hatemail tech newsletter 2024-01-08
A walk through Shilpa Gupta's borderland; and the week's hacking and privacy news
We took a spontaneous stroll over to the Amant art center in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn recently. Our reward was an exhibition featuring the works of Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta. Some of cabal remembers Gupta from her work at the Greenpoint outpost for the Faurschou art consultancy and collection. Gupta’s Threat was displayed by Faurschou in 2022, a massive piece composed of thousands of soap bricks each with the word “THREAT” inscribed. The artist encouraged visitors to take a soap brick home, until the piece was no more.
The exhibition currently running at Amant provokes thoughts about borders, castes, and the structures of society that are as forceful as they are invisible. The exhibition is titled I did not tell you what I saw, but only what I dreamt and contains pieces created by the artist from 2008 to 2023, with most of them being produced in the past five years. Pieces make use of rocks taken from disputed territory; cannabis smuggled across a border finds new purpose as an ink on paper; a speaker hanging from the ceiling at one point appears to chase visitors around the room with recorded voice counting off numbers in a banal, authoritative manner.
Gupta’s manifestation of grim and violent themes is frankly playful. While some may claim that the discourse of today’s dark realities require nuance, it may be actually be levity that is lacking. The ability to disperse and consume information with a light, gentle, and caring touch could be all the difference between finding an ally in someone or finding one at odds.
Shilpa Gupta’s I did not tell you what I saw, but only what I dreamt runs at Amant in Brooklyn until April 2024.

Threat by Shilpa Gupta as it appeared at Faurschou’s gallery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn in 2022. Source: Faurschou

For, in your tongue, I cannot fit as exhibited at Amant’s running exhibition of Gupta’s work. Source: Amant

TikTok’s Data Collection Being Scrutinized by Australia's Privacy Watchdog
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), the country’s privacy watchdog, launched an inquiry into TikTok’s personal data collection methods and consent protocols. [The Guardian]
Cars Have Become Computers On Wheels – And Police Have Easy Access to Data
Law enforcement is increasingly turning to car data to solve crimes. The practice sheds light on how much data is already stored in cars, the growth of computers being incorporated into them, and the legal gray areas surrounding the issue. [The Record]
An Indigenous Perspective on Generative AI
Justin Hendrix sits down with Michael Running Wolf from McGill University to talk about exploitation, data sovereignty, and ownership from an Indigenous lens. [Tech Policy Press]
Google Wrote a ‘Robot Constitution to Make Sure Its New AI Droids Won’t Kill Us
Google’s DeepMind robotics team has introduced a new training data system with a “Robot Constitution” inspired by Isaac Asimov in order to prioritize human safety during tasks. [The Verge]
California Senator Files Bill Prohibiting Agencies from Working with Unethical Tech Companies
Sen. Steve Padilla had introduced Senate Bills 892 and 893, which prohibits the California government from contracting AI services from companies that don’t meet “established standards.” [The Verge]

Inauthentic Accounts Pose as Taiwanese Users to Spread Political Memes and Videos Ahead of 2024 Election
This report released by Graphika describes a coordinated effort to manipulate online conversation ahead of Taiwan’s January 2024 presidential election. [Graphika]
Avert Your Eyes, Avoid Responsibility and Just Blame TikTok
Zeynep Tufekci argues that politicians will have to develop policy ideas beyond social media platform accountability if they really want to mitigate the influence that online disinformation has on young voters. [The New York Times]

Law Firm That Handles Data Breaches Was Hit by Data Breach
International law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe recently reported that sensitive data of more than 637,000 individuals was stolen by hackers in March 2023. [TechCrunch]
A Mexican Cartel Set Up Its Own Shitty Internet And Forced Everyone To Use It
The residents of Cenobio Moreno and San Juan de los Plátanos, in Michoacán, made monthly internet payments to the drug cartel Los Viagras for access to a poor quality network. [LUIS]
Adversarial Machine Learning: A Taxonomy and Terminology of Attacks and Mitigations
This report lays out a taxonomy of concepts and definitions in the field of adversarial machine learning (AML) to build future standards for security assessments and to develop a common industry language. [NIST]

Meet ‘Link History,’ Facebook’s New Way to Track the Websites You Visit
Facebook is pushing a new data setting on users called “Link History,” which collects information on all of the links you click while in its mobile app and uses the data to fuel targeted ads. [Gizmodo]
New Spin on a Revolving Door: Pentagon Officials Turned Venture Capitalists
Defense officials are moving away from traditional revolving door weapons makers like Lockheed Martin and instead are increasingly joining venture capital firms bankrolling defense technology startups. [The New York Times]
Huawei Teardown Shows 5nm Chip Made in Taiwan, Not China
A teardown of Huawei Technologies Co.’s latest notebook revea;s that the laptop runs on a chip made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., contradicting speculation that Huawei’s mainland Chinese chip maker had achieved a major technical advance. [Bloomberg]
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