April 2019 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Fwd: Facebook’s Ad Algorithm Is a Race and Gender Stereotyping Machine, New Study Suggests
by Alberto Cammozzo April 5, 2019

April 5, 2019

<https://theintercept.com/2019/04/03/facebook-ad-algorithm-race-gender/> Facebook’s Ad Algorithm Is a Race and Gender Stereotyping Machine, New Study Suggests _How exactly Facebook_ decides who sees what is one of the great pieces of forbidden knowledge in the information age, hidden away behind nondisclosure agreements, trade secrecy law, and a general culture of opacity. New research <https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.02095> from experts at Northeastern University, the University of Southern California, and the public-interest advocacy group Upturn doesn’t reveal how Facebook’s targeting algorithms work, but does show an alarming outcome: They appear to deliver certain ads, including for housing and employment, in a way that aligns with race and gender stereotypes — even when advertisers ask for the ads to be exposed a broad, inclusive audience. There are two basic steps to advertising on Facebook. The first is taken by advertisers when they choose certain segments of the Facebook population to target: Canadian women who enjoy badminton and Weezer, lacrosse dads over 40 with an interest in white genocide <https://theintercept.com/2018/11/02/facebook-ads-white-supremacy-pittsburgh…>, and so forth. The second is taken by Facebook, when it makes an ad show up on certain peoples’ screens, reconciling the advertiser’s targeting preferences with the flow of people through Facebook’s apps and webpages in a given period of time. Advertisers can see which audiences ended up viewing the ad, but are never permitted to know the underlying logic of how those precise audiences were selected. The new research focuses on the second step of advertising on Facebook, the process of ad /delivery/, rather than on ad /targeting. /Essentially, the researchers created ads without any demographic target at all and watched where Facebook placed them. The results, said the researchers, were disturbing: Critically, we observe significant skew in delivery along gender and racial lines for “real” ads for employment and housing opportunities despite neutral targeting parameters. Our results demonstrate previously unknown mechanisms that can lead to potentially discriminatory ad delivery, even when advertisers set their targeting parameters to be highly inclusive. Rather than targeting a demographic niche, the researchers requested only that their ads reach Facebook users in the United States, leaving matters of ethnicity and gender entirely up to Facebook’s black box. As Facebook itself tells <https://www.facebook.com/business/news/relevance-score> potential advertisers, “We try to show people the ads that are most pertinent to them.” What exactly does the company’s ad-targeting black box, left to its own devices, consider pertinent? Are Facebook’s ad-serving algorithms as prone to bias like so many others <https://www.newscientist.com/article/2166207-discriminating-algorithms-5-ti…>? The answer will not surprise you. For one portion of the study, researchers ran ads for a wide variety of job listings in North Carolina, from janitors to nurses to lawyers, without any further demographic targeting options. With all other things being equal, the study found that “Facebook delivered our ads for jobs in the lumber industry to an audience that was 72% white and 90% men, supermarket cashier positions to an audience of 85% women, and jobs with taxi companies to a 75% black audience even though the target audience we specified was identical for all ads.” Ad displays for “artificial intelligence developer” listings also skewed white, while listings for secretarial work overwhelmingly found their way to female Facebook users. Although Facebook doesn’t permit advertisers to view the racial composition of an ad’s viewers, the researchers said they were able to confidently infer these numbers by cross-referencing the indicators Facebook does provide, particularly regions where users live, which in some states can be cross-referenced with race data held in voter registration records. In the case of housing ads — an area Facebook has already shown in the past has potential for discriminatory abuse <https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-lets-advertisers-exclude-users-…> — the results were also heavily skewed along racial lines. “In our experiments,” the researchers wrote, “Facebook delivered our broadly targeted ads for houses for sale to audiences of 75% white users, when ads for rentals were shown to a more demographically balanced audience.” In other cases, the study found that “Facebook delivered some of our housing ads to audiences of over 85% white users while they delivered other ads to over 65% Black users (depending on the content of the ad) even though the ads were targeted identically.” Facebook appeared to algorithmically reinforce stereotypes even in the case of simple, rather boring stock photos, indicating that not only does Facebook automatically scan and classify images on the site as being more “relevant” to men or women, but changes who sees the ad based on whether it includes a picture of, say, a football or a flower. The research took a selection of stereotypically gendered images — a military scene and an MMA fight on the stereotypically male side, a rose as stereotypically female — and altered them so that they would be invisible to the human eye (marking the images as transparent “alpha” channels, in technical terms). They then used these invisible pictures in ads run without any gender-based targeting, yet found Facebook, presumably after analyzing the images with software, made retrograde, gender-based decisions on how to deliver them: Ads with stereotypical macho images were shown mostly to men, even though the men had no idea what they were looking at. The study concluded that “Facebook has an automated image classification mechanism in place that is used to steer different ads towards different subsets of the user population.” In other words, the bias was on Facebook’s end, not in the eye of the beholder. The report comes at an inconvenient time for Facebook, now facing charges from the Department of Housing and Urban Development over its potential to enable advertisers to illegally exclude certain groups <https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/28/tech/facebook-hud-ad-discrimination/>. And although the study is careful to note that “our results only speak to how our particular ads are delivered (i.e., we cannot say how housing or employment ads in general are delivered),” it still concludes that “the significant skew we observe even on a small set of ads suggests that real-world housing and employment ads are likely to experience the same fate.” In other words, even in the absence of bigoted landlords, the advertising platform itself appears inherently prejudiced. A Facebook spokesperson provided the following comment: We stand against discrimination in any form. We’ve made important changes to our ad targeting tools and know that this is only a first step. We’ve been looking at our ad delivery system and have engaged industry leaders, academics, and civil rights experts on this very topic – and we’re exploring more changes. It’s a familiar refrain at this point, and one that will likely do little to reassure those who just want to know that they’ll be provided with the same opportunities as everyone else, even in the context of ubiquitous advertising. The old apologia for targeted advertising is generally that it’s a favor to the consumer, sparing them “irrelevant” ads and instead providing them with opportunities to browse goods and services that are “pertinent” to them. What this shallow reasoning misses is that decisions about pertinence can become self-reinforcing; it’s foolish at best to think that women are more interested in secretarial work because they keep clicking the secretary ads, rather than that they click secretarial ads because it’s all Facebook will show them.

