The Twitter account defending Australian democracy | Twitch says livestream of Buffalo mass shooting was removed in less than 2 minutes | Russia downed satellite internet in Ukraine
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With snappy humor and serious factchecks, the Australian Electoral Commission is trying to counter a growing flood of misinformation. The Washington Post
Twitch confirmed the shooting was streamed and said the user "has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts rebroadcasting this content." CNN
Russia was behind a massive cyberattack against a satellite internet network that took tens of thousands of modems offline at the onset of Russia-Ukraine war, the United States, Britain, Canada, Estonia and the European Union said on Tuesday. Reuters
ASPI ICPC
China’s internet platforms are revealing user location—and embarrassing nationalist bloggers
Quartz
Jane Li
“Prominent nationalists have been clamoring for more sophisticated methods of censorship and surveillance like this in order to combat what they see as the threat from hostile foreign forces,” said Fergus Ryan, senior analyst at the International Cyber Policy Centre of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think tank.
Shocking new maps reveal how much territory Russia has lost in Ukraine in days
Mirror
Ryan Merrifield
Nathan Ruser, a researcher for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), an independent think tank, shared maps showing the situation as of Tuesday (May 10). On his Twitter account, he posted multiple maps showing the receding line of Moscow's territorial control.
Ukraine - Russia
Russia downed satellite internet in Ukraine -Western officials
Reuters
James Pearson
Russia was behind a massive cyberattack against a satellite internet network that took tens of thousands of modems offline at the onset of Russia-Ukraine war, the United States, Britain, Canada, Estonia and the European Union said on Tuesday.
Australia
The Twitter account defending Australian democracy
The Washington Post
Michael E. Miller and Frances Vinall
With snappy humor and serious factchecks, the Australian Electoral Commission is trying to counter a growing flood of misinformation.
AI and policing: what a Queensland case study tells us
The Strategist
Teagan Westendorf
AI solutions are here to stay. Appropriate regulation in law enforcement scenarios is imperative to mitigate their significant potential impacts on justice outcomes and civil liberties. If Australia wants to ensure AI is safe, secure and reliable, we need an ethical framework that is compulsory and legally enforceable, not voluntary and aspirational.
Alan Tudge emerges on WeChat to respond to questions about ‘toxic gender ideology’
The Guardian
Wing Kuang and Anne Davies
The elusive education minister, Alan Tudge, has emerged on WeChat in an interview with a Chinese community leader where he responds generally to questions which include what to do about “toxic gender ideology” infiltrating schools.
ACT Senate candidate Li Fuxin linked to Chinese government's foreign influence arm
ABC News
Echo Hui and Dylan Welch
A Senate candidate billing himself as a choice for social harmony has a long history of activity with the Chinese government's main arm of overseas influence, the United Front Work Department.
China
China shuts down talk of covid hardship; users strike back
The Washington Post
Lily Kuo
For one day, Chinese Internet users were victorious against the censors. On Friday, April 22, a six-minute video titled “Voices of April” went viral. It showed footage of an empty Shanghai and audio recordings of some of the most desperate moments of the past month of lockdown.
Mass covid testing, already a familiar ritual, becomes China’s new normal
The Wall Street Journal
Liyan Qi and Natasha Khan
China is doubling down on mass testing as a key weapon against Covid-19 even as costs mount and the highly infectious Omicron variant exposes challenges with the strategy. Mass testing has become a part of daily life across the country. Similar to how many people in the West have had to show a vaccine pass to dine out, enter the office or get on a plane, in China, the thing not to leave home without is a negative Covid test.
China database reveals the thousands detained in Xinjiang
Yahoo! News
Laurie Chen and Eyul Deniz
A leaked list of thousands of detained Uyghurs has helped Nursimangul Abdureshid shed some light on the whereabouts of her missing family members, who have disappeared in China's sweeping crackdown on Xinjiang.
China chipmaker SMIC says phone, PC demand has dropped 'like a rock'
Nikkei
Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li
Top Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co. says demand for mobile phones, personal computers and home appliances has dropped "like a rock" and shows no signs of recovering.
Explainer: Small Chinese-language media outlets press on as Hong Kong’s big names disappear
Hong Kong Free Press
Peter Lee
According to both Beijing and Hong Kong officials, freedom of the press has survived unscathed since the national security law came into force in June 2020. But prominent independent outlets have shut down one after another and journalists have been detained on national security and sedition charges. The International Federation of Journalists says Hong Kong’s press freedom has entered its “end game.”
USA
Twitch says livestream of Buffalo mass shooting was removed in less than 2 minutes
CNN
Brian Stelter and Sharif Paget
Twitch confirmed the shooting was streamed and said the user "has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts rebroadcasting this content."
The Buffalo supermarket shooting suspect allegedly posted an apparent manifesto repeatedly citing 'great replacement' theory
NBC News
Ben Collins
A manifesto allegedly written and posted by the suspect in a mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket that killed 10 people laid out specific plans to attack Black people and repeatedly cited the “great replacement" theory, the false idea that a cabal is attempting to replace white Americans with nonwhite people through immigration, interracial marriage and, eventually, violence.Buffalo mass shooter likely sought combat gear advice on online chats
Unicorn Riot
Dan Feidt
The man who allegedly killed ten people and injured more in a mass shooting at Tops Friendly Markets in Buffalo, New York on May 14, appears to have looked for advice about carrying out violent acts in more than 80 online chat messages collected by Unicorn Riot.Racist Republican lawmaker claims white supremacist Buffalo shooting was false flag
Rolling Stone
Tim Dickinson
After an 18-year-old uploaded a racist manifesto before targeting Black people in a mass shooting, the shooter’s fellow racists are scrambling to obfuscate the truth.
