March 2020 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Moscow's 105, 000 Facial Recognition Cameras Here to Stay as Country's Court System Entrenches Video Surveillance - CPO Magazine
by Alberto Cammozzo March 20, 2020

March 20, 2020

<https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/moscows-105000-facial-recognition-…> Over the past few months, the city of Moscow has quietly rolled out one of the largest facial recognition systems in the world. The city has moved rapidly from announcing plans for the system in the summer of 2019 to installing over 100,000 cameras to an operating system by early 2020, with plans to have over 200,000 facial recognition cameras active when all is said and done. The city is no stranger to video surveillance, with about 160,000 CCTV cameras dating back as far as the Cold War, but the new cameras come with built-in facial recognition capability. The Russian courts were hit with lawsuits from privacy organizations shortly after the announcement of this system, but the cameras were allowed to be installed and put into use while the cases were considered. A recent ruling that facial recognition does not violate citizen privacy would appear to be the definitive statement that Moscow will now be the largest city outside of China to track people with facial recognition in nearly every inch of public space. The strong push for Russian video surveillance There has been talk about implementation of a large-scale facial recognition scheme in Russia for years, but concrete steps toward it began last year. It was held up for some time by a lawsuit filed by a woman who claimed that she was identified and arrested via facial recognition while engaging in a peaceful protest outside of the Kremlin. The lawsuit claimed that Russia’s constitution guarantees personal privacy and the existing data protection laws specified that biometric data can only be processed with written consent. The courts decided against her in November, and installation of the new facial recognition system immediately began. The mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, has expressed a desire to have a video surveillance system on the scale and with the capabilities of the one in place in Beijing. Russia has been investing in Chinese facial recognition technology developer Megvii since 2017, and is making use of the company’s products. [...]

1 0

Ciclofattorini e altri lavoratori uberizzati continuano a lavorare
by Antonio Casilli March 20, 2020

March 20, 2020

Inchiesta di Politico sui gig-workers https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-pandemic-leaves-gig-economy-wor… -- Antonio A. Casilli Professor, Telecom Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris Member, Interdisciplinary Institute for Innovation (i3 UMR 9217 CNRS) Associate Member, LACI-IIAC (EHESS) Faculty Fellow, Nexa Center for Internet & Society *We respect your right to disconnect. This email send time is due to my own workflow efficiency. You are in no obligation to take action or reply to it outside your office hours.*

2 1

Blengino: "Emergenze e diritti fondamentali"
by J.C. DE MARTIN March 20, 2020

March 20, 2020

Emergenze e diritti fondamentali Carlo Blengino /Salus rei publicae suprema lex esto/ è una famosa massima ciceroniana (presente anche nello stemma dell’esercito italiano) ripresa dal Macchiavelli nei suoi “Discorsi” per dir che quando è in gioco la salvezza dello Stato, /“non vi debba cadere alcuna considerazione né di giusto né di ingiusto, né di pietoso né di crudele, né di laudabile né di igominioso; anzi, posposto ogni altro rispetto, seguire al tutto quel partito che li salvi la vita”/. La massima parrebbe valere ancora oggi posto che stiamo assistendo ad inedite torsioni del diritto e del sistema costituzionale e in molti iniziano a chiedersi, del tutto legittimamente, quali siano i limiti ed i confini ordinamentali di una situazione come quella che stiamo vivendo. [...] continua qui: https://www.ilpost.it/carloblengino/2020/03/19/emergenze-e-diritti-fondamen…

3 2

We need privacy and data laws to tackle this global pandemic - Beatriz Botero Arcila - Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University [notsp]
by Diego Latella March 20, 2020

March 20, 2020

FYI We need privacy and data laws to tackle this global pandemic https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/the-world-well-wake-up-to-1-7bbd846… Beatriz Botero Arcila <https://medium.com/@beatrizbotero?source=follow_footer---------------------…> Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University Diego Dott. Diego Latella - Senior Researcher CNR-ISTI, Via Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy (http:www.isti.cnr.it) FM&&T Lab. (http://fmt.isti.cnr.it) http://www.isti.cnr.it/People/D.Latella - ph: +390506212982, mob: +39 348 8283101, fax: +390506212040 =================== The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than compulsion; if in the process we learn how to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task. Above all, remember your humanity. -- Sir Joseph Rotblat

