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Detecting Machine-Generated Content: An Easier Task For Machine Or Human?
by 380° Feb. 2, 2023

Feb. 2, 2023

Buongiorno, un compagno di merende mi ha segnalato questo interessante articolo: https://hackaday.com/2023/02/01/detecting-machine-generated-content-an-easi… «Detecting Machine-Generated Content: An Easier Task For Machine Or Human?» by Maya Posch - February 1, 2023 --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- [...] As such machine-generated content and interactions begin to play an ever bigger role, it raises both the question of how you can detect such generated content, as well as whether it matters that the content was generated by an algorithm instead of by a human being. [...] In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith describes a department within the Ministry of Truth called the Fiction Department, where machines are constantly churning out freshly generated novels based around certain themes. Meanwhile in the Music Department, new music is being generated by another system called a versificator. [...] this machine-generated content is essentially harmless, as Winston remarks later in the book, when he observes a woman in the prole area of the city singing the latest ditty, adding her own emotional intensity to a love song that was spat out by an unfeeling, unthinking machine. [...] It would thus seem that the answer to the question of whether a given text was generated by a human or not is a definitive ‘maybe’. Although statistical analysis can provide some hints as to the likelihood of a text having being generated by an LLM, ultimately the final judgement would have to be with a human, who can not only determine whether the text passes muster semantically and contextually, but also check the presumed source of a text for being genuine. Naturally, there are plenty of situations where it may not matter who wrote a text, as long as the information in it is factually correct. Yet when there’s possibly nefarious intent, or the intent to deceive, it bears to practice due diligence. Even with auto-detecting algorithms in place, and with a trained and cautious user, the onus remains on the reader to cross-reference information and ascertain whether a statement made by a random account on social media might be genuine. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Che importa se un testo, un segnale di allarme, una diagnosi, una sentenza... è stata /sintetizzato/ da una macchina, la cosa **fondamentale* è che il _giudizio_ finale /deve/ essere di un essere umano. Che importa se una menzogna è stata /sintetizzata/ da una macchina o scritta da un essere umano, la cosa importante è che **ogni** essere umano abbia la possibilità di e le competenze per _verificare_ l'informazione che gli viene fornita e _partecipare_ alla sua determinazione e diffusione, per generare informazione _nuova_ e sempre più corrispondente al vero. Corollario: che importa se un racconto, un'immagine, una musica, una canzone, una scultura... è stata /sintetizzata/ da una macchina, la cosa **fondamentale** è che per essere definita "opera dell'ingegno" [1] deve essere _interpretata_ da un essere umano, l'unico in grado di creare opere _nuove_... interpretando quelle di che più gli procurano emozioni, applicando intuizione _e_ tecnica [2]. Saluti, 380° [1] la cui versione speculare, quella sintetizzata dalla macchina, possiamo opportunamente definire "opera del calcolo" [2] sì non si può proprio fare a meno della tecnica, nell'arte -- 380° (Giovanni Biscuolo public alter ego) «Noi, incompetenti come siamo, non abbiamo alcun titolo per suggerire alcunché» Disinformation flourishes because many people care deeply about injustice but very few check the facts. Ask me about <https://stallmansupport.org>.

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Re: [nexa] ChatGpt e la scuola
by alessandro marzocchi Feb. 2, 2023

