March 2022 - nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Barcellona: infrastruttura open source per evitare raccolta dati studenti
by Eleonora Panto March 10, 2022

March 10, 2022

Il Comune di Barcellona investe 340.000 euro in uno strumento open source che eviti la "raccolta massiccia di dati sugli studenti" https://elpais.com/espana/catalunya/2022-02-09/barcelona-crea-un-software-p… Nell'articolo in spagnolo, ma facilmente traducibile, sono anche indicate le cifre che il comune ha investito per creare l'infrastruttura sw , anche se non e' chiaro quante scuole (dice tre centri ma non e' chiaro a cosa si riferisce) ne beneficiano.. saluti Eleonora -- ///|\\\ \\\|/// ///|\\\ \\\|/// ///|\\\ \\\|/// Eleonora Pantò abbonati a Lapilli <https://eleonorapanto.substack.com/> - la newsletter su educazione e digitale www.puntopanto.it | @epanto <https://twitter.com/epanto>

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Terzo volume dell' Enciclopedia dei dati digitali - L'etica dei dati digitali: L'equità
by Vetro' Antonio March 10, 2022

March 10, 2022

Sperando di fare cosa gradita soprattutto a chi si occupa della c.d. etica dei dati e dei problemi di discriminazione algoritmica, segnalo che il prof. Carlo Batini ha pubblicato su Bicocca open archive con licenza Creative Commons il terzo volume dell' Enciclopedia dei dati digitali, intitolato L'etica dei dati digitali: L'equità Il volume può essere scaricato dal link https://boa.unimib.it/handle/10281/357958 In precedenza nel 2021 il prof. Batini ha pubblicato il Volume 1 di Introduzione ai dati digitali al link https://boa.unimib.it/handle/10281/301758 e il Volume 2 dedicato ai Modelli dei dati al link https://boa.unimib.it/handle/10281/301806 Antonio V.

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Italy fines US facial recognition firm Clearview AI | Courthouse News Service
by Alberto Cammozzo March 10, 2022

March 10, 2022

<https://www.courthousenews.com/italy-fines-us-facial-recognition-firm-clear…> (AFP) — Italy's data privacy watchdog on Wednesday fined U.S.-based firm Clearview AI 20 million euros (almost $22 million) over its controversial facial recognition software. The watchdog ordered the company to delete data relating to people in Italy and banned it from further collection and processing of information there. Clearview AI says it has built up a database of more than 10 billion facial images taken from public websites, from social media to news sites, which it touts as a tool for law enforcement. Italy's privacy watchdog said that, despite Clearview's assertions to the contrary, the firm had allowed the tracking of citizens and people in Italy. "The personal data held by the company, including biometric and geolocation data, are processed unlawfully," the watchdog said. The company had also violated several principles of GDPR, a European Union privacy regulation introduced in 2018 to control who can access personal data. In addition to the fine, the watchdog said Clearview should designate an EU representative to act as "an interlocutor" with plaintiffs. Campaigners have condemned Clearview's use of images for being open to abuse, and a number of groups including Privacy International last year filed complaints with data regulators in France, Austria, Italy, Greece and Britain. In December, France's privacy watchdog ordered Clearview to delete data on its citizens and cease further collection. Meanwhile in June last year, Canada's independent parliamentary watchdog ruled that both Clearview's database and the use of it by federal police were illegal.

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European Health and Digital Executive Agency
by Alessandro Brolpito (ETF) March 10, 2022

March 10, 2022

Dear all, In relation to NEXA event of yesterday, thanks again Prof. Pagallo, an interesting event organised by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA) on 14 March 2022. Further information about the event and agenda is available here<https://digital-skills-jobs.europa.eu/en/latest/events/digital-europe-progr…>. Regards, Alessandro Alessandro Brolpito (ETF) Senior Human Capital Development Expert - Digital Skills and Learning Policy and Public Outreach Department ADDRESS Villa Gualino, Viale Settimio Severo 65, I - 10133 Torino TELEPHONE +39 011 630 2279 FAX +390116302200 E-MAIL info(a)etf.europa.eu WEB http://www.etf.europa.eu

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"Diritto delle imprese e intelligenza artificiale" | 15 marzo 2022, ore 18:00
by Nexa Media March 9, 2022

