- nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

The Privacy Shield Fell — Now What?
by Giacomo Tesio Aug. 20, 2020

Aug. 20, 2020

Personal data flows between countries as fast as dollars and euros. The current of personal data between US companies and European citizens was abruptly switched off after Europe’s top court killed a trans-Atlantic agreement that allows data to move between the European Union and the United States. This means that any transfer of information from EU citizens to US companies is now in legal limbo. Are you reading this on a mobile phone? Your browsing information is transferred to the US. Every time you type a message on your phone in Rome, the predictive keyboard transfers data to Google or Apple across the pond. Or say you wedge a Tesla through the narrow streets of Amsterdam — that data flies right over to the US. Without the legal framework of the Privacy Shield, all of these daily activities are technically illegal. What’s Next Companies have to rethink their data transfer and storage policies before they become outlaws. It won’t be easy. Any firm that collects and manages the data of European citizens must sift through their applications and storage policies, and storing data in European availability zones from US-based companies won’t be a workaround anymore. Tech titans like Google and Facebook are diving for loopholes, arguing that the ECJ left the system of standard contractual clauses (SCCs) in place, the section of the Privacy Shield that facilitates data transfer. But with the Privacy Shield down, the SCCs won’t help them export EU data, says Carlo Piana, who has been practicing IT law in Europe since 1995. What used to be fairly straightforward — like storing logs from a server in one of the many available EU data centers — won’t fly now. “It’s a lot more difficult to confine data from applications like speech recognition in mobile phones to Europe,” Carlo explains. While the court didn’t strike them down directly, the SCCs are only valid if they respect the same standards of protections granted by European laws. The trouble? Those same companies fall under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) jurisdiction, rendering SCCs invalid. Lawmakers are heading back to the drawing board. The US Chamber of Commerce is already in damage-control mode — see the letter they fired off — backed by thousands of companies urging governments to “develop a stable and sustainable mechanism for companies to transfer data between the European Union and the United States” or risk denting the $1.1 trillion in total trade in goods and services between the two. Continua su https://www.dataversity.net/the-privacy-shield-fell-now-what/ Giacomo

1 0

Amazon can be liable for third-party sellers’ defective products, appeals court rules
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 20, 2020

Aug. 20, 2020

Decisioni parecchio significativa, anche se locale Buona lettura dl https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/13/21367966/amazon-liable-defective-product… _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

1 0

British Grading Debacle Shows Pitfalls of Automating Government - The New York Times
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 20, 2020

Aug. 20, 2020

<https://twitter.com/HUCKmagazine/status/1294985562106015750> <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/world/europe/uk-england-grading-algorith…> Even after a final term with schools closed for the pandemic, Sam Sharpe-Roe was optimistic about the coming school year. Teachers from his West London school had given him grades — three A’s and one B — that were strong enough to secure him a spot at his first choice of university next month. But after the British government used a computer-generated score to replace exams that were canceled because of the coronavirus, all his grades fell and the college revoked his admission. Mr. Sharpe-Roe, along with thousands of other students and parents, had received a crude lesson in what can go wrong when a government relies on an algorithm to make important decisions affecting the public. Experts said the grading scandal was a sign of debates to come as Britain and other countries increasingly use technology to automate public services, arguing that it can make government more efficient and remove human prejudices. But critics say the opaque systems often amplify biases that already exist in society and are typically adopted without sufficient debate, faults that were put on clear display in the grading disaster. Nearly 40 percent of students in England saw their grades reduced after the government re-evaluated the exams, known as A-levels, with the software model. It included in its calculations a school’s past performance on the tests and a student’s earlier results on “mock” exams. Government officials said the model was meant to make the system more fair, balancing out potentially inflated scores given by some teachers. But students and their parents, particularly those from lower-income areas with struggling schools, were outraged that their futures had been turned over to lines of code that favored students from private schools and wealthy areas. [...]

1 0

Germany′s military-run transport fleet hacked | News | DW | 16.08.2020
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 20, 2020