Feb. 2, 2023

Buongiorno, ciao Paolo. Ho visto - https://www.paolomauri.it/chi-sono/ - che sei un maestro nella primaria, nella condizione migliore per collaborare al progetto che vorrei realizzare: educare il bambino all'uso consapevole del digitale, un passo per volta in analogia a quanto si fa con l'alfabeto. Cominciando da una prima elementare con l'intenzione di accompagnare i bambini fino alla fine dei 5 anni - https://server-nexa.polito.it/pipermail/nexa/2023-January/024778.html -. Chi meglio di te, ed altri con esperienza analoga per consigli e critiche? Se sei disponibile ti chiedo di metterti in contatto con Alessandro Brolpito <abrolpito at gmail.com <https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa>>. che ha accettato l'incarico di guidare la formazione del gruppo di lavoro al quale a primavera, manca un mese e mezzo, si aggiungerà Giacomo Tesio e con la speranza di altre adesioni ... l'invito è aperto a tutti! Grazie e cordialità*.* Duccio (Alessandro Marzocchi) Il giorno mer 1 feb 2023 alle ore 09:12 <nexa-request(a)server-nexa.polito.it> ha scritto: > Send nexa mailing list submissions to > nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > nexa-request(a)server-nexa.polito.it > > You can reach the person managing the list at > nexa-owner(a)server-nexa.polito.it > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of nexa digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Il discorso di Audran Le Baron (Paolo Mauri) > 2. Madison Square Garden's Facial Recognition Mess: What We Know > (Alberto Cammozzo) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2023 17:38:31 +0100 > From: Paolo Mauri <paolo(a)paolomauri.it> > To: Nexa <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> > Subject: [nexa] Il discorso di Audran Le Baron > Message-ID: <20230131173831.18e83f27@piemme> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > Buongiorno a tutti, > > ho cercato di leggere i numerosi fili di discussione di questa lista, ma > non riesco per mancanza di tempo a > seguire per bene tutto. > > Volevo tuttavia convidere una riflessione che ho in testa da qualche > giorno. > > In questi periodo ho avuto modo di leggere il discorso che Audran Le > Baron ha fatto lo scorso 8 novembre durante un evento, Salon Open > Source Experience 2022 a Parigi. > Audran è direttore della Direction du numerique pour l'éducation, in > pratica quello che corrisponde ai nostri uffici del ministero. > > Trovate la trascrizione del suo intervento qui: > > https://www.librealire.org/education-et-open-source-en-france-audran-le-bar… > > Quello che mi ha colpito è stata la frase di apertura, da cui poi > discendono tutte le scelte concrete: > > ...historiquement l’Éducation nationale s’est construite sur un certain > nombre de valeurs, sur la volonté de libérer, de diffuser au plus grand > nombre les savoirs et les connaissances pour que chacune et chacun > puisse s’approprier ces savoirs et ces connaissances, les utiliser, les > partager, les étudier. Quand je dis tous ces termes, vous voyez à quel > point on a des valeurs communes avec le monde du logiciel libre et à > quel point les valeurs fondatrices de l’Éducation nationale résonnent > avec celles du logiciel libre. > > Poi passa a descrivere alcune delle azioni che il suo dipartimento a > esso in atto nella direzione dell'open source. > > Ecco, un discorso rispetto ai valori non mi ricordo di averlo mai > sentito pronunciare dai responsabili del digitale del nostro ministero. > Io credo che la differenza tra le scelte operate dal nostro ministero e > dal ministero francese stia proprio qui: nella direzione politica delle > azioni. Mi sembra che in Italia le scelte quotidiane sul > digitale vengano prese da valori differenti ma non quelli che sono > citati nel discorso di Le Baron. > > > -- > Paolo Mauri > Linux User #462825 > irc maupao > twitter @mauri_paolo > www.paolomauri.it > mastodon https://framapiaf.org/@maupao > matrix @maupao:matrix.org > > un sistema libero per la scuola > http://wiki.scuola.linux.it > > Esci dall'illegalità: utilizza LibreOffice.org: > http://www.libreoffice.org/download > http://linguistico.sourceforge.net/wiki/doku.php?id=usaooo > http://linguistico.sourceforge.net/pages/traduzioni/ms_illegal.html > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2023 09:12:33 +0100 > From: Alberto Cammozzo <ac+nexa(a)zeromx.net> > To: Nexa <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> > Subject: [nexa] Madison Square Garden's Facial Recognition Mess: What > We Know > Message-ID: <4D756A13-3C3F-40F7-8CD2-19B2DB124D8E(a)zeromx.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > 30 pagine di nomi di avvocati banditi dalla sala perché impiegati presso > studi che hanno cause contro la proprietà. > > Le foto dei siti web degli studi legali sono usate per il riconoscimento > facciale. > > > < > https://gizmodo.com/madison-square-garden-facial-recognition-what-we-know-1… > > > > The future of facial recognition use by private companies in the United > States could boil down to who emerges victorious in an ongoing dispute > between a collection of lawyers and a petty, authoritarian New York > billionaire. The place: one of America’s most famous venues, Madison Square > Garden. The owner: James Dolan. > > Over the past three months, multiple lawyers in the New York area have > come forward with dramatic accounts of being denied entry into Madison > Square Garden and other venues also owned by MSG Entertainment. The common > factor in their stories? Each of them were spotted by the company’s facial > recognition system. That system was looking for lawyers from an estimated > 90 law firms with active litigation against Madison Square Garden or MSG > who were placed on a list denying them entry into the venues. The venue > justifies banning the attorneys, many of whom aren’t personally involved in > the lawsuits, because their presence somehow “creates an inherently adverse > environment.” New York’s Attorney General, on the other hand, says that > practice may violate state civil rights laws. Madison Square Garden first > rolled out facial recognition systems to its venues in 2018 with the stated > goal of increasing security. > > “This is bad, and it’s just one example of how facial recognition could be > used to infringe on peoples’ rights,” Fight for the Future Director Evan > Greer said in a statement. “This technology puts music fans, sports fans, > and others at risk of being unjustly detained, harassed, judged, or even > deported.” > > Madison Square Garden’s owner says he’s not going to stop using the > technology any time soon. Here’s everything we know about the Madison > Square Garden facial recognition saga so far. > > 2 / 10 > > A basketball fan was ejected from a Knicks game because his law firm was > representing someone suing Madison Square Garden > > > On November 5, 28-year-old Long Island attorney Alexis Majano went with a > friend to watch the New York Knicks face off against the Boston Celtics, > only to be stopped by security guards at the venue’s escalators. Majano, > whose law firm Sahn Ward Braff Koblenz had a pending legal case against > MSG, told The New York Post a man in a suit told him the manager wanted to > speak with him. Security had reportedly blocked off a nearby exit. > > Majano claims he spoke with an employee who showed him a list of 20 to 30 > pages of names, all of which were allegedly