Cybersecurity Advisors Network

CyAN is proud to partner with 2 special crypto events in Paris on 4-5 July.

In the evening of July 4th, come and meet our member Yul Bahat,international cybersecurity expert, a hacker and a French social engineer to learn about”Cryptocurrency threats: what kind of target are you?”  Free entry upon registration

In the morning of July 5th, an international event on “Crypto Investment Today and Tomorrow“, will provide international crypto investors, entrepreneurs and related professionals with a unique opportunity to meet key investors and influencers from France, the French-speaking world, and beyond.

Leading investors and community leaders from France, Switzerland, Russia, the USA, Brazil and other countries will be there to discuss industry issues and present their strategy. The issue of securing crypto assets will be discussed with participation of hackers and  industry experts.

In addition, a selection of thrilling international Blockchain projects will be presented on a giant screen.

By Peter Coroneos*, CyAN Head of APAC Region

– The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CyAN –

From Cambridge Analytica to Bedroom Mazurka — The Ethical Boundaries of Human Tolerance Take Another Step into the Abyss

Call it audacity, diversion or sheer opportunism, but the announcement that Facebook will enter the multi-billion dollar dating game caught just about everyone by surprise. Me included.

Not that the idea isn’t entirely logical or feasible.  I’m sure that the business case was easy to make, with its 200 million self-categorised singles surely a market too good to miss.

“So clearly there’s something to do here” proclaimed Mark Zuckerberg, assuming that this is a problem to be solved.

Not just hookups mind you, but long term relationships. The coders are already hard at work, weighting our variables and tabulating our characteristics.

Having visited Facebook HQ in 2008 before it went stellar, before my kids even knew what it was, I can still see the ranks of software engineers, hundreds of them, jammed at their desks, separated only by winding blue skeins of Cat. 5 cable, algorithmically imagining human love – while the marketers, huddled in their glass rooms debate the monetisation thereof.

I couldn’t help smile at the irony given Facebook started life as a dorm room fantasy, a rating system (no less) for college girls based on “hotness”, before it went legit. What are we to make of this? Has the company circled back to its roots?

Sam Langford from junked.com nailed the obvious PR challenge: “Because getting even more personal data from people is gonna go down a treat right now.”

We are assured however, that privacy will be paramount. Fresh off the congressional spit-roast that was MZ’s testimony, the ever-optimistic Facebook User #1, crowed delight while he delighted the crowd with the unlimited possibilities of merging big data analytics with the most fundamental human need. You could almost hear him saying: “It’s nothing less than our duty to do this for the world”, overpopulation aside.**

As one wag tweeted “Facebook gonna marry you to the Russian spambot of your dreams”, referencing the degree to which automated messaging from a digital friend could in fact be a machine in a server farm in a former Soviet state run by the same people that believe in their democratic right to deprive you of your bitcoin and disrupt other people’s elections.

When you’ve finished reading this piece, search for “10 ways to tell if your new Facebook friend is a spam bot”. It’s poignant when you get to this part:

“When real life love dries up, you can often find some kind of solace in the correspondence you shared with your inamorata when the flame of your love burned brightest… [but] the beautiful words of your love may be replaced with the dreaded phrase, This message is no longer available because it was identified as abusive or marked as spam, which might be the coldest break-up note a man can receive.”

If you’ve seen the movie Ex Machina, it is said the reclusive main character who is developing humanoid love-robots is part based on the Facebook chief. The character, Nathan Bates, is described by one film critic as “a man who aspires to put himself at the centre of creation”.

Hmm, the Centre of Creation, “clearly something to do here”, spam bots. You see what’s happening here, people? You see? We are sleepwalking into a world where machines will decide who you meet, what you think, how you vote, and what will make you happy.

Technology, like fire, is a good servant but a bad master.  And when unelected corporations become more powerful than governments, when accountability equals shareholder value, when privacy is a long forgotten concept, when ‘friend’ and ‘like’ and ‘love’ and ’truth’ and ‘community’ and ‘relationship’ all become mere metrics for investor meetings, will we look back at this day and ask: At what point did we let our humanity slip away?

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**on the other hand if we end up marrying robots, the population problem will be solved.

* As CEO of the Internet Industry Association from 1997-2011, Peter Coroneos has championed best practice across a range of issues, from privacy to cybersecurity to child protection. By ministerial appointment he served two terms on the Privacy Advisory Committee, a panel of experts advising government on emerging social and technological threats to privacy. Peter was a prime mover in the passage of Australia’s anti-spam laws, heralded as the strongest in the world, which removed Australia from the top 20 list of spamming nations. He also helped secure major amendments to the Privacy Act which brought the private sector under its remit. He twice represented industry at APEC on standards for privacy protection throughout the Asia Pacific. Peter was twice invited to the White House to advise the Obama Administration on cybersecurity policy. He is now Regional Head for the global Cybersecurity Advisors Network.(www.cyan.international)

By Peter Coroneos*, CyAN Head of APAC Region

– The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CyAN –

We should not be surprised by the revelation that Facebook facilitated massive privacy breaches through harvesting users’ data or by turning a blind eye to the practices of the app developers they supported. Their model is based on encouraging users to reveal vast amounts of personal data then mining that data for profit. They talk about their mission of promoting more transparency in society through the sharing of information, but there is very little transparency in how they capture and monetise our information.

