Tag: internet

Massive healthcare breaches prompt US cybersecurity rules overhaul

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has proposed updates to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) to secure patients’ health data following a surge in massive healthcare data leaks.

These stricter cybersecurity rules, proposed by the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and expected to be published as a final rule within 60 days, would require healthcare organizations to encrypt protected health information (PHI), implement multifactor authentication, and segment their networks to make it harder for attackers to move laterally through them.

“In recent years, there has been an alarming growth in the number of breaches affecting 500 or more individuals reported to the Department, the overall number of individuals affected by such breaches, and the rampant escalation of cyberattacks using hacking and ransomware,” the HHS’ proposal says.

“The Department is concerned by the increasing numbers of breaches and other cybersecurity incidents experienced by regulated entities. We are also increasingly concerned by the upward trend in the numbers of individuals affected by such incidents and the magnitude of the potential harms from such incidents.”

Reuters reports that Anne Neuberger, the White House’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, also told reporters that the HIPAA cybersecurity rule updates were prompted by the ransomware attacks and massive breaches that have affected hospitals and Americans in recent years.

Neuberger added that implementing these rules would cost roughly $9 billion in the first year and over $6 billion during the following four years.

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25 Tech Laws Slated To Take Effect in 2025

When it comes to technology, free speech, and new laws, the big question going into 2025 is whether the U.S. Supreme Court will allow a TikTok ban to take effect on January 19. Along with that possible change, a bevy of lower-profile tech laws—some good, mostly bad—are slated to take effect across the U.S. in the upcoming year, with many going into effect on January 1.

For today’s newsletter, I’ve rounded up some of the most notable ones, which include bans on teens using social media (Florida and Tennessee), age verification requirements for porn websites (Florida and Tennessee), a law ordering online platforms to remove “deceptive” election-related content (California), and a law limiting law enforcement use of images collected by drones (Nevada).

This list is not comprehensive. But I looked through a lot of laws taking effect in various states, so it’s a decent overview of what’s coming.

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Dumbing down society

Dumbing down of society has benefited the ruling and wealthy classes to the point that, more likely than not, it’s been done on purpose. Discussing with any seriousness the lowering of average individual’s IQ is quickly marginalized as a conspiracy theory. Yet paradoxically, it’s the same « Joe Average » in society who’s sounding the alarm on a situation that’s becoming self-evident even to the intelligence challenged. This is akin to an obese person looking at themselves in the mirror and acknowledging that they have a weight problem.

The internet has undeniably changed the way humans consume information, share ideas, and engage with one another. While it has led to tremendous advancements in various fields, it has also had an effect: the dumbing down of the general population. This phenomenon leaves many people vulnerable to manipulation by governments and corporations. Whom appear to have purposely orchestrated this process for greater control over society, thereby securing their interests.

There’s no shortage of political and financial organizations where the self-titled « elites» of society interface with one another. Despite globalization policies, a conspiracy for control of the entire world still seems improbable. More easy to accept is how the late George Carlin put it, « There are no conspiracies when there are convergent interests. » Or, people will inevitably support and cooperate with others whose actions / policies fit with their own agendas. – It’s obligatory to explore the reasons for the dumbing down of society, the role the Internet plays and the benefits which governments and large corporations gain from it.

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Global Age Verification Measures: 2024 in Review

EFF has spent this year urging governments around the world, from Canada to Australia, to abandon their reckless plans to introduce age verification for a variety of online content under the guise of protecting children online. Mandatory age verification tools are surveillance systems that threaten everyone’s rights to speech and privacy, and introduce more harm than they seek to combat.

Kids Experiencing Harm is Not Just an Online Phenomena

In November, Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, claimed that legislation was needed to protect young people in the country from the supposed harmful effects of social media. Australia’s Parliament later passed the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, which bans children under the age of 16 from using social media and forces platforms to take undefined “reasonable steps” to verify users’ ages or face over $30 million in fines. This is similar to last year’s ban on social media access for children under 15 without parental consent in France, and Norway also pledged to follow a similar ban.

No study shows such harmful impact, and kids don’t need to fall into a wormhole of internet content to experience harm—there is a whole world outside the barriers of the internet that contributes to people’s experiences, and all evidence suggests that many young people experience positive outcomes from social media. Truthful news about what’s going on in the world, such as wars and climate change is available both online and by seeing a newspaper on the breakfast table or a billboard on the street. Young people may also be subject to harmful behaviors like bullying in the offline world, as well as online.

