#greatfireorg

#greatfireorg

When Guatemalan computer scientist Luis von Ahn first proposed the idea of "games with a purpose" (GWAPs) in 2004, his goal was to harness human brainpower so that computers could learn from it. His idea was simple: Get humans to solve tasks that are trivial to us but difficult for computers back then, like labeling images, transcribing text or classifying data.

Around 2013 in Taiwan's context, when Facebook started to take over the digital ecosystem in Taiwan, many local independent bulletin boards that had been formed for sexual minorities were shut down because they had no income from advertisements, and people were pushed into mainstream platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Meta, whatever, Twitter now X where sexual expression was usually reported or flagged.

Recent revelations from news agency Reuters that the US is "developing an online portal that will enable people in Europe and elsewhere to see content banned by their governments including hate speech and terrorist propaganda," as a method to counter what it sees as excessive censorship in other parts of the world is troubling to the EU. Even if the plans appear to have been delayed and detail is thin, the US position is clear.

Managed by the US state department and the US Agency for Global Media, the programme broadly called Internet Freedom funds small groups all over the world, from Iran to China to the Philippines, who built grassroots technologies to evade internet controls imposed by governments. It has dispensed well over $500m (370m) in the past decade, according to an analysis by the Guardian, including $94m in 2024.

Telegram's CEO says he will not be fazed by Russian attempts to limit access to the popular messaging app used by newsmakers of all kinds, including the Kremlin, courts and the exiled opposition. Russia tried and failed to block Telegram in 2018Image: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/picture alliance Telegram's Russian-born founder Pavel Durov said late Tuesday he was not going to bow to pressure from Russian authorities, writing the app "stands for freedom and privacy, no matter the pressure."

Tianfu Cup was launched as an alternative to the Zero Day Initiative's Pwn2Own competition, which regularly pays out more than $1 million to white hat hackers who demonstrate critical vulnerabilities in consumer and enterprise hardware and software, industrial control systems, and automotive products. Tianfu Cup made headlines in 2021, when participants earned a total of $1.9 million for exploits targeting Windows, Ubuntu, iOS, Microsoft Exchange, Chrome, Safari, Adobe Reader, Asus routers, and various virtualization products.

Telegram users in Russia may begin noticing service disruptions on Tuesday after Russia's communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, reportedly moved to slow down and restrict access to the app, as reported by Russian news outlet . Roskomnadzor said in a statement to RBC, translated using machine translation, that it "will continue to introduce successive restrictions" on Telegram, claiming the app is not taking adequate steps to prevent fraud and criminal activity.

Two independent journalists were detained by Chinese officials after they published a report alleging corruption by a local official in southwestern China, rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Tuesday, condemning the incident. Police in Chengdu said they were investigating a 50-year-old man surnamed Liu and a 34-year-old surnamed Wu on suspicion of making "false accusations" and conducting "illegal business operations." Authorities said they were placed under "criminal coercive measures," a term typically referring to detention.

The so-called 'Cyber Dialogue' will supposedly help manage cyber threats to both country's national security, revealed Bloomberg, which was first to reported the move citing anonymous sources with knowledge of the forum, It claimed that the forum will improve communication, enable private discussions, and deescalate tensions. It also establishes a direct line between London and Beijing to enable senior officials to discuss ongoing cyber incidents.

Cybersecurity researchers have taken the wraps off a gateway-monitoring and adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) framework dubbed DKnife that's operated by China-nexus threat actors since at least 2019. The framework comprises seven Linux-based implants that are designed to perform deep packet inspection, manipulate traffic, and deliver malware via routers and edge devices. Its primary targets seem to be Chinese-speaking users, an assessment based on the presence of credential harvesting phishing pages for Chinese email services, exfiltration modules for popular Chinese mobile applications like WeChat,

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has rounded up several of these counter surveillance projects, and perhaps unsurprisingly many of these have to do with Flock, best known for its automated license plate reader (ALPR). Flock operates the largest network of surveillance cameras in America, and, while it has contracts with thousands of police departments and municipalities across the US, sometimes ICE gains access to this footage, according to US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and those who have looked into Flock's misuse.

"Today the Russian government has attempted to fully block WhatsApp in an effort to drive users to a state-owned surveillance app," Meta told the FT in a statement. "Trying to isolate over 100 million people from private and secure communication is a backwards step and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia."

Hong Kong's once vibrant media outlets have responded with silence or celebration to the 20-year jail sentence handed down to Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy media tycoon and critic of the Chinese Communist party. Lai, 78, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Monday after being convicted of sedition and colluding with foreign forces under Hong Kong's national security law. The charges were widely seen as being politically motivated and designed to silence one of Hong Kong's most influential pro-democracy campaigners.