Technology

This keynote will look at the connections between where we are now and how we got here. Connecting the “Crypto Wars”, the role of encryption and privacy, and ultimately the hype of AI… all through the lens of Signal.

Full text of Meredith's talk: https://signal.org/blog/pdfs/ndss-key...

America’s military-industrial complex has been rapidly expanding from the Capital Beltway to Silicon Valley. Although much of the Pentagon’s budget is spent on conventional weapons systems, the Defense Department has increasingly sought to adopt AI-enabled systems. Big tech companies, venture capital, and private equity firms benefit from multi-billion dollar Defense contracts, and smaller defense tech startups that “move fast and break things” also receive increased Defense funding. This report illustrates how a growing portion of the Defense Department’s spending is going to large, well-known tech firms, including some of the most highly valued corporations in the world.

Given the often-classified nature of large defense and intelligence contracts, a lack of transparency makes it difficult to discern the true amount of U.S. spending diverted to Big Tech. Yet, research reveals that the amount is substantial, and growing. According to the nonprofit research organization Tech Inquiry, three of the world’s biggest tech corporations were awarded approximately $28 billion from 2018 to 2022, including Microsoft ($13.5 billion), Amazon ($10.2 billion), and Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company ($4.3 billion). This paper found that the top five contracts to major tech firms between 2019 and 2022 had contract ceilings totaling at least $53 billion combined.

From 2021 through 2023, venture capital firms reportedly pumped nearly $100 billion into defense tech startup companies — an amount 40 percent higher than the previous seven years combined. This report examines how Silicon Valley startups, big tech, and venture capital who benefit from classified Defense contracts will create costly, high-tech defense products that are ineffective, unpredictable, and unsafe – all on the American taxpayer’s dime.

User agents are pieces of software that represent the user, a natural person, in their digital interactions. Examples include Web browsers, operating systems, single-sign-on systems, or voice assistants. User agents hold, due to the role they play in the digital ecosystem, a strategic position. They can be arbiters of structural power. The overwhelming majority of the data that is collected about people, particularly that which is collected passively, is collected through user agents, at times with their explicit support or at least by their leave. I propose to lean on this strategic function that user agents hold to develop a regime of fiduciary duties for them that is relatively limited in the number of actors that it affects yet has the means to significantly increase the power of users in their relationships with online platforms. The limited, tractable scope of software user agency as a fiduciary relationship provides effective structural leverage in righting the balance of power between individuals and tech companies. 

The Internet, itself in constant innovation since its inception, has historically supported unprecedented innovation across the globe, driving considerable growth in technology and commerce.This paper reviews a set of properties set out by Internet experts in 2012, which aimed to capture the unvarying properties that defined the Internet (“the Invariants”).

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An early realization was that that the Invariants not only capture an ideal form of the Internet, they describe a generative platform — a platform capable of continuous growth and fostering the expansive development of new things upon itself.

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Notably, several technologies being developed and deployed in today’s Internet don’t conform to those Invariants, and thus are not laying the foundation for similar innovations in the future. With the Invariants in hand, however, we have a tool to evaluate the state of the Internet and any proposed changes that would impact it, and support discussion between and among technologists and policy makers to help ensure that future choices foster a better Internet, aligned with the ideal expressed in the Internet Invariants.

This is “climate change” of the Internet ecosystem: absent concrete action to address the departure of the application infrastructure of the Internet from the ideal outlined in the Invariants, the experience of the Internet going forward will not feature such a rich diversity of solutions to the needs of the world’s population.

 A couple of weeks ago, I gave a talk in Austria on smartphones and cybersecurity.

“Put up your hand if you like or maybe even love your smartphone,” I asked the audience of policymakers, industrialists and students.

Nearly every hand in the room shot up.

“Now, please put up your hand if you trust your smartphone.”

One young guy at the back put his hand in the air, then faltered as it became obvious he was alone. I thanked him for his honesty and paused before saying,“We love our phones, but we do not trust them. And love without trust is the definition of an abusive relationship.”

Israeli quadcopters are employing a "bizarre" new tactic of playing audio recordings of crying infants and women in order to lure Palestinians to locations where they can be targeted.

On Sunday and Monday night, residents of the northern parts of Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp woke up to the sounds of babies crying and women calling out for help.

When they went outside to locate the source of the cries and provide aid, Israeli quadcopters reportedly opened fire directly at them.

These people have no idea how computers work, how brains work, or how to define intelligence. They just believe that if they get enough transistors together, feed it enough data and the electricity requirements of a large industrialised nation, they will eventually create God. It's the ultimate cargo cult. They're drunk on they're own snake oil. And they're among the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world, instead of being institutionalised for their own safety. It's so funny/scary.

 The video shows Sam Altman in talk with Connie Loizos. When Loizos asked Altman is he is planning to monetise his product, Sam Altman replied with: “The honest answer is, we have no idea."

Sam Altman further said that they had no plans to make any revenue. "We never made any revenue. We have no current plans to make any revenue. We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue," he said.

Speaking about the investors, Sam Altman said, “We have made soft promises to investors that once we build this sort of generally intelligent system, basically we will ask it to figure out a way to generate an investment return for you."

As the audience laugh, Sam Altman said, “You can laugh. It's all right. But, it is what I actually believe is going to happen."

Bert's idea appears simple:

   What if your computer made a little noise each time it sends data to Google?

So this is what he did. A piece of software dubbed googerteller designed for his Linux computer that emits a scratchy beep when the computer detects information flowing out from his computer to one of Google's computers.

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After announcing the tool in a tweet the video quickly received over a million views. Spurred by this attention Bert decided to develop his tool further and include trackers not only from Google but also Facebook and dozens of other trackers.

The truth is many of the ills of today’s internet have a single thing in common: they are built on a system of corporate surveillance. Multiple companies, large and small, collect data about where we go, what we do, what we read, who we communicate with, and so on. They use this data in multiple ways and, if it suits their business model, may sell it to anyone who wants it—including law enforcement. Addressing this shared reality will better promote human rights and civil liberties, while simultaneously holding space for free expression, creativity, and innovation than many of the issue-specific bills we’ve seen over the past decade.

In other words, whatever online harms you want to alleviate, you can do it better, with a broader impact, if you do privacy first.

Yes, all of them.

Tesla is recalling all 3,878 Cybertrucks that it has shipped to date, due to a problem where the accelerator pedal can get stuck, putting drivers at risk of a crash, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The recall caps a tumultuous week for Tesla. The company laid off more than 10% of its workforce on Monday, and lost two of its highest-ranking executives. A few days later, Tesla asked shareholders to re-vote on CEO Elon Musk’s massive compensation package that was struck down by a judge earlier this year.