Month: November 2021

The Chinese province of Henan is building a surveillance system with face-scanning technology that can detect journalists and other “people of concern”.

Documents seen by BBC News describe a system that classifies journalists into a “traffic-light” system – green, amber and red.

Journalists in the “red” category would be “dealt with accordingly”, they say.

The Henan Public Security Bureau has not responded to a request for comment.

The documents, discovered by the surveillance analyst firm IPVM, also outline plans to surveil other “people of concern”, including foreign students and migrant women.

Human Rights Watch said: “This is not a government that needs more power to track more people… especially those who might be trying to peacefully hold it accountable.”

‘Thematic libraries’
The documents, published on 29 July, are part of a tendering process, encouraging Chinese companies to bid for a contract to build the new system, won, on 17 September, by NeuSoft.

NeuSoft has not responded to BBC News request for comment.

The system includes facial-recognition technology linked to thousands of cameras in Henan, to alert authorities when a “person of concern” is located.

“People of concern” would be categorised into “thematic libraries” – in an already existing database of information about and images of people in the province.

The system would also connect with China’s national database.

‘Key concern’
One of the groups of interest to the Henan Public Security Bureau is journalists, including foreign journalists.

“The preliminary proposal is to classify key concerned journalists into three levels,” the documents say.

“People marked in red are the key concern.

“The second level, marked in yellow, are people of general concern.

“Level three, marked in green – are for journalists who aren’t harmful.”

And an alert would be triggered as soon as “journalists of concern”, marked as “red” – or “yellow”, if they had previous criminal charges – booked a ticket to travel into the province.

The system would also assess foreign students and divide them into three categories of risk – “excellent foreign students, general personnel, and key people and unstable personnel”.

“The safety assessment is made by focusing on the daily attendance of foreign students, exam results, whether they come from key countries, and school-discipline compliance,” the documents say.

The schools themselves would need to notify the authorities of students with security concerns.

And those considered to be of concern would be tracked.

During politically sensitive periods, such as the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, “a wartime alarm mechanism” would be activated and tracking of “key concern” students stepped up, including tracking their cell phones.

The documents outline a desire for the system to contain information taken from:

cell phones
social media – such as WeChat and Weibo
vehicle details
hotel stays
travel tickets
property ownership
photos (from existing databases)
It should also focus on “stranded women”, or non-Chinese migrant women who do not have the right to live in China.

A large number of women enter China to find work.

Others have been trafficked from neighbouring countries.

And the system would “dock” with the National Immigration Bureau, the Ministry of Public Security and Henan police, among others.

The documents were published around the time the Chinese government criticised foreign media outlets for their coverage of the Henan floods.

Conor Healy, Government Director of IPVM, said: “The technical architecture of mass surveillance in China remains poorly understood… but building custom surveillance technology to streamline state suppression of journalists is new.

“These documents shed light on what China’s public-security officials want from mass surveillance.”

China’s facial-recognition system is thought to already be in use across the country.

And last year, the Washington Post reported Huawei had tested artificial-intelligence software that could recognise people belonging to the Uighur ethnic minority and alert police.

Human Rights Watch’s China director Sophie Richardson said: “The goal is chilling, ensuring that everyone knows they can and will be monitored – and that they never know what might trigger hostile interest.”

South Africa’s president has condemned travel bans enacted against his country and its neighbours over the new coronavirus variant Omicron.

Cyril Ramaphosa said he was “deeply disappointed” by the action, which he described as unjustified, and called for the bans to be urgently lifted.

The UK, EU and US are among those who have imposed travel bans.

Omicron has been classed as a “variant of concern”. Early evidence suggests it has a higher re-infection risk.

The heavily mutated variant was detected in South Africa earlier this month and then reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) last Wednesday.

The variant is responsible for most of the infections found in South Africa’s most populated province, Gauteng, over the last two weeks, and is now present in all other provinces in the country.

The WHO has warned against countries hastily imposing travel restrictions, saying they should look to a “risk-based and scientific approach”. However, numerous bans have been introduced in recent days amid concerns over the variant.

WHO’s Africa director Matshidiso Moeti said on Sunday: “With the Omicron variant now detected in several regions of the world, putting in place travel bans that target Africa attacks global solidarity.”

How worrying is the new Covid variant?
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In his speech on Sunday, Mr Ramaphosa said there was no scientific basis for the travel bans and that southern Africa was the victim of unfair discrimination.

