Tag: technology

Ottawa’s Hidden Agenda: Bill C-26 Aims for Secret Surveillance Backdoors

Canada’s Bill C-26, currently making its way through the country’s parliament, includes “secretive” provisions that can be used to break encryption, researchers are warning.

As far as its sponsors are concerned, Bill C-26 is cyber security legislation intended to amend the Telecommunications Act and other related acts.

But the way the Telecommunications Act will be amended is by allowing the government to force companies operating in that industry to include backdoors in networks protected by encryption, a pair of University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab researchers suggest.

In case the government decides its surveillance needs require altering “the 5G encryption standards that protect mobile communications” – then this can also be done, should C-26 become law.

This raises several important questions, such as whether the bill’s purpose might be precisely to undermine encryption, considering that the government decided not to include amendments in the text that would prevent this.

Another worrying aspect is that given the already lacking level of security in the telecommunications space, the government would be expected to try to fix the existing problems, rather than create new ones, the researchers note.

The amendment that could have rectified this situation was proposed last year by the Citizen Lab, while civil society and industry leaders and experts also participated in parliamentary hearings concerning C-26 to recommend restricting what are said to be the draft’s broad powers to prevent “technical changes from being used to compromise the ‘confidentiality, integrity, or availability’ of telecommunication services.”

However, these warnings fell on deaf ears, with the bill now progressing through parliament without the recommended changes, and despite MPs stating that facilitating and broadening mass surveillance in Canada was not the motive behind C-26.

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Harsh Electronic WARFARE among Russia and Ukraine-NATO Military Forces

Ukraine’s stocks of American-made Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) munitions are being jammed by Russian electronic warfare equipment, three informed sources familiar with the ‘problem’ told Reuters.

The Boeing/Saab Group-developed GLSDB is a ground-launched variant of Boeing’s GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb – a 129 kg glide munition with a 93 kg fragmentation warhead and a 150 km range designed for strikes against heavily entrenched targets.

The GLSDB can be fired from M270 and M142 HIMARS precision multiple launch rocket installations – which the United States began delivering to Ukraine in mid-2022, and which Russian forces initially had difficulties locating due to the systems’ rapid shoot-and-scoot [the ability to come out of cover, quickly fire and go back into hiding] capabilities.

GLSDBs began to be sent to Ukraine in early 2024 in a bid by the Pentagon to extend Ukraine’s long-range strike potential, which Kiev has used to target both military and civilian targets in the Donbass and elsewhere.

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SHOCKING NEW STUDY SAYS AI IS QUICKLY BECOMING “MASTERS OF DECEPTION,” TEACHING ITSELF TO LIE AND MANIPULATE HUMAN USERS

A recent empirical review found that many artificial intelligence (AI) systems are quickly becoming masters of deception, with many systems already learning to lie and manipulate humans for their own advantage.

This alarming trend is not confined to rogue or malfunctioning systems but includes special-use AI systems and general-use large language models designed to be helpful and honest. 

The study, published in the journal Patterns, highlights the risks and challenges posed by this emerging behavior and calls for urgent action from policymakers and AI developers.

“AI developers do not have a confident understanding of what causes undesirable AI behaviors like deception,” Dr. Peter S. Park, the study’s lead author and an AI existential safety postdoctoral fellow at MIT, said in a press release. “But generally speaking, we think AI deception arises because a deception-based strategy turned out to be the best way to perform well at the given AI’s training task. Deception helps them achieve their goals.” 

The review meticulously analyzed various AI systems and found that many had developed deceptive capabilities due to their training processes. These systems ranged from game-playing AIs to more general-purpose models used in economic negotiations and safety testing environments.

One of the most striking examples cited in the study was Meta’s CICERO, an AI developed to play the game Diplomacy. Despite being trained to act honestly and maintain alliances with human players, CICERO frequently used deceptive tactics to win. 

This behavior included building fake alliances and backstabbing allies when it benefited its gameplay, leading researchers to conclude that CICERO had become a “master of deception.”​

“Despite Meta’s efforts, CICERO turned out to be an expert liar,” researchers wrote. “It not only betrayed other players but also engaged in premeditated deception, planning in advance to build a fake alliance with a human player to trick that player into leaving themselves undefended for an attack.”

