April 2021 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Re: [nexa] NFT e cancellazione.

by Stefano Zacchiroli

On Mon, Apr 26, 2021 at 12:49:30PM +0200, Alberto Cammozzo via nexa wrote: > Ho una domanda ingenua. A quanto comprendo un NFT è immutabile quanto > gli altri elementi della chain. Cosa succede se il contenuto di un > NFT diventa oggetto di un sentenza di cancellazione/takedown/esercizio > di diritto all'oblio/...? In generale con gli NFT sulla blockchain trovi solo l'hash dell'opera soggiacente, quindi lo scenario che proponi non è in se problematico. La legge può imporre di far sparire dalla circolazione l'opera digitale giudicata problematica, senza bisogno di modificare il ledger della blockchain. (Ma il problema generale resta: su varie chain si mettono metadati anche molto piccoli in termini di volume, ma che potrebbero essere considerati dati personali o sensibili ai sensi di GDPR o simili. Non mi è chiaro se sia mai successo che qualcuno abbia provato a farli rimuovere per legge. Ma se non è ancora successo, succederà, e ci sarà da ridere.) -- Stefano Zacchiroli . zack(a)upsilon.cc . upsilon.cc/zack . . o . . . o . o Computer Science Professor . CTO Software Heritage . . . . . o . . . o o Former Debian Project Leader & OSI Board Director . . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »

April 26, 2021

Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza

by Antonio Iacono

La versione 2.0 del Recovery Fund, ora PNRR, è pronta [1]. La 1.0 (del precedente Governo) lasciava un po' a desiderare. In questi giorni, quindi, sono in tanti coloro che si sono messi a leggerla, analizzarla, commentarla, ecc. ognuno dal proprio punto di osservazione, l'economista da quello macroeconomico, l'imprenditore da quello di chi cerca nuovi "business" e così via. Uno che vi ha dedicato qualche minuto in più alla lettura è stato un giovane programmatore, Daniele Scacciafratte (qui la sua "lettura veloce" [2]). Io di tempo non ne ho avuto e quindi ho fatto come ai tempi in cui andavo in libreria a scegliere un libro, ne prendevo uno e sceglievo una pagina a caso. Se la frase che mi capitava di leggere era scritta in modo chiaro (e ovviamente non banale), compravo il libro, altrimenti lo riponevo nello scaffale. Torniamo al PNRR, ho applicato la stessa "tecnica", ed è venuto fuori questo: saranno previsti disincentivi per le amministrazioni che non avranno effettuato la migrazione dopo un “periodo di grazia” predefinito. Saranno anche riviste le regole di contabilità che attualmente disincentivano la migrazione (al momento, infatti, la migrazione al cloud comporta di “tradurre” capex in opex). ... Il supporto alle amministrazioni che aderiranno al programma di trasformazione sarà realizzato con “pacchetti” completi che includeranno competenze tecniche e risorse finanziarie. In una logica di vera e propria “migration as a service” si aiuteranno le amministrazioni nella fase di analisi tecnica e di definizione delle priorità ... Le abilità e competenze digitali si fondano su una forte base quantitativa e richiedono una conoscenza dei software per la scrittura, il calcolo e per l’impiego delle applicazioni che oramai contemplano tutti i campi disciplinari, dall’arte alla scienza. Una forte base STEM è propedeutica alla conoscenza più applicativa degli strumenti per il digitale quindi è fondamentale arricchire la scuola primaria e secondaria di corsi a base quantitativa, con relative esemplificazioni sugli strumenti digitali (che gli studenti oggi conoscono bene dal punto di vista dell’impiego come “user”, ma che ignorano nel risvolto di programmazione). --- capex, opex, migration as service, base quantitativa ... Forse all'autore o agli autori, un po' di base "qualitativa" non avrebbe fatto male. Intendiamoci, non che questi termini siano particolarmente difficili da capire, ma è chiaramente un modo di esprimersi da economista ad economista, quando, con un piccolo sforzo aggiuntivo si sarebbe potuto scrivere un documento "leggibile" da tutti. Antonio [1] https://www.governo.it/sites/governo.it/files/PNRR.pdf [2] https://daniele.tech/2021/04/una-lettura-veloce-al-piano-nazionale-di-ripar…

April 26, 2021

Our customers received 40 billion more emails in February of 2021 than in February of 2020.” ...