1 0

Draft Paper: “The Automated Administrative State: A Crisis of Legitimacy” by Ryan Calo, Danielle Keats Citron :: SSRN
by J.C. DE MARTIN March 20, 2020

March 20, 2020

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3553590 (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

1 0

Google Agrees to Worker Council in Europe Amid Recurring Discord
by J.C. DE MARTIN March 20, 2020

March 20, 2020

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-19/google-agrees-to-worker-… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

1 0

[OT] Varoufakileaks
by Giovanni Biscuolo March 19, 2020

March 19, 2020

Buongiorno, perdonate il palese OT ma il tema della trasparenza mi sta molto a cuore, a mia parziale giustificazione c'è una _vaga_ connessione con l'uso di Internet per tentare di aumentare la trasperenza :-) Da _povero ingenuo_ come sono, non avevo la più pallida idea che le riunioni di quel simpatico consesso informale del dopolavoro chiamato Eurogruppo [1] non fossero verbalizzate, l'ho imparato ora; ah beata ignoranza! :-) I documenti delle riunioni del 2015 sulle decisioni in merito alla crisi greca, quindi, non ci sarebbero stati se Yanis Varoufakis in persona non avesse registrato *e* sbobinato (i suoi collaboratori) le conversazioni; ora le ha pubblicate con tanto di audio, dopo aver tentato di depositarle al Parlamento greco ma se le è viste respingere come "inaccettabili" dal presidente del parlamento greco. Questo l'annuncio del 16 Febbraio scorso: https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2020/02/16/euroleaks-why-release-and-why-now/ --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- After the first three Eurogroup meetings I realised, to my horror, that no minutes were being taken down. Moreover, the absence of any record of what was being said allowed the troika apparatchiks to indulge in an orgy of leaks and innuendos that very quickly spread worldwide. [...] in a Parliamentary debate on matters pertaining to labour law involving party leaders (last Friday 14th Feb), I addressed my detractors directly: “You have spent 5 years”, I told them “lying about what was going on in these Eurogroup meetings. Now you are building upon those distortions new austerity and liquidation legislation. For this reason, before Members of Parliament can cast an informed vote on these bills, they have a right and a duty to know exactly what was being said in those Eurogroup meetings.” At that point, I read out a Greek High Court decision advising that such recordings are fully legal (provided they do not pertain to the participants’ private life and are recorded in the course of one’s public duties). Then, I took out an envelop containing a USB stick with all the recordings in my possession and submitted it to the House’s secretariat saying that I leave it to the Speaker of the House to decide how he would make the material available to MPs and the public at large. Soon afterwards, a police officer returned the USB stick to my office, on the orders of the Speaker who deemed my gesture ‘unacceptable’. A few hours later, I issued a statement that DiEM25-MeRA25 will, in view of the Speaker’s stance, release the material to the public. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- La pubblicazione è avvenuta il 14 Marzo scorso: ubi major minor cessat quindi (quasi) non fanno notizia... e probabilmente non lo faranno mai https://diem25.org/euroleaks-come-i-leader-europei-prendono-le-decisioni-su… --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- Oggi, sabato 14 marzo 2020 il Movimento per la democrazia in Europa 2025 (DiEM25) pubblica i file audio completi delle riunioni dell’Eurogruppo di Yanis Varoufakis nel 2015 sul sito: euroleaks.diem25.org! http://euroleaks.diem25.org/ --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- ...ma adesso c'è la crisi europea (mondiale) peggiore dal dopoguerra, vedremo "cosa resterà di questi anni '80". Saluti, Giovanni. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurogroup#Criticism_against_the_Eurogroup -- Giovanni Biscuolo Xelera IT Infrastructures

