Top cybersecurity official ousted by Trump I Australian officials respond angrily to fresh attacks from Chinese diplomats I Companies could face hefty fines under new Canadian privacy law

Nov 18, 2020

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

President Trump ousted Christopher Krebs, the top U.S. cybersecurity official, on Tuesday evening, disagreeing with Krebs’s statement affirming the security of the 2020 election. The Hill
China-Australia relations have soured further after a China official listed complaints against Australia in the media. The document says Australia has unfairly blocked Chinese investment, spread "disinformation" about China's efforts to contain coronavirus, falsely accused Beijing of cyber-attacks, and engaged in "incessant wanton interference" in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang. ABC News
The Canadian government is threatening to impose fines that could run to millions of dollars on private companies that violate Canadians' privacy. CBC

ASPI ICPC

What can social media platforms do about disinformation?
The Strategist
@arielbogle
A circuit breaker is needed to stop the cross-platform spread of deceptive or misleading claims, but even the coordinated removal of posts and videos about issues like election fraud raises concerns about false positives and censorship. And if such an approach were applied globally, the platforms could draw criticism for imposing American norms of speech in other countries. In any case, given the now embedded use of disinformation as a campaigning tool, a where-goes-one-goes-all approach to domestic disinformation is unlikely to be legislated.

Strategic Forum live updates: What Biden’s presidency will mean for Australia
The Australian
@AdesholaOre
Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior analyst Tom Uren warned against complacency in the cybersecurity landscape. “It takes people a long time to catch up to what the risks are and dedicate the right amount of resources,” he said.

China vs Democracy - The Greatest Game
Halifax International Security Forum
Beijing’s plans do indeed have global implications. Summarizing the issue in a seminal paper on China’s international aspirations in tech, Samantha Hoffman, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre, argues: “The Chinese party-state’s tech-enhanced authoritarianism is expanding globally. This expansion isn’t always distinctly coercive or overtly invasive… By leveraging state-owned enterprises (SOEs), Chinese technology companies and partnerships with foreign partners—including Western universities— the CCP is building a massive and global data-collection ecosystem.”

Mapping China's Tech Giants | Australian Strategic Policy Institute | ASPI

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.

World

Foxglove @Foxglovelegal

Breaking: More than 200 @Facebook content moderators (and supporting employees) from across the US and Europe have published a demand for better protections - and full employment rights - during the pandemic.

Open letter from content moderators re: pandemic — FoxgloveFoxglove is supporting social media content moderators in their fights for fair treatment from the platforms they work for, and for safe working conditions during the pandemic. Here is the full text of an open letter which over 200 Facebook content moderators from across the world have just addresfoxglove.org.uk

Australia

Australian officials respond angrily to fresh attacks from Chinese diplomats
ABC News
@stephendziedzic
The document says Australia has unfairly blocked Chinese investment, spread "disinformation" about China's efforts to contain coronavirus, falsely accused Beijing of cyber-attacks, and engaged in "incessant wanton interference" in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang. It also lambasts the Federal Government's decision to ban Huawei from 5G networks and criticises Australia's push against foreign interference, accusing it of "recklessly" seizing the property of Chinese journalists and allowing Federal MPs to issue "outrageous condemnation of the governing party of China"

Google Translate used over professional translators for Government's official COVID-19 messaging
ABC News
@steph_dalzell
Critical public health messages by the Commonwealth about the coronavirus pandemic were bungled amid revelations bureaucrats used Google Translate to communicate with multicultural communities.

China

Huawei, 5G, and the Man Who Conquered Noise
Wired
@StevenLevy
How an obscure Turkish scientist’s obscure theoretical breakthrough helped the Chinese tech giant gain control of the future. US telecoms never had a chance.

Her Abuse Was a ‘Family Matter,’ Until It Went Live
The New York Times
The grisly death of a farmer, whose attack was streamed online, has shocked China, with many asking why the legal system failed to protect her.

Chinese tech group joins list of companies to default on bond issue
Financial Times
A Chinese state-backed technology group is the latest company to default on a domestic bond issue, denting Beijing’s ambitions to build a “self-reliant” semiconductor sector and further agitating the world’s second-largest bond market.

Bill Bishop @niubi

China's great firewall looks like it has blocked substack.com per @GreatFireChina how recent is this? en.greatfire.org/https/substack…

USA

Top cybersecurity official ousted by Trump
The Hill
@MagMill95 @mchalfant16
President Trump ousted Christopher Krebs, the top U.S. cybersecurity official, on Tuesday evening, disagreeing with Krebs’s statement affirming the security of the 2020 election.

After Krebs' dismissal, DHS's cyber agency is led by career official Brandon Wales. For now. CyberScoop
The Firing of Chris Krebs Is What an Attack On Democracy Looks Like Defense One

Chris Krebs @C_C_Krebs

Check out Cisa.gov/rumorcontrol for solid info on election security #Protect2020

Rumor Control | CISAMis- and Disinformation can undermine public confidence in the electoral process, as well as in our democracy. A message from the CISA Director.cisa.gov

Trump team looks to box in Biden on foreign policy by lighting too many fires to put out
CNN
The White House has directed newly installed acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller to focus his attention in the remaining weeks on cyber and irregular warfare, with a focus on China in particular, an administration official tells CNN.

Los Angeles Police Just Banned The Use Of Commercial Facial Recognition
BuzzFeed News
@bri_sacks @RMac18 @caro1inehaskins
The country’s third-largest police department notified employees of the ban after BuzzFeed News showed that its officers were using Clearview AI, a facial recognition platform that has taken data from Facebook and other social media platforms.

