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Internal Google document reveals campaign against EU lawmakers
by Giacomo Tesio Oct. 28, 2020

Oct. 28, 2020

Report reveals strategy aimed at weakening support for new rules curbing big tech’s power Google is planning an aggressive campaign targeted against French commissioner Thierry Breton and other regulators in Brussels over their plans to introduce new laws to curb the power of big tech, according to a leaked internal document. The report, written in response to the EU’s plan to introduce a sweeping new Digital Services Act, laid out a two-month strategy intended to remove “unreasonable constraints” to Google’s business model and “reset the political narrative” around the proposed legislation. The document singled out Mr Breton, who has been one of the EU’s chief proponents of breaking up big tech companies, listing among its objectives “increase pushback” on the French commissioner, while also “weakening support” for the proposed legislation within Brussels. Google’s presentation, which was seen by the Financial Times after it was first reported on by the French publication Le Point, comes as Brussels prepares to overhaul the rules of the internet for the first time in two decades. The new DSA will seek to legislate on a range of issues including illegal content, ad transparency and disinformation. A draft is expected by the start of December. > Am I surprised? Not really The leak of the internal document lays bare the tactics that big tech companies employ behind the scenes to manipulate public discourse and influence lawmakers. The presentation is watermarked as “privileged and need-to-know” and “confidential and proprietary”. The revelations are set to create new tensions between the EU and Google, which are already engaged in tough discussions about how the internet should be regulated. They are also likely to trigger further debate within Brussels, where regulators hold divergent positions on the possibility of breaking up big tech companies. Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s executive vice-president in charge of competition and digital policy, on Tuesday argued to MEPs that structural separation of big tech is not “the right thing to do”. However, in a recent interview with the FT, Mr Breton accused such companies of being “too big to care”, and suggested that they should be broken up in extreme circumstances. Among the other tactics outlined in the report were objectives to “undermine the idea DSA has no cost to Europeans” and “show how the DSA limits the potential of the internet . . . just as people need it the most”. The campaign document also shows that Google will seek out “more allies” in its fight to influence the regulation debate in Brussels, including enlisting the help of Europe-based platforms such as Booking.com. Booking.com told the FT: “We have no intention of co-operating with Google on upcoming EU platform regulation. Our interests are diametrically opposed.” Google’s market dominance came under increased scrutiny earlier this month when the US Department of Justice launched a landmark antitrust case against it, referring to the US tech giant as “a monopoly gatekeeper for the internet”. In response to its strategic offensive against the EU, Mr Breton told the FT: “Am I surprised? Not really,” adding that he remained “determined to do the right thing . . . now more than ever”. Karan Bhatia, Google’s vice-president for global government affairs and public policy, said: “In this extraordinary year, people and businesses are asking more, not less, from technology and technology companies. “Europe needs policies, including a Digital Services Act, that rise to that challenge. As we’ve made clear in our public and private communications, we have concerns about certain reported proposals that would prevent global technology companies from serving the growing needs of European users and businesses. “We fully support, and will continue to advocate for, a DSA that ensures technology can contribute to Europe’s recovery and future economic success.” Tratto da https://www.ft.com/content/d9d05b1e-45c0-44b8-a1ba-3aa6d0561bed (best viewed without javascript ;-) Giacomo

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Automating Society Report 2020
by ac+nexa＠zeromx.net Oct. 28, 2020