1 0

Re: [nexa] (no subject)
by Giuseppe Attardi March 19, 2020

March 19, 2020

Si potrebbe fare molto se avessimo investito in infrastrutture pubbliche e in particolare cloud. Mi sono impegnato per 4,5 anni in questa direzione, come coordinatore della divisione cloud del GARR. Abbiamo creato una cloud per la ricerca italiana (http://cloud.garr.it <http://cloud.garr.it/>), interamente basata su strumenti OpenSource: OpenStack e Kubernetes. Anche con caratteristiche originali, tra cui un servizio che abbiamo chiamato DaaS (Depolyment as a Service), che consente di fare deployment di applicazioni su cloud mi forma automatica, in self-service, scegliendo da un lista di applicazioni predisposte. Qui ci son dei video che illustrano il meccanismo: https://cloud.garr.it/doc/videos/ Una delle applicazioni è proprio Moodle. Con pochi click un utente può direttamente creare la propria istanza di server Moodle che poi gestisce e amministra come vuole. Viene usato per creare dozzine di istanze, ad esempio per gestire le Olimpiadi di Statistica dell’IStituto Nzionale di Statistica, oppure quando facciamo corsi per amministratori di Moodle. Potremmo quindi creare in pochi minuti un Moodle per ciascuna scuola. Un altro servizio che abbiamo attivato è il Workplace GARR, una piattaforma collaborativa per gestire documenti e progetti online, basata sul sw OpenSource OnlyOffice, che gestisce documenti in vari formati, inclusa completa compatibilità con Open Office. Ma i miei sforzi sono caduti nel vuoto, perché a nessuno sembrava interessare una piattaforma di servizi cloud nostra, aperta e dedicata a università e ricerca. Le università hanno preferito rivolgersi a Google e Microsoft, lavandosene le mani. Non voglio qui stare a discutere i motivi di queste scelte. Sta di fatto che noi avevamo dimostrato che una strada diversa era possible, realizzando servizi di alta qualità, rispondenti alle esigenze degli utenti, a fronte di investimenti ridotti, investendo pesantemente in tecniche di automazione, che ci consentivano di gestire il tutto con pochissimo personale. BTW: la nostra soluzione è stata copiata da i due fornitori di SPC Cloud: Tim e DXC. Ma a settembre ho dovuto prendere atto che a nessuno interessava ciò che stavano facendo, compresi i diretti destinatari. Avevo chiesto un segnale di interesse, indicando un piano di investimenti dai costi limitati, ma necessario per aggiornare l’infrastruttura e farla crescere e consolidare. Ma l’INFN ha dichiarato di volersi fare una propria cloud, l’INAF, che a loro il cloud non serve (anche se usano Google Cloud), mentre il CNR e le Università hanno nicchiato. La conclusione sono state le mie dimissioni e un’occasione persa per la ricerca italiana di avere una infrastruttura cloud a sua disposizione. Ora che tutti si sono abituati a Google Suite o Microsoft Team, è impossible tornare indietro. — Beppe > On 19 Mar 2020, at 08:14, nexa-request(a)server-nexa.polito.it wrote: > > From: Giacomo Tesio <giacomo(a)tesio.it <mailto:giacomo@tesio.it>> > To: nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it <mailto:nexa@server-nexa.polito.it> > Subject: [nexa] (no subject) > Message-ID: > <CAHL7psHq51xMW71Sd=t+bDTGY7+ZOcqBUOS5CP09pMJM200utw(a)mail.gmail.com <mailto:CAHL7psHq51xMW71Sd=t+bDTGY7+ZOcqBUOS5CP09pMJM200utw@mail.gmail.com>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > http://www.paolomauri.it/come-i-francesi/ <http://www.paolomauri.it/come-i-francesi/> > > [...] > > Allora vado ad approfondire e mi imbatto in un tweet del > corrispondente francese del ministero dell’innovazione che mi rimanda > ad una pagina in cui ricorda ai dipendenti pubblici che hanno a > disposizione due strumenti utili per il lavoro a distanza: > > una chat dedicata ai dipendenti statali: Tchat basata sul software > libero Riot > una videoconferenza dedicata ai dipendenti statali, basata sul > software libero Jitsi > > E allora il mio pensiero va a quello che propone il nostro ministero > dell’istruzione: una pagina in cui ha raccolto varie idee di soluzioni > di didattica a distanza in cui per esempio compaiono i due soliti noti > e manca la piattaforma per eccellenza nella formazione a distanza: > Moodle > > Moodle ha alle spalle una ricchissima comunità, permette di creare e > di gestire corsi di tutti i tipi con gli strumenti utili per le > attività di didattica a distanza. È utilizzato da molte scuole > superiori, da università in Italia e nel mondo. La rivista Bricks ha > dedicato un numero intero per raccontare esperienze fatte con Moodle. > > Non inserire Moodle, e anche altri servizi liberi utilizzabili nella > didattica a distanza, tra le risorse a disposizione delle scuole mi > sembra un errore enorme. > > Andando a raccattare risorse gratuite prese dalle aziende è un po’ > come se lo stato rinunciasse a costruirsi le scuole, le caserme, gli > uffici centrali e periferici e invece preferisse utilizzare in > comodato tutto in blocco da privati. > > L’emergenza di questi giorni ha evidenziato, se ancora ce ne fosse > stato bisogno, che l’infrastruttura digitale è fondamentale per la > crescita e il progresso di un paese, e non mi sembra una buona idea > non dedicarci la progettualità, le risorse e l’impegno necessari senza > affidarsi a soluzioni chiavi in mano di aziende ma facendo ricorso a > strumenti liberi, per costruire servizi per il cittadino, liberi da > logiche commerciali. > _____ > > Fantastiche parole di Paolo Mauri. > > Le sottoscrivo pienamente. > > E' possibile. Se lo fanno i francesi, possiamo farlo anche noi. > > > Giacomo >

