tardigrada

Archived version

Boox recently switched its AI assistant from Microsoft Azure GPT-3 to a language model created by ByteDance, TikTok's parent company.

[...]

Testing shows the new AI assistant heavily censors certain topics. It refuses to criticize China or its allies, including Russia, Syria's Assad regime, and North Korea. The system even blocks references to "Winnie the Pooh" - a term that's banned in China because it's used to mock President Xi Jinping.

When asked about sensitive topics, the assistant either dodges questions or promotes state narratives. For example, when discussing Russia's role in Ukraine, it frames the conflict as a "complex geopolitical situation" triggered by NATO expansion concerns. The system also spreads Chinese state messaging about Tiananmen Square instead of addressing historical facts.

When users tried to bring attention to the censorship on Boox's Reddit forum, their posts were removed. The company hasn't made any official statement about the situation, but users are reporting that the AI assistant is currently unavailable.

[...]

In China, every AI model has to pass a government review to make sure it follows "socialist values" before it can launch. These systems aren't allowed to create any content that goes against official government positions.

We've already seen what this means in practice: Baidu's ERNIE-ViLG image AI won't process any requests about Tiananmen Square, and while Kling's video generator refuses to show Tiananmen Square protests, it has no problem creating videos of a burning White House.

Some countries are already taking steps to address these concerns. Taiwan, for example, is developing its own language model called "Taide" to give companies and government agencies an AI option that's free from Chinese influence.

[...]

Archived version

The Russian disinformation network “Matryoshka” has launched a new campaign on the Bluesky social network. Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative journalism group Bellingcat, has been one of the first researchers to detect its activity. So far, four Russian-made fake videos have been identified on the platform.

Each disinformation video begins with a real person — a professor, a student from a top university, or a recognized expert — introducing themselves and beginning to speak on a topic unrelated to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The footage then transitions to segments that do not show the speaker on screen — while what sounds like their voice continues narrating. In these moments, the speaker seems to promote claims that the West should end its support for Ukraine, that Europe should align its future with Russia, and that Volodymyr Zelensky is a dictator — or even a vampire.

[...]

The videos circulating on Bluesky had previously appeared on X, according to the Bot Blocker project (@antibot4navalny), which first uncovered and detailed the workings of the Matryoshka network in early 2024.

[...]

Original article paywalled

Authorities in the US are considering a ban on TP-Link internet routers over national security concerns due to their repeated links to Chinese cyberattacks. Investigators at the Commerce, Defense, and Justice departments have all launched probes into the company [...] with TP-Link reportedly being subpoenaed by an office of the Commerce Department.

[...]

TP-Link holds roughly 65 percent of the US router market for homes and small businesses, and its internet communications products are used by the Defense Department and other federal government agencies. The company’s market dominance is at least partly driven by the extreme low cost of its routers. The US Justice Department is investigating whether TP-Link sells products for less than they cost to produce in violation of a law that prohibits attempts at monopolies.

[...]

Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17343934

Archived version

TLDR:

The Twitter account @whyyoutouzhele has allegedly been shadow banned by X (formerly Twitter) in relation to the 2nd anniversary of the White Paper protests, the rights organization Article 19 says.

The account is run by a Chinese artist living in Europe. It has played a key role in disseminating information about protests and other sensitive topics in China which are subjected to strict censorship by the state.

[...]

Few online actors are more influential in skirting China’s censorship efforts than Li Ying (李颖) who established the @whyyoutouzhele, ‘Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher’, account in April 2022. Having lived in Italy since 2015, he used to post actively on the Chinese platform Weibo. Because he lived beyond the Great Firewall, people in China would reach out asking him to post sensitive content on their behalf. His Weibo account was shut down at least 52 times for crossing the line into social issues, until he was finally purged from the platform altogether.

In April 2022 he switched to X and by November 2022 was gaining hundreds of thousands of followers a week, as he became a clearinghouse for sensitive content, especially for information about the White Paper Protests. As the account became a respected source for disseminating and accessing sensitive information beyond the reach of China’s censors, Li Ying faced increasing digital transnational repression.

[...]

On Wednesday, 27 November, the blue tick verified ‘Teacher Li is not Your Teacher’ (李老师不是你老师) X (formally Twitter) account posted to its 1.8 million followers that it believes it had been shadow banned on the platform. The post speculated that the ban was in relation to the two-year anniversary of the White Paper Movement, a protest wave that rocked through numerous cities in China in November 2022 and saw numerous anniversary protests around the world over the past weekend.