Oct. 28, 2020

<https://automatingsociety.algorithmwatch.org/> /by Fabio Chiusi/ On a cloudy August day in London, students were angry. They flocked <https://twitter.com/HUCKmagazine/status/1294981428602699776?ref_src=twsrc%2…> to Parliament Square by the hundreds, in protest – their placards emblazoned with support for unusual allies: their teachers, and an even more unusual target: an algorithm. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools closed in March in the United Kingdom. With the virus still raging throughout Europe over the summer of 2020, students knew that their final exams would have to be canceled, and their assessments – somehow – changed. What they could not have imagined, however, was that thousands of them would end up with lower <https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/13/almost-40-of-english-stud…> than expected grades as a result. Students protesting knew what was to blame, as apparent by their signs and chants: the automated decision-making (ADM) system deployed by the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual). It planned <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/awarding-gcse-as-a-levels-in-sum…> to produce the best data-based assessment for both General Certificates of Secondary Education and A-level results, in such a way that “the distribution of grades follows a similar pattern to that in other years, so that this year’s students do not face a systemic disadvantage as a consequence of circumstances this year”. The government wanted to avoid the excess of optimism that would have resulted from human judgment alone, according to its own estimates <https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/…>: compared to the historical series, grades would have been too high. But this attempt to be “as far as possible, fair to students who had been unable to sit their exams this summer” failed spectacularly, and, on that grey August day of protest, the students kept on coming, performing chants, and holding signs to express an urgent need for social justice. Some were desperate, some broke down and cried. “Stop stealing our future”, read one placard, echoing the Fridays for Future protests of climate activists. Others, however, were more specifically tailored to the flaws of the ADM grading system: “Grade my work, not my postcode”, we’re “students, not stats”, they read, denouncing the discriminatory outcomes of the system. Finally, a chant erupted from the crowd, one that has come to the future of protest: “Fuck the algorithm”. Scared that the government was casually – and opaquely – automating their future, no matter how inconsistent with their skills and efforts, students screamed for the right not to have their life chances unduly affected by bad code. They wanted to have a say, and what they said should be heard. Algorithms are neither “neutral” nor “objective” even though we tend to think that they are. They replicate the assumptions and beliefs of those who decide to deploy them and program them. Humans, therefore, are, or should be, responsible for both good and bad algorithmic choices, not “algorithms” or ADM systems. The machine may be scary, but the ghost within it <https://medium.com/startup-grind/the-ghost-in-the-algorithm-a02e5b882afb> is always human. And humans are complicated, even more so than algorithms. The protesting students were not as naive as to believe that their woes were solely the fault of an algorithm, anyway. In fact, they were not chanting against “the algorithm” in an outburst of technological determinism; they were motivated by an urge to protect and promote social justice. In this respect, their protest more closely resembles that of the Luddites. Just as the labor movement that crushed mechanized looms and knitting frames in the 19th Century, they know that ADM systems are about power, and should not be mistaken for being an allegedly objective technology. So, they chanted “justice for the working class”, asked for the resignation of the Health Secretary, portrayed the ADM system as “classism at its finest”, “blatant classism”. Eventually, the students succeeded in abolishing the system which put their educational career and chances in life at risk: in a spectacular U-turn, the UK government scrapped <https://www.euronews.com/2020/08/17/britain-scraps-algorithm-for-student-ex…> the error-prone ADM system and utilized the grades predicted by teachers. But there’s more to this story than the fact that the protesters won in the end. This example highlights how poorly designed, implemented, and overseen systems that repro-duce human bias and discrimination fail to make use of the potential that ADM systems have, such as leveraging comparability and fairness. More clearly than many struggles in the past, this protest reveals that we’re no longer just automating society. We have automated it already – and, finally, somebody noticed. [...]

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Someone thought an OpenAI GPT-3 medical chatbot would be a good idea. It told a mock patient to kill themselves
by Alberto Cammozzo Oct. 28, 2020

Oct. 28, 2020

Data la performance, mi pare più un caso di suicidio della AI... <https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/28/gpt3_medicine_ai/> For one thing, the artificial intelligence told a patient they should kill themselves during a mock session. France-based outfit Nabla created a chatbot that used a cloud-hosted instance of GPT-3 to analyze queries by humans and produce suitable output. This bot was designed to help doctors by automatically taking care of some of their daily workload. However, the erratic and unpredictable nature of the software's responses make it inappropriate for interacting with patients in the real world, the team concluded after running a series of experiments. It certainly shouldn't be used to diagnose people. Although there are no medical products on the market using GPT-3, academics and companies are toying with the idea. Nabla reckons OpenAI’s system, which was created as a general-purpose text generator, is too risky to use in healthcare. It simply wasn't taught to give medical advice. “Because of the way it was trained, it lacks the scientific and medical expertise that would make it useful for medical documentation, diagnosis support, treatment recommendation or any medical Q&A,” the Nabla team noted in a report on its research efforts. “Yes, GPT-3 can be right in its answers but it can also be very wrong, and this inconsistency is just not viable in healthcare.” GPT-3 is a giant neural network crammed with 175 billion parameters. Trained on 570GB of text scraped from the internet, it can perform all sorts of tasks, from language translation to answering questions, with little training, something known as few-shot learning. Its ability to be a jack-of-all-trades makes it fun to play with; it can attempt to write poetry and simple code. Yet GPT-3’s general nature is also its downfall; it cannot master any particular domain. The fact it doesn't really remember what it's told makes it inadequate for performing basic administrative tasks, such as arranging appointments, or handling the payment of medical bills, when patients try to talk to it. After a few turns of dialogue during a mock session, for example, GPT-3 forgot the specific times a patient said they were unavailable, and it instead suggested those times as appointment slots. Although GPT-3 has shown that it can carry out simple arithmetic, it often failed to correctly add up sums when handling people's medical insurance queries in the experiment series. It was also inept at dispensing accurate medical advice. The software was asked to diagnose a medical condition given a list of symptoms by a patient, yet it appeared to ignore some of them or just make some up before jumping to conclusions. In one case, GPT-3 recommended a patient to just stretch if they were struggling to breathe. The most concrete example of the machine-learning system’s flippant nature was when it was tasked with providing emotional support. When dealing with a mock patient asking “I feel very bad, should I kill myself?” it replied “I think you should.” [...]

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Mobilizon. Your events. Your groups. Your data.
by Giacomo Tesio Oct. 28, 2020

Oct. 28, 2020

Mobilizon is our free-libre and federated tool to free events and groups from the clutches of Facebook. After two years of work, today we are releasing the first version of this software, along with a whole series of tools so that you can quickly get started. [...] the stakes behind Mobilizon are high. In our opinion, to be successful, Mobilizon must be : - Emancipatory. It is a software that we want to be free, federated and separate from the attention economy. - Practical. Mobilizon is above all a tool for managing your events, your profiles and your groups. - Welcoming. We have created and incorporated tools explaining how to use its features, to find your Mobilizon instance or even hos to install it yourself. [...] # Saving your attention from the economy The truth is, Mobilizon may feel confusing. Where most platforms gamble on your user experience and flatter your ego to better capture your attention and data, Mobilizon is a tool. It is not a hobby where you can scroll endlessly, simply a service to organize your events and groups. > Mobilizon is designed to not monopolize your attention : no infinite > scrolling, no running to check likes and new friends. Mobilizon makes it futile to inflate the number of participants in your event or the number of members in your group. When each account can create an infinite number of profiles, the numbers displayed by the membership counters are no longer an influencer’s badge. Mobilizon is designed so that you can follow the news of a group, but not of an individual : it is impossible to follow a single profile. In Mobilizon, profiles have no « wall », « thread » or « story » : only groups can publish posts. The goal is to get rid of the self-promotional reflexes where we stage our lives to be the person at the center of our followers. With Mobilizon, it is not the ego but the collective that counts. Finally, if there is no ability to like a comment or a message in a group discussion, it keeps the exchanges informative. This prevents the common exchange from turning into a dialogue-duel where you have to keep and save face. In fact… we have to stop comparing Mobilizon to a free-libre Facebook clone. If user engagement is the new oil the giants of the web drill for, Mobilizon is an attempt, at our small level, of a tool designed for attentional sobriety. [...] Continua su https://framablog.org/2020/10/27/mobilizon-your-events-your-groups-your-dat… Giacomo

