A leading tech industry group on Tuesday called on G7 nations to harmonize cloud security certification across the world’s richest nations, in an effort to stoke cooperation and counter calls that data should stay within national borders.
Industry group BSA The Software Alliance, which represents tech giants including Microsoft and IBM, argues that its initiative would reduce compliance burdens for cloud service providers while maintaining robust security standards.
“We encourage governments to look at where their cloud requirements are effectively the same, but using different language,” said Aaron Cooper, senior vice president of global policy at BSA.
Greater unity among G7 nations could also “hopefully lead to a recognition that localization doesn’t aid with security,” he added. “But that’s not specifically what this proposal is about.”
The G7 nations are the United States, Britain, Canada, Japan and EU member states France, Germany and Italy.
Reliance on cloud computing, instead of companies or governments running software on-site, is regarded as computing’s new reality.
This has been further cemented in recent years due to the intense processing needed to deliver artificial intelligence capabilities, with few companies able to alone provide the data infrastructure necessary.
The growth in-cloud computing has sparked governments worldwide to implement cloud security certification requirements to mitigate risks associated with widespread cloud adoption, such as cyber attacks, data theft or legal problems.
While these certifications have a lot in common, some countries, notably G7-member France, are insisting that cybersecurity standards come with strict geographic requirements in order to not leave sensitive or private data in foreign hands.
France’s position has helped cause the delay of the EU’s long promised cybersecurity standard, known as EUCS, with several EU member countries opposing Paris.
BSA also opposes that stance, instead arguing that cybersecurity agencies across friendly nations should find ways to cooperate.
Closer cooperation could also offer cloud companies easier market access and provide customers with a wider array of secure cloud options, BSA said.
BSA members also include Oracle, Siemens and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.
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The first major study of social media behavior during wartime has found that posts celebrating national and cultural unity in a country under attack receive significantly more online engagement than derogatory posts about the aggressors.
University of Cambridge psychologists analyzed a total of 1.6 million posts on Facebook and Twitter (now X) from Ukrainian news outlets in the seven months prior to February 2022, when Russian forces invaded, and the six months that followed.
Once the attempted invasion had begun, posts classified as expressing Ukrainian “ingroup solidarity” were associated with 92% more engagement on Facebook, and 68% more on Twitter, than similar posts had achieved prior to Russia’s full-scale attack.
While posts expressing “outgroup hostility” towards Russia only received an extra 1% engagement on Facebook after the invasion, with no significant difference on Twitter.
“Pro-Ukrainian sentiment, phrases such as Glory to Ukraine and posts about Ukrainian military heroism, gained huge amounts of likes and shares, yet hostile posts aimed at Russia barely registered,” said Yara Kyrychenko, from Cambridge’s Social Decision-Making Lab (SDML) in its Department of Psychology.
“The vast majority of research on social media uses US data, where divisive posts often go viral, prompting some scholars to suggest that these platforms drive polarization. In Ukraine, a country under siege, we find the reverse,” said Kyrychenko, lead author of the study published in Nature Communications.
“Emotions that appeal to ingroup identity can empower people and boost morale. These emotions may be more contagious, and prompt greater engagement, during a time of active threat—when the motivation to behave beneficially for one’s ingroup is heightened.”
Previous research from the same Cambridge lab found that going viral on US social media is driven by hostility: posts that mock and criticize the opposing sides of ideological divides are far more likely to get engagement and reach larger audiences.
The new study initially used the same techniques, finding that—prior to the invasion –social media posts from pro-Ukrainian as well as pro-Russian news sources that contained keywords of the “outgroup”—opposing politicians, placenames, and so on— did indeed generate more traction than posts containing “ingroup” keywords.
However, researchers then trained a large language model (LLM)—a form of language-processing AI, similar to ChatGPT—to better categorize sentiment and the motivation behind the post, rather than simply relying on keywords, and used this to analyze Facebook and Twitter posts of Ukrainian news outlets before and after the invasion.
This deeper dive revealed a consistently strong engagement rate for solidarity posting—higher than for “outgroup hostility”—in the lead up to Russia’s attack, which leaps even further after the invasion, while interactions with derisive posts about Russia flatline.
Lastly, a separate dataset of 149,000 post-invasion Tweets that had been geo-located to Ukraine was fed into a similar LLM, to test this effect on social media posts from the Ukrainian population, rather than only news sources.
Tweets—now X posts—from the Ukrainian public containing messages of “ingroup solidarity” championing Ukraine were likely to get 14% more engagement, while those expressing antagonism to Russians were likely to gain only a 7% increase.
“Social media platforms allow expressions of the national struggle that would otherwise have been private to reach millions,” said Kyrychenko.
“These moments echo solidarity and resistance from a first-person account, which can make them more powerful than traditional media rooted in impersonal reporting.”
