- nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

Gattaca?
by maurizio lana Sept. 13, 2021

Sept. 13, 2021

buongiorno, non azzardo di confrontarmi con Agamben o Cacciari o Gazzuolo: "noi, incompetenti come siamo, non abbiamo alcun titolo per suggerire alcunché". credo però che in tempi di crisi i distinguo molto sottili dei professori rischiano di sostenere la crisi. (scrivo 'dei professori' essendo parte del gruppo, che conosco da dentro; e sul 'sostenere la crisi' scrivo /rischiano/: ognuno sceglie quali rischi correre e gli altri intorno decidono se quel rischio gli va oppure no) quello che so è che per qualsiasi malattia ci curiamo con dei farmaci che sono pharmaka, cioè /veleni, /etimologicamente. veleni che assumiamo /in dosi controllate/. in certe dosi curano; sotto quella dose sono inutili, sopra quella dose uccidono. anche questa malattia richiede dei pharmaka, individuali e sociali. essendo pharmaka è necessario un controllo attento delle dosi, ma la malattia non si risolve senza pharmaka cioè senza veleni assunti in dose controllata. una parte delle questioni mi pare che nascano dal fatto che come individui e società non sappiamo controllare (non sappiamo /come/ controllare) pienamente i pharmaka e le loro dosi. non sapendo, o non volendolo fare, qualcuno preferirebbe stare senza pharmaka. mi pare che qui ci sia un tipico tema 'da nexa': 1) cosa serve per gestire il Green pass senza che questo comporti intrusione al di là dello scopo dichiarato? 2) nessuno vuole ammalarsi e quindi è lecito e legittimo voler sapere se quelli con cui condivido i fiati e l'aria sono pericolosi per la mia salute. qual è un modo diverso dal Green pass per rendere possibile questo? se si ritiene pericoloso per vari motivi il metodo del Green pass, si individui un'alternativa. se/finché l'alternativa non c'è, ci teniamo il pharmakon e lo usiamo con la dovuta attenzione/cautela. se c'è poca attenzione, si definiscano le azioni necessarie per accrescere/migliorare l'attenzione/cautela, e si mettano in atto. se no buttiamo il bambino con l'acqua sporca: o, per dirla con le parole del poeta: tutti "forti / e liberi. / Come i morti" Maurizio > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2021 12:27:48 +0200 > From: 380° <g380(a)biscuolo.net> > To: nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it > Subject: [nexa] Green pass: discriminazione e controllo (Gattaca?) > Message-ID: <875yv78l0b.fsf(a)xelera.eu> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Buongiorno, > > vi chiedo perdono in partenza per la lunghezza del mio messaggio, anche > se cercherò di essere stringato al massimo, ma io vedo un > pericolosissimo salto di paradigma reso possibile dalla recente crisi > covid-19 nel contesto della "tecnologia del controllo". > > Le posizioni molto critiche di Cacciari e Agamben sul "green pass" [1] > si inscrivono perfettamente nel più ampio discorso del "capture > capitalism" [2] (detto volgarmente: se vogliamo "tenere aperto" dobbiamo > applicare misure /tecnologiche/ (in)adatte a /prevenire/ questa e le > future pandemie), oltre che nella questione molto più profonda della > "nuda vita" [3]. > > Un articolo molto interessante che evidenzia questa connessione (tra > green pass e capture capitalism) è quello di Tommaso Gazzolo [4], > docente di Filosofia del Diritto, recentemente pubblicato nel "Diario > della Crisi" dell'Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici: > > «Green pass: discriminazione e controllo» > > https://www.iisf.it/index.php/progetti/diario-della-crisi/green-pass-discri… > > [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ there's a blaze of light in every word it doesn't matter which you heard the holy or the broken hallelujah l. cohen, hallelujah ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maurizio Lana - 347 7370925

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Green pass: discriminazione e controllo (Gattaca?)
by 380° Sept. 11, 2021

