August 2021 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

The Taliban Have Seized U.S. Military Biometrics Devices
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 19, 2021

Aug. 19, 2021

<https://theintercept.com/2021/08/17/afghanistan-taliban-military-biometrics/> _The Taliban have_ seized U.S. military biometrics devices that could aid in the identification of Afghans who assisted coalition forces, current and former military officials have told The Intercept. The devices, known as HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, were seized last week during the Taliban’s offensive, according to a Joint Special Operations Command official and three former U.S. military personnel, all of whom worried that sensitive data they contain could be used by the Taliban. HIIDE devices contain identifying biometric data such as iris scans and fingerprints, as well as biographical information, and are used to access large centralized databases. It’s unclear how much of the U.S. military’s biometric database on the Afghan population has been compromised. While billed by the U.S. military as a means of tracking terrorists <https://www.army.mil/article/32609/bats_helps_id_insurgents_hostages> and other insurgents, biometric data on Afghans who assisted the U.S. was also widely collected and used in identification cards, sources said. “We processed thousands of locals a day, had to ID, sweep for suicide vests, weapons, intel gathering, etc.” a U.S. military contractor explained. “[HIIDE] was used as a biometric ID tool to help ID locals working for the coalition.” A spokesperson for the Defense Intelligence Agency referred questions to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which did not respond to a request for comment. An Army Special Operations veteran said it’s possible that the Taliban may need additional tools to process the HIIDE data but expressed concerns that Pakistan would assist with this. “The Taliban doesn’t have the gear to use the data but the ISI do,” the former Special Operations official said, referring to Pakistan’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. The ISI has been known to work closely with the Taliban. The U.S. military has long used HIIDE devices in the global war on terror and used biometrics to help identify <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-biometrics-helped-to-identif…> Osama bin Laden during the 2011 raid on his Pakistani hideout. According to investigative reporter Annie Jacobsen, the Pentagon had a goal <https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956705029/first-platoon-examines-how-war-on-…> to gather biometric data on 80 percent of the Afghan population to locate terrorists and criminals. <https://www.army.mil/article/47549/new_equipment_helps_troops_locate_insurg…> “I don’t think anyone ever thought about data privacy or what to do in the event the [HIIDE] system fell into the wrong hands,” said Welton Chang, chief technology officer for Human Rights First, himself a former Army intelligence officer. “Moving forward, the U.S. military and diplomatic apparatus should think carefully about whether to deploy these systems again in situations as tenuous as Afghanistan.” The Defense Department has also sought to share the biometrics data collected by HIIDE with other government agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security. In 2011, the Government Accountability Office criticized <https://www.gao.gov/assets/a317375.html> the Pentagon for not doing enough to ensure these other surveillance agencies had easy access to the information, warning that the military “limits its federal partners’ ability to identify potential criminals or terrorists.” But the U.S. didn’t only collect information about criminals and terrorists; the government appears to also have been collecting biometrics from Afghans assisting diplomatic efforts, in addition to those working with the military. For example, a recent job posting by a State Department contractor sought to recruit a biometric technician with experience using HIIDE and other similar equipment to help vet personnel and enroll local Afghans seeking employment at U.S. embassies and consulates. The federal government has collected biometric data from Afghans despite knowing the risks entailed by maintaining large databases of personal information, especially given recent cyberattacks on government agencies and private companies. These efforts are continuing to expand. For example, a February 2020 article <https://peoiews.army.mil/aircraft-survivability-2-2/> published by the Army indicated that the service was modernizing its 20-year-old biometric processing technology and had saved more than 1 million entries in the Pentagon’s Automated Biometrics Identification System, or ABIS, which hosts HIIDE and data collected by other devices as well. “This updated database will make it more efficient for warfighters to collect, identify and neutralize the enemy,” wrote Col. Senodja Sundiata-Walker, project manager for the Pentagon’s biometrics program. President Joe Biden’s proposed budget for the Army in fiscal year 2022 seeks more than $11 million to purchase 95 new biometric collection devices expanding upon those used in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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US judge rejects suit over UK privacy law
by Enrico Nardelli Aug. 18, 2021