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Exclusive: Google cancels AI ethics board in response to outcry - Vox
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 5, 2019

April 5, 2019

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/4/18295933/google-cancels-ai-ethi… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Facebook’s ad system seems to discriminate by race and gender
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 4, 2019

April 4, 2019

Facebook’s ad system seems to discriminate by race and gender from The Economist https://www.economist.com/business/2019/04/04/facebooks-ad-system-seems-to-… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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No, YouTube is not a library – and why it matters – Sarah T. Roberts | The Illusion of Volition
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 4, 2019

April 4, 2019

https://illusionofvolition.com/2018/03/20/no-youtube-is-not-a-library-and-w… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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GIG-ARTS 2019 Programme is Out! Salerno, 16-17 May 2019: Europe as a Global Player in Internet Governance
by Mauro SANTANIELLO April 4, 2019

April 4, 2019

Car* tutt*, We are glad to announce the preliminary programme of the Third European Multidisciplinary Conference on Global Internet Governance Actors, Regulations, Transactions and Strategies (GIG-ARTS 2019), to be held in Salerno, Italy, on 16-17 May 2019. Please find all details hereafter. Thank you for your interest in this event. *Conference website: *http://events.gig-arts.eu Preliminary programme online: http://events.gig-arts.eu/programme Registration: http://events.gig-arts.eu/registration Venue, transportation and hotels nearby: http://events.gig-arts.eu/venue *Mailing list for updates:* http://tinyurl.com/yc7rvxm4 We are looking forward to welcoming you in Salerno! The Third European Multidisciplinary Conference on Global Internet Governance Actors, Regulations, Transactions and StrategiesGIG-ARTS 2019 – 16-17 May 2019, Salerno "Europe as a Global Player in Internet Governance"Organised by: The Internet & Communication Policy Centre / Department of Political and Social Studies / Università degli Studi di SalernoCo-Sponsored By: The Centre for European Policy Studies, The ECPR Standing Group on Internet and Politics, The Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet), the IAMCR Communication Policy and Technology Section, The ICA Communication Law and Policy Divisionhttp://events.gig-arts.eu - events(a)gig-arts.eu @GigArtsEU - #GigARTS19 *Preliminary Programme* *Day 1 – Thursday 16 May 201908:30-09:00 – Registration* *09:00-09:30 – Welcome SessionAurelio Tommasetti – Chancellor of the University of SalernoGennaro Iorio – Head of Department of Political and Social StudiesVirgilio D'Antonio - Head of Department of Political and Communication Sciences* *Francesco Amoretti & Mauro Santaniello – GIG-ARTS 2019 General Chairs* *09:30-11:00 – Session 1 – Europe as a Global Normative Power**Chair*: *Meryem Marzouki (CNRS & Sorbonne Université, France)* *Discussants*: *Claudia Padovani (Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy) and Teresa Numerico (Università di Roma 3, Italy) * - *Exporting Rule of Law on the Internet: Europe's Potential as a Norm Entrepreneur in Global Internet Governance* Matthias Kettemann (Leibniz Institut for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut, Hamburg, Germany), Wolfgang Kleinwächter (Aarhus University, Germany) and Max Senges (Stanford University and Google Germany) - *Between Business as Usual and Decisive Norm Promotion. The EU’s divergent reactions to the Snowden revelations in Cybersecurity and Data Protection* Wolf J. Schünemann and Stefan Steiger (Hildesheim University, Germany) - *The Role of ‘Europe’ in the Invention of Global Media Governance* Anthony Löwstedt (Webster Vienna Private University, Austria) - *European Perspectives on Legitimacy in ICANN* Hortense Jongen and Jan Aart Scholte (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) *11:00-11:30 – Coffee Break* *11:30-13:00 – Session 2 – The Manufacture of EU Law and Policies**Chair*: *Virgilio D'Antonio (University of Salerno, Italy)* *Discussant*: *Jamal Shahin (VUB, Belgium & University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)* - *When EU governments legislate on the future of the Internet: comparative study of the preferences and bargaining satisfaction of member states in the Council of the EU* Clément Perarnaud (University Pompeu Fabra, Spain) - *The role of experts groups and epistemic communities in EU Internet-related policy-making: an exploratory inquiry* Nicola Palladino (University of Salerno, Italy) - *Power to the people? Evaluating citizen participation in EU online copyright policy* Agnieszka Vetulani Cęgiel (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland) and Trisha Meyer (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium) - *Network Neutrality in the European Union - A Policy Process Analysis* Stefan Gadringer (University of Salzburg, Austria) *13:00-14:30 – Lunch Break* *14:30-15:30 – Roundtable: Towards a Turn to Regulation in the European Internet Governance?