March 9, 2022

Gentilissimi, vi invitiamo a partecipare all'incontro *"Diritto delle imprese e intelligenza artificiale"*, che si terrà *martedì 15 marzo 2022**, alle ore 18:00*, presso il *Polo del '900 - Sala '900* - Via del Carmine 14, Torino. L'incontro sarà strutturato in un dialogo a partire dal libro /*Diritto delle imprese e intelligenza artificiale. Dalla Fintech alla Corptech*/, di *Niccolò Abriani* e *Giulia Schneider*, Il Mulino, 2021. Partecipano, in dialogo con gli autori: *Gastone Cottino*, professore emerito all'Università degli studi di Torino, *Paolo Montalenti*, Università degli studi di Torino, e *Marco Ricolfi*, Università degli studi di Torino e co-direttore del Centro Nexa. Modera: *Dunia Astrologo*, Comitato scientifico Fondazione Istituto piemontese A. Gramsci. Maggiori informazioni sull'incontro sono disponibili alla pagina: https://nexa.polito.it/diritto-imprese-e-intelligenza-artificiale 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/ mail: anita.botta(a)polito.it tel: 011 090 7219

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spam
by Angelo Raffaele Meo March 8, 2022

March 8, 2022

caro J.C., ti chiedo scusa per averti innervosito ieri con la mia telefonata, ma mi permetto di tornare sull'argomento che mi pare importante e che ho proposto a Nexa un paio di giorni fa. Nella sola giornata del 4 marzo (quella in cui ho perduto un messaggio molto importante per me), 15 messaggi di Nexa sono finiti in spam. Possiamo chiedere al gestore della posta del Polli di rispermiare tutti i messaggi di Nexa? Non so se ciò sia tecnicamente possibile, ma, se non fosse possibile, tutti i colleghi del Poli dovranno provvedere singolarmente e quindi devono essere avvisati. Raf

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The Hidden Role of Facial Recognition Tech in Many Arrests | WIRED
by Alberto Cammozzo March 8, 2022