by gianlucaquaglia＠gmail.com

By Kate Morgan26th April 2021 Since the pandemic hit, we’ve been using more digital tools to work longer hours, creating a cognitive load that’s tough on our brains. How do we fix that? L Late last year, a tweet <https://twitter.com/delia_cai/status/1330597127131684870> from BuzzFeed trends editor Delia Cai went viral: “Another day of staring at the big screen while scrolling through my little screen so as to reward myself for staring at the medium screen all week,” she joked. It seems right on. More than a year into the pandemic, we are glued to our screens. And it’s not only about binging movies and scrolling through TikTok. As remote work has set in, we’re relying entirely on digital tools to keep in touch with each other and get our work done. This all-virtual-all-the-time nature of our everyday has led to a worrisome spike in ‘digital intensity’. It’s not just that we’re increasingly using digital tools to work; it’s that we’re also using digital tools more to /work more. /A new survey from Microsoft tracked the habits of more than 30,000 users in 31 countries <https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work> over the last year, and the results are alarming. “People spend 148% more minutes in weekly Teams meetings,” says Jared Spataro, Microsoft corporate vice-president. “An average user is sending 42% more chats after hours, and 200% more chats on weekends. Our customers received 40 billion more emails in February of 2021 than in February of 2020.” [...] continua qui https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210423-is-there-an-antidote-to-digit… --

April 26, 2021

NFT e cancellazione.

by Alberto Cammozzo

Grazie per la guida. Ho una domanda ingenua. A quanto comprendo un NFT è immutabile quanto gli altri elementi della chain. Cosa succede se il contenuto di un NFT diventa oggetto di un sentenza di cancellazione/takedown/esercizio di diritto all'oblio/...? Supponiamo ad esempio che un contenuto (da autori e acquirenti che possono benissimo restare anonimi e quindi impuniti) venga riconosciuto in giudizio come pedo o revenge porn e quindi debba essere rimosso. E' possibile farlo per un singolo token? Il giudice potrebbe ordinare la rimozione dell'intera chain? Quanto azionabile sarebbe una tale sentenza? Se non vi sono alternative, vedo una serie di gravi scenari denial of service che danneggerebbero la chain in modo irreparabile. Ciao, Alberto On 08/04/2021 17:49, Matteo G.P. Flora wrote: > > Gli NFT sono artefatti digitali, in gergo “token non fungibili” che > utilizzano la tecnologia blockchain per creare unicità e dare valore > agli oggetti digitali, oppure per certificare ed autenticare oggetti > fisici. Sono anche uno dei fenomeni del momento, con migliaia di > autori al mondo che hanno saputo approfittare delle peculiarità di > questo nuovo strumento per creare valore nelle loro opere. > > *La guida è liberamente scaricabile (pdf, epub, mobi) qui » > https://guidanft.it <https://guidanft.it>* > > Inizialmente, gli NFT hanno investito il mondo delle arti visive, > creando nuove modalità di creazione e fruizione delle opere d’arte e > stravolgendo il mercato, ma la vera rivoluzione della “tokenizzazione” > deve ancora dispiegare i suoi effetti: offrirà una maggiore > personalizzazione dei diritti e permetterà interazioni che prima non > erano immaginabili. > > Con i colleghi di 42 Law Firm, e con la collaborazione dei suoi > partner tecnologici, abbiamo voluto raccogliere in una guida pratica > tutto ciò che sappiamo ad oggi sugli NFT, per offrire uno strumento > immediato e pratico che consenta a chiunque di comprendere questo > nuovo fenomeno e di muovere anche in autonomia i primi passi in un > fiorente e variegato mercato. > > La guida si propone istruire il lettore alla creazione e messa in > vendita di semplici NFT, ma offre al contempo anche una prima disamina > degli aspetti tecnici e legali di maggiore interesse, mettendo queste > informazioni a disposizione di tutti coloro che sono incuriositi da > questo nuovo strumento di gestione della proprietà e dei diritti connessi. > > *_La guida è liberamente scaricabile (pdf, epub, mobi) qui » > https://guidanft.it <https://guidanft.it>_* > > Un saluto a tutti! > > M. > > -- > *Matteo G.P. Flora* > > *Professor (adj.) *in /'//Corporate Reputation > <http://matteoflora.com/#prof>//and Storytelling' /in University of Pavia > Founder and co-ceo » *THE FOOL <http://matteoflora.com/#aziende> > *- /*Customer Insights* for *Reputation* and *Value Strategy*/ > Co-founder » *LT42 > <http://matteoflora.com/#aziende> *- /*Legal-Automation* and Legal-Tech/ > Partner » *42 LAW FIRM <http://matteoflora.com/#aziende> *- /Lawyers > for *Digital Transformation*/ > > > M. +39.347.9676430 - mf(a)thefool.it <mailto:mf@thefool.it> > > <http://matteoflora.com/#ci> > > > _______________________________________________ > nexa mailing list > nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it > https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa

April 26, 2021

Cry havoc! — and let slip the IP addresses of war

by Giovanni Biscuolo

Buongiorno ho trovato un lunghissimo articolo scritto su "Liberty Unyielding", un sito che "Media Bias / Fact Check" [1] identifica come tendente all'estrema faziosità di destra, però con un punteggio "Factual Reporting: MOSTLY FACTUAL". L'articolo è scritto da J.E. Dyer, un agente in pensione dell'intelligence navale USA. Lo includo inline in forma integrale in fondo al messaggio, il testo l'ho adattato in forma solo testo dal HTML; spero di non fare cosa sgradita, considerato che è un testo piuttosto lungo. L'articolo ovviamente è da prendere cum granu salis. Comunque la si pensi, che le esternazioni di Dyer siano complottistiche o meno, la sua conclusione è di buon senso direi: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- It doesn’t look like millions of precious IPv4 IP addresses are being unleashed, tantalizingly out of reach, just to excite a response from the Web’s malicious-exploits marauders. It looks like someone wants to do something with those IP addresses. What it is, people with other expert backgrounds will probably have to divine. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Questa la versione web: https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://libertyunyielding.com/20… «Cry havoc! — and let slip the IP addresses of war» By J.E. Dyer April 25, 2021 Saluti, Giovanni [1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/liberty-unyielding/ P.S.. ho cercato di fare in modo che tutti i riferimenti siano disponibili nella Wayback Machine ma non sono sicurissimo. Ecco li testo: Giovanni Biscuolo Table of Contents ───────────────── Cry havoc! — and let slip the IP addresses of war By [J.E. Dyer] Saturday 24 April brought a little [information cluster bomb] in the Washington Post with the promising headline “Minutes before Trump left office, millions of the Pentagon’s dormant IP addresses sprang to life.” It turned out, [on investigation], that the “minutes” were a literal reference. The statutory end of Trump’s term was 12 noon EST on 20 January 2021, and according to computer records, the floodgate on the “dormant IP addresses” opened at 11:57:35 AM EST. This appears to be the only thing any of this had to do with Trump. We’ll look at that below. The long-story background is at the Post story [and AP follow-on], which added a few more useful specifics. Using the information from those stories, with some LU research mixed in, we can tell the short-version as follows: In the 1990s, the Pentagon [reserved for itself] millions of IP addresses out of the universe of possible addresses that use Internet Protocol version 4, or IPv4, to manage Internet connections. IPv4 addresses are a precious commodity at this point, because the potential universe of them [maxed out several years ago]. Web infrastructure managers are being encouraged now to migrate to IPv6, to relieve competition for a finite and scarce resource. The Pentagon’s millions of those older-version IP addresses had lain dormant until 20 January 2021 at 11:57:35 AM, Eastern Standard Time. At that second, they announced their presence with authority. That’s a thing: an IP address is “announced” to the Net universe, and that’s when you know it’s live and open for business. Read about it at the links. The weird thing is that a mysterious, no-footprint company incorporated in Delaware and registered in Plantation, Florida is their Net daddy. Its name is Global Resource Systems LLC. Its address is a building in Plantation, Florida where a lot of other businesses have their addresses, and only one traceable name is connected with it: Raymond Saulino. More on that below. Net watchers were puzzled by this, and tracked the action as the millions of Pentagon-held IP addresses rolled out – being announced by Global Resource Systems – in February and March. Eventually the Pentagon’s Defense Digital Service (DDS) provided a brief explanation. The DDS was running a “pilot program” to, in essence, test the reaction of the infosphere to the announcement of all these Pentagon proprietary IP addresses. (Again, read the linked stories for what that entails: basically, looking for attempts at malicious activity once a whole lot of IP addresses are exposed to it. It has a whiff about it of Robert S. McNamara and his Vietnam-era “exciter” patrols by U.S. warships and aircraft, basically trying to get American military craft shot at.) The DDS likes to refer to itself in the swashbuckling terms of its first director, Chris Lynch: as “a SWAT team of Nerds.” So we’re to understand that it’s precisely the kind of rat squad that would do a crazy thing like unleash millions of dormant IP addresses on the world, just to see what happens. And, sure, it would kick this public-spirited enterprise off two minutes and 25 seconds before the new president, Joe Biden, officially took the helm of the USS United States. That’s what you do when you’re the grappling-hooks and cutlasses brigade of the U.S. Digital Service, whose prosaic civilian headquarters is in the Office of Management and Budget. AP learned a bit more, discovering that the IP transit backbone for Global Resource Systems is a long-established, extensively connected Silicon Valley company, Hurricane Electric. In the last decade Hurricane Electric has been named [the largest company] of its kind by the number of nodes it operates throughout the world, but I’m not sure if that’s currently the case. That said, an [informative interview] with Hurricane Electric’s founder, Mike Leber, sheds some light on why the company may be a good fit for the use it’s being put to with GRS and the Pentagon IP addresses. Leber has stuck to the basics of expanding capacity to do one thing well: provide IP transit throughput. He’s not interested in doing that through partnerships that result in others holding equity in his company and seeking to diversify its service offerings. This makes Hurricane Electric ideal for customers – like DDS – that already know what they’re doing, and just want to buy a whole lot of IP transit from a well-entrenched, global provider. In a situation like that, neither customer nor seller has to ask the other a lot of questions. It’s considered unusual that the Department of Defense would announce its massive swarm of IP addresses using a no-footprint front company in Florida (GRS), instead of just announcing the addresses itself. Everyone who understands the IP universe knows the addresses belong to the Pentagon. The Pentagon’s block of them has been known for more than 25 years. The people piece That’s our starting point. I suspect the main problem with clearing up this mystery lies in going the wrong direction to solve it. It’s not the technical aspects of this event that are illuminating. It’s who’s involved. And it took only a few keystrokes to turn up the usual links for most of the main characters. Brett Goldstein, the current director of the DDS (he succeeded Chris Lynch), was appointed to his position in April of 2019 by then-Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan. One media announcement [described him] as being “recruited” by Shanahan, but the resumes of the two men don’t make a good recruiting story. Shanahan was Acting after James Mattis left; he had no prior Washington or government experience, but had come from a long industry career at Boeing, in which there is no indication he specialized in information systems or infotech. (He was involved with the jetliner programs and missile defense.) Shanahan probably acted on the recommendations of people with more specialized expertise, in bringing Goldstein onboard. Goldstein is the co-founder of a venture capital firm where he was working at the time, Chicago-based Ekistic Ventures. He and co-founder David Spielfogel [started it] in September of 2016. But prior to that, Goldstein