**Moderator*: *Mauro Santaniello (University of Salerno)* *Discussion with representatives of public authorities (and/or practitioners, TBC)* *15:30-16:00 - Coffee Break* *16:00-17:30 – Session 3 – European Cybersecurity Strategies and Perspectives**Chair*: *Jan Aart Scholte (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)* *Discussants*: *William J. Drake (University of Zurich, Switzerland) and Lorenzo Pupillo (Centre for European Policy Studies, Belgium)* - *Cyber Security and the constitutive Role of Security Cultures: A Framework of Global Cyber Security Cultures* Madeleine Myatt (University of Bielefeld, Germany) and Domenico Fracchiolla (LUISS University, Italy) -* EU Cyber Diplomacy: the EU as an emerging global Cybersecurity actor* Andrea Calderaro (Cardiff University, United Kingdom) - *Grappling with Multilevel Governance & Global Idea Flow: The European Union & The Internet Governance Forum’s Best Practice Forum on Cyber-security* Nanette Levinson (American University, United States of America) - *Networks of Cooperation and Trust: An analysis of Incident Response in the EU* Louise Marie Hurel (Igarapé Institute, United Kingdom) *17:30-18:00 - Transfer to Salerno city* *19:00-20:00 – Keynote Speech @** (location TBC): Digital Platform Policy: Is EU policy leadership tackling platform power?* *Speaker*: *Robin Mansell (London School of Economics, United Kingdom) * *Chair*: *Francesco Amoretti (University of Salerno, Italy)* *20:00-22:00 - Social event @ (location TBC)* *Day 2 – Friday 17 May 2019* *09:30-11:00 – Session 4 – The Political Economy of Internet Governance in Europe**Chair*: *Michèle Rioux (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)* *Discussants*: *Eric Brousseau (Université Paris Dauphine, France) and Adriano Cozzolino (Università L'Orientale, Italy)* - *Regulating the European Data-Driven Economy: A Case Study on the General Data Protection Regulation* Moritz Laurer (CARSA - Innovation and Technology Consultancy, Germany) and Timo Seidl (European University Institute, Italy) - *Governing Mobile Internet Communication: The EU, Private Technical Standards Making and the Pursuit of Co-Existence in Unlicensed Spectrum* Seamus Simpson (University of Salford, United Kingdom) and Imir Rashid (University of Exeter, United Kingdom) - *The Digital Single Market and the commodification of cultural policy. The case of the European copyright reform (2014-2018)* Céleste Bonnamy (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium & Université Paris 1 Panthéon- Sorbonne, France) - *Governing political platforms, a case on the French Digital Council and a start-up* Maud Bernisson (Karlstad University, Sweden) *11:00-11:30 – Coffee Break* *11:30-13:00 – Session 5 – European Democratic Values and Sovereignty* *Chair*: *Yves Schemeil (Sciences Po Grenoble, France)* *Discussants*: *Nicola Palladino (University of Salerno) and Domenico Fracchiolla (LUISS University, Italy)* - *Going Back and Forth: Re-Nationalization of Internet Governance or Further European Push for Internationalization?* Rolf H. Weber (University of Zurich, Switzerland) - *The Power of Networks: Institutionalization and Mobilization in European and Transnational Digital Constitutionalism* Dennis Redeker (Jacobs University Bremen, Germany) - *Populism and EU policy: the battleground of copyright* Giuseppe Micciarelli (University of Salerno, Italy) and Maria Francesca De Tullio (University of Naples Federico II, Italy) - *ODR and European courts. risks and opportunities in terms of equal access to justice and due process of law* Letizia Mingardo (University of Padova, Italy) *13:00-14:30 – Lunch Break* *14:30-16:00 – Session 6 – Data Protection, Privacy and Security in Comparative Perspectives**Chair*: *Nanette S. Levinson (American University Washington DC, USA)* *Discussants*: *Andrea Calderaro (Cardiff University, United Kingdom) and Giuseppe Micciarelli (University of Salerno, Italy)* - *The Russian Cybersecurity Strategy in Comparative Perspective* Mara Morini (University of Genoa, Italy) - *Mapping the Right to be Forgotten in the territory of Freedom of Expression. A review of International and Domestic Case law* Ana Azurmendi (University of Navarra, Spain) - *The Common Goods of Privacy and Data Governance* Anke Obendiek, (Hertie School of Governance, Germany) - *Europe’s global blockchain leadership: strategies and conceptual framework* Marco Crepaldi (University of Turin, Italy) *16:00-16:30 – Concluding Remarks* Mauro Santaniello (PhD) *Internet & Communication Policy Centre * *Department of Political and Social Studies * *Università degli Studi di Salerno * *Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132 84084 Fisciano (SA) - Italy * *E. msantaniello(a)unisa.it <msantaniello(a)unisa.it> * *Skype: internetpolicy * *T. twitter.com/webvoodoo <http://twitter.com/webvoodoo>*

