December 2014 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

"The Enormous Implications Of Facebook Indexing 1 Trillion Of Our Posts"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Dec. 29, 2014

Dec. 29, 2014

*The Enormous Implications Of Facebook Indexing 1 Trillion Of Our Posts* Posted 11 hours ago by Josh Constine (@joshconstine) A whole wing of the Internet just got added to our collective conscience, like websites by Google or knowledge by Wikipedia before it. Yet the news cruised by with analysis focused simply on what Facebook’s new keyword post search does today. Yes, any post by you or any of your friends can now be dug up with a quick search from mobile. But I don’t think people realize how big a deal it is for tomorrow. Facebook just went from data rich to Scrooge-McDuck-swimming-in-a-tower-full-of data rich. The ramifications for advertising, developers, and Facebook itself are tough to fathom. Our most vivid doppelgänger, our digital echoes can now be tracked. They don’t just say who we were, but where we’re headed, and what we’ll want next. First, the trillion post index gives us group memory. Each person can only search stories from their friends and surrounding network, but Mark Zuckerberg recently said those all add up to over 1 trillion posts. […] Continua qui: http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/28/mining-the-hive-mind/

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"netsociety", una nuova lista in lingua inglese
by J.C. DE MARTIN Dec. 29, 2014

Dec. 29, 2014

Carissimi, vi segnalo che la Rete Globale di Centri Internet & Società (coordinata dal Centro Nexa fino all'autunno 2016) ha appena istituito una mailing list pubblica di discussione, "netsociety": https://lists.networkofcenters.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/netsociety La lista è appena nata, per cui per il momento ci sono "solo" circa 70 persone appartenenti alla Rete di Centri (qui l'elenco: http://networkofcenters.net/centers) ma prevediamo che la lista si espanda rapidamente. Se ve la cavate con l'inglese e avete piacere di partecipare a discussioni sui temi internet e società con persone da tutto il mondo (o quasi) , iscrivetevi, ci fate piacere! juan carlos

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La legge di programmazione militare francese fa un regalo di natale ai cittadini: la sorveglianza di massa
by Antonio Casilli Dec. 29, 2014

Dec. 29, 2014

La notte di natale il governo francese ha fatto passare il decreto applicativo dell'articolo 20 della Legge di programmazione militare votata nel dicembre 2013 con zero resistenza da parte dei parlamentari e nell'indifferenza quasi generale della società civile. Dal primo gennaio 2015 il ministero della difesa, il fisco e il ministero degli interni francesi potranno ottenere sms, telefonate e dati di connessione internet di ogni cittadino senza bisogno dell'autorizzazione di un giudice e senza dover precisare nel quadro di quale inchiesta i dati sono richiesti. Il tutto praticamente al di fuori di qualunque controllo democratico e in barba alla decisione dell'8 aprile 2014 della Corte di giustizia dell'UE contro la data retention. http://www.humanite.fr/surveillance-des-internautes-un-decret-qui-sent-le-s… SURVEILLANCE DES INTERNAUTES : "UN DECRET QUI SENT LE SAPIN" Matignon a publié, le soir de Noel, le décret d'application du très contesté article 20 de la loi de programmation militaire (LPM) qui prévoit un accès très vaste des services de l'État aux télécommunications (téléphone, SMS, Internet, etc.) des Français, et à toutes les informations qui transitent par les réseaux nationaux.

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Tufekci: "The year we get creeped out by algorithms"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Dec. 29, 2014

