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Myanmar hit with internet disruptions during coup | US ‘SWAT Team’ reviewing past startup deals tied to Chinese investors | Amazon says government demands for user data spiked by 800% in 2020
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Myanmar hit with internet disruptions during coup | US ‘SWAT Team’ reviewing past startup deals tied to Chinese investors | Amazon says government demands for user data spiked by 800% in 2020

ASPI Cyber Policy
Feb 1, 2021
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Follow us on Twitter. The Daily Cyber Digest focuses on the topics we work on, including cyber, critical technologies & strategic issues like foreign interference.

  • Myanmar is experiencing internet and phone service disruptions amidst reports it faces a possible military coup. Data reveals these disruptions are impacting several local and international service providers including Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) and Telenor. ZDNet

  • A national-security panel on the hunt for Chinese involvement in U.S. technology companies is scrutinizing startup investments that are months or even years old. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or Cfius, has over the past two years built out a new enforcement arm of roughly two dozen people tasked with rooting out old investment deals that involve sensitive technologies and could pose a threat to national security, according to current and former government officials and national-security lawyers. The team has its sights on venture-capital investments, even small-dollar deals, where the money can be traced back to China, these people say. Wall Street Journal

  • The new report presents the data differently from previous transparency disclosures. Amazon now breaks down the top requesting countries. U.S. authorities historically made up the bulk of the overall data demands Amazon receives, but this latest report shows Germany with 42% of all requests, followed by Spain with 18% and Italy and the U.S. with 11% share each. Amazon said it handed over user content data in 52 cases. TechCrunch

World

Amazon says government demands for user data spiked by 800% in 2020
TechCrunch
@zackwhittaker
New transparency figures released by Amazon show the company responded to a record number of government data demands in the last six months of 2020.

  • Read Amazon’s report here.

Australia

Australian prime minister says Bing could replace Google
Associated Press
Rod McGuirk
Australia’s prime minister said on Monday that Microsoft is confident it can fill the void if Google carries out its threat to remove its search engine from Australia. A Google executive told a Senate hearing last month that it would likely make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government goes ahead with a draft law that would make tech giants pay for news content.

  • Microsoft ‘pretty confident’: PM says rival could take advantage of a Google search exit
    The Sydney Morning Herald
    @LisaVisentin
    Mr Fletcher said he had joined Prime Minister Scott Morrison in talks last week with Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, where they discussed the company’s potential expansion of its search engine Bing.

US grants $302 million contract to Brisbane bio-tech firm Ellume to produce at-home COVID tests
ABC News
The United States Department of Defense has awarded a contract worth $US230 million ($302 million) to Brisbane-based biotech firm Ellume to ramp up production of its COVID-19 home test kits.

China

Worker Deaths Put Big Tech in China Under Scrutiny
The New York Times
@vwang3
The deaths of two young employees of Pinduoduo, an e-commerce platform, have reignited longstanding concerns about working conditions at internet giants.

USA

Government ‘SWAT Team’ Is Reviewing Past Startup Deals Tied to Chinese Investors
Wall Street Journal
@heathersomervil
A national-security panel on the hunt for Chinese involvement in U.S. technology companies is scrutinizing startup investments that are months or even years old. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or Cfius, has over the past two years built out a new enforcement arm of roughly two dozen people tasked with rooting out old investment deals that involve sensitive technologies and could pose a threat to national security, according to current and former government officials and national-security lawyers. The team has its sights on venture-capital investments, even small-dollar deals, where the money can be traced back to China, these people say.

Russian hack brings changes, uncertainty to US court system
Associated Press
@Maryclairedale
Until recently, even the most secretive material — about wiretaps, witnesses and national security concerns – could be filed electronically. But that changed after the massive Russian hacking campaign that breached the U.S. court system’s electronic case files and those of scores of other federal agencies and private companies.

Why Intel's troubles should concern us all
AXIOS
@inafried
Warning bells are sounding for the U.S. semiconductor industry as Intel grapples with internal and competitive challenges that could imperil the future of domestic chipmaking.

Facebook Knew Calls for Violence Plagued ‘Groups,’ Now Plans Overhaul
Wall Street Journal
@JeffHorwitz
The social network struggled to balance CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s mantra of free expression against internal findings that misinformation and rabid partisanship had overrun a feature meant to be central to its future.

Twitter avatar for @lageneralistaAlicia Wanless @lageneralista
This weekend has been eventful. I'm not going to rehash what passed for those who enjoyed a pleasant Saturday. In considering how the @OversightBoard attempts to communicate to the world & engage researchers, instead I'll offer up some advice to the leadership of tech companies.

January 31st 2021

9 Retweets25 Likes
Twitter avatar for @60Minutes60 Minutes @60Minutes
The U.S. Military recently issued a warning to all service members instructing them not to use direct-to-consumer genealogy tests, like those offered by Ancestry, 23andMe and other companies, because the DNA data collected could be exposed or exploited.
cbsn.ws/2L8F7Ew
Image

February 1st 2021

635 Retweets916 Likes
Twitter avatar for @60Minutes60 Minutes @60Minutes
Chinese biotech firm BGI declined our request for an interview and said in a statement, “the notion that the genomic data of American citizens is in any way compromised through the activities of BGI in the U.S. is groundless.”
cbsn.ws/2MClDse
Image

February 1st 2021

73 Retweets102 Likes

North Asia

QAnon Is Alive and Well in Japan
The Diplomat
Alex Silverman
If you thought that QAnon – the baseless conspiracy theory purporting that a global cabal of satanic pedophiles is plotting against former U.S. President Donald Trump – was an exclusively American phenomenon, you’d be wrong. Before Twitter purged 70,000 QAnon-related accounts in the wake of the Capitol siege in Washington D.C., one of the most influential promoters of the conspiracy theory was the Japanese Twitter user Eri Okabayashi. 