Aug. 18, 2021

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-tech/2021/08/18/china-seeks-gr… (la notizia è in basso) A ruling by a federal judge in California this week will likely quash any potential efforts to bring stricter European privacy laws into the U.S. legal system. On Monday, the court ruled against a U.K. citizen’s attempt to sue an American company over alleged violations — on British soil — of the U.K.’s version of the EU’s privacy law. — How it went down: The plaintiff, Hugh Elliott, was trying to file a U.S. class action suit composed solely of U.K. residents against PubMatic, a California-based third-party advertising company that uses cookies for its targeted marketing. When the plaintiff filed his lawsuit, PubMatic had placed 45 cookies in his web browser. But the move was blocked in a Monday order from Judge Phyllis Hamilton of Northern California’s federal district court, after PubMatic said it would submit to jurisdiction in the courts of England and Wales. — The privacy tug-of-war across the pond: The U.S. and Europe are increasingly facing down each other over privacy, including U.S. court orders demanding information protected under GDPR. Both sides are working on a replacement for the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield — a framework that allowed for transatlantic data transfers and had major implications for how U.S. tech companies operate in Europe — which has been invalidated by the courts. -- EN ===================================================================== Prof. Enrico Nardelli Dipartimento di Matematica - Universita' di Roma "Tor Vergata" Via della Ricerca Scientifica snc - 00133 Roma tel: +39 06 7259.4204 fax: +39 06 7259.4699 mobile: +39 335 590.2331 e-mail: nardelli(a)mat.uniroma2.it home page: http://www.mat.uniroma2.it/~nardelli blog: http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/blog/enardelli/ http://link-and-think.blogspot.it/ ===================================================================== --

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Per i social l’Afghanistan diventa un “dilemma”
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 17, 2021

Aug. 17, 2021

Anche il mondo social lato aziende in fibrillazione per l'avanzata talebana. Un sunto dello stato dell'arte dl https://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/over-the-top/facebook-vieta-i-contenut… _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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OpenAI's GPT-3-based pair programming model – Codex – now open for private beta testers through an API
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 17, 2021

Aug. 17, 2021

Un passo non particolarmente sorprendente immagino, tuttavia un passo fatto. Buona lettura dl https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/16/in_brief_ai/ _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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Tesla’s Autopilot faces US investigation after crashes with emergency vehicles
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 17, 2021

