January 2019 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

CfP Workshop on Engineering Accountable Information Systems Stockholm University Stockholm, Sweden, June 10-11, 2019

by Ben Wagner

Dear all, we currently have a call for papers on Accountable Systems for a workshop at ECIS 2019 that might be interesting for many people on this list: https://easychair.org/cfp/ECIS2019-EAIS <https://easychair.org/cfp/ECIS2019-EAIS> Deadline for submissions is 15 March 2019. If you have any questions about it please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Best, Ben -- Dr. Ben Wagner Assistant Professor Institute for Information Systems and Society Vienna University of Economics and Business Director, Privacy & Sustainable Computing Lab Email: ben.wagner(a)wu.ac.at <mailto:ben.wagner@wu.ac.at> | Tel: +43-1-31336-6061 Web: https://www.privacylab.at/ <https://www.privacylab.at/> | Twitter: @benwagne_r ECIS 2019 Workshop: Engineering Accountable Information Systems The function of information systems in society is increasingly in focus of information systems research. One outstanding challenge is how to build information systems which promote accountability, as part of a wider debate on fairness, accountability, and transparency principles (e.g., ACM FAT*). This need for accountability must be reflected on all layers of systems engineering, ranging from process analysis to concrete technical components and primitives employed during implementation. Based on our existing research we believe that three specific areas of information systems research are most relevant in this context: user cognition and human behaviour in relation to the design of interfaces; automated decision-making systems and decision-support systems; critical business processes with a particular need for accountability. In all these and further areas, accountability in complex information systems needs to be addressed through technical mechanisms. Existing high-level considerations on accountability in information systems notwithstanding, however, the concrete engineering and implementation of such mechanisms has so far received only limited attention. Similarly, the challenges arising during such transformations of abstract accountability concepts into concrete technologies as well as the critical evaluation of respective implementations are only rarely covered by existing research. We see this workshop as an opportunity to close these gaps through engaging with the existing debate on accountability while integrating key knowledge from the information systems community. Importantly, our approach to accountable systems is not just focused on high level norms of system development, but indispensably also incorporates practical questions of engineering and designing actual systems. We therefore encourage submissions from the above-mentioned and other areas of accountability engineering as long as they sufficiently incorporate questions of concrete systems engineering and implementation. Submission Guidelines Authors should follow the ECIS 2019 guidelines for research in progress papers, with papers between 4 and 7 pages in length. A poster is not required. Full details are available here: http://ecis2019.eu/information-to-authors <http://ecis2019.eu/information-to-authors> Submissions must be made through the EasyChair system via the following link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ecis2019eais <https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ecis2019eais> For questions about the workshop, submissions or review process, contact the chairs via ecis2019eais[at]easychair[dot]org Relevant Dates • Submissions due by March 15 2019 • Replies by April 15 2019 • Final Papers due June 1 2010 • Workshop will be held on June 10 and 11, at Stockholm University’s Kista campus. Organizing & Program Committee Chairs • Ben Wagner, WU Vienna • Frank Pallas, TU Berlin • Florian Cech, TU Vienna • Ancsa Hannak, CSH Vienna Program Committee • Soheil Human, WU Vienna • Till Winkler, WU Vienna • Niels ten Oever, University of Amsterdam • Jörg Pohle, HIIG Berlin • Claudia Müller-Birn, FU Berlin • Juhi Kulshreshta, GESIS, Leibniz • Eliška Pírková, University of Helsinki • Juan Quintero, FAU Erlangen Nürnberg • Eva Zangerle, University of Innsbruck • Abhijnan Chakraborty, MPI Saarbrucken • Piotr Sapiezynski, Northeastern University • Jat Singh, University of Cambridge • Martina Zitterbart, KIT Karlsruhe • Giovanni Sartor, EUI Florence • Abbas Masnavi, CalTech • Golnaz Bidabadi, San Jose State University • Melanie Herschel, IPVS, University of Stuttgart Publication Accepted papers will be published as part of an open-access online collection with CEUR Workshop Proceedings http://ceur-ws.org/ <http://ceur-ws.org/> and an overview of the workshop findings will be published with CAIS (Communications of the Association for Information Systems). Venue The conference will be held in Stockholm University’s Kista campus on June 10 and 11. -- Dr. Ben Wagner Assistant Professor Institute for Information Systems and Society Vienna University of Economics and Business Director, Privacy & Sustainable Computing Lab Email: ben.wagner(a)wu.ac.at | Tel: +43-1-31336-6061 Web: https://www.privacylab.at/ | Twitter: @benwagne_r

Jan. 30, 2019

FW: Facebook Project Atlas: Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them | TechCrunch

by gabriele elia

ormai senza limiti?? peraltro credo sia compliant GDPR se hanno chiesto il consenso ... gabriele https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/ [https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/facebook-research-vpn-pro…]<https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/> Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them – TechCrunch<https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/facebook-project-atlas/> Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity ... techcrunch.com Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them Josh Constine@joshconstine / 12 hours ago Comment Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and that was removed in August. Facebook sidesteps the App Store and rewards teenagers and adults to download the Research app and give it root access to network traffic in what may be a violation of Apple policy so the social network can decrypt and analyze their phone activity, a TechCrunch investigation confirms. Facebook admitted to TechCrunch it was running the Research program to gather data on usage habits. Since 2016, Facebook has been paying users ages 13 to 35 up to $20 per month plus referral fees to sell their privacy by installing the iOS or Android “Facebook Research” app. Facebook even asked users to screenshot their Amazon order history page. The program is administered through beta testing services Applause, BetaBound and uTest to cloak Facebook’s involvement, and is referred to in some documentation as “Project Atlas” — a fitting name for Facebook’s effort to map new trends and rivals around the globe. [Update 11:20pm PT: Facebook now tells TechCrunch it will shut down the iOS version of its Research app in the wake of our report. The rest of this article has been updated to reflect this development.] Facebook’s Research program will continue to run on Android. We’re still awaiting comment from Apple on whether Facebook officially violated its policy and if it asked Facebook to stop the program. As was the case with Facebook removing Onavo Protect from the App Store last year, Facebook may have been privately told by Apple to voluntarily remove it. Facebook’s Research app requires users to ‘Trust’ it with extensive access to their data We asked Guardian Mobile Firewall’s security expert Will Strafach to dig into the Facebook Research app, and he told us that “If Facebook makes full use of the level of access they are given by asking users to install the Certificate, they will have the ability to continuously collect the following types of data: private messages in social media apps, chats from in instant messaging apps – including photos/videos sent to others, emails, web searches, web browsing activity, and even ongoing location information by tapping into the feeds of any location tracking apps you may have installed.” It’s unclear exactly what data Facebook is concerned with, but it gets nearly limitless access to a user’s device once they install the app. The strategy shows how far Facebook is willing to go and how much it’s willing to pay to protect its dominance — even at the risk of breaking the rules of Apple’s iOS platform on which it depends. Apple may have asked Facebook to discontinue distributing its Research app. A more stringent punishment would be to revoke Facebook’s permission to offer employee-only apps. The situation could further chill relations between the tech giants. Apple’s Tim Cook has repeatedly criticized Facebook’s data collection practices. Facebook disobeying iOS policies to slurp up more information could become a new talking point. TechCrunch has spoken to Apple and it’s aware of the issue, but the company did not provide a statement before press time. Facebook’s Research program is referred to as Project Atlas on sign-up sites that don’t mention Facebook’s involvement “The fairly technical sounding ‘install our Root Certificate’ step is appalling,” Strafach tells us. “This hands Facebook continuous access to the most sensitive data about you, and most users are going to be unable to reasonably consent to this regardless of any agreement they sign, because there is no good way to articulate just how much power is handed to Facebook when you do this.” Facebook’s surveillance app Facebook first got into the data-sniffing business when it acquired Onavo for around $120 million in 2014. The VPN app helped users track and minimize their mobile data plan usage, but also gave Facebook deep analytics about what other apps they were using. Internal documents acquired by Charlie Warzel and Ryan Mac of BuzzFeed News reveal that Facebook was able to leverage Onavo to learn that WhatsApp was sending more than twice as many messages per day as Facebook Messenger. Onavo allowed Facebook to spot WhatsApp’s meteoric rise and justify paying $19 billion to buy the chat startup in 2014. WhatsApp has since tripled its user base, demonstrating the power of Onavo’s foresight. Over the years since, Onavo clued Facebook in to what apps to copy, features to build and flops to avoid. By 2018, Facebook was promoting the Onavo app in a Protect bookmark of the main Facebook app in hopes of scoring more users to snoop on. Facebook also launched the Onavo Bolt app that let you lock apps behind a passcode or fingerprint while it surveils you, but Facebook shut down the app the day it was discovered following privacy criticism. Onavo’s main app remains available on Google Play and has been installed more than 10 million times. The backlash heated up after security expert Strafach detailed in March how Onavo Protect was reporting to Facebook when a user’s screen was on or off, and its Wi-Fi and cellular data usage in bytes even when the VPN was turned off. In June, Apple updated its developer policies to ban collecting data about usage of other apps or data that’s not necessary for an app to function. Apple proceeded to inform Facebook in August that Onavo Protect violated those data collection policies and that the social network needed to remove it from the App Store, which it did, Deepa Seetharaman of the WSJ reported. But that didn’t stop Facebook’s data collection. Project Atlas TechCrunch recently received a tip that despite Onavo Protect being banished by Apple, Facebook was paying users to sideload a similar VPN app under the Facebook Research moniker from outside of the App Store. We investigated, and learned Facebook was working with three app beta testing services to distribute the Facebook Research app: BetaBound, uTest and Applause. Facebook began distributing the Research VPN app in 2016. It has been referred to as Project Atlas since at least mid-2018, around when backlash to Onavo Protect magnified and Apple instituted its new rules that prohibited Onavo. Previously, a similar program was called Project Kodiak. Facebook didn’t want to stop collecting data on people’s phone usage and so the Research program continued, in disregard for Apple banning Onavo Protect. Facebook’s Research App on iOS Ads (shown below) for the program run by uTest on Instagram and Snapchat sought teens 13-17 years old for a “paid social media research study.” The sign-up page for the Facebook Research program administered by Applause doesn’t mention Facebook, but seeks users “Age: 13-35 (parental consent required for ages 13-17).” If minors try to sign-up, they’re asked to get their parents’ permission with a form that reveal’s Facebook’s involvement and says “There are no known risks associated with the project, however you acknowledge that the inherent nature of the project involves the tracking of personal information via your child’s use of apps. You will be compensated by Applause for your child’s participation.” For kids short on cash, the payments could coerce them to sell their privacy to Facebook. The Applause site explains what data could be collected by the Facebook Research app (emphasis mine): “By installing the software, you’re giving our client permission to collect data from your phone that will help them understand how you browse the internet, and how you use the features in the apps you’ve installed . . . This means you’re letting our client collect information such as which apps are on your phone, how and when you use them, data about your activities and content within those apps, as well as how other people interact with you or your content within those apps. You are also letting our client collect information about your internet browsing activity (including the websites you visit and data that is exchanged between your device and those websites) and your use of other online services. There are some instances when our client will collect this information even where the app uses encryption, or from within secure browser sessions.” Meanwhile, the BetaBound sign-up page with a URL ending in “Atlas” explains that “For $20 per month (via e-gift cards), you will install an app on your phone and let it run in the background.” It also offers $20 per friend you refer. That site also doesn’t initially mention Facebook, but the instruction manual for installing Facebook Research reveals the company’s involvement. Facebook’s intermediary uTest ran ads on Snapchat and Instagram, luring teens to the Research program with the promise of money Facebook seems to have purposefully avoided TestFlight, Apple’s official beta testing system, which requires apps to be reviewed by Apple and is limited to 10,000 participants. Instead, the instruction manual reveals that users download the app from r.facebook-program.com and are told to install an Enterprise Developer Certificate and VPN and “Trust” Facebook with root access to the data their phone transmits. Apple requires that developers agree to only use this certificate system for distributing internal corporate apps to their own employees. Randomly recruiting testers and paying them a monthly fee appears to violate the spirit of that rule. Security expert Will Strafach found Facebook’s Research app contains lots of code from Onavo Protect, the Facebook-owned app Apple banned last year Once installed, users just had to keep the VPN running and sending data to Facebook to get paid. The Applause-administered program requested that users screenshot their Amazon orders page. This data could potentially help Facebook tie browsing habits and usage of other apps with purchase preferences and behavior. That information could be harnessed to pinpoint ad targeting and understand which types of users buy what. TechCrunch commissioned Strafach to analyze the Facebook Research app and find out where it was sending data. He confirmed that data is routed to “vpn-sjc1.v.facebook-program.com” that is associated with Onavo’s IP address, and that the facebook-program.com domain is registered to Facebook, according to MarkMonitor. The app can update itself without interacting with the App Store, and is linked to the email address PeopleJourney(a)fb.com. He also discovered that the Enterprise Certificate first acquired in 2016 indicates Facebook renewed it on June 27th, 2018 — weeks after Apple announced its new rules that prohibited the similar Onavo Protect app. “It is tricky to know what data Facebook is actually saving (without access to their servers). The only information that is knowable here is what access Facebook is capable of based on the code in the app. And it paints a very worrisome picture,” Strafach explains. “They might respond and claim to only actually retain/save very specific limited data, and that could be true, it really boils down to how much you trust Facebook’s word on it. The most charitable narrative of this situation would be that Facebook did not think too hard about the level of access they were granting to themselves . . . which is a startling level of carelessness in itself if that is the case.” “Flagrant defiance of Apple’s rules” In response to TechCrunch’s inquiry, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed it’s running the program to learn how people use their phones and other services. The spokesperson told us “Like many companies, we invite people to participate in research that helps us identify things we can be doing better. Since this research is aimed at helping Facebook understand how people use their mobile devices, we’ve provided extensive information about the type of data we collect and how they can participate. We don’t share this information with others and people can stop participating at any time.” Facebook’s Research app requires Root Certificate access, which Facebook gather almost any piece of data transmitted by your phone Facebook’s spokesperson claimed that the Facebook Research app was in line with Apple’s Enterprise Certificate program, but didn’t explain how in the face of evidence to the contrary. They said Facebook first launched its Research app program in 2016. They tried to liken the program to a focus group and said Nielsen and comScore run similar programs, yet neither of those ask people to install a VPN or provide root access to the network. The spokesperson confirmed the Facebook Research program does recruit teens but also other age groups from around the world. They claimed that Onavo and Facebook Research are separate programs, but admitted the same team supports both as an explanation for why their code was so similar. Facebook’s Research program requested users screenshot their Amazon order history to provide it with purchase data However, Facebook’s claim that it doesn’t violate Apple’s Enterprise Certificate policy is directly contradicted by the terms of that policy. Those include that developers “Distribute Provisioning Profiles only to Your Employees and only in conjunction with Your Internal Use Applications for the purpose of developing and testing”. The policy also states that “You may not use, distribute or otherwise make Your Internal Use Applications available to Your Customers” unless under direct supervision of employees or on company premises. Given Facebook’s customers are using the Enterprise Certificate-powered app without supervision, it appears Facebook is in violation. Seven hours after this report was first published, Facebook updated its position and told TechCrunch that it would shut down the iOS Research app. Facebook noted that the Research app was started in 2016 and was therefore not a replacement for Onavo Protect. However, they do share similar code and could be seen as twins running in parallel. A Facebook spokesperson also provided this additional statement: “Key facts about this market research program are being ignored. Despite early reports, there was nothing ‘secret’ about this; it was literally called the Facebook Research App. It wasn’t ‘spying’ as all of the people who signed up to participate went through a clear on-boarding process asking for their permission and were paid to participate. Finally, less than 5 percent of the people who chose to participate in this market research program were teens. All of them with signed parental consent forms.” Facebook did not publicly promote the Research VPN itself and used intermediaries that often didn’t disclose Facebook’s involvement until users had begun the signup process. While users were given clear instructions and warnings, the program never stresses nor mentions the full extent of the data Facebook can collect through the VPN. A small fraction of the users paid may have been teens, but we stand by the newsworthiness of its choice not to exclude minors from this data collection initiative. Facebook disobeying Apple so directly and then pulling the app could hurt their relationship. “The code in this iOS app strongly indicates that it is simply a poorly re-branded build of the banned Onavo app, now using an Enterprise Certificate owned by Facebook in direct violation of Apple’s rules, allowing Facebook to distribute this app without Apple review to as many users as they want,” Strafach tells us. ONV prefixes and mentions of graph.onavo.com, “onavoApp://” and “onavoProtect://” custom URL schemes litter the app. “This is an egregious violation on many fronts, and I hope that Apple will act expeditiously in revoking the signing certificate to render the app inoperable.” Facebook is particularly interested in what teens do on their phones as the demographic has increasingly abandoned the social network in favor of Snapchat, YouTube and Facebook’s acquisition Instagram. Insights into how popular with teens is Chinese video music app TikTok and meme sharing led Facebook to launch a clone called Lasso and begin developing a meme-browsing feature called LOL, TechCrunch first reported. But Facebook’s desire for data about teens riles critics at a time when the company has been battered in the press. Analysts on tomorrow’s Facebook earnings call should inquire about what other ways the company has to collect competitive intelligence now that it’s ceased to run the Research program on iOS. Last year when Tim Cook was asked what he’d do in Mark Zuckerberg’s position in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, he said “I wouldn’t be in this situation . . . The truth is we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer, if our customer was our product. We’ve elected not to do that.” Zuckerberg told Ezra Klein that he felt Cook’s comment was “extremely glib.” Now it’s clear that even after Apple’s warnings and the removal of Onavo Protect, Facebook was still aggressively collecting data on its competitors via Apple’s iOS platform. “I have never seen such open and flagrant defiance of Apple’s rules by an App Store developer,” Strafach concluded. Now that Facebook has ceased the program on iOS and its Android future is uncertain, it may either have to invent new ways to surveil our behavior amidst a climate of privacy scrutiny, or be left in the dark. Additional reporting by Zack Whittaker. Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

