A high-ranking CIA officer found with $40m of gold bars in his home set up a fake intelligence program in what could have been a movie plot. CC-licensed photo by BullionVault on Flickr.
A selection of 9 links for you. Bourne free. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
Apple and Google given three months to ban nude images on children’s devices • BBC News
Zoe Kleinman:
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Tech companies such as Apple and Google have been asked by the UK government to block access to naked images on smartphones and other devices for under-18s.
Sir Keir Starmer has told firms to either activate built-in features or update software to prevent children from taking, sending or viewing sexually explicit images on their phones and other devices. Speaking at London Tech Week, the prime minister said: “This is not an impossible challenge. These are some of the most innovative companies in the world and I believe they can solve it.”
The government said it will bring forward legislation to force firms to activate the features if they do not comply voluntarily within three months. This could include fines or, as a last resort, criminal liability for companies which do not comply.
The prime minister said the changes would apply to both existing and newly-sold smartphones and tablets in the UK. “Legislation could cover operating system providers and others in the supply chain, such as retailers, and will not affect the use of devices owned and used by adults who verify their age,” he said.
In response, a Google spokesperson said it was “deeply committed to protecting children online.”
“We are working constructively with UK partners to find effective, privacy-preserving solutions that deter the spread of harmful content while ensuring a safe digital environment for young people.”
Apple has not responded to the BBC’s request for comment.
It is unclear what action firms will take in response to Monday’s announcement. But a number of tech companies already have methods in place to try and prevent children from seeing or sharing nude imagery.
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The government will bring forward legislation, will it? Given how incredibly slow it has been to introduce legislation about absolutely anything (for example: its failure to outlaw SLAPPs, lawsuits by the powerful against those who expose them), the smart move by the tech companies would be to make encouraging noises and sit on their hands in the expectation that it will all be forgotten if Andy Burnham wins his by-election.
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Apple drops support for a long list of Apple Watches with latest OS updates • The Verge
Tom Warren:
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Apple is dropping support for at least three generations of Apple Watch models in watchOS 27. Apple’s website initially stated that the latest watchOS update would only be available on Apple Watch Series 10 devices and above, Apple Watch Ultra 2 and above, and Apple Watch SE 3. Apple later updated the listing to include the Series 9. We’ve also seen reports of people successfully installing the watchOS 27 developer beta on the first-generation Watch Ultra, though it doesn’t appear on the list. We’ve asked Apple for confirmation on which models are supported.
It’s a surprise support cull for Apple Watch models, which consumers certainly don’t refresh as much as an iPhone. WatchOS 26, released a year ago, supported Apple Watch Series 6 and later, as well as Apple Watch SE (2nd generation) and later, and all Apple Watch Ultra models. This was the same list of devices as watchOS 11. Even if the first-gen Watch Ultra is still supported in watchOS 27, that still means owners of the Series 6, 7, and 8, as well as the Watch SE (2nd gen), are out of luck.
…Surprisingly, Apple is maintaining support for its iPhone 11 models with iOS 27 later this year. This means an iPhone from 2019 is supported by its latest OS updates, but an Apple Watch from 2022 isn’t. Make it make sense.
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It will be something to do with RAM and CPU capacity. This all assumes, of course, that what iOS 27 brings – surely a chunk of on-device LLMs – is worth having. If it really is then Apple is going to reap a windfall of upgraders brought forward by this.
If you want all the ins and outs of Apple’s WWDC announcements, MacRumors is the place to find it.
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Smartphones broke dating. ChatGPT might finish the job • Vox
Eric Levitz:
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In the 20th century, fertility fell primarily because couples started having fewer children. Now, it is falling mostly because fewer people are forming couples — or having sex at all.
If these trends continue, the consequences will be transformative — and possibly, catastrophic, as graying populations place unprecedented burdens on the remaining young. Vast countries will swiftly shrivel into city states. Today, Thailand is home to 63 million people. In two centuries, that will fall to 2 million, if the country’s current fertility rate persists.
These are just 23rd-century problems. If sustained indefinitely, today’s global fertility rate would ensure humanity’s extinction.
And it’s partly your phone’s fault.