Aug. 17, 2021

<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/16/teslas-autopilot-us-inve…> The US government has opened a formal investigation into Tesla’s driver-assistance system known as Autopilot after a series of collisions with parked emergency vehicles. The investigation covers 765,000 vehicles, almost everything that Tesla has sold in the US since the start of the 2014 model year. Of the crashes identified by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as part of the investigation, 17 people were injured and one was killed. NHTSA says it has identified 11 crashes since 2018 in which Teslas on Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control have hit vehicles at scenes where first responders used flashing lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board or cones warning of hazards. The agency announced the action on Monday in a posting on its website. “Most incidents took place after dark and the crash scenes encountered included scene control measures such as first responder vehicle lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board, and road cones,” the agency said. The investigation covers Tesla’s entire current model lineup, the Models Y, X, S and 3 from the 2014 through 2021 model years. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which also has investigated some of the Tesla crashes, has recommended that NHTSA and Tesla limit Autopilot’s use to areas where it can safely operate. The NTSB also recommended that NHTSA require Tesla to have a better system to make sure drivers are paying attention. NHTSA has not taken action on any of the recommendations. The NTSB has no enforcement powers and can only make recommendations to other federal agencies such as NHTSA. Autopilot has frequently been misused by Tesla drivers, who have been caught driving drunk or even riding in the back seat while a car rolled down a California highway. The investigation is the latest in a series launched by NHTSA which has opened at least 30 crash investigations involving Tesla cars that it suspected were linked to Autopilot. One investigation into a 2016 crash cleared Tesla’s Autopilot of any blame. Tesla and other manufacturers warn that drivers using the systems must be ready to intervene at all times. Teslas using the system have crashed into semis crossing in front of them, stopped emergency vehicles and a roadway barrier. A message was left early on Monday seeking comment from Tesla, which has disbanded its media relations office. Earlier this month Tesla tweeted that “a Tesla with Autopilot engaged experienced 0.2 accidents per million miles driven, while the US average was 9x higher”. The crashes into emergency vehicles cited by NHTSA began on 22 January 2018 in Culver City near Los Angeles when a Tesla using Autopilot struck a firetruck that was parked partially in the travel lanes with its lights flashing. Crews were handling another crash at the time. Since then, the agency said there were crashes in Laguna Beach, California; Norwalk, Connecticut; Cloverdale, Indiana; West Bridgewater, Massachusetts; Cochise county, Arizona; Charlotte, North Carolina, Montgomery county, Texas; Lansing, Michigan; and Miami, Florida. “The investigation will assess the technologies and methods used to monitor, assist and enforce the driver’s engagement with the dynamic driving task during Autopilot operation,” NHTSA said in investigation documents. In addition, the investigation will cover object and event detection by the system, as well as where it is allowed to operate. NHTSA says it will examine “contributing circumstances” to the crashes, as well as similar crashes. An investigation could lead to a recall or other enforcement action by NHTSA. “NHTSA reminds the public that no commercially available motor vehicles today are capable of driving themselves,” the agency said in a statement. “Every available vehicle requires a human driver to be in control at all times, and all state laws hold human drivers responsible for operation of their vehicles.” The agency said it has “robust enforcement tools” to protect the public and investigate potential safety issues, and it will act when it finds evidence “of noncompliance or an unreasonable risk to safety”. In June NHTSA ordered all automakers to report any crashes involving fully autonomous vehicles or partially automated driver assist systems. The measures show the agency has started to take a tougher stance on automated vehicle safety than in the past. It has been reluctant to issue any regulations of the new technology for fear of hampering adoption of the potentially life-saving systems. Shares of Tesla, based in Palo Alto, California, fell nearly 2% before the opening bell.

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Sul lavoro agile Generali scrive le regole per il post emergenza
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 17, 2021

Aug. 17, 2021

Interessante sperimentazione con accordo tra le parti sociali, un primo approccio che rimette al centro le persone, di interesse per gli studi in questo senso Buona lettura dl https://www.snfia.it/wp-content/uploads/20210727-Gruppo-Generali-Accordo-Ne… _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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discorso di Jeffrey Sachs
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 16, 2021

Aug. 16, 2021

Breve discorso (10') del Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Ammetto che i riferimenti al digitale ci sono (parla anche di "digital access") ma non sono certo predominanti; tuttavia consentitemi lo stesso di segnalarvi questo discorso perché è raro sentire parlare in un'occasione ufficiale in questo modo, ovvero, con così tanta lucidità, passione e coraggio: https://youtu.be/WZ1xc491mnU juan carlos

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Cashed out: a fond farewell to coins and notes | Money | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 15, 2021