on the venue’s list of people > banned from entering. The same employee told the fan he had been identified > using the venue’s facial recognition system. Majano claims he never showed > the venue his ID when entering and the tickets were in his friend’s name, > which means it would have been almost impossible for the venue to locate > him without facial recognition. > > “I was upset—we had a whole night planned out that got botched,” Majano > told The Post. “I said, ‘This is ridiculous.’” > > 3 / 10 > > Facial recognition was used to ban a mom attending a Rockettes Christmas > show with her daughter at Radio City Music Hall > > Late last year, a lawyer named Kelly Conlon took her daughter to see a > Rockettes show at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall, only to be denied > entry after being flagged by the venue’s facial recognition system. She > worked for a law firm taking legal action against MSM Entertainment. In > this case, however, Conlon was neither plaintiff nor defendant in the > litigation. The venue with the active litigation, a restaurant owned by > MSG, wasn’t even based in the same state as Radio City Music Hall. > > Conlon claims she was stopped by security immediately after walking > through the venue’s metal detectors and asked to show her ID. > > “They knew my name before I told them,” Conlon told NBC New York.” They > knew the firm I was associated with before I told them. And they told me I > was not allowed to be there.” > > 4 / 10 > > A lawyer was banned from a Brandi Carlile show at Madison Square Garden on > her anniversary > > > Barbara Hart, a lawyer from the firm Grant & Eisenhofer, was reportedly > removed from a Brandi Carlile show at Madison Square Garden on her > anniversary after being spotted by facial recognition. Hart, who believes > the venue was able to detect her based on a photo posted on her employer’s > website, said her firm has active litigation against MSG, but noted that > she herself was not part of that litigation. > > “It was a very eerie experience to be on the receiving end of,” Hart said > in an interview with Rolling Stone. > > 5 / 10 > > A Brooklyn lawyer was booted from a New York Rangers hockey game > > > 61-year-old Brooklyn personal injury lawyer Benjamin Pinczewski told the > New York Post he was making his way down to the lower level-seats with > friends at a New York Rangers game when he was apprehended by two guards. > The guards told Pinczewski he’d been detected by the venue’s facial > recognition system and that he would be escorted out due to the company’s > rule banning attorneys involved in active lawsuits against MSG. > > “It was a slap in the face,” Pinczewski said in an interview with The New > York Post. “I’m at the main entrance with thousands of people—and they’re > looking at me like I’m some sort of terrorist or criminal.” > > 6 / 10 > > James Dolan: The billionaire behind the business (and the beer ban) > > > Madison Square Garden first started implementing facial recognition > systems at its venue back in 2018 but has only more recently gained > attention for using those systems to target lawyers. The man credited with > the new policy is controversial MSG CEO and billionaire James Dolan. The > loudmouthed executive has a history of squaring off with fans, media, and > lawmakers alike, and hasn’t been shy about threatening people who get on > his bad side with lifetime bans. > > Dolan spoke out about the facial recognition bans this week, during an > unhinged morning talk show appearance where he criticized lawmakers for > looking into his bans on fans, which he claimed he was entitled to > implement under the Bill of Rights. At one point during the interview, > Dolan reportedly targeted the head of the New York State Liquor Authority > to “stick to his knitting.” The Liquor Authority has launched an > investigation into Dolan’s targeting of lawyers and suggested it was > considering taking away his liquor license. In response, Dolan said he > would beat them to the punch and implement a “beer ban” of his own. > > 7 / 10 > > Madison Square Garden’s facial recognition and fan bans spur new state > legislation > > > The flurry of fan bans and subsequent lawsuits filed against Madison > Square Garden by some of the lawyers who were allegedly targeted has gained > the attention of New York state legislators. Last week, state senators > introduced a new bill that would prevent MSG and other sporting venues from > denying entry to individuals who possess a valid ticket. The legislation > would add sporting events like the New York Knicks stadium to a list of > public places. New York state senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal one of the authors > behind the new legislation, called the venue’s practice of using facial > recognition to bar lawyers entry “absurd.” > > “MSG claims they deploy biometric technology for the benefit of public > safety when they remove sports fans from the Garden,” Hoylman-Sigal said in > a statement. “Our legislation will close the loophole in state law that > allows MSG to remove fans from the Garden and encourage an end to > surveillance for non-security purposes.” > > 8 / 10 > > New York attorney general Letitia James says Madison Square Garden’s use > of facial recognition could be illegal > > > The lawyers’ bans caught the eye of New York’s top prosecutor, Attorney > General Letitia James. In a letter sent to MSG Entertainment James > suggested the firm’s record of denying certain fans could potentially > violate New York’s civil and human rights laws. > > “MSG Entertainment cannot fight their legal battles in their own arenas,” > James said in a statement. “Anyone with a ticket to an event should not be > concerned that they may be wrongfully denied entry based on their > appearance, and we’re urging MSG Entertainment to reverse this policy.” > > James went on to say MSG’s policies—made a reality by facial > recognition—could dissuade attorneys from taking future legitimate legal > actions against the company over fears doing so could wind up with them > being denied entry to events. > > 9 / 10 > > Dolan doubles down > > > Neither the lawsuits, the new investigation, or the threat of an impending > AG investigation have been enough to dissuade MSG from its policies. In > fact, the company this week doubled down on its actions. In a dramatic > statement sent to Gizmodo Thursday, MSG Entertainment planted its feet in > the ground, defending the practice and calling out so-called “self-serving > politicians” they claimed were using the news as a fundraising ploy. > > “We urge our elected representatives to focus on causes that improve the > quality of life for their constituents—such as addressing rampant crime and > homelessness in the city, rather than taking up the cause of a small > percentage of attorneys so they can attend Knicks and Rangers games,” CEO > James Dolan said in the statement. “These elected officials are exploiting > this issue for their own publicity.” > > In the bizarre statement, MSG cast aspersion on the scores of attorneys > included on its ban list which it described as, “money grabbers whose > business is motivated by self-promotion and who capitalize on the > misfortune of others.” MSG said it has used facial recognition at its > venues since 2018 and believes it is within its right to deploy it against > attorneys. > > 10 / 10 > >