Sept. 11, 2021

Buongiorno, vi chiedo perdono in partenza per la lunghezza del mio messaggio, anche se cercherò di essere stringato al massimo, ma io vedo un pericolosissimo salto di paradigma reso possibile dalla recente crisi covid-19 nel contesto della "tecnologia del controllo". Le posizioni molto critiche di Cacciari e Agamben sul "green pass" [1] si inscrivono perfettamente nel più ampio discorso del "capture capitalism" [2] (detto volgarmente: se vogliamo "tenere aperto" dobbiamo applicare misure /tecnologiche/ (in)adatte a /prevenire/ questa e le future pandemie), oltre che nella questione molto più profonda della "nuda vita" [3]. Un articolo molto interessante che evidenzia questa connessione (tra green pass e capture capitalism) è quello di Tommaso Gazzolo [4], docente di Filosofia del Diritto, recentemente pubblicato nel "Diario della Crisi" dell'Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici: «Green pass: discriminazione e controllo» https://www.iisf.it/index.php/progetti/diario-della-crisi/green-pass-discri… nel quale l'autore fa un'interessante analisi del concetto giuridico di discriminazione e come la pandemia (e il "green pass") abbia messo fortemente in crisi (o no?!?) la sua declinazione nel diritto: Alcuni estratti (arbitrari) che mi consentono di passare alla "fase distopica": --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- [...] Perché, sul piano giuridico, si può certo osservare che il “green pass” introduce un differente trattamento non delle persone, ma delle azioni – un differente trattamento, cioè, dipendente dall’aver compiuto o meno una certa azione (vaccinarsi), e non certo dall’identità o dalle convinzioni personali dei soggetti (non è perché sei convinto che il vaccino non sia opportuno o utile che vieni “discriminato”). [...] Il secondo argomento che il testo (di Cacciari e Agamben, n.d.r) spende è di ordine diverso. Mette in gioco, infatti, non tanto il problema della “discriminazione”, quanto quello della tecnologia politica che oggi corrisponde al nostro tipo di società, e che Deleuze già chiamava “società di controllo”. [...] Siamo, invece, in società che sono fondate sul controllo, ossia sull’idea – che il funzionamento degli algoritmi ha ormai portato ad un nuovo e inedito livello – di poter prevedere che cosa le persone, nella libertà dei loro movimenti, faranno ad una certa ora del giorno in un certo luogo. [...] Le vere innovazioni sono, piuttosto due: (a) da una parte, lo sviluppo di tutti quei dispositivi che consentono di assicurare un flusso di dati in grado di fondare calcoli predittivi. [...] Curarti /prima/ che ti ammali, limitare il traffico di ingresso in una Regione prima che i contagi oltrepassino la soglia di “sicurezza”, calcolare in anticipo il numero di persone che saliranno su quel bus a quell’ora in modo da verificare che esso non ecceda i posti seduti disponibili: sono queste le necessità del potere, oggi. (b) [...] una logica che assicurerà meccanismi “fluidi” di entrata e uscita dagli spazi, basati, più che sull’identità concreta degli individui, sui dati che essi possono trasmettere. [...] città «in cui ciascuno può lasciare il suo appartamento, la sua strada, il suo quartiere grazie alla sua carta elettronica (dividuale) che faccia alzare questa o quella barriera, e allo stesso modo la carta può essere respinta quel giorno o entro la tal ora; ciò che conta non è la barriera ma il computer che ritrova la posizione di ciascuno, lecita o illecita, ed opera una modulazione universale». [...] --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Viviamo perennemente in uno "stato di eccezione", dove la necessità di /garantire sicurezza/ ai governati giustifica da parte dei governanti il ricorso ad ogni mezzo (il)lecito per combattere questa sorta di incessante guerra (civile): dal terrorismo alla pandemia (passando per le migrazioni), dai rifiuti al cambiamento climatico... ovviamente il tutto /scientemente/ (non scientificamente) [5] dimostrato. L'ultimo passo sopra mi ha ricordato la trama di un interessante film del '97, "Gattaca" [6], nel quale si narra di un mondo nel quale: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- A genetic registry database uses biometrics to classify those so created as "valids" while those conceived naturally and more susceptible to genetic disorders are known as "in-valids". Genetic discrimination is illegal, but in practice genotype profiling is used to identify valids to qualify for professional employment while in-valids are relegated to menial jobs. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Un mondo dove la discriminazione è illegale, /semplicemente/ i tuoi dati biometrici - nel film comprendono il profilo genetico completo con predizione aspettativa di vita e malattie - sono utilizzati per determinare cosa NON puoi fare: prego notare con attenzione e pazienza l'analogia con l'analisi del concetto giuridico di discriminazione svolta dal Gazzolo nell'articolo sopra menzionato. C'è forse qualcuno che per combattere la "guerra alle malattie" (alla morte?!?) sta seriamente pensando di applicare questo paradigma di governo? Ci sono ricercatori e medici che stanno seriamente studiando il modo di rendere /scientemente/ [5] giustificato un simile scenario? Temo che tale scenario sarebbe accettato molto più che volentieri da ogni cittadino in modo analogo a come viene non solo accettato ma /richiesto/ il green pass... dopotutto chi non vorrebbe vivere /per sempre/ in totale sicurezza?!? [7] Se così fosse, per l'ennesima volta mi permetto di ricordare che tutto questo rischia seriamente di finire in una /drammatica/ allucinazione scientifica [8] (scientista) collettiva. Saluti, 380° [1] https://www.iisf.it/index.php/progetti/diario-della-crisi/massimo-cacciari-… [2] che io preferisco di gran lunga all'etichetta "surveillance capitalism" [3] https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-la-nuda-vita-e-il-vaccino [4] https://www.uniss.it/ugov/person/17442 [5] https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-la-medicina-come-religione [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_extension; sul legame tra AI e (rifiuto della) morte un giorno mi piacerebbe ritornare (partendo dalle posizioni di Ray Kurzweil, Marvin Minsky e il transumanesimo vs. Joseph Weizenbaum e l'umanesimo) [8] https://nooscope.ai/ -- 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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'Hey Facebook, take a photo': The social network's smart glasses are here - CNET
by Alberto Cammozzo Sept. 11, 2021