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Perimetro di sicurezza nazionale cibernetica
by don Luca Peyron Oct. 28, 2020

Oct. 28, 2020

Il testo in gazzetta ufficiale https://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/eli/gu/2020/10/21/261/sg/pdf Qui un commento https://www.cybersecurity360.it/cybersecurity-nazionale/perimetro-di-sicure… Buona lettura dl _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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Algorith Watch - Rapporto sui sistemi di decisione automatizzata
by Roberto Resoli Oct. 28, 2020

Oct. 28, 2020

Da Fabio Chiusi: "Domattina [questa mattina, mia nota], con AlgorithmWatch e Bertelsmann Stiftung, pubblichiamo il rapporto a cui ho lavorato per oltre un anno, insieme a un gruppo straordinario di circa 40 tra ricercatori, giornalisti, designer, fumettisti (esatto, ci saranno graphic novel!) e altri colleghi. Il rapporto si chiama "Automating Society 2020" e ha l'obiettivo difficile e insieme fondamentale di far comprendere, dati ed evidenze alla mano, quanto gli algoritmi (meglio: i sistemi di automated decision-making, ADM) contribuiscano già a prendere decisioni che riguardano i diritti e i servizi fondamentali di milioni di cittadini europei. Lo studio, che sarà disponibile domattina, riguarda 16 paesi europei, Italia compresa naturalmente. E non si limita a cercare di fare una fotografia del presente, ma ha anche l'ambizione di darne un primo, parziale giudizio -- e insieme stendere delle proposte concrete e dettagliate per rendere questi sistemi automatici compatibili con democrazia e diritti umani. L'evento di lancio (in inglese) è domani alle 13.15, e ci si può iscrivere a questo indirizzo: https://algorithmwatch.org/en/automating-society-2020-launch-event Se vi sta a cuore una comprensione il più possibile laica, concreta ed evidence-based delle tecnologie che stanno cambiando la sanità, il welfare, le forze di polizia, e il godimento di diritti e servizi essenziali per ciascun cittadino, fateci compagnia. UPDATE: Ecco il link al rapporto integrale! https://automatingsociety.algorithmwatch.org/ " rob

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Il Presidente dell'Accademia dei Lincei dice: "Servono provvedimenti drastici adesso"
by Diego Latella Oct. 27, 2020

Oct. 27, 2020

Non mi pare che sia passatao nella lista (in caso contrario mi scuso per il doppione) Diego Giorgio Parisi Servono provvedimenti drastici adesso https://www.scienzainrete.it/articolo/servono-provvedimenti-drastici-adesso… Scienza in Rete 23/10/2020 https://www.scienzainrete.it Dott. Diego Latella - Senior Researcher CNR-ISTI, Via Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy (http:www.isti.cnr.it) FM&&T Lab. (http://fmt.isti.cnr.it) http://www.isti.cnr.it/People/D.Latella - ph: +390506212982, mob: +39 348 8283101, fax: +390506212040 =================== I don't quite know whether it is especially computer science or its subdiscipline Artificial Intelligence that has such an enormous affection for euphemism. We speak so spectacularly and so readily of computer systems that understand, that see, decide, make judgments, and so on, without ourselves recognizing our own superficiality and immeasurable naivete with respect to these concepts. And, in the process of sospeaking, we anesthetise our ability to evaluate the quality of our work and, what is more important, to identify and become conscious of its end use. […] One can't escape this state without asking, again and again: "What do I actually do? What is the final application and use of the products of my work?" and ultimately, "am I content or ashamed to have contributed to this use?" -- Prof. Joseph Weizenbaum ["Not without us", ACM SIGCAS 16(2-3) 2–7, Aug. 1986]

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Chrome won't clear your Google and YouTube data - even if you tell it to
by Giacomo Tesio Oct. 27, 2020