He also argued that the bans would not be effective in preventing the spread of the variant.

“The only thing the prohibition on travel will do is to further damage the economies of the affected countries and undermine their ability to respond to, and recover from, the pandemic,” he said.

He called on countries with bans in place to “urgently reverse their decisions… before any further damage is done to our economies”.

Mr Ramaphosa described the emergence of the Omicron variant as a wake-up call for the world regarding vaccine inequality – warning that until everyone was vaccinated, more variants were inevitable.

There are no vaccine shortages in South Africa itself, and Mr Ramaphosa urged more people to get jabbed, saying that remained the best way to fight the virus.

A previous statement by the South African foreign ministry on Saturday also strongly criticised the travel bans, saying the country was being punished – instead of applauded – for discovering Omicron.

Omicron has now been detected in a number of countries around the world, including the UK, Germany, Australia and Israel.

In other developments on Sunday:

In the Netherlands, Omicron was detected in 13 people who arrived in Amsterdam on two flights from South Africa.
Separately, Dutch police said they detained a couple who had escaped from a quarantine hotel. The arrest was made on a plane just before the take-off
Israel banned all foreigners from entering the country for 14 days from midnight Sunday
The UK called for an emergency meeting of the G7 group of nations on Monday to discuss the new variant
Voters in Switzerland backed the government’s measures to tackle Covid, according to preliminary results

As people rush to snap up their Black Friday deals, there are mounting worries that some gadgets won’t be available for Christmas.

Silicon, which is in most products, is in short supply because of high demand and manufacturing problems since the start of the pandemic.

The world now faces one of the most extreme chip shortages it has seen.

It means that this year, people may be disappointed when it comes to giving and receiving tech as presents.

Gamers face disappointment
According to technology experts Trusted Reviews, the Nintendo Switch is the UK’s most wanted piece of tech this year.

Earlier this month, Nintendo revised its sales forecast because of “the effects of the global semiconductor shortage”.

Chip designers ARM warned the scarcity could delay Christmas gifts like the Switch being delivered on time and said that, in some instances, the wait for chips is taking 60 weeks.

The PS5 and the Xbox Series X and Series S have been extremely difficult to buy since they launched last year. Demand for these new consoles would have been high regardless of the chip shortage. When they are occasionally restocked, they often sell out in minutes.

The situation has created a community of console hunters who aim to identify those rare times when stock is delivered, so they can pass the news on to their followers.

One is YouTuber Jake Randall, who says he has contacts with many employees across various retailers, who tell him when new batches are going into shops.

He also looks for clues on websites, such as Amazon talking about special deals for consoles for Prime customers which can be swiftly followed by new stock appearing online.

Jake told BBC’s World Service Tech Tent: “It’s extremely difficult to get a games console right now. This is probably the hardest it’s ever been – even more so than launch day or even earlier in the year.

“A lot of people have waited to get one because they thought it would get easier, but these companies cannot manufacture anywhere near enough to meet demand.”

The market is not helped by a community of people who use bots to buy up consoles and sell them at inflated prices, he added.

Smartphone supplies also hit

Apple’s iPhone is also a much wanted gift for Christmas, after its latest generation model was released in September.

The company recorded a 54% increase in revenue in the first three months of 2021, when compared with the same period last year.

But it faced “larger than expected supply constraints” between June and September, and said that the chip shortage is now affecting “most products”.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook previously warned investors that it could affect sales of the iPhone and the iPad.

There are less handsets available too. Apple had originally planned to produce 90 million iPhones in the final months of this year, but cut that figure by 10 million because there were not enough available parts.

There are also reports that Samsung and OnePlus are struggling to keep up with demand for their phones.

Earlier in the year, Google was forced to limit its Pixel 5a launch to only the USA and Japan.

Good news if you want a laptop
There is some good news though, as the big online retailers do seem to have stock of both laptops and tablets.

The pandemic created huge demand for laptops, because people needed kit to work from home.

Tech company Philips also said memory chip producers were not able to keep up, and that ships transporting products were backed up in ports.

Laptop manufacturers like Dell, Acer and HP say that they are selling models as fast as they can make them, and with the recent launch of Windows 11, competition for stock is even fiercer.

However, Argos has assured its customers that they will have access to a range of deals and products, although it made no guarantees.