Aug. 20, 2020

<https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-military-run-transport-fleet-hacked/a-545842…> Germany's military-run transport fleet hacked Germany's state-owned vehicle fleet, which provides chauffeurs for parliamentarians and is run by the Bundeswehr military, has been hacked. Federal cyber experts have begun a probe, reports the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. German government cars Germany's Bundestag administration and federal parliamentarians were told Friday that unknown hackers had infiltrated the FuhrparkService (BWFU) transport fleet, reported the Sunday newspaper BamS (Bild am Sonntag). "Last week, there was an attack on the company's IT network by an as yet unidentified external party," Germany's defense ministry added on Saturday. Headquartered at Troisdorf, near Bonn, the BWFU is run by Germany's Bundeswehr military and comprises 33,500 vehicles, including trucks, and chauffeur-driven cars assigned to parliamentarians, including those in Berlin. Read more: Germany: Third of small and mid-sized companies have been hacked Last year, it provided 142,000 such chauffeur services for the Bundestag parliament and BaMs said it was possible the hackers could have obtained politicians' private addresses and other sensitive details such as times booked and locations. Parliament's own information technology system was hacked in 2015. Last May, Chancellor Angela Merkel told the Bundestag there was "hard evidence" that Russian intelligence had been behind that infiltration. The BWFU fleet and driver service, established in 2002 as a state-owned company, operates from 160 locations across Germany and recruits its own certified drivers. The Bundeswehr military has a three-quarter majority holding in the fleet service; German Rail (Deutsche Bundesbahn) a one quarter stake.

1 0

Automated and partly automated contact tracing: a systematic review to inform the control of COVID-19 - The Lancet Digital Health
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 20, 2020

Aug. 20, 2020

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(20)30184-9/… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

1 0

Splinternet. Gli Usa e Mike Pompeo vogliono rompere l’internet globale?
by dgiorio＠hotmail.com Aug. 19, 2020

Aug. 19, 2020

1 0

What Can America Learn from Europe About Regulating Big Tech?
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 19, 2020

Aug. 19, 2020

Una storia interessante, buona lettura dl https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/what-can-america-learn-… _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

1 0

The German Constitutional Court Nixes Foreign Surveillance - Lawfare
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 19, 2020

Aug. 19, 2020

https://www.lawfareblog.com/german-constitutional-court-nixes-foreign-surve… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

1 0

Secret government tracking software hidden in apps - Android Authority
by Alberto Cammozzo Aug. 18, 2020

Aug. 18, 2020

<https://www.androidauthority.com/government-tracking-apps-1145989/> A new report today from The Wall Street Journal exposes yet another concerning development when it comes to mobile phone tracking. According to the report, at least one federal contractor puts government tracking software in over 500 mobile applications. The contractor — a Virginia-based company called Anomaly Six LLC — pays mobile developers to include its in-house tracking code within their apps. The trackers then collect anonymized data from our phones and Anomaly Six aggregates that data and sells it to the US government. It sounds crazy, but it’s happening. What’s more, it appears it’s totally legal. See also: US-China trade war: Why every Chinese phone maker should prepare for the worst Government tracking: What you need to know The report from The Wall Street Journal makes it clear that the tracking software from Anomaly Six appears in over 500 mobile applications. However, Anomaly Six would not disclose the apps with which it has partnerships. The WSJ was unable to glean this information through other methods. One would assume you could dive into the terms of service agreements of popular apps and find references to Anomaly Six. That would be a waste of time, though, because app developers don’t need to disclose the Anomaly Six tracker to users. Therefore, you could have one or even dozens of apps with Anomaly Six’s government tracking code and you would have no idea. The tracking code used by this federal contractor does not need to be disclosed to the user by the app on which it's running. To be clear, the data Anomaly Six collects is anonymized. Each smartphone is attached to an alphanumeric identifier that isn’t linked to the name of the phone’s owner. Of course, there are plenty of ways one could use “anonymous” data such as these to figure out who owns the device. For example, the device will likely be idle at night while the owner sleeps, and the device’s location at that time is likely the owner’s home. Once you have that info, it isn’t hard to start concluding other user habits, such as where they work, what they use to commute, where they go out to eat, etc. Since Anomaly Six doesn’t disclose its government tracking software, there’s no way to opt-out. In brief: you are being tracked and your smartphone habits are being sold to the government and there’s nothing you can do about it. How is this legal? Since the idea of tracking location data via smartphones is still so new, laws and regulations related to the practice are behind the curve. Since the data Anomaly Six collects is technically anonymous and since it isn’t selling the data for commercial purposes — i.e. advertising or marketing — it’s fine to do this within the eyes of the law. Related: Is selling your privacy for a cheaper phone really a good idea? The big question, though, is what the government is doing with this data. Is it just keeping tabs on its citizens? Does it use it for law enforcement purposes? Is it using it as a counter-terrorism tactic? There are a lot of questions here, but Anomaly Six has no intention of answering them. According to the company, the business it conducts is considered confidential (although technically not classified), so it can’t elaborate on its business partners without their strict permission. Obviously, that permission isn’t likely to be easy to get.

2 1

Material Called Pedot the Answer to Connecting Humans to AI?
by don Luca Peyron Aug. 18, 2020

Aug. 18, 2020

Scientists have discovered a ground-breaking bio-synthetic material that they claim can be used to merge artificial intelligence with the human brain. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/artificial-i… _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino www.universitari.to.it via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

1 0