The certificate linked to the virus will not be available before June in Switzerland. Until then, here are twelve answers linked to questions of security, data and accessibility concerning what some call the “Immunity Passport”. In particular, Jean-Pierre Hubaux, C4DT Academic Director, provides insights on the questions linked to data.
French-language news paper ‘Le Temps’ published an opinion piece by C4DT’s Academic Director and Head of the LDS lab at EPFL, Jean-Pierre Hubaux, on trusting the SwissCovid app. Prof. Hubaux raises the point that the excessive focus on privacy protection has cast doubt on a tool which makes it possible to defend other rights. Read the article in French on ‘www.letemps.ch’ by clicking the following link.
Increasingly, reports warn that state-sponsored actors use social media to spread fake news/disinformation in order to sow distrust and create panic during pandemics and create discord and polarized opinions among people on political issues during democratic elections. Adding to this, social media platforms’ algorithms “add salt to the wound” by feeding their users posts which are aligned with their opinion in order to increase their screen time. How serious and how massive is the problem? What are its implications? And what can/should be done about it?
During this forum, organized jointly by the Center for Digital Trust (C4DT), the CyberPeace Institute and the Graduate Institute’s Centre for Trade and Economic Integration (CTEI) in Geneva, we will discuss not only the technological aspects of this phenomena, but also the regulatory role executive and legislative branches of governments should play. Societal, economical and geopolitical implications will also be debated. This event is open to the general public.
For more information please click below
Following the webinar SwissCovid (DP^3T project) – a proximity-tracing app against COVID-19: building trust in a technology solution organized today by C4DT, the explanations of journalist Marielle Savoy on the question of the population’s support for the Swisscovid application.
Click below to listen to the full report
Thursday 26 September 2019 saw the launch of the CyberPeace Institute, an independent NGO that will address the growing impact of major cyberattacks, assist vulnerable communities, promote transparency, and advance global discussions on acceptable behavior in cyberspace. EPFL President Martin Vetterli will be sitting on the Executive Board, and the Center for Digital Trust is named as a scientific partner.
The C4DT is looking forward to working with the @cyberpeaceinst led by @DuguinStephane and @MarietjeSchaake and supporting its mission to enhance the stability of #cyberspace. Please click below to access the official announcement.
In this talk, Dan Bogdanov will start by introducing secure computing technologies and their potential in enterprise and government use. He will then look at a focus group study of the barriers of adopting such technologies based on interviews in many industries.
September 4, 2019 @ 14:15 in BC 410
by Prof. Ben Zhao, Univ. of Chicago
The lack of transparency in today’s deep learning systems has paved the way for a new type of threats, commonly referred to as backdoor or Trojan attacks. In this talk, Ben Zhao will describe two recent results on detecting and understanding backdoor attacks on deep learning systems.
September 24th, 2019 @ 14:15, room BC 420
Kasra Edalatnejad presents DataShare, a decentralized and privacy-preserving global search system that enables journalists worldwide to find documents via a dedicated network of peers. This work stems from the need of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) for securing their search and discovery platform.
Wednesday, July 3rd 2019 @16:15, room BC 410
By Prof. Wei Meng, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Click is the prominent way that users interact with web applications. Attackers aim to intercept genuine user clicks to either send malicious commands to another application on behalf of the user or fabricate realistic ad click traffic. In this talk, Prof. Wei Meng investigates the click interception practices on the Web.