“Availability in some product categories may vary, but alternatives are available and stores continue to receive deliveries daily,” a spokesperson said.

And Currys said it has been “working hard” to ensure that its customers can get hold of the goods they want.

“Thanks to our preparations and strong relationships with the biggest brands, we already have more stock in the business than we did last year,” a spokesperson told the BBC.

“There are inevitably some products that will be hotter than others, but we’re confident we’ll have plenty of choice for everyone.”

When will this shortage end?
Experts have predicted the shortage could go on for another year or so.

Pedro Martins, co-founder of IT company Totality Services, said: “The reality is, the silicon chip shortage has been ongoing for some time now, it just wasn’t visible to the general public.

“It’s more prominent now because of the sheer volume of user devices that require chips. In the past it was mainly servers, workstations and laptops that needed the chips, that’s no longer the case.

“The reality is, no-one actually knows when the shortage will end, but it will without a doubt improve in the short term.”

Amazon workers in 20 countries – including the US, UK, and several in the EU – are planning protests and work stoppages on Black Friday.

The shopping-centric day is among Amazon’s busiest all year.

The Make Amazon Pay group says: “Amazon takes too much and gives back too little.”

It is backed by a coalition of labour groups, trade unions, grassroots campaigns and non-profit-making organisations in individual countries.

In the UK, that includes the:

GMB Union
Trades Union Congress
Momentum
War on Want
International Transport Workers’ Federation
Labour Behind the Label
No UK Amazon warehouses are unionised, so legally they can’t strike.

Many employees will be working on the day, but campaign groups which include Amazon workers will be staging protests at Amazon buildings in Coalville, Leicestershire, Coventry, Peterborough and at its London headquarters.

But strikes are being encouraged elsewhere.

In Germany, for example, the union Verdi called on employees at major shipping centres to strike, beginning on Wednesday night.

Worldwide, nearly 50 organisations have signed up to a list of “common demands”, published by the Make Amazon Pay coalition, which include:

raising warehouse workers’ pay and adding hazard pay and peak time increments
halting worker “surveillance” and strict productivity targets
extending sick leave and improving Covid-19 tracking and reporting
ending casual employment status and “union-busting” activities
paying taxes without using loopholes or tax havens
“This company is a pandemic profiteer can afford to do better,” said Mick Rix, from the GMB Union. “It’s time for Amazon sit down with their workers’ union GMB and make Amazon a great, safe place to work. “

Amazon reported a tripling of profits earlier this year, attributed to its success during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The company has also been accused of taking an anti-union stance across its operations, particularly in the US.

A landmark push to unionise a workplace in Bessemer, Alabama, failed earlier this year but was examined by the US regulator over allegations the company had put pressure on employees during the vote.

Owen Espley, from the War on Want campaign group, said: “Amazon’s growing power is a threat to communities and workers around the world.

“Amazon is abusing its dominance across online retail, cloud services, and logistics, to create unfair competition that is driving down standards for everyone.

“Amazon workers face unsafe conditions, constant surveillance and are treated like robots.

“It’s time for Amazon to pay fair wages, fair taxes, and for its impact on the planet.”

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on the UK action.

But its representatives have told US media outlets it is already addressing many of the concerns laid out by the Make Amazon Pay group, while admitting things “are not perfect” as they are.

Apple’s much promoted digital driver’s licence feature is now to be delayed to early 2022.

Announced in September, the scheme will allow residents in eight US states to store state IDs and driver’s licences inside the Apple Wallet app on their iPhone.

The delay follows Apple’s announcement it was looking for “sole control” over how states rolled out the feature.

Reports have stated the new feature will come at a cost to the taxpayer.

Conflicting information
The delay was first noticed on an update to Apple’s iOS 15 page, by technology website MacRumors.

Apple has not provided a specific release date for the feature beyond the early 2022 timeframe.

And there is conflicting information on the company’s site, with the software’s All New Features page still stating the ID feature is coming in “late 2021”.

BBC News has asked Apple for comment.

Privacy concerns
Arizona, and Georgia will introduce the system first, with Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah also signed up.

Apple has said it is in discussions with other US states – reportedly including Florida – as it works to offer the feature, announced at a presentation in June, nationwide in the future.

The “first locations” to use the system will be airport-security checkpoints run by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Apple says.