March 8, 2022

<https://www.wired.com/story/hidden-role-facial-recognition-tech-arrests/> In April 2018, Bronx public defender Kaitlin Jackson was assigned to represent a man accused of stealing a pair of socks from a TJ Maxx store. The man said he couldn’t have stolen the socks because at the time the theft occurred, he was at a hospital about three-quarters of a mile away, where his son was born about an hour later. Jackson couldn’t understand how police had identified and arrested her client months after the theft. She called the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, and a prosecutor told her police had identified her client from a security camera photo using facial recognition <https://www.wired.com/tag/facial-recognition/>. A security guard at the store, the only witness to the theft, later told an investigator from her office that police had sent him a mugshot of her client and asked in a text message “Is this the guy?” Jackson calls that tactic “as suggestive as you can get.” Jackson’s questions led a judge to order a hearing to determine whether the identification process had been unduly suggestive. Shortly afterward, Jackson says, prosecutors offered her client a deal: Plead guilty to petit larceny in exchange for a sentence of time served. The client, who had been in jail for roughly six months, agreed. “I would have liked to go forward and go to hearings and go to trial because I think he very likely would have been acquitted, but sitting in jail waiting for that just did not make sense for him, so he ultimately took a misdemeanor plea deal” just to get out of jail, Jackson says. “He just wants to go on with his life.” The prosecutor who told Jackson how her client had been identified was unusual. Across most of the US, neither police nor prosecutors are required to disclose when facial recognition is used to identify a criminal suspect. Defense attorneys say that puts them at a disadvantage: They can’t challenge potential problems with facial recognition technology if they don’t know it was used. It also raises questions of equity, since studies have shown that facial recognition systems are more likely to misidentify people who are not white men, including people with dark skin, women, and young people. “Facial recognition technology use shouldn't be a secret,” says Anton Robinson, a former public defender now at the Innocence Project, a nonprofit dedicated to getting people who've been wrongly convicted out of prison. “It's such a big issue in criminal cases. Attorneys shouldn't be left to have these epiphany moments.” Misidentification is historically a huge factor in sending innocent people to prison. The Innocence Project found that more than two-thirds of people exonerated through DNA evidence had been misidentified by witnesses, making it the leading factor in these convictions. Eyewitnesses can struggle to identify people they don’t know, especially when those individuals are of different racial or ethnic backgrounds. The rules regulating facial recognition use are gaining importance as more police agencies adopt the technology. In 2016, the Georgetown Center on Privacy and Technology said <https://www.perpetuallineup.org/> police in most US states had access to the tech and that photos of about half of US adults were in a facial recognition database. The report also warned that the technology would disproportionately hurt Black people because of the technology's higher error rates for people with dark skin. In a 2019 report <https://www.flawedfacedata.com/#footnoteref49_zt1y3aq>, the Georgetown center said New York police had made more than 2,800 arrests following face recognition searches between 2011 and 2017. Last year, BuzzFeed News reported <https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facial-recognition-local-polic…> that law enforcement agencies in 49 states, and more than 20 federal agencies, had at least tested facial recognition technology products from Clearview AI <https://www.wired.com/story/clearview-ai-new-tools-identify-you-photos/>. A handful of US police departments, including in New York City and Detroit, have since adopted policies governing the use of facial recognition. The New York and Detroit policies require two people to review the results of a facial recognition scan before the results are turned over to detectives and say facial recognition alone cannot be used as probable cause to carry out a search warrant or arrest. The New York policy took effect in March 2020. The latest version requires prosecutors to tell defendants when facial recognition is used to identify them. But defense attorneys say they suspect police are not always adhering to the policy. The NYPD says on its website <https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/about/about-nypd/equipment-tech/facial-recog…> that the department knows of no cases of false arrest based on the use of facial recognition in an investigation, but the department did not respond to questions about specific cases. Jackson, the public defender, says police often obscure their use of facial recognition programs by crediting a witness with identifying a suspect. But the witness may have been shown photos generated by a facial recognition program. The use of facial recognition programs “gets papered over by these human identifications that only could have been made with the use of facial recognition,” she says. Facial recognition searches that lead to criminal charges most commonly begin with an image, often from security cameras. That photo is run through a system that compares the image to those in a large database, like a collection of mugshots or driver’s license photos. Florida’s system includes more than 13 million mugshots and 25 million driver’s license photos. A human analyst reviews the search results and picks out possible matches, which are then given to investigators. The search results can include hundreds of photos, with confidence scores for each potential match. Investigators show potential matches to an eyewitness or police officer, and if they make a positive identification, they can typically testify at trial without ever mentioning facial recognition. Facial recognition technology is improving, but it is still flawed. Error rates have fallen 90 percent since the National Institute for Standards and Technology began testing systems in 2018, says Patrick Grother, of NIST’s Image Group <https://www.nist.gov/itl/iad/image-group> that evaluates fingerprint, iris, and facial recognition software. The algorithms are better at analyzing low-quality images and recognizing aging faces, and some have made progress in recognizing faces from the side. Nevertheless, Grother says, “there’s a considerable spectrum of accuracy” and “image quality remains an issue.” NIST’s most recent test, which largely relies on a database of high-quality mugshot photos, found that even the best algorithms <https://www.wired.com/tag/algorithms/> can be wrong more than 20 percent of the time. Another problem: There are few rules governing the images police submit to facial recognition systems. In 2017, New York police believed that a theft suspect looked like Woody Harrelson, so they used a photo of the actor as a probe photo, then arrested <https://www.flawedfacedata.com/> the tenth person who appeared in a facial recognition search. Elsewhere, police have submitted artists’ sketches <https://www.flawedfacedata.com/#composite> of a suspect to facial recognition systems. See What’s Next in Tech With the Fast Forward Newsletter From artificial intelligence and self-driving cars to transformed cities and new startups, sign up for the latest news. Fighting Facial Recognition in Court Substances such as DNA found at crime scenes are treated as evidence in criminal investigations, but attorneys and tech policy analysts say they’ve not seen a facial recognition scan used as evidence at trial. Still, the technology may have helped identify a suspect, without the suspect or their legal team having been informed. This has prompted defense attorneys to hunt for hints that the technology was used and to devise strategies to force disclosure. Jackson, the public defender, has created a guide for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. She advises attorneys to ask what made detectives suspicious of their client. If the basis of suspicion is unclear, photos or videos are listed as evidence, and their client is identified by a stranger, Jackson says lawyers should suspect the use of facial recognition. Jackson advises lawyers to request supporting materials for an investigation, including a list of all of the candidates returned by a facial recognition system and the confidence scores assigned to them. False identification with facial recognition led to the arrests of Michael Oliver and Robert Williams <https://www.wired.com/story/wrongful-arrests-ai-derailed-3-mens-lives> in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Attorneys representing the men say they’ve requested lists of all potential matches in those cases as part of lawsuits against police. “If police picked number 65 produced by the system, the defense should be able to say, ‘What about numbers one through 64?’” says Jumana Must, director of the Fourth Amendment Center at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “Any time a technology or something forensic or science is used in a court, the defense is supposed to have an opportunity to test that, to validate it, to see ‘Does it do what you said it did?’” Clare Garvie, a former senior associate at Georgetown’s Center on Privacy and Technology, has spent the better part of a decade tracking police use of facial recognition and trained more than 2,000 defense attorneys on how to spot use of the technology. She advises them to look in arrest warrants for the names of companies that make facial recognition technology, police department units like the Facial Identification Section in New York City, or the names of specific police officers. In her research, Garvie found that some analysts in Nebraska and Florida who were evaluating facial recognition search results were allowed to change the confidence level necessary to create a match. If, for example, a search with 90 percent accuracy returns no results, they can specify a lower accuracy rate and search again. When defendants push back, police sometimes retreat, as may have happened with Jackson’s case with the stolen socks. Garvie recalls a New York case where a man charged with multiple counts of robbery carrying a possible seven-year sentence was offered a plea deal for 20 hours of community service after a defense attorney requested information about a facial recognition system. Because many cases are resolved with plea deals, Garvie says there hasn’t been a clear test of whether disclosure is required. Oliver and Williams say they each considered plea deals before they were exonerated. “I think what we're waiting for, unfortunately, is probably a murder or rape case where the prosecution is not willing to plea out or drop charges,” Garvie says. Signs of Change There are some signs of change. Laws took effect last year in Utah <https://le.utah.gov/~2020/bills/sbillint/SB0218.pdf> and Washington state <https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2019-20/Pdf/Bill%20Reports/Senate/6…> requiring police to disclose the use of facial recognition in criminal cases. The Washington law specifies that police cannot use facial recognition alone to establish probable cause in an investigation; it also requires independent tests of any facial recognition systems used by state agencies. Attorneys in both states said it was too soon to tell whether these laws are having an effect. Several other states are considering similar laws. A proposed change to a 2021 Massachusetts law would stipulate that all records related to facial recognition searches be turned over to defendants, including other possible matches returned by facial recognition systems and the accuracy rate of predictions made by the tech. Late last year, a group representing chiefs of police from major US cities, including New York, called for <https://majorcitieschiefs.