Jan. 30, 2019

Would you program a human?

by Giacomo Tesio

[...] I install the toolkit. Immediately, I'm not impressed. The documentation is a mess. It's outdated, and most of the API is just blank. StackOverflow is filled with questions about programs randomly crashing, and smug answers belittling the poster. I'll have to poke around blindly looking for something that works. You laugh, but this is the true state of affairs for the software that runs your phones, cars, medical devices, and military hardware. Do we really expect that we'd approach human programming more rigorously? We can't stop the development of technology just because we haven't figured out programming yet. We also can't use the argument, "but these are people!" That holds little weight to the decisions made by giants like Facebook and Google -- who essentially already control our lives through the software they write. Alright, I have some code. I can't just deploy this. I need to test it. I wonder how this will even work. Do we have some emulator? Maybe, but it looks buggy. I see there's an offer from India to outsource my testing. They've got a web form and ability to upload the code. I'm best off not thinking about what happens on the backend. As long as I get my results, it's their concern, not mine. [...] This demands the question: what level of completeness is okay? It's currently impossible to set a deadline and a planned feature set in software. This isn't a lack of planning ability, it's a fundamental uncertainty in how the profession works. There's no reason to assume human programming will be any different. What defects are we willing to accept when it comes to gene editing? [...] If I think about the self-driving car discussions, we have a fundamental lack of knowledge to deal with morality and software. And the repercussions will be played out at a high political level, it might never even involve the programmer -- despite them being essential to the answer. https://dev.to/mortoray/would-you-program-a-human-57gb