Tuesday July 23rd, 2019 @10:00, room BC 420
EPFL’s IC School invites you to the 2019 edition of the IC Summer Research Institute (SuRI), held in Lausanne (EPFL, BC 420) on June 13-14. The conference brings together renowned researchers and experts from academia and industry who will present their latest research in cybersecurity, privacy, and cryptography. The event is open to everyone and attendance is free of charge. For more information and to register please click here…
A slightly morbid example of how you never know what your data might eventually be used for. Although this is not exactly a classical case of your privacy being violated, I have some doubts that everyone who enthusiastically chased cute virtual monsters in their neighborhood would also have volunteered to collect data to train military (…)
We use Matrix, too, so this issue hits close to home for us. The timing is infortunate. Europe is actively working to reduce its digital dependency, and this incident has landed right in the middle of those efforts, ready to be weaponized by skeptics. However, the details matter. From what is currently known, neither the (…)
Amongst all the big news, I really like blog posts like this – just a cryptographer finding an interesting oddity, deciding to dig into it, and sharing their findings with the rest of us, even if nothing big came of it.
A reality check for anyone assuming AI subscriptions will stay at today’s prices — or get cheaper. Repricing is only a matter of time. But beyond the economics lies a sovereignty trap: cheap access accelerates dependency, erodes internal capability, and eliminates negotiating leverage before the real cost arrives. By then, workflows and data are already (…)
I find this interesting because it extends the debate about digital sovereignty beyond software and hardware to the scarce resource of satellite communication spectrum. The EU’s 20-year strategy clearly demonstrates its vision for autonomous, secure infrastructure, such as the IRIS² project. I hope this assertive yet justified strategy progresses without provoking retaliation from the US (…)
This piece offers an optimistic path forward for AI governance. Rather than searching for consensus on abstract ethical principles, we can build on the public values that our societies have already agreed upon. The author also makes the important point that experimentation in AI governance will inevitably produce failures and that this is not only (…)
As the global AI landscape consolidates around US and Chinese dominance, every nation outside this duopoly faces an urgent question: how can countries retain meaningful control over a technology increasingly expected to shape their economic competitiveness, national security, and societal resilience? From the viability of sovereign cloud architectures and open-weight foundation models to the governance mechanisms needed to ensure AI systems reflect Swiss values and legal frameworks, this conference brings together industry leaders, researchers, legal experts, policymakers, and civil society actors to assess the concrete levers of AI sovereignty and work toward actionable recommendations for a Swiss sovereign AI strategy.
Now even the pope chimes in on giving his ideas how to use LLMs in a responsible way. His name predecessor, Leo the XIII, had many things to say about responsible capitalism. Now is the time to set the agenda straight with regards to LLMs: the pope puts the human in the center again, asks (…)
It’s encouraging to see digital sovereignty discussions beginning to bear fruit, though much of that fruit is still unripe. The more closely the non-US community examines the issue, the more complex it becomes: ‘sovereign’ cloud computing means little if the underlying hardware is produced in the US or China. A server is not just one (…)
November 10th, 2026, 09h30-18h30, Starling Hotel, 1025 Saint-Sulpice Introduction The global AI landscape is consolidating around two dominant poles. Global corporate AI investment reached $581.7 billion in 2025 — up 130% year-over-year — while generative AI investment alone surged nearly fivefold to $170.9 billion, with the overwhelming share of this capital concentrated in the United (…)
The Geneva Dialogue on Responsible Behaviour in Cyberspace is bringing together key stakeholders during Geneva Cyber Week to explore how AI is transforming cyber threats and whether existing cyber norms can keep up with rapidly evolving technology — particularly when the same tools can be used for both attack and defence.
Talkspace has been using patients’ therapy session data to train an AI chatbot, and undoubtedly, many of them have no idea. It is well documented that most users do not read terms of service closely enough to understand what they’re actually consenting to. Even if they did, Talkspace’s assurances that the data is “anonymized” are (…)
I think this take on the state of AI adoption is spot on. Since ChatGPT made its public debut, we’ve been promised large-scale transformation of the workplace and society at large. But a little over three years in, apart from very specific tasks, we’re still unclear what this supposed revolution will actually look like, and (…)
This philosophical rumination on whether or not LLMs have a consciousness has actual implications on how to train LLMs and how users will interact with them. It is possible to train LLMs as pure technology and remove any reference to a consciousness, but then alignement becomes very difficult, as there is no basis to anchor (…)