Some users had expressed privacy concerns about handing over smartphones to police or security officials.

And Apple now says users do not need to unlock or hand over their phones for the system to work for airport security.

But it remains unclear if or how it might eventually work for other uses of ID, such as drivers stopped by police.

The people behind a failed bid to buy a rare original copy of the US constitution are facing an avalanche of refunds – up to $40m for 17,000 donors.

The ConstitutionDAO team used a “decentralised” approach – largely unregulated and using cryptocurrency – to amass the fortune.

But large fees for those crypto-transactions are eating up huge sums of money in the refund process.

The group said issuing refunds was its top priority.

ConstitutionDAO – short for “decentralised autonomous organisation” – raised the vast sums of money in the Ethereum cryptocurrency to bid on an extremely rare privately-owned copy of the original printing of the US constitution.

The group had promised to maintain the historic document “for the people”.

But they were outbid by a private investor, and the document sold for more than double the auction house’s original estimate.

Now, some investors in the scheme are reporting that they must pay fees of up to half their refund.

Gas money
That is because the Ethereum network records its transactions on the blockchain, the same basic technology idea that powers other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

And like Bitcoin mining, it requires computational power to run.

“Gas” is the fee paid to those who run the computer systems to facilitate transactions. And it changes price based on supply and demand.

That means that at times, it can be much more expensive to make any kind of transaction, depending on how busy the Ethereum network is.

And the network has recently seen high usage – and high gas prices.

Buying a pink NFT cat was a nightmare
On its official Discord – the chat app which allows anyone to create rooms and discussion channels for enthusiasts on almost any topic – the group said it had 17,437 donors with a median donation of $206.26.

High gas fees mean that “small” donations could be severely hit by the transaction charge.

One user on the Discord said that in order to get $400 refunded, they would have to pay $168 in gas. Others complained of the fees being higher than the relatively small amount of their refund.

“Wow, lessons learned, [Ethereum] is no good. Gas too high,” wrote another in the support channel.

A different contributor lamented that the experience might sour cryptocurrency for those who were not already investors, but got caught up in the drama of “buying the constitution”.

“Almost a third of people that contributed are new to [Ethereum] and their first experience is this. Not only that, they’ll have to know the pain of paying $200+ in gas for literally nothing,” they said.

The future
Senior figures in the Discord- known as delegates – said there was no clear solution.

“We looked at and did everything in our power to come up with a gas-free refund option. However there was nothing that could be set up in a timely manner,” wrote one.

“Providing a safe refund process as soon as possible was the primary goal.”

Another admin on the server told users: “This was a very, very hard call and we’ve all been at our computers for the last several days for every waking hour trying to find the least bad option. There was no solution that was going to please everyone.”

But despite the chaotic refunds process after the group’s initial reason for existence failed, its organisers have pledged that this is not the end.

The group was only established days before the auction of the historic document by Sotheby’s, and so had little time to set up its desired decentralised structure. Instead, a core group of insiders – the delegates – took care of managing the project, writing and rewriting the rules and FAQs as they went.

The group had originally planned to use ownership of digital tokens as a way of allocating voting power over the care and display of the constitution document, and briefly proposed a new type of token to decide its future.

That has since been scrapped – but the group is promising an imminent announcement “regarding the future of ConstitutionDAO”.

“We know you have been waiting patiently, and we are grateful for it. We know you have questions, and we are working on answers.”

Plans to roll out end-to-end encryption on Facebook and Instagram have been delayed amid a row over child safety.

Meta – as Facebook’s parent company is now called – said messaging encryption on the apps would now come in 2023.

The process means only the sender and receiver can read messages, but law enforcement or Meta cannot.

However, child protection groups and politicians have warned that it could hamper police investigating child abuse.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), has claimed that private messaging “is the front line of child sexual abuse”.

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel has also criticised the technology, saying earlier this year that it could “severely hamper” law enforcement in pursuing criminal activity, including online child abuse.

Privacy v protection
End-to-end encryption works by “scrambling” or encrypting the data while it travels between phones and other devices.

The only way to read the message is usually to get physical access to an unlocked device that sent or received it.

The technology is the default for popular messaging service WhatsApp, also owned by Meta – but not the company’s other apps.

The NSPCC sent Freedom of Information requests to 46 police forces across England, Wales, and Scotland asking them for a breakdown of the platforms used to commit sexual offences against children last year.