Sept. 11, 2021

Il ritorno del glasshole... Sono in vendita in Italia e prodotti da Rayban (Luxottica, azienda italiana): immagino che abbiano dovuto chiedere un parere al Garante... <https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/hey-facebook-take-a-photo-the-social-netwo…> When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the social network was working on its first smart glasses, he tried to dial down the hype. The glasses, he suggested during the Facebook Connect conference in September 2020, would be just a step toward a more ambitious project. "They're not yet augmented reality glasses," Zuckerberg said, referring to technology that places digital images on someone's view of the real world. "They're on the road there." On Thursday, Facebook's smart glasses -- under the Ray-Ban brand -- go on sale online and at some stores in the US, UK, Canada, Italy, Ireland and Australia. Called Ray-Ban Stories, the smart glasses shoot photos and 30-second videos with the press of a button. They also play music and podcasts and make calls. The glasses include a virtual assistant so you can snap photos and videos hands-free by uttering the phrase "Hey Facebook." Watch this: Facebook's first smart glasses are the Ray-Ban Stories The release of its first pair of smart glasses, which start at $299 (£299, AU$449), shows how Facebook continues to bet on augmented reality. Zuckerberg has enthused about a future in which augmented reality glasses will let people play games on their couch next to holograms of their friends or share an experience on social media without whipping out their phones. Though Facebook's smart glasses don't include AR effects, they move the company closer to that goal. (Zuckerberg has been waxing on lately about the "metaverse," a virtual environment where people will meet up. His company also makes the Oculus headset, which relies on virtual reality, a technology that's more immersive than AR.) "Ray-Ban Stories are an important step towards the future when phones are no longer a central part of our lives and you won't have to choose between interacting with a device, or interacting with the world around you," Zuckerberg said in a video released Thursday. There's still a lot you can't do with Facebook's smart glasses, though, and those limitations underscore how far this gadget is from becoming the next big thing. The smart glasses, which need to be recharged every six hours with a charging case, don't let you browse Facebook, shop or play games. "What we want to do with Ray-Ban Stories is to listen to our customers in order to understand where to go, but also to make sure that as we're building our roadmap, we are being responsible," Hind Hobeika, a product manager at Facebook Reality Labs, said in a video chat. Facebook certainly isn't the first company to try to convince people they should wear a computer on their face. Google, Snap and Amazon have released smart glasses. And the average consumer passed on all of them. (Apple and Samsung are also reportedly working on AR glasses.) But analysts say smart glasses are part of an emerging market. In a report last year, ImmersivEdge Advisors forecast that annual sales of smart glasses will reach more than 22 million units by 2030. For some perspective, global smartphone sales totaled 1.3 billion in 2020, according to Gartner. Ben Delaney, CEO of ImmersivEdge Advisors and lead author of the report, expects smart glasses to play a larger role in how people get directions, shop, track their fitness or learn in the classroom. Facebook executives teased the new smart glasses this week by posting videos of themselves golfing, skateboarding and fencing, among other activities. Smart glasses also come with concerns about privacy, which Facebook doesn't have a strong reputation for respecting. Privacy advocates still worry the technology can be abused for surveillance. Google Glass faced backlash in 2013 from people who were upset at how tough it was to tell if the device was recording video. Facebook is well aware of the privacy issues that come with smart glasses, demonstrating restraint with the gadget's features even though the product comes with two cameras and built-in microphones. Facebook has a separate app to store and share photos and videos from Ray-Ban Stories to other platforms. The glasses, for example, don't include facial recognition technology. People who use Ray-Ban Stories will also need a separate Facebook View app to share photos and videos captured on the device to other platforms. Hobeika said Facebook deliberately left out automatic sharing because the company wants to give users control over those decisions. Facebook won't use media captured on the smart glasses or in the View app for personalized advertising, she said. If users choose to share photos and videos from the smart glasses on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or other apps, the terms of services for those pieces of software will apply. Facebook, Hobeika said, doesn't use audio data for ads. Users will also be able to choose if they want to share additional data with Facebook, such as the number of videos taken and their length, to help improve the product. It will likely take time for people to become comfortable with glasses recording photos and videos. Early adopters of Google Glass were derisively called "Glassholes." To help generate acceptance, Ray-Ban Stories include a white LED light visible from 25 feet away so the wearer and people around them know when photos and videos are being captured. Some users might also be wary about sharing even more photos and videos with Facebook, a company that has been plagued with several privacy scandals. Facebook includes tips in the View app and on a website so people who use the smart glasses know that recording in bathrooms or while driving are big no-nos. "Don't use your smart glasses to engage in harmful activities like harassment, infringing on privacy rights, or capturing sensitive information like pin codes," one of the tips states. Facebook said it consulted with groups including the Future of Privacy Forum, National Network to End Domestic Violence and the LGBT Technology Partnership as it was working on the smart glasses. Erica Olsen, director of Safety Net at NNEDV, said the group along with Facebook had concerns the glasses could be used to capture images or videos of people without their consent. An abuser could share that content in a way intended to cause harm. "We already see this common tactic of abuse and we know some people will misuse any type of technology they can," Olsen said in a statement. "We hope the opportunities for misuse will be limited because these are glasses and the recording functionality will be fairly obvious to others." Even so, some privacy experts say Facebook's smart glasses could be misused in ways the company can't yet imagine. "Inevitably, these glasses will be used by consumers in ways not intended by the manufacturer," said Jeremy Greenberg, policy counsel for the Future of Privacy Forum. "It will really be up to the developers to respond to those alternative uses in real time." (Facebook is a supporter of the Future of Privacy Forum, as is Red Ventures, parent company of CNET.) Analysts say makers of smart glasses face a more fundamental challenge: The technology isn't ready. The price could also prompt prospective buyers to think twice about purchasing a pair. Ray-Ban Stories can function as regular glasses or sunglasses, but the price goes up accordingly if you add prescription or polarized lenses. ImmersivEdge's Delaney says Facebook has its work cut out convincing consumers it's the right company to make smart glasses. Though the social network has hardware products, like its Portal chat tool and Oculus virtual reality helmet, other companies have more experience. "There are so many other companies that know how to do hardware and software better than they do," Delaney said. Even if Ray-Ban Stories flop, analysts say Facebook will learn what does and doesn't work for consumers. That knowledge will be useful to its other platforms. "For a company as wealthy as Facebook, there isn't much downside," said Lisa Ask, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. "It's still kind of a Wild West right now. Nobody's had a breakthrough product."