[...]

On 28 November, [the rights organization] ARTICLE 19 ran its own search on X, using the account’s username @whyyoutouzhele and its Chinese account name 李老师不是你老师. The search did not surface the authentic Teacher Li account in either case, however both searches revealed multiple impersonator accounts, with around 20 when searching for the username. The search for the Chinese account name returned over 900 impersonator account results, but not the authentic account.

[...]

Shadow banning occurs when a social media platform intentionally limits the reach of certain content to its users, although platforms often deny shadow banning takes place. In its post, the Teacher Li account shared a screenshot from the platform claiming it had been subjected to a ‘search suggestion ban’.

Earlier this year, two obscure companies from Northern Louisiana brokered a multimillion-dollar deal with former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social and walked away with a finders’ fee valued at $155 million.

The companies—WorldConnect IPTV and JedTec—formed a joint venture, named WorldConnect Technologies, which served as the middleman between Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) and Perception TV CDN, the company hired to build the tech infrastructure needed to power Truth Social’s foray into video streaming.

To better understand the nature of TMTG’s burgeoning media holdings and the companies building it, Fortune examined dozens of business filings from the U.S. and abroad, and spoke to seven sources that previously worked with Perception’s cofounders, its current chair Matjaz “Matt” Vidmar and CEO John Mills.

What emerged from these sources was a “no questions asked” policy at Perception and previous companies connected to Vidmar and Mills that led them to work with Chinese and Russian state-backed propaganda networks, Islamist television channels, and Iranian corporations. TMTG chose to work with Perception despite the fact that in the past it did business with now-sanctioned entities.

[...]

TV channels for Russia, China, and Islamic fundamentalists

Vidmar’s previous company, Vision247, also had a history of working with clients that ran afoul of regulators [...] The company exhibited little discernment regarding who it would work with, striking deals with Russia Today (RT), China Central Television (CCTV), and several Islamist networks.

[...]

RT and CCTV are the state-backed media outlets of Russia and China respectively. Vision247 also carried the broadcast channels of the Islamist media companies Peace TV and Almajd Network. Almajd is an Arabic-language media company that has close ties to the Salafi branch of Islamic fundamentalism. In 2019, Peace TV’s content led to it being banned from broadcasting in the U.K. in 2019 for inciting violence and hate speech. Peace TV was a client of Vision247 at the time it was booted from British airwaves.

[...]

A bipartisan group of 14 attorneys general from across the country allege that the company uses addictive features to hook children to the app and that it has intentionally misled the public about the safety of prolonged use.

[...]

New York Attorney General Letitia James said young people across the country had died or been injured doing TikTok "challenges" and many others were feeling "more sad, anxious and depressed because of TikTok's addictive features".

She cited a 15-year-old boy, who died in Manhattan while “subway surfing” - riding on top of a moving subway car. His mother later found TikTok videos of such activity on his phone, she said.

[...]

Regulators have launched similar cases against Facebook and Instagram for their impact on young people's mental health.

[...]

The Federal Trade Commission, a government watchdog, accused TikTok in August of violating child privacy laws.

Over the past year, software developer turned security researcher Jason Parker has found and reported dozens of critical vulnerabilities in no fewer than 19 commercial platforms used by hundreds of courts, government agencies, and police departments across the U.S. Most of the vulnerabilities were critical.

[...]

"These platforms are supposed to ensure transparency and fairness, but are failing at the most fundamental level of cybersecurity,” Parker wrote recently in a post he penned in an attempt to raise awareness. “If a voter’s registration can be canceled with little effort and confidential legal filings can be accessed by unauthorized users, what does it mean for the integrity of these systems?”

The Tor Project, a global non-profit developing tools for online privacy and anonymity, and Tails, a portable operating system that uses Tor to protect users from digital surveillance, have joined forces and merged operations.

Incorporating Tails into the Tor Project's structure allows for easier collaboration, better sustainability, reduced overhead, and expanded training and outreach programs to counter a larger number of digital threats, Tor says in a blog post. In short, coming together will strengthen both organizations' ability to protect people worldwide from surveillance and censorship.

Early on a Saturday morning in April, Akara Etteh was checking his phone as he came out of Holborn tube station, in central London.

A moment later, it was in the hand of a thief on the back of an electric bike - Akara gave chase, but they got away.