Or so one leading theory goes. To make sense of recent fertility trends, some analysts have turned to the devices in their pockets. In the view of the journalist John Burn-Murdoch and social scientist Alice Evans, the smartphone helped birth the global spike in singledom. [Insert “was midwife to” for “helped birth” if your teeth are grinding – Overspill Ed.]
Their argument goes (partly) like this: As smartphone ownership skyrocketed globally during the 2010s, more and more young people tapped into a vast, omnipresent trove of personalized entertainment, which reduced their incentives to socialize in person. When you have virtually every movie, TV show, and pornography ever made at your fingertips, you no longer need parties for stimulation or diversion. And when you have an X or Facebook account, you can participate in a public conversation — and experience communal recognition — without ever leaving the comfort of your goon cave.
Yet this withdrawal from in-person socializing reduces young people’s opportunities to meet romantic partners or develop social skills. Relationship formation falls as a result.
“The digital revolution has played a signal role in both degrading socialization for young adults and dividing young adults from one another,” Brad Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, told me.
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Sharp Eyes: how China’s police carry out mass surveillance of foreigners in China – Part 1 • Netaskari
Marc Hofer is a German cybersecurity journalist:
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In a previous post we explained how unsecured and forgotten dashboard and web pages can reveal a lot about China’s security and surveillance system. Now, we can reveal a much more detailed insight into how such a system could look like in real life.
NetAskari got exclusive access to a web front-end demonstrating a remote tracking system especially for foreigners. It is developed for the Public Security Bureau in the region of Zhangjiakou (a prefecture of Hebei province about 60 km west of Beijing).
It is still a test-system and not connected to a real time data environment. But it is filled partially with real data from many real people of foreign nationality who have resided ( or still reside ) in China. It outlines very clearly where the journey in mass surveillance has been going in China over the past years and how foreigners are definitely at the center of the states’ attention again.
The system is clearly meant as a demo, with many functionalities just hinted at or simulated with place holder information. Originally considered abandoned, some minor changes to the UI could be discovered during the observation time of 3 months though. Since the last changes, the system has grown increasingly unstable as the underlying REDIS service seems to struggle to run reliably. A sign that nobody seems to actively maintain the platform anymore at this stage.
After passing the login screen the user is greeted with a traditional ‘data dashboard’ in the blue style, that is so often used by Chinese cyber security dashboards. The designs always seem to take a lot of inspiration from video games or popular sci-fi movies, coming across as too flashy for what the products contains.
Focusing on the region of Zhangjiakou, a mountainous area that is often used for winter sports and thus was the location of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, the dashboard gives us a quick run down of all foreigners registered or currently living in the area. The user can choose to track changes from year to year from 2023 until 2026.
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Hofer unravels a huge system capable of tracking all foreign nationals around China. Which is an incredible undertaking, apart from anything else.
Satya Nadella ‘not sure’ who said Microsoft wanted to make addictive AI, is looking for guy who did this • 404 Media
Jason Koebler:
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On Tuesday, we published an article about an internal Microsoft strategy document that explained the company wanted to “make people addicted” to its new AI assistant, Scout. On Thursday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told staff that he was “not sure what this document is or who is writing and leaking this nonsense,” according to a message obtained by The Information.
The document we reported on was not some random document. As we wrote at the time, the strategy document was written by Microsoft executives Omar Shahine, Jakob Werner, and some sort of AI writing tool. This information is in our original article and is readily available to Nadella. We wrote: “The document seen by 404 Media lists Shahine and another executive, Jakob Werner, as its authors. The document itself, however, notes that it was ‘co-created turn-by-turn with AI. Human verified every sentence.’”
Shahine is the leader of Microsoft’s Scout project, as he has written numerous times on his own blog, on his LinkedIn, and on Microsoft’s own announcement of the software. In attempting to distance himself from his own company’s executives and strategy documents, Nadella has revealed that he either does not know how to read or does not know what is happening with some of the company’s highest-profile products.
Phase one of the company’s launch plan for Scout, which was previously called ClawPilot internally, was to “make people addicted. Continue shipping the standalone ClawPilot experience. Pilot the UX, grow the user base, and build the skill and tool ecosystem that makes people depend on it daily. This is already happening organically.”
