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LIVE EPIC ONLINE POLICY PANEL: PRIVACY AND THE PANDEMIC
by Diego.Latella June 1, 2020

June 1, 2020

LIVE EPIC ONLINE POLICY PANEL PRIVACY AND THE PANDEMIC (https://epic.org/events/June3/) JUNE 3, 2020 1 PM - 2 PM ET The COVID-19 pandemic is a global health emergency of unprecedented scale, and countries are deploying a wide range of techniques to respond. EPIC is advocating for greater privacy protection to ensure that the public health response protects individuals. These systems should be lawful and voluntary. There should be minimal collection of personally identifiable information. The techniques should be robust, scalable, and provable. And they should only be used during the pandemic emergency. Our panelists will discuss ways in which governments can protect both public health and privacy, the technology behind digital contact tracing apps, and the Congressional response to privacy and the pandemic. PANELISTS: Jane Bambauer Professor of Law at the University of Arizona Alan Butler Interim Executive Director and General Counsel, EPIC Asad Ramzanali Legislative Director, Representative Anna Eshoo [D-CA-18] Bruce Schneier Internationally renowned security technologist MODERATOR: Anita Allen Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania Law School Chair, EPIC Board of Directors ABOUT EPIC: https://epic.org/epic/about.html -- 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 =================== The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than compulsion; if in the process we learn how to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task. Above all, remember your humanity. -- Sir Joseph Rotblat 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]

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NYTimes: How Your Phone Betrays Democracy
by J.C. DE MARTIN June 1, 2020

June 1, 2020

How Your Phone Betrays Democracy https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/21/opinion/location-data-democr… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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The Future of Neuroscience in National Security - A virtual colloquium organised by the National Academies
by Diego Latella June 1, 2020

June 1, 2020

Ricevo e volentieri ritrasmetto The Future of Neuroscience in National Security A virtual colloquium organised by the National Academies on Wednesday, June 24, 2020 from 11am-5pm EDT https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/06-24-2020/the-future-of-neuroscien… <https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/06-24-2020/the-future-of-neuroscien…> During the event, a panel of experts will explore how developments in neuroscience might be used to create the means to influence behaviors, detect intentions, discern truth telling, affect cognitive performance, and manipulate emotions in individuals. Speakers will also discuss the potential national security implications of this research. Diego 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 =================== The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than compulsion; if in the process we learn how to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task. Above all, remember your humanity. -- Sir Joseph Rotblat =================== 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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Re: [nexa] [Aisa.circuli] Teledidattica e GARR: un (piccolo?) enigma
by Giuseppe Attardi June 1, 2020

