New U.S. Tensions
Bloomberg
While the U.S. struggled to come up with enough tests to manage the world’s largest coronavirus outbreak, a Chinese genetics company took less than a month to build testing centers thousands of miles away in the Middle East. By moving swiftly, Shenzhen-based BGI Group won hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with traditional U.S. allies including Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Now the U.S. is warning those countries that they may be giving Beijing access to highly prized personal data that will propel economies of the future.
Read more about BGI in ASPI ICPC's Mapping China's Technology Giants
Misc
ShinyHunters Is a Hacking Group on a Data Breach Spree
WIRED
@lilyhnewman
In the first two weeks of May, they've hit the dark web, hawking 200 million stolen records from over a dozen companies.
These Are The Fake Experts Pushing Pseudoscience And Conspiracy Theories About The Coronavirus Pandemic
BuzzFeed News
@JaneLytv @broderick @CraigSilverman
A guide to the spin doctors and conspiracy theorists clogging up your social media feed.
How the “Plandemic” Movie and Its Falsehoods Spread Widely Online
The New York Times
@sheeraf @btdecker @daveyalba
Conspiracy theories about the pandemic have gained more traction than mainstream online events. Here’s how.
Research
Quantifying the global 5G experience across ten operators
Opensignal
Understanding the extent to which 5G improves the mobile experience is critical both for consumers considering upgrading to 5G and also for the mobile industry that’s planning how quickly to invest in 5G. We’ve looked at how the 5G experience compares in four leading countries: Australia, South Korea, the U.S. and the U.K.
Researchers: Nearly Half Of Accounts Tweeting About Coronavirus Are Likely Bots
NPR
@bobbyallyn
Nearly half of the Twitter accounts spreading messages on the social media platform about the coronavirus pandemic are likely bots, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University said Wednesday.
Events
Estonia, together with fellow non-permanent members of the UN Security Council, including Indonesia, are organising an Arria Formula meeting on Cyber Stability, Conflict Prevention and Capacity Building. It's the first cybersecurity event under the auspices of the UN Security Council since 2016. The event will be streamed here at 10am EST on May 22: