One more thing which doesn’t stop inspiring security-related articles: cars with a 24/7 internet connection. This time it’s KIA where attackers found a way to remotely open/lock the vehicles, start the motor, and many more things. The only thing needed is the license-plate number. So, it seems that the car manufacturers still don’t test their (…)
A good discussion on the reasons behind the regulatory fervor regarding AI which reveals that, at its core, it is a struggle for power—specifically, the power to determine the values, goals, and means that will eventually be enshrined in regional and international institutional settings governing AI.
This white paper will analyze the extent to which concerns surrounding different classes of public sector use of AI—process automation, AI-driven decision-making, and citizen service delivery with AI tools—differ, consider the existing national and supranational regulatory frameworks, and develop recommendations for strategic areas necessary to guide the usage of AI decision-making tools in the public sector. To achieve this the project will include document analysis, stakeholder interviews, and comparative research from other countries’ use cases and regulations.
This project addresses the growing need for a strategic policy approach to data and data spaces in Switzerland, especially as the EU is rapidly advancing in this field. Since 2023, the Federal Chancellery, particularly the DTI (Digital Transformation and ICT Steering), has been consolidating efforts towards the “Swiss Data Ecosystem.” The C4DT at EPFL supports these efforts, aiming to develop a foundational document for Swiss data policy, focusing on the state’s role in the data ecosystem. This document will be crafted in collaboration with key policy actors in Switzerland and will include practical recommendations for the Federal Council and Parliament.
The EPFL AI Center and LauzHack is hosting a DeepFake Mini-Hackathon. While rapid advances in GenAI and the increased accessibility to models/compute can lead to impressive advances in science and technology, these tools can be also for malicious purposes, notably deepfake generation. The goal of this hackathon is to leverage the intelligence and creativity of the EPFL community (and surroundings) to better understand and raise awareness about the technology that can be used for deepfake generation and detection.
Modulation recognition state-of-the-art architectures use deep learning models. These models are vulnerable to adversarial perturbations, which are imperceptible additive noise crafted to induce misclassification, posing serious questions in terms of safety, security, or performance guarantees at large. One of the best ways to make the model robust is to use adversarial learning, in which the model is fine-tuned with these adversarial perturbations. However, this method has several drawbacks. It is computationally costly, has convergence instabilities and it does not protect against multiple types of corruptions at the same time. The objective of this project is to develop improved and effective adversarial training solutions that tackle these drawbacks.
C4DT Demonstrator using the Swiss Public Sandbox Trust Infrastructure This is our third article about the Swiss e-ID Journey. An overview of the system can be found in our first article, Switzerland’s e-ID journey so far [1a], and an introduction to the first steps of using the sandbox [8] in our second article, The Swiss (…)
In our latest edition of the C4DT Digital Governance Book Review, we discuss investigative journalist Kashmir Hill’s book on the rise and consequences of facial-recognition company Clearview AI for the future of privacy.
Investigative journalist Kashmir Hill traces the rise and consequences of facial-recognition company Clearview AI on the future of privacy.
On the 19th of June 2024 the C4DT Factory organized a hands-on workshop to show what can go wrong when Large Language Models (LLMs) are fine-tuned. It was a pleasure working with our partners from armasuisse, FOITT (BIT), ELCA, ICRC, Kudelski Security, SICPA, Swiss Post, and Swissquote. LLMs take the world by storm, but for (…)
In this fourth part of the blog series “Swiss e-ID journey”, we give an overview of the Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) [10] landscape in CH, EU, and beyond. This allows the reader to put the current effort of the e-ID in context with international efforts in references and implementations regarding e-ID systems. You can read the (…)
C4DT Demonstrator using the Swiss Public Sandbox Trust Infrastructure This is our third article about the Swiss e-ID Journey. An overview of the system can be found in our first article, Switzerland’s e-ID journey so far [1a], and an introduction to the first steps of using the sandbox [8] in our second article, The Swiss (…)
The d-voting project from the DEDIS lab at EPFL is a decentralized voting system that leverages blockchain technology and cryptographic algorithms to ensure secure, transparent, and verifiable elections. By using a blockchain as the storage medium, the system allows multiple entities to oversee the election process and enables easy access for public verifiers to ensure (…)
October 1st, 2024, 09h30-17h30, SwissTech Convention Center, EPFL Introduction In 2024, more than 50 national elections are taking place or have already taken place across the globe, from Taiwan’s presidential elections in January, to India’s Lok Sabha election staged over seven phases from April to June, to the US presidential elections in November. Meanwhile, the (…)
CPDP is a non-profit platform originally founded in 2007 by research groups from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Université de Namur and Tilburg University. The platform was joined in the following years by the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique and the Fraunhofer Institut für System und Innovationsforschung and has now grown into a platform carried by 20 academic centers of excellence from the EU, the US and beyond.
The Swiss E-ID Journey This article is the second in a series of three articles which discusses C4DT’s experiences and takeaways testing the Swiss Confederation Public Sandbox Trust Infrastructure, hereafter abbreviated as “sandbox”. In the first article, we looked over all the components of the sandbox, and its setup. In this article we delve deeper (…)
[Lang : Fr][ictjournal.ch] Les populations ont de moins en moins confiance dans l’innovation, selon le baromètre Edelman. En entretien avec la rédaction, Olivier Crochat, directeur du Center for Digital Trust de l’EPFL (C4DT), partage son diagnostic et ses pistes de solution.
May 28th, 2024, 09h15-12h00,EPFL by invitation only Introduction Ensuring the secure transmission and storage of vital data, imperative for societal, economic, and governmental functions, is a growing concern among politicians. The proliferation of cloud computing underscores the urgency of addressing this issue, making it a central focus in discussions on digitalization security. Acknowledging data’s central (…)
What does the future hold for the service public in the digital platform era? Check out the first edition of our Insight, by Prof. Matthias Finger & Dr. Melanie Kolbe-Guyot.
Six years ago, EPFL rolled out an e-voting platform developed by Bryan Ford’s DEDIS lab for its internal elections [2]. The then newly-formed Center for Digital Trust (C4DT) brought this project as one of the first under the umbrella of its Digital-Trust Open Platform, the precursor to what is today the C4DT Factory – (…)
In this policy paper, Matthias Finger and Melanie Kolbe-Guyot unpack the challenges that digital platforms bring to traditional service public sectors. They suggest actionable strategies for policymakers to ensure accessibility, affordability, and sustainability of the existing physical service public offerings.
Inspired by the panel session at this year’s “AI House” panel session on “Transparency in Artificial Intelligence”, this write up very informally summarizes Imad Aad’s thoughts about transparency and trust in AI. It is aimed at readers with all backgrounds, including those who had little or no exposure to AI so far.
This project underscores the need for a paradigm shift in data privacy policies, acknowledging the inherent trade-off between data utility and privacy that current Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) cannot fully mitigate. It highlights the limitations of PETs and the systemic responsibility issues within the data supply chain, where technology producers often evade accountability. Consequently, a shift towards a data-use case-centric evaluation framework is recommended, one that prioritizes utility while minimizing leakage through nuanced risk assessments. Finally, the porject calls for greater transparency and a redefined accountability structure in the data sharing ecosystem.
This book offers an in-depth, objective analysis of the three dominant regulatory models for digitalization—market-driven by the US, state-driven by China, and citizen-driven by the EU—and their global impacts on data, digital platforms, and the internet, highlighting the current geo-political struggles and possible future scenarios.