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Diffusion models memorize individual images from their training data and emit them at generation time
by Daniela Tafani Feb. 1, 2023

Feb. 1, 2023

Nel caso ti servisse un esempio eclatante, Marco, quando parli di bolle giuridiche: Extracting Training Data from Diffusion Models Abstract Image diffusion models such as DALL-E 2, Imagen, and Stable Diffusion have attracted significant attention due to their ability to generate high-quality synthetic images. In this work, we show that diffusion models memorize individual images from their training data and emit them at generation time. With a generate-and-filter pipeline, we extract over a thousand training examples from stateof- the-art models, ranging from photographs of individual people to trademarked company logos. We also train hundreds of diffusion models in various settings to analyze how different modeling and data decisions affect privacy. Overall, our results show that diffusion models are much less private than prior generative models such as GANs, and that mitigating these vulnerabilities may require new advances in privacy-preserving training. <https://t.co/LQuTtAskJ9> Buona serata, Daniela

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Grand Challenge: Call for Participation
by Ugo Pagallo Feb. 1, 2023

Feb. 1, 2023

Nexiane/i, segnalo questa bella 'challenge' da 100 k euro... e cito "We offer the prize of 100’000 CHF (approx. 100’000 USD/EUR) to the team that assesses best the compliance of A.I. technology with the upcoming A.I. Act of the European Union. We invite potential teams and team members worldwide to participate in the Grand Challenge." Per dettagli ecco il link: https://www.thegrandchallenge.eu/news/call-for-participation https://www.thegrandchallenge.eu/news/call-for-participation Ad maiora, e vinca il migliore

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Articolo "L’esperienza del Centro Nexa su internet e società" | A&RT - Atti e Rassegna Tecnica | Di Juan Carlos De Martin e Marco Ricolfi
by Nexa Media Feb. 1, 2023

Feb. 1, 2023

Gentilissime, gentilissimi, Vi segnaliamo che è disponibile online (open access) l'articolo "L’esperienza del Centro Nexa su internet e società" <http://art.siat.torino.it/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/A_RT_LXXVI-demartin-ri…>, scritto dai co-direttori del Centro Nexa *Juan Carlos De Martin* e *Marco Ricolfi*, e pubblicato all'interno del numero speciale LXXVI, 1-2-3 - Cultura tecnica e cultura umanistica. Il caso torinese <http://art.siat.torino.it/lxxvi/> della rivista*A&RT - Atti e Rassegna Tecnica*, la rivista della Società degli Ingegnerie degli Architetti in Torino (SIAT). L'articolo ripercorre la *storia dei primi 15 anni del Centro Nexa su Internet e Società*, dalla sua costituzione, nel 2006, ad oggi, ponendo in risalto le esperienze, descritte nella loro struttura istituzionale, che hanno portato alla sua nascita, ed evidenziando le principali attività che hanno caratterizzato il suo lavoro di ente di ricerca indipendente. Scopri di più sul nostro sito: https://nexa.polito.it/articolo-esperienza-centronexa-demartin-ricolfi Grazie per l'attenzione, Cordiali saluti, <https://nexa.polito.it/articolo-esperienza-centronexa-demartin-ricolfi> -- 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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"EU chat control law will ban open source operating systems"
by Marco Fioretti Feb. 1, 2023

Feb. 1, 2023

Ho appena visto questo, di cui non avevo mai sentito parlare prima, a qualcun altro risulta? Commenti? https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/2/1/eu-chat-control-law-will-ban-open-sour… (https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/2/1/eu-chat-control-law-will-ban-open-sour…) Marco

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Madison Square Garden's Facial Recognition Mess: What We Know
by Alberto Cammozzo Feb. 1, 2023

