NEW REPORT: Australia’s new digital ID system | NZ Justice Minister signs Kim Dotcom’s extradition order

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‘Australia’s new digital ID system’ report reviews the Australian Government’s proposed plans for establishing a digital ID, and the ways the new system is expected to work. ASPI
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has told Kim Dotcom, the former Mega Upload owner, that New Zealand will deport him to the US. Stuff
A licence-free environment for AUKUS technology transfer will come into effect next month after the three nations finalised legislative reforms that unlock billions of dollars in defence exports. InnovationAus

Australia’s new digital ID system: finding the right way to implement it
ASPI
Dr Rajiv Shah
This report reviews the Australian Government’s proposed plans for establishing a digital ID, and the ways the new system is expected to work. It explores the planned digital ID system, the key features of the approach, and the privacy and security protections that have been built into the proposals.

US signs off on AUKUS tech trade reforms
InnovationAus
Justin Hendry
A licence-free environment for AUKUS technology transfer will come into effect next month after the three nations finalised legislative reforms that unlock billions of dollars in defence exports.

Half of crypto ads on Facebook are scams or violate Meta’s policies, consumer regulator alleges
The Guardian
Josh Taylor
More than half of cryptocurrency-related ads on Facebook analysed by Australia’s consumer regulator were scams or violated Meta’s policies, a court has heard. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission took Meta to court over celebrity scam ads in 2022, alleging the company had engaged in false, misleading or deceptive conduct in publishing the ads, and aiding and abetting the false conduct by the advertisers.

New govt AI use policy mandates accountability
InnovationAus
Joseph Brookes
Defence and national intelligence agencies have been carved out of the first policy for responsible use of AI by government, which launched on Thursday to engender trust in the technology that Australians are slow to adopt.

Australia Olympic chief slams online attack on breakdancer Raygun
Reuters
The Australian Olympic Committee on Thursday condemned an online petition calling for an investigation into breakdancer Rachael Gunn’s selection for the Paris Olympics, saying it contained falsehoods aimed at inciting hatred against her.

‘Languishing’ CDR bill passes Parliament
InnovationAus
Brandon How
After “languishing” in Parliament for close to two years, legislation to expand the consumer data right to action initiation has passed, despite concerns about the broader scheme.

China to limit antimony exports in latest critical mineral curbs
Reuters
China will impose export limits on antimony and related elements in the name of national security, its commerce ministry said on Thursday, Beijing’s latest move to restrict shipments of critical minerals in which it is the dominant supplier.

Chinese Big Tech to see big AI gains in social, educational and office use, report says
South China Morning Post
Ben Jiang
Tech giants are seeing the biggest gains from GenAI by integrating LLMs into apps and services that already had large user bases, according to QuestMobile

US considers breaking up Google after illegal monopoly ruling, reports say
The Guardian
A week after a judge ruled that Alphabet’s Google illegally monopolised the online search market, the US Department of Justice is considering options that include breaking up the tech giant, worth some $2tn, according to reports from the New York Times and Bloomberg News.

Social media influencers descend on the White House, where Biden calls them the new ‘source of news’
Associated Press
Fatima Hussein and Haleluya Hadero
Social media influencers got the royal treatment at the White House on Wednesday as President Joe Biden gave a nod to their ability to hold sway with millions of loyal followers.

Australia needs an influencers strategy for international affairs
The Strategist
Daria Impiombato
Australian government departments should develop an engagement strategy with online influencers and invite them to join the press in attending international and security events. In a society increasingly dominated by social media or other content-sharing online platforms, issues of security, defence and international affairs are still obscure to many. This is an issue that weakens our democratic processes, it must be addressed, and it can be addressed in part by engaging with increasingly influential influencers.

See why AI detection tools can fail to catch election deepfakes
The Washington Post
Kevin Schaul, Pranshu Verma and Cat Zakrzewski
Artificial intelligence-created content is flooding the web and making it less clear than ever what’s real this election. From former president Donald Trump falsely claiming images from a Vice President Kamala Harris rally were AI-generated to a spoofed robocall of President Joe Biden telling voters not to cast their ballot, the rise of AI is fueling rampant misinformation.

US lawmakers urge probe of WiFi router maker TP-Link over fears of Chinese cyber attacks
Reuters
Alexandra Alper
Two U.S. lawmakers want the Biden administration to probe China’s TP-Link Technology Co and its affiliates for potential national security risks from their widely used WiFi routers over fears they could be used in cyber attacks against the U.S.

Google confirms an Iranian group is trying to access emails linked to both US presidential campaigns
Associated Press
Ali Swenson
Google said Wednesday that an Iranian group linked to the country’s Revolutionary Guard has tried to infiltrate the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people linked to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump since May.