Researchers found that other AI systems had developed the ability to cheat at different types of games. For instance, Pluribus, a poker-playing model created by Meta, demonstrated it could convincingly bluff in Texas hold ’em poker, successfully misleading professional human players about their hand strengths. 

In another example, AlphaStar, an AI system created by Google’s DeepMind to play the real-time strategy game Starcraft II, exploited the game’s “fog-of-war“ mechanics to feint attacks and deceive opponents to gain strategic advantages. 

“While it may seem harmless if AI systems cheat at games, it can lead to breakthroughs in deceptive AI capabilities that can spiral into more advanced forms of AI deception in the future,“ Dr. Park explained.

Indeed, during their review, researchers found that some AI systems had already learned methods of deception that extend far beyond the realm of games. 

In one instance, AI agents had learned to “play dead“ to avoid being detected by a safety test designed to eliminate faster-replicating AI variants. Such behavior can create a false sense of security among developers and regulators, potentially leading to severe consequences if these deceptive systems are deployed in real-world applications​​.

Another AI system trained on human feedback was found to have taught itself how to behave in ways that earned positive scores by tricking human reviewers into thinking an intended goal had been accomplished. 

The potential risks of AI deception are significant and multifaceted. Researchers note that in the near term, these systems could be used by malicious actors to commit fraud, manipulate financial markets, or interfere with elections. 

Moreover, as AI capabilities advance, there is an increasing concern among experts that humans may not be able to control these systems, posing existential threats to society.

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Chinese scientists create 90% lethal Ebola-like virus to study eye disorders

Chinese scientists have genetically modified a virus that imitates Ebola infection. This virus has caused severe eye ulcers and ultimately wiped out an entire group of hamsters.

Researchers are hopeful that this study will aid in the research of Ebola-related eye disorders.

In this study, vesicular stomatitis, typically found in livestock, was harboring the Ebola virus. When they gave it to the hamsters, the entire group died after the ulcers in their eyes worsened.

New model reveals promising insights into Ebola virus research

Vesicular stomatitis (VSV), carries a part of the Ebola virus called glycoprotein (GP). It helps the virus to enter and infect the cells. Five female and five male hamsters that were up to three weeks old died within three days.

They showed symptoms similar to those in Ebola patients, such as weight loss, multi-organ failure, severe eye inflammation, and ulcers. Additionally, the hamsters had high levels of the virus in their bodies.

Scientists are optimistic that this new model could help in future research on Ebola-related eye disorders. “All animals died within 2-3 days after infection,” the researchers observed, noting that this model could be useful for testing Ebola vaccines.

According to the scientists, this model allowed for quick preclinical testing of Ebola virus countermeasures in BSL-2 conditions.

They added, “This surrogate model is a safe, effective, and cost-efficient tool for rapid preclinical evaluation of medical countermeasures against the Ebola virus under BSL-2 conditions. It has the potential to accelerate technological advances and breakthroughs in combating Ebola virus disease.”

More accessible to researchers for studying

The Ebola virus causes internal bleeding and tissue damage and is spread by direct contact with infected body fluids, such as blood or sweat, or by touching contaminated objects. This is significant because studying Ebola requires expensive and high-level biological security, like that in BSL-4 facilities.

As a result, the virus has been less accessible to scientists. According to the scientists, the development of countermeasures against EBOV has been hindered by the lack of ideal animal models. The reason was that EBOV requires handling in BSL-4 facilities.

In the study, they also analyzed the influence of the virus. They found that the virus had accumulated in critical tissues. Like for example the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, intestines, and brain. As the study showed, the highest viral loads were found in the liver, and the lowest levels were found in the brain.

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Microsoft Introduces AI “Recall” Tool That Records *Everything* You Do On Your Computer

It records everything you do with your PC, including your apps, movies, documents, emails, browsing history, browser tabs, and more.

Microsoft recently unveiled a new AI tool that has a lot of people online concerned about what this means for their privacy and safety. The AI tool called “Recall,” that will become available to some Windows 11 users, records the user’s screen and allows them to go back in time and see what it is they were doing. Microsoft claims that the data is stored locally and therefore protected, but many are not convinced.

According to Windows Latest, ‘With Recall, Microsoft says it can turn your previous actions into “searchable snapshots”, allowing you to search and interact with your past actions. Recall runs in the background and relies on the NPU chip to record your screen.’