Feb. 1, 2023

30 pagine di nomi di avvocati banditi dalla sala perché impiegati presso studi che hanno cause contro la proprietà. Le foto dei siti web degli studi legali sono usate per il riconoscimento facciale. <https://gizmodo.com/madison-square-garden-facial-recognition-what-we-know-1…> The future of facial recognition use by private companies in the United States could boil down to who emerges victorious in an ongoing dispute between a collection of lawyers and a petty, authoritarian New York billionaire. The place: one of America’s most famous venues, Madison Square Garden. The owner: James Dolan. Over the past three months, multiple lawyers in the New York area have come forward with dramatic accounts of being denied entry into Madison Square Garden and other venues also owned by MSG Entertainment. The common factor in their stories? Each of them were spotted by the company’s facial recognition system. That system was looking for lawyers from an estimated 90 law firms with active litigation against Madison Square Garden or MSG who were placed on a list denying them entry into the venues. The venue justifies banning the attorneys, many of whom aren’t personally involved in the lawsuits, because their presence somehow “creates an inherently adverse environment.” New York’s Attorney General, on the other hand, says that practice may violate state civil rights laws. Madison Square Garden first rolled out facial recognition systems to its venues in 2018 with the stated goal of increasing security. “This is bad, and it’s just one example of how facial recognition could be used to infringe on peoples’ rights,” Fight for the Future Director Evan Greer said in a statement. “This technology puts music fans, sports fans, and others at risk of being unjustly detained, harassed, judged, or even deported.” Madison Square Garden’s owner says he’s not going to stop using the technology any time soon. Here’s everything we know about the Madison Square Garden facial recognition saga so far. 2 / 10 A basketball fan was ejected from a Knicks game because his law firm was representing someone suing Madison Square Garden On November 5, 28-year-old Long Island attorney Alexis Majano went with a friend to watch the New York Knicks face off against the Boston Celtics, only to be stopped by security guards at the venue’s escalators. Majano, whose law firm Sahn Ward Braff Koblenz had a pending legal case against MSG, told The New York Post a man in a suit told him the manager wanted to speak with him. Security had reportedly blocked off a nearby exit. Majano claims he spoke with an employee who showed him a list of 20 to 30 pages of names, all of which were allegedly on the venue’s list of people banned from entering. The same employee told the fan he had been identified using the venue’s facial recognition system. Majano claims he never showed the venue his ID when entering and the tickets were in his friend’s name, which means it would have been almost impossible for the venue to locate him without facial recognition. “I was upset—we had a whole night planned out that got botched,” Majano told The Post. “I said, ‘This is ridiculous.’” 3 / 10 Facial recognition was used to ban a mom attending a Rockettes Christmas show with her daughter at Radio City Music Hall Late last year, a lawyer named Kelly Conlon took her daughter to see a Rockettes show at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall, only to be denied entry after being flagged by the venue’s facial recognition system. She worked for a law firm taking legal action against MSM Entertainment. In this case, however, Conlon was neither plaintiff nor defendant in the litigation. The venue with the active litigation, a restaurant owned by MSG, wasn’t even based in the same state as Radio City Music Hall. Conlon claims she was stopped by security immediately after walking through the venue’s metal detectors and asked to show her ID. “They knew my name before I told them,” Conlon told NBC New York.” They knew the firm I was associated with before I told them. And they told me I was not allowed to be there.” 4 / 10 A lawyer was banned from a Brandi Carlile show at Madison Square Garden on her anniversary Barbara Hart, a lawyer from the firm Grant & Eisenhofer, was reportedly removed from a Brandi Carlile show at Madison Square Garden on her anniversary after being spotted by facial recognition. Hart, who believes the venue was able to detect her based on a photo posted on her employer’s website, said her firm has active litigation against MSG, but noted that she herself was not part of that litigation. “It was a very eerie experience to be on the receiving end of,” Hart said in an interview with Rolling Stone. 5 / 10 A Brooklyn lawyer was booted from a New York Rangers hockey game 61-year-old Brooklyn personal injury lawyer Benjamin Pinczewski told the New York Post he was making his way down to the lower level-seats with friends at a New York Rangers game when he was apprehended by two guards. The guards told Pinczewski he’d been detected by the venue’s facial recognition system and that he would be escorted out due to the company’s rule banning attorneys involved in active lawsuits against MSG. “It was a slap in the face,” Pinczewski said in an interview with The New York Post. “I’m at the main entrance with thousands of people—and they’re looking at me like I’m some sort of terrorist or criminal.” 6 / 10 James Dolan: The billionaire behind the business (and the beer ban) Madison Square Garden first started implementing facial recognition systems at its venue back in 2018 but has only more recently gained attention for using those systems to target lawyers. The man credited with the new policy is controversial MSG CEO and billionaire James Dolan. The loudmouthed executive has a history of squaring off with fans, media, and lawmakers alike, and hasn’t been shy about threatening people who get on his bad side with lifetime bans. Dolan spoke out about the facial recognition bans this week, during an unhinged morning talk show appearance where he criticized lawmakers for looking into his bans on fans, which he claimed he was entitled to implement under the Bill of Rights. At one point during the interview, Dolan reportedly targeted the head of the New York State Liquor Authority to “stick to his knitting.” The Liquor Authority has launched an investigation into Dolan’s targeting of lawyers and suggested it was considering taking away his liquor license. In response, Dolan said he would beat them to the punch and implement a “beer ban” of his own. 7 / 10 Madison Square Garden’s facial recognition and fan bans spur new state legislation The flurry of fan bans and subsequent lawsuits filed against Madison Square Garden by some of the lawyers who were allegedly targeted has gained the attention of New York state legislators. Last week, state senators introduced a new bill that would prevent MSG and other sporting venues from denying entry to individuals who possess a valid ticket. The legislation would add sporting events like the New York Knicks stadium to a list of public places. New York state senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal one of the authors behind the new legislation, called the venue’s practice of using facial recognition to bar lawyers entry “absurd.” “MSG claims they deploy biometric technology for the benefit of public safety when they remove sports fans from the Garden,” Hoylman-Sigal said in a statement. “Our legislation will close the loophole in state law that allows MSG to remove fans from the Garden and encourage an end to surveillance for non-security purposes.” 8 / 10 New York attorney general Letitia James says Madison Square Garden’s use of facial recognition could be illegal The lawyers’ bans caught the eye of New York’s top prosecutor, Attorney General Letitia James. In a letter sent to MSG Entertainment James suggested the firm’s record of denying certain fans could potentially violate New York’s civil and human rights laws. “MSG Entertainment cannot fight their legal battles in their own arenas,” James said in a statement. “Anyone with a ticket to an event should not be concerned that they may be wrongfully denied entry based on their appearance, and we’re urging MSG Entertainment to reverse this policy.” James went on to say MSG’s policies—made a reality by facial recognition—could dissuade attorneys from taking future legitimate legal actions against the company over fears doing so could wind up with them being denied entry to events. 9 / 10 Dolan doubles down Neither the lawsuits, the new investigation, or the threat of an impending AG investigation have been enough to dissuade MSG from its policies. In fact, the company this week doubled down on its actions. In a dramatic statement sent to Gizmodo Thursday, MSG Entertainment planted its feet in the ground, defending the practice and calling out so-called “self-serving politicians” they claimed were using the news as a fundraising ploy. “We urge our elected representatives to focus on causes that improve the quality of life for their constituents—such as addressing rampant crime and homelessness in the city, rather than taking up the cause of a small percentage of attorneys so they can attend Knicks and Rangers games,” CEO James Dolan said in the statement. “These elected officials are exploiting this issue for their own publicity.” In the bizarre statement, MSG cast aspersion on the scores of attorneys included on its ban list which it described as, “money grabbers whose business is motivated by self-promotion and who capitalize on the misfortune of others.” MSG said it has used facial recognition at its venues since 2018 and believes it is within its right to deploy it against attorneys. 10 / 10