In Nadella’s message to staff reported by The Information Thursday, he wrote “this is absolutely a non goal! If anything we are doing the exact opposite. We want to make sure AI empowers and adds real value to human endeavor and broad economic growth! We should make sure that our teams are clear about this. Not sure what this document is or who is writing and leaking this nonsense! They may want to go work elsewhere…..”
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The headline is a neat reference.
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‘A driver of political violence’: how the breakneck AI boom is fueling anti-tech extremism • The Guardian
Nick Robins-Early:
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When a 20-year-old man from Texas was arrested earlier this year for allegedly trying to burn down OpenAI’s headquarters and Sam Altman’s house, authorities found an anti-AI manifesto alongside his lighter and a jug of kerosene. It was one of a spate of attacks that has caused alarm among researchers, the tech industry and law enforcement about the rise of anti-tech extremism.
In April, an Italian “nature pilled” Instagram influencer was arrested in Rome and charged with plotting a series of anti-tech attacks that took inspiration from Ted “The Unabomber” Kaczynski. Two self-described “ecofascists” that carried out a deadly anti-Muslim attack on a mosque in San Diego last month also cited “AI slop” and JD Vance’s ties to Palantir as motivations for their violence in their manifesto. An Indianapolis city councilor woke up earlier this year to gunshots being fired into his home before finding a note that read “NO DATA CENTERS”.
The growing public backlash to the tech industry’s rapid rollout of artificial intelligence has taken many, mostly-non violent forms such as local communities organizing against datacenters and political candidates promising increased oversight. Yet at the fringes, researchers say grievances against the AI industry and its leaders are animating old violent extremist movements and fomenting new ones.
“AI is becoming this driver of political violence, and that’s a very new phenomenon,” said Jordyn Abrams, a researcher at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.
While much of the early public discussion around generative AI and extremism focused on how malign actors like terrorist groups could misuse products such as ChatGPT for propaganda purposes or plotting attacks, there is more recent attention given to how the AI industry as a whole can radicalize people. What motivates someone to extremist violence might not be a conversation with a chatbot, researchers say, but the society-wide disruption, narrative of existential threat and lack of accountability that has come with the AI boom.
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Are we going to get a sort of anti-AI version of the Baader-Meinhof gang or Charles Manson’s lunatic fringe? It doesn’t seem beyond possibility. Everything that goes around comes around, as the Americans say.
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CIA officer who had gold bars is accused of creating fake spy program • The Washington Post
Warren Strobel, Ellen Nakashima and Katie Mettler:
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The former senior CIA official found with more than $40m worth of gold bars in his house allegedly created a fake, highly classified intelligence program that he used as a conduit to funnel millions of dollars for his personal use, according to people familiar with the criminal investigation.
David J. Rush, who was arrested last month and charged with one count of theft of public money, constructed what is known as a “special access program,” a sort of black box for the most secret intelligence operations, the people familiar with the investigation said. Even intelligence personnel with the highest security clearance cannot access an individual SAP, as they are known, without specific authorization.
The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation, said the criminal probe found that Rush “read in,” or initiated, two colleagues into the highly secretive sham program, effectively cultivating them as perhaps unwitting accomplices and preventing them from talking to others about it. He persuaded one of them to transfer millions of dollars to the program via a government contract that was also fraudulent, they said.
“He made up a contract,” one of the people said.
Rush, who worked in the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, has not pleaded to the charges against him. At a detention hearing in federal court in Alexandria on Friday, a judge ruled that Rush posed a significant flight risk and ordered him to remain detained at the local jail pending trial.
The CIA, meanwhile, has put several agency officials on leave as FBI and spy agency investigations continue, two people familiar with the matter said. NBC News first reported that development. The people familiar did not disclose those officials’ names or positions. The science and technology directorate is the arm of the agency that creates technical espionage tools to aid US spies and their agents abroad.
The account of those familiar with the criminal probe appears to raise serious questions about secrecy guardrails and vetting at the CIA.
