Deep Shit: Paradigms, Paranoia and Politics of Machine Intelligence (en)

05/10/17 • 30 min

The lecture explores the infrastructuralisation of artificial intelligence techniques and technologies including deep learning, convolutional neural networks, robotics and IoT along with the autonomisation of capitalist processes in tools and entities like blockchain, DAO and Ethereum, approaching them in the context of their cultural, philosophical, political, social, economic, and ecologic entanglements.

Paul Feigelfeld

Digital warfare from highly complex and clandestine weapons systems like Stuxnet to brute force DDoS attacks like the recent ones carried out by the Mirai botnet, to algorithmic manipulation à la Cambridge Analytica call for highly urgent reforms in international law and war conventions, as well as new forms of critical practice and theory in all fields and across all disciplines.

Paul Feigelfeld

Previous Episode

History of DDoS: from digital civil disobedience to online censorship (en)

Deflect has been at the forefront protecting human rights and independent media organizations from Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks. We will give a brief history of DDoS, from digital civil disobedience, to inter-state aggression, retaliatory hacker operations, and online censorship. Leaning on real-life cases we will describe the problems posed to civil society by DDoS actions today. We will involve the audience to share their experience of DDoS and propose community driven solutions.

Floriana Pagano
Donncha O Cearbhaill

During this session we will offer a short history of DDoS – from the Zapatistas’ use of Floodnet and the “Netstrikes” and “Virtual Sit-Ins” at the turn of the millennium, to Anonymous’ campaigns and political actions against Estonia, Georgia and Ukraine, up to more recent and disruptive episodes like the attacks against Krebs on Security and Dyn. A description of 3 case studies reported by Deflect Labs in 2016 – targeting an independent news site in Ukraine, the website of the Palestinian global campaign BDS Movement and the official website of Black Lives Matter – will illustrate how DDoS is being used by governments, local authorities and hacker crews alike to censor critical voices online. Beyond the hype generated by Mirai and other software for managing botnets, launching a DDoS attack is becoming easier and cheaper by the day, and the risk of a “democratization of online censorship”, as Brian Krebs has called it, is growing.

Even if websites of independent media and civil society organizations can be protected by free DDoS mitigation infrastructures like Deflect.ca, the protection measures these services can offer have their limits, and it’s important to explore solutions based on community action.

This session will aim at starting a conversation with groups that are particularly vulnerable to DDoS attacks, to find common ground in solidarity against the threat of DDoS-based censorship. How big are the risks? What are our needs before, during and after the attacks? How can we defend ourselves and band together to do so more effectively?

During the second part of the session the public will be invited to share their experiences of DDoS attacks, those at risk of attack to discuss their needs, and those in a position to help to consider how we can collaborate.

The purpose of this session is to gather information on our community’s needs and capabilities and to start developing standards for threat-intelligence sharing among peers and participants of re:publica.

Next Episode

Yes, I said cyber. Digital security and rights in international development cooperation

Cyber. the word entails controversy: hype, misunderstandings, misappropriation, and above all many yet unanswered questions. Due to this and especially now this notion and topic are becoming increasingly important within international cooperation. Between network policy and security policy, between cyber arms race and cyber cynicism, one thing is often left out: What about the digital security of the poorest and most remote regions and populations? The more countries like Germany address the protection of their own digital infrastructures, the more it becomes apparent that we also have a global responsibility in this regard. However, an official "cyber development policy" does not yet exist. How do we prevent an increase of digital divides in the digital arms race? What cyber-risks need to be taken into account by development cooperation and humanitarian aid? In this panel the German development cooperation deals with questions like these and looks together with partner countries, experts and the audience for suitable answers. Because if cyber - then responsibly.

Katrin Bornemann
Nathaniel A. Raymond
Mona Al achkar
Rahel Dette
Isabel Skierka

In the "cyber discourse" cross-border voices are often not heard. This notion is often closely linked to national security and keeps states currently on their toes. We need to and want to look beyond national borders as resilience of connected systems needs to be guaranteed also on a global level. However, collaboration in the field of security has its pitfalls. Under which circumstances can one country strengthen the cyber capacities of another country? How do human rights based approaches to cyber security strategies look like? It is difficult to make security as a task for international cooperation tangible, but it is necessary. Should experts, the government, NGOs or watchdogs be responsible for cyber capacity building? How can technical and practical know-how about internet risks reach also the most remote regions? Who guarantees that the digital transformation does not reinforce inequalities or that deficits in cyber capacities do not hamper development? In regard to these questions one has to keep always in mind that new cyber security strategies should be developed according to the needs of the population and that freedoms and rights are guaranteed.