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Inside the Invasive, Secretive “Bossware” Tracking Workers
by Giovanni Biscuolo July 4, 2020

July 4, 2020

Buongiorno, non fosse stato per la fonte (EFF) lo avrei scambiato per un articolo di Lercio [1]... poi proseguendo la lettura il mio sorriso si è trasformato in smorfia di disgusto. Pare non ci sia proprio nessun pudore, nessuna vergogna, nessuna etica che riesca ad evitare al genere umano di precipitare a simili livelli (c'è di peggio, lo so!). Ai giuristi in lista: *se* venisse fatta una cosa del genere in Italia da una azienda qualsiasi, in particolare da una multinazionale, il lavoratore potrebbe opporsi, sempre che abbia il coraggio di farlo e le competenze per scoprirlo? (Nota: la tabella "stralciata" dall'articolo e riportata più sotto viene visualizzata bene solo se si usa un font "monospaced") «Inside the Invasive, Secretive “Bossware” Tracking Workers» Bennett Cyphers, Karen Gullo; 1 Jul 2020 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/inside-invasive-secretive-bossware-tr… --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- COVID-19 has pushed millions of people to work from home, and a flock of companies offering software for tracking workers has swooped in to pitch their products to employers across the country. [...] What can they do? Bossware typically lives on a computer or smartphone and has privileges to access data about everything that happens on that device. Most bossware collects, more or less, everything that the user does. We looked at marketing materials, demos, and customer reviews to get a sense of how these tools work. There are too many individual types of monitoring to list here, but we’ll try to break down the ways these products can surveil into general categories. [...] Every product we looked at has the ability to take frequent screenshots of each worker’s device, and some provide direct, live video feeds of their screens. This raw image data is often arrayed in a timeline, so bosses can go back through a worker’s day and see what they were doing at any given point. Several products also act as a keylogger, recording every keystroke a worker makes, including unsent emails and private passwords. A couple even let administrators jump in and take over remote control of a user’s desktop. These products usually don’t distinguish between work-related activity and personal account credentials, bank data, or medical information. [...] Some bossware goes even further, reaching into the physical world around a worker’s device. Companies that offer software for mobile devices nearly always include location tracking using GPS data. At least two services—StaffCop Enterprise and CleverControl—let employers secretly activate webcams and microphones on worker devices. There are, broadly, two ways bossware can be deployed: as an app that’s visible to (and maybe even controllable by) the worker, or as a secret background process that workers can’t see. Most companies we looked at give employers the option to install their software either way. [...] Invisible monitoring The majority of companies that build visible monitoring software also make products that try to hide themselves from the people they’re monitoring. Teramind, Time Doctor, StaffCop, and others make bossware that’s designed to be as difficult to detect and remove as possible. At a technical level, these products are indistinguishable from stalkerware. In fact, some companies require employers to specifically configure antivirus software before installing their products, so that the worker’s antivirus won’t detect and block the monitoring software’s activity. [...] The table below shows the monitoring and control features available from a small sample of bossware vendors. This isn’t a comprehensive list, and may not be representative of the industry as a whole; we looked at companies that were referred to in industry guides and search results that had informative publicly-facing marketing materials. Table: Common surveillance features of bossware products Activity Screenshots or Keylogging Webcam/ Can be made monitoring screen microphone "invisible" (apps, recordings