News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

Poland Under Cyber-Attack

Poland Says it Was Target of Russian and Belarussian Cyber Attacks on Monday

Poland´s security officials said Monday they have foiled cyberattacks and online blackmail attempts by groups acting for Russian and Belarusian services.

Poland has registered up to 1,000 online attacks daily targeting government institutions and agencies, officials said, linking them to the country’s support for neighboring Ukraine in its 2 1/2-year war against Russia’s invasion.

The group that was broken up was seeking access to information in state and individual companies with the goal of blackmailing them, said Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski.

He said that in the first half of 2024, more than 400,000 attempted or successful cyberattacks were recorded, compared to 370,000 in all of last year.

The government plans new legislation to increase Poland’s cybersecurity, Gawkowski said. The government would like internet operators to store data on servers in Poland, not abroad, to ensure better internal protection and oversight by national authorities.

EU Insists on Apple & Google Paying Taxes and Not Marginalizing Their Competitors

Apple and Google Lose EU Appeals, Face Billions in Penalties

The European Union’s highest court ruled against Apple and Google on Tuesday in two landmark legal cases, delivering a major victory for the bloc’s efforts to regulate the technology industry, and leaving the tech giants facing billions in tax bills and penalties.

The New York Times reports that the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled against Apple and Google in two separate cases on Tuesday. The decisions, which have been years in the making, are seen as a crucial test of the EU’s efforts to clamp down on the world’s largest technology companies.

In the Apple case, the court upheld a 2016 European Union order for Ireland to collect €13 billion (approximately $14.4 billion) in unpaid taxes from the company. EU regulators had determined that Apple had entered into illegal deals with the Irish government, allowing the company to pay virtually no taxes on its European business in some years. Although Apple had initially won a decision to strike down the order, the European Commission appealed the ruling to the Court of Justice. The €13 billion, which had been placed in an escrow account during the appeals process, will now be released to Ireland.

Apple expressed disappointment with the decision, arguing that it effectively allows the European Union to impose a double tax on company income that has already been taxed in the United States. The company stated, “This case has never been about how much tax we pay, but which government we are required to pay it to.”

In the Google case, the court agreed with the commission’s 2017 decision to fine the company €2.4 billion ($2.6 billion) for giving preferential treatment in Google search results to its own price-comparison shopping service over rival offerings. Google had lost an appeal in 2021 and stated that it was “disappointed” by the ruling. However, the company noted that it had already adjusted its products to comply with the 2017 decision, including new designs to steer consumers to rival shopping price comparison websites.

The Apple and Google cases represented a major shift in how the tech industry was regulated when the European Union first penalized the companies. Until then, governments worldwide had largely taken a hands-off approach to tech oversight as companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook (now Meta) grew exponentially and transformed how people live, work, shop, and communicate. The cases helped establish the European Union and its antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, as the world’s most aggressive tech industry watchdog, with other countries following Europe’s lead in intensifying scrutiny of the sector’s business practices.

Google Has Not Stopped Marginalizing Rivals

Google Trial 2.0: Internet Giant Changed Ad Tools to Favor Itself Knowing Industry Was at Its Mercy

Google knew that publishers would be unhappy when it implemented measures in 2019 to prevent them from diverting ad sales to competitors, it recognized that its stranglehold over the digital ads market would prevent them from fleeing the internet giant’s ad marketplace, according to internal documents presented at the tech giant’s antitrust trial on Thursday.

Reuers reports that during the ongoing antitrust trial against Google, the U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of states are seeking to demonstrate that the company unfairly dominated markets for the technology that facilitates online advertising. A key piece of evidence in the case is Google’s removal of a feature that publishers used to reduce their dependence on the tech giant.

Internal emails and documents shown in court revealed that Google employees discussed the company losing revenue because publishers were using their ability to set a higher minimum for bids from Google’s AdX than for other exchanges. As a result, when ads were offered through multiple exchanges, publishers often sold to exchanges other than Google’s.