was the chief data officer, and then the chief information officer, for the city of Chicago. He held these positions under Rahm Emanuel from 2011 to 2013. Prior to becoming the nation’s first city-government CDO, Goldstein’s big portfolio was as a Chicago Police employee, working a [predictive analytics project for policing applications]. That’s the one where programs survey and analyze people’s online profiles, including social media activity, to predict things like whether they’ll commit crimes, riot, or be uncooperative with law enforcement. Goldstein can be described as an activist and leading light of advocacy for “civic tech”; i.e., information tech deployed for the purpose of embedding government as seamlessly and comfortably as possible in the daily lives of the people. Spielfogel’s career [has been in politics]. He was Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s chief of policy and strategic planning; before that, he worked in the Clinton White House, for Howard Dean, and for the Senate campaigns of Barack Obama and Alexi Giannoulias. Since Goldstein moved to the DDS job in 2019, Spielfogel has become the [chief policy officer] at the smart-cities company Lime, with a focus on the “last mile of transportation” for urban residents. Using tech to bring ideas for urban policy and urban government to fruition is thus the environment both partners came from and have been passionate about. Ekistic Ventures, notably, shares key board members with another of Goldstein’s gigs, the 501(c)(3) group [Code for America]. Code for America, or CfA, was founded in 2009, and the similarity of its name to the Obama campaign organization, Obama for America, is presumably not accidental. Certainly CfA’s profile, which includes local “brigades” in cities across the country, is very much on the community-organizing model. The vision of CfA is – my wording – to use tech to embed the spirit of government in people’s daily lives. In concrete terms, that means things like automating and easing people’s access to EBT cards and other government services. One way to think of it — again, me speaking — is as “what ACORN would have done,” if the current, highly-agile generation of tech had been available during ACORN’s heyday. For a flavor of the company CfA runs in, consider one of its signal successes: partnering with the former D.A. of San Francisco, George Gascón (who is now the notoriously Soros-backed D.A. of Los Angeles, embarking on a career of [gutting the criminal justice system]). The joint CfA- Gascón [effort in San Francisco] involved automating the search for marijuana possession records to expunge for thousands of Californians. Goldstein is on CfA’s board along with the former mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, and tech advocate Tim O’Reilly, who are also both on the board of Ekistic Ventures. Nutter, a long-time supporter of Hillary Clinton, was a natural fit for making joint appearances with Obama during the latter’s presidency. Also on Ekistic Venture’s board is Anne Milgram, formerly the (Democratic) attorney general of New Jersey and now Joe Biden’s [nominee to head the Drug Enforcement Agency]. Milgram is prominent, among other things, for her involvement in advocating “[policy equity].” Investment firm head Michael Sacks, another [Chicago-based player], is a board member of Ekistic Ventures. He has [donated millions over the years] to Democratic candidates and PACs, including Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s. CfA, meanwhile, is [funded by] the usual sources, including the Open Society Foundation and the Omidyar Network. Google has been another major funder. CfA’s current CEO is, believe it or not, [Amanda Renteria]. She was Hillary’s national campaign director in 2016, and figured as well [in the Spygate drama] (as the person Loretta Lynch allegedly wanted to reassure that the DOJ probe of Hillary’s email “matter” wouldn’t “go too far”), and the Democrats’ [anti-Kavanaugh assault] in 2018. But CfA’s original founder circles us back, as the saying goes, to a few years earlier, and not only to the founder herself, Jennifer Pahlka, but to the first director of the Defense Digital Service, Chris Lynch. That’s because Pahlka and Lynch were both among the early recruits for Obama’s U.S. Digital Service, formed in 2014. The USDS’s [best-known exploit] was its emergency surgery on the cataclysmically non-performing Healthcare.gov website, which nearly stalled Obamacare out of the starting gate. But we’ve met the USDS at LU before, in [a treatment] of Obama’s project to upgrade the entire White House information systems structure, an enterprise that began in 2014. The Obama vision for the USDS was as a raiding party that would jumpstart IT redesign and the implementation of fixes, coming in from outside the stovepiped, formally-funded and chartered entities provided by the plodding budgets written in Congress. Thus, the USDS [ended up] being headquartered just under the radar at OMB, in the Executive Office of the President, but having a presence as well in the General Services Administration and a handful of others, including the DDS at the Pentagon. Jennifer Pahlka, who had [founded Code for America] in 2009, came in as a short-tour “fellow” with the Obama EOP and [ended up driving the architecture and concept of the USDS]. Chris Lynch, meanwhile, also came in (a bit later) on a “tour” from the commercial tech world (as part of the effort to fix Healthcare.gov) and was moved from the USDS niche in the EOP to [become the first director of the Defense Digital Service], in – think about this – November 2015. The timing of the DDS stand-up can’t help being interesting. Besides its proximity to the early moves of Spygate and Russiagate, the whole USDS enterprise, especially in light of its expeditionary fix-and-dash profile, has a curious feel, for the latter half of a final presidential term. And anything that has a curious feel has it doubly so when it involves causing jerky motions at the Pentagon. These aren’t random tech folks at work. They come from the Obama network legacy. And the one who’s the DDS director today has been overseeing the announcement of Pentagon-held IP addresses, in their fabled 1990s-era millions, since 11:57:35 AM EST on 20 January 2021. Interesting side plots There are other arresting features of the baseline story. Let’s look at a couple. Two relate to the minor saga of the provenance of Global Resource Systems LLC. The first is about a predecessor company, in the sense of the company having the exact same name. The current GRS was [registered in Florida] in October 2020. AP reports that it was created (i.e., by incorporation in Delaware) in September 2020. So it has only existed for six or seven months. Note: there’s nothing to be read into the incorporation in Delaware. Incorporating in Delaware is a popular practice due to the friendly legal structure there, so that mere fact almost certainly has nothing to do with Joe Biden. But there was [previously a Global Resource Systems LLC] doing business at the same street address in Plantation, Florida (which is near Fort Lauderdale), but headquartered at the address of investment firm [Lake Capital Ventures] in Chicago. Two founders of that previous GRS were listed in the Florida registry: Terrance Graunke (misspelled Granke in the Florida documents) and Paul Yovovich. They are the co-founders of Lake Capital Management. It’s not clear from this remove in time why they registered their GRS in Florida in 2006. Its registration lapsed sometime before 2009, when they reinstated it with Florida. But the GRS company merged in 2006 with an email marketing company called MediaWhiz (which was headquartered in New York, according to Lake Capital’s [historical account]). In January 2013, GRS-MediaWhiz was [bought out by an Israeli company], Matomy, and the GRS entity