China’s big tech companies upset Beijing I George Soros has stake in Palantir I Solomon Islands Cabinet Passes Ban on Facebook
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The climate is cooling rapidly for China’s tech giants. After years of warily allowing companies such as Alibaba and Tencent the freedom to grow without significant interference, Beijing has signalled it does not like how Big Tech is behaving. Last week, Chinese tech stocks lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value, with Alibaba falling 12 per cent in Hong Kong, after the release of new antitrust guidelines for the sector and analysts predicted that pain was on the way. Financial Times
Soros Fund Management, run by billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, and Third Point, the firm led by occasional activist investor Dan Loeb, both disclosed late Friday that they recently bought stakes in Palantir, the secretive and controversial big data firm backed by Peter Thiel. CNN
Solomon Islands Cabinet has agreed to ban the world’s biggest social networking site, Facebook, in the Solomon Islands. Minister Agovaka told Solomon Times Online (STO) that this temporary ban was made because of the controversial issues raised via Facebook. “Abusive languages against Ministers, Prime Minister, character assassination, defamation of character, all these are issues of concerns”, Agovaka says. Solomon Times
ASPI ICPC
Mapping China's Tech Giants website Feedback
ASPI ICPC
We will soon begin the next phase of "Mapping China's Technology Giants". Part of this project will include updating the website. To ensure the website remains as useful to you and your organisation as possible, we would like to invite you to give us feedback on your use of our website. Your feedback is an important part of this process as it allows us to know what is working well, what we can improve on and what really matters to you. The feedback will take approximately two minutes.
See ASPI ICPC’s China Tech Giant’s map here.
Covid-19 is accelerating the surveillance state
The Strategist
@KelseyMunro @DaniellesCave
The first global pandemic of the digital age has accelerated the international adoption of surveillance and public security technologies, normalising new forms of widespread, overt state surveillance. Governments seeking greater social and political control have an opportunity to use Covid-19 as cloud cover to make capital investments in surveillance technologies, including those that enable, store and process mass collections of data on people’s location, activity (both physical and digital) and biometrics (including DNA and genomics). As evidence continues to mount that some data surveillance applications have been effective in slowing the spread of the virus in some countries, it’s vital to ensure that public health surveillance tools—rushed into use for an extraordinary crisis with privacy trade-offs—don’t become business as usual. The changes wrought by Covid-19 risk increasing complacency among policymakers about using controversial surveillance technologies.
Read ASPI ICPC’s comments on cyber capacity building in response to the revised predraft report of the UN open-ended working group on development in ICTs in the context of international security here.
Australia
Top Albanese staffer resigns after 'malicious, false' attack
The Sydney Morning Herald
@anguslivingston
Labor leader Anthony Albanese's deputy chief of staff Sabina Husic has resigned after an anonymous "malicious" attack against her was posted online the day she returned from three weeks of mental health leave. An anonymous document was posted on a specially-created webpage on Monday night, airing a series of uncorroborated claims against senior staff in Mr Albanese's office. Mr Albanese described the claims as "fake" and stood by his "outstanding office" staff.
China
How China’s big tech companies upset Beijing
Financial Times
The climate is cooling rapidly for China’s tech giants. After years of warily allowing companies such as Alibaba and Tencent the freedom to grow without significant interference, Beijing has signalled it does not like how Big Tech is behaving. Last week, Chinese tech stocks lost hundreds of billions of dollars in value, with Alibaba falling 12 per cent in Hong Kong, after the release of new antitrust guidelines for the sector and analysts predicted that pain was on the way.
Tech War With U.S. Turbocharges China’s Chip-Development Resolve
The Washington Street Journal
@lizalinwsj
China is investing heavily in computer chips and stepping up efforts to cultivate homegrown talent as it accelerates its quest for technological self-sufficiency amid a tech trade war with the U.S. Chinese semiconductor companies have raised the equivalent of nearly $38 billion so far this year through public offerings, private placements and asset sales, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence—more than double last year’s total.
USA
George Soros buys a stake in big data firm Palantir
CNN
@LaMonicaBuzz.
Two heavy hitters of the investment world recently bought stakes in Palantir, the secretive and controversial big data firm backed by Peter Thiel that began trading on Wall Street in September. Soros Fund Management, run by billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, and Third Point, the firm led by occasional activist investor Dan Loeb, both disclosed late Friday that they own shares of Palantir.
Muslim Pro Stops Sharing Location Data After Motherboard Investigation
VICE News
@josephfcox
Muslim Pro, a Muslim prayer and Quran app with over 98 million downloads, has said it will no longer share user data with X-Mode, a location data firm that has sold information to, among other clients, defense contractors and ultimately the U.S. military.
Army-Funded Algorithm Decodes Brain Signals
Nextgov
A new machine-learning algorithm can successfully determine which specific behaviors—like walking and breathing—belong to which specific brain signal, and it has the potential to help the military maintain a more ready force. Rsearchers funded by the U.S. Army have reportedly developed a machine-learning algorithm that can model and decode brain and behavioral signals.
Machine learning algorithm could provide Soldiers feedback. U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs
Facebook Knows That Adding Labels To Trump’s False Claims Does Little To Stop Their Spread
BuzzFeed News
@CraigSilverman @RMac18
The labels Facebook has been putting on false election posts from President Donald Trump have failed to slow their spread across the platform, according to internal data seen by BuzzFeed News. After an employee asked last week whether Facebook has any data about the effectiveness of the labels, a data scientist revealed that the labels — referred to as “informs” internally — do very little to reduce them from being shared.
South Asia
Religious conservative narrative dominates social media spaces in Indonesia
The Jakarta Post
A recent study by researchers from Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) has found that religious conservative narratives have dominated online conversations, particularly on Twitter, in recent years in Indonesia, a country that has seen a growing use of social media and the rise of conservatism in society.