The documents also showed that Google knew publishers were willing to accept making less money on some ad sales in exchange for the ability to preference other ad tech companies, such as those who charged a lower fee. In a 2017 email thread, Google executives discussed how this helps publishers “keep Google at bay and put pressure on us (similar to any industry).”

As Google prepared to terminate the feature in 2019, employees discussed ways to mitigate potential blowback from publishers. Nitish Korula, then a research scientist at Google, stated in an email that rolling out the change by itself “would be viewed as pure loss of functionality that we’re doing for our own (perceived ‘nefarious/self serving’ reasons).”

Ultimately, Google introduced the change alongside other features that publishers favored, such as ending the practice whereby Google’s ad selling tools would receive a “last look” that allowed it to outbid other sellers. Former Google employee Rahul Srinivasan testified that the changes were meant to simplify the system and make it fairer, with Google estimating that its top 500 publishers saw a median increase of 2.7 percent in ad auction revenue.

Social Media & Fentanyl

‘Open Air Drug Market:’ Social Media Sites Including Instagram, Snapchat Fuel Fentanyl Deaths Among Youth

Social media platforms including Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook and Instagram, China’s TikTok, and Snapchat have become dangerous marketplaces for the sale of deadly fake pills laced with fentanyl, contributing to a growing epidemic of overdose deaths among young Americans.

AP News reports that social media has a new dark side — the ease with which drug dealers can sell their deadly wares to unsuspecting youth. In the last five years, fentanyl overdoses due to counterfeit pills have become a leading cause of death for minors, even as overall drug use has slightly declined. The DEA found in a 2022 analysis that six out of 10 fentanyl-laced fake prescription pills contained a potentially lethal dose.

Experts, law enforcement, and children’s advocates point to social media companies like Snap, TikTok, Telegram, and Meta Platforms (owner of Instagram) as enablers of this crisis. They argue these companies are not doing enough to keep children safe on their platforms. With just a few clicks, kids can find dealers promising prescription pills like Percocet or Xanax. But all too often, what arrives instead are fake pills tainted with lethal doses of fentanyl.

The stories of victims follow a tragic pattern. Teens hear pills are available on social media. They connect with a dealer, a package arrives, they take a pill in their bedroom, and within minutes they are dead, sometimes not found until the next morning. The National Crime Prevention Council estimates 80 percent of teen and young adult fentanyl poisoning deaths trace back to some social media contact.

While overall accidental overdoses have decreased slightly each year since 2021 according to the CDC, the decline is very small. In 2021 there were 1,622 overdose deaths among ages 0-19, 1,590 in 2022, and 1,511 last year. Education and awareness have helped, but much more needs to be done.

Social media companies say they are constantly working to address the issue, while law enforcement has made some high-profile busts. But the problem persists. Encrypted messaging and alleged lax moderation on some platforms make illegal activity even easier. Money is sent through legitimate payment platforms and drugs delivered by mail.

AI Bots for Kamala?

Robots for Kamala: Study Reveals Leftist Political Bias in 24 Popular AI Chatbots

A recent academic study has uncovered evidence that AI chatbots powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) have an inherent leftist political bias, potentially influencing the information and advice they provide to users.

ScienceAlert reports that in an increasingly digital world, AI chatbots are becoming a go-to source for information and guidance especially for young people. However, a new study conducted by David Rozado, a computer scientist from Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand, has revealed that these AI engines may have a political bias that could unknowingly sway society’s values and attitudes.

The study, published in academic journal PLOS ONE, involved testing 24 different LLMs, including popular chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, using 11 standard political questionnaires such as The Political Compass test. The results showed that the average political stance across all the models was not neutral but rather left-leaning.

This will not surprise those who have closely followed AI. For example, Google Gemini ran amok when it was launched, rewriting history into a woke mess of leftist fantasy.

While the average bias was not strong, it was still significant. Further experiments on custom bots, where users can fine-tune the LLMs’ training data, demonstrated that these AIs could be influenced to express political leanings using left-of-center or right-of-center texts.