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/MCCA-FRT-in-Modern…> police to disclose when facial recognition is used to help identify a suspect. Christian Quinn, a coauthor of the report, is a former major in the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Department in Virginia. He has a background in digital forensics and previously supervised investigators. Quinn says the spread of facial recognition technology has led investigators to believe there will be suitable digital evidence in every case, similar to the way the TV show /CSI/ led people to believe there would always be DNA or physical forensic evidence. In reality, security camera images can be grainy, low quality, from odd angles, and suffer from lighting issues that hinder a good match. Given widespread mistrust of police in some areas, “we really need to put it out there and help educate our communities as to the value of this stuff and how we’re using it,” Quinn says. Referring to bans on facial recognition <https://www.wired.com/story/next-target-facial-recognition-ban-new-york/> use in some cities, he says it otherwise “becomes very easy to discuss these technologies in terms of all or nothing.” As more states and cities consider restricting the technology, a September report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank, suggests that Congress create national standards to prevent a patchwork of regulation. Lead author James Lewis says he supports facial recognition and thinks its spread is inevitable but that there should be transparency around how the technology is used in criminal investigations. Seven US states and cities, including Boston and San Francisco <https://www.wired.com/story/san-francisco-bans-use-facial-recognition-tech/>, have adopted full or partial bans of facial recognition by government agencies. Lewis doesn’t think Congress will follow suit, in part because of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol and ensuing investigation, saying, “I think that's influential, when you have to hide in a closet.” An analysis <http://hrlr.law.columbia.edu/hrlr-online/you-can-see-my-face-why-cant-i-fac…> by the Human Rights Law Review at Columbia University concluded that “defendants face meaningful barriers to challenging” the technology and called on Congress to pass a law requiring disclosure. The report also called for procedural safeguards, such as regular testing and a minimum threshold for the accuracy of facial recognition systems. White House science and tech policy leaders endorsed <https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-bill-of-rights-artificial-intelligence/> more disclosure around the use of artificial intelligence as part of an AI Bill of Rights last fall. Regulation of facial recognition technology has drawn bipartisan support <https://venturebeat.com/2019/11/11/facial-recognition-regulation-is-surpris…> in Congress, but there are no federal restrictions on use of the tech by law enforcement, despite a documented lack of guardrails <https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-518> for federal agencies using the tech. The National District Attorneys Association (NDAA) says it instructs its more than 5,000 members to use “professional judgment and discretion” when it comes to divulging the use of facial recognition and to consider issues like public safety, privacy, and relevance when making these decisions. NDAA officials did not respond to requests for examples of how disclosing facial recognition use in a criminal investigation could threaten public safety. “The longer things remain secret, the harder it is to challenge them, and the harder it is to challenge them, the longer police go without courts putting limits on what they can do,” says Nathan Wessler, who leads the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at the ACLU. An Attempt to Learn More Defense attorneys say their best hope of getting police and prosecutors to reveal that facial recognition helped identify a suspect rests on a 1963 Supreme Court decision. In Brady v Maryland, the court ruled that police must turn over to a defendant any evidence they collected that would exonerate that defendant. The best-known case involving facial recognition and the Brady decision is that of Willie Allen Lynch, a Florida man convicted in 2016 of selling $50 in crack cocaine, in part based on facial recognition, and sentenced to eight years in prison. During his trial, Lynch, who defended himself for a period of time, argued he should be able to cross-examine a crime analyst who had performed the facial recognition scan and sent a single photo of Lynch to investigators. In a pretrial deposition, the analyst testified that she didn’t fully understand how the facial recognition program worked. In December 2018, a Florida appeals court denied Lynch’s appeal, arguing that he had failed to demonstrate on Brady grounds that documents like pictures of other potential subjects would have changed the outcome of a trial. Lynch then appealed to the Florida Supreme Court, seeking more information about how facial recognition was used in his case, including pictures of other potential matches and the software behind the algorithm. The appeal was supported by groups <https://www.eff.org/document/lynch-v-florida-amicus-brief> including the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology, and the Innocence Project. They argued that uncertainty around the results of facial recognition analysis should be treated as equivalent to eyewitnesses who said they weren’t sure they would recognize the person who committed a crime. The Florida Supreme Court declined to hear the case. In the years leading up to the Lynch case, public defenders in Pinellas County, where Lynch was charged, said they had not been told that facial recognition was being used. However, the 2016 Georgetown report found that the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office maintained a facial recognition system, FACES <https://www.perpetuallineup.org/jurisdiction/florida>, that law enforcement agencies across Florida tapped thousands of times a year over the span of 15 years. In December 2021, the /Sun-Sentinel/ and Pulitzer Center reported <https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/fl-ne-police-facial-recognition-20211222…> that Palm Beach County public defenders are rarely notified when police use facial recognition in a criminal investigation and that in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, FACES is disproportionately used in cases involving Black people. In New York, judges in at least four cases have declined suspects’ requests for more information about the facial recognition program that contributed to their arrest. Jackson, the public defender in the Bronx, thinks it can be easy for people whose lives are never touched by the criminal justice system to not worry about facial recognition. She says that’s a mistake. “I think people sometimes feel a sense of ease, like ‘That would never happen to me because I'm not somebody who has had a lot of interactions with the police,’” Jackson says. “But no one can guarantee that you don't look a lot like somebody who committed a crime. Nobody is safe from poor facial recognition technology.”