was dissolved in Florida. Resurrecting a company in 2020 with the exact same name, at the same address (although a different suite number), looks odd. It looks like trying to throw up a baffle, create ambiguity – something along those lines. There is no indication I’ve discovered that the 2020 GRS has anything to do with Lake Capital Partners, although it’s conceivable for that to come out at some point, given the extensive links to Chicago through Brett Goldstein, who’s running this IP-address show from the Pentagon. As mentioned above, meanwhile, the one name that is on the 2020 version of Global Resource Systems is that of Raymond Saulino. AP’s [reporting] about him suggests that what I turned up separately is related to the same Raymond Saulino. AP’s summary speaks of defense contracts within the last decade; a company called Tidewater Laskin in Virginia Beach, from which a one-time co-worker believes Saulino is now retired; and an earlier connection with the firm Packet Forensics (at the same Virginia Beach address as the Tidewater Laskin company), which reportedly sold a capability to “government agencies and law enforcement that let them spy on people’s web browsing using forged security certificates.” (This capability was explained at the time to be a legitimate exploitation of application operations.) My research led me to a Raymond Saulino of retirement age who is the proprietor of a consulting firm named RAS Associates LLC in Sterling, Virginia, just outside Washington. D.C. Mr. Saulino and the business have the same address; we don’t dox here at LU, so I will only say that it is a residential address, suggesting contract work that could well include setting up a structure for a single-focus IT front company, such as one like GRS that exists only to announce and receive IP-address traffic for a designated group of addresses. Saulino’s involvement is a curiosity, but there isn’t enough information about it to draw conclusions from. One more feature of the story merits highlighting. The Defense Digital Service has a “satellite” presence in another state (i.e., besides Virginia, where the Pentagon is located). The DDS satellite, cleverly called Tatooine, was formally set up at the end of 2019, after preparations began for the field location in the latter half of 2018. “Tatooine” is [in Augusta, Georgia], the state’s capital. It’s hosted by the [Georgia Cyber Center], and is partnered with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the DDS (its parent), and the U.S. Army Cyber Command (at Fort Gordon, near Augusta). It’s interesting (that word again) that Tatooine would be in Georgia. It may come to be more so; at the moment, with less than a day’s research completed, there isn’t enough to support responsible speculation. But looking at the Obama-centric tale of how the Defense Digital Service came to be, at how a current chief plugged directly into the progressive-left Chicago network was appointed by a political-outsider Acting SECDEF during the Trump administration, and at the usual-suspect linkage cropping up across the surrounding landscape – plus the CfA brigades model, with hundreds of “civic tech” activists being groomed in readiness to minister government to the masses – the feel of this thing shifts. It doesn’t look like millions of precious IPv4 IP addresses are being unleashed, tantalizingly out of reach, just to excite a response from the Web’s malicious-exploits marauders. It looks like someone wants to do something with those IP addresses. What it is, people with other expert backgrounds will probably have to divine. [J.E. Dyer] J.E. Dyer is a retired Naval Intelligence officer who lives in Southern California, blogging as The Optimistic Conservative for domestic tranquility and world peace. Her articles have appeared at Hot Air, Commentary’s Contentions, Patheos, The Daily Caller, The Jewish Press, and The Weekly Standard. [J.E. Dyer] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://libertyunyielding.com/au…> [information cluster bomb] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.washingtonpost.com/t…> [on investigation] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.kentik.com/blog/the-…> [and AP follow-on] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.tampabay.com/news/mi…> [reserved for itself] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li…> [maxed out several years ago] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.internetsociety.org/…> [the largest company] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu…> [informative interview] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.telecomramblings.com…> [described him] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.c4isrnet.com/managem…> [started it] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.govtech.com/top-25/t…> [predictive analytics project for policing applications] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.businessfast.co.uk/p…> [has been in politics] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.chicagobusiness.com/…> [chief policy officer] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.fuelchoicessummit.co…> [Code for America] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.codeforamerica.org/> [gutting the criminal justice system] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://libertyunyielding.com/20…> [effort in San Francisco] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/25/u…> [nominee to head the Drug Enforcement Agency] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.nj.com/politics/2021…> [policy equity] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.policingequity.org/c…> [Chicago-based player] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://bluetent.us/funding/mich…> [donated millions over the years] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.campaignmoney.com/po…> [funded by] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.informationweek.com/…> [Amanda Renteria] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.govtech.com/civic/co…> [in the Spygate drama] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://libertyunyielding.com/20…> [anti-Kavanaugh assault] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://libertyunyielding.com/20…> [best-known exploit] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.theatlantic.com/tech…> [a treatment] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://libertyunyielding.com/20…> [ended up] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.vox.com/2018/7/12/17…> [founded Code for America] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Je…> [ended up driving the architecture and concept of the USDS] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un…> [become the first director of the Defense Digital Service] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.defenseone.com/techn…> [registered in Florida] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry…> [previously a Global Resource Systems LLC] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry…> [Lake Capital Ventures] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/http://www.lakecapital.com/defau…> [historical account] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/http://www.lakecapital.com/inves…> [bought out by an Israeli company] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.adexchanger.com/onli…> [reporting] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.tampabay.com/news/mi…> [in Augusta, Georgia] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.fedscoop.com/defense…> [Georgia Cyber Center] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://www.gacybercenter.org/> [J.E. Dyer] <https://web.archive.org/web/20210425133413/https://libertyunyielding.com/au…> -- Giovanni Biscuolo Noi, incompetenti come siamo, non abbiamo alcun titolo per suggerire alcunché.