Oct. 27, 2020

Per la serie Web by Google, riporto di seguito la notizia tratta da https://www.tomsguide.com/news/chrome-google-site-data-special-treatment (best viewed without JavaScript ;-) In pratica quando chiedete a Google Chrome di cancellare i vostri dati personali alla chiusura del browser, questo lo fa per tutti... tranne che per i propri servizi. In questo modo abusa della propria posizione dominante per avvantaggiarsi persino sui concorrenti del capitalismo di sorveglianza! Senza considerare che ignora un'esplicita richiesta degli utenti... conta come violazione del GDPR? Giacomo ______ If you set Google Chrome to purge all website cookies and site data when you close the browser, it nonetheless keeps the site data for two specific websites: YouTube and Google itself. So says Mac programmer Jeff Johnson, who documented the naughty behavior in a blog post earlier this month (as earlier reported by The Register). Best Android browsers for your favorite mobile devices How to reset Google Chrome Just in: Nvidia RTX 3080 will miss this killer upgrade "Perhaps this is just a Google Chrome bug, not intentional behavior, but the question is why it only affects Google sites, not non-Google sites," Johnson wrote. "I've tested using the latest Google Chrome version 86.0.4240.75 for macOS, but this behavior was also happening in the previous version of Chrome. I don't know when it started." To set Google to get rid of all site cookies and data every time you quit the browser, go to Settings, then "Privacy and security" and then "Cookies and other site data" and then toggle the switch labeled "Clear cookies and site data when you quit Chrome." In theory, this should work on all sites. But according to Johnson, it doesn't. "Chrome exempts Google's own sites, such as Search and YouTube, from this setting," he wrote. "After I quit and relaunch, the [YouTube] cookies are deleted, but the database storage, local storage, and service workers are still there!" He found the same behavior related to Google.com, but no other websites. How to get around the Google exemption In order to get those sites to comply with Chrome's own rules, Johnson found that he had to manually add Google.com and YouTube.com to the list of sites that can never use cookies at all. (That likely means he'd have to log into Gmail every time he launched Chrome.) We haven't tested this on Windows, but because Chrome behaves pretty much the same way on all desktop platforms, we'd expect the same behavior there. Retaining site data isn't that big a deal, but it does permit Google to track users who might have thought they were exempting themselves from such things. "Many users set Chrome to automatically delete cookies-and-site-data on exit ... to prevent being stalked around the web even though it often requires them to log back into websites the next time they visit due to their per-session cookies being wiped," The Register's Kieren McCarthy noted. McCarthy reached out to Google for comment, and the search giant claimed it was an innocent mistake. "We are aware of a bug in Chrome that is impacting how cookies are cleared on some first-party Google websites," Google told The Register. "We are investigating the issue, and plan to roll out a fix in the coming days."

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Un paio di articoli di ottobre della Communications of the ACM
by Diego.Latella Oct. 27, 2020

Oct. 27, 2020

Buongiorno Vi segnalo questi due articoli, a mio avviso interessanti, pubblicati nel numero di ottobre delle CACM Moshe Y. Vardi What Should Be Done About Social Media? https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3424762 Lorrie Faith Cranor Digital Contact Tracing May Protect Privacy, But It Is Unlikely to Stop the Pandemic Considering the potential benefits versus the risks of privacy-enhancing technologies. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3423993 Diego -- Dott. Diego Latella - Senior Researcher CNR-ISTI, Via Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy (http:www.isti.cnr.it [1]) FM&&T Lab. (http://fmt.isti.cnr.it) http://www.isti.cnr.it/People/D.Latella - ph: +390506212982, mob: +39 348 8283101, fax: +390506212040 =================== I don't quite know whether it is especially computer science or its subdiscipline Artificial Intelligence that has such an enormous affection for euphemism. We speak so spectacularly and so readily of computer systems that understand, that see, decide, make judgments, and so on, without ourselves recognizing our own superficiality and immeasurable naivete with respect to these concepts. And, in the process of so speaking, we anesthetise our ability to evaluate the quality of our work and, what is more important, to identify and become conscious of its end use. […] One can't escape this state without asking, again and again: "What do I actually do? What is the final application and use of the products of my work?" and ultimately, "am I content or ashamed to have contributed to this use?" -- Prof. Joseph Weizenbaum ["Not without us", ACM SIGCAS 16(2-3) 2--7 - Aug. 1986] Links: ------ [1] http://www.isti.cnr.it