Dec. 29, 2014

*The year we get creeped out by algorithms* by Zeynep Tufekci It turns out computers have a built-in “uncanny valley” (that creepy feeling android robots generate when they kind of look human). Just like we don’t want robots too human-shaped — we want them to know their place — it turns out we aren’t too happy when our computers go from “smart” (as in automating things and connecting us to each other or information) to “smart” (as in “let me make that decision for you”). zeynep-tufeckiAlgorithmic judgment is the uncanny valley of computing. Algorithms (basically computer programs, but here I’m talking about the complex subset that is being used to calculate results of some consequence, which then shape our experience) have become more visible in 2014, and it turns out we’re creeped out. The most visible, cited, discussed academic article of 2014 was one which exposed the fact that Facebook uses algorithms to manipulate its News Feed — something a majority of people apparently did not know. Most of the discussion was outrage: The lead author received hundreds of disgusted emails asking how dare he manipulate our social interactions on Facebook; the reality, of course, is that’s what Facebook does every day, algorithmically. The Facebook experiment made visible what was always there, and raised more questions than it could answer. 2015 looks to be the year when we start grappling with the power and role of these complex algorithms — sometimes discussed as machine learning or artificial intelligence — and when a thousand more startups (and big companies, since they have a data advantage in fueling these types of algorithms) start trying to “deploy” them not just in apps and sites, but in our devices and objects as chips and sensors become more prevalent. […] Continua qui: http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/12/the-year-we-get-creeped-out-by-algorithms/

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Essay: "Big Data, Machine Learning, and the Social Sciences:, Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Dec. 29, 2014

Dec. 29, 2014

*Big Data, Machine Learning, and the Social Sciences:,Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency */by //Hanna Wallach <https://medium.com/@hannawallach> This essay is a (near) transcript of a talk I recently gave at a NIPS 2014 workshop on “Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Machine Learning,” organized by Solon Barocas and Moritz Hardt./*/ / *Introduction I want to start by giving you some context for this talk by telling you a little bit about me and my background: I’m a machine learning researcher by training. That said, I wouldn’t describe my research over the past few years as being traditional machine learning. Instead, most of my recent research has been in the emerging field of computational social science — that is, the development and use of computational and statistical techniques to study social processes. This shift in research direction has given me an opportunity to start thinking outside the algorithmic boxes typically embraced by the machine learning community and instead focus on the opportunities, challenges, and implications involved developing and using machine learning methods to analyze real-world data about society. Outside of my research life, I’ve also spent the past 15 years contributing to the free and open source software community and working to promote and support women in computing. These activities, and their focus on transparency, openness, fairness, and inclusion, have influenced my perspective on the issues surrounding today’s workshop, and I’m excited to be speaking here because it’s given me an opportunity to tie together some of my thoughts on these ideas and their relationship to machine learning. We have a really interesting group of people here today, with very diverse backgrounds, and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out of their interactions. As a result, this talk will be structured around four talking points — intended to prompt discussion — that lie at the heart of fairness, accountability, and transparency in machine learning: - Data - Questions - Models - Findings […] Continua qui: https://medium.com/@hannawallach/big-data-machine-learning-and-the-social-s…

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Fwd: New report: The Future of Privacy
by J.C. DE MARTIN Dec. 29, 2014

Dec. 29, 2014

-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: New report: The Future of Privacy Resent-Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 17:21:39 +0100 Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 16:21:33 +0000 From: Pew Research Center Internet Project <info(a)pewinternet.org> New report: The Future of Privacy NUMBERS, FACTS AND TRENDS SHAPING YOUR WORLD December 18, 2014 <http://pewresearch.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=434f5d1199912232d41689…> <http://pewresearch.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=434f5d1199912232d41689…> <http://pewresearch.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=434f5d1199912232d4168…> Experts Are Divided on the Future of Privacy <http://pewresearch.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=434f5d1199912232d41689…> Are privacy and personal data rights “dead” in the digital age or merely in transition? More than 2,500 technology experts and analysts were nearly evenly divided when they were asked the question, “Will policy makers and technology innovators create a secure, popularly accepted and trusted privacy-rights infrastructure by 2025?” Fifty-five percent of the experts invited to respond to this query by the Pew Research Center and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center answered “no,” and 45 percent answered “yes.” “The citizens will divide between those who prefer convenience and those who prefer privacy,” said Niels Ole Finnemann, a professor and director of Netlab, DigHumLab in Denmark. What else did the experts have to say? Read the full quotes and responses from many more experts in the*full report <http://pewresearch.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=434f5d1199912232d41689…>, *or*browse through a selection of highlights <http://pewresearch.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=434f5d1199912232d41689…>.*

