Spaceship at the site of a battle

Defending Democracy – 17 October 2024

Welcome to this week’s “Defending Democracy”.

It’s your source for curated news affecting democracy in the cyber arena with a focus on protecting democracy. That necessitates an opinionated Butlerian jihad against big tech as well as evangelizing for open-source and the Fediverse. Since big media’s journalism wing is flailing and failing in its core duty to democracy, this is also a collection of alternative reporting on the eternal battle between autocracy and democracy. We also cover the cybersecurity world. You can’t be free without safety and privacy.

DD comes out on Thursday and is updated through the end of day on Friday. Then we start over. So take your time in perusing it and check back in over the weekend.

FYI, my opinions will be in bold. And will often involve cursing. Because humans. Especially tech bros. And fascists.

After a month of holiday and hurricane evacuations we are back on schedule.


Featured Item

Cory Doctorow writes:

Making up words is a perfectly cromulent passtime, and while most of the words we coin disappear as soon as they fall from our lips.

But every now and again, you get a word that just kills. That brings me to “enshittification,” a word I coined in 2022.

The word rattled around my mind for five months before attaching itself to my detailed theory of platform decay. But it was that detailed critique, coupled with a minor license to swear, that gave “enshittification” a life of its own. How do I know that the theory was as important as the swearing? Because the small wave of amusement that followed my first use of “enshittification” petered out in less than a day. It was only when I added the theory that the word took hold.

Pluralistic: Dirty words are politically potent (14 Oct 2024)


The response to Russia’s War Crimes and other douchebaggery

Radio Free Europe reports:

EU Approves New Sanctions On Iran Over Missile Transfers To Russia

EU Sanctions Pro-Russian Governor, Others For Meddling In Moldova

NPR reports:

Ukraine is amping up drone production to get an edge in the war against Russia

Tech Policy has:

AI for Activism

The Quest for European Technological Sovereignty: Building the EuroStack

EuroNews reports:

Are AI companies complying with the EU AI Act? A new ‘LLM Checker’ can find out

TechCrunch reports:

White House considers expanding Nvidia’s and AMD’s AI chip export limits to additional countries

The Verge reports:

The FTC is finally making it easier to cancel your gym membership

Bleeping Computer reports:

US disrupts Anonymous Sudan DDoS operation, indicts 2 Sudanese brothers

The Center for Democracy and Technology reports:

Companies, Civil Society, Academics Announce Voluntary Principles to Combat Image-Based Sexual Abuse


The Evil Empire Strikes Back

Tech Policy has:

Election Meddling, Censorship, and More Bad News in 2024 Freedom on the Net Report

Cory Doctorow has:

Lina Khan’s future is the future of the Democratic Party — and America

EuroNews reports:

Dutch prosecutor and police investigate Telegram’s lack of cooperation

DarkReading reports:

Cyberattackers Unleash Flood of Potentially Disruptive Election-Related Activity

The Guardian reports:

‘It’s not me, it’s just my face’: the models who found their likenesses had been used in AI propaganda

Pariah States

Radio Free Europe reports:

Threatening E-Mails Sent To Ukrainian Organizations After RFE/RL Investigation

NBC reports:

This is how a Russian disinformation campaign starts.

EuroNews reports:

Council of Europe declares Russian destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage ‘genocide’

Bleeping Computer reports:

Malicious ads exploited Internet Explorer zero day to drop malware

404 Media reports:

TikTok’s Pro-North Korea Supplement Ads

Even the dipshits on TikTok aren’t dumb enough to fall for this.

Hackers Advertise Stolen Verizon Push-to-Talk ‘Call Logs’

Ars Technica reports:

North Korean hackers use newly discovered Linux malware to raid ATMs

CNN reports:

Chinese hackers access US telecom firms, worrying national security officials

DarkReading reports:

Iran’s APT34 Abuses MS Exchange to Spy on Gulf Gov’ts

Big Media

Joan Westenberg reports:

NYT’s Latest Miss: The Harris Book Fake Controversy

Big Tech

404 Media reports:

AI-Powered Social Media Manipulation App Promises to ‘Shape Reality’

The Center for Democracy and Technology reports:

Report — Rules of the Road: Political Advertising on Social Media in the 2024 U.S. Election

This week in Musk c^ntness.

The Kyiv Independent reports:

Russia’s illegal use of Starlink terminals hastened fall of Vuhledar, WP reports

The Verge reports:

X blocked hacked JD Vance dossier links after the Trump campaign flagged it

NBC News reports:

An AI-powered bot army on X spread pro-Trump and pro-GOP propaganda, research shows

BBC reports:

Twitter, now X, to remove blocking feature – Musk

Look for large growth in federated social media this week.

Terrorists

The Guardian reports:

Revealed: International ‘race science’ network secretly funded by US tech boss


Cybersecurity/Privacy

The Markup announces:

Launching Blacklight Query, a Tool to Scan Websites for Privacy at Scale

Dark Reading has:

Why Your Identity Is the Key to Modernizing Cybersecurity

Even Orgs With SSO Are Vulnerable to Identity-Based Attacks

Bleeping Computer reports:

Amazon says 175 million customers now use passkeys to log in

Critical Kubernetes Image Builder flaw gives SSH root access to VMs

USDoD hacker behind National Public Data breach arrested in Brazil

Bom.

The Register reports:

Internet Archive wobbles back online, with limited functionality


Fediverse

The Fediverse Report has:

Last Week in Fediverse – ep 88

Tech Policy reports:

Online Safety and the “Great Decentralization” – The Perils and Promises of Federated Social Media

Newsmast says:

“We can have a different web, if we want it”

Soatok has:

Ambition, The Fediverse, and Technology Freedom

Elena Rossini continues a series:

Beyond technical features: why we need to talk about the values of the Fediverse (part 2)

The Nexus of Privacy looks at:

The Social Web Foundation and the elephant in the federated room

1. The SWF doesn’t give a fuck about safety/privacy. 2. Fuck Meta.

Bengo explores:

The Challenge of ActivityPub Data Portability

The Verge reports:

Instagram and Threads moderation is out of control

Other Federated Social Media

The Fediverse Report has:

Last Week in the ATmosphere – Oct 24 week 3

Squishy Computer explores:

Nature’s many attempts to evolve a Nostr

Good article, but they might want to look up the definition of nature.


CTAs (aka show us some free love)

Reuben Walker headshot

Ringleader, Battalion
Reuben Walker
Follow me on the Fediverse