Jan. 30, 2019

Re: [nexa] Valore legale della blockchain e smart contract: primo via libera al Senato

by Giacomo Tesio

Illuminante. Fa il paio con la PEC. Giacomo

Jan. 29, 2019

CFP Urbino

by Fabio Giglietto

Ciao a tutti, sono un lettore silenzioso ma vorace della vostra ML. Ho pensato che a qualcuno di voi potessero interessare questi due eventi che ospiteremo a Urbino a giugno. ☑️ 24th June 2019 | Association of Internet Researchers (#AoIR) Symposium - Below the Radar: Private Groups, Locked Platforms and Ephemeral Content ( https://aoir.org/aoir2019symposia/) ☑️ 25-29 June 2019 | 15th Conference of Sociocybernetics - “Dark Ages 2.0”: Social Media And Their Impact (https://easychair.org/cfp/ICSC2019) Sperando di aver fatto cosa gradita. A presto, Fabio Giglietto -- Fabio Giglietto Associate Professor at University of Urbino "Carlo Bo" Twitter: @fabiogiglietto <https://twitter.com/fabiogiglietto> Google Scholar profile <http://scholar.google.it/citations?user=FmenbcUAAAAJ&hl=en>

Jan. 29, 2019

Valore legale della blockchain e smart contract: primo via libera al Senato

by Guido Noto La Diega

"Primo via libera alla norma – come emendamento al decreto Semplificazioni, ora al Senato – che inserisce per la prima volta nel nostro ordinamento le “tecnologie basate su registri distribuiti come la Blockchain” e una definizione di smart contract. Il primo aspetto è “la possibilità di dare un valore giuridico a una transazione che sfrutti un registro elettronico distribuito e informatizzato, senza passare da notai o enti certificatori centrali”, spiega Fulvio Sarzana, avvocato e membro del team degli esperti blockchain avviato dal ministero dello Sviluppo economico. «La norma sullo smart contract invece dà a un contratto eseguito in automatico da un programma informatico il valore giuridico di un contratto normale, scritto e firmato», aggiunge Sarzana." https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/tecnologie/2019-01-23/valore-legale-blockch… -- Guido Guido Noto La Diega, PhD FHEA Senior Lecturer / European Research Partnerships Coordinator @ Northumbria Law School Director @italiot | Fellow @nexacenter | Co-convenor @NINSOrig | Co-founder @DPA2018 Northumbria Law School City Campus East, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST noto.la.diega(a)gmail.com +44(0)191 349 5562 You can access my papers on Academia.edu <http://northumbria.academia.edu/GuidoNotoLaDiega> and on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1794950>) This e-mail and any attachment hereto are strictly confidential and are exclusively intended for the person above identified. Without intended recipient’s entitlement, use, copy and dissemination of this e-mail is prohibited. If you have received it in error, please advice us immediately by telephone and return the documents received to the above address, deleting the files. Thank you. Unless necessary, please do not print this e-mail.

Jan. 29, 2019

Re: [nexa] Seminario di discussione su “The Game” di Alessandro Baricco | 1 febbraio 2019