April 26, 2021

Re: [nexa] Minutes before Trump left office, millions of the Pentagon’s dormant IP addresses sprang to life

by Giovanni Biscuolo

Buongiorno, mistero, tantissimo mistero... Alberto Cammozzo via nexa <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> writes: [...] > Three months later, the total was nearly 175 million. That’s > almost 6 percent of a coveted traditional section of Internet real > estate — called IPv4 — where such large chunks are worth billions of > dollars on the open market. Sì e IPv6 venne creato perché IPv4 è un bene (artificialmente più che matematicamente) scarso... ma evidentemente agli USA interessa di più tenere saldamente (e militarmente) in mano un pezzo dell'address space di Internet più che metterli a disposizione "on the open market"... e IPv6 è ancora al palo, chissà perché? [...] > Network administrators began speculating about perhaps the most dramatic > shift in IP address space allotment since BGP was introduced in the > 1980s. Ecco, direi che solo questo basta a evidenziare come questo fatto, per Internet, sia di portata storica. [...] > The change is the handiwork of an elite Pentagon unit known as the > Defense Digital Service, which reports directly to the secretary of > defense. OK, quindi niente "privatizzazione": è un'operazione militare USA. [...] > Brett Goldstein, the DDS’s director, said in a statement that his unit > had authorized a “pilot effort” publicizing the IP space owned by the > Pentagon. Publicizing un cavolo, pare proprio che abbiano "solo" inserito una marea di IP in BGP... chissà cosa significa eh?!? > “This pilot will assess, evaluate and prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP > address space,” ROTFL, "unauthorized" da chi visto che sono loro che controllano Internet? [...] > The specifics of what the effort is trying to achieve remain unclear. > The Defense Department declined to answer a number of questions about > the project, Ovvio: segreto militare > What is clear, however, is the Global Resource Systems announcements > directed a fire hose of Internet traffic toward the Defense Department > addresses. Fuochino... > Madory said such large amounts of data could provide several benefits > for those in a position to collect and analyze it for threat > intelligence and other purposes. Quinci Madory ci sta /forse/ dicendo che il flood di BGP sta servendo per dirottare ancora più traffico Internet verso nodi militari statunitensi? No, devo aver capito male. [...] > and could reveal exploitable weaknesses in computer systems. In > addition, several Chinese companies use network numbering systems that > resemble the U.S. military’s IP addresses in their internal systems, [...] >that could cause some of that information to be routed to > systems controlled by the U.S. military. Quindi sperano di aggirare in Great Firewall?!? :-D [...] il mistero si infittisce... -- Giovanni Biscuolo Noi, incompetenti come siamo, non abbiamo alcun titolo per suggerire alcunché.

