• Hong Kong officials have singled out at least two schools for singing the Chinese national anthem "too softly". Teachers at a third school have been asked to help students "cultivate habit and confidence" in singing it.
• Hong Kong has redoubled the emphasis on "patriotic" education since 2020 when China cracked down on the city's pro-democracy movement. Many former opposition lawmakers and democracy campaigners have been jailed since 2020 under a controversial national security law that criminalised all forms of dissent.
• In January, China implemented a law which requires schools, including those in Hong Kong, to include "patriotic education" in their curriculum and companies to do the same in their operations. The definition is vague but the curriculum is meant to promote the leadership and ideology of the Chinese Communist Party.
• The city has also set up a government committee to help "the new generation to really appreciate our Chinese culture, our Chinese history," Hong Kong's chief executive John Lee said.
• In November last year, the 'education bureau' introduced a new subject which would require students as young as eight to start learning about the Beijing-enacted security law. It also covers "Chinese culture" and history that aligns with the Chinese Communist Party's vision.
• Last month, the bureau also called on parents to work with schools to "help [their children] learn the importance of safeguarding national security and enhance their national identity and national pride".

• Threat actors in the cyberespionage ecosystem are engaging in an increasingly disturbing trend of using ransomware as a final stage in their operations for the purposes of financial gain, disruption, distraction, misattribution, or removal of evidence.
• This report introduces new findings about notable intrusions in the past three years, some of which were carried out by a Chinese cyberespionage actor but remain publicly unattributed.
• Our findings indicate that ChamelGang, a suspected Chinese APT group, targeted the major Indian healthcare institution AIIMS and the Presidency of Brazil in 2022 using the CatB ransomware. Attribution information on these attacks has not been publicly released to date.
• ChamelGang also targeted a government organization in East Asia and critical infrastructure sectors, including an aviation organization in the Indian subcontinent.
• In addition, a separate cluster of intrusions involving off-the-shelf tools BestCrypt and BitLocker have affected a variety of industries in North America, South America, and Europe, primarily the US manufacturing sector.
• While attribution for this secondary cluster remains unclear, overlaps exist with past intrusions that involve artifacts associated with suspected Chinese and North Korean APT clusters.

Archived link

"The Stanford Internet Observatory continues its important work following the departure of founding director Alex Stamos under the leadership of faculty director Jeff Hancock, whose research program focuses on areas of trust, deception and online harms; social media and well-being; and, AI in human communication," theorganization says on its website.

"Stanford has not shut down or dismantled SIO as a result of outside pressure. SIO does, however, face funding challenges as its founding grants will soon be exhausted."

As a result, SIO continues to actively seek support for its research and teaching programs under new leadership.

Facial recognition startup Clearview AI reached a settlement Friday in an Illinois lawsuit alleging its massive photographic collection of faces violated the subjects’ privacy rights, a deal that attorneys estimate could be worth more than $50 million.

But the unique agreement gives plaintiffs in the federal suit a share of the company’s potential value, rather than a traditional payout. Attorneys’ fees estimated at $20 million also would come out of the settlement amount.

It’s unclear how many people would be eligible to join the settlement. The agreement language is sweeping, including anyone whose images or data are in the company’s database and who lived in the U.S. starting in July 1, 2017. A national campaign to notify potential plaintiffs is part of the agreement.

A national campaign to notify potential plaintiffs is part of the agreement.

Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, of the Northern District of Illinois, gave preliminary approval to the agreement Friday.

The case consolidated lawsuits from around the U.S. filed against Clearview, which pulled photos from social media and elsewhere on the internet to create a database it sold to businesses, individuals and government entities.

The company settled a separate case alleging violation of privacy rights in Illinois in 2022, agreeing to stop selling access to its database to private businesses or individuals. That agreement still allowed Clearview to work with federal agencies and local law enforcement outside Illinois, which has a strict digital privacy law.

Clearview does not admit any liability as part of the latest settlement agreement.