3 3

The reckless, infinite scope of web browsers
by Giacomo Tesio March 19, 2020

March 19, 2020

https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope.html Since the first browser war between Netscape and Internet Explorer, web browsers have been using features as their primary means of competing with each other. This strategy of unlimited scope and perpetual feature creep is reckless, and has been allowed to go on for far too long. I used wget to download all 1,217 of the W3C specifications which have been published at the time of writing1, of which web browsers need to implement a substantial subset in order to provide a modern web experience. I ran a word count on all of these specifications. How complex would you guess the web is? The total word count of the W3C specification catalogue is 114 million words at the time of writing. If you added the combined word counts of the C11, C++17, UEFI, USB 3.2, and POSIX specifications, all 8,754 published RFCs, and the combined word counts of everything on Wikipedia’s list of longest novels, you would be 12 million words short of the W3C specifications.2 I conclude that it is impossible to build a new web browser. The complexity of the web is obscene. The creation of a new web browser would be comparable in effort to the Apollo program or the Manhattan project. It is impossible to: - Implement the web correctly - Implement the web securely - Implement the web at all Starting a bespoke browser engine with the intention of competing with Google or Mozilla is a fool’s errand. The last serious attempt to make a new browser, Servo, has become one part incubator for Firefox refactoring, one part playground for bored Mozilla engineers to mess with technology no one wants, and zero parts viable modern web browser. But WebVR is cool, right? Right? The consequences of this are obvious. Browsers are the most expensive piece of software a typical consumer computer runs. They’re infamous for using all of your RAM, pinning CPU and I/O, draining your battery, etc. Web browsers are responsible for more than 8,000 CVEs.3 Because of the monopoly created by the insurmountable task of building a competitive alternative, browsers have also been free to stop being the “user agent” and start being the agents of their creators instead. Firefox is filling up with ads, tracking, and mandatory plugins. Chrome is used as a means for Google to efficiently track your eyeballs and muscle anti-technologies like DRM and AMP into the ecosystem. The browser duopoly is only growing stronger, too, as Microsoft drops Edge and WebKit falls well behind its competition. The major projects are open source, and usually when an open-source project misbehaves, we’re able to to fork them to offer an alternative. But even this is an impossible task where web browsers are concerned. The number of W3C specifications grows at an average rate of 200 new specs per year, or about 4 million words, or about one POSIX every 4 to 6 months. How can a new team possibly keep up with this on top of implementing the outrageous scope web browsers already have now? The browser wars have been allowed to continue for far too long. They should have long ago focused on competing in terms of performance and stability, not in adding new web “features”. This is absolutely ridiculous, and it has to stop. ____ In questi giorni riflettevo (di nuovo) proprio sulla complessità dei browser. Il problema è architetturale: i browser sono stati trasformati in un surrogato di un sistema operativo distribuito su cui sviluppare applicazioni distribuite. Si tratta di un pessimo surrogato per diverse ragioni storiche e tecniche che da un lato sono molto costose da superare, dall'altro sono estremamente vantaggiose se ti danno accesso al 90% circa dei computer sul mondo (includendo nel computo anche gli smartphone, i tablet, le smart-tv, auto elettriche etc...). La mia domanda è se sia concepibile una soluzione di natura legale. Un limite massimo alle righe di codice di un programma, per esempio, in modo da garantire la possibilità di studiarlo interamente in un tempo ragionevole (una settimana? un mese?) avrebbe un impatto enorme sulla qualità del software esistente. Giacomo