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Il discorso di Audran Le Baron
by Paolo Mauri Jan. 31, 2023

Jan. 31, 2023

Buongiorno a tutti, ho cercato di leggere i numerosi fili di discussione di questa lista, ma non riesco per mancanza di tempo a seguire per bene tutto. Volevo tuttavia convidere una riflessione che ho in testa da qualche giorno. In questi periodo ho avuto modo di leggere il discorso che Audran Le Baron ha fatto lo scorso 8 novembre durante un evento, Salon Open Source Experience 2022 a Parigi. Audran è direttore della Direction du numerique pour l'éducation, in pratica quello che corrisponde ai nostri uffici del ministero. Trovate la trascrizione del suo intervento qui: https://www.librealire.org/education-et-open-source-en-france-audran-le-bar… Quello che mi ha colpito è stata la frase di apertura, da cui poi discendono tutte le scelte concrete: ...historiquement l’Éducation nationale s’est construite sur un certain nombre de valeurs, sur la volonté de libérer, de diffuser au plus grand nombre les savoirs et les connaissances pour que chacune et chacun puisse s’approprier ces savoirs et ces connaissances, les utiliser, les partager, les étudier. Quand je dis tous ces termes, vous voyez à quel point on a des valeurs communes avec le monde du logiciel libre et à quel point les valeurs fondatrices de l’Éducation nationale résonnent avec celles du logiciel libre. Poi passa a descrivere alcune delle azioni che il suo dipartimento a esso in atto nella direzione dell'open source. Ecco, un discorso rispetto ai valori non mi ricordo di averlo mai sentito pronunciare dai responsabili del digitale del nostro ministero. Io credo che la differenza tra le scelte operate dal nostro ministero e dal ministero francese stia proprio qui: nella direzione politica delle azioni. Mi sembra che in Italia le scelte quotidiane sul digitale vengano prese da valori differenti ma non quelli che sono citati nel discorso di Le Baron. -- Paolo Mauri Linux User #462825 irc maupao twitter @mauri_paolo www.paolomauri.it mastodon https://framapiaf.org/@maupao matrix @maupao:matrix.org un sistema libero per la scuola http://wiki.scuola.linux.it Esci dall'illegalità: utilizza LibreOffice.org: http://www.libreoffice.org/download http://linguistico.sourceforge.net/wiki/doku.php?id=usaooo http://linguistico.sourceforge.net/pages/traduzioni/ms_illegal.html

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Shoshana Zuboff: ‘Privacy has been extinguished. It is now a zombie’
by Alberto Cammozzo Jan. 31, 2023