The responses revealed:

more than 9,470 instances of child sex abuse images and online child sex offences were reported to police
52% of these took place on Facebook-owned apps
over a third of the cases took place on Instagram, and 13% on Facebook and Messenger, with very few occurring via WhatsApp
That has led to fears that Meta’s plans to expand encryption to widely-used Facebook Messenger and Instagram direct messages could shield the majority of abusers from detection.

The NSPCC said that encrypting messages by default could lead to the easier spread of child abuse imagery or online grooming.

But advocates say that encryption protects users’ privacy, and prevents prying by both governments and unscrupulous hackers. Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg made those arguments himself when he announced Facebook’s encryption plans in 2019.

‘Getting it right’
Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety, said that the delay in implementing encryption to 2023 was because the company was taking its time “to get this right”.

The company had previously said the change would happen in 2022 at the earliest.

Ms Davis said: “As a company that connects billions of people around the world and has built industry-leading technology, we’re determined to protect people’s private communications and keep people safe online.”

She also outlined a number of additional preventative measures the company had already put in place, including:

“proactive detection technology” that scans for suspicious patterns of activity such as a user who repeatedly sets up new profiles, or messages a large number of people they do not know
placing under-18 users into private or “friends only” accounts by default, and restricting adults from messaging them if they aren’t already connected
educating young people with in-app tips on how to avoid unwanted interactions
Andy Burrows, head of child safety online policy at the NSPCC, welcomed the delay by Meta.

He said: “They should only go ahead with these measures when they can demonstrate they have the technology in place that will ensure children will be at no greater risk of abuse.

“More than 18 months after an NSPCC-led a global coalition of 130 child protection organisations raised the alarm over the danger of end-to-end encryption, Facebook must now show they are serious about the child safety risks and not just playing for time while they weather difficult headlines.”

Tesla drivers say they have been locked out of their cars after an outage struck the carmaker’s app.

Dozens of owners posted on social media about seeing an error message on the mobile app that was preventing them from connecting to their vehicles.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk personally responded to one complaint from a driver in South Korea, saying on Twitter: “Checking.”

Mr Musk later said the app was coming back online.

The Tesla app is used as a key by drivers to unlock and start their cars.

Owners posted a multitude of complaints online about not being able to use their vehicles.

“I’m stuck an hour away from home because I normally use my phone to start [my] car,” one owner tweeted.

About 500 users reported an error on the app at around 16:40 ET (21:40 GMT) on Friday, according to the outage tracking site DownDetector. Five hours later, there were just over 60 reports of an error.

“Apologies, we will take measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” Mr Musk tweeted.

The app is not the only way to access the cars though, Stuart Masson, editor of The Car Expert website, told the BBC.

“There will be a secondary mechanism to get in or out of the car beyond the app, the difficulty will come for drivers if they are not carrying it,” he said.

“Technology makes things convenient, but relies on a server working 100% of the time. It’s the same as leaving the house without my credit cards, expecting to pay for things with my smartphone. If we are reliant on one mechanism all the time, we can be caught out.”

Professor David Bailey from the Birmingham Business School has written extensively on the automotive industry. He also drives a Tesla and experienced the outage on Friday.

“To some extent, Tesla is a bit of a victim of its own success,” he told the BBC. “It encourages its customers to use the cutting edge technology it creates and sometimes that will go wrong.

“Although of course you can use a key to open the car too, the natural instinct of many Tesla drivers, who are buying one of the most high tech models in the market, is to rely on the technology.”

Facebook says it is introducing new features to give people more control over what appears in their news feeds.

The social network has been under intense scrutiny in recent years for how its algorithms promote content.

Now, it says it is testing controls to “adjust people’s ranking preferences” and customise the feed.

That includes, for example, increasing the number of posts from friends and family, and decreasing those from groups and pages.

It will also make controls that already exist “easier to access”, it said – such as the favourites and snooze features, which largely live inside a settings sub-menu.

“We’ll begin testing in countries around the world to a small percentage of people, gradually expanding in the coming weeks,” Facebook said in its announcement post.

“This is part of our ongoing work to give people more control over [the] news feed, so they see more of what they want and less of what they don’t.”

Ranking row
It comes as Facebook and its newly-named parent company Meta are under political pressure to let users avoid its ranking systems.