"Clearview AI is pleased to have reached an agreement in this class action settlement,” James Thompson, an attorney representing the company in the suit, said in a written statement Friday.

The lead plaintiffs’ attorney Jon Loevy said the agreement was a “creative solution” necessitated by Clearview’s financial status.

“Clearview did not have anywhere near the cash to pay fair compensation to the class, so we needed to find a creative solution,” Loevy said in a statement. “Under the settlement, the victims whose privacy was breached now get to participate in any upside that is ultimately generated, thereby recapturing to the class to some extent the ownership of their biometrics.”

It’s not clear how many people would be eligible to join the settlement. The agreement language is sweeping, including anyone whose images or data are in the company’s database and who lived in the U.S. starting in July 1, 2017.

A national campaign to notify potential plaintiffs is part of the agreement.

The attorneys for Clearview and the plaintiffs worked with Wayne Andersen, a retired federal judge who now mediates legal cases, to develop the settlement. In court filings presenting the agreement, Andersen bluntly writes that the startup could not have paid any legal judgment if the suit went forward.

“Clearview did not have the funds to pay a multi-million-dollar judgment,” he is quoted in the filing. “Indeed, there was great uncertainty as to whether Clearview would even have enough money to make it through to the end of trial, much less fund a judgment.”

But some privacy advocates and people pursuing other legal action called the agreement a disappointment that won’t change the company’s operations.

Sejal Zota is an attorney and legal director for Just Futures Law, an organization representing plaintiffs in a California suit against the company. Zota said the agreement “legitimizes” Clearview.

“It does not address the root of the problem,” Zota said. “Clearview gets to continue its practice of harvesting and selling people’s faces without their consent, and using them to train its AI tech.”

TikTok says it offered the US government the power to shut the platform down in an attempt to address lawmakers' data protection and national security concerns.

It disclosed the "kill switch" offer, which it made in 2022, as it began its legal fight against legislation that will ban the app in America unless Chinese parent company ByteDance sells it.

The law has been introduced because of concerns TikTok might share US user data with the Chinese government - claims it and ByteDance have always denied.

TikTok and ByteDance are urging the courts to strike the legislation down.

"This law is a radical departure from this country’s tradition of championing an open Internet, and sets a dangerous precedent allowing the political branches to target a disfavored speech platform and force it to sell or be shut down," they argued in their legal submission.

They also claimed the US government refused to engage in any serious settlement talks after 2022, and pointed to the "kill switch" offer as evidence of the lengths they had been prepared to go.

TikTok says the mechanism would have allowed the government the "explicit authority to suspend the platform in the United States at the US government's sole discretion" if it did not follow certain rules.

A draft "National Security Agreement", proposed by TikTok in August 2022, would have seen the company having to follow rules such as properly funding its data protection units and making sure that ByteDance did not have access to US users' data.

The "kill switch" could have been triggered by the government if it broke this agreement, it claimed.

In a letter - first reported by the Washington Post - addressed to the US Department of Justice, TikTok's lawyer alleges that the government "ceased any substantive negotiations" after the proposal of the new rules.

The letter, dated 1 April 2024, says the US government ignored requests to meet for further negotiations.

It also alleges the government did not respond to TikTok's invitation to "visit and inspect its Dedicated Transparency Center in Maryland".

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hold oral arguments on lawsuits filed by TikTok and ByteDance, along with TikTok users, in September.

Legislation signed in April by President Joe Biden gives ByteDance until January next year to divest TikTok's US assets or face a ban.

It was born of concerns that data belonging to the platform's 170 million US users could be passed on to the Chinese government.

TikTok denies that it shares foreign users' data with China and called the legislation an "unconstitutional ban" and affront to the US right to free speech.

It insists that US data does not leave the country, and is overseen by American company Oracle, in a deal which is called Project Texas.

However, a Wall Street Journal investigation in January 2024 found that some data was still being shared between TikTok in the US and ByteDance in China.

In May, a US government official told the Washington Post that "the solution proposed by the parties at the time would be insufficient to address the serious national security risks presented."

They added: "While we have consistently engaged with the company about our concerns and potential solutions, it became clear that divestment from its foreign ownership was and remains necessary."

Archived version

Apple has a long-running history of guarding their walled garden by not allowing much interoperability with other standards that are the current norm in the industry, while also going on to reinvent, giving features a novel-sounding name.

Of course, the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) has been successful in making Apple do things that they wouldn't ever do, if it weren't the law to do so.

However, Apple still does its best to gate keep developers who aren't their own, and one such recent incident caught my attention that involves their typical “my way or the highway” approach to things.

Apple Loves to Gatekeep: When Will They Stop?

Posted on X by the UTM project, they revealed that Apple rejected their application for publishing the UTM SE app after a two-month-long review process, citing that “Rule 4.7” of their App Review Guidelines didn't apply to it.

That rule is meant to allow game emulators, mini apps, chatbots, plugins, etc. to be published on the App Store.

The developers of UTM mention that Apple even went the extra step, and disallowed the publishing of UTM SE on third-party marketplaces. They added that:

The App Store Review Board determined that “PC is not a console” regardless of the fact that there are retro Windows/DOS games for the PC that UTM SE can be useful in running.

If you are not familiar, UTM is a QEMU-powered open-source emulator/virtual machine host for iOS and macOS, a popular tool to run alternative operating systems (such as ones based on Linux, or even Windows) on Apple devices.

There's more information in the linked article.

On March 7, 2024, Google inexplicably downranked the website of Tuta Mail in its search results. While Tuta Mail is a prominent provider of encrypted email services, focusing on security and privacy, our website was deranked for terms like “secure email” and “encrypted email” completely. The search results for our website was limited exclusively to so called “branded” search terms, e.g. search terms that included our brand name like Tuta, Tutanota, or Tutamail. In consequence, only people who already knew that Tuta existed were able to find our website via Google Search – any new potential customers were not able to find our encrypted email solution.

Faced with this immense problem with Google Search and a drop in visibility of the Tuta website by ~90% in Google's search results, we tried to get in touch with Google, both through official channels and on social media, but in vain. So on April 24, we submitted a formal complaint to the EU so that the EU could investigate whether Google’s actions in downranking a direct competitor violates the newly issued Digital Markets Act (DMA). We welcome the fact that the EU has already started an investigation against Google, Apple, and Meta in regards to whether these big tech companies are sufficiently complying with the DMA regulation. Not being legal experts here, but what Google has been doing to our website and what Apple is doing with their new App store policy for app developers, seem like obvious examples of malicious compliance.

NewsGuard audit finds that 32% of the time, leading AI chatbots spread Russian disinformation narratives created by John Mark Dougan, an American fugitive now operating from Moscow, citing his fake local news sites and fabricated claims on YouTube as reliable sources.

The audit tested 10 of the leading AI chatbots — OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4, You.com’s Smart Assistant, xAI’s Grok, Inflection’s Pi, Mistral’s le Chat, Microsoft’s Copilot, Meta AI, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity’s answer engine. The prompts were based on 19 significant false narratives that NewsGuard linked to the Russian disinformation network: 152 of the 570 responses contained explicit disinformation, 29 responses repeated the false claim with a disclaimer, and 389 responses contained no misinformation — either because the chatbot refused to respond (144) or it provided a debunk (245).

The findings come amid the first election year featuring widespread use of artificial intelligence, as bad actors are weaponizing new publicly available technology to generate deepfakes, AI-generated news sites, and fake robocalls. The results demonstrate how, despite efforts by AI companies to prevent the misuse of their chatbots ahead of worldwide elections, AI remains a potent tool for propagating disinformation.

Chinese officials appear to have blocked a formerly imprisoned journalist from the view of cameras at an event between Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Canberra.

Cheng Lei, who was imprisoned by Beijing for three years, later said she believed two embassy officials had stood in front of her to prevent her from "saying” or “doing something” that they thought “would be a bad look”.

Mr Li's visit - the first by a Chinese premier since 2017 - has been seen as another step in the thawing of tensions between the two nations after a string of disputes.

Both he and Mr Albanese said bilateral discussions so far had been constructive.

When asked about whether he saw Ms Cheng being blocked on Monday, Mr Albanese said he “wasn’t aware” there had been an issue, but that “it’s important people be allowed to participate fully”.

“That’s what should happen in this building and anywhere else in Australia,” he added.

Ms Cheng, who is now working as a journalist for Sky News Australia, said she had been sitting in an area assigned for media representatives when the two officials “went to great lengths to block me from the cameras and to flank me”.

Footage showed Australian officials then trying to intervene while Ms Cheng took photographs of the incident on her phone.

The 49-year-old was working as a business reporter for China's state-run English language TV station CGTN when she was arrested in August 2020 and accused of "illegally supplying state secrets overseas".

She was tried in secret and her charges were never made public, before her surprise release in October last year.

Her detention and that of a fellow Australian who remains imprisoned, democracy blogger Yang Hengjun, strained ties between Beijing and Canberra.

When Mr Albanese took office in 2022, he vowed to improve relations and end a diplomatic hiatus that had been triggered by several prickly incidents during the pandemic. These included back-and-forth accusations of foreign interference and Chinese sanctions on a range of Australian goods.

On Monday, Mr Li said he hoped to help build a "more mature, stable, and fruitful comprehensive strategic partnership".

Mr Albanese said the two had made progress on key issues such as “improving military to military communication so as to avoid incidents”.

Several other co-operation documents related to business, education and climate change were also signed.

China will now add Australia to its visa waiver programme to increase trade and tourism between the two nations.

Last year, Mr Albanese became the first Australian leader to visit China since 2016, hailing "significant progress" in relations after talks with President Xi Jinping.

Archived link

Nearly 20 years after the Second Intifada, the Israeli military has resumed airstrikes in the West Bank — and killed 24 children.

• The world’s attention has been on the Israeli campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 36,000 people — including more than 15,000 children — and prompted accusations of genocide from U.N. officials and at the International Court of Justice. In the name of eliminating Hamas in retaliation for the attacks in October last year.

• But Israel has also transformed its tactics in the West Bank. Since June of last year, and with increasing regularity during the Gaza offensive, the Israel Defense Forces have shown a new willingness to use air power in the West Bank, regardless of the collateral damage to children and other civilians caught in the blasts.

• An open-source Intercept investigation documented at least 37 Israeli airstrikes, drone strikes, and attacks by helicopter gunships in the West Bank since June 2023, which have killed 55 Palestinians. 24 of the were children.

• Many experts inside and outside of Israel criticize the Israeli forces. "It is thus extremely unlikely that the air and drone strikes targeting individuals are in compliance with Israel’s obligations under international law,” one expert commented.

"In what kind of society can one openly advocate policies modeled on Hitler's conduct? In a society that feels complete impunity due to America's protection," one foreign policy expert said.

Former Israeli Knesset member Moshe Feiglin quoted Adolf Hitler as he called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip and create a "Hebrew Gaza."

Feiglin, who quit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party to found the right-wing Zehut Party and plans to challenge Likud in Israel's next elections, made the comments during a panel discussion on Israel's Channel 12 that was shared on social media on Sunday, as Middle East Eye reported.

"We are not guests in our country, this is our country, all of it..." Feiglin said, adding, "As Hitler said, 'I cannot live if one Jew is left.' We can't live here if one 'Islamo-Nazi' remains in Gaza."

Feiglin's remarks earned widespread condemnation on social media.

"In what kind of society can one openly advocate policies modeled on Hitler's conduct?" asked Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. "In a society that feels complete impunity due to America's protection."

Former Greek Finance Minister and leader of the pan-European leftist political party DiEM25 Yanis Varoufakis wrote that "the evidence of genocidal intentions is mounting" and asked, "When will the ICC [International Criminal Court] act?"

Israel has killed at least 37,337 people and injured 85,299 in its war on Gaza since October 7, when Hamas carried out a lethal attack against southern Israel, killing around 1,100 people and taking more than 240 hostage. Prior to the attack, Israel had maintained a 16-year blockade of the narrow enclave.

South Africa brought a case before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, citing the vast destruction of its bombing campaign as well as statements made by high-level Israeli politicians, including Netanyahu, that portray all Gazans as complicit in the October 7 attacks. Several human rights experts and scholars have also concluded that Israel is committing genocide.

This is not the first time that Feiglin, who served in the Knesset from 2013 to 2015, has called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.

"We need a different prime minister who is willing to stick his neck out to win. Zehut will provide, whenever elections happen, such a candidate," he told supporters in January, according to Middle East Eye. "For us, the war in Gaza is not merely a defensive war. It's a war of liberation, the liberation of the land from its occupiers."

In an October 2023 interview with Al Jazeera, he also advocated for the "complete destruction of Gaza, before invading it... Destruction like Dresden and Hiroshima, without a nuclear weapon."

Zehut's 2019 platform included the cancellation of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, according toHaaretz.

"Don't talk to me about international law, because there is not such a thing. You know, the minute you use the word 'Palestinian,' you stop saying the truth. Because there is no Palestinian nation, and they know it," Feiglin said that same year.

Other currently governing Israeli politicians have also called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in January that the Israeli government should "encourage the migration" of Palestinians out of Gaza.

Later the same month, Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attended a right-wing conference calling for the "resettlement" of Gaza.

Archived version

After five years of pioneering research into the abuse of social platforms, the Stanford Internet Observatory is winding down. Its founding director, Alex Stamos, left his position in November. Renee DiResta, its research director, left last week after her contract was not renewed. One other staff member's contract expired this month, while others have been told to look for jobs elsewhere, sources say.

Some members of the eight-person team might find other jobs at Stanford, and it’s possible that the university will retain the Stanford Internet Observatory branding, according to sources familiar with the matter. But the lab will not conduct research into the 2024 election or other elections in the future.

The shutdown comes amid a sustained and increasingly successful campaign among Republicans to discredit research institutions and discourage academics from investigating political speech and influence campaigns.

SIO and its researchers have been sued three times by conservative groups alleging that its researchers colluded illegally with the federal government to censor speech, forcing Stanford to spend millions of dollars to defend its staff and students.

In parallel, Republican House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and his Orwellian “Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government” have subpoenaed documents at Stanford and other universities, selectively leaked fragments of them to friendly conservative outlets, and misrepresented their contents in public statements.

And in an actual weaponization of government, Jordan’s committee has included students — both undergraduates and graduates — in its subpoena requests, publishing their names and putting them at risk of threats or worse.

The remnants of SIO will be reconstituted under Jeff Hancock, the lab’s faculty sponsor. Hancock, a professor of communication, runs a separate program known as the Stanford Social Media Lab. SIO’s work on child safety will continue there, sources said.

Two of SIO’s major initiatives — the peer-reviewed Journal of Online Trust and Safety and its Trust and Safety Research Conference — will also continue. (The journal is funded through a separate grant from the Omidyar Network.)

But in quietly dismantling SIO, the university seems to have calculated that the lab had become more trouble than it is worth.

In a statement emailed after publication, Stanford strongly disputed the fact that SIO is being dismantled. "The important work of SIO continues under new leadership, including its critical work on child safety and other online harms, its publication of the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, the Trust and Safety Research Conference, and the Trust and Safety Teaching Consortium," a spokesperson wrote. "Stanford remains deeply concerned about efforts, including lawsuits and congressional investigations, that chill freedom of inquiry and undermine legitimate and much needed academic research – both at Stanford and across academia."