Researchers acknowledge these trends may result from algorithms used by social media companies, but say the fact that similar effects were detected on two separate platforms, and with posts from both Ukraine’s news sources and its citizenry, suggests much of this information-sharing dynamic is driven by people.
“The Kremlin has long tried to sow division in Ukraine, but fails to understand that the Euromaidan revolution and Russia’s attempted invasion have only spurred Ukrainian identity towards national unity,” said Dr. Jon Roozenbeek, study senior author from Cambridge’s SDML as well as King’s College London.
“We can trace through social media posts this fortification of Ukrainian group identity in the face of extreme Russian aggression,” said Roozenbeek, who published the book Propaganda and Ideology in the Russian–Ukrainian War earlier this year.
Kyrychenko, a Cambridge Gates Scholar born and raised in Kyiv, recalls the critical role Facebook and Twitter played in the Euromaidan protests in 2014, some of which she participated in as a teenager, and her surprise at the attitude towards social media she encountered in the US after moving there to study in 2018, during the Trump presidency.
“By the time I arrived in the US, social media was seen as toxic and divisive, whereas my experience of these platforms in Ukraine had been as a force for positive political unity in the fight for democracy,” said Kyrychenko.
While Kyrychenko points out that hate speech and conspiracy theories still thrive online in Ukraine, she argues that the solidarity fostered on social media reflects some of the early promise these platforms held for uniting people against tyranny.
“The Ukrainian experience reminds us that social media can be used for good, pro-social causes, even in the direst of situations.”
“Thanks to the KALUSH ORCHESTRA band for their support! Glory to Ukraine! 🇺🇦” got 4434 retweets.
“Our flag will fly over all of Ukraine, said General Valery Zaluzhnyi.” got 5577 favorites and 767 retweets.
“Ukrainian soldiers congratulate students with September 1 and remembers their first bells 💔🔔” … got 92381 shares and 482896 likes on Facebook.
“In a Polish church, they decided to sing the song “Oh, there’s a red viburnum in the meadow” right during the service! 🇺🇦 ❤️🇵🇱” … got 34897 shares and 68847 likes on Facebook.
A further description from lead author Yara Kyrychenko of an example of Ukrainian ‘ingroup solidarity’ social media content:
“On New Year’s Eve 2022, a family in the then recently de-occupied Ukrainian city of Kherson watched Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidential address over WhatsApp with their relatives in the still-occupied territories.
“A video of the entire family crying—as Zelensky states Ukraine will liberate and rebuild—quickly went viral across platforms. It captured something so powerful and deeply emotional that watching it makes many cry, even months later.
“The sense of unity despite barriers, the tender cherishing of the national tradition, and the human connection—all distilled into one TikTok. Posts like these evoke similar feelings of solidarity in countless Ukrainians, even though each has seen a different face of the war.”
Outgroup hostility examples include:
“Boris Johnson: negotiating with Putin is like negotiating with a crocodile” got 425 retweets and 4957 favorites.
“It hurts to understand that these bastards shoot absolutely everything. It doesn’t matter if the military is there or not. Hospitals, schools….” got 21728 Shares and 25125 Likes.
“❗️Russians don’t want to fight for Putin. The story of a soldier captured in Kharkov. ‘Bastards! I hate them! They are making propaganda!'” … got 65409 shares and 79735 Likes.
More information:
Social identity correlates of social media engagement before and after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-52179-8
Citation:
Solidarity drives online virality in a nation under attack, study of Ukrainian social media reveals (2024, October 1)
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Facebook parent Meta will produce its next-generation virtual and augmented reality headsets in Vietnam, creating more than 1,000 jobs, the company said Tuesday.
The announcement comes as Vietnam looks to boost its attractiveness as a destination for investment by the world’s biggest companies and a key part of the global supply chain.
Speaking at a tech conference in Hanoi, Meta’s global affairs president Nick Clegg said the firm would focus on the production of the Quest 3S headset in the Southeast Asian country.
“We will, with our local partners, be manufacturing them here in Vietnam, and we estimate that this will create well over 1,000 new jobs,” he said.
Communist Vietnam—long a low-cost destination to make clothes, shoes and furniture—is eyeing a rapid climb up the global supply chain and last week the government said Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to invest $1.5 billion in the country.
Vietnam’s top leader To Lam used a trip to New York last month to meet bosses from Apple, Meta and IT firm Supermicro.
He also met President Joe Biden, a year after the US leader made a high-profile state visit to Vietnam to boost diplomatic and trade ties.
Vietnam is particularly intent on developing its capabilities in the lucrative chip industry, with global supply chain shocks and fears about US reliance on China for key resources boosting investment there.