The internet is a valuable resource for both young people and adults who rely on the internet to find community and themselves. As we said about age verification measures in the U.S. this year, online services that want to host serious discussions about mental health issues, sexuality, gender identity, substance abuse, or a host of other issues, will all have to beg minors to leave and institute age verification tools to ensure that it happens. 

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U.K.’s Advanced Censorship Laws Force Small Websites To Shut Down!

The United Kingdom’s rulers created an online censorship law that has now advanced to the point where small websites are being shut down. The authoritarians who authored the U.K.’s “Online Safety Act” are citing disproportionate liability and risk under the new law when it comes to these smaller web pages.

The new legislative landscape in the country, which is supposed to go into effect in full force in March is already claiming victims, according to a report by Reclaim the Net. The law is not providing any kind of safety for hundreds of small websites, including non-profit forums, that will be forced to shut down because they are unable to comply with the act.  Specifically, the websites are faced with what reports refer to as “disproportionate personal liability.”

The massive global censorship campaign has not slowed down as we inch our way to 2025. Much of it is still done, but it’s become a behind-the-scenes issue as those reporting on it have been more focused on who will rule over the United States for the next four years instead.

The fines for not complying with the U.K.’s new law go up to the equivalent of $25 million U.S. dollars, while the law also introduces new criminal offenses.

Ofcom, who is responsible for enforcing this act, has published dozens of measures that online services are supposed to implement by March 16th, 2025. Some of these measures include naming a person responsible and accountable for making sure a website or an online platform complies with the ruling class’s edicts.

The law is presented as a new way to efficiently tackle illegal content, and in particular, provide new ways to ensure the safety of children online, including by age verification (“age checking”), but many have pointed out it is just another way to censor things that those in charge don’t want others focused on.

Microcosm has already fallen victim to this new law, as it will be unable to comply by monitoring encrypted messages on the site. U.K. press reports have already been declaring this as one of the first examples of the harm this law will cause. The non-profit free hosting service Microcosm and its 300 sites, among them community hubs and forums dedicated to topics like cycling and tech, will all go down in March, unable to live up to the “disproportionately high personal liability.”

“It’s too vague and too broad and I don’t want to take that personal risk,” Microcosm’s Dee Kitchen is quoted. The fines alone just for disobeying could be enough to destroy the life of one single person who is to be “accountable” to the ruling class.

Ofcom has made it clear that “very small micro businesses” are also subject to the legislation, according to Reclaim the Net. 

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UN General Assembly Adopts Controversial Cybercrime Treaty Amid Criticism Over Censorship and Surveillance Risks

As we expected, even though opponents have been warning that the United Nations Convention Against Cybercrime needed to have a narrower scope, strong human rights safeguard and be more clearly defined in order to avoid abuse – the UN General Assembly has just adopted the documents, after five years of wrangling between various stakeholders.

It is now up to UN-member states to first sign, and then ratify the treaty that will come into force three months after the 40th country does that.

The UN bureaucracy is pleased with the development, hailing the convention as a “landmark” and “historic” global treaty that will improve cross-border cooperation against cybercrime and digital threats.

But critics have been saying that speech and human rights might fall victim to the treaty since various UN members treat human rights and privacy in vastly different ways – while the treaty now in a way “standardizes” law enforcement agencies’ investigative powers across borders.

Considerable emphasis has been put by some on how “authoritarian” countries might abuse this new tool meant to tackle online crime – but in reality, this concern applies to any country that ends up ratifying the treaty.

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Team presents first demonstration of quantum teleportation over busy internet cables

Northwestern University engineers are the first to successfully demonstrate quantum teleportation over a fiberoptic cable already carrying internet traffic.

The discovery introduces the new possibility of combining quantum communication with existing internet cables—greatly simplifying the infrastructure required for distributed quantum sensing or computing applications.

The study is published on the arXiv preprint server and is due to appear in the journal Optica.

“This is incredibly exciting because nobody thought it was possible,” said Northwestern’s Prem Kumar, who led the study. “Our work shows a path towards next-generation quantum and classical networks sharing a unified fiberoptic infrastructure. Basically, it opens the door to pushing quantum communications to the next level.”

An expert in quantum communication, Kumar is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, where he directs the Center for Photonic Communication and Computing.

Only limited by the speed of light, quantum teleportation could make communications nearly instantaneous. The process works by harnessing quantum entanglement, a technique in which two particles are linked, regardless of the distance between them. Instead of particles physically traveling to deliver information, entangled particles exchange information over great distances—without physically carrying it.

“In optical communications, all signals are converted to light,” Kumar explained. “While conventional signals for classical communications typically comprise millions of particles of light, quantum information uses single photons.”