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Memento | 149° Mercoledì di Nexa | 9 Marzo 2022
by Nexa Media March 7, 2022

March 7, 2022

Gentilissimi, vi ricordiamo che *mercoledì 9 marzo**,**dalle ore 18.00 alle ore 20.00*, si svolgerà il 149° Mercoledì di Nexa, con un incontro dal titolo: /*"Il dovere alla salute. Sul rischio di sottoutilizzo dell'intelligenza artificiale in ambito sanitario"*/. Ospite: *Ugo Pagallo* (Trustee Centro Nexa, Università degli Studi di Torino). Il Prof. Pagallo presenterà il suo nuovo libro Il dovere alla salute. Sul rischio di sottoutilizzo dell''intelligenza artificiale in ambito sanitario <https://www.mimesisedizioni.it/libro/9788857586670>, Mimesis, Milano, 2022, primo volume della collana /Tecnologie emergenti e diritto/ (Mimesis, Milano), diretta da Eleonora Bassi e Ugo Pagallo. Sarà possibile partecipare al seminario connettendosi al seguente indirizzo: https://didattica.polito.it/VClass/NexaEvent Sarà possibile guardare la diretta streaming dell'incontro al seguente link: https://youtu.be/nzRHRlrXpbs Maggiori informazioni sull'evento sono disponibili alla pagina: https://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-149 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/ mail: anita.botta(a)polito.it tel: 011 090 7219

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Secretive Algorithm Will Now Determine Uber Driver Pay
by Antonio Iacono March 6, 2022

March 6, 2022

Uber has long said the average amount it takes from fares is about 25 percent. But Vance shared screenshots with The Markup of two recent trips he did for Uber that show the company took far more. One shows a customer paid $30 for a 20.9-mile trip, Vance earned $14, Uber got $13, and the rest went to sales tax. The other trip, which was 8.8 miles and included an airport drop, the customer paid $22, Vance got $6, Uber took $9, and the remainder went to airport fees and sales tax ... Before Uber’s change in pay structure, Vance said he’d normally average around $1 per mile once time and distance were calculated, especially if he was driving on the highway. So, the 20.9-mile trip would have earned him about $21, and the 8.8-mile trip would have brought in roughly $9. https://themarkup.org/working-for-an-algorithm/2022/03/01/secretive-algorit…

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‘Bot holiday’: Covid disinformation down as social media pivot to Ukraine | Social media | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo March 6, 2022

