May 2019 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Alexa, please explain the dark side of artificial intelligence
by J.C. DE MARTIN May 30, 2019

May 30, 2019

Alexa, please explain the dark side of artificial intelligence From non-renewable materials to worker exploitation, our gadgets come with a higher price than many of us know https://www.ft.com/content/3632591e-819f-11e9-9935-ad75bb96c849 (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Behavioral Ad Targeting Not Paying Off for Publishers, Study Suggests - WSJ
by Alberto Cammozzo May 30, 2019

May 30, 2019

<https://www.wsj.com/articles/behavioral-ad-targeting-not-paying-off-for-pub…> Are creepy advertisements really necessary to support the free web? A new academic study suggests they aren’t. Behavioral advertising, which involves collecting data about readers’ online behavior and using it to serve them specially tailored ads, often through bits of code called cookies, has become the dominant force in digital advertising in recent years. But in one of the first empirical studies of the impacts of behaviorally targeted advertising on online publishers’ revenue, researchers at the University of Minnesota, University of California, Irvine, and Carnegie Mellon University suggest publishers only get about 4% more revenue for an ad impression that has a cookie enabled than for one that doesn’t. The study tracked millions of ad transactions at a large U.S. media company over the course of one week. That modest gain for publishers stands in contrast to the vastly larger sums advertisers are willing to pay for behaviorally targeted ads. A 2009 study by Howard Beales, a professor at George Washington University School of Business and a former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission, found advertisers are willing to pay 2.68 times more for a behaviorally targeted ad than one that wasn’t. Much of the premium likely is being eaten up by the so-called “ad tech tax,” the middlemen’s fees that eat up 60 cents of every dollar spent on programmatic ads, according to marketing intelligence firm Warc. The online ad ecosystem is complex and opaque, said Alessandro Acquisti, a professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College, who conducted the study along with Veronica Marotta and Vibhanshu Abhishek. It is “hard to understand how much value each participant in the ecosystem is adding to the process, and whether the fees different intermediaries receive are commensurate to their value added,” he said. Publishers’ inability to benefit much from behavioral targeting could have implications for policy as lawmakers in Washington, D.C., debate the shape of national privacy legislation. The ad industry is pushing for new federal rules, partly to head off the risk of a state-by-state patchwork of privacy laws, following the passage of California’s own privacy regulations. “It is a huge finding in terms of the policy debate,” said Ashkan Soltani, one of the authors of the California Consumer Privacy Act who formerly served as the chief technologist for the FTC. (Mr. Soltani also served as a technical adviser to The Wall Street Journal’s 2012 series on privacy, “What They Know.”) “All of these externalities with regard to the ad economy—the harm to privacy, the expansion of government surveillance, the ability to microtarget and drive divisive content—were often justified to industry because of this ‘huge’ value to publishers,” Mr. Soltani said. [...]

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Jeff Bezos e il gotha della Silicon Valley in Umbria
by don Luca Peyron May 30, 2019

May 30, 2019

" Le nostre idee per il futuro comportano la gioia di una tecnologia sottoposta all’umanità" Poco più che gossip, ma un segnale comunque interessante... o specchietto per le allodole? Buona lettura dl https://forbes.it/2019/05/30/cosa-ci-faceva-jeff-bezos-e-il-gotha-della-sil… _________________________ www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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JELT - Journal of Ethics and Legal Technology - first issue and call for papers
by Letizia Mingardo May 30, 2019

May 30, 2019

Dear All, the first issue of our new JELT is online: https://jelt.padovauniversitypress.it It is dedicated to: "Science, Technology and Law: Rediscovering the Value of Human Dialogue". I invite everyone to spread our Journal and to participate by September 1, 2019 in the call for papers for Vol. 1, Number 2, which will be published October 31, 2019. The details of the call are specified on the home page at the link above. Thank you for participation. Best wishes. Letizia Mingardo JELT Editorial Board Professor on Contract in Methodology and Legal Informatics Department of Private Law and Critique of Law University of Padova

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How to set your Google account to delete itself after you die
by Antonio Vetro' May 30, 2019

May 30, 2019

Si può scegliere a chi mandare i dati (fino a 10 persone) oppure di cremarli tutti quanti (le ceneri saranno criptate ?) https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/28/how-to-set-google-to-delete-everything-afte… av

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Opinion | Why Privacy Is an Antitrust Issue - The New York Times
by J.C. DE MARTIN May 29, 2019

May 29, 2019

Why Privacy Is an Antitrust Issue The demise of Facebook’s competition has put our data at risk. By Dina Srinivasan Ms. Srinivasan is an antitrust scholar. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/opinion/privacy-antitrust-facebook.html (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Legal Action Could Put an End to Sharing of Passenger Data :: Civil Liberties Union for Europe
by Alberto Cammozzo May 29, 2019