activation websites) ActivTrak confirmed confirmed confirmed CleverControl confirmed confirmed confirmed confirmed confirmed (1, 2) DeskTime confirmed confirmed confirmed Hubstaff confirmed confirmed Interguard confirmed confirmed confirmed confirmed StaffCop confirmed confirmed confirmed confirmed confirmed (1, 2) Teramind confirmed confirmed confirmed confirmed TimeDoctor confirmed confirmed confirmed Work Examiner confirmed confirmed confirmed confirmed WorkPuls confirmed confirmed confirmed [...] Some of the biggest companies in the world use bossware. Hubstaff customers include Instacart, Groupon, and Ring. Time Doctor claims 83,000 users; its customers include Allstate, Ericsson, Verizon, and Re/Max. ActivTrak is used by more than 6,500 organizations, including Arizona State University, Emory University, and the cities of Denver and Malibu. Companies like StaffCop and Teramind do not disclose information about their customers, but claim to serve clients in industries like health care, banking, fashion, manufacturing, and call centers. Customer reviews of monitoring software give more examples of how these tools are used. [...] Unfortunately, many use cases involve employers wielding excessive power over workers. Perhaps the largest class of products we looked at are designed for “productivity monitoring” or enhanced time tracking—that is, recording everything that workers do to make sure they’re working hard enough. Some companies frame their tools as potential boons for both managers and workers. Collecting information about every second of a worker’s day isn’t just good for bosses, they claim—it supposedly helps the worker, too. Other vendors, like Work Examiner and StaffCop, market themselves directly to managers who don’t trust their staff. These companies often recommend tying layoffs or bonuses to performance metrics derived from their products. [...] Some firms also market their products as punitive tools, or as ways to gather evidence for potential worker lawsuits. InterGuard advertises that its software “can be silently and remotely installed, so you can conduct covert investigations [of your workers] and bullet-proof evidence gathering without alarming the suspected wrongdoer.” This evidence, it continues, can be used to fight “wrongful termination suits.” In other words, InterGuard can provide employers with an astronomical amount of private, secretly-gathered information to try to quash workers’ legal recourse against unfair treatment. [...] Unfortunately, excessive information collection often isn’t an accident, it’s a feature. Work Examiner specifically advertises its product’s ability to capture private passwords. Another company, Teramind, reports on every piece of information typed into an email client—even if that information is subsequently deleted. Several products also parse out strings of text from private messages on social media so that employers can know the most intimate details of workers’ personal conversations. [...] Companies that have adopted bossware must consider what their goals are, and should try to accomplish them in less-intrusive ways. Bossware often incentivizes the wrong kinds of productivity—for example, forcing people to jiggle their mouse and type every few minutes instead of reading or pausing to think. Constant monitoring can stifle creativity, diminish trust, and contribute to burnout. If employers are concerned about data security, they should consider tools that are specifically tailored to real threats, and which minimize the personal data caught up in the process. [...] COVID-19 has put new stresses on us all, and it is likely to fundamentally change the ways we work as well. However, we must not let it usher in a new era of even-more-pervasive monitoring. We live more of our lives through our devices than ever before. That makes it more important than ever that we have a right to keep our digital lives private—from governments, tech companies, and our employers. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Saluti, Giovanni. [1] https://www.lercio.it/stati-generali-renzi-propone-scudo-legale-anche-per-g… -- Giovanni Biscuolo