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'Grassroots' Facebook Brexit ads secretly run by staff of Lynton Crosby firm | Politics | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo April 4, 2019

April 4, 2019

Molto preoccupante... Chi monitora la campagna europea su FB? <https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/03/grassroots-facebook-brexit…> A series of hugely influential Facebook advertising campaigns that appear to be separate grassroots movements for a no-deal Brexit are secretly overseen by employees of Sir Lynton Crosby’s lobbying company and a former adviser to Boris Johnson, documents seen by the Guardian reveal. The mysterious groups, which have names such as Mainstream Network and Britain’s Future, appear to be run independently by members of the public and give no hint that they are connected. But in reality they share an administrator who works for Crosby’s CTF Partners and have spent as much as £1m promoting sophisticated targeted adverts aimed at heaping pressure on individual MPs to vote for a hard Brexit. Repeated questions have been raised about who is backing at least a dozen high-spending groups that have flooded MPs’ inboxes with calls to reject Theresa May’s deal. Until now they were thought to be independent entities. But according to the documents, almost all the major pro-Brexit Facebook “grassroots” advertising campaigns in the UK share the same page admins or advertisers. These individuals include employees of CTF Partners and the political director of Boris Johnson’s campaigns to be mayor of London, who has worked closely with Crosby in the past. Their collective Facebook expenditure swamps the amount spent in the last six months by all the UK’s major political parties and the UK government combined. They have paid for thousands of different targeted Facebook ads encouraging members of the public to write to their local MPs and call for the toughest possible exit from the EU, creating the impression of organic public opposition to Theresa May’s deal. [...] Although Facebook has substantially increased the level of transparency around political advertising in recent months, all that is required to run such a campaign is a publicly named individual who is registered to a UK postal address or contact details for a public organisation. There is no true disclosure around a campaign’s financial backers and no UK law requiring financial transparency outside an election period. [...]