Before Kumar’s new study, conventional wisdom suggested that individual photons would drown in cables filled with the millions of light particles carrying classical communications. It would be like a flimsy bicycle trying to navigate through a crowded tunnel of speeding heavy-duty trucks.

Kumar and his team, however, found a way to help the delicate photons steer clear of the busy traffic. After conducting in-depth studies of how light scatters within fiberoptic cables, the researchers found a less crowded wavelength of light to place their photons. Then, they added special filters to reduce noise from regular internet traffic.

“We carefully studied how light is scattered and placed our photons at a judicial point where that scattering mechanism is minimized,” Kumar said. “We found we could perform quantum communication without interference from the classical channels that are simultaneously present.”

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Elon Musk’s AfD Endorsement Triggers EU Push for Stricter Censorship Under Digital Services Act

Elon Musk’s endorsement of Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has sparked significant controversy, particularly among European political figures concerned about the potential for what they call “foreign interference” in Germany’s upcoming elections.

Musk, the CEO of X, voiced his support for some of AfD’s policies following a deadly terror attack in Germany. His comments have raised alarm among EU officials, prompting calls for increased scrutiny of the X app and its compliance with the EU’s stringent censorship laws.

Thierry Breton, the European Union’s former Commissioner, took to X to express his outrage over Musk’s support for AfD. In a tweet posted on December 21, Breton accused Musk of being involved in “foreign interference” in Germany’s electoral process, especially given the timing of his comments around the tragic attack in Magdeburg.

Breton, who has been an advocate for strict censorship of social media platforms, and even threatened Elon Musk for over his interview with President Donald Trump, also called for the immediate application of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) to combat what he described as “double standards” when it comes to regulating speech online.

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Mitt Romney’s AI Bill Seeks to Ban Anonymous Cloud Access, Raising Privacy Concerns

A new Senate bill, the Preserving American Dominance in AI Act of 2024 (S.5616), has reignited debate over its provisions, particularly its push to impose “know-your-customer” (KYC) rules on cloud service providers and data centers. Critics warn that these measures could lead to sweeping surveillance practices and unprecedented invasions of privacy under the guise of regulating artificial intelligence.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

KYC regulations require businesses to verify the identities of their users, and when applied to digital platforms, they could significantly impact privacy by linking individuals’ online activities to their real-world identities, effectively eliminating anonymity and enabling intrusive surveillance.

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Privacy in Pieces: States Scramble to Protect Data as Congress Dithers

As Congress struggles to catch up to the European Union’s comprehensive data privacy regulations, some US states have begun to forge their own robust legislation to increase user protection. But this system only protects the data of some Americans, leaving more than half the country without guaranteed data protection or privacy rights.

And it may take years before a national solution is created, if at all.

The EU took its first step towards providing sweeping privacy protection years ago, with the creation of the region’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The GDPR, which took effect in 2018 and gives individuals ownership over their personal information and the right to control who can use it, is often marked as the first major, multinational step towards comprehensive data protection and privacy.

Traditionally, the EU’s approach to data privacy stems from a human rights standpoint and has its roots in World War II, when the Nazi party collected personal data to commit numerous atrocities and, later, when the East German secret police, the Stasi, carried out invasive state surveillance.

After the war ended, the right to privacy was enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights and later in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, becoming the ideological foundation on which data privacy laws have been built in the EU today.

Across the Atlantic, the US Constitution does not explicitly provide a right to privacy.

Rather than enacting a comprehensive federal law, the US federal government has taken a reactive approach, passing legislation only after issues arise in a few specific business sectors, which has resulted in a series of data protection laws addressing specific types of data. For example, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) have protected medical and financial data respectively since the 1990s.

“The US is very much an innovation, capital-first society,” said Jodi Daniels, founder and CEO of privacy consultancy firm Red Clover Advisors. “And they do want to protect the people, but it has to all get balanced.”

But in recent years, some lawmakers have begun to push back against this system by introducing comprehensive data privacy bills, like the bipartisan American Privacy Rights Act (APRA).

Introduced in April by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), APRA is like GDPR in that it is not limited to specific business sectors and aims to minimize the amount and types of data companies can collect, give consumers control over their information, and allow them to opt out of targeted advertising.

While the legislation didn’t get very far, stalling in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, it’s the furthest any comprehensive privacy bill has gone in Congress yet. To become law, however, it would have to be reintroduced next year when Republicans control both chambers. 

Some lawmakers, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), contend that APRA is more concerned with “controlling the internet” than creating a balance between innovation and privacy protection, and argue that the current right to private action present in the act, which allows individuals to pursue legal action if their privacy is violated, will give overwhelming power to trial lawyers.

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