Intel chief releases Russian disinfo | Coordinated push of conspiracy theories target Biden before debate | Duterte threatens to stop Facebook in the Philippines

Sep 29, 2020

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Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified a Russian intelligence assessment that was previously rejected by Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee as having no factual basis, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Politico
A conspiracy theory that Joe Biden would wear an electronic device in his ear during the first presidential debate went wildly viral Tuesday in the hours before the debate, and the groundless theory was later amplified by conservative news outlets that claimed that Biden had backed out of an ear “inspection.” NBC News
President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to stop Facebook in the Philippines after the tech giant recently took down a fake network linked to the country's police and military. Rappler

ASPI ICPC

STEM career pathways for the Indigenous Australian community
ASPI
@DarkiesDesign @HuonCurtis
ASPI has been awarded a competitive grant from the Department of Defence to support a project which will look at strategies to provide more STEM career pathways to the Indigenous Australian community in Northern Australia. This project will build on previous work ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre has done in 2019-20 including the Indigi-Cyber Camps for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids and ongoing research work. This new multi-year project - which focuses on information and communications technology and cyber-security - will establish a best practice reference model comprising a framework and strategy for creating and sustaining workforce pathways for Indigenous Australians.

China’s Xi is doubling down on genocide
The Washington Post
The Xinjiang Data Project of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute found that the regime is building scores of new prison-like compounds where Uighurs are held. Satellite imagery showed 380 suspected detention sites created or expanded since 2017, including 61 since July 2019. The Post’s Anna Fifield provided a rare eyewitness account of one of the new facilities near the city of Kashgar.. A second report by the Xinjiang Data Project, also based on satellite imagery, found that some 8,500 mosques in the region had been destroyed since 2017, and another 7,500 had been damaged.

Visit ASPI ICPC’s resource The Xinjiang Data Project

Freedom on the Net @freedomonthenet

How are state and non-state actors manipulating online information around COVID-19? @ASPI_org is tracking the latest:

Covid-19 Disinformation & Social Media ManipulationA range of actors are manipulating the information environment to exploit the COVID-19 crisis for strategic gain. ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre is tracking many of these state and non-state actors online, and will occasionally publish investigative, data-driven reporting that will focus o…aspi.org.au

World

How democracies can claim back power in the digital world
Technology Review
@MarietjeSchaake
Should Twitter censor lies tweeted by the US president? Should YouTube take down covid-19 misinformation? Should Facebook do more against hate speech? Such questions, which crop up daily in media coverage, can make it seem as if the main technologically driven risk to democracies is the curation of content by social-media companies. Yet these controversies are merely symptoms of a larger threat: the depth of privatized power over the digital world.

Australia

WA government to establish whole-of-government cybersecurity centre
ZD Net
@achanthadavong
The Western Australian government has announced it will sink AU$1.8 million to establish a whole-of-government cybersecurity operations centre. To be managed by the Department of Premier and Cabinet's Office of Digital Government, the centre will provide further support to existing cybersecurity efforts across government and the dedicated cybersecurity team within the Office of Digital Government.

Ariel Bogle @arielbogle

Since January, I've read hundreds of audience submissions about pandemic misinformation and scams -- what people are seeing in their emails, on Facebook, YouTube. What impact is this having on us? We try and get at that in our series Click-Sick.

Click-Sick: Part 1 Why sharing isn’t always caringTwo families, two posts...and two stories of how seemingly benign shares on social media can turn bad.abc.net.au

China

Megha Rajagopalan @meghara

Since the Chinese Foreign Ministry has posted my personal info online, I'll share the email in which they rejected my visa application. It's dated May 9, 2018 and came months after ministry officials assured me I'd have no problems getting a new visa after many years in China.

USA

Intel chief releases Russian disinfo on Hillary Clinton that was rejected by bipartisan Senate panel
Politico
@AndrewDesiderio @dlippman
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified a Russian intelligence assessment that was previously rejected by Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee as having no factual basis, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Alex Stamos @alexstamos

The Director of National Intelligence just injected Russian dezinformatsiya into the information ecosystem 35 days before we vote for the next President of the United States. The word "unprecedented" really doesn't cut it anymore.

Alex Salvi @alexsalvinews

NEW: DNI Ratcliffe declassifies a Russian intel assessment suggesting Hillary Clinton developed a plan to connect Russian hacking to then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016. Ratcliffe says the IC does not know the accuracy of the allegation or how much is exaggerated or fabricated. https://t.co/u89U0mldx9

Coordinated push of groundless conspiracy theories target Biden hours before debate
NBC News
A conspiracy theory that Joe Biden would wear an electronic device in his ear during the first presidential debate went wildly viral Tuesday in the hours before the debate, and the groundless theory was later amplified by conservative news outlets that claimed that Biden had backed out of an ear “inspection.”

FBI & CISA Issue Another Warning About 2020 U.S. Election Disinformation
LawFare
@tia_sewell
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) today issued another public service announcement that warns of the potential threat posed by foreign actors and cybercriminals spreading disinformation to cast doubt on the legitimacy of U.S. elections. In today’s statement, the agencies specifically warn of disinformation about “hacked voter information;” the letter asserts that in reality, much U.S. voter information is already publicly available and the acquisition of such data would not compromise the integrity of election results, nor prevent registered voters from casting their ballots.

What’s the Plan if Trump Tweets That He’s Won Re-election?
The New York Times
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have all pledged to crack down on misinformation around voting and electoral outcomes. Perhaps in the above scenario they append a label to the president’s posts saying that the information is disputed and that the results are not in. They could introduce friction into the algorithms to slow the reach of the posts.