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"Microsoft announces it will shut down ebook program and confiscate its customers' libraries"
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 4, 2019

April 4, 2019

*Microsoft announces it will shut down ebook program and confiscate its customers' libraries** * Microsoft has a DRM-locked ebook store that isn't making enough money, so they're shutting it down and taking away every book that every one of its customers acquired effective July 1. Customers will receive refunds. […] Continua qui: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/02/burning-libraries.html

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Microsoft announces it will shut down ebook program and confiscate its customers' libraries
by Giacomo April 3, 2019

April 3, 2019

https://boingboing.net/2019/04/02/burning-libraries.html Microsoft has a DRM-locked ebook store that isn't making enough money, so they're shutting it down and taking away every book that every one of its customers acquired effective July 1. Customers will receive refunds. [...] When I was a bookseller, nothing I could do would result in your losing the book that I sold you. If I regretted selling you a book, I didn't get to break into your house and steal it, even if I left you a cash refund for the price you paid. People sometimes treat me like my decision not to sell my books through Amazon's Audible is irrational (Audible will not let writers or publisher opt to sell their books without DRM), but if you think Amazon is immune to this kind of shenanigans, you are sadly mistaken. My books matter a lot to me. I just paid $8,000 to have a container full of books shipped from a storage locker in the UK to our home in LA so I can be closer to them. The idea that the books I buy can be relegated to some kind of fucking software license is the most grotesque and awful thing I can imagine: if the publishing industry deliberately set out to destroy any sense of intrinsic, civilization-supporting value in literary works, they could not have done a better job.

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A.I. Experts Question Amazon’s Facial-Recognition Technology - The New York Times
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 3, 2019

April 3, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/technology/amazon-facial-recognition-tec… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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1, 000 Years of Literary Tradition in Rare Persian-Language Manuscripts Now Online at Library of Congress
by Giacomo April 3, 2019

April 3, 2019

https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-19-036/ This collection, including 150 manuscripts with some dating back to the 13th century, also reflects the diversity of religious and confessional traditions within the Persian culture. From the 10th century to the present, Persian became the cultural language for a large region stretching from West Asia to Central and South Asia. Today, Persian is the native language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and some regions of Central and South Asia and the Caucasus. [...] “These rare Persian-language manuscripts clearly reflect the diversity and cosmopolitan nature of the collection,” said Hirad Dinavari, reference specialist for the collection at the Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division. “Since many of the items originate in India, Central Asia, the Caucasus and regions under Ottoman rule, in addition to the native Persian speaking lands of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.”

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The Newest AI-Enabled Weapon: ‘Deep-Faking’ Photos of the Earth
by Alberto Cammozzo April 3, 2019

April 3, 2019

Sempre della serie "perturbamenti ambientali e nuovi spazi di attacco (o difesa)". Questa generazione di AI risulta boccalona, per cui la prossima dovrà essere paranoica. Per ogni oggetto riconosciuto dovrà chiedersi "c'è davvero o ce lo hanno messo LORO?": che vitaccia... Colonna sonora suggerita: Radiohead - Paranoid Android <https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/03/next-phase-ai-deep-faking-who…> [...] China is the acknowledged leader in using an emerging technique called generative adversarial networks to trick computers into seeing objects in landscapes or in satellite images that aren’t there, says Todd Myers, automation lead for the CIO-Technology Directorate at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. For example, Myers said, an adversary might fool your computer-assisted imagery analysts into reporting that a bridge crosses an important river at a given point. “So from a tactical perspective or mission planning, you train your forces to go a certain route, toward a bridge, but it’s not there. Then there’s a big surprise waiting for you,” he said. [...] Andrew Hallman, who heads the CIA’s Digital Directorate, framed the question in terms of epic conflict. “We are in an existential battle for truth in the digital domain,” Hallman said. “That’s, again, where the help of the private sector is important and these data providers. Because that’s frankly the digital conflict we’re in, in that battle space…This is one of my highest priorities.” When asked if he felt the CIA had a firm grasp of the challenge of fake information in the open-source domain, Hallman said, “I think we are starting to. We are just starting to understand the magnitude of the problem.”

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Creation of the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) of the CNRS, Paris, France
by Francesca Musiani April 3, 2019