Meta’s Facebook is widely used in Vietnam and Clegg said the nation was among the global leaders in using its Messenger platform “not just to send messages to family and friends, but actually communicate with businesses and so foster trade and commerce across the country”.
But Facebook has also faced criticism from human rights groups in recent years for blocking content deemed illegal by the country’s government.
Facebook is a popular platform for activists in Vietnam, where all independent media is banned.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law to protect the privacy of brainwave data on the same weekend he vetoed a controversial bill intended to curb abuses by powerful generative artificial intelligence models.
A new California law extends consumer privacy protection to brainwave data gathered by implants or wearable devices.
Governor Gavin Newsom over the weekend signed into law a bill amending the California Consumer Privacy Act, the state’s spin on the GDPR in Europe, to classify “neural data” as protected personal information along the lines of precise geolocation, genetics and biometrics.
Neurorights Foundation medical director Sean Pauzauskie called the California law “an enormous victory” for patients suffering from mental health disorders as well as for consumers simply looking to enhance their lives with new technologies.
The NGO co-sponsored the bill with a state senator.
“The essential privacy guardrails it ensures should only boost confidence in all varieties of these revolutionary neurotechnologies, the great majority which are based in California,” Pauzauskie said in a release.
California is the second state to extend data protections to brainwaves, on the heels of Colorado putting in place a law requiring privacy safeguards along the lines of what is done for fingerprints.
The California law sends “a clear signal to the fast-growing neurotechnology industry” to protect people’s mental privacy, NeuroRights Foundation general counsel Jared Genser said in a release.
Genser argued for a national brainwave data privacy law.
Protections under the California law include the right to know what brain data is being collected, limit its disclosure, and to be able to opt-out or have it deleted.
The law applies to devices capable of recording or altering nervous system activity, whether they be implanted or worn, the NGO said.
The potential for devices to tap into how people feel or think has raised concerns they could be used to manipulate feelings or thoughts.
“In the coming years, the sensitivity of neural data will increase alongside surging investments…resulting in increased resolution of brain scans and larger datasets of brain data being collected,” the NGO predicted.
“Meanwhile generative artificial intelligence will continue accelerating the ability to accurately decode these scans.”
Billionaire Elon Musk with his Neuralink startup is among those striving to link brains and computers.
Musk envisions Neuralink implants going beyond restoring sight to the blind to giving people infrared or ultraviolet vision or letting them share concepts with others telepathically.
“We want to give people superpowers,” Musk said. “Not just that we’re restoring your prior functionality, but that you actually have functionality far greater than a normal human.”
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Globetrotters may soon be able to store their U.S. passport in a Google Wallet.
The tech giant has announced that it’s rolling out a variety of new Google Wallet updates aimed at travelers and commuters.
As part of that plan, Google is beta testing the ability to create a digital ID from a U.S. passport, according to a news release from Google. Once uploaded to a Wallet, the digital U.S. Passport ID could be used at select TSA checkpoints by those traveling within the United States.
Google expects that being able to store passports digitally in your Wallet will save “time and stress at the airport when traveling domestically.”
When the new digital passport feature becomes available to the public, users will be able to create their digital ID by selecting the “create an ID pass with your U.S. passport” function in the Google Wallet app.
After that, users will be required to scan the security chip located on the back of passports. The process also involves taking a selfie that will be used to verify identity.
From start-to-finish, creating a digital ID from a passport should take just a few minutes, per Google. The digitized version of one’s passport however, should not replace carrying your actual passport. Google has worked to stress this point.
The company has also underscored that your passport information will be safe when stored in a Wallet.
“ID passes are stored encrypted, meaning you must authenticate using your fingerprint, PIN or passcode before the ID pass is viewable or shareable,” Google said in a statement. “You’re in control of the information shared: before using your digital ID for identity verification, you can review what information is being requested.”
The passport news is just a small part of Google’s plans when it comes to digitized identification. Last year, the tech company introduced the ability to save select state-issued digital IDs to Wallet.
Now, Google is in talks with partners to make digital IDs acceptable for a variety of additional travel uses, including when renting a car.
“While ID passes are accepted at select TSA checkpoints today, we’re working with partners so you can use digital IDs in even more situations—for example, in the future we believe you should be able to use digital ID for things like account recovery, identity verification and even car rentals,” the company said in a statement.
In the future, the Google wallet will automatically import transit tickets from Gmail booking confirmations. With this upcoming function, users will be able to view live train status updates from the ticket in the Google app.
And yet another feature in the works would provide Google Wallet users with notifications if there’s a change to an assigned seat associated with a boarding pass.
Since launching two years ago, people in more than 90 countries and territories have begun using Google Wallet to save and access everything from payment cards to train and event tickets.
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Your Google Wallet may soon be able to carry your passport (2024, September 30)
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