April 26, 2021

Jury acquits Extinction Rebellion protesters despite ‘no defence in law’ | Extinction Rebellion | The Guardian

by Alberto Cammozzo

La notizia dell'assoluzione su basi morali e non giuridiche degli attivisti di Extinction Rebellion mi pare talmente singolare da meritare di essere registrata anche nel nostro contesto, in cui i vuoti normativi spesso sono più efficaci dei pieni. <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/23/jury-acquits-extinction…> Six Extinction Rebellion protesters have been cleared of causing criminal damage to Shell’s London headquarters despite the judge directing jurors that they had no defence in law. Two of the group’s co-founders, Simon Bramwell, 49, and Ian Bray, 53, were acquitted on Friday alongside Jane Augsburger, 55, Senan Clifford, 60, David Lambert, 62, and James “Sid” Saunders, 41, after a trial at Southwark crown court. The six, who represented themselves, were also cleared of individual counts of having an article with intent to destroy or damage property, while a seventh protester, Katerina Hasapopoulos, 43, earlier pleaded guilty to criminal damage. Prosecutor Diana Wilson told jurors that each of the defendants deliberately sprayed graffiti or smashed windows of the Shell building in Belvedere Road, central London, on 15 April 2019. The protest, which saw activists pour fake oil, glue themselves to windows and doors, break glass, climb on to a roof and spray graffiti, was part of wider Extinction Rebellion demonstrations across the capital. Wilson said that while some protesters stood outside the building holding banners or speaking through megaphones, “these defendants went further”, adding: “The seven involved caused significant damage.” All those who stood trial explained they had targeted the Shell building because the oil giant was directly contributing to the climate crisis, thereby causing serious injury and death, and argued that it was a “necessary” and “proportionate” response to the harm being caused. Clifford quoted Sir David Attenborough and former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in his evidence. He said: “I believe if I don’t do whatever I can to protect our Earth, to protect life on this Earth, to stop the death and injury that is and will be happening, I’m committing a crime, a really serious crime, and I’m willing to break a window, to paint a message on a wall, I’m willing to break the glass on that emergency button, even if some say that’s a crime. “Because this is a much bigger crime and I’m trying to stop that crime, I’m trying to protect life in the only way I feel I can.” Judge Gregory Perrins directed jurors that even if they thought the protesters were “morally justified”, it did not provide them with a lawful excuse to commit criminal damage. With the exception of Saunders, who claimed in his defence that he honestly believed Shell’s employees and shareholders would have consented to his criminal damage, the judge said: “They don’t have any defence in law for the charges they face.” But the jury of seven women and five men took seven hours and four minutes to acquit them of both charges. Some of the defendants waved at jurors, several of whom were visibly emotional, as they left court. Before reaching their verdicts, the jury had asked to see a copy of the oath they took when they were sworn in. Thanking jurors for their “care and attention”, the judge said: “This has been an unusual case.” Augsburger, Bramwell, Clifford, Lambert and Saunders, who are all from Stroud, Gloucestershire and Bray, from Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, were jubilant as they left court. Hasapopoulos, from Stroud will be sentenced later. Speaking after the verdicts, Bramwell said Hasapopoulos had only pleaded guilty because of childcare issues. He said: “This is such a significant victory for the consciousness of the British people when it comes to the huge, immediate threat of climate change and the absolute failure of our government to do anything meaningful about it.”