Laura Kayali @LauKaya

Digital Services Act: Ex ante rules for gatekeepers will apply to 4 "key services," according to an internal draft document. ▶️Intermediation services (marketplaces, app stores, social networks) ▶️Search engines ▶️Operating systems ▶️Cloud services (!!) POLITICO Propro.politico.eu

Scars, Tattoos, And License Plates: This Is What Palantir And The LAPD Know About You
Buzzfeed News
Ahead of its Sept. 30 public listing, Palantir, a secretive data analytics company with ties to the defense and intelligence communities, has been touting itself as a tool that can “target terrorists and keep soldiers safe.” With an expected valuation of about $22 billion, it will become one of the biggest surveillance companies in the world.

Congress Wants a 'Manhattan Project' for Military Artificial Intelligence
Military.com
@HopeSeck
A new bipartisan congressional report calls for the Defense Department to get a lot more serious about the race to acquire artificial intelligence and autonomous capabilities, modeling efforts to become dominant in these spheres after the "Manhattan Project" initiative to test and develop nuclear weapons in the 1940s.

Lindsay P. Gorman @LindsayPGorman

US becoming increasingly isolated in data-sharing arrangements as Israel follows on the EU Privacy Shield decision. Not good from the perspective of democracies joining together to contest data-driven authoritarianism.

Omer Tene @omertene

BREAKING: Israel blocks data transfers to the US relying on Privacy Shield. Such transfers were previously permitted per Section 2(8)(2) of Israel's Transfer Regulations. Transfers to US based on other legal mechanisms in the Regs are still valid. (Hebrew) https://t.co/ToTpISJwUf

TikTok rolls out in-app elections guide
Axios
@sarafischer
TikTok said Tuesday that it's debuting a new in-app elections guide to connect users with credible information about the elections from sources like the National Association of Secretaries of State, BallotReady, and SignVote.

North Asia

Audrey Tang on her “conservative-anarchist” vision for Taiwan’s future
Rest of World
The country’s digital minister has a radical vision and acknowledges the high-stakes balancing act between mass surveillance and good governance.

Taiwanese suppliers for Apple to invest US$900 million in India
Taiwan News
Three Apple suppliers in Taiwan are reportedly planning to invest a total of US$900 million in India in the next five years under the Indian government's new incentive plan for large-scale electronics manufacturing. The three Taiwanese contract manufacturers — Foxconn, Wistron, and Pegatron — all plan to participate in India's US$6.65 billion production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme.

NTT to take over Docomo, aiming to accelerate research on 6G tech
Nikkei Asia
@etammykim
The development is seen as an early victory for Yoshihide Suga, Japan's new prime minister, who has made reducing mobile phone charges a policy priority. But it is likely to fuel concerns over the industry's profitability now that carriers are rolling out 5G network infrastructure and developing apps, on top of running their networks.

Southeast Asia

Duterte threatens to stop Facebook in the Philippines
Rappler
@SOFIATOMACRUZ
President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday, September 28, threatened to stop Facebook in the Philippines after the tech giant recently took down a fake network linked to the country's police and military.

India

Govt’s new defence acquisition policy drops offsets in 3 types of contracts
Indian Express
@Krishn_
The government has decided not to have an offset clause in procurement of defence equipment if the deal is done through inter-government agreement (IGA), government-to-government or an ab initio single vendor. The offset clause requires a foreign vendor to invest a part of the contract value in India.

Europe

U.S. renews pressure on Europe to ditch Huawei in new networks
Reuters
@rdfemmott
Telecoms company Huawei Technologies is part of China’s surveillance state, complicit in human rights abuses, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday, as Washington renewed pressure on Europe to ban the company from fifth-generation (5G) networks.

Thorsten Benner @thorstenbenner

Latest twist in Germany's neverending 5G saga: Handelsblatt reports government agreed on draft law that "does not formally ban Huawei from #5G but strongly restricts Huawei components, not just in core but also access network". Details to follow. Bundestag to discuss draft law.

Moritz Koch @MoritzKoch78

Exklusiv: Durchbruch im deutschen #Huawei-Streit. Regierung hat sich auf ein Verfahren geeinigt, das kein Huawei-Verbot vorsieht, aber Huawei-Komponenten stark beschränkt. Und zwar nicht nur im Kern-, sondern auch im Zugangsnetz. Alle Details morgen im @Handelsblatt. @till_hoppe

Misc

I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots'
BBC
@LoraElwen
Shibu is the founder of Transcend - a small London-based firm that buys beauty products wholesale and re-sells them online. For the last year and a half he has used Hubstaff software to track his workers' hours, keystrokes, mouse movements and websites visited.

Read Danielle Cave and Kelsey Munro’s essay on how Covid-19 will accelerate the surveillance state here (from page 136) here.

Microsoft report shows increasing sophistication of cyber threats
Microsoft on the Issues
Today, Microsoft is releasing a new annual report, called the Digital Defense Report, covering cybersecurity trends from the past year. This report makes it clear that threat actors have rapidly increased in sophistication over the past year, using techniques that make them harder to spot and that threaten even the savviest targets.

Swatch shuts down some technology systems after cyber attack
IT News
Swatch Group shut down some of its technology systems after detecting a cyberattack over the weekend, the world's biggest watchmaker said.

Jobs

Director of Product, Anti-Disinformation
Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a Director of Product Management to design and implement our anti-disinformation program. This unique position will have a global impact on preventing Disinformation through Wikipedia and our other Wikimedia projects. You will gain a deep understanding of the ways in which our communities have fought disinformation for the last two decades and how this content is used globally. You will work cross-functionality with Legal, Security, Research and other teams at the Foundation and imagine and design solutions that enable our communities to achieve our Vision: a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.

Daily Cyber Digest