South-East Asia

Myanmar hit with internet disruptions as military seeks to take control
ZDNet
@eileenscyu
Myanmar is experiencing internet and phone service disruptions amidst reports it faces a possible military coup. Data reveals these disruptions are impacting several local and international service providers including Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications (MPT) and Telenor.

Twitter avatar for @rachelblundyRachel Blundy @rachelblundy
Many recent Instagram posts tagged in Myanmar are black to mark the news that the military has staged a coup. Other posts mourn the arrest of de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi
instagram.com/explore/locati…
Image

February 1st 2021

2 Retweets8 Likes

New Zealand & The Pacific

China wants Pacific nations’ telecoms assets, but can Australia jam the call?
South China Morning Post
@joshmcdonaldddd
Analysts say state-owned China Mobile’s purchase of Digicel will allow Beijing to spy on Australia’s neighbours, with Canberra now apparently willing to finance a potential buyer to fend off China’s advances.

South and Central Asia

Twitter avatar for @BhuvanbaggaBhuvan Bagga 吧奥文 @Bhuvanbagga
A source in India's IT ministry @GoI_MeitY on blocked tweets/ @TwitterIndia accounts: "MeitY directed Twitter to block around 250 tweets/ Twitter accounts which were using a hashtag and making fake, intimidatory & provocative tweets on Saturday, January 30." 1/2

February 1st 2021

10 Retweets23 Likes

UK

UK Research and Innovation suffers ransomware attack
ZDNet
@SecurityCharlie
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has disclosed a ransomware attack that has disrupted services and may have led to data theft.

Europe

Beijing calls Lithuania's block of Chinese tech at airports 'politicised'
Lithuanian Radio and Television
ast week, the Lithuanian government decided to block the contract for X-ray baggage scanning equipment at the country’s three main international airports, saying that the data would be available to Chinese intelligence and security services under Chinese law.

  • Should Australia be buying border-security technology from China’s Nuctech? The Strategist

Twitter avatar for @MartijnRasserMartijn Rasser @MartijnRasser
1/ Dutch security experts raising concerns over use scanning equipment from Chinese firm Nuctech by Dutch Customs. Nuctech equipment is used at the port of Rotterdam.
fd.nl/economie-polit… #FD #Privacy #CybersecurityVrees voor Chinese spionage via douanescanners in haven RotterdamDe scanners van Nuctech, dat deels in Chinese staatshanden is, staan wereldwijd in tientallen havens en vliegvelden. Steeds meer landen vragen zich af hoe veilig dit is voor hun grensbewaking.fd.nl

February 1st 2021

2 Retweets

Huawei to create 110 jobs over two years with €80m R&D investment
Independent 
@adrianweckler
Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is to create 110 new jobs in Ireland over the next two years after committing to an €80m investment in research and development.

How Europe Can Tackle Influence Operations and Disinformation
Carnegie Europe
@lageneralista
The Digital Services Act will require social media platforms to share data with researchers. But to understand influence operations, the EU must facilitate longer-term research collaboration between industry and academia.

Africa

Cabling Africa: the great data race to serve the ‘last billion’
Financial Times
@jsphctrl
A data centre boom is already under way. But global internet companies have also noticed the edge that investing in upgrading Africa’s digital infrastructure could give them in cutting the costs of access to their services in a largely untapped market.

Why AI Needs to Be Able to Understand All the World's Languages
Scientific American
Moussa Doumbouya @LisaEinstein @chrispiech
West Africans have spoken their languages for thousands of years, creating rich oral history traditions that have served communities by bringing alive ancestral stories and historical perspectives and passing down knowledge and morals. Computers could easily support this oral tradition. While computers are typically designed for use with written languages, speech-based technology does exist. Speech technology, however, does not “speak” any of the 2,000 languages and dialects spoken by Africans. Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, and Amazon’s Alexa collectively service zero African languages.

Gender and Women in Cyber

Twitter avatar for @RikeFrankeUlrike Franke @RikeFranke
“Feed one a photo of a man cropped right below his neck, and 43% of the time, it will autocomplete him wearing a suit. Feed the same one a cropped photo of a woman, and 53% of the time, it will autocomplete her wearing a low-cut top or bikini.”
An AI saw a cropped photo of AOC. It autocompleted her wearing a bikini.Image-generation algorithms are regurgitating the same sexist, racist ideas that exist on the internet.technologyreview.com

February 1st 2021

76 Retweets115 Likes

Misc

The Next Cyberattack Is Already Under Way
The New Yorker
Jill Lepore
Amid a global gold rush for digital weapons, the infrastructure of our daily lives has never been more vulnerable.

We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins review – the reinvention of reporting for the internet age
The Guardian
@lukeharding1968
Bellingcat’s rise reveals something new about our digitally mediated times: spying is no longer the preserve of nation states – anyone with an internet connection can do it. The balance between open and secret intelligence is shifting.

The Remote Work Revolution Will Be Bigger Than We Think
The Atlantic
@DKThomp
As a general rule of human civilization, we’ve lived where we work. More than 90 percent of Americans drive to work, and their average commute is about 27 minutes. This tether between home and office is the basis of urban economics. But remote work weakens it; in many cases, it severs the link entirely, replacing spatial proximity with cloud-based connectivity. What knock-on changes will this new industrial revolution bring?

Jobs

ICPC Senior Analyst or Analyst - China
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has a unique opportunity for an exceptional and experienced China-focused senior analyst or analyst to join its centre.
Apply here.

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