Biden eyes new ways to bar China from scooping up U.S. data
Reuters
Alexandra Alper and Karen Freifeld
The Biden administration has drafted an executive order that would give the Department of Justice vast powers to stop foreign adversaries like China accessing Americans' personal data, according to a person familiar with the matter and excerpts seen by Reuters.
Rubio Warns Miami about Chinese influence campaign
Nation Review
Jimmy Quinn
Senator Marco Rubio warned Miami mayor Francis Suarez that the Chinese Communist Party is continuing its efforts to influence local government officials. While there has been previous concern about Chinese influence efforts at the state and municipal levels, Rubio’s letter this week to Suarez, the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, followed a recent incident in his city.
United States signs protocol to strengthen international law enforcement cooperation to combat cybercrime
United States Department of Justice
At the Council of Europe (COE) headquarters in Strasbourg, France, on May 12, Deputy Assistant Attorney General (DAAG) Richard Downing of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division signed the Second Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime on enhanced cooperation and disclosure of electronic evidence on behalf of the U.S. government.
East Asia
UK
Going the extra mile: what it takes to be a responsible cyber power
Lawfare
Max Smeets
Being a responsible power means the U.K. will have to go the extra mile in terms of how it targets computer systems or networks, minimizes collateral damage, and tests its capabilities. The result is a longer, costlier and potentially frustrated process, which could ultimately reduce effectiveness and performance.
Europe
How Putin drove Finland into NATO’s arms
The Wall Street Journal
Sune Engel Rasmussen
If the Nordic country joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alongside Sweden in coming weeks, as expected, Mr. Putin will get a highly militarized NATO member next door. Russia’s border with NATO will more than double at the stroke of a pen, with an additional 830 miles.
EU governments, lawmakers agree on tougher cybersecurity rules for key sectors
Reuters
Foo Yun Chee
EU countries and lawmakers agreed on Friday to tougher cybersecurity rules for large energy, transport and financial firms, digital providers and medical device makers amid concerns about cyber attacks by state actors and other malicious players.
Americas
Costa Rica declares state of emergency over ransomware attack
NBC News
Kevin Collier
Costa Rica has declared a state of emergency after ransomware hackers crippled computer networks across multiple government agencies, including the Finance Ministry.
Africa
Bank of central African states urges CAR to annul bitcoin as currency
Voice of America
Moki Edwin Kindzeka
The Cameroon-headquartered Bank of Central African States (BEAC) has urged the Central African Republic (CAR) to annul a law it passed in late April that made the cryptocurrency Bitcoin legal tender. The bank warned in a letter made public last week that the move breached its rules and could affect monetary stability in the region.
Kenyans are protesting plans by tax authority to snoop on their online chats
Quartz
Faustine Ngila
There is outrage across Kenya after the country’s tax authority announced on May 11 that it plans to start mining data from digital devices in a bid to combat tax and financial fraud.
Big Tech
How Twitter lost the celebs
The Washington Post
Taylor Lorenz, Steven Zeitchik and Will Oremus
Elon Musk was right that Twitter’s most popular accounts have gone quieter over the years. Hollywood insiders explain what happened — and why Musk’s ownership might only make it worse.
Elon Musk says Twitter deal is on hold, putting bid on shaky ground
The Washington Post
Faiz Siddiqui, Reed Albergotti, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Rachel Lerman
Elon Musk tweeted early Friday that his $44 billion bid to buy Twitter was temporarily on hold, opening up a potential door for renegotiation and raising uncertainty about his push to take the social media site private.
Elon Musk places $61.4 billion deal for Twitter on hold over details on fake accounts
ABC News
Elon Musk said Friday that his planned $US44 billion ($61.4 billion) purchase of Twitter is "temporarily on hold" pending details about spam and fake accounts on the social media platform.
Mark Zuckerberg on his big metaverse bet: 'I feel a responsibility to go for it.'
Protocol
Janko Roettgers
Zuckerberg sat down with Protocol for an exclusive conversation about the company’s investments in the metaverse, how it compares to Facebook’s transition to mobile a decade and a half ago, why Meta’s social VR world Horizon is a walled garden for the time being and how he eventually wants to open the doors to those platforms over time.
Dissection by TikTok: Johnny Depp, Amber Heard trial posts are making accidental influencers out of some, targets out of others
CNN
Sara Ashley O'Brien
Callum Hood, head of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate which recently investigated abuse directed at several high-profile women, including Heard, on Instagram similarly noted that the nature of TikTok is such that "you get very, very slim segments of the trial presented and usually with a very heavy skew."
Anonymous social media App Yik Yak exposed users’ precise locations
VICE
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai
The anonymous message board app Yik Yak is designed in a way that it is possible to get the precise location of a user’s post, and see users’ unique IDs, potentially allowing someone to dox and stalk users, according to a researcher.
Events
The digital component of Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression
Atlantic Council
Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov discusses Ukraine’s digital resistance Russian aggression, and a new report from StrategEast details the role of the IT sector in Ukraine’s victory and post-war recovery.
Jobs
The Sydney Dialogue - Senior Events Coordinator
ASPI ICPC
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is currently recruiting for an experienced events professional to coordinate the planning and logistics of the second iteration of ASPI’s Sydney Dialogue - the world’s premier summit on emerging, critical and cyber technologies.
ICPC Senior Analyst or Analyst - China
ASPI ICPC
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has a unique opportunity for exceptional and experienced China-focused senior analysts or analysts to join its centre. This role will focus on original research and analysis centred around the (growing) range of topics which our ICPC China team work on. Our China team produces some of the most impactful and well-read policy-relevant research in the world, with our experts often being called upon by politicians, governments, corporates and civil society actors to provide briefings and advice.