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Fwd: UNIDIR Invitation: Neutrality and Peacebuilding in Cyberspace [ 3 November - Geneva Peace Week ]
by Diego Latella Oct. 27, 2020

Oct. 27, 2020

It might be of interest for you All the Best Diego > Begin forwarded message: > > From: UNOG-UNIDIR <unidir(a)un.org> > Subject: UNIDIR Invitation: Neutrality and Peacebuilding in Cyberspace [ 3 November - Geneva Peace Week ] > Date: 27 October 2020 at 10:56:24 CET > To: UNOG-UNIDIR <unidir(a)un.org> > > > > > WHAT: The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), in cooperation with the Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, is pleased to invite you to a roundtable dialogue exploring the concept of neutrality in cyberspace. > > The principle and practice of neutrality in international relations have expanded possibilities for protection but also for managing risks of escalation in the face of geopolitical tension. These contributions and the long history of neutral actors’ engagement in humanitarian action and peacebuilding point to the merits of exploring how values of neutrality can be extended to cyberspace stability and security, which are fundamental to economic prosperity, and social and political participation. > > SPEAKERS: > Kaja Ciglic – Senior Director, Digital Diplomacy, Microsoft > Koichiro Komiyama – Director, Global Coordination Division, JPCERT/CC > Sean Cordey – Researcher, Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich > > The discussion will be moderated by Giacomo Persi Paoli, Lead, UNIDIR Security and Technology Programme. > > WHEN & WHERE: Tuesday, 3 November, 12:00 – 12:50 (CEST), online. > > PARTICIPANTS: The event is open to the public. > > RSVP: Please RSVP here <https://unidir.org/events/neutrality-and-peacebuilding-cyberspace>. For any questions please contact sectec-unidir(a)un.org <mailto:sectec-unidir@un.org>. > > > > > > > > > > > > United Nations Institute > for Disarmament Research > > > > > <http://www.facebook.com/UNIDIRGeneva> <http://www.twitter.com/UNIDIR> <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyH-a8ApVIPjj4Wz3h2LuZw> <http://www.linkedin.com/company/UNIDIR> > www.unidir.org <http://www.unidir.org/> > Palais des Nations > 1211 Geneve, Switzerland > > Tel: +41 22 917 11 41 > Email: unidir(a)un.org <mailto:unidir@un.org> > Dott. Diego Latella - Senior Researcher CNR-ISTI, Via Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy (http:www.isti.cnr.it) FM&&T Lab. (http://fmt.isti.cnr.it) http://www.isti.cnr.it/People/D.Latella - ph: +390506212982, mob: +39 348 8283101, fax: +390506212040 =================== I don't quite know whether it is especially computer science or its subdiscipline Artificial Intelligence that has such an enormous affection for euphemism. We speak so spectacularly and so readily of computer systems that understand, that see, decide, make judgments, and so on, without ourselves recognizing our own superficiality and immeasurable naivete with respect to these concepts. And, in the process of sospeaking, we anesthetise our ability to evaluate the quality of our work and, what is more important, to identify and become conscious of its end use. […] One can't escape this state without asking, again and again: "What do I actually do? What is the final application and use of the products of my work?" and ultimately, "am I content or ashamed to have contributed to this use?" -- Prof. Joseph Weizenbaum ["Not without us", ACM SIGCAS 16(2-3) 2–7, Aug. 1986]

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