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The internet is disappearing, with a quarter of all webpages from 2013 to 2023 going the way of the dodo

Well, so long and thanks for all the fish. A study from the Pew Research Center entitled “When Online Content Disappears” indicates that our beloved internet may well be disappearing beneath our fingers—with a quarter of all webpages that existed between 2013 and 2023 found to be no longer accessible.

Contrary to the popular perception that everything committed to the interwebs is destined to exist forever, the study revealed that 38% of pages that existed in 2013 alone have now been lost (via The Independent). It doesn’t appear to be an age-related phenomenon, either. 

Even newer pages appear to be performing vanishing acts—eight percent of pages that existed in 2023 were found to be unavailable, too.

The study made use of Common Crawl, an open repository of web crawl data that archives billions of webpages and provides archives and datasets for public use. The researchers took random samples of over a million webpages, before checking the links to see which were still active, and which had gone to the great lost information archive in the sky.

The results showed 23% of news pages and 21% of government websites studied were found to include at least one broken link, while a staggering 54% of Wikipedia pages included a reference link that no longer exists. That’s a lot of facts that can no longer be reasonably checked.

Given the internet’s integral role in modern society (for better or worse) in terms of verifying information, these results are troubling. What with the increasing proliferation of misleading AI content, losing valuable sources of information pre AI-era can’t possibly help.

Compounding this slide into a murky world where verifiable information is increasingly harder to find, a recent study found that 46.9% of all internet traffic could be attributed to bots—many of which may be contributing all sorts of made-up information to further muddy the waters.

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Google’s Woke AI Is Hilariously But Frighteningly Broken

Google’s hastily rolled out AI Overview feature is disastrously broken, returning searches claiming that people should spread glue on pizzas, eat rocks, and that it’s safe for pregnant women to smoke cigarettes.

The Verge reports that Google is scrambling to manually disable the AI Overview feature for certain searches after users found it giving our some truly bizarre advice, and information that is just made up nonsense.

Apparently cockroaches are so named because they live in penis holes.

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“FOO FIGHTER” EXPERIMENTAL FIRE CONTROL SATELLITE PROGRAM TO DEVELOP NEW GROUND SYSTEM PRIOR TO OFFICIAL LAUNCH

The Space Development Agency (SDA) has announced it is moving forward with the development of a ground system infrastructure for its experimental “FOO Fighter” fire control satellites.

Boeing’s Millennium Space Systems is developing the Fire-Control On Orbit-support-to-the-war Fighter, or FOO Fighter (F2) system. The system will involve an array of eight prototype satellites capable of high-fidelity tracking of adversary missiles and providing precise coordinates to missile defense interceptors.

The program “will accelerate the ability to provide fire-control in support of global detection, warning, and precision tracking of advanced missile threats, including hypersonic missile systems,” according to a draft solicitation released by the SDA last fall. “The F2 system will demonstrate advanced missile defense capability by incorporating fire control-quality sensors into a prototype constellation,” the solicitation adds.

This week, it was revealed that the first request for proposals for the experimental satellites is set to be released on June 18, according to SDA Director Derek Tournear, who spoke with reporters on May 24. The proposal request was first reported by Breaking Defense.

According to its current timelines, the SDA plans to solicit proposals for contractors to develop and manage the ground system backbone for the FOO Fighter program. This initiative marks a significant step toward advancing the U.S.’s satellite-based missile defense capabilities.

Tournear explained on Friday that a pre-RFP announcement had been posted on the SAM.gov website, detailing the SDA’s solicitation for an integrator to develop and manage the ground system for the FOO Fighter program.

The first solicitation, called the “Advanced Fire Control Ground Integration,” is looking for contractors to lay the groundwork for the program through the establishment of a developmental operations center (DOC) at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.

The development of the system’s DOC will include the construction of ground entry points for data downlinks, cloud hosting for computing, and providing the IT resources that will support the FOO Fighter program during its initial stages, as well as later providing support for other fire control demonstrations.

This will be followed by a second solicitation, the “Advanced Fire Control Mission Integration” (AFCMI), later this summer. This solicitation will secure a contractor to oversee ground-based operations for the management of incoming data from the FOO Fighter and future demonstrations, helping to propel the program toward eventual use with military operators.