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Conference report: "Managing the New Global Commons"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Dec. 29, 2014

Dec. 29, 2014

COUNCIL OF COUNCIL’S SIXTH REGIONAL CONFERENCE OTTAWA, CANADA https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/coc_2014_can_version_confere… (30 pagine di cui 9 di report vero e proprio; documento rilasciato CC by-nc-nd). Argomenti trattati: - SUMMITRY AND DIPLOMACY IN THE ARCTIC - GOVERNING THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM - BREAKING THE GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE DEADLOCK - CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN A WORLD ADRIFT *- THE FUTURE OF INTERNET GOVERNANCE (p. 7-8)* - TROUBLED TRADE AGREEMENTS juan carlos

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Nuovi documenti Snowden su Der Spiegel
by Antonio Casilli Dec. 28, 2014

Dec. 28, 2014

appena sfornato da (fra gli altri) Jacob Appelbaum e Laura Poitras: PRYING EYES: INSIDE THE NSA'S WAR ON INTERNET SECURITY http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inside-the-nsa-s-war-on-interne… + listona di nuovi documenti Snowden che dettagliano gli attacchi della NSA et della GCHQ su VPN, SSL, TLS, SSH e Tor http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-documents-attacks-on-vpn-ssl-… "US and British intelligence agencies undertake every effort imaginable to crack all types of encrypted Internet communication. The cloud, it seems, is full of holes. The good news: New Snowden documents show that some forms of encryption still cause problems for the NSA. When Christmas approaches, the spies of the Five Eyes intelligence services can look forward to a break from the arduous daily work of spying. In addition to their usual job -- attempting to crack encryption all around the world -- they play a game called the "Kryptos Kristmas Kwiz," which involves solving challenging numerical and alphabetical puzzles. The proud winners of the competition are awarded "Kryptos" mugs."

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NYT: "The Scoreboards Where You Can’t See Your Score"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Dec. 28, 2014

Dec. 28, 2014

*The Scoreboards Where You Can’t See Your Score* By NATASHA SINGER DEC. 27, 2014 The characters in Gary Shteyngart’s novel “Super Sad True Love Story” inhabit a continuously surveilled and scored society. Consider the protagonist, Lenny Abramov, age 39. A digital dossier about him accumulates his every health condition (high cholesterol, depression), liability (mortgage: $560,330), purchase (“bound, printed, nonstreaming media artifact”), tendency (“heterosexual, nonathletic, nonautomotive, nonreligious”) and probability (“life span estimated at 83”). And that profile is available for perusal by employers, friends and even strangers in bars. It’s a fictional forecast of a data-deterministic culture in which computer algorithms constantly analyze consumers’ profiles, issuing individuals numeric rankings that may benefit or hinder them. Observing a street billboard that publicly broadcasts the score of each passer-by, the Abramov character says in the novel, “The old Chinese woman had a decent 1,400, but others, the young Latina mothers, even a profligate teenaged Hasid puffing down the street, were showing blinking red scores below 900, and I worried for them.” In two nonfiction books, scheduled to be published in January, technology experts examine similar consumer-ranking techniques already in widespread use. […] Continua qui: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/technology/the-scoreboards-where-you-cant…

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Fwd: [Creis_Terminal] "Operation Socialist" : la cyberguerre entre Européens
by Mariella Berra Dec. 27, 2014

Dec. 27, 2014

Buon anno Mariella -------- Messaggio Inoltrato -------- Oggetto: [Creis_Terminal] "Operation Socialist" : la cyberguerre entre Européens Data: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 23:35:05 +0100 Mittente: Maurice Liscouët <maurice.liscouet(a)univ-nantes.fr> A: creis_terminal(a)lecreis.org Londres a piratÃ© pour Washington les donnÃ©es de Belgacom, opÃ©rateur des institutions europÃ©ennes, au risque de saborder le rÃ©seau. Un vÃ©ritable acte de guerre. http://www.lepoint.fr/chroniqueurs-du-point/guerric-poncet/operation-social… -- Maurice LiscouÃ«t

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