March 6, 2022

Russia’s information war with western nations seems to be pivoting to new fronts, from vaccines to geopolitics. <https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/mar/04/bot-holiday-covid-misinformat…> When David Fisman tweets, he often receives a deluge of hate within moments of posting. Fisman, an epidemiologist and physician, has been outspoken about Covid and public health. Even when he tweets something innocuous – once, to test his theory, he wrote the banal statement “kids are remarkable” – he still receives a flood of angry pushback. Flood of Russian misinformation puts tech companies in the hot seat Read more But in recent days, Fisman noticed an “astounding” trend, he said. He posted about topics like requiring vaccination and improving ventilation to prevent the spread of Covid – and the nasty responses never came. No support for the trucker convoy, no calls to try the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, for treason. Others have observed the same phenomenon; those who frequently encounter bots or angry responses are now seeing a significant drop-off. Covid misinformation, which has often trended on social media over the past two years, seems to be taking a nosedive. The reasons for this “bot holiday”, as Fisman calls it, are probably varied – but many of them point to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s information war with western nations seems to be pivoting to new fronts, from vaccines to geopolitics. And while social media has proven a powerful tool for Ukraine – with images of Zelenskiy striding through the streets of Kyiv and tractors pulling abandoned Russian tanks – growing campaigns of misinformation around the world could change the conflict’s narrative, and the ways the world reacts. The likely reasons for the shift in online chatter are many. Russia began limiting access to Twitter on Saturday, sanctions have been levied against those who could be financing disinformation sites and bot farms, and social media companies are more attuned to banning bots and accounts spreading misinformation during the conflict. But something more coordinated may also be at play. Conspiracy theories around the so-called “New World Order” – loosely defined conspiracies about shadowy global elites that run the world – have converged narrowly on Ukraine, according to emerging research. “There’s actually been a doubling of New World Order conspiracies on Twitter since the invasion,” said Joel Finkelstein, the chief science officer and co-founder of the National Contagion Research Institute, which maps online campaigns around public health, economic issues and geopolitics. At the same time, “whereas before the topics were very diverse – it was Ukraine and Canada and the virus and the global economy – now the entire conversation is about Ukraine,” he said. “We’re seeing a seismic shift in the disinformation sphere towards Ukraine entirely.” Online activity has surged overall by 20% since the invasion, and new hashtags have cropped up around Ukraine that seem to be coordinated with bot-like activity, Finkelstein said. Users pushing new campaigns frequently tweet hundreds of times a day and can catch the eye of prominent authentic accounts. “We can’t say for certain that Russia is behind this or that it contributes directly to the propagation of these messages. But it’s pretty difficult to believe that it’s not involved,” Finkelstein said, with topics strikingly similar to Russian talking points about the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, being controlled by the west and the need to dissolve Nato. A Russian bot farm reportedly produced 7,000 accounts to post fake information about Ukraine on social media, including Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber, according to the security service of Ukraine. And influencers who previously demonstrated against vaccines are now turning their support to Russia. Social media users may see a topic trending and not realize its connection to conspiracy theories or disinformation campaigns, said Esther Chan, Australia bureau editor for First Draft, an organization that researches misinformation. “A lot of social media users may just use these terms because they’re trending, they sound good,” she said. “It’s a very clever sort of astroturfing strategy that we’ve seen in the past few years.” The topics pushed by troll farms and Russian state media are often dictated by Russian officials, said Mitchell Orenstein, a professor of Russian and east European studies at University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. In this case, it seems “their orders got changed because priorities shifted”, he said. Russia has coordinated significant misinformation campaigns to destabilize western countries, including topics like the 2016 election and the pandemic, according to several reports. Inauthentic accounts are not fully responsible for real hesitations and beliefs. But they amplify harmful messages and make pushback seem more widespread than it is. “They’ve had tremendous success with social media platforms,” Orenstein said. “They play a pretty substantial role and they do shift people’s perception about what opinion is.” Fake accounts will frequently link to “pink slime” or low-credibility sites that once carried false stories about the pandemic and are now shifting focus to Ukraine, said Kathleen Carley, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. “The bots themselves don’t create news – they’re more used for amplification,” she said. These sites frequently sow division on controversial issues, research finds, and they make it more difficult to spot disinformation online. The escalation of narratives like these could have wide-ranging consequences for policy. “Right now, we’re in the beginning of a war that has a consensus, right? It’s clear that what Russia’s doing is against the moral order of the modern world. But as the war becomes prolonged, and people become exhausted, that may change,” Finkelstein said. As “we enter into more unknown territory, these narratives will have a chance to grow … it gives us a window into what these themes are going to be like.” The research around these changing campaigns is limited, looking at thousands of tweets in the early days of an invasion, Carley cautioned. It’s very early to understand what direction the misinformation is going and who is behind it – and conspiracies tend to follow current events even when there aren’t coordinated campaigns. And “that does not mean that all the disinformation, all the conspiracy theories about Covid are not still there,” she said. “I would not say the bots are on holiday. They have been re-targeted at different stories now, but they’ll be back.” On 3 March the surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, asked tech firms to cough up what they know about who is behind Covid-19 misinformation. Murthy wants social networks, search engines, crowdsourced platforms, e-commerce and instant messaging companies to provide data and analysis on the kind of vaccine misinformation identified by the CDC, such as “the ingredients in COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous” and “COVID-19 vaccines contain microchips”. Misinformation campaigns around the New World Order, however, have more longevity than some other conspiracy theories, because they can quickly morph depending on the target. “They probably will still exist for a long time,” Chan said. “The question for us is whether they would have an impact on people – on real life and also on policymaking.” It may be too soon to say what’s emerging during the invasion of Ukraine, but leaders should understand what terms are emerging in conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns so they don’t inadvertently signal support for the theories in their public statements, she said. “They need to take note of what terms are commonly used and try to avoid them,” Chan said. A global agreement on how to address misinformation or disinformation would be key, Carley said. “Each country does it separately. And the thing is, because we’re all connected very tightly throughout the world in social media, it doesn’t matter that one country has some strong reactions because it’ll still go from another country’s machines on to your machines,” she said. Such rules would also need to have teeth to prevent further campaigns, she said. And educating the public about how to parse misinformation and disinformation is also important. “We need to start investing better in critical thinking and digital media literacy.”

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