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Il caso Assange e il futuro della nostra società.
by Giovanni Biscuolo July 3, 2020

July 3, 2020

Cari nexiani, contrariamente a quanto (giustamente) in uso in lista, l'oggetto dell'email è mio, non è il titolo dell'articolo: ci tenevo a DRAMMATIZZARE il discorso. Per analogia con quanto detto da Fico ieri in merito a Regeni, quanto sta succedendo ad Assange è un calcio in faccia, con gli anfibi, alla libertà di ciascuno di noi. Non credo di esagerare dicendo che il «caso Assange» è un punto di non ritorno, dopo il quale sarà impossibile per l'occidente sostenere quello che ha sostenuto fino a tre secondi fa. «Wikileaks-Hosted "Most Wanted Leaks" Reflects the Transparency Priorities of Public Contributors» Kurt Opsahl, Wed 1 Jul 2020 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/wikileaks-hosted-most-wanted-leaks-re… --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- The government recently released a superseding indictment[1] against Wikileaks editor in chief Julian Assange, currently imprisoned and awaiting extradition in the United Kingdom. As we’ve written before, this prosecution poses a clear threat to journalism, and, whether or not Assange considers himself a journalist, the indictment targets routine journalistic practices such as working with and encouraging sources during an investigation. [...] Rather than viewing this document as a wishlist generated by Wikileaks staff or a reflection of Assange’s personal priorities, we must understand that this was a publicly-generated list developed by contributors who felt each “wanted” document offered information that would be valuable to the public. [...] The Most Wanted Leaks page shows that it has visible “edit” links, similar to what one might find on any wiki page. [...] It’s easy to understand why. The government prosecutors are trying to paint a picture of Assange as a mastermind soliciting leaks, and is charging him with violating computer crime law and the Espionage Act. It doesn’t suit their narrative to show Wikileaks as a host for a crowdsourced page where activists, scholars, and government accountability experts from across the globe could safely and anonymously offer their feedback on the transparency failures of their own governments. [...] We’ve long argued that working with sources to obtain classified documents of public importance is a well-established and integral part of investigative journalism and protected by the First Amendment. [...] Many of the documents on the Most Wanted Leaks page are of clear public interest. Some of the documents requested by editors of the page include: * Lists of domains that are censored (or on proposed or voluntary censorship lists) in China, Australia, Germany, and the U.K. * In Austria, the source code for e-Voting systems used in student elections. * Documents detailing the Vatican’s interactions with Nazi Germany. * Profit-sharing agreements between the Ugandan government and oil companies * PACER - the United States’ federal court record search database. While today it’s in the government’s interest to paint Wikileaks as a rogue band of hackers directed by Assange, the Most Wanted Leaks page epitomizes one of the most important features of Wikileaks: that as a publisher, it served the public interest. Wikileaks served activists, human rights defenders, scholars, reformers, journalists and other members of the public. With the Most Wanted Leaks page, it gave members of the public a platform to speak anonymously about documents they believed would further public understanding. It’s an astonishingly thoughtful and democratic way for the public to educate and communicate their priorities to potential whistleblowers, those in power, and other members of the public. The ways Wikileaks served and furthered the public interest doesn’t fit the prosecution’s litigation strategy. If Assange goes to court to combat the Espionage charges he is facing, he may well be prevented from discussing the public interest and impact of Wikileaks’ publication history. That’s because the Espionage Act, passed in 1917, pre-dated modern communications technology and was never designed as a tool to crack down on investigative journalists and their publishers. There’s no public interest defense to the Espionage Act, and those charged under the Espionage Act may have no chance to even explain their motivation or the impact—good or bad—of their actions. [...] Regardless of how you feel about Assange as a person, we should all be concerned about his prosecution. If found guilty, the harm won’t be just to Assange himself—it will be to every journalist and news outlet that will face legal uncertainty for working with sources to publish leaked information. And a weakened press ultimately hurts the public’s ability to access truthful and relevant information about those in power. And that is directly against the public interest. Read the new charges against Assange. [1] A superseding indictment means that the government is replacing its original charges with new, amended charges. [2] The Most Wanted Leaks document was also submitted in Chelsea Manning’s trial. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-wikileaks-most-wanted-list-admitt… --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- -- Giovanni Biscuolo

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Dati interessanti
by don Luca Peyron July 3, 2020

July 3, 2020

The world has changed dramatically over the first three months of 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic impacting almost every aspect of our lives. These changes have been clearly evident in the world’s digital behaviours too, especially as billions of people turn to connected devices to help them cope with life and work under lockdown. We’ve dedicated a significant portion of our Digital 2020 April Global Statshot Report to exploring these extraordinary trends, but this update also includes all of the usual data points that we cover in our ongoing series of Global Digital Reports too, including detailed analysis of how people around the world are using the internet, social media, mobile devices, and ecommerce. https://wearesocial.com/blog/2020/04/digital-around-the-world-in-april-2020 _________________________ 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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"Eric Schmidt: I Used to Run Google. Silicon Valley Could Lose to China."
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 3, 2020

