Headquarters of the UK's National Security Agency

Your WIRED daily briefing. Today, Privacy International has warned that international spy agencies are using intelligence sharing to bypass legal and ethical constraints, Facebook has finally published its community standards, hackers used a DNS exploit to hijack Amazon IP addresses in cryptocurrency theft and more.

Campaign group Privacy International has issued new report detailing the practice of intelligence sharing between allied governments' spy agencies (The Register). The group highlights particular concerns with the way in which this effectively allows states to "outsource surveillance", for example allowing them to gather intelligence on their own citizens where this is illegal, or obtain information from torture without having to technically order it themselves. PI also noted a lack of government oversight of the practice and warns that "without proper safeguards, states can use intelligence sharing as a way of outsourcing surveillance to each other, bypassing any constraints and limits on their own intelligence gathering".


Facebook has published details of its community standards, a 22-page document of rules for its users which, it says, "closely mirror our internal guidelines" (Ars Technica). However, the new standards don't match the level of detail found in confidential briefings given to Facebook's moderation team, for example failing to go into depth on where the line between hate speech and purported "humour" lies. The publication of the new rules coincides with a company-wide tightening of regulations ahead of Europe's new GDPR law on May 25, alongside a WhatsApp ban for Europeans under the age of 16 and the introduction of a tool to download your images and data from Instagram.

Hackers used a Border Gateway Protocol attack to hijack internet traffic that was supposed to be going to cryptocurrency website MyEtherWallet.com and instead route it to a phishing site, stealing an estimated $150,000 in cryptocurrency (Ars Technica). The attack compromised US ISP eNet, which then gave out the false routing data to thousands of users. Amazon officials say: "Neither AWS nor Amazon Route 53 were hacked or compromised. An upstream Internet Service Provider (ISP) was compromised by a malicious actor who then used that provider to announce a subset of Route 53 IP addresses to other networks with whom this ISP was peered. These peered networks, unaware of this issue, accepted these announcements and incorrectly directed a small percentage of traffic for a single customer’s domain to the malicious copy of that domain."

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Researchers working in the North Polar regions have found high concentrations of microplastic particles in Arctic sea ice, illustrating how ubiquitous microplastic pollution has become. Speaking to BBC News, researcher Gunnar Gerdts said that, using new methods capable of detecting plastic particles as small as 11 micrometres in diameter, "we found concentrations of over 12,000 particles per litre of sea ice - which is two to three times higher than what we'd found in past measurements." It's thought that the microplastic particles – defined as fragments of plastic less than 5mm long – largely originate from huge floating clumps of plastic waste found in our oceans. The scope of their effect on sea life has yet to be fully assessed.

After a year of TV with a noticeable lack of gratuitous Western-themed android violence, Westworld is finally back on our screens with the first episode of season two (WIRED). In true Westworld fashion, however, the episode raised way more questions than it answered. Where does the line between host and guest end? What exactly is Delos up to? Where did William get his iconic black hat?

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On Sunday, April 22, paper planes started gliding through the sky from tower blocks in Moscow. The planes used in the small-scale protest mimicked the logo of encrypted messaging service Telegram.

WIRED 05.18 is out now. As Apple closes in on becoming the first $1 trillion company we look at its next move, step into the battle to recreate dead celebrities as holograms and go onboard the world's biggest cruise ship. Subscribe now and save.


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