Facebook & Google’s surveillance poses danger to human rights: Amnesty International | Microsoft restores services large global outage | China can turn off the Philippine national power grid
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Facebook and Google’s omnipresent surveillance of billions of people poses a systemic threat to human rights, Amnesty International warned in a new report as it called for a radical transformation of the tech giants’ core business model. Amnesty International
Microsoft confirmed that its services were back up and running after it experienced interruptions across the US and parts of the Asia Pacific region. Business Insider
Philippine senators have called for an investigation into the security implications of China’s part ownership of the national energy grid after officials said engineers in Beijing could plunge the entire country into darkness with the flick of a switch. South China Morning Post
ASPI ICPC
Event: Launch of China Defence Universities Tracker
ASPI's International Cyber Policy Centre invites you to attend the launch of the 'China Defence Universities Tracker’ on November 26. The tracker is a comprehensive resource on the defence and security links of over 160 Chinese universities and research institutions. The tracker will take the form of a publicly available website accompanied by a report that explains the database’s findings and recommends policies in response to them. The project aims to improve the ability of governments, universities and researchers to understand collaboration with the PRC and raise the standard of risk-management and due-diligence work carried out by universities.
Cyber-diplomacy web discussion: Norms and confidence building measures (CBMs): Are we there yet?
Diplo
This webinar is the fourth in a series of cyber-diplomacy web discussions, organised by DiploFoundation with the support of Microsoft. It follows the discussions Cyber-armament: A heavy impact on peace, economic development, and human rights; Applicability of international law to cyberspace: Do we know the rules of the road?; and Traceability and attribution of cyber-attacks: How confidently can we point a finger? The series focuses on risks for international peace and security stemming from cyberspace, and hosts a number of distinguished international discussants.
World
An update on our political ads policy
Google
While we've never offered granular microtargeting of election ads, we believe there’s more we can do to further promote increased visibility of election ads. That’s why we’re limiting election ads audience targeting to the following general categories: age, gender, and general location (postal code level).
Google and Facebook's data collection models are a threat to human rights, Amnesty International says
ABC
The data-collection business model fuelling Facebook and Google represents a threat to human rights around the world, Amnesty International has said in a report.
Facebook and Google’s pervasive surveillance poses an unprecedented danger to human rights Amnesty International
Australia
New code for internet-connected devices to stop hackers
Sydney Morning Herald
Web-connected devices including smart TVs, watches and home speakers will be subject to a new industry code to protect families, businesses and Australia's national security from cyber hackers. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton will on Tuesday raise the alarm on poor cyber security features in many devices, calling on companies to do more to stamp out cyber crime.
Australians are being watched at work. So what can we do about it?
ABC
@arielbogle
Software that logs each keystroke. Car trackers that monitor location as well as braking and acceleration. Australian employers are collecting increasingly detailed and intimate data about workers.
Australia is particularly exposed': New technology rules needed to deal with China, experts say
Sydney Morning Herald
Australia needs to consider banning the export of sophisticated technologies which could be used by China to boost its military and espionage activities, according to security experts.. Dr John Lee, a foreign affairs and security expert, said Australia was "particularly exposed" to the US restrictions and the likely response from China.
US
Preparing the Military for a Role on an Artificial Intelligence Battlefield
National Interest
@megan_lamberth
The Defense Innovation Board—an advisory committee of tech executives, scholars, and technologists—has unveiled its list of ethical principles for artificial intelligence (AI). If adopted by the Defense Department, then the recommendations will help shape the Pentagon’s use of AI in both combat and non-combat systems.
Trump hosted Zuckerberg for undisclosed dinner at the White House in October
NBC News
President Donald Trump hosted a previously undisclosed dinner with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook board member Peter Thiel at the White House in October, the company told NBC News on Wednesday.