June 1, 2020

> On 1 Jun 2020, at 09:53, nexa-request(a)server-nexa.polito.it wrote: > > Maria Chiara Pievatolo, 01/06/20 10:04: >> Salve. >> >> Segnalo anche qui quanto ho scritto altrove, nella speranza che qualcuno >> sia in grado di rispondermi. >> >> Perché buona parte delle università (e delle scuole) hanno affidato la >> teledidattica a piattaforme proprietarie basate su datacenter esteri, >> quando il consorzio GARR, dal 17 marzo, offre risorse gratuite di ottima >> qualità? Buona domanda. Sono stato coordinatore per 4 anni del dipartimento CSD (Cloud) del GARR e ho diretto la costruzione della citata piattaforma cloud del GARR (cloud.garr.it <http://cloud.garr.it/>). La piattaforma è efficiente e moderna, basata interamente si software Open Source (OpenStack e Kubernetes), anzi abbiamo creato noi l’integrazione tra le due piattaforme. Abbiamo investito pesantemente in automazione, per rendere possibile gestire un servizio cosi complesso con le poche persone disponibili. Oltre al classico IaaS, abbiamo introdotto un servizio che abbiamo denominato DaaS (Deployment as a Service), che consente a chino è un sistemista o è digiuno di tecniche di virtualizzazione, di creare in del service applicazioni, scelte da un catalogo. Per esempio, abbiamo in catalogo Moodle, che consente a chiunque con pochi click di attivare una propria istanza d Moodle sul cloud. La abbiamo usata estensivamente, creando decine di istanze quando il GARR eroga corsi di formazione su Moodle o per l’ISS per organizzare le olimpiadi di statistica, che richiedono la creazione al volo di decine di istanze. Qui trovate un video che illustra il funzionamento: https://cloud.garr.it L’architettura del cloud è di tipo federato, per cui è possibile per ciascun istituto di partecipare, creando una propria regione cloud con un certo numero di server, che vengono integrati, in modo automatico, nella federazione e gestiti in forma unitaria. Tutto è documentato sul sito. Abbiamo insegnato come fare diversi paesi dell’Est che volevano lanciare la propria cloud. In Grecia hanno adottato la nostra soluzione per i loro cloud della ricerca. Purtroppo le università hanno largamente ignorato l’esistenza del servizio, preferendo fare accordi per acquistare servizi cloud da privati tramite la Fondazione CRUI. Lo stesso GARR è stato molto timido, non riuscendo in 4 anni a definire una politica di tariffe per l’uso del servizio. A settembre ho lasciato il mio incarico, dopo aver chiesto di fare chiarezza su quanto il GARR intendeva investire nello sviluppo della piattaforma. Gli altri soci del GARR hanno dimostrato scarso interesse: il nuovo direttore dell’INFN ha dichiarato che intendeva svilupparsi una propria cloud, il CNR è rimasto evasivo, l’INAF ha detto che a loro la cloud non serve. >> >> IL GARR è "un’associazione senza fini di lucro fondata sotto l’egida del >> Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca. I soci >> fondatori sono CNR, ENEA, INFN e Fondazione CRUI, in rappresentanza di >> tutte le università italiane" (https://www.garr.it/it/chi-siamo <https://www.garr.it/it/chi-siamo>). >> >> La privacy dei suoi servizi si vede qui: >> https://cloud.garr.it/terms/#privacy <https://cloud.garr.it/terms/#privacy>Sì, ho scritto io quel testo e ho fatto in modo di ottenere la certificazione ISO 27001 per i servizi cloud del GARR, al fine di rendere il servizio abilitato tra i servizi CSP di Agid, come richiede la normativa. >> e qui: >> https://www.garr.it/it/chi-siamo/informazioni-utili/informativa-privacy <https://www.garr.it/it/chi-siamo/informazioni-utili/informativa-privacy> >> E fra le istanze Jitsi in http://iorestoacasa.work <http://iorestoacasa.work/> quella del GARR è la >> migliore di quelle da me sperimentate. Il GARR ha contribuito i propri server all’iniziativa. >> Però buona parte delle >> università, salvo eccezioni >> (https://poliflash.polito.it/in_ateneo/il_politecnico_digitale_al_via_con_su… <https://poliflash.polito.it/in_ateneo/il_politecnico_digitale_al_via_con_su…> >> …) ha preferito MS e Google. >> >> Non era una scelta inevitabile o, se lo era, era giustificabile solo >> all'inizio dell'emergenza, per i motivi che sono chiari, per esempio, al >> governo francese: >> https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/outils-agents/webconference-etat/ <https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/outils-agents/webconference-etat/> >> >> e che valgono a fortiori per una funzione delicata come l'insegnamento. >> >> Eppure, incredibilmente, le pagine dedicate del MIUR >> (https://www.istruzione.it/coronavirus/didattica-a-distanza.html <https://www.istruzione.it/coronavirus/didattica-a-distanza.html> >> "Piattaforme") indicano solo piattaforme commerciali, dando >> l'impressione (fuorviante) di un paese talmente povero da non avere >> un'infrastruttura telematica propria per la didattica e la ricerca e di >> affidarsi a privati i cui termini di servizio su privacy e copyright >> sono discutibili >> (http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2020/05/27/emergency-remote-teaching-a… <http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2020/05/27/emergency-remote-teaching-a…>). >> >> >> Perché le istituzioni italiane, a partire dal M(i)ur, ignorano il Garr, >> vale a dire se stesse, e consigliano piattaforme commerciali >> proprietarie - cioè raccomandano il Tavernello del discount come se non >> sapessero di avere in cantina dell'ottimo Barolo? Già. Aggiungo che gestire in proprio i servizi costituirebbe parte della missione di università e ricerca, perché non si possono conoscere le cose, se non facendole. Inoltre eviteremmo il lock-in su piattaforme proprietarie, che è ben peggiore del lock-in su software proprietario. Ho cercato di dare voce alle preoccupazioni de tecnici che lavorano nelle università e che vedono a rischio il loro mestiere, trasferito in outsourcing a cloud service provider. Ma la loro voce si è persa e i rettori preferiscono liberarsi di una grana e del personale, allo scopo di ridurre i costi. Scelta alquanto miope secondo me, perché dotarsi di una piattaforma cloud nazionale, non solo avrebbe ricadute rilevanti sullae nostre competenze, ma costituisce anche un investimento in infrastrutture che moltiplica i suoi benefici, con le ricadute che avrebbe nel facilitare le ricerche, nella possibilità d aggregare dati su una piattaforma condivisa, ecc. Nei miei contatti con il team digitale di Piacentini prima e della Pisano ora, si era ipotizzata la costituzione di un cloud nazionale della ricerca, da affiancare al cloud della PA. Da realizzare con requisiti e caratteristiche speciali per la ricerca. Per esempio avevo progettato un aggiornamento dell’architettura, bastata su una soluzione hyperconverged all-flash, utilizzando dischi SSD da 15TB di cui avevo trovato un fornitore a basso costo. Ma purtroppo ero il solo a pensare queste cose. — Beppe >> >> Non è una domanda retorica: chiedo per sapere. >> >> A presto, >> MCP