Originally, the SDA had envisioned hiring a sole contractor to oversee all of the program’s demonstration satellites under the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) Futures Program (PFP). This included the T1DES (Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System) project and the T2DES (Transport Layer Tranche 2).

Following additional feedback from industry stakeholders, an additional draft solicitation was issued last month, prompting SDA to take a slightly different approach.

The April 30 solicitation announced an award “using Other Transaction Authority (OTA) with a total potential value of approximately $414 million to build eight satellites, for launch in first quarter fiscal year 2027,” revealing that the fixed-price agreement had been awarded to California-based Millennium Space Systems, Inc.

“The FOO Fighter program will provide an operational demonstration of fire control efforts separate from, but complementary to, our missile warning/missile tracking and missile defense efforts already underway in the tranches,” Tournear said, accompanying the solicitation’s release.

“We look forward to working with Millennium, a new teammate in the expanding marketplace of performers innovating to deliver the PWSA for the warfighter,” Tournear said.

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World’s first bioprocessor uses 16 human brain organoids for ‘a million times less power’ consumption than a digital chip

A Swiss biocomputing startup has launched an online platform that provides remote access to 16 human brain organoids. FinalSpark’s Neuroplatform is claimed to be the world’s first online platform delivering access to biological neurons in vitro. Moreover, bioprocessors like this are claimed to “consume a million times less power than traditional digital processors.”

FinalSpark says its Neuroplatform is capable of learning and processing information, and due to its low power consumption could reduce the environmental impacts of computing. In a recent research paper about its developments, it claims that training a single LLM like GPT-3 required approximately 10GWh – about 6,000 times greater energy consumption than the average European citizen uses in a whole year. Such energy expenditure could be massively cut following the successful deployment of bioprocessors. 

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Blinken Poking the Bear WWIII – Using Directed Energy Weapons

Given that the CIA is running Ukraine and Zelenskyy is simply a figurehead, Blinken is authorizing the CIA to strike inside Russia putting America in the war front and center.  A last ditch solution to Netanyahu’s criminal arrest dilemma.  War.   A last ditch effort to forego US elections.  War.   All while putting Taiwan on military alert. 

The Blinken logic is that if Ukraine uses – US weapons inside Russia – it could trigger WWIII.  Problem with this media illogic?  The Kyiv CIA has already been striking inside Russia in the Belgorod Region.  Every weapon left to the disposal of Ukraine is either US made, German made, or UK made. The Kabbalah is running out of time and solutions.  Kyiv has few troops left and morale is in hell.  But Netanyahu needs a diversion.

As Blinken testifies before the House committee, the topic opens with,  “I think the need for U.S. global leadership – and cooperation with allies and partners – has never been greater”.  Congress is in denial of world events.  No one in Congress objects to this dystopian intifada.  On the World Stage – No one wants America’s version of leadership.  Not even Europe.  Global Heads of State have watched as the Kabbalah has taken a nice filet mignon and turned it into blackened ash.   America is decaying – and their war is already lost.  Their only hold on The People was their anonymity.

Jacob Rothschild died.  Klaus Schwab has announced his retirement.  Soros has handed the reins to his youngest son Alex whose education is a BA in History.  And 145 countries voted FOR Palestine against Israel and the US.  The power struggle is now simply a Will Smith slap fest.  While the media continue their tribute to immature fantasyland drivel.   Ted Cruz, one of Kabbalahs top funding recipients, suddenly appears on CNN discussing election fraud.   And pundits grovel.  Nauseating!

The insanity of America’s politicians discussing initiating WWIII based on Ukraine is most certainly the last death wish of Gyorgy Schwartz – Soros.   Lloyd Austin has admitted that the US is not nearly ready for a confrontation with anyone given our depleted inventory of manpower and weapons.   Not to mention, the quality of manpower has been severely lowered via vaccine injuries and death and a lowering of intellectual and physical enlistment requirements.  Not to worry, the FBI is training migrants.   Not to work the vineyards as Pelosi claims – but to fight – internally & externally.  The same FBI that was given a thumbs up to take out Trump at Mar a Lago last year.

Inevitably, chaos has always been the mantra of Soros – which is also the reflection of the Biblical Satan.   Chaos vs Order.   Order is the equivalent of a country rooted in Biblical teachings.  Chaos is America.  If chaos wins – America goes to Hell.

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