So-called “engagement-based ranking” has been a repeated target of criticism in the testimony of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who said it prioritised divisive and extreme content.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
View original tweet on Twitter
Facebook disagrees with that, but the view has caught on among some.

A group of US lawmakers has tabled a bill named the “Filter Bubble Transparency Act”, which is designed to make sure that social networks give their users an option to use the sites without any kind of algorithmic interference.

That would bring Facebook much closer to its original version. In the early days, when Facebook was only really used by university students, it simply displayed every post from friends, with the most recent ones first.

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Facebook, for its part, believes that users do not actually want that. A recent report by the Washington Post discovered that Facebook has run at least two experiments in recent years, exploring what happens when the algorithmic feed is disabled.

One of those tests, the Post reported, resulted in users logging into Facebook less often, spending less time reading content, and posting less themselves.

“The documents suggest that Facebook’s defence of algorithmic rankings stems not only from its business interests, but from a paternalistic conviction, backed by data, that its sophisticated personalisation software knows what users want better than the users themselves,” the Post wrote.

Facebook has added one way to access a chronological feed since March this year, although it is not an option available by default.

On its mobile apps, while scrolling through the news feed, an option for “most recent” will sometimes appear. It only works for that browsing session. The next time the app is opened, it will revert to the algorithmic feed.

A crowd-funded effort to buy a rare 1787 copy of the US constitution at auction claims to have received more than $13m (£9.6m) worth of cryptocurrency donations.

The group, ConstitutionDAO, says it plans “to put the constitution in the hands of the people”, and hopes to raise at least $20m.

But it is not clear how ownership will be arranged if the bid succeeds.

The BBC has approached the group for comment.

Published in 1787, auctioneers Sotheby’s estimates a sale price of up to $20m, when the auction takes place on 18 November.

There are 13 known copies to have survived from a run of 500 originally printed after the text was settled at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The copy for sale is one of only two not held in the collection of an institution, Sotheby’s says.

The group wants to put the document on public display.

‘Decentralised’ organising
DAO stands for “decentralised autonomous organisation”.

The idea is to enable individuals to come together to make purchases and share ownership, with their transactions and operating rules recorded on the blockchain – the same underlying technology on which cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum run.

ConstitutionDAO launched just a week before the auction, and is soliciting money with which to buy the constitution document in Ethereum.

On its website, the group says it is “pooling together money to win this auction”.

At first, the website told contributors they were buying “fractional ownership and governance. You will own a piece of the constitution based on how much you contribute”.

That has since been changed to say those who contribute will not get a share in owning the constitution.

The question “Am I receiving ownership of the constitution in exchange for my donation?” is answered: “No, you are receiving a governance token, not fractionalised ownership”.

The “governance token”, the website says, could be used to “advise” on “where the constitution should be displayed, how it should be exhibited, and the mission and values of ConstitutionDAO”.

According to a frequently asked questions (FAQ) document posted to the group’s Discord social media channel by a core contributor to the project: “After the initial purchase, the community will be able to restructure ownership” in line with the group’s mission and values.

The website says there will be “refunds” should the auction bid be unsuccessful.

However, the largely unregulated world of cryptocurrency brings with it many risks.

The FAQ warns of the possibility of hacking or of theft of money, although it says “we have made everything as secure and foolproof as possible given the time constraints”.

The cryptocurrency funds that will be used to make the purchase are in a wallet currently controlled by 13 core contributors, with nine being required to approve transactions.

Regulatory hurdles
DAOs have a chequered history. In 2016, “The DAO” – a distributed venture capital organisation – raised $150m, only to see $50m disappear in a hack because of a flaw in the code that it used.

The legal status of DAOs is also not clear, experts say.

Sotheby’s told the BBC: “As DAOs are not legally recognised entities in most jurisdictions, Sotheby’s requires DAOs to take certain legal steps to ensure the entity can participate in our auctions at this time.”

As a result, the project has formed a US limited liability company in order to take part.

On display
The group says that it is seeking “an esteemed partner” to publicly display the constitution.

“The eventual home must have the expertise to properly house, store, and maintain the artefact,” the group says.

“Additionally, the community has expressed strong preferences for institutions that are free to the public and willing to cover the costs associated with housing the document.”

Proceeds of the Sotheby’s auction will go to the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation – a non-profit group that works to promote understanding of democracy.