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Five Big Problems with Canada’s Proposed Regulatory Framework for “Harmful Online Content” - Tech Policy Press
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 11, 2021

Sept. 11, 2021

https://techpolicy.press/five-big-problems-with-canadas-proposed-regulatory… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Revealed: Google illegally underpaid thousands of workers across dozens of countries | Google | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Sept. 10, 2021

Sept. 10, 2021

Do no evil... tomorrow. <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/10/google-underpaid-workers…> Google has been illegally underpaying thousands of temporary workers in dozens of countries and delayed correcting the pay rates for more than two years as it attempted to cover up the problem, the Guardian can reveal. Google executives have been aware since at least May 2019 that the company was failing to comply with local laws in the UK, Europe and Asia that mandate temporary workers be paid equal rates to full-time employees performing similar work, internal Google documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian show. But rather than immediately correct the errors, the company dragged its feet for more than two years, the documents show, citing concern about the increased cost to departments that rely heavily on temporary workers, potential exposure to legal claims, and fear of negative press attention. Google executives and attorneys at one point pursued a plan to come into compliance slowly and at the least possible cost to itself, despite acknowledging that such a move was not “the correct outcome from a compliance perspective” and could place the staffing companies it contracts with “in a difficult position, legally and ethically”. Google admitted the failures and said it would conduct an investigation after being contacted by the Guardian. “While the team hasn’t increased the comparator rate benchmarks for some years, actual pay rates for temporary staff have increased numerous times in that period,” said Spyro Karetsos, Google’s chief compliance officer, in a statement. “Most temporary staff are paid significantly more than the comparator rates. “Nevertheless, it’s clear that this process has not been handled consistent with the high standards to which we hold ourselves as a company. We’re doing a thorough review, and we’re committed to identifying and addressing any pay discrepancies that the team has not already addressed. “And we’ll be conducting a review of our compliance practices in this area. In short, we’re going to figure out what went wrong here, why it happened, and we’re going to make it right.” A whistleblower represented by Whistleblower Aid has filed a complaint about the alleged violations with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. While international labor law is not under the purview of the SEC, the complaint alleges that Google’s failure to disclose the pay parity liabilities, which it estimates could amount to $100m, constitute material misstatements in its quarterly financial reports, a violation of US securities law. “The disclosure makes it clear that Google hasn’t just broken labor laws around the world, but has misled investors about major legal and financial liabilities,” said John Tye, founder and chief disclosure officer of Whistleblower Aid. “The lawful, anonymous whistleblower disclosure is a critical step toward ensuring that Google is held to account. We urge the SEC to bring an enforcement action against Google, and protect the rights of investors to receive complete and accurate information.” The issue stems from Google’s extensive reliance on what it calls its “extended workforce”, as well as the plethora of local laws that govern how such workers must be treated in the dozens of countries where Google operates. Google maintains a workforce of more than 100,000 temps, vendors and contractors who are not directly employed by the company, but who perform work on its behalf, on tasks ranging from food service and security to coding and data analysis. The vast majority of these workers are “vendors” who work on long-term projects that are wholly managed by the vendor company, such as content moderation, and have little interaction with Google employees. But at any given time, Google also employs thousands of temporary workers. While they are paid by staffing agencies, temps report directly to Google managers. The departments that rely most heavily on temporary workers include recruiting, marketing, and Waymo, Google’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary. Globally, Google spends about $800m annually on temporary workers. The use of contingent workers is common in the tech industry, but Google’s reliance on a “shadow workforce” that outnumbers its direct employee base has long drawn criticism from the company’s own employees, as well as politicians and labor unions. More than 30 countries, including the UK, the EU member states, India, and Taiwan, have enacted “pay parity” or “equal treatment” laws that require temporary workers to be treated equally to full time employees (FTEs) who perform the same or similar work, according to Google’s internal guidance on the laws. The US, where the majority of Google’s temps are based, does not have any such protections. In general, these laws require equivalent treatment of temps and FTEs when it comes to pay, hours, breaks, vacation, holidays, and certain perks. In the UK, pay parity is required after a 12-week qualifying period, for example, while in Ireland it is mandated from the first day of work. Some countries also mandate equivalency for benefits and bonuses. The staffing agency and the hirer – in this case, Google – share the responsibility for ensuring equitable treatment, but it is the hirer’s responsibility to provide the agency accurate data about the pay rates. In 2012 and 2013, Google undertook an exercise to map all its temporary roles in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) with the comparable Google full-time roles, according to the internal memo. The exercise produced “comparator” rates that Google then provided to the staffing agencies that recruit and employ its temporary staff. The company performed a similar exercise for temp roles in APAC (Asia Pacific) in 2017. Since those exercises were carried out, compensation for full-time Google employees has increased substantially. The median total compensation rose more than 38%, from $197,274 to $273,493, between 2017 and 2020, according to SEC filings. But the comparator rates were never updated. “Ideally this would be done annually,” reads the internal Google memo on the issue, which acknowledges that it is Google’s obligation to keep the information up to date. By 15 May 2019, the problem was known to Adrienne Crowther, the executive responsible for Google’s extended workforce team (xWS), her comments on the internal memo show. “Yikes! This seems WAY too old,” she wrote in response to the “2012-2013” date of the comparator data. “Agreed,” responded Alan Barry, a compliance manager for Google’s extended workforce team. Barry went on to suggest that xWS “refresh” the data as part of a larger project working on ensuring accurate mapping between temporary and full-time positions. Scale of the problem Given the very high turnover rate of temporary workers, the number of workers affected by Google’s failure could be in the tens of thousands. One document shows that, as of 16 February 2021, Google had 1,030 temporary workers in countries with pay parity laws, the largest numbers in the UK (343), India (222), Ireland (207) and Germany (59). That document – an audit of countries with pay parity laws performed for Google by Deloitte – highlighted another problem with the company’s legal compliance. Deloitte reported that pay-parity laws had been enacted in 16 countries where Google was employing more than 350 temporary workers without providing equal treatment rates, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Switzerland and Taiwan. Google’s underpayments to its temporary workers are substantial. One internal analysis estimated that Google’s expenses for 1,200 temps in EMEA and APAC regions would need to increase by $17.3m to comply with pay parity laws, of which $12.65m would go to the temporary workers in increased wages and bonuses. (An additional $4.4m in costs would be the result of the estimated 35% markup that staffing agencies charge.) But that analysis was based on a proposal to correct the rates for new hires only, without providing raises and back pay to existing and previous temp workers for the time they worked at the incorrect rates, suggesting that the total amount of lost wages to current and past workers is significantly higher. Individual temps were paid between 12% and 50% less than they should have been, according to an internal memo also from February 2021. Another document showed that temporary workers in Google’s human resources department in the UK were paid between £4.10 and £8.25 less per hour than they should have been, with some temps earning £14.17 instead of £18.27 and others earning £21.56 instead of £29.80. Google’s delay in addressing the rates could hurt former temporary workers’ ability to seek redress. Under the UK’s Agency Worker Regulations 2010, temps can appeal to an Employment Tribunal if they believe their rights have been breached, but they must do so within three months. In Ireland, appeals to the Rights Commissioner are supposed to be made within six months. “These agency workers have been the victims of wage theft,” said Matthew Creagh, an employment rights policy officer for the Trades Union Council, who criticized the UK’s lack of a state regulator to enforce worker protections. “How will they be compensated? Often the discussion veers towards punishing employers, which is good, but getting the agency workers their money is overlooked.” Internal debate Though executives in Google’s xWS department were aware by May 2019 that the company was failing to comply with the law and underpaying workers, the company did not move quickly to correct the rates and provide back wages to those who were owed them. Instead, it spent at least two years continuing to pay out-of-date rates while it debated internally how to come back into legal compliance without admitting what had happened, documents and emails show. Leaders of the xWS team appeared keenly aware that admitting the problem would damage its reputation within Google by causing headaches for departments whose budgets would be effected, as well as with the staffing agencies that are liable for providing pay parity. They also expressed interest in preventing existing and former temp workers from knowing they had been underpaid, in order to prevent claims for back pay. By October 2020, xWS executives, including Crowther and Deepak Negi, another director, and Google’s employment counsels for EMEA and APAC had signed off on a plan to correct the rates, emails and documents show. The company would pursue a “natural correction” of the temp rates, whereby new joiners started at correct rates while existing temps remained at the lower rates, rather than an “immediate correction”, whereby all temps had their rates adjusted to the correct levels. The plan had received support from executives and attorneys due to “the current low risk of a parity claim, the ability to correct rates and not make a great deal of noise, and the ability to correct rates without immediate substantial financial impact to [Google’s departments],” an xWS operations manager promoting it wrote in an email. Some xWS staffers appear to have pushed back on the proposal, noting that it would result in groups of temps performing similar work earning significantly different wages. Some also worried that the staffing agencies, who are responsible for complying with pay parity laws, might ask questions about the changed rates, or even object. But in an extraordinary December 2020 email, Barry, the attorney responsible for compliance in xWS, endorsed the “natural correction” despite acknowledging that it was insufficient. “We know that the impacted workers are not on the correct 2020 rates, nor were they in 2019,” he wrote. “So, strictly speaking, from the point that we put ourselves on notice as to the correct comparator rate, it should apply to both the incumbents as well as the new joiners. To do otherwise may place our staffing partners in a difficult position, legally and ethically.” “In my view, while [an immediate correction] does appear to be the correct outcome from a compliance perspective, I recognise the barriers to this,” Barry wrote. “The cost is significant and it would give rise to a flurry of noise/frustration on the part of the [Google departments] who have not accounted for the changed cost. I’m also not keen to invite the charge that we’ve allowed this situation to persist for so long that the correction required is significant … I am leaning towards favouring [the natural correction] – but with careful thought and consideration needed as to how we communicate it to the [staffing agencies].” By February 2021, Barry and others were considering a third option beyond the “natural” and “immediate” corrections: applying the new rates to new joiners and existing temps and backdating the increases for the existing temps to their start date. (None of the options included providing back pay to temps who had been underpaid but no longer worked for Google.) The memo suggests that Barry and the xWS team’s concerns remained primarily reputational. It includes guidance from Google’s employment lawyers that “the threat of litigation is greater than the prospect of actual litigation” since actual litigation would require temps to know that they were being underpaid, and by how much. “If and when they become aware they will seek recompense but will want to avoid litigation. Strategy should therefore be driven by an assessment of the internal PR/reputational risk and the risk of pay disparity becoming known within our temps population.” Nevertheless, Barry argued that despite the “significant” financial cost and potential for criticism of xWS from Google and staffing agencies, he now believed that this third option was the best course. “In my view – better to opt to for option three in a controlled fashion now, than in an uncontrolled fashion later,” he wrote.