Biotech company hacked in 2023 pays states $4.5 million over breached data
The Record by Recorded Future
Joe Warminsky
Three state governments have announced a $4.5 million payment from Enzo Biochem — a biotech company that suffered a ransomware attack in April 2023 — for failing to protect the diagnostic test information and personal data of nearly 2.5 million people.

Ransomware gangs rake in more than $450 million in first half of 2024
The Record by Recorded Future
Jonathan Greig
More than $459 million was extorted from victims of ransomware attacks in the first half of 2024, highlighting a growing crisis that has affected all organizations from major corporations to local governments and hospitals, according to a new report.

Russian citizen sentenced in US for selling stolen financial data on criminal marketplace
The Record by Recorded Future
Daryna Antoniuk
The U.S. has sentenced a Russian citizen to 40 months in prison for selling financial information and login credentials on a criminal internet marketplace called Slilpp.

Trump’s mysterious X promos show the limits of digital ad transparency
The Washington Post
Cristiano Lima-Strong and Aaron Schaffer
Days after former president Donald Trump’s highly publicized live stream with Elon Musk on X, there’s little-to-no public information about how much the GOP nominee may have paid to promote the event, highlighting key gaps in online campaign transparency.

Fake accounts on Meta pushed conservatives to run for office as independents
The Washington Post
Naomi Nix
A network of social media accounts used Meta to promote a fictitious political advocacy group, which attempted to recruit conservative candidates to run as independents — part of a rush of campaigns infiltrating the platform ahead of the 2024 election.

Ahead of DNC, suit aims to ban police bodycams with Chinese chip from political events
POLITICO
Alfred NG
A federal court has agreed to expedite a case that seeks to ban the nation’s most popular police body cameras from all political events related to the 2024 presidential election cycle, which could include the Democratic National Convention, on suspicion the Axon cameras are vulnerable to Chinese espionage.

F.B.I. resumes communication with Facebook, X and others on foreign disinformation
The New York Times
Steven Lee Myers
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies quietly resumed coordinating with the major social media companies earlier this year to fight what government officials warned was a coming onslaught of foreign disinformation and influence operations leading up to the presidential election in November. In at least two instances in recent weeks, the companies have taken action to remove malign content, according to the Biden administration and company officials.

Seoul authorities find toxic substances in Shein and Temu products
The Japan Times
Women’s accessories sold by some of the world’s most popular online shopping firms contained toxic substances sometimes hundreds of times above acceptable levels, authorities in Seoul said Wednesday.

Japan chip equipment maker Disco to open India sales base
Nikkei Asia
Japanese chipmaking device supplier Disco is set to form a subsidiary in India as early as September for marketing and helping manufacturers set up semiconductor fabs in the country.

Isuzu, Sojitz to join Japan’s ASEAN chip, EV supply chain push
Nikkei Asia
Anna Nishino
Fifteen Japanese companies including Isuzu Motors and trading house Sojitz will receive government funding to create supply chains in Southeast Asia, Nikkei has learned, part of an initiative with investments estimated at 100 billion yen ($679 million).

Pakistan’s internet firewall could cost economy $300 million, association says
Reuters
Ariba Shahid
Pakistan’s economy could lose up to $300 million due to internet disruptions caused by imposition of a national firewall, the Pakistan Software Houses Association said in a press release on Thursday.

Indian telecom regulator orders crackdown on spam calls
The Record by Recorded Future
Daryna Antoniuk
India’s telecom regulator has directed service providers to block all promotional calls — whether pre-recorded or computer-generated — from unregistered senders in a major move “to curb the increasing number of spam calls.”

China rules on AI and Vietnam draws chip designers
Nikkei Asia
Yifan Yu
Vietnam is becoming a new chip hub in Asia, not for manufacturing but for R&D, thanks to its affordable, quality talent pool. Companies from the U.S., Taiwan and South Korea are racing to build research facilities in the Southeast Asian country.

Justice Minister signs Kim Dotcom’s extradition order
Stuff
Glenn McConnell
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has told Kim Dotcom, the former Mega Upload owner, that New Zealand will deport him to the US. Dotcom, a rich lister who the US Government alleges made his fortune from digital piracy, moved to New Zealand in 2010.

Polish anti-doping agency targeted by cyber attack, ‘fake’ test results leaked
The New York Times
Charlie Eccleshare
The Polish anti-doping agency said on Wednesday that it was the victim of a cyber attack that led to false details of positive tests from a number of athletes being leaked.

English ChatGPT users flummoxed by language glitch as bot turns Welsh
Financial Times
Cristina Criddle
ChatGPT users in the UK have been flummoxed by the chatbot responding in Welsh to English-language queries, in the latest example of how the race to create artificial intelligence systems can throw up unexpected bugs.