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For all those concerned about election integrity (in the era of e-voting)
by Diego Latella June 1, 2020

June 1, 2020

------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 May 2020 14:22:08 PDT From: "Peter G. Neumann" <neumann(a)csl.sri.com <mailto:neumann@csl.sri.com>> Subject: Election Integrity in RISKS I finally decided to update a subsection of my very out-of-date http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/illustrative.pdf <http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/illustrative.pdf> summary of RISKS issues, and have now created a version that summarizes all of the RISKS items relating to Election Integrity. It is 16 pages two-columned in fine print, which should give you an idea of how relevant this topic has been in past issues of RISKS: http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/risks-voting.pdf <http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/risks-voting.pdf> 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 =================== The quest for a war-free world has a basic purpose: survival. But if in the process we learn how to achieve it by love rather than by fear, by kindness rather than compulsion; if in the process we learn how to combine the essential with the enjoyable, the expedient with the benevolent, the practical with the beautiful, this will be an extra incentive to embark on this great task. Above all, remember your humanity. -- Sir Joseph Rotblat =================== 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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130° Mercoledì di Nexa | 10 Giugno 2020 | Modalità Telematica
by Nexa Media June 1, 2020

June 1, 2020

Gentilissimi, a seguito delle disposizioni adottate per far fronte all'emergenza da Covid-19, vi segnaliamo che il 130° Mercoledì di Nexa, *"Potere computazionale. L'impatto delle ICT su diritto, società, sapere"*, con ospiti il Prof.*Massimo Durante *(Università di Torino e Fellow Centro Nexa) e il Prof. *Luciano Floridi* (University of Oxford), si svolgerà *mercoledì 10 giugno, dalle ore 18.00 alle ore 20.00*, in *modalità telematica*, utilizzando il software open source di conference call *Jitsi Meet*. Per chi vorrà partecipare live al seminario sarà possibile accedere alla conference call attraverso il seguente link: https://meet.nexacenter.org/MercolediNexa Nexa Center for Internet and Society Newsletter Se non visualizzi correttamente questo messaggio clicca qui <https://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-130> NEXA 130° Mercoledì di Nexa Mercoledì 10 giugno 2020, ore 18.00 - 20.00 Politecnico di Torino https://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi-130 Potere computazionale. L’impatto delle ICT su diritto, società, sapere Speaker Prof. Massimo Durante (Università di Torino e Fellow Centro Nexa) e Prof. Luciano Floridi (University of Oxford) This event will be webcast live: https://nexa.polito.it/nexa-hangout-on-air L'INCONTRO SI SVOLGERÀ IN MODALITÀ TELEMATICA UTILIZZANDO IL SOFTWARE DI CONFERENCE CALL *JITSI MEET*. Per partecipare all'incontro: https://meet.nexacenter.org/MercolediNexa Deleghiamo decisioni e compiti ad *agenti artificiali*, *meccanismi di apprendimento automatico*, *procedure algoritmiche*, in breve, a *sistemi computazionali*. Tutto ciò non vuole portarci sulla Luna, rimpiazzare gli esseri umani con legioni di androidi, creare scenari fantascientifici /à la/ Matrix o programmare la Macchina di /Person of Interest/. Si tratta di una *rivoluzione del quotidiano*: tanto più profonda, inosservata e diffusa quanto più investe la trama delle nostre abitudini e forme di vita. Come tutte le grandi rivoluzioni si radica nelle pratiche correnti. È a questo livello che i suoi effetti devono essere studiati e valutati secondo una precisa linea d’indagine, che mette a tema la *questione del potere computazionale*. Che cosa è, dunque, il *potere computazionale*? A chi appartiene? Come si esercita? L’uso di tale potere non si limita a *processare dati* e a *produrre risorse e informazioni*, spesso concentrandole nelle mani di pochi, ma *genera anche nuove forme del sapere*: una *diversa rappresentazione della realtà*, popolata ormai da agenti autonomi, sistemi d’intelligenza artificiale, robot e altri modelli computazionali. Chi si adatterà alla rappresentazione di chi? Tocca a noi, pertanto, riaffermare i valori di fondo e le regole del gioco necessari a trasformare una *lotta per il potere*, condotta sul terreno del sapere, in una *competizione leale e trasparente*. BIOGRAFIE - e informazioni supplementari [mercoledì129] *Massimo DURANTE * is Associate Professor in Philosophy of Law at the Department of Law of the University of Turin. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Law, Department of Law, University of Turin, and a Ph.D. in Moral Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Paris IV Sorbonne. He teaches courses in Legal Informatics, Law and Technology, and Philosophy of Law at the Department of Law, University of Turin. He is member of the Board of the International Ph.D. Program “Law, Science, and Technology”. His main fields of research concern the relationship between Law and Technology, Computer and Information Ethics, Privacy and Data Protection. Author of several books, he has widely published papers, essays, and book chapters in Italian, English and French. Member of editorial boards and peer-reviewer for several international reviews, he has been involved in many research projects in the fields of Philosophy of Law, Legal Informatics, and ICTs policies. *Luciano FLORIDI* is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford, where he directs the Digital Ethics Lab (DELab) of the Oxford Internet Institute. He is also Faculty Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute (ATI), the British National Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, where he is Chairman of the Data Ethics Group. Among the many awards, the most recent are: the CogX 2019 Award for "Outstanding Achievement in the Field of AI Ethics"; the IBM Thinker Award 2018 and the CRUI 2018 Award to Knowledge. Her most recent book in Italian, /La Quarta Rivoluzione – Come l’infosfera sta trasformando il mondo/, was translated by Cortina and is a winner of the J. Ong Award. *Lettura consigliata:* * Massimo Durante, /Potere computazionale. L’impatto delle ICT su diritto, società, sapere/, pubblicato da Meltemi nel 2019 nella Collana “Filosofia delle scienze e dintorni” diretta da Giovanni Boniolo, in corso di traduzione in lingua inglese per essere pubblicato presso Routledge nella Collana “Antinomies” diretta da Anthony Elliott e Jennifer Rutherford. Che cosa sono il Centro Nexa e i cicli di incontri “Mercoledì di Nexa” e “Nexa Lunch Seminar” <https://www.facebook.com/nexa.center/> <https://twitter.com/nexacenter> <https://www.youtube.com/user/NexaCenter> #lucianofloridi <https://twitter.com/Floridi> #nexawednesday <https://twitter.com/search?q=%23nexawednesday&src=typd> Il Centro Nexa su Internet & Società del Politecnico di Torino (Dipartimento di Automatica e Informatica) dal 2006 è un centro di ricerca indipendente e interdisciplinare che, in collaborazione con l'Università di Torino, studia Internet (e più in generale le Tecnologie digitali) e i suoi rapporti con la società. Maggiori informazioni all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/about. Durante i “*Mercoledì di Nexa*”, che si tengono *ogni 2° mercoledì del mese* alle *ore 18 in punto*, il Centro Nexa su Internet e Società apre le sue porte non solo agli esperti e a tutti coloro i quali lavorano con Internet, ma anche a semplici appassionati e cittadini. Il ciclo di incontri intende approfondire, con un linguaggio preciso ma accessibile, i temi legati alla Rete: motori di ricerca, Creative Commons, social networks, open source/software libero, neutralità della rete, libertà di espressione, privacy, file sharing, big e open data, smart cities e molto altro. Al centro di quasi tutti gli incontri un ospite pronto a dialogare con i direttori del Centro Nexa, il Prof. Juan Carlos De Martin del Politecnico di Torino e il Prof. Marco Ricolfi dell'Università di Torino, nonché lo staff e i Fellows del Centro Nexa. Maggiori informazioni sui Mercoledì di Nexa, incluso un elenco di tutti i “Mercoledì” passati, sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/mercoledi. Si segnala inoltre che dal maggio 2012 *ogni 4° mercoledì* del mese *dalle ore 13 alle ore 14* il Centro Nexa organizza anche i "*Nexa Lunch Seminar*". Una lista di tutti i “Lunch Seminar” passati è disponibile all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/lunch-seminars. See our events calendar <http://nexa.polito.it/events> if you're curious about future luncheons, discussions, lectures, and conferences not listed in this email. Our events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Responsabile Comunicazione Centro Nexa su Internet & Società: *Anita Botta*, tel: +39 011 090 7219, Mob: +39 347 131 3903, anita.botta(a)polito.it <mailto:anita.botta@polito.it>. Maggiori informazioni sui Mercoledì di Nexa e i Nexa Lunch Seminar, sono disponibili all'indirizzo: http://nexa.polito.it/events. Weekly Events Newsletter. Sign up <http://nexa.polito.it/mailing-lists> to receive this newsletter if this email was forwarded to you. To manage your subscription preferences, please click here <https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa>. Connect & get involved: Jobs, internships, and more <http://nexa.polito.it/get-involved>. Cordiali saluti, -- Anita Botta Communication Manager Nexa Center for Internet & Society Politecnico di Torino – DAUIN Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino _web:_ https://nexa.polito.it/ _mail:_anita.botta@polito.it <mailto:anita.botta@polito.it> tel: 011 090 7219