May 29, 2019

<https://www.liberties.eu/en/news/legal-action-against-mass-surveillance-in-…> The PNR data of every passenger travelling in Europe is compared against existing patterns, even when they are not suspected of any crimes. This allows law enforcement agencies to identify new suspects. Unfortunately, totally innocent people can be affected by the false results from opaque automatic data evaluation programs and be investigated by the police. The authorities that are responsible for storing and processing PNR data are usually police authorities, like the Federal Criminal Police Offices in both Germany and Austria. However, other authorities can access the data as well, with domestic police authorities, intelligence services and security agencies being able to manually access the databases. Moreover, the data may be exchanged with other EU countries and, in certain cases, even with third countries. PNR data is stored for six months using real names, and then for another four and a half years under pseudonyms. These pseudonyms can be removed, however, under certain circumstances. It is only after five years that, as long as there have been no in-depth police measures, the data is finally deleted. Retaining PNR data violates European fundamental rights In a 2017 legal opinion, the ECJ found that the transfer of PNR data as planned in a draft international treaty between the EU and Canada would breach citizens' fundamental rights. The PNR Directive also violates the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, especially the right to respect for private and family life (Article 7), as well as the right to the protection of personal data (Article 8). In our case, it is not possible to appeal directly to the ECJ. GFF and epicenter.works have thus taken legal action against the national implementation of the PNR Directive before German and Austrian courts, both civil and administrative. They expect the national courts to refer the question of the PNR Directive to the ECJ, and only the ECJ can overturn the PNR Directive and thus stop the retention of PNR data in all EU member states. We thank the Digital Freedom Fund for providing the basic funding for the project.

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Jim Balsillie : ‘Data is not the new oil – it’s the new plutonium’ – Financial Post
by J.C. DE MARTIN May 29, 2019

May 29, 2019

https://business.financialpost.com/technology/jim-balsillie-data-is-not-the… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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accordo Poste Microsoft
by armeo＠mail.nexacenter.org May 29, 2019

May 29, 2019

carissimi, nessuno degli amici di Nexa ha reagito a questo mio mail che qui ricopio: "" Poste non è una pubblica amministrazione, come giustamente rileva Stefano, ma è una società per azioni posseduta - non sono sicuro - dallo Stato nella misura del 60%. A prescindere dal fatto che penso che la privatizzazione di quel servizio sia stata una follia (ma so che questa mia opinione non è condivisa dalle persone importanti), gli uomini dello Stato presenti nel Consiglio di amministrazione si sono posti il quesito dei costi e benefici per il nostro Paese dell'accordo con la Microsoft? Ad esempio (ma questa è solo una parte del problema), quanto costerà al nostro Paese, che vive un momento di tragica condizione economica, l'esborso verso un'aziende straniera per un lavoro che poteve essere svolto benissimo da operatori pubblici e privati del nostro paese?"" Se avessi scritto una mail con una proposta sulle "fake news" (che sono una realtà imperante su tutte le comunità di ominidi "sapientes" da molti millenni) molti sarebbero intervenuti. Ma su una notizia così grave, non so se per condivisione dell'iniziativa o per rassegnazione, nessuno interviene neppure su Nexa. Formulo una proposta precisa: affidare a una struttura pubblica del Paese (da torinese sto pensando a CSP, CSI, TOPIX, ma anche a CINECA e a molte strutture di ricerca oltre ai dipartimenti di informatica delle università del nostro Paese) lo sviluppo di software libero per attuare le funzionalità dei servizi messi a disposizione da Microsoft e alle stesse Poste la gestione dei relativi servizi. Analoghe considerazioni si applicano all'accordo Confindustria-IBM. Raf

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Pokémon Sleep: game unveiled that 'turns sleeping into entertainment'
by Alberto Cammozzo May 29, 2019

May 29, 2019

Il mercato dei behavioral futures, per dirla con la Zuboff, si allarga anche al sonno... Che ci faranno coi dati sul sonno? Mi piacerebbe vedere i TOS... <https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/may/29/pokemon-sleep-game-unveiled-t…> The Pokémon Company has announced a new game in line with its hit Pokémon Go, called Pokémon Sleep, which aims to “turn sleeping into entertainment”. The new game involves tracking a player’s sleep patterns to affect gameplay, and was announced during a press conference which covered topics as varied as the franchise’s official expansion into China and Pokémon-branded dress shirts coming to the west. The aim is to “reward good sleep habits as part of a healthy lifestyle” and is being developed by Select Button, which previously collaborated with the company on the smartphone app Magikarp Jump. Niantic, the developers of Pokémon Go, is also assisting. Pokémon Go remains one of the world’s most successful smartphone games, with millions of active users still playing every month. [...]

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