New streaming and digital media rules by Indian government rattles industry
ZDNet
Last Wednesday, a major development indicated which way the wind would blow, according to many industry watchers, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government introduced a notification that may just be the beginning of things to come. The rule, that has shocked many, simply states that digital media will now be regulated by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Until now, this division of the government only censored and regulated print newspapers, television, films and theatre while digital content effectively slipped under the radar.
New Zealand & The Pacific
Solomon Islands Cabinet Passes Ban on Facebook
Solomon Times
Cabinet has agreed to ban the world’s biggest social networking site, Facebook, in Solomon Islands. Minister Agovaka told Solomon Times Online (STO) that this temporary ban was made because of the controversial issues raised via Facebook. “Abusive languages against Ministers, Prime Minister, character assasination, defamation of character, all these are issues of concerns”, Agovaka says.
Europe
NSA Spied On Denmark As It Chose Its Future Fighter Aircraft
The Drive
@CombatAir
Reports in the Danish media allege that the United States spied on the country’s government and its defense industry, as well as other European defense contractors, in an attempt to gain information on its fighter acquisition program. The revelations, published online by DR, Denmark’s Danish public-service broadcaster, concern the run-up to the fighter competition that was eventually won by the U.S.-made Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter.
Ukraine’s Top Cyber Cop on Defending Against Disinformation and Russian Hackers
Recorded Future
@ddd1ms
In recent years, Ukraine has become an involuntary testing ground for some of the most dangerous cyberweapons in the world. Throughout that time, Serhii Demediuk perhaps played the most prominent role in defending Ukraine against digital intrusions, investigating cyberattacks and the groups behind them, and strengthening the country’s capabilities in cyberspace. In 2015, Demediuk was tasked with building out Ukraine’s CyberPolice force, which prosecutes cybercriminals and thwarts state-sponsored attacks. Last year, the president of Ukraine appointed Demediuk as the Deputy Secretary of the country’s National Security and Defense Council. Demediuk talked to Recorded Future expert threat intelligence analyst Dmitry Smilyanets about the most dangerous attacks he’s dealt with, as well as new threats that he’s bracing for.
North America
‘You Have Zero Privacy’ Says an Internal RCMP Presentation. Inside the Force’s Web Spying Program
The Tyee
@bpcarney
A 3,000-page batch of internal communications from the RCMP obtained by The Tyee provides a window into how the force builds its capabilities to spy on internet users and works to hide its methods from the public. The emails and documents pertain to the RCMP’s Tactical Internet Operation Support unit based at the national headquarters in Ottawa and its advanced web monitoring program called Project Wide Awake.
Misc
The true dangers of AI are closer than we think
MIT Technology Review
@_KarenHao
AI is now screening job candidates, diagnosing disease, and identifying criminal suspects. But instead of making these decisions more efficient or fair, it’s often perpetuating the biases of the humans on whose decisions it was trained.
Disappearing Tweets? Twitter Now Has a Feature for That
The New York Times
@MikeIsaac
On Tuesday, Twitter said it would introduce a feature called Fleets, allowing users to post ephemeral photos or text that will automatically disappear after 24 hours. Fleets, a name that refers to the “fleeting” nature of a thought or expression, will roll out to all iPhone and Android users globally over the coming days, the company said.
New Zoom feature can alert room owners of possible Zoombombing disruptions
ZDNet
@campuscodi
Video conferencing software maker Zoom has launched a new feature today that can alert conference organizers when their online meetings are at risk of getting disrupted via Zoombombing attacks. Named "At-Risk Meeting Notifier," this new feature is a service that runs on Zoom's backend servers and works by continuously scanning public posts on social media and other public sites for Zoom meeting links.
The Countries Where Democracy Is Most Fragile Are Test Subjects for Platforms’ Content Moderation Policies
Slate Magazine
@M_Karanicolas
It’s good to see that platforms appear to be learning from their mistakes. However, it is obviously problematic that the countries where democracy is most fragile are on the front lines of this learning curve. When things go wrong there, the results can be an order of magnitude worse than anything that America is likely to experience, as the violent dismantling of democratic structures in the Philippines and Brazil illustrate. Therein lies the tension between implementing a moderation system that governs political discourse all over the world but is disproportionately focused on impacts in the U.S.
Events
An International Strategy to Better Protect the Global Financial System from Cyber Threats
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The global financial system is going through an unprecedented digital transformation, which is being accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. Malicious actors are taking advantage of this transformation and pose a growing threat to financial stability and consumers worldwide. The Carnegie Endowment, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, will release a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive blueprint to better protect the global financial system against cyber threats. Join us for a discussion with leading voices on this report's crucial recommendations.
Date: 18 November 2020
Time: 11:30 AM—12:45 PM EST
Watch the event here.
Research
A Roadmap to Strengthen US Cyber Enforcement: Where Do We Go From Here?
Third Way
The following report is the result of a multiyear effort to define concrete steps to improve the US government’s ability to tackle the scourge of cybercrime by better identifying perpetrators and imposing meaningful consequences on them and those behind their actions.
Jobs
Senior Researcher / Project Lead
ASPI ICPC
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has an outstanding opportunity for a senior researcher to lead a one-year project looking at leadership networks across Asia. Interviews will start immediately.
Senior Strategic Communications Manager
ASPI
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has an outstanding opportunity for a highly experienced, strategic comms professional to contribute to the launch of a new, high profile global project. The Senior Strategic Communications Manager will be an integral member of a bespoke team that will liaise with the Australian government, foreign governments, industry and civil society to build up this exciting new project from scratch. The position will work closely with the Executive Director and the Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre.