Category Archives: Technology

Communist party accessed TikTok data of Hong Kong protesters, former executive alleges

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Ruling party accessed user data including Sim card ID and IP addresses, former executive alleges in legal filing

A former executive at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has alleged that the Chinese Communist party accessed user data from the social video app belonging to Hong Kong protesters and civil rights activists.

Yintao Yu, a former head of engineering at ByteDance’s US operation, claimed in a legal filing that a committee of Communist party members accessed TikTok data that included the users’ network information, Sim card identifications and IP addresses in a bid to identify the individuals and their locations.

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AI should be licensed like medicines or nuclear power, Labour suggests

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Exclusive: party calls for developers without a licence to be barred from working on advanced AI tools

The UK should bar technology developers from working on advanced artificial intelligence tools unless they have a licence to do so, Labour has said.

Ministers should introduce much stricter rules around companies training their AI products on vast datasets of the kind used by OpenAI to build ChatGPT, Lucy Powell, Labour’s digital spokesperson, told the Guardian.

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BA, Boots and BBC staff details targeted in Russia-linked cyber-attack

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Hack attributed to criminal gang hit MOVEit software used by third-party payroll provider Zellis

British Airways, Boots and the BBC are investigating the potential theft of personal details of staff after the companies were hit by a cyber-attack attributed to a Russia-linked criminal gang.

BA confirmed it was one of the companies affected by the hack, which targeted software called MOVEit used by Zellis, a payroll provider.

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‘Much easier to say no’: Irish town unites in smartphone ban for young children

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Parents and schools across Greystones adopt voluntary ‘no-smartphone code’ in bid to curb peer pressure

On the principle of strength in numbers, parents in the Irish town of Greystones have banded together to collectively tell their children they cannot have a smartphone until secondary school.

Parents’ associations across the district’s eight primary schools have adopted a no-smartphone code to present a united front against children’s lobbying.

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US colonel retracts comments on simulated drone attack ‘thought experiment’

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Colonel clarifies comments about ‘rogue AI drone’ that supposedly killed its operator

A US air force colonel “misspoke” when he said at a Royal Aeronautical Society conference last month that a drone killed its operator in a simulated test because the pilot was attempting to override its mission, according to the society.

The confusion had started with the circulation of a blogpost from the society, in which it described a presentation by Col Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, the chief of AI test and operations with the US air force and an experimental fighter test pilot, at the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit in London in May.

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Chinese censors remove protest site Sitong Bridge from online maps

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Amid usual scrubbing for Tiananmen Square anniversary, searches for bridge where protest was held in 2022 return no results

Chinese censors scrubbing the internet of any words or symbols that could be used to reference the Tiananmen Square massacre in the run-up to Sunday’s anniversary have a new target in their sights: a bridge in Beijing where a rare protest was staged last year.

As the 34th anniversary of the 1989 massacre approaches, anyone searching in Chinese for Sitong Bridge on Baidu maps will draw a blank.

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Twitter and Tesla’s interests at odds in Elon Musk’s quiet China visit

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The world’s richest person lapsed into an unusual silence on social media during his trip to the electric carmaker’s second largest market

Followers of Elon Musk didn’t know what to expect from his trip to China. Would he speak about Tesla, a company with a large market and manufacturing footprint there? Or SpaceX, with its symbiotic relationship with the American state? Or even Twitter, the social network he bought because “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy”?

The one thing no one expected: silence.

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Amazon’s Ring doorbell was used to spy on customers, FTC says in privacy case

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In the agency’s latest effort to hold big tech accountable, the company agreed to settle the privacy violations for $5.8m

A former employee of Amazon’s Ring doorbell camera unit spied on female customers for months in 2017 with cameras placed in bedrooms and bathrooms, the Federal Trade Commission said in a court filing on Wednesday when it announced a $5.8m settlement with the company over privacy violations.

Amazon also agreed to pay $25m to settle allegations it violated children’s privacy rights when it failed to delete Alexa recordings at the request of parents and kept them longer than necessary, according to a court filing in federal court in Seattle that outlined a separate settlement.

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Nvidia: chipmaker’s strategic AI moves result in a tech position of power

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The company is now the fifth most valuable in the US after investing in artificial intelligence early on

Nvidia saw its valuation soar to $1tn on Tuesday, making it the fifth most valuable American company and one of the first major corporate beneficiaries of the hype around AI.

The chipmaker has been a major and in some cases dominant player in several industries for years. But no development has raised its profile – and its potential windfall – as much as the current excitement around generative AI.

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NHS data breach: trusts shared patient details with Facebook without consent

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Observer investigation reveals Meta Pixel tool passed on private details of web browsing on medical sites

NHS trusts are sharing intimate details about patients’ medical conditions, appointments and treatments with Facebook without consent and despite promising never to do so.

An Observer investigation has uncovered a covert tracking tool in the websites of 20 NHS trusts which has for years collected browsing information and shared it with the tech giant in a major breach of privacy.

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Report: ‘massive’ Tesla leak reveals data breaches, thousands of safety complaints

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Whistleblower files reveal customer and employee information plus complaints about driver assistance system

Tesla has failed to adequately protect data from customers, employees and business partners and has received thousands of customer complaints regarding the carmaker’s driver assistance system, Germany’s Handelsblatt has reported, citing 100 gigabytes of confidential data leaked by a whistleblower.

The Handelsblatt report said customer data could be found “in abundance” in a data set labelled “Tesla Files”.

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GCHQ warns of fresh threat from Chinese state-sponsored hackers

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National Cyber Security Centre urges operators of critical national infrastructure to prevent hacks

The UK’s cybersecurity agency has urged operators of critical national infrastructure, including energy and telecommunications networks, to prevent Chinese state-sponsored hackers from hiding on their systems.

The National Cyber Security Centre, part of GCHQ, issued the warning after it emerged that a Chinese hacking group known as Volt Typhoon had targeted a US military outpost in the Pacific Ocean.

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United Nations official and others in Armenia hacked by NSO Group spyware

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At least a dozen victims were found to have been hacked by Pegasus during clashes in the region in 2021

Researchers have documented the first known case of NSO Group’s spyware being used in a military conflict after they discovered that journalists, human rights advocates, a United Nations official, and members of civil society in Armenia were hacked by a government using the spyware.

The hacking campaign, which targeted at least a dozen victims from October 2020 to December 2022, appears closely linked to events in the long running military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region.

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US Congress members demand that PayPal end ban on Palestinian business

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Other payment companies do business with Palestinians in the occupied territories, but PayPal only provides services to Israelis there

Eleven members of the US Congress have demanded PayPal end a ban on doing business with Palestinians in the occupied territories while permitting Israeli settlers to use the digital payment platform.

The letter, authored by Representative Mark Pocan, says PayPal is discriminating against Palestinians by denying “equal access to the digital economy”.

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Biden trade curbs on China risk huge damage to US tech sector, says Nvidia chief

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Jensen Huang says Chinese firms will ‘just build it themselves’ if they cannot buy from US

The US risks causing “enormous damage” to its tech industry if it continues restrictions on trade with China, according to the chief executive of the chipmaker Nvidia.

Jensen Huang said curbs introduced by the Biden administration, which include restricting the export to China of advanced chips made with US technology, had left the business with “our hands tied behind our back”.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Huang said: “If [China] can’t buy from … the United States, they’ll just build it themselves. So the US has to be careful. China is a very important market for the technology industry.”

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‘Don’t F&*! The Planet’: Atlassian issues net zero guide for companies cutting climate impact

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Tech firm founded by Australians Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar says net zero must be achieved by cutting emissions by 90% and only offsetting the remainder

As corporate reports go, the title of Aussie tech firm Atlassian’s guide for other companies to cut their greenhouse gas emissions is as direct and flavoursome as they come: “Don’t F&*! The Planet.”

The firm, founded by Australians Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, says it is already running its operations on 100% renewable electricity and has a “science-based target” to reach net zero emissions no later than 2040.

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With DeSantis campaign event, Musk seeks to shore up a sinking Twitter

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The social network has floundered since the tech billionaire took over – political live streams may give the platform relevance

The news that Ron DeSantis will launch his presidential campaign during a live Twitter appearance with Elon Musk marks the tech billionaire’s latest attempts to shore up engagement with the social network at a moment of crisis for the company.

The event – which will take place Wednesday on Twitter Spaces, a live stream feature that is often broadcasted at the top of Twitter’s feed – was confirmed by Musk on Tuesday afternoon. Speaking at the Wall Street Journal CEO Summit, Musk called the Florida governor’s decision “ground breaking” and said it won’t be the last political event that Twitter will host.

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Netflix crackdown on password sharing reaches the UK

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Streaming company tells millions of British subscribers that the service can no longer be used free by other households

Netflix has begun its crackdown on the millions of UK subscribers who share their passwords with friends and family who live outside of their household.

The streaming company has sent a letter to almost four million British subscribers that it has identified as giving friends and family members outside their home free access.

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Facebook owner Meta fined €1.2bn for mishandling user information

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Penalty from Ireland’s privacy regulator is a record for breach of EU data protection regulation

Facebook’s owner, Meta, has been fined a record €1.2bn (£1bn) and ordered to suspend the transfer of user data from the EU to the US.

The fine – equivalent to $1.3bn – imposed by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which regulates Meta across the EU, is a record for a breach of the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

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Fraudster jailed for running multimillion-pound website iSpoof

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Tejay Fletcher’s site offered tools allowing criminals to make phone calls that appeared to be from trusted companies

The mastermind behind an online fraud shop used to con victims out of more than £100m has been jailed for more than 13 years.

Tejay Fletcher, 35, bought a £230,000 Lamborghini, two Range Rovers worth £110,000 and an £11,000 Rolex after making about £2m from the iSpoof.cc website. He was the founder and leading administrator of the site, which was brought down last year in the UK’s biggest fraud sting.

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