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ICT day 22 settembre a Torino Intelligenza Artificiale: sviluppo economia e sostenibilità"
by Mauro Alovisio Sept. 10, 2021

Sept. 10, 2021

Gent.me/mi segnalo l'Ict Day ad oggetto: "*Intelligenza Artificiale , sviluppo economia e sostenibilità"* che si svolgerà a Torino m*ercoledì 22 settembre 2021 *a Torino presso CTE Next L'evento a cura del Club di dirigenti di Informatica prevede le relazioni di Ministri, professori, esperti e imprenditori e sarà trasmesso on line in diretta. L'evento è gratuito ed è patrocininato da diversi enti fra cui università degli Studi di Torino, Unione Industriale, Csi, Torino Wireless e diverse associazioni fra cui il Centro Studi di Informatica Giuridica di Ivrea Torino. Per iscrizioni: https://www.clubdi.org/it-day-2021/ Cordiali saluti Mauro Alovisio Se non leggi correttamente questo messaggio, clicca qui <http://wchhbjb.emctrack.com/viewonline/@f*025j2F7ib38j2f2S1*3=0*81f9f1e7b7f…> . <http://www.clubdi.org/it-day-2019/> [image: Insert Alt text here] <https://www.clubdi.org/it-day-2021/> *Torna ITDAY!* mercoledì *22 settembre 2021* *AI: Sviluppo, Economia, Sostenibilità* *scenari di un futuro migliore* *Club Dirigenti Informatica * dell'Unione Industriale di Torino ti invita ad un full day *digital community event .* Potrai sviluppare *networking * con tutti i partecipanti presenti sulla piattaforma e *partecipare attivamente* alle sessioni tematiche su *Intelligenza Artificiale* e #Cybersecurity #Data economy #Digitalskills #Formazione #Etica #Infrastrutture #Sviluppo sostenibile #Impatto sociale tutti i temi su cui dovremo *riflettere *per affrontare la *transizione digitale* che ci porta nel *futuro*! Programma e Relatori <https://www.clubdi.org/it-day-2021/%20> [image: Insert Alt text here] <http://www.clubdi.org/it-day-2021>