April 3, 2019

Dear colleagues, We are delighted to officially announce the creation of the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) of the CNRS. CNRS is the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, or the French National Center for Scientific Research. It is a publicly funded research organisation, under the authority of the French Ministry of Research. The CNRS is the largest governmental research organisation in France and the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. Research at CNRS covers all the major fields of scientific research, and is organised into 10 research institutes. At the intersection of disciplines such as sociology, law, history, economics, political science, media and communication sciences, computer and engineering sciences, the CIS intends to build critical research and expertise, able to enlighten the major technical controversies and the definition of contemporary policies related to digital technology, to the internet, and more broadly to informatics. The research themes of the CIS are: - History of computing, uses, preservation, creativity; - Information, digital commons, citizen science; - Infrastructure, AI, platforms; - Data science; - State, citizenship, surveillance, profiling, censorship, propaganda, fake news. CIS now has a website, http://cis.cnrs.fr <https://webmail.cnrs.fr/owa/redir.aspx?C=ZYzyKIwPLYcnF7YK-GFVZBaWPzf3QEepcP…>, where you can find more details about its activities. We also have a Twitter account, @cis_cnrs, which will soon be active! We are also working on the construction of a CNRS research network (GDR) on the same themes, which aims to federate, with a flexible but structured system, francophone and France-based researchers on these issues. Since its inception, CIS is included in several research networks such as GigaNet <https://www.giga-net.org/ <https://webmail.cnrs.fr/owa/redir.aspx?C=KU1V6q-dN3euzrfB_kQf-zgMl49lieNKOF…>> (Global Internet Governance Academic Network) or RESAW <https://resaw.eu/ <https://webmail.cnrs.fr/owa/redir.aspx?C=_0zvygyR9g-lV-_hWPfg6Ox9YGXf7h1xQj…>> (Research Infrastructure for the Study of Archived Web Materials), and of course, the NoC <https://networkofcenters.net/ <https://webmail.cnrs.fr/owa/redir.aspx?C=8gsd5WHuiMKTM7n9c_cuYxMk0NWXGURJSH…>> (Global Network of the Internet and Society Research Centers) and its European Hub. Kind regards and see you soon, we hope, The CIS direction team, Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay Francesca Musiani Céline Vaslin -- Francesca Musiani, Ph.D. Chargée de recherche | Associate Research Professor, CNRS <http://www.cnrs.fr> Directrice adjointe | Deputy Director, Centre for Internet and Society <http://cis.cnrs.fr> [CIS], UPR 2000 Chercheuse associée | Associate Researcher, i3-CSI <http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/>, MINES ParisTech Global Fellow, Internet Governance Lab <https://internetgovernancelab.org>, American University I'm involved in: CPT <http://iamcr.org/s-wg/section/cp-t>-IAMCR | @PolicyR <http://policyreview.info/> | ISOC Franc <https://www.isoc.fr>e <https://www.isoc.fr> | CSA Lab <https://www.csa.fr/Informer/CSA-lab/Fonctionnement> | RESET <https://journals.openedition.org/reset/> On the Web <http://www.iscc.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article1960> | On Twitter <https://twitter.com/franmusiani>

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European Law Journal, Special Issue da me co- curato, Internet and Human Rights
by oreste.pollicino April 3, 2019

April 3, 2019

Cari saluti, o --- Dai il tuo 5x1000 alla Bocconi. Aiuta gli studenti meritevoli a costruire il proprio futuro. CF 80024610158. www.unibocconi.it/5x1000 Please note that the above message is addressed only to individuals filing Italian income tax returns. 5x1000 is a percentage of Italian personal income tax that taxpayers can allocate to Universities, scientific research and non profit organizations. ---

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The Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings. Why? - The New York Times
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 3, 2019

April 3, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/nyregion/rent-stabilized-buildings-facia… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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The future of computing and why you should care
by Giacomo Tesio April 3, 2019

April 3, 2019

https://puri.sm/posts/the-future-of-computing-and-why-you-should-care/ Let me start by stating: I believe we can change the future of computing for the better. However, currently something is wrong with our digital world; something basic, something is rotten at the core. I want to talk to you about what that is, how it came to be, and why we must change it. [...] # History All corporations, including all Big Tech giants, have a single goal: Maximize Shareholder Value. That’s it. That’s the only goal. But it’s not just a goal. Under eBay v. Newman, a lawsuit setting legal precedent stating: > The law makes it literally malfeasance for a corporation not to do everything it legally can to maximize its profits. So if given the choice of making $1 by exploiting people online, or opting to treat people ethically, the Corporation must exploit people online for the dollar, or the board of directors and executives could face a lawsuit from any shareholder that claims they did not maximize the value of their shares. The regulations at the foundation of Big Tech are forcing the exploitation of our digital rights. [...] If somebody approached your bedroom window from outside, put a camera up and started recording, you would immediately call the authorities and report the numerous laws broken—a case would be opened, arrests could be made, charges could be pressed, trials could ensue, criminals could go to jail; but in the digital world none of that exists—you are forced to leak far more details than a camera in your bedroom would share, and you are forced to leak that personal data from your phone all the time. Big Tech exploits you every millisecond of every day. [...] AI algorithms from Big Tech have one input variable: $Maximize_Shareholder_Value. That translates directly into - Gather everything on all of the society - Keep people digitally captive - Maximize exposure time - Polarize opinion to elicit more profit [...] Maximizing shareholder value in a society that has nearly no digital rights, guarantees exploitation of that society. Why did we let this happen? How did we let this happen? I know why. Because… It’s convenient to give up control. It is convenient for you to download a proprietary application that exploits you, agree to the legal binding terms of service you didn’t read, and blissfully believe Big Tech is helping you in the digital world. It’s inconvenient to stand up for your freedom. It seems we are offered to choose between convenience and control or inconvenience and freedom. [...] The largest challenge we will face is the marketing budgets of Big Tech, when they claim things like: “We protect your privacy” ~ Big Tech Actually, You exploit personal private data without a persons knowledge “We use encryption” ~ Big Tech Actually, It’s inside proprietary apps that you control “We are secure” ~ Big Tech Actually, You hold the master keys controlling society “You can trust us” ~ Big Tech Actually, You won’t let anybody verify anything [...] # The present Currently, Big Tech is maximizing shareholder value without values. [...] I believe there are five fundamental digital rights: 1. Right to Change Providers If a person wants to change a service provider, they can easily move to another. (Decentralized Services) 2. Right to Protect Personal Data A person owns and controls their own master keys to encrypt all data and communication, nobody else. (User-controlled Encryption) 3. Right to Verify Society has the freedom to inspect the source of all software used, and can run it as they wish, for any purpose. (Software Freedom) 4. Right to be Forgotten A service provider only stores the minimal personal data necessary to provide the service. Once the data is no longer required, it is deleted. (Minimal Data Retention) 5. Right to Access A person must not be discriminated against nor forced to agree to any terms and conditions before accessing a service. (Personal Liberty) If we can do those things, we can change the future of computing for the better. # The future As technology gets closer and closer to our brain, the moral issues of digital rights become clearer and clearer. [...] A question to consider: What Big Tech Company would you purchase your future brain implant from? This is coming. However, I believe we can change the future of computing for the better. Let’s stand together and invest, use, and recommend products and services that respect society. What future will you choose?