July 3, 2020

*Eric Schmidt: I Used to Run Google. Silicon Valley Could Lose to China.* /We can’t win the technology wars without the federal government’s help./ By Eric Schmidt Dr. Schmidt is the chairman of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and the Defense Innovation Board. He is the former chairman and C.E.O. of Google. Feb. 27, 2020 America’s companies and universities innovate like no other places on earth. We are garage start-ups, risk-taking entrepreneurs and intrepid scholars exploring new advances in science and technology. But that is only part of the story. Many of Silicon Valley’s leaders got their start with grants from the federal government — including me. My graduate work in computer science in the 1970s and ’80s was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. [...] continua qui: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/opinion/eric-schmidt-ai-china.html

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Mise: online la Strategia italiana per l’Intelligenza artificiale
by don Luca Peyron July 2, 2020

July 2, 2020

Buona lettura dl https://www.mise.gov.it/images/stories/documenti/Proposte_per_una_Strategia… _________________________ don Luca Peyron Direttore Ufficio per la Pastorale Universitaria Arcidiocesi di Torino via XX settembre 83, Torino tel. 011 5156239

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"Don't Believe Proven Liars": The Absolute Minimum Standard of Prudence in Merger Scrutiny
by Giacomo Tesio July 2, 2020

July 2, 2020

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/dont-believe-proven-liars-absolute-mi… Anti-monopoly enforcement has seen a significant shift since the 1970s. Where the Department of Justice once routinely brought suits against anticompetitive mergers, today, that's extremely rare, even between giant companies in highly concentrated industries. (The strongest remedy against a monopolist—breaking them up altogether—is a relic of the past). Regulators used to go to court to block mergers to prevent companies from growing so large that they could abuse their market power. In place of blocking mergers, today's competition regulators like to add terms and conditions to them, exacting promises from companies to behave themselves after the merger is complete. This safeguard continues to enjoy popularity with competition regulators, despite the fact that companies routinely break their public promises to safeguard users’ privacy and rarely face consequences for doing so. (These two facts may be related!) When they do get sanctioned, the punishment almost never exceeds the profits from the broken promise. "A fine is a price." Today, we'd like to propose a modest, incremental improvement to this underpowered deterrent: If a company breaks its promise, and then it makes the same promise when seeking approval for a merger, we should not believe it. Read on for three significant broken promises we'd be fools to believe again. > "There's a sucker born every minute" -Traditional > (often misattributed to PT Barnum) Amazon promised not to use data from the sellers on its platform to launch competing products. It lied. In the summer of 2019, Amazon's General Counsel Nate Sutton made the company's position crystal clear when he told Congress, "We don't use individual seller data directly to compete." In April, the Wall Street Journal spoke to 20 former Amazon employees who said they did exactly this, confirming the suspicions of Amazon sellers, who'd been told that it was just a coincidence that the world's largest online retailer kept cloning the most successful products on its platform. > "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, > but expecting different results." -Rita Mae Brown > (often misattributed to Albert Einstein) In 2014, Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19b, and promised users that it wouldn't harvest their data and mix it with the surveillance troves it got from Facebook and Instagram. It lied. Years later, Facebook mixes data from all of its properties, mining it for data that ultimately helps advertisers, political campaigns and fraudsters find prospects for whatever they're peddling. Today, Facebook is in the process of acquiring Giphy, and while Giphy currently doesn’t track users when they embed GIFs in messages, Facebook could start doing that anytime. > "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. > The third time it’s enemy action." -Ian Fleming In 2007, Google bought DoubleClick, a web advertising network. It promised not to merge advertising data with Google user profiles. It lied. Like most Big Tech companies, much of Google's growth comes from buying smaller companies. Because Google's primary revenue source is targeted advertising, these mergers inevitably raise questions about data-mining. As Google’s role in online advertising is under scrutiny, antitrust enforcers must not accept a new “We mean it, this time. Seriously, guys” promise to protect user data. It would be easy to argue that promises made in a formal settlement with antitrust enforcers will carry more weight than mere public statements about what a company will do. But those public promises can keep customers unaware, and enforcers away, as the company extends its dominance. Those promises have to mean something. Hiding privacy abuses behind false promises “ ">effectively raises rivals’ costs, as they try to compete against what appears to be high quality, but is, in truth, low quality.” That could raise antitrust liability. An overhaul to competition enforcement is long past due, but while that's happening, can we take the absolute smallest step toward prudent regulation and stop believing liars when they tell the same lies? ____ Credo che a Cory Doctorow sfugga che il governo USA non è ingenuo. Non si fa fregare da queste aziende: controlla il resto del mondo attraverso di esse. Giacomo