Senior DHS cyber official Jeanette Manfra to step down
Cyber Scoop
@snlyngaas
Jeanette Manfra, a senior cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security, plans to step down from her position, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
Uber reports a sharp rise in government demands for user data
Tech Crunch
@zackwhittaker
Uber says the number of legal demands for riders’ data made by U.S. and Canadian authorities has risen sharply in the past year. The ride-hailing company said the number of law enforcement demands for user data during 2018 are up 27% on the year earlier, according to its annual transparency report published Wednesday. Uber said the rise in demands was partly due to its business growing in size, but also a “rising interest” from governments to access data on its customers.
Microsoft restores services after it experienced a large global outage across numerous platforms
Business Insider
Microsoft confirmed that its services were back up and running after it experienced interruptions Tuesday night and Wednesday morning across the US and parts of the Asia Pacific region.
Southeast Asia
China can turn off the Philippine national power grid, officials say
South China Morning Post
@raissawriter
Philippine senators have called for an investigation into the security implications of China’s part ownership of the national energy grid after officials said engineers in Beijing could plunge the entire country into darkness with the flick of a switch.
Pacific Islands
Palmtree router: A secure and private Internet gateway
APNIC Blog
The Palmtree Router (PTR) project was born out of a few conditions that I had faced when I moved to a new location on the Samoan main island of Upolu, in a village called Laulii. Faced with a problem of getting Internet access on my small network, I needed a way to build a network gateway that could support Internet access where a fixed-line connection could not be reached. So the only way to get Internet access was through the mobile network.
Europe
Rouen hospital turns to pen and paper after cyber-attack
BBC
Medical staff at the French city's University Hospital Centre (CHU) were forced to abandon PCs as ransomware had made them unusable, a spokesman said. Instead, staff returned to the "old-fashioned method of paper and pencil", said head of communications Remi Heym.
Russia
Russia's ‘Sandworm’ Hackers Also Targeted Android Phones
Wired
@a_greenberg
The Russian state-sponsored hackers known as Sandworm have launched some of the most aggressive and disruptive cyberattacks in history: intrusions that planted malware inside US electric utilities in 2014, operations that triggered blackouts in Ukraine—not once, but twice—and ultimately NotPetya, the most costly cyberattack ever. But according to Google, several of Sandworm's quieter operations have gone unnoticed in recent years.
Russia and China get a big win on internet "sovereignty"
Axios
@JoeUchill
The United Nations adopted an anti-cybercrime pact backed by China, North Korea and Russia Monday, against the wishes of U.S. and pro-civil liberty groups.
Misc
Podcast: Demystifying Deepfakes: A Conversation with Sam Gregory
Power 3.0 | Authoritarian Resurgence, Democratic Resilience
In this episode of the Power 3.0 podcast, featured guest Sam Gregory discusses how synthetic media produced by artificial intelligence, often referred to as “deepfakes,” may soon be used by malicious actors to undermine democracy—and how civil society can prepare for this challenge.
A Security Strategy That Centers on Humans, Not Bugs
Dark Reading
The industry's fixation on complex exploits has come at the expense of making fundamentals easy and intuitive for end users. Too often, the human element of security is ignored or overlooked. As Martijn Grooten has pointed out, humans are features, not bugs, in information security. It's past time we acknowledged this reality and focus on improved usability for technical solutions and better communication outside the security community. With this one-two punch, the Internet Society's Online Trust Alliance estimates, over 90% of compromises could be prevented.
AI software defines people as male or female. That's a problem
CNN
@rachelmetz
Top tech companies including Microsoft, Amazon and, until recently, IBM, have all invested in technology that can tag pictures of faces fed to their AI systems with binary labels such as "male" and "female," along with predicting other characteristics, such as whether they are wearing glasses or makeup.
The Rise of the Rest: Maturing Cyber Threats Beyond the Big Four
Aspen Institute
One of the most pronounced trends in recent years is the democratization and spread of cyber capabilities—the rise and maturation of high-level threats from the developing world and countries beyond the four main hostile nation-states typically identified with offensive cyber-operations: China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.