ts, without compromising individualsΓÇÖ privacy.

NCSC blog entry.

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Privacy for Agentic AI

[2025.05.02] Sooner or later, itΓÇÖs going to happen. AI systems will start
acting as agents, doing things on our behalf with some degree of autonomy. I
think itΓÇÖs worth thinking about the security of that now, while its still a
nascent idea.

In 2019, I joined Inrupt, a company that is commercializing Tim Berners-LeeΓÇÖs
open protocol for distributed data ownership. We are working on a digital wallet
that can make use of AI in this way. (We used to call it an ΓÇ£active wallet.ΓÇ¥
Now weΓÇÖre calling it an ΓÇ£agentic wallet.ΓÇ¥)

I talked about this a bit at the RSA Conference earlier this week, in my keynote
talk about AI and trust. Any useful AI assistant is going to require a level of
access -- and therefore trust -- that rivals what we currently our email
provider, social network, or smartphone.

This Active Wallet is an example of an AI assistant. ItΓÇÖll combine personal
information about you, transactional data that you are a party to, and general
information about the world. And use that to answer questions, make predictions,
and ultimately act on your behalf. We have demos of this running right now. At
least in its early stages. Making it work is going require an extraordinary
amount of trust in the system. This requires integrity. Which is why weΓÇÖre
building protections in from the beginning.

Visa is also thinking about this. It just announced a protocol that uses AI to
help people make purchasing decisions.

I like VisaΓÇÖs approach because itΓÇÖs an AI-agnostic standard. I worry a lot
about lock-in and monopolization of this space, so anything that lets people
easily switch between AI models is good. And I like that Visa is working with
Inrupt so that the data is decentralized as well. HereΓÇÖs our announcement
about its announcement:

This isnΓÇÖt a new relationship -- weΓÇÖve been working together for over two
years. WeΓÇÖve conducted a successful POC and now weΓÇÖre standing up a sandbox
inside Visa so merchants, financial institutions and LLM providers can test our
Agentic Wallets alongside the rest of VisaΓÇÖs suite of Intelligent Commerce
APIs.

For that matter, we welcome any other company that wants to engage in the world
of personal, consented Agentic Commerce to come work with us as well.

I joined Inrupt years ago because I thought that Solid could do for personal
data what HTML did for published information. I liked that the protocol was an
open standard, and that it distributed data instead of centralizing it. AI
agents need decentralized data. ΓÇ£WalletΓÇ¥ is a good metaphor for personal
data stores. IΓÇÖm hoping this is another step towards adoption.

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Another Move in the Deepfake Creation/Detection Arms Race

[2025.05.05] Deepfakes are now mimicking heartbeats

In a nutshell

Recent research reveals that high-quality deepfakes unintentionally retain the
heartbeat patterns from their source videos, undermining traditional detection
methods that relied on detecting subtle skin color changes linked to heartbeats.
The assumption that deepfakes lack physiological signals, such as heart rate, is
no longer valid. This challenges many existing detection tools, which may need
significant redesigns to keep up with the evolving technology. To effectively
identify high-quality deepfakes, researchers suggest shifting focus from just
detecting heart rate signals to analyzing how blood flow is distributed across
different facial regions, providing a more accurate detection strategy.
And the AI models will start mimicking that.

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Fake Student Fraud in Community Colleges

[2025.05.06] Reporting on the rise of fake students enrolling in community
college courses:

The botsΓÇÖ goal is to bilk state and federal financial aid money by enrolling
in classes, and remaining enrolled in them, long enough for aid disbursements to
go out. They often accomplish this by submitting AI-generated work. And because
community colleges accept all applicants, theyΓÇÖve been almost exclusively
impacted by the fraud.

The article talks about the rise of this type of fraud, the difficulty of
detecting it, and how it upends quite a bit of the class structure and learning
community.

Slashdot thread.

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Chinese AI Submersible

[2025.05.07] A Chinese company has developed an AI-piloted submersible that can
reach speeds ΓÇ£similar to a destroyer or a US Navy torpedo,ΓÇ¥ dive ΓÇ£up to 60
metres underwater,ΓÇ¥ and ΓÇ£remain static for more than a month, like the
stealth capabilities of a nuclear submarine.ΓÇ¥ In case youΓÇÖre worried about
the military applications of this, you can relax because the company says that
the submersible is ΓÇ£designated for civilian useΓÇ¥ and can ΓÇ£launch research
rockets.ΓÇ¥

ΓÇ£Research rockets.ΓÇ¥ Sure.

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Florida Backdoor Bill Fails

[2025.05.12] A Florida bill requiring encryption backdoors failed to pass.

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Court Rules Against NSO Group

[2025.05.13] The case is over:

A jury has awarded WhatsApp $167 million in punitive damages in a case the
company brought against Israel-based NSO Group for exploiting a software
vulnerability that hijacked the phones of thousands of users.

IΓÇÖm sure itΓÇÖll be appealed. Everything always is.

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GoogleΓÇÖs Advanced Protection Now on Android

[2025.05.14] Google has extended its Advanced Protection features to Android
devices. ItΓÇÖs not for everybody, but something to be considered by high-risk
users.

Wired article, behind a paywall.

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Upcoming Speaking Engagements

[2025.05.14] This is a current list of where and when I am scheduled to speak:

IΓÇÖm speaking (remotely) at the Sektor 3.0 Festival in Warsaw, Poland, May
21-22, 2025.
The list is maintained on this page.

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AI-Generated Law

[2025.05.15] On April 14, Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum,
announced that the United Arab Emirates would begin using artificial
intelligence to help write its laws. A new Regulatory Intelligence Office would
use the technology to "regularly suggest updates" to the law and "accelerate the
issuance of legislation by up to 70%." AI would create a "comprehensive
legislative plan" spanning local and federal law and would be connected to
public administration, the courts, and global policy trends.

The plan was widely greeted with astonishment. This sort of AI legislating would
be a global "first," with the potential to go "horribly wrong." Skeptics fear
that the AI model will make up facts or fundamentally fail to understand
societal tenets such as fair treatment and justice when influencing law.

The truth is, the UAE's idea of AI-generated law is not really a first and not
necessarily terrible.

The first instance of enacted law known to have been written by AI was p

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