by Francesco Ruggiero

*REMINDER*: vi ricordiamo che venerdì 1 febbraio 2019, dalle ore 16 alle ore 20, avrà luogo al Centro Nexa un seminario interno dal titolo: *Tra grande narrazione e storytelling: raccontare la rivoluzione digitale.* *Seminario di discussione su “The Game” di Alessandro Baricco, Einaudi Editore.* Conduce: *Enrico Donaggio* Cordiali saluti, Francesco Il giorno mar 8 gen 2019 alle ore 14:17 Francesco Ruggiero < francesco.ruggiero(a)polito.it> ha scritto: > Carissimi, > > scrivo per segnalarvi il seminario interno di Nexa che avrà luogo > il *1** febbraio 2019 *dalle ore 16.00 alle ore 20.00 e che sarà condotto > da *Enrico Donaggio.* > > Titolo: > *Tra grande narrazione e storytelling: raccontare la rivoluzione digitale.* > *Seminario di discussione su “The Game” di Alessandro Baricco, Einaudi > Editore.* > > "Quella che stiamo vivendo non è solo una rivoluzione tecnologica fatta di > nuovi oggetti, ma il risultato di un'insurrezione mentale. Chi l'ha > innescata - dai pionieri di Internet all'inventore dell'iPhone - non aveva > in mente un progetto preciso se non questo, affascinante e selvaggio: > rendere impossibile la ripetizione di una tragedia come quella del > Novecento. Niente più confini, niente più élite, niente più caste > sacerdotali, politiche, intellettuali. Uno dei concetti più cari all'uomo > analogico, la verità, diventa improvvisamente sfocato, mobile, instabile. I > problemi sono tradotti in partite da vincere in un gioco per > adulti-bambini. Perché questo è The Game." > > Grazie e buona giornata, > > Francesco > > > -- > Francesco Ruggiero > Communication Manager > > Nexa Center for Internet & Society > Politecnico di Torino - DAUIN > Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino > > web: http://nexa.polito.it > mail: francesco.ruggiero(a)polito.it > tel: 011 090 7219 > -- Francesco Ruggiero Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino - DAUIN Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino web: http://nexa.polito.it mail: francesco.ruggiero(a)polito.it tel: 011 090 7219

Jan. 29, 2019

Facebook drafts a proposal describing how its new content review board will work

by Matteo Flora

Facebook drafts a proposal describing how its new content review board will work https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/28/facebook-drafts-a-proposal-describing-how…