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Facebook and the “Free Speech” Excuse | The New Yorker
by J.C. DE MARTIN May 30, 2020

May 30, 2020

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/facebook-and-the-free-speech-e… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Intervento su StopCovid
by Philippe Aigrain May 30, 2020

May 30, 2020

Sono stato invitato questa mattina sul giornale di France24 (canale pubblico internazionale) per parlare di StopCovid. Il video è qui: http://paigrain.debatpublic.net/?p=10164 C'e anche un post più dettagliato prima dell'approvazione dell'app da parte del parlamento: Stop StopCovid, http://paigrain.debatpublic.net/?p=10151 Philippe

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The Culture War in Open Source is On - The challenges to open source's "noble neutrality."
by Giacomo Tesio May 30, 2020

May 30, 2020

<https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-culture-war-in-open-source-is-on> Perhaps you remember Eric S. Raymond from his memorable essay “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” or his advice to programmers on “not reacting like a loser,” or his enthusiasm for guns. Regardless, the legendary open-source coder and commentator recently made a brief comeback to the Open Source Initiative, an organization he co-founded in 1998. On February 24, he announced on an OSI email list that “a wild co-founder appears” after being absent for many years. By February 28, after denouncing the “political ratfucking” and “vulgar Marxism” he perceived to be infecting the organization, he was removed from the list for violating the code of conduct—the existence of which he had also railed against. The previous month, also, Raymond’s OSI co-founder Bruce Perens withdrew his membership over an apparently unrelated dispute about a software license. These happenings are not unrelated, really. They are part of what has been variously called “the culture war at the heart of open source” and “the great open source shake-up.” The disputes concern the decades-old legal technology at the heart of the movement known variously as “free software” or “open source”: software licenses, particularly ones that turn proprietary code into a common good. The conflicts at hand raise questions about ethics and economics that the open source establishment believes have long been answered and can be put away for good. Oh, and as programmer Steve Klabnik notes in passing, without further explanation, “I personally think that gender plays a huge role.” Richard Stallman, originator of the first free-and-open license, resigned from the Free Software Foundation last year over comments sympathetic to the late billionaire and molester Jeffrey Epstein. The reputation of Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig also took a hit for defending one of Epstein’s enablers. Maybe all this set a mood, heightened the intensity. It is probably not an accident that, in a world where ~95% percent of GitHub contributors identify as male, several of the major partisans in this culture war do not. The bug that has been lurking in the open source codebase all along, for the partisans, might be best summarized as neutrality. The OSI’s Open Source Definition prohibits value judgments about such things as “fields of endeavor,” business models, and technology stacks. The Free Software Foundation puts the idea this way: “The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.” As long as the code remains free and open, users—whether individual or corporate—should not be constrained by a license in what they do or how they make money. Any such constraint, the argument goes, is a slippery slope. During his brief return to OSI’s email lists, Raymond quoted Thomas Paine: “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” Restrict others, and it will come back to haunt you. The challenges to this noble neutrality come in two forms: ethics and economics. On the first front, there is the Ethical Source Movement, the doing of Ruby developer and Model View Culture contributor Coraline Ada Ehmke, against whom Raymond’s worst recent vitriol has been directed. Ethical Source builds on the waves of tech workers rebelling against their bosses for taking contracts with the likes of the Pentagon and ICE. Ethical Source offers its own counter-definition to OSI’s, outlining a type of license that allows developers to restrict certain uses of their software. The handful of compliant licenses prohibit violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for instance, or International Labour Organization standards. The promise is some peace of mind for programmers and perhaps a more ethical world; the danger is a mess of unenforceable licenses whose prohibitions become impossible to keep track of. The second challenge is economic. This has long been a sore spot in open source, which has largely outsourced its economics to companies that might contribute employee time or grants to what projects are building. Those companies also get a lot of the financial rewards, leaving many contributors to offer their unpaid free time—an unequally available resource. New lawyerly efforts, such as Heather Meeker’s PolyForm Project and Kyle E. Mitchell’s License