April 26, 2021

Memento | 87° Nexa Lunch Seminar | 28 Aprile 2021

by Nexa Media

Gentilissimi, vi ricordiamo che *mercoledì ***28 aprile*, dalle ore 13.00 alle ore 14.00*, si svolgerà l'87° Nexa Lunch Seminar, con un incontro dal titolo: */*/*"I rischi della sovranità digitale"*/*/.* Ospiti: *Simone Basso* (OONI) e *Edoardo Celeste* (Dublin City University). L'incontro si svolgerà in *modalità telematica*, utilizzando il software open source di conference call *Jitsi Meet*. Per chi vorrà partecipare live al seminario sarà possibile accedere alla conference call attraverso il seguente link: https://meet.nexacenter.org/LunchSeminar <https://meet.nexacenter.org/LunchSeminar> Maggiori informazioni sull'incontro sono disponibili alla pagina: https://nexa.polito.it/lunch-87 <https://nexa.polito.it/lunch-87> Cordiali saluti,   -- Anita Botta Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino – DAUIN Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino _web:_ https://nexa.polito.it/ <https://nexa.polito.it/> _mail:_anita.botta@polito.it <mailto:anita.botta@polito.it> tel: 011 090 7219

April 26, 2021

Re: [nexa] Bad software sent postal workers to jail, because no one wanted to admit it could be wrong - The Verge

by Giovanni Biscuolo

Buongiorno, Alberto Cammozzo via nexa <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> writes: > <https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/23/22399721/uk-post-office-software-bug-cri…> > > For the past 20 years UK Post Office employees have been dealing with a > piece of software called Horizon, which had a fatal flaw: bugs that made > it look like employees stole tens of thousands of British pounds. This > led to some local postmasters being convicted of crimes, even being sent > to prison, because the Post Office doggedly insisted the software could > be trusted. After fighting for decades, 39 people are finally having > their convictions overturned, after what is reportedly the largest > miscarriage of justice that the UK has ever seen. [...] grazie della segnalazione, ignoravo la vicenda nonostante la sua importanza epocale e me ne vergogno. Come al solito Wikipedia ci viene in aiuto con un discreto sunto dei punti salienti della vicenda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_(IT_system) --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- Horizon was introduced in 2000, and from then onwards unexplained discrepancies and losses began to be reported by sub-postmasters. The Post Office maintained that Horizon was "robust" and that none of the shortfalls or discrepancies in sub-postmasters' branch accounts were due to problems caused by Horizon. Sub-postmasters unwilling or unable to make good the shortfalls were sometimes prosecuted (by the Post Office's in-house prosecution team) for theft, false accounting and/or fraud. This was done on IT evidence alone, without proof of criminal intent. Despite this, some sub-postmasters were successfully persuaded by their own solicitors to plead guilty to false accounting, on being told the Post Office would drop theft charges. Once the Post Office had a criminal conviction, it would attempt to secure a Proceeds of Crime Act Order against convicted sub-postmasters, allowing it to seize their assets and bankrupt them. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- (ovviamente l'intero articolo di Wikipedia con i riferimenti merita di essere letto) La notizia in oggetto, quindi, è in realtà l'inizio della /meritata/ fine di una dolorosissima vicenda iniziata nel 1999: no, non avete letto male: https://www.postofficetrial.com/2020/05/post-office-reviewing-900-prosecuti… --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- From the limited information which was publicly available we knew the Post Office had prosecuted dozens of people a year from 2005 to 2013. No one outside the Post Office had any idea, until now, it had prosecuted 900 Subpostmasters and counter staff since 1999. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Il sito https://www.postofficetrial.com/ è curato da un giornalista freelance britannico e contiene una valanga di materiale per chi volesse approfondire la complessa vicenda, compresi gli accordi extragiudiziali [1] e la collusione dell'associzione nazionale dei subpostmaster (AFAIU un sindacato) con il Post Office [2] per tentare di mettere tutto a tacere. Io, comunque, *voglio* sapere /quali/ sono stati i bug... cercherò se le sentenze lo dicono ma è DOVEROSO che queste cose vengano esposte trasparentemente. Dulcis in fundo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_(IT_system)#Replacement --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- «In April 2021 Post Office Chief Executive Nick Read announced that the Horizon system will be replaced with a new cloud-based IT system.» --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Trogloditi. Saluti, Giovanni. [1] https://www.postofficetrial.com/2021/04/settlement-disagreement.html [2] https://www.postofficetrial.com/2019/04/common-issues-trial-judgment-nfsp.h… -- Giovanni Biscuolo Noi, incompetenti come siamo, non abbiamo alcun titolo per suggerire alcunché.

April 25, 2021

Re: [nexa] Bad software sent postal workers to jail, because no one wanted to admit it could be wrong - The Verge

by Andrea Trentini

On 25/04/2021 12:41, Giacomo Tesio wrote: > ... > Una vicenda drammatica, dovuta all'ignoranza informatica diffusa mi ha ricordato (scusate la memoria da nerd) un episodio di Star Trek TOS (The Original Series) dal titolo "Court Martial" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708425/) in cui Kirk viene accusato di aver causato la morte di un membro dell'equipaggio e la difesa (qui sta il link che mi mi è venuto in mente) chiede alla corte di poter contestare un testimone "particolare": il computer di bordo. -- |_|o|_| Andrea Trentini - http://atrent.it |_|_|o| Dipartimento di Informatica |o|o|o| Università degli Studi di Milano

April 25, 2021