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Leaning Toward 2050
by Giuseppe Attardi Sept. 9, 2021

Sept. 9, 2021

Segnalo questo evento, il 12 settembre, sul tema: Leaning Toward 2050 https://www.tedxlungarnomediceo.com <https://www.tedxlungarnomediceo.com/> in cui farò un intervento dal titolo: Distopia o Utopia: l’Intelligneza Artificiale nel 2050 I biglietti sono esauriti ma l’evento verrà trasmesso in streaming su: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpEEKiTRZgE Aproveche — Beppe

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Tecnologia, capitalismo e/o democrazia: la lezione di Luciano Gallino
by VETRO' ANTONIO Sept. 9, 2021

Sept. 9, 2021

https://www.economiaepolitica.it/il-pensiero-economico/tecnologia-capitalis… Un articolo pubblicato online quasi un anno fa ma che ho scoperto solo ora, e che mi sembra di potenziale interesse per la lista. E’ scritto dal Prof. Lelio Demichelis, che ripercorre il volume postumo di Luciano Gallino “Tecnologia e Democrazia” e prova a continuarne il pensiero nella direzione di una maggiore partecipazione alle decisioni sullo sviluppo della tecnologia, che necessiterebbero -secondo l’autore- maggiore conoscenza diffusa e non solo competenze, e una riflessione collettiva sui fini, per contrastare la palese irresponsabilità (anche nel senso di non-“accountability”) della grande impresa tecnologica moderna (soprattutto digitale). Riporto qui i paragrafi conclusivi dello scritto di Demichelis. "Ed è quindi questa razionalità strumentale/calcolante-industriale ad essere anti/a-democratica in sé e per sé. Oltre ad essere razionalmente irrazionale. Cercare una democratizzazione della tecnica è forse impossibile anche se comunque necessaria (si resterebbe però nel positivismo/pragmatismo del problem solving ex post), ma prima (ex ante) occorre uscire antropologicamente non tanto dal tecno-capitalismo quanto da questa razionalità strumentale/calcolante-industriale totalitaria e nichilistica in termini sociali e ambientali; occorre abbandonare cioè un pensiero solo calcolante recuperando invece e soprattutto un pensiero meditativo e un’etica della responsabilità alla Jonas– richiamata anche da Gallino – come forma e norma dell’agire in vista di fini che siano umani".

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Revealed: LAPD officers told to collect social media data on every civilian they stop | Los Angeles | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Sept. 9, 2021

Sept. 9, 2021

<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/08/revealed-los-angeles-police…> The Los Angeles police department (LAPD) has directed its officers to collect the social media information of every civilian they interview, including individuals who are not arrested or accused of a crime, according to records shared with the Guardian. A lawsuit charges that the Rodeo Drive task force has been stopping and arresting Black people without cause. Copies of the “field interview cards” that police complete when they question civilians reveal that LAPD officers are instructed to record a civilian’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media accounts, alongside basic biographical information. An internal memo further shows that the police chief, Michel Moore, told employees that it was critical to collect the data for use in “investigations, arrests, and prosecutions”, and warned that supervisors would review cards to ensure they were complete. The documents, which were obtained by the not-for-profit organization the Brennan Center for Justice, have raised concerns about civil liberties and the potential for mass surveillance of civilians without justification. “There are real dangers about police having all of this social media identifying information at their fingertips,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, a deputy director at the Brennan Center, noting that the information was probably stored in a database that could be used for a wide range of purposes. The Brennan Center conducted a review of 40 other police agencies in the US and was unable to find another department that required social media collection on interview cards (though many have not publicly disclosed copies of the cards). The organization also obtained records about the LAPD’s social media surveillance technologies, which have raised questions about the monitoring of activist groups including Black Lives Matter. [...]

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Bosses turn to ‘tattleware’ to keep tabs on employees working from home | Technology | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Sept. 8, 2021