Why Isn't Susan Wojcicki Getting Grilled By Congress?
Wired
@evelyndouek
YouTube is a major vector for election and other disinformation. But its CEO isn't with Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey on Capitol Hill today.

Financially troubled startup helped power Trump campaign
AP
@garanceburke
President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign was powered by a cellphone app that allowed staff to monitor the movements of his millions of supporters, and offered intimate access to their social networks.

CNN @CNN

Trump's campaign and Fox News host Tucker Carlson alleged last week that a vote cast by a Georgia woman named Deborah Jean Christiansen was fraudulent. But the voter, who the Trump campaign claimed was deceased, answered the door when CNN showed up.

‘Just ridiculous’: CNN speaks to Georgia voter the Trump campaign falsely accused of casting ballot in the name of a dead womanDeborah Jean Christiansencnn.it

Former Raytheon Engineer Sentenced for Exporting Sensitive Military Related Technology to China
US Department of Justice
@TheJusticeDept
Today, Wei Sun, 49, a Chinese national and naturalized citizen of the United States, was sentenced to 38 months in prison by District Court Judge Rosemary Marquez. Sun previously pleaded guilty to one felony count of violating the Arms Export Control Act (AECA).

Canada

Companies could face hefty fines under new Canadian privacy law
CBC
@cattunneycbc
The federal government is threatening to impose fines that could run to millions of dollars on private companies that violate Canadians' privacy. Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains introduced the Digital Charter Implementation Act today — officially called an "Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act and the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts." It represents one of the biggest shakeups in Canada's privacy law in decades. If the bill passes, companies could face fines of up to five per cent of global revenue or $25 million — whichever is greater — for the most serious offences. Bains said the legislation provides for the heaviest fines among the G7 nations' privacy laws.

Christopher Parsons @caparsons

The @cybercentre_ca released their National Cyber Threat Assessment today. Here’s a crude summary + thoughts on it. But first: this is a very well done report. The team that was involved in writing/managing its development deserves congratulations for the excellent work. 👏👏👏

New Zealand & The Pacific

PICISOC @picisoc

This writeup by @maureen_hilyard on leadership within the Pacific focusing & contributions by a hard-working team whose goals were building interest& capacity regionally, to ensure active engagement in the development of the internet in the Pacific

Pacific Leadership in Internet GovernanceCOVID-19 created great upheaval globally but throughout and continuing, the Pacific continues to demonstrate the resiliency that has developed over years of overcoming the many natural disasters that…medium.com

Europe

Pole and Chinese citizen indicted in Warsaw for spying
Reuters
Polish authorities said on Wednesday a former secret service agent and a Chinese citizen who worked for a telecommunications company have been charged with spying for China. Reuters previously reported on the allegations against an employee of Huawei and a former Polish domestic intelligence operative who were being investigated by the Warsaw government for suspected espionage.

Misc

Twitter 'exploring' adding a dislike button or downvote system
Mashable Australia
@jmorse_
Twitter is currently "exploring" adding a dislike button or some kind of downvoting system, presumably à la Reddit, announced the company's product lead on Tuesday. The potential change, confirmed Twitter, is part of a larger effort to make Twitter a place amenable to more nuanced conversations.

The future of AI in the military is not killer robots
Axios
@bryanrwalsh
An approach that focuses on human-machine collaboration raises operational and ethical questions.

evelyn douek @evelyndouek

This is a great overview of the issues & rules around livestreams. There was a brief window post-Christchurch when it seemed like we would have a broader societal conversation abt the trade-offs involved, but it petered out. We won't avoid it forever.

Election Delegitimization: Coming to you Live — Election Integrity PartnershipAuthors: Samantha Bradshaw, David Thiel, Carly Miller, Renee DiRestaeipartnership.net

Research

The Case for Digital Public Infrastructure
Knight First Amendment Institute
@EthanZ
Societies operate on infrastructures: physical, digital, and social. At the intersection of digital and social infrastructures is a set of spaces that host critical conversations about civic, political, and social issues. At present, these spaces primarily are built and governed by large media companies who maintain them to collect user data and serve advertisements. What would happen if we built digital public infrastructures, digital social spaces built with taxpayer dollars with explicit civic goals? This article builds on a previous essay, The Case for a Digital Public Infrastructure, to propose a roadmap to build a robust ecosystem of public service digital spaces, tools and resources. The essay includes discussions of interoperability, taxation, common tool sets and more.

Report of the Working Group on Platform Scale
Stanford Program on Democracy and the Internet
Francis Fukuyama, Barak Richman, Ashish Goel Roberta R. Katz, A. Douglas Melamed, Marietje Schaake
The internet economy has produced digital platforms of enormous economic and social significance. These platforms—specifically, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, and Apple— now play central roles in how millions of Americans obtain information, spend their money, communicate with fellow citizens, and earn their livelihoods. Their reach is also felt globally, extending to many countries around the world. They have amassed the economic, social, and political influence that very few private entities have ever obtained previously. Accordingly, they demand careful consideration from American policymakers, who should soberly assess whether the nation’s current laws and regulatory institutions are adequately equipped to protect Americans against potential abuses by platform companies.

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 Institutes’s International Cyber Policy Centre.

Allie Funk @alfunk

ICYMI - @freedomhouse’s technology & democracy team is hiring a new research analyst or associate to join us in January. We’re a small, dynamic, & supportive team geeking out on all things rights & digital tech. Learn more, share, or apply here: phe.tbe.taleo.net/phe01/ats/care…

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