Aug. 15, 2021

<https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/aug/15/cashed-out-a-fond-farewell-to…> [...] This anecdotal stuff is backed by hard fact: cash payments fell by 35% in 2020 in the UK and five out of six payments are now cashless. In 2019, the Access to Cash review predicted that only one in 10 payments in the UK would be cash within a decade; now, chairman Natalie Ceeney says, “Covid might have accelerated that to next year.” In April, Rishi Sunak announced a joint Treasury-Bank of England taskforce to explore the scope for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the UK: it’s intended to provide a sort of official, ultra-secure alternative to bitcoin. So is that it? Is dirty cash (90% of dollar bills test positive for cocaine residue) over? Covid compounded our suspicions around banknotes – the preserve of drug dealers and tax dodgers – with since-discredited warnings of contagion risk and government advice to retailers to favour contactless payments. Now, given the ease and ubiquity of mobile payment, why seek out an increasingly hard-to-find and grimy ATM, skirting pools of beer or worse, when you have everything you need on your phone? Once the habit was disrupted, cash started to seem weird as well as suspect: grubby paper and discs of base metal in return for goods and services. Admittedly, contemporary cash is no stranger than other systems of currency. Felix Martin’s Money: An Unauthorised Biography recounts an American anthropologist’s 1903 encounter with the Pacific Yap islanders, whose currency was fei – vast stone wheels up to 12ft in diameter. These rarely if ever physically changed hands: one family’s wealth was in a large fei that had sunk in a shipwreck several generations previously (they are still used even now, for symbolic exchanges). We know money is only an idea: a headline I love from the satirical magazine The Onion reads; “US Economy Grinds to Halt as Nation Realises Money Just a Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion.” Does it matter if we lose the physical expression of that illusion? Sweden suggests not. Already basically cashless, it’s committed to being entirely digital by 2023. One Swedish friend says she “hardly knows what our new notes and coins look like”. “Cash is useless,” says another. Swish, the transfer service has spawned a verb, swisha, and most homeless people (yes, Sweden has a few) usually have a smartphone to take Swish payments. But even in Sweden, there are rumblings of unease: the Kontantupproret movement (Cash Rebellion) warns of the potential cybersecurity, individual freedom and privacy implications of a cashless society. There’s also the question of what happens in the worst-case scenario. “Isn’t cash the last resort between us and anarchy in the apocalypse?” asks Gottfried Leibbrandt, one of the authors of The Pay Off: How Changing the Way We Pay Changes Everything. “Your bank is not infallible digitally,” warns Gareth Shaw, head of money at Which? “Cash is the ultimate backstop, a bulwark against lots of things.” That seems to be reflected in Bank of England data indicating there are 10% more banknotes in circulation since the start of the first lockdown: we may not be using cash day-to-day, but some of us want it around, just in case. We might swerve the apocalypse, but cash still matters: nothing else currently offers all the attributes of notes and coins. Universally accessible without a bank account, fixed address, national insurance number or smartphone, cash can be received and spent by anyone. Notes and coins are also easily recognisable, which is important for visually impaired consumers, many of whom find the split-second digital display for card and contactless payments difficult to read. “We’ve seen a really diverse group of people relying on cash,” says Shaw. He describes the Which? Freedom to Pay campaign as “Trying to ensure we are not sleepwalking into a cashless society without some guardrails on it.” Eight million people in the UK would struggle in a cashless society, mainly those on lower incomes. Cruelly, those who rely most on cash find it hardest to access: free-to-use ATMs vanish from deprived areas at a much faster rate than from prosperous ones according to University of Bristol research. Cash also offers the bracing “pain of paying”. That’s how behavioural economics explains the way we feel making physical payments, in contrast to the dismayingly discreet, frictionless, digital cascade of payments that exit our bank accounts for subscription services we’ve forgotten about and in-app purchases we don’t notice. It’s why cash is a cornerstone of budgeting strategy. “We’ve spoken to people in severe debt and one of the biggest pieces of advice is to cut up your cards and start paying in cash,” says Shaw. [...]