PRC-UAE collaboration and US technology transfer concerns in Abu Dhabi
The Jamestown Foundation
Cheryl Yu
The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence poses a high risk of technology transfer due to its deep connections to the People’s Republic of China and its collaborations with leading US technology companies and universities.

X’s new AI image generator will make anything from Taylor Swift in lingerie to Kamala Harris with a gun
The Verge
Adi Robertson
xAI’s Grok chatbot now lets you create images from text prompts and publish them to X — and so far, the rollout seems as chaotic as everything else on Elon Musk’s social network.

Huawei’s cloud services unit sees Asia-Pacific as a vast market for AI products
South China Morning Post
Iris Deng
The cloud computing unit of Huawei Technologies sees Asia-Pacific as a potentially vast market for its artificial intelligence products, on the back of the 20-fold growth of its services in the region over the past four years in spite of US-led sanctions.

Meta axed CrowdTangle, a tool for tracking disinformation. Critics claim its replacement has just ‘1% of the features’
TechCrunch
Rebecca Bellan
Journalists, researchers, and politicians are mourning Meta’s shutdown of CrowdTangle, which they used to track the spread of disinformation on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta struggles with moderation in Hebrew, according to ex-employee and internal documents
The Guardian
Kari Paul
Meta is struggling with moderating content related to the Israel-Palestine war, particularly in Hebrew, despite recent changes to internal policies, new documents have revealed.

Google brings AI answers in Search to new countries
Reuters
Kenrick Cai
Google parent Alphabet said on Thursday it was expanding its AI-generated summaries for search queries to six new countries, just two months after it rolled back some capabilities following a problem-riddled launch.

A.L.S. stole his voice. A.I. retrieved it
The New York Times
Benjamin Mueller
In an experiment that surpassed expectations, implants in a patient’s brain were able to recognise words he tried to speak, and A.I. helped produce sounds that came close to matching his true voice.

Ex-Google CEO says successful AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to ‘clean up the mess’
The Verge
Alex Heath
Former Google CEO and chairman Eric Schmidt has made headlines for saying that Google was blindsided by the early the rise of ChatGPT because its employees decided that “working from home was more important than winning.”

Hedge funds race to tailor ChatGPT for time-consuming research chores
The Japan Times
Justina Lee
Thanks to the new amped-up generation of artificial intelligence, chatbots are now carrying out his time-consuming research chores. Everything from summing up the views of Wall Street economists and generating charts to extracting the latest pronouncements from monetary officials, and more.

How AI is revolutionising how firefighters tackle blazes and saving lives
The Guardian
Selena Ross
Every morning, California’s top firefighters get a forecast of the day in wildfire terms – when the wind will shift, how dry the ground is and a host of other ingredients that can start or spread a fire. Lately, the routine has an extra step: checking a machine’s opinion.

Google’s AI search gives sites dire choice: Share data or die
Bloomberg
Julia Love and Davey Alba
Google now displays convenient artificial intelligence-based answers at the top of its search pages — meaning users may never click through to the websites whose data is being used to power those results. But many site owners say they can’t afford to block Google’s AI from summarising their content.

Researchers have ranked AI models based on risk—and found a wild range
WIRED
Will Knight
Bo Li, an associate professor at the University of Chicago who specializes in stress testing and provoking AI models to uncover misbehavior, has become a go-to source for some consulting firms. These consultancies are often now less concerned with how smart AI models are than with how problematic—legally, ethically, and in terms of regulatory compliance—they can be.

The Sydney Dialogue
ASPI
The Sydney Dialogue was created to help bring together governments, businesses and civil society to discuss and progress policy options. We will forecast the technologies of the next decade that will change our societies, economies and national security, prioritising speakers and delegates who are willing to push the envelope. We will promote diverse views that stimulate real conversations about the best ways to seize opportunities and minimise risks.

What’s next for KOSA, the controversial ‘child safety’ bill that could change online speech
The Verge
Nilay Patel
The legislative package, which includes KOSA and COPPA 2.0, has major implications for how tech platforms handle speech.

Analyst or Researcher – Climate and Security Policy Centre
ASPI
We are seeking a high-performing individual to join our Climate and Security Policy Centre as a Researcher/Analyst. We are looking to recruit individuals to support the assessment of security risks posed by climate change in the Indo-Pacific. The role will involve data and policy analysis. The closing date for applications is 16 August 2024– an early application is advised as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if suitable applications are received.

Receptionist/Corporate Coordinator
ASPI
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is looking for an experienced Receptionist/Corporate Coordinator. This is an outstanding opportunity for a highly organised and skilled individual to join our dynamic, positive, and hardworking team. The Receptionist/Corporate Coordinator will handle daily administrative operations at ASPI, serving as the primary contact for visitors and phone inquiries. The role involves a variety of administrative tasks and several corporate responsibilities. The closing date for applications is 16 August 2024– an early application is advised as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if suitable applications are received.