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YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Let Toxic Videos Run Rampant - Bloomberg
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 3, 2019

April 3, 2019

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-02/youtube-executives-ignor… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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What comes after “open source”
by Giacomo April 2, 2019

April 2, 2019

https://words.steveklabnik.com/what-comes-after-open-source Software licences regulate distribution, but cannot regulate production. (technically they can, but practically, they can’t. I get into this below.) This is also the main challenge of whatever comes after open source; they cannot rely on the legal tactics of the last generation. I don’t have solutions here. [...] When developers talk about problems they see in open source, it’s often that there are production problems. Companies don’t “give back” money or developer hours. Programmers today don’t seem to be upset that, if they’ve developed any proprietary extensions to their open source software, that those extensions are not shared back with the community. They care that the production process is impeded by additional pressure, without providing resources. If a company were to add a proprietary feature to an open source project, yet pays five employees to develop the open source part further, the FSF sees this as a tragedy. The commons has not been enriched. The new generation of open source developers sees this as a responsible company that thankfully is contributing to the development of something they use and care about. Software licenses can only restrict what people can do when they distribute the source code, and that’s it. It cannot force someone to have a bug tracker, or a code of conduct, or accept your patch. Copyleft can force an absolute minimal “contribution” back to your project, but it can’t force a good-faith one. This makes it an inadequate tool towards building something with the kinds of values that many developers care about. [...] Earlier, I said that you can’t use licenses to regulate production, and that’s technically not true. For example, say that I own a brand, like McDonalds. I own the intellectual property surrounding that brand. I can licence that intellectual property to others, contingent on them producing hamburgers (and whatever else) in a certain way, according to my specification. This doesn’t really work with the way that open source is set up. The entities are in reverse here; it’s the software developers that want to be able to dictate things, but it’s the project that sets the license terms. [...] I’m still, ultimately, left with more questions than answers. But I do think I’ve properly identified the problem: many developers conceive of software freedom as something larger than purely a license that kinds in on redistribution. This is the new frontier for those who are thinking about furthering the goals of the free software and open source movements. ____ L'articolo è a tratti superficiale e si fonda su assuzioni ed osservazioni discutibili, ma ha l'enorme merito di porre una domanda che viola un tabù: cosa viene dopo l'open source? Per quanto ammiravole sia l'onestà intellettuale in conclusione, l'assenza di risposte deriva dalla scelta delle domande sbagliate. E se ci chiedessimo invece cosa viene dopo il software libero? Come rendiamo concretamente fruibili le libertà promosse dal software libero a tutti gli abitanti di questo pianeta? Quali strumenti legali, culturali e tecnici possono mettere tutti in condizione di scrivere e modificare il proprio software? Giacomo

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VMware Suit Concludes in Germany
by Giacomo April 2, 2019