Recent shock admissions by former senior Facebook executives that they knowingly manipulated the dopamine response to trigger and addict users’ neurological reward systems through the Facebook “Like” feature represents one of the most pernicious examples of applying psychology for mass exploitation. It’s getting very close to the drug dealer’s modus operandi.

The ethics of these practices are yet to be accounted for, but I imagine more will soon come to light as we once again grapple with the perils of the Information Age. And whether the utility of social media in this case is worth the trade off in the loss of sovereignty of our personal information.

The EU General Directive on Privacy Regulation (GDPR) which begins in May comes on the heels of Australia’s Mandatory Data Breach Reporting regime which started a month ago. Some say these measures are too little too late. Others complain they represent a massive impost on business and slant the playing field against legitimate access to information.

I certainly believe that in an age of cybercrime, it’s not good enough to hide behind purely commercial arguments to justify mass data collection. The breaches we’ve seen over the last few years should put everyone on notice that whatever you collect is a honeypot for the bad guys, even if your own intentions are relatively benign.

Back in 1998 as industry leader for the Internet, we wrote to the then Prime Minister urging him to consider extending the Privacy Act to cover the private sector. We did so in the belief that abuse of privacy would undermine confidence in the nascent digital economy. We saw an opportunity for Australia to be better than other nations, to be reputationally known as a safer place to do digital business, the “Swiss bank” of the international e-commerce community.

The subsequent reforms to the Act did indeed occur, once businesses came to realise that good privacy is good for business.

Regrettably, not all cultures are so privacy respectful and the US example stands out. This is not to say that people are less concerned there, but the powerful interests that stand behind the doctrine of “commercial free speech” are unrelenting in the assertion of their right to extract commercial advantage where they can.

The dilemma for Australians is that the large social media and search platforms we have come to rely upon are largely US based and follow US law. For many practical reasons, they argue they cannot comply with everyone’s privacy laws, so we are left with the lowest common denominator.

The impacts go beyond economic exploitation. We have seen the manipulation of the democratic process itself by mining and aggregating vast amounts of personal data using advanced machine learning to profile our thoughts, opinions and attitudes. Campaigns based on misinformation are skewing democratic outcomes. We should be very concerned about this.

Political parties do this and they hire very skilled technologists to help them. The Cambridge Analytica debacle is the most high profile example, but there will be more.

As a technology industry leader, I was often asked to comment on the interplay between technology and society. Observing the impacts, I became more and more convinced that just because technology can enable certain processes to be done does not mean that they should be done.

We are seeing a parallel in the use of artificial intelligence for autonomous warfare with grave concerns raised by many of the researchers whose work has given rise to the use and misuse of drone technology. It seems like we are entering a new era of the genie escaping the bottle.

However this dilemma is not new. The early creators of nuclear technology voiced similar misgivings about the future application of their work, and were horrified to see the consequences of the first atomic bombs dropped on civilian populations.

So where do we go from here? Should we get off all social media? Should we demand more rights and more transparency in how our personal information is collected and used by foreignbased organisations? Should we examine our own practices as companies to build a bridge of trust to our customers?

I recommend we take a hard look at our own values and begin in earnest the discussion about what kind of society we want to become. It’s hard to understand the trade offs we are unconsciously making precisely because no one, not even the creators of technology can predict future applications. So instead we need to set parameters on collection and use. The Privacy Act does that. How well do you understand the law and the principles it is based on? Are you having that discussion internally and with your customers? Are you seeing trust as fundamental not only to business, but to society? Are you prepared to step up and proclaim a commitment to respecting privacy as a basic human right? Are you prepared to be held accountable to that standard?

For its time for us all to evaluate these questions and stake out a position. Our customers and our citizens will demand that of us. It’s time to examine our own consciences. Perhaps it’s not too late to bring a better alignment between human values and corporate practices. Technology is after all neutral. It’s what we do with it that matters.

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* As CEO of the Internet Industry Association from 1997-2011, Peter Coroneos championed best practice across range of issues, from privacy to cyber security to child protection. He served six years alongside the current  privacy commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim, on the Privacy Advisory Committee, a ministerial panel which advised government and industry on emerging social and technological threats to privacy. Peter was a prime mover in the passage of Australia’s anti-spam laws, heralded as the strongest in the world, which removed us from the top 20 list of spamming nations. He also helped secure changes to the Privacy Act which brought the private sector under its remit. He twice represented Australian industry at APEC on standards for privacy protection throughout the Asia Pacific. Based in Sydney, he is now CEO of Icon Cyber (iconcyber.com) and Regional Head for the global Cybersecurity Advisors Network