Rozado also examined foundation models like GPT-3.5, which serve as the basis for conversational chatbots. Although no evidence of political bias was found in these models, the lack of a chatbot front-end made it challenging to collate the responses meaningfully.

As AI chatbots increasingly replace traditional information sources like search engines and Wikipedia, the societal implications of embedded political biases become substantial. With tech giants like Google incorporating AI answers into search results and more people turning to AI bots for information, there is a growing concern that these systems could influence users’ thinking through the responses they provide.

The exact cause of this bias remains unclear. One possible explanation is an imbalance of left-leaning material in the vast amounts of online text used to train these models. Additionally, the dominance of ChatGPT in training other models could be a contributing factor, as the bot has previously been shown to have a left-of-center political perspective.

It is important to note that bots based on LLMs rely on probabilities to determine the sequence of words in their responses, which can lead to inaccuracies even before considering various types of bias.

Australian Children & Social Media

Australia Plans Ban on Most Children Using Social Media

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday his left-wing government is preparing to impose a minimum age limit, probably between 14 and 16, for children to use social media.

“I want to see kids off their devices and onto the footy fields and the swimming pools and the tennis courts. We want them to have real experiences with real people because we know that social media is causing social harm,” Albanese said in an interview with the Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

“Parents are worried sick about this,” he said of social media. “We know they’re working without a map. No generation has faced this challenge before.”

Albanese said he personally would prefer an even higher minimum age than 16. His Labor government is planning to conduct “age verification” trials to test both its censorship technology and determine the ideal minimum age for social media access.

“What we’re looking at is how you deliver it,” Albanese said on Tuesday. “We know that it’s not simple and it’s not easy. Otherwise, governments would have responded before.”

The prime minister said the new policies had to be imposed at the national level, to avoid having “eight different states responses” with different minimum ages for social media.

Albanese added that state and territorial governments would be consulted before laws to restrict social media access are introduced next year. The state of South Australia has already proposed fining social media companies that allow children younger than 14 to use their platforms.

“This is a scourge. We know that there is mental health consequences for what many of the young people have had to deal with. The bullying that can occur online, the access to material which causes social harm, and parents are wanting a response,” Albanese said.

Although Internet rights activists and civil libertarians are generally critical of proposals to ban young people from social media, there is little serious political opposition to the idea in Australia. The opposition Liberal Party, headed by Peter Dutton, is demanding a 16-year age limit. Only the Green Party strongly opposes the idea, saying it prefers better education about the perils of social media to banning young people from using it.

Critics of the minimum age proposal noted that it would prevent children from accessing useful knowledge online and might even force them into darker corners of the Internet as they seek to evade a social media ban.

Queensland University of Technology digital media director Daniel Angus warned the “knee-jerk move” could “create serious harm by excluding young people from meaningful, healthy participation in the digital world, potentially driving them to lower quality online spaces.”

“This is a very blunt instrument that’s going to potentially exclude children from some very, very helpful supports on social media,” said IT expert Lisa Given of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

US State Dept. Sponsored Censorship

House GOP Report: State Department Office Funded Groups Engaged in Domestic Censorship

A new congressional report accuses an office within the State Department of funding groups that targeted and censored small businesses in the United States, overstepping its mandate to combat foreign disinformation.

The Washington Examiner outlines a recently released report by the Republican-led House Small Business Committee that raises serious concerns about the activities of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC). The 66-page report alleges that the GEC, which has an estimated budget of $61 million and a staff of 125, has been funding groups engaged in domestic censorship, thereby skirting its primary mandate of thwarting foreign disinformation.

The investigation, which began following a series of reports on the GEC’s involvement with the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British group pressuring advertisers to defund right-of-center media outlets in the U.S., has uncovered a pattern of questionable funding practices. The report argues that the GEC promoted “tech start-ups and other small businesses in the disinformation detection space to private sector entities with domestic censorship capabilities.”