Jan. 31, 2023

“It is possible to have surveillance capitalism, and it is possible to have a democracy. It is not possible to have both,” Shoshana Zuboff: ‘Privacy has been extinguished. It is now a zombie’ The professor who predicted that computers would change our lives demands a right to sanctuary from data ‘theft’ <https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcontent%2F0cca6054-6fc9-…> These are uncertain times for Silicon Valley. Tech companies are firing staff who they hired in the pandemic. Twitter, under Elon Musk, has repelled advertisers. Apple, a self-proclaimed privacy champion, wants to reduce <https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.ft.com/content/1146da72-8337-46f4-…> the reach of Google. It’s possible to imagine that the digital wild west will become more genteel. Yet for the critics of Big Tech, there is little relief. Shoshana Zuboff, a professor emerita at Harvard Business School, published /The Age of Surveillance Capitalism/ in 2019 — a blast about how tech companies had made billions of dollars by sucking up private data. “We thought we were searching Google, but Google was searching us,” she summarised. Today she’s frustrated that efforts to restrain tech companies are so fragmented. “We have fantastic scholars, researchers, advocates who are focused on privacy, others who are focused on disinformation, others who are focused on the nexus with democracy,” she says, when we meet in London. This “Balkanisation” reduces the ability to pinpoint the “actual source of harm”: people’s data is treated as a costless resource, just as forests and other parts of nature were in centuries past. Zuboff cites data that, in the US, which has no federal privacy law, people have their location exposed 747 times a day. In the EU, which she says has the “best regulation”, it’s 376. “It’s better, but it’s not nearly better enough.” Mark Zuckerberg once promised you that a predictive model would tell you, on arriving in a strange city, which bar to go to and a bartender would already have prepared your favourite drink. That dream has faded only on the basis of practicality, not principle. In a paper <https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/26317877221129290> published in November, Zuboff argued that Apple and Google had strong-armed European health officials over Covid tracing technology. “It is possible to have surveillance capitalism, and it is possible to have a democracy. It is not possible to have both,” she wrote. Apple had created the illusion of acting as Robin Hood, when only democratic oversight could protect individual rights. She sees its move against Google as simply an “expansion” of surveillance capitalism. Tim Cook’s promises to protect privacy can be withdrawn any time: “Users have no say.” Tech surveillance matters, Zuboff argues, because it robs us of “life-sustaining inwardness”. Nor can individuals realistically opt out by themselves. What we need is a right to sanctuary. Last year Brussels introduced <https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.ft.com/content/c472e2b2-47af-4c99-…> the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, its most comprehensive tech legislation to date. The UK parliament is currently debating the online safety bill <https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.ft.com/content/b48cd2f9-3076-4c02-…>. Zuboff wants these to be stepping stones. *** Normally in newspaper interviews, the journalist asks questions, and the interviewee answers them. An interview with Zuboff is different. You ask questions and, more often than not, she responds with first principles — step-by-step explanations of how she believes that surveillance capitalism has taken hold this century. Zuboff is particular about how her ideas are described, about how things are set up, about what pen she uses. She mulls each detail. “Is it distracting for you if I stand? I’ll sit down. I usually walk and talk,” she says, when we start. This particular mind is, in tech terminology, a feature, not a bug. It enables Zuboff to take the long view. In 1988, she published /In the Age of the Smart Machine, /which argued that computers would change companies in a way that previous technologies had not. She later ran Odyssey, a Harvard Business School education programme to help successful people decide how to spend the later part of their lives. Her opus on surveillance capitalism was her own late-career flourish. It was published when she was 67, after a lightning strike had burnt down her family home in Maine and after the unexpected death of her husband and sometime co-author, the businessman Jim Maxmin. Zuboff argues that tech companies knew that the public would never support their data collection. “Right from the start, they were understood as things that had to be secret, had to be camouflaged from users, lest they provoke resistance.” She quotes a recent Google executive as saying: “Won’t it creep people out to know how much we are paying attention?” Today tech companies “are becoming much more reluctant to patent their discoveries, because they don’t want the public to know exactly what they’re doing. They’re no longer in most cases making their own data available to researchers.” So Zuboff sees the need for a regulatory fishing expedition. The EU’s tech laws will create “new cadres of people with new mixes of skills that are going to go inside the corporations. Their brief will be to lift the hood, to understand what’s really going on. One of the huge problems that we have is that most of the information that comes out of the companies is intentionally designed to be misleading. Gaslighting is a rhetorical art form that is genuinely practised by these companies.” Zuboff rarely uses short answers or plain terminology. Nonetheless, she is direct about content moderation — companies’ attempts to remove harmful content — which she describes as “quicksand . . . an utterly losing proposition, designed in fact to keep us occupied as long as possible so that they can keep getting away with what they’re really doing.” She is more positive about age-appropriate design, where platforms are engineered to minimise harm to children and to collect less data from them. The UK pioneered age-appropriate design, but after Brexit will miss out on Brussels’ “more muscular power” against surveillance capitalism, says Zuboff. She also sees “a move to weaken and denature the existing data protection regime with a data protection bill that favours the big tech companies and perpetuates the misbegotten idea that democracy must get out of the way.” The problem for privacy advocates is that their cause seems to offer too few advantages and too many drawbacks. For most European citizens, the biggest impact of privacy legislation is annoying cookies pop-ups. Regulation seems impractical: the UK and France have both wanted <https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.ft.com/content/5b0b84c1-3edf-4286-…> to place age limits on porn sites, but have so far failed to find effective ways of doing so. Similarly, Zuboff criticises Apple and Google for taking control of Covid tracing, but what if their system simply worked better than the centralised ones favoured by European health officials? She laughs at the suggestion. But she admits regulation is hindered “because we can’t get inside [tech companies] to know what’s really going on. We’re regulating with blinders on . . . We don’t understand our adversary well enough.” Zuboff insists that her attack is not against technology itself, but the economic logic that underpins it — “theft”. She holds out the possibility that we could use data and prediction for the common good. The counterargument is that there are basic trade-offs. Tech services, whether for predicting text answers or the fastest driving routes, can only work by accumulating data and reducing our privacy. I ask what she makes of Musk’s ownership of Twitter. “We’ve got politicians, lawmakers, elected officials, as well as the entire citizenry, focused on one man and asking the question, ‘what will he do?’ Our political stability, our ability to know what’s true and what false, our health and to some degree our sanity, is challenged on a daily basis depending on which decisions Mr Musk decides to take. I regard this as fundamentally intolerable . . . These spaces cannot exist solely under corporate control . . . We’re two decades into the digital era but we have never, as democracies, taken stock of the meaning of these technologies.” Musk has put Donald Trump back on Twitter. The former US president’s suspension from Facebook will end “in the coming weeks”, its parent company has said <https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.ft.com/content/418244e7-9bef-422e-…>. Zuboff is aghast. “It should not be a decision that belongs to individuals such as Musk or Zuckerberg or anyone else.” The implications for democracy are too great. “In an information civilisation, our information spaces must exist under public law and be governed by democratic institutions . . . With luck and determination we will look back on the days of the information oligarchs like Musk and Zuckerberg as the first primitive missteps of a new civilisation.” She compares the west’s tech giants to China’s surveillance state. “This is a world in which privacy has been extinguished. Privacy is now a zombie category. None of us have privacy, even as we thought about it in the year 2000.” Her sense of dystopia is visceral. “Somebody just invented a type of paint that you can put on your face that confounds facial recognition. Young people on Reddit are very excited about this. This is terrible, Henry!” The abolition of surveillance capitalism requires new laws that allow societies to decide “what becomes data in the first place, what we share, with whom, and to what purpose”. Instead, tech marches onwards, particularly in the form of artificial intelligence <https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.ft.com/content/1e34f334-4e73-4677-…>. “ChatGPT has shaken us up. It has shocked people, forcing us to recognise how far AI has come, with virtually no law and democratic governance to shape or constrain its development and application.” AI’s development has relied on stealing human data, she argues. She points hopefully to the EU’s proposed AI Act — “the first law to assert democratic governance over the application of AI”. But it’s hard not to feel that, even when Silicon Valley stumbles, it is still a step ahead.