1 0

Spying on coronavirus: A little-known U.S. intel outfit has its most important mission yet
by Alberto Cammozzo March 19, 2020

March 19, 2020

<https://news.yahoo.com/spying-coronavirus-little-known-u-090036839.html> WASHINGTON — Last month, well before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, a little-known unit within the Defense Intelligence Agency had already predicted that the outbreak would reach pandemic proportions. The warning came from the National Center for Medical Intelligence, a senior defense official told NBC News. The NCMI, as it is known, is an obscure patch of the U.S. spying community that is now in the midst of one of the most important missions in its history. The warning was first reported by Newsweek. The NCMI is the intelligence community's eyes and ears when it comes to global disease outbreaks. While the CIA also has a medical intelligence unit, current and former officials said, the NCMI, headquartered at Fort Detrick, Maryland, is the clearing ground for classified information and analysis related to the coronavirus outbreak. Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak The Trump administration declined a request to tour the facility and interview its leaders. Former officials and outside experts say the NCMI calls upon all sources of intelligence — from communications intercepts to satellite imagery to human source reporting — to seek answers that elude public health authorities, including whether foreign governments are lying about the extent and nature of the disease in their countries. It also combs open sources, such as social media. "The value that NCMI brings is that it has access to information streams that the World Health Organization does not have, nor does the Centers for Disease Control or anyone else," said Denis Kaufman, a retired senior officer who worked at the NCMI. The NCMI employs a multidisciplinary team of virologists, epidemiologists, toxicologists, medical doctors, veterinarians and other experts with extensive operational medical experience from the military services, Kaufman added. In normal times, the NCMI's primary customer is the U.S. military, which uses the information to monitor potential health threats to its forces abroad. But in the midst of a pandemic, NCMI analysis is likely a fixture in the president's daily intelligence briefing, officials say. The NCMI would have been monitoring the virus' beginnings in Wuhan, China, including the Chinese government's effort to cover up what was happening, experts say. "That's kind of their raison d'être — they would definitely want to know and try to find out what foreign governments really know about what is going on," said Jonathan Clemente, a physician who has visited and written about the NCMI. Now, the NCMI would be gathering information on everything from strains on hospitals in Italy to signs of the virus in Syrian refugee camps. Download the NBC News app for full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak Anthony Rizzo, a former NCMI director, told an interviewer in 2013: "Our job was to predict what would be a threat to the United States. What I'm most proud of is having been part of protecting this country from threats that people will never even know we faced." Rizzo declined to comment to NBC News. A classified document leaked by Edward Snowden and published by The Intercept in 2016 shows that the NCMI teamed up with the National Security Agency, the digital spying behemoth, to gather "medical SIGINT," or signals intelligence, a government term for the fruits of hacking and eavesdropping. Topics of interest included "SARS in China, cholera in Liberia, and dysentery, polio, and cholera in Iraq," according to a classified internal document leaked by Snowden. Politics The NSA and its intelligence agency partners researched "the effect of the epidemic on the state security apparatus," media coverage of the disease, the political and economic impacts of its spread and the "impact" of SARS on the "readiness" of China's People's Liberation Army, according to NSA documents about a SARS conference published by The Intercept in 2016. NBC News has previously reported that the intelligence community has been warning about the risks of a COVID-19-style pandemic for years in annual threat assessments presented to Congress. The most recent worldwide threat assessment, put out in January 2019 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, included language on global health that was more pointed than in previous years. "We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support," it said. No public threats hearing has been held in 2020, in part because intelligence officials badly want to avoid speaking truths they know will offend President Donald Trump, multiple current and former officials familiar with the matter told NBC News. Exactly what the NCMI is now saying about the global risks of coronavirus, the possible economic impacts and the potential death toll is not something the Trump administration is prepared to make public.

1 0