Moreover, the National Endowment for Democracy, a State Department-funded nonprofit that awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars to GDI, is accused of violating its international restrictions by collaborating with fact-checking entities to assess the credibility of domestic press businesses.

The report also highlights the GEC’s involvement in a secret group chat targeting conservatives over alleged “fake news.” Internal documents show that the GEC was added to a private email list titled “#FakeNewsSci,” in which apparent censorship activists critiqued applicants, including domestic businesses such as the Daily Caller and its fact-checking organization.

Participants in the email list were affiliated with various entities, including the National Endowment for Democracy, Snopes, Poynter, Clemson University, and the University of Washington. In one instance, a then-National Endowment for Democracy official, Dean Jackson, slammed the Daily Caller, citing links to articles critical of the outlet’s content and writers.

The House Small Business Committee report emphasizes that it is not appropriate for the GEC or the NED to “belong to a cohort that gatekeeps domestic press companies from belonging to a private credibility organization.” The report also notes issues in the GEC’s recordkeeping and insufficient audit procedures to efficiently track its use of taxpayer dollars.

MS Censors Turned AI Deepfake Authorities

Microsoft-Backed 2020 Election Censors Reposition Themselves as ‘AI Deepfake’ Authorities

2020 Election censors True Media are repositioning themselves as “AI Deepfake” authorities heading into the 2024 election thanks to backing from tech giant Microsoft.

Microsoft is positioning itself as an authority on fighting election-related “disinformation” caused by AI deepfakes, and is lobbying for new regulations in this area. Yet a closer look at its anti-disinformation projects reveal the involvement of extreme Democrat partisans with a track record of pushing political censorship.

LinkedIn founder and Microsoft board member Reid Hoffman and “Chief Question Officer,” Trevor Noah are promoting the Microsoft-partnered project True Media — an organization ostensibly focused on curtailing deepfakes but advised by the same far-left, pro-censorship activists behind the now discredited Election Integrity Project, the DHS-linked consortium that played a leading role in censoring Republican speech during the 2020 presidential election.

Russell Dye, Spokesperson for the House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), commented:

The House Judiciary Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government continue to conduct oversight of how and the extent to which the executive branch has coerced or colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor lawful speech. As part of this oversight, the Committee and Select Subcommittee have examined the risk artificial intelligence (AI) poses to free speech, and have uncovered how the Biden-Harris Administration is already seeking to influence the development of private AI models and is funding the development of AI-powered speech-monitoring tools that could enable the mass censorship of American speech. Reports that the censorship-industrial complex is seeking to pressure AI companies like they did social media companies is deeply troubling and represents a serious risk to free speech in our country.

In an interview  with True Media CEO Oren Etzioni for Microsoft’s podcast The Prompt, former Daily Show Host Trevor Noah (who was previously exposed for failing to disclose his affiliation with Microsoft when giving softball interviews to the company’s execs) Noah calls the 2024 election “one of the most consequential elections of all time.” Reinforcing the argument for third-party authorities to moderate and regulate the AI space, Etzioni said Americans “cannot figure this stuff out on their own.”

Hoffman linked to the video on X and added that he was “excited to see new technologies being created to help detect political deepfakes and ensure that our elections are free and fair.”

The threat of “deepfakes” has emerged as a favorite narrative among those pushing for tighter top-down control of online content, with familiar rhetoric. According to True Media, “Disinformation, transmitted virally over social networks, has emerged as the Achilles heel of democracy in the 21st Century.”

More Layoffs

Game Over: Woke Microsoft Lays Off 650 Employees from Xbox Division

Woke tech giant Microsoft has announced a round of layoffs affecting 650 employees within its Xbox gaming unit, marking the third gaming-related layoff since the company’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.

CNBC reports that in a memo sent to employees on Thursday, Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, revealed that the company had made the “difficult” decision to cut 650 roles at its Xbox division. The layoffs primarily affect corporate and supporting functions, as Microsoft aims to align its post-acquisition team structure and position the business for long-term success.