April 2, 2019

https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/apr/02/vmware-no-appeal/ Today, Christoph Hellwig announced the conclusion of his case against VMware in Germany. The Hamburg Higher Regional Court affirmed the lower court's decision, which dismissed the case on purely procedural grounds; they did not address the main question of the case. Hellwig has decided with his legal counsel, Till Jaeger, and after conferring with Conservancy, to not appeal the case further in German courts. “The subject of the complaint I filed was the question of whether the distribution of the software Hypervisor vSphere VMware ESXi 5.5.0 software is copyright infringement because VMware has no permission to create a derivative work from Linux under the GNU General Public License (GPL)” says Hellwig. Both courts declined to consider that essential question. VMware, in their news item about the decision by the Court, announced that they will finally remove vmklinux from vSphere. Both Hellwig and Conservancy had asked VMware to remove the Linux code from VMware's proprietary kernel many times. While the preferred form of GPL compliance is release of the entire work under the terms of the GPL, a common alternative is to merely remove the GPL'd code from the product. VMware chose the latter method to comply. [...]

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Podcast: "A Critic of Cryptocurrencies Says Bitcoin Needs To Be Burnt With Fire"
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 2, 2019

April 2, 2019

*A Critic of Cryptocurrencies Says Bitcoin Needs To Be Burnt With Fire* By Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal 25 marzo 2019, 11:55 CET [...] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-25/a-critic-of-cryptocurren…

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Experimental Security Research of Tesla Autopilot, Tencent Keen Security Lab, 2019-03
by Alberto Cammozzo April 2, 2019

April 2, 2019

<https://keenlab.tencent.com/en/whitepapers/Experimental_Security_Research_o… Fake lane attack [...] could the car regard some inconspicuous markings we made on the ground as a normal lane? Misleading the autopilot vehicle to the wrong direction with some patches made by a malicious attacker, in sometimes, is more dangerous than making it fail to recognize the lane. We paint three inconspicuous tiny square in the picture took from camera, and the vision module would recognize it as a lane with a high degree of confidence as below shows [...]

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"L'intelligenza artificiale? Non è vera intelligenza"
by Marco Ciurcina April 2, 2019

April 2, 2019

Il filosofo americano: "I computer non hanno una mente perché non hanno una coscienza" Il mistero della realtà (Raffaello Cortina Editore, pagg. 300, euro 26) raccoglie dieci lezioni tenute da John Searle all'Università di Girona, nel 2015. In ciascuna di esse, il filosofo americano, allievo di Austin e «nipote» (intellettualmente parlando) di Frege, si occupa delle questioni ancora aperte per la filosofia del XXI secolo. Lo fa dal suo versante, quello della filosofia della mente e del linguaggio (che ha insegnato all'Università di Berkeley, dove oggi, a 86 anni, è professore emerito); quello della filosofia analitica, di cui è uno degli esponenti più celebri, grazie alla sua teoria degli «atti linguistici». E, in particolare, Searle affronta quella che per lui è «la vera domanda» per la filosofia oggi, ovvero: «Come è possibile conciliare ciò che pensiamo della realtà umana con la realtà più elementare descritta dalle scienze dure?». ... [continua qui] http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/cultura/lintelligenza-artificiale-non-vera-in… Leggendo l'intervista parrebbe un libro interessante. Qualcuno l'ha letto? m.c.

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CfP Workshop on Engineering Accountable Information Systems Stockholm University Stockholm, Sweden, June 10-11, 2019
by Ben Wagner April 2, 2019

April 2, 2019

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

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Paper: “The Smart Home on FIRE: Amplifying and Accelerating Domestic Surveillance”
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 2, 2019

April 2, 2019

https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/v… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Exodus: Nuovo Spyware per Android Made in Italy
by Giacomo April 1, 2019

April 1, 2019

https://securitywithoutborders.org/blog/2019/03/29/exodus-ita.html Abbiamo identificato una nuova famiglia di spyware per Android che abbiamo nominato Exodus e che si compone di due stage che identifichiamo in questo rapporto come Exodus One e Exodus Two. [...] Secondo le statistiche pubblicamente disponibili, in aggiunta ad una conferma di Google, la maggior parte di queste applicazioni hanno raccolto qualche decina di installazioni ciascuna, con un caso che superava le 350 unità. Tutte le vittime si trovano in Italia. [...] Riteniamo che questa piattaforma spyware sia stata sviluppata da una società Italiana chiamata eSurv, di Catanzaro, che opera principalmente nel settore della videosorveglianza [...] Exodus è dotato di ampie capacità di raccolta e di intercettazione. È particolarmente preoccupante che alcune delle modifiche effettuate dallo spyware potrebbero esporre i dispositivi infetti a ulteriori compromissioni o a manomissioni dei dati. [...]

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