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Ya think?? This is like something out of all those conspiracy films – the Bourne series and so on, with their hidden projects. Except it’s real. More like Burn After Reading, perhaps.
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The architecture of the internet creates risks for democracy • Science
Stephan Lewandowsky:
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Will democracy survive the internet? Do we need to choose between Facebook’s surveillance capitalism or democracy? Layered lines of evidence can inform questions like these. When considered together, the evidence gives rise to a concerning picture, as summarized in a recent report for the European Commission that I co-led.
The first line of evidence comes from naturalistic quasi-experiments from which we can infer the causal impact of the rollout of internet hardware on relevant outcome measures. For example, the rollout of broadband in the US 20 years ago was affected by state “right-of-way” laws, which govern how easy it is for telecommunications companies to lay cables along public roads and land corridors. Some states imposed far more onerous conditions than others before digging could commence. Using this variation in regulation as an independent variable, one study showed that broadband availability increased affective political polarization.
Similar studies in the UK and Europe used physical variables such as distance from telephone exchange nodes (which determines internet speed for users) as independent variables. Their findings are consistent: broadband reduced civic participation, eroded social trust, and boosted voting for extreme-right and populist parties in Italy and Germany.
There is now a solid body of evidence showing that internet availability is causing a variety of outcomes that adversely affect democracy. However, these studies leave unanswered the question of why and how these effects occur. Why would access to fast broadband make people more polarized and more extreme?
…Remarkably, many platforms are demonstrably aware of the risks they pose to democracy. Under EU legislation (the Digital Services Act; DSA), platforms must file annual systemic risk assessments of their operations and how they might affect democracy, and Bing, X, Snapchat, and TikTok all highlight the risks of echo chambers in their reports.
Fortunately, the problems emerging from algorithmic curation are, in principle, solvable. The experiment that identified the problematic role played by the X algorithm in prioritizing anti-democratic content also identified a potential solution: the experiment was possible only because the researchers developed an algorithm that could downrank anti-democratic content—suggesting that the same technology could be deployed by platforms at scale in the interest of democracy.
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The wearable showdown: Oura Ring 5 v Fitbit Air v Whoop MG v Apple Watch • WSJ
Nicole Nguyen:
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What’s the best tracker? A fitness band? Smart ring? Smartwatch? Smart…shorts?
There was only one way to find out: I wore them all at the same time.
Trackers have really evolved, and beefed up on artificial intelligence. They can flag sleep apnea, predict illnesses—even act as contraception. Studies show that tracking activity does spur people to move more. But the data influx can create excessive worry or an unhealthy obsession with achieving perfect scores.
I loaded up my limbs with a $399-and-up Oura Ring 5, a $100 Google Fitbit Air and a Whoop MG embedded in various clothing. (The Whoop tracker itself is included in the $199-and-up annual membership.) There are many benefits to going with one of these screenless options, namely better battery life and fewer distractions, though they lack the GPS tracking and access to emergency services available in smartwatches.
I did also wear an Apple Watch Series 11 ($399 and up). Fun fact: About 90% of smart-ring owners also own a smartwatch, according to research firm Circana.
…The Apple Watch excelled across every activity. The Whoop could match it, provided I wore the sensor on my bicep. During periods of high activity, the Fitbit Air and Oura faltered.
Whoop’s Capodilupo says the company is currently updating the heart-rate algorithm. A Google spokeswoman said the lightweight Fitbit Air is easier to move during more aggressive exercises, especially if the band isn’t snug.
…Oura requires a $6-a-month subscription. Stop paying and it locks up your biometrics, leaving you with basic three-score feedback (sleep, readiness and activity). Whoop doesn’t charge an upfront hardware cost but there’s a mandatory membership starting at $199 a year. And the accessories—bra, shorts, etc.—aren’t cheap.
That still isn’t a lot to pay if you can get off the couch and build lasting change. But if you want data without a monthly fee, the pricier Apple Watch will provide it. And you can skip the Google Health $10-a-month premium plan and still use the Fitbit.
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Seems like the Apple Watch remains the best at this, though Nguyen observes that the fitness analysis app is pretty basic. However, there are third-party apps which will analyse that data for you.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
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