Spencer expressed the company’s gratitude for the contributions of the affected employees, stating, “We are deeply grateful for the contributions of our colleagues who are learning they are impacted.” He assured that those affected in the US would receive support through exit packages, including severance, extended healthcare, and outplacement services to aid in their transition. Packages for employees outside the US will vary according to location.

The memo also indicated that there would be some impact on other teams as they adapt to shifting priorities and manage the lifecycle and performance of games. However, Spencer emphasized that no games, devices, or gaming experiences are being canceled, and no studios would be closed as a result of the redundancies.

Microsoft’s gaming division has undergone significant changes in recent years, with the company acquiring ZeniMax Media, the owner of Bethesda Softworks, for $7.5 billion in 2021. The acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the publisher behind the popular Call of Duty franchise, for $69 billion in cash, has further reshaped the company’s gaming landscape.

The layoffs at Xbox are part of a broader trend in the video game industry, with several major gaming studios cutting thousands of jobs worldwide since the beginning of 2023. Sony, Unity, Twitch, Playtika, and Discord have all announced substantial rounds of layoffs in recent months.

Amazon to Close West Sacramento Warehouse, Lay Off 160 Employees

Amazon will be shuttering one of its grocery fulfillment centers in West Sacramento, California, resulting in layoffs impacting nearly 160 employees.

The facility will close on October 30, according to a notice filed with the state Employment Development Department, obtained by the Sacramento Bee.

Five Amazon managers and 154 associates will reportedly be impacted by the closure at its warehouse facility at 3640 Ramos Drive.

Amazon spokesperson, Sam Stephenson, told the newspaper that the laid off workers will have the opportunity to find employment at other job sites in the area.

Stephenson added that the facility is closing because Amazon decided not to renew its lease at that particular facility location.

The retail giant also told KCRA 3 that the closed warehouse in West Sacramento will not affect the company’s customers.

China The Current World Leader in Technology!?

Report: China Now World Leader in Almost 90% of Critical Technologies

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) revealed in a recent report that China has become the world leader in roughly 90 percent of critical technologies and is on track to take the lead in defense technologies as well, including drones and satellites.

ASPI’s latest update to its Critical Technology Tracker reporting project found China “effectively switched places” with the United States as world technology leader in less than twenty years.

“The U.S. led in 60 of 64 technologies in the five years from 2003 to 2007, but in the most recent five years (2019–2023) is leading in seven. China led in just three of 64 technologies in 2003–20074 but is now the lead country in 57 of 64 technologies in 2019–2023, increasing its lead from our rankings last year (2018–2022), where it was leading in 52 technologies,” ASPI found.

“Critical technologies” are a basket of 64 fields covering “defense, space, energy, the environment, artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, robotics, cyber, computing, advanced materials and key quantum technology areas.”

ASPI launched the Critical Technology Tracker in March 2023, and recently expanded it to include data stretching all the way back to the turn of the century.

By analyzing data on research papers and technological developments, the tracker determined that China is now leading in quantum sensors, high-performance computing, gravitational sensors, space launch, and advanced integrated circuit design and fabrication. The United States retains a lead in quantum computing, vaccines, nuclear medicine, small satellites, atomic clocks, genetic engineering, and natural language processing.

Most disturbingly, ASPI said China took the lead in every one of the advanced technologies its researchers have classified as “high risk,” meaning a single nation could develop an effective worldwide monopoly on the tech.

“The technologies newly classified as high risk include many with defense applications, such as radar, advanced aircraft engines, drones, swarming and collaborative robots and satellite positioning and navigation,” ASPI added.

The new critical tracker update found that India is also making big strides in critical technology fields. In fact, India has pushed the U.S. out of second place in several fields that are now dominated by China.

On the other hand, the United Kingdom is in straight decline, falling out of the top five nations in eight critical technology fields. Some other tech and industrial powerhouses, including Germany, South Korea, and Japan, have held relatively stable since 2023.

ASPI researchers attributed much of China’s remarkable progress in critical technologies to heavy government financial support and high-performance academic institutions, such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).