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"Il primato di Amazon nella consegna dei pacchi finisce sotto osservazione"
by J.C. DE MARTIN July 2, 2020

July 2, 2020

*Il primato di Amazon nella consegna dei pacchi finisce sotto osservazione** */ //L'Agcom riconosce una posizione dominante del colosso dell'ecommerce nel mercato del recapito delle merci. Si prospetta uno scontro// / di Luca Zorloni 2 Jul, 2020 https://www.wired.it/economia/business/2020/07/02/amazon-pacchi-agcom/

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GDPR e intelligenza artificiale
by Diego Giorio July 1, 2020

July 1, 2020

Non mi sembra fosse ancora passato in lista questo studio del Parlamento Europeo suoi rapporti fra GDPR e intelligenza artificale https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=EPRS_ST… Saluti a tutti D.

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Fwd: Barbara Simons Receives 2019 ACM Policy Award
by Diego.Latella July 1, 2020

July 1, 2020

ACM Bulletin Archives July 1, 2020 Barbara Simons Receives 2019 ACM Policy Award Barbara Simons was named the recipient of the 2019 ACM Policy Award for long-standing, high-impact leadership as ACM President and founding Chair of ACM's US Public Policy Committee (USACM, now USTPC), while making influential contributions to improve the reliability of and public confidence in election technology. Over several decades, Simons has advanced technology policy by founding and leading organizations, authoring influential publications, and effecting change through lobbying and public education. Now part of ACM's Technology Policy Council (TPC), which serves global regions, the TPC groups have continued Simons' original vision for ACM: to provide cogent advice and analysis to legislators and policymakers about a wide range of issues including cryptography, computer security, privacy, and intellectual property. Simons is internationally known as an expert on voting technology, an advocate for auditable paper-based voting systems, and author of numerous papers on secure election technology. Through her publications, reports, testimony to the US Congress, and advocacy, Simons has been a key player in persuading election officials to shift to paper-based voting systems, and has contributed to proposals for reforms in election technologies. Simons served as ACM President from 1998 to 2000. Since 2008, Simons has served as one of two US Senate appointees to the Board of Advisors of the US Election Assistance Commission, and she was named Chair of the Board of Advisors subcommittee on election security in 2019. She currently also chairs the Board of Directors of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that advocates for legislation and regulation that promotes accuracy, transparency and verifiability of elections. She remains active with ACM as a member of the global Technology Policy Council and as Co-chair of USTPC's Voting subcommittee. Read the ACM news release. Association for Computing Machinery 1601 Broadway, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10019-7434 Copyright (c) 2020, ACM, Inc. All rights reserved You are subscribed with: diego.latella(a)CNR.IT Unsubscribe Connect with us: https://www.facebook.com/pages/ACM-Association-for-Computing-Machinery/1792… https://twitter.com/TheOfficialACM https://www.linkedin.com/company/association-for-computing-machinery?trk=na… https://www.youtube.com/user/TheOfficialACM https://www.instagram.com/theofficialacm/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/theofficialacm

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face recognition a detrit
by Stefano Quintarelli July 1, 2020

July 1, 2020

face recognition a Detroit https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/detroit-police-chief-admits-fac… sbaglia solo il 95-97% delle volte ciao, s. -- reserve your meeting with me at https://cal.quintarelli.it

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