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Europe-wide overhaul of GDPR monitoring triggered by ICCL
by Giacomo Tesio Jan. 31, 2023

Jan. 31, 2023

Following action by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), the European Commission will start regularly checking the progress of all “large-scale” GDPR cases across the EU. ICCL has previously criticised the lack of GDPR enforcement against Big Tech, and the European Commission’s failure to monitor how the GDPR is applied. The European Commission has now committed to examining every large-scale GDPR case, everywhere in Europe. It will measure how long each procedural step in a case is taking, and what the relevant data protection authorities are doing to progress the case. The Commission will do this six times per year. Dr Johnny Ryan, ICCL Senior Fellow, said: “The European Commission’s new commitment should transform Europe’s data and digital enforcement. Previously, big cases lay dormant for years. Now, we should see acceleration in investigation and enforcement, and it will be clear where the European Commission needs to take swift action against Member States that fail to apply the GDPR. This heralds the beginning of true enforcement of the GDPR, and of serious European enforcement against Big Tech.” The Commission’s monitoring overhaul follows a sixteen-month action by ICCL, which began in September 2021 when the organisation alerted the European Commission to its EU-wide “data deficit”. ICCL urged the Commission to monitor the progress of GDPR cases across Europe, and followed up by launching a complaint process with the EU Ombudsman. This culminated in December last year when the EU Ombudsman recommended that the Commission monitor the progress of all Big Tech cases that fall under the responsibility of the Irish Data Protection Commission. Today’s commitment by the European Commission applies those recommendations to all large-scale cases across Europe, finally implementing ICCL’s suggestion to the Commission from September 2021. https://www.iccl.ie/digital-data/europe-wide-overhaul-of-gdpr-monitoring-tr… https://www.iccl.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/FOLLOW_UP_202200097_20230124… https://www.iccl.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/10-February-2022-REQUEST_FOR… Bah... speruma... Giacomo

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