He is just one victim of an estimated 78,000 "snatch thefts" in England and Wales in the year to March, a big increase on the previous 12 months. The prosecution rate for this offence is very low - the police say they are targeting the criminals responsible but cannot "arrest their way out of the problem". They also say manufacturers and tech firms have a bigger role to play.

[...]

Then, in May, just over a month after the theft, Akara checked Find My iPhone again - his prized possession was now on the other side of the world - in Shenzhen, China.

[..]

It is not uncommon for stolen phones to end up in Shenzhen - where if devices can't be unlocked and used again, they are disassembled for parts.

[...]

In the moments after Akara’s phone was stolen, he saw police officers on the street and he told them what had happened. Officers, he said, were aware of thieves doing a “loop of the area” to steal phones, and he was encouraged to report the offence online, which he did. A few days later, he was told by the Metropolitan Police via email the case was closed as “it is unlikely that we will be able to identify those responsible”.

Imagine your search terms, key-strokes, private chats and photographs are being monitored every time they are sent. Millions of students across the U.S. don’t have to imagine this deep surveillance of their most private communications: it’s a reality that comes with their school districts’ decision to install AI-powered monitoring software such as Gaggle and GoGuardian on students’ school-issued machines and accounts.

"As we demonstrated with our own Red Flag Machine, however, this software flags and blocks websites for spurious reasons and often disproportionately targets disadvantaged, minority and LGBTQ youth," the Electronic Software Foundation (EFF) says.

The companies making the software claim it’s all done for the sake of student safety: preventing self-harm, suicide, violence, and drug and alcohol abuse. While a noble goal, given that suicide is the second highest cause of death among American youth 10-14 years old, no comprehensive or independent studies have shown an increase in student safety linked to the usage of this software. Quite to the contrary: a recent comprehensive RAND research study shows that such AI monitoring software may cause more harm than good.

Here is the indictment and press release by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The indictment of two employees of RT - formerly 'Russia Today', a Kremlin-controlled propaganda outlet based in Moscow - includes allegations that they implemented a nearly $10 million plan to fund a U.S.-based company as one of their “covert projects.”

Employees of the Russia-backed media network RT funded and directed a scheme that sent millions of dollars to prominent right-wing commentators through a media company that appears to match the description of Tenet Media, a leading platform for pro-Trump voices [...]

The indictment on Wednesday of two RT employees, Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, includes allegations that the duo implemented a nearly $10 million plan to fund an unnamed Tennessee-based company as one of their “covert projects” to influence American politics by posting videos to TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube.

[...]

[Involved apoear to be] six commentators: Lauren Southern, Tim Pool, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen, Dave Rubin and Benny Johnson. The indictment refers to six commentators, who are not named.

[...]

Details included in the indictment match those of two of Tenet’s personalities: Rubin and Pool. As of Wednesday, Rubin’s “The Rubin Report” YouTube channel had 2.44 million subscribers. The indictment refers to “Commentator-1” as having over 2.4 million YouTube subscribers. A person with over 1.3 million YouTube subscribers is referred to as “Commentator-2.” Pool now has 1.37 million subscribers. The indictment also refers to three other commentators, including one with female pronouns, but lacked any information that could directly identify their channels.

[...]

Archived version

A little-known spyware maker based in Minnesota has been hacked, TechCrunch has learned, revealing thousands of devices around the world under its stealthy remote surveillance.

[...]

The data shows that Spytech’s spyware — Realtime-Spy and SpyAgent, among others — has been used to compromise more than 10,000 devices since the earliest-dated leaked records from 2013, including Android devices, Chromebooks, Macs, and Windows PCs worldwide.

Spytech is the latest spyware maker in recent years to have itself been compromised, and the fourth spyware maker known to have been hacked this year alone.

[...]

Spytech is a maker of remote access apps, often referred to as “stalkerware,” which are sold under the guise of allowing parents to monitor their children’s activities but are also marketed for spying on the devices of spouses and domestic partners. Spytech’s website openly advertises its products for spousal surveillance, promising to “keep tabs on your spouse’s suspicious behavior.”

[...]

The breached data [...] contains logs of all the devices under Spytech’s control, including records of each device’s activity. Most of the devices compromised by the spyware are Windows PCs, and to a lesser degree Android devices, Macs and Chromebooks.

The device activity logs [...] were not encrypted.