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Facebook is obstructing our work on disinformation. Other researchers could be next | Laura Edelson and Damon McCoy | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 15, 2021

Aug. 15, 2021

<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/14/facebook-research-disinf…> Last week, Facebook disabled our personal accounts, obstructing the research we lead at New York University to study the spread of disinformation on the company’s platform. The move has already compromised our work – forcing us to suspend our investigations into Facebook’s role in amplifying vaccine misinformation, sowing distrust in our elections and fomenting the violent riots at the US Capitol on 6 January. But even more important than the effect on our work is what Facebook’s hostility toward outside scrutiny means for the many other researchers and journalists trying to study Facebook’s effects on society. We’ve already heard from other researchers planning similar projects who are now pulling back. If Facebook has its way, there will be no independent research of its platform. Our dispute with Facebook centers on a research tool called Ad Observer. Ad Observer is a web browser extension that Facebook users can choose to install to share with us limited and anonymous information about the ads that Facebook shows them. The data they share with us includes the categories advertisers chose when targeting them. Examples might be “married women” or “interested in dating” or “lives in Florida”. Using data collected through Ad Observer, and also data collected using the transparency tools Facebook makes available to researchers, we’ve been able to help the public understand how the platform fails to live up to its promises, and shed light on how it sells the attention of its users to advertisers. In a forthcoming paper, we show that Facebook has failed to include more than 100,000 ads that meet its own criteria as political, social and issue ads in its public archive. For example, it failed to include ads supporting Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 elections; Amazon ads about the minimum wage; and an anti-mask ad targeted to conservatives run by a group called Reopen USA, whose Facebook page posts anti-vaccine and anti-mask memes. We have also shown how highly partisan and misleading news sources get far more engagement on Facebook than reliable news sources do, and we will be publishing an expanded version of this analysis in another forthcoming paper. But we’re not the only researchers who use Ad Observer’s data. For the past three years, we’ve been making information we collect through Ad Observer and through Facebook’s tools available to other researchers and journalists, so they can conduct their own investigations. The Markup has used our data to report on how ads with QAnon content and merchandise from extremist militia groups have slipped through Facebook’s filters, despite bans. The Markup also used the data to demonstrate how corporate advertisers such as ExxonMobil and Comcast promote seemingly contradictory messages about hot button issues to different audiences. Reporters from Florida to Kentucky to New Mexico used it to report on trends in political advertising in their states ahead of the 2020 elections. In disabling our accounts last week, Facebook claimed that we were violating its terms of service, that we were compromising user privacy, and that it had no choice but to shut us down because of an agreement it has with the Federal Trade Commission. All of these claims are wrong. Ad Observer collects information only about advertisers, not about our volunteers or their friends, and the FTC has stated that our research does not violate its consent decree with Facebook. Unfortunately, Facebook’s campaign against us is part of a larger pattern of hostility toward outside scrutiny. Just last month the New York Times reported that Facebook, after internal controversy, was dismantling a team working on CrowdTangle, its marquee transparency tool for researchers who want to see how unpaid Facebook posts spread and gain engagement on the platform. The paper reported this week that the White House itself was having so much trouble getting a straight answer from Facebook on vaccine misinformation that officials asked to speak directly to the platform’s data scientists, rather than its lobbyists. Social Science One, launched in 2018 to great fanfare, was supposed to provide researchers with access to Facebook user data in a safe way. But the data offered proved to be much less useful than anticipated, to the point that the funders of the project dropped out. In our work we’ve shown how Facebook’s transparency tools fall short of promises. We can’t let Facebook decide unilaterally who gets to study the company and what tools they can use. The stakes are too high. What happens on Facebook affects public trust in our elections, the course of the pandemic and the nature of social movements. We need the greater understanding that researchers, journalists and public scrutiny provide. If Facebook won’t allow this access voluntarily, then it’s time for lawmakers to require it.

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I sindacati e l’arrocco al tempo della rivoluzione digitale
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 14, 2021

Aug. 14, 2021

Un editoriale duro. Al di là del tema singolo mi pare oggettivo il fatto che un ente intermedio così importante come il sindacato, sui temi che ci riguardano in questa lista, non sembra particolarmente presente o propositivo. Ne ho personalmente riprova nel percorso fatto con il territorio in occasione della candidatura di Torino quale sede del Centro Italiano per l'Intelligenza Artificiale. Buona lettura. dl https://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/lavoro-carriere/competenze/i-sindacati… _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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