Sept. 8, 2021

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/05/covid-coronavirus-work-home… [...] Every minute or so, the program would capture a live photo of David and his workmates via their company laptop webcams. The ever-changing headshots were splayed across the wall of a digital conference waiting room that everyone on the team could see. Clicking on a colleague’s face would unilaterally pull them into a video call. If you were lucky enough to catch someone goofing off or picking their nose, you could forward the offending image to a team chat via Sneek’s integration with the messaging platform Slack. I signed up to manage their digital marketing, not to livestream my living room According to the Sneek co-founder Del Currie, the software is meant to replicate the office. “We know lots of people will find it an invasion of privacy, we 100% get that, and it’s not the solution for those folks,” Currie says. “But there’s also lots of teams out there who are good friends and want to stay connected when they’re working together.” For David, though, Sneek was a dealbreaker. He quit after less than three weeks on the job. “I signed up to manage their digital marketing,” he tells me, “not to livestream my living room.” Little did he realize that his experience was part of a wide-scale boom in worker surveillance– and one that’s poised to become a standard feature of life on the job. Remote surveillance software like Sneek, also known as “tattleware” or “bossware”, represented something of a niche market pre-Covid. But that all changed in March 2020, as employers scrambled to pull together work-from-home policies out of thin air. In April last year, Google queries for “remote monitoring” were up 212% year-on-year; by April this year, they’d continued to surge by another 243%. One of the major players in the industry, ActivTrak, reports that during March 2020 alone, the firm scaled up from 50 client companies to 800. Over the course of the pandemic, the company has maintained that growth, today boasting 9,000 customers – or, as it claims, more than 250,000 individual users. Time Doctor, Teramind, and Hubstaff – which, together with ActivTrak, make up the bulk of the market – have all seen similar growth from prospective customers. I want this pandemic to end – yet I secretly pine for another lockdown Read more These software programs give bosses a mix of options for monitoring workers’ online activity and assessing their productivity: from screenshotting employees’ screens to logging their keystrokes and tracking their browsing. But in the fast-growing bossware market, each platform potentially brings something new to the table. There’s FlexiSpy, which offers call-tapping; Spytech, which is known for mobile device access; and NetVizor, which has a remote takeover feature. Tattleware platforms are hardly the sole culprits of expanded workplace surveillance. Employers are reportedly drawing on in-house IT departments to monitor emails for flagged phrases at an increased rate compared with before the pandemic. By receiving alerts when certain employees are discussing “recruiter” or “salary”, for example, management hopes to know when employees are looking to up sticks for greener pastures. Big-name tech companies have also dipped their toes into the spy game, with varying degrees of success. In April 2020, Zoom quickly backtracked on a short-lived “attention tracking” setting, which alerted a call host when a participant was focused away from the meeting for more than 30 seconds. And in December, Microsoft bowed to tech experts’ outcry over the release of a “productivity score” feature for its 365 suite, which rated individuals on criteria that included email use and network connectivity; the tool no longer identifies users by name. Despite controversy, tattleware and remote monitoring are not going away any time soon, even as employees shift back to in-house and hybrid work models. The statistics seem to bear out that we are inured to the idea of some layer of surveillance in our work lives. Photograph: Hayley Blackledge/Alamy Stock Photo “There’s no real sign of this trend slowing down,” says Juan Carloz, a digital researcher and privacy advocate with the University of Melbourne. “No sign of legislative change in any jurisdiction I can name, and no sign of pushback from employees, even when they’re aware of it happening.” ‘Many are all too content to let it slide’ Whether all of this amounts to corporate snooping, or just plain accountability, depends largely on which side of the fence you sit on. White-collar workers around the world have long taken it for granted that their emails are monitored on the job; warehouses, offices, and shops, meanwhile, are regularly monitored by CCTV. The statistics seem to bear out that we are inured to the idea of some layer of surveillance built into our professional lives. In a recent survey, nearly three-quarters of workers said their productivity wouldn’t be affected even if they knew their employer was monitoring them. And while the jury’s still out on whether there’s any benefit to remote monitoring, Elizabeth Lyons, an associate professor of management at the University of California San Diego, is willing to play devil’s advocate. “A study we conducted found people doing data collection work out of the office were more productive when they were made aware they were being monitored, compared to their colleagues who weren’t told they were being tracked,” says Lyons. Surveillance even increased worker satisfaction, she adds, noting that remote employees appreciate signals that their performance is integral to the organization. Yet Lyons acknowledges that when monitoring becomes overbearing, employee morale will take a hit. “In other studies we’ve looked at, the workers were essentially saying, ‘If the manager is going to watch everything I do, then I’m not going to do anything above and beyond what they expect of me,’” says Lyons. Then there’s the question of privacy. Carloz, the digital researcher, is concerned that the boom in tattleware has tipped the scales too heavily in favor of the employer. “Prior to the pandemic, the line between work and play was [clearer] – surveillance, in other words, stopped at the door,” says Carloz. But the rise of tattleware changes the game. If an employee uses a spy-enabled, work-sponsored computer outside of hours, their employer could easily access their personal data, down to internet banking passwords and Facebook messages. Carloz concedes that most employers are probably not interested in collecting their workers’ personal information. They want to know what websites employees are on, and what tasks they’re dividing their time on, during the workday. However, if a boss does feel like snooping around off-hours, Carloz points out, there are “essentially no legal protections afforded to [those employees] in most western nations”. “But since, rightly or wrongly, [surveillance software] is being framed as a trade-off for remote work, many are all too content to let it slide,” says Carloz. Which brings us back to David. In the weeks after boldly departing his first post-college job, the young digital marketer secured a post with a new, Sneek-free firm. He says he’s much happier for it. “But one of the first things they asked me to do was sign up for Hubstaff,” he laughs.

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