I’m not sure I would
turn this down.
Voting
Machine Maker Defends Refusal of White-Hat Hacker Testing at DEF-CON
Not allowing its voting system to be submitted to
independent hacking by security researchers at the “Voting Village”
at the DEF CON cybersecurity conference does not mean ES&S shows
any lack of commitment to security; on the contrary, it was actually
meant to protect their systems, the company said.
“Forums open to anonymous hackers must be viewed
with caution, as they may be a green light for foreign intelligence
operatives who attend for purposes of corporate and international
espionage,” ES&S President & CEO Tom Burt said in a
letter last week. “We believe that exposing technology in
these kinds of environment s makes hacking elections easier, not
harder, and we suspect that our adversaries are paying very close
attention.”
Burton’s letter was in response to one
he received several days before from four U.S. senators calling
out ES&S for not allowing its system to be tested by security
researchers at DEF CON, and blatantly questioning the company’s
commitment to security.
The Senators’ letter was not without merit.
ES&S previously
acknowledged that some of the voting machines it sold to local
governments from 2000-2006 included a specially-configured copy of
PCAnywhere, a remote access tool used for tech support. The news was
worrying for the security community not just for the potential for
hacking into the machines, but because it called into question the
company’s credibility, as it had previously denied the inclusion of
the tool.
How would this work?
Would the government dedicate a few hundred really good programmers
to build and continuously modify an algorithm to catch and delete all
“inappropriate” content? Probably they would create a new, very
large organization and attempt to review the billions of tweets,
photos, videos and other types of content. Neither way would work.
UK
broadcasters urge the government to create a social media watchdog
A smorgasbord of TV broadcasters, mobile network
and internet service providers has urged the UK government to
strengthen its oversight of social media companies. In a
letter to The Sunday Telegraph, executives from the BBC,
ITV and Channel 4, as well as Sky, BT and TalkTalk, called for a new,
independent regulator to help tackle fake news, child exploitation,
harassment and other growing issues online. "We
do not think it is realistic or appropriate to expect internet and
social media companies to make all the judgment calls about what
content is and is not acceptable, without any independent
oversight," the collective wrote.
(Related)
Exclusive:
U.N. Human Rights Experts Directly Engage With Facebook on “Overly
Broad” Definitions in Regulating Terrorist Content
United Nations Special Rapporteur Fionnuala Ní
Aoláin has asked Facebook
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to add precision and rigor to the
social network’s guidelines on terrorism-related content.
In a letter to Zuckerberg and a significant meeting last week with
Facebook executives, Ní Aoláin said the existing
definitions risk catching others, such as legitimate opponents of
oppressive authorities, in a dangerous net. The
rapporteur told Just Security her office will take a similar approach
to “other platforms whose practices mirror Facebook.”
… George
Washington a Terrorist?
Facebook’s broad definition of terrorism does
not comport with common or expert understanding of the term. Under
Facebook’s definition, the Continental Congress and Washington’s
Army might have been censored as terrorist organizations in the
American Revolution, just as today’s authoritarian leaders seek to
brand opponents to their regimes as “terrorists.”
(Related)
Election
Season in a Dangerous Democracy
Last Thursday’s morning papers in India settled
something that we have been debating for a while. A front-page
report about the arrests of five political activists in The Indian
Express read,
“Those held part of anti-fascist plot to overthrow govt, Pune
police tell court.” We should know by now that we are up against a
regime that its own police calls fascist. In the India of today, to
belong to a minority is a crime. To be murdered is a crime. To be
lynched is a crime. To be poor is a crime. To defend the poor is to
plot to overthrow the government.
No comments:
Post a Comment