Zero, offer menus of licenses designed to enable certain popular business models. The code is still “source available”—anyone can read it, and use it under certain terms—but there are restrictions to prevent some company from taking it and profiting from others’ work. One PolyForm license permits only small businesses to use the software for free; big corporations have to pay. Again, though, critics fear a free-for-all of licenses that end up piling on restrictions and constraining the commons. Let me get back to that question of gender. From the perspective of the “meritocracy” ideal familiar in tech culture—and much maligned in these pages—the neutrality principle makes sense. The spree of new license-making is confounding. Forget money, forget ideology, we’ll judge you by your code! But through the lens of feminist thought, the challenges should come as no surprise. For instance, feminists have been really good at noticing the undervalued, under-noticed labor propping up everything else—because often it is women doing that stuff. Why not make sure that people creating open code are also the ones receiving financial benefits? Especially since women tend to have far less free time on their hands, getting paid matters. Meanwhile, feminists have stressed that there is really no value-neutral, objective, meritocratic vantage point. All knowledge is situated. There is no excuse for dispensing with ethical discussion and ethical standards. Why not find reasonable ways for groups to articulate and enforce the standards they hold? The more you look at open source through a feminist lens—as I’ve done at greater length elsewhere—the more those two-decade-old certainties start to crack. We need to see those cracks to build better tools. People often talk about open source as a commons, but if you go back and read Elinor Ostrom’s studies on pre-digital practices of commoning around the world, you’ll find that there are some important things missing. (She didn’t identify her work with feminism, but she is still the first woman to have won the Nobel in economics.) Ostrom recognized boundary-making as an essential practice for commoners—defining who is a member and what purpose the commons serves, whether economic, social, or otherwise. She also found that a healthy commons depends on participants having a voice in changing its rules and norms, which is a far cry from the dictatorships-for-life that tend to rule open source. If open source listened better to the legacy of commoning before it, projects wouldn’t just choose a license, they would start by adopting a governance structure and finding a place to manage funds. They would plan for economic and ethical self-determination—autonomy was another principle Ostrom emphasized—rather than outsourcing those matters to corporate whims. Anyway, it is only natural that open source contributors should want to hack the process, not just the software they write. For all that open source has achieved, there is so much more that it hasn’t. “The year of the Linux desktop” has turned from an expectation to a joke, unless you count Google’s Android and Chromebooks. The open Web has closed shut. Surveillance-powered corporate platforms have accumulated power because of, not despite, open source. And the staggering homogeneity that still persists among open source developers testifies to the talent and life experience that their projects are missing. If the early architects of open source feel threatened by a new generation demanding more, that is probably a sign of progress.

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White House: "Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship"
by J.C. DE MARTIN May 30, 2020

May 30, 2020

*Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship* /Issued on: May 28, 2020/ By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Policy. Free speech is the bedrock of American democracy. Our Founding Fathers protected this sacred right with the First Amendment to the Constitution. The freedom to express and debate ideas is the foundation for all of our rights as a free people. In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand pick the speech that Americans may access and convey on the internet. This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic. When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power. They cease functioning as passive bulletin boards, and ought to be viewed and treated as content creators. The growth of online platforms in recent years raises important questions about applying the ideals of the First Amendment to modern communications technology. Today, many Americans follow the news, stay in touch with friends and family, and share their views on current events through social media and other online platforms. As a result, these platforms function in many ways as a 21st century equivalent of the public square. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube wield immense, if not unprecedented, power to shape the interpretation of public events; to censor, delete, or disappear information; and to control what people see or do not see. […] Continua qui: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-…

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