Jan. 29, 2019

ALGORITHMIC ENTITIES

by Giacomo

Ho trovato questo articolo di LYNN M. LOPUCKI estremamente interessante. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2954173 Le conclusioni sembrano interessati da un punto di vista legale (almeno così sembrani ad un profano come me) ma sono ingenuamente catastrofiste da un punto di vista tecnico. Siamo tanto vicini a produrre intelligenze artificiali generali quanto siamo vicini a visitare la galassia di Andromeda. Il vero pericolo delle Artificial Entities non sta nella loro mente artificiale, ma in quelle biologiche che le controllerebbero senza risponderne. Di seguito abstract e conclusioni: In a 2014 article, Professor Shawn Bayern demonstrated that anyone can confer legal personhood on an autonomous computer algorithm by putting it in control of a limited liability company. Bayern’s demonstration coincided with the development of “autonomous” online businesses that operate independently of their human owners—accepting payments in online currencies and contracting with human agents to perform the off-line aspects of their businesses. About the same time, leading technologists Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking said that they regard human-level artificial intelligence as an existential threat to the human race. This Article argues that algorithmic entities—legal entities that have no human controllers—greatly exacerbate the threat of artificial intelligence. Algorithmic entities are likely to prosper first and most in criminal, terrorist, and other anti-social activities because that is where they have their greatest comparative advantage over human-controlled entities. Control of legal entities will contribute to the threat algorithms pose by providing them with identities. Those identities will enable them to conceal their algorithmic natures while they participate in commerce, accumulate wealth, and carry out anti-social activities. Four aspects of corporate law make the human race vulnerable to the threat of algorithmic entities. First, algorithms can lawfully have exclusive control of not just American LLC’s but also a large majority of the entity forms in most countries. Second, entities can change regulatory regimes quickly and easily through migration. Third, governments— particularly in the United States—lack the ability to determine who controls the entities they charter and so cannot determine which have non-human controllers. Lastly, corporate charter competition, combined with ease of entity migration, makes it virtually impossible for any government to regulate algorithmic control of entities. [...tutto l'articolo...] CONCLUSIONS AEs are inevitable because they have three advantages over humancontrolled businesses. They can act and react more quickly, they don’t lose accumulated knowledge through personnel changes, and they cannot be held responsible for their wrongdoing in any meaningful way. AEs constitute a threat to humanity because the only limits on their conduct are the limits the least restrictive human creator imposes. As the science advances, algorithms’ abilities will improve until they far exceed those of humans. What remains to be determined is whether humans will be successful in imposing controls before the opportunity to do so has passed. This Article has addressed a previously unexplored aspect of the artificial-intelligence-control problem. Giving algorithms control of entities endows algorithms with legal rights and gives them the ability to transact anonymously with humans. Once granted, those rights and abilities would be difficult to revoke. Under current law, algorithms could inhabit entities of most types and nationalities. They could move from one type or nationality to another, thereby changing their governing law. They could easily hide from regulators in a system where the controllers of nonpublicly-traded entities are all invisible. Because the revocation of AEs’ rights and abilities would require the amendment of thousands of entity laws, the entity system is less likely to function as a means of controlling artificial intelligence than as a means by which artificial intelligence will control humans. Entity law is not only incapable of regulating AEs, it is incapable of regulating much of anything. The entity system is grounded in three principles. First, an entity can incorporate anywhere, regardless of the location of its operations. Second, an entity chartered in one jurisdiction can do business in virtually any other jurisdiction. Third, while operating in those other jurisdictions, the entity continues to be governed by the entity law under which it was formed. Together, those principles implicitly define a regulatory competition through the sale of entity charters. Each government competes for a share in billions of dollars of revenues annually by promoting and selling its entities and the regulation that accompanies them. To regulate is to restrict. A competition to sell restrictions will, of course, be won by the jurisdiction that provides the fewest. Thus, the natural culmination of charter competition is a system that does not restrict at all. That result is not unintended. It is essentially what Romano touted as the “genius of American corporate law.”328 By embracing the charter competition, the United States has become the world’s largest supplier of anonymous entities and enabled its corporate service providers to achieve the world’s lowest rate of compliance with the international standards designed to prevent terrorist financing and money-laundering. Because they believed that government should not regulate the relationship among the corporation and its officers, directors, and shareholders, charter competition advocates have perpetuated a system that hardly regulates at all. What the advocates apparently failed to realize is that entity law applies to much more than the entities’ internal affairs. AEs have no internal affairs, yet entity law will govern the key issues that determine their viability. Chartering governments decide who—or what—can have the rights of a person by acting through an entity. Chartering governments also decide what information about the human actors will be available to the public, what information will be available to police and prosecutors, how quickly that information will be made available and at what expense, how quickly and easily an entity can flee a jurisdiction to avoid the jurisdiction’s current or proposed regulations, and even whether a tort creditor can recover against an entity’s owner. Chartering governments decide these issues even when the effects are felt entirely outside the chartering jurisdiction. The AE threat dramatically illustrates the fundamental weakness of regulatory competition as a policy tool. Once the charter competition was up and running, the economic, political, and legal systems adjusted. Ending the competition now would be so disruptive it is almost impossible. The entity system is not merely a system that will not regulate when regulation is not needed, it is a system that cannot regulate even when regulation is needed. The assertion that charter competition is harmless because entity law governs only entities’ internal affairs is no longer plausible. As the example of AEs illustrates, entity law governs far more than the internal affairs of a corporation. It determines the very nature of the corporate personality. The survival of the human race may depend on recognition of that fact.

Jan. 28, 2019

Uso degli algoritmi e distorsioni programmate | 6 febbraio 2019

by Francesco Ruggiero

Carissimi, vi segnalo un incontro in programma mercoledì *6* *febbraio 2019*, a partire dalle ore 17.30, dal titolo: *Uso degli algoritmi e distorsioni programmate.* L’incontro avrà luogo nella sala Conferenze del *Polo del Novecento *in corso Valdocco 4/a, Torino. Ne discutono *Ugo Pagallo* (Università degli Studi di Torino - Centro Nexa), *Pietro Jarre* (Sloweb) e *Antonio Santangelo* (Centro Nexa). In allegato la locandina. Grazie per l'attenzione. -- Francesco Ruggiero Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino - DAUIN Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino web: http://nexa.polito.it mail: francesco.ruggiero(a)polito.it tel: 011 090 7219

Jan. 28, 2019