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"A European strategy for data "
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 3, 2020

April 3, 2020

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS A European strategy for data Documento (PDF, 35 pagin) in allegato. juan carlos

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Move Fast & Roll Your Own Crypto: A Quick Look at the Confidentiality of Zoom Meetings - The Citizen Lab
by Alberto Cammozzo April 3, 2020

April 3, 2020

<https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto-a-quick-look-a…> This report examines the encryption that protects meetings in the popular Zoom teleconference app. We find that Zoom has “rolled their own” encryption scheme, which has significant weaknesses. In addition, we identify potential areas of concern in Zoom’s infrastructure, including observing the transmission of meeting encryption keys through China. Key Findings Zoom documentation claims that the app uses “AES-256” encryption for meetings where possible. However, we find that in each Zoom meeting, a single AES-128 key is used in ECB mode by all participants to encrypt and decrypt audio and video. The use of ECB mode is not recommended because patterns present in the plaintext are preserved during encryption. The AES-128 keys, which we verified are sufficient to decrypt Zoom packets intercepted in Internet traffic, appear to be generated by Zoom servers, and in some cases, are delivered to participants in a Zoom meeting through servers in China, even when all meeting participants, and the Zoom subscriber’s company, are outside of China. Zoom, a Silicon Valley-based company, appears to own three companies in China through which at least 700 employees are paid to develop Zoom’s software. This arrangement is ostensibly an effort at labor arbitrage: Zoom can avoid paying US wages while selling to US customers, thus increasing their profit margin. However, this arrangement may make Zoom responsive to pressure from Chinese authorities. [...]

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"Singapore, vado a Singapore…"
by Antonio Casilli April 3, 2020

April 3, 2020

Singapore to shut down workplaces and schools - contact tracing isn't effective enough. Prime minister says "despite our good contact tracing, for nearly half of these [new] cases, we do not know where or from whom the person caught the virus." https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/most-workplaces-to-close-scho… -- Antonio A. Casilli Professor, Telecom Paris, Institut Polytechnique de Paris Member, Interdisciplinary Institute for Innovation (i3 UMR 9217 CNRS) Associate Member, LACI-IIAC (EHESS) Faculty Fellow, Nexa Center for Internet & Society *We respect your right to disconnect. This email send time is due to my own workflow efficiency. You are in no obligation to take action or reply to it outside your office hours.*

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noyb.eu report on video conferencing privacy policies
by Alberto Cammozzo April 3, 2020

April 3, 2020

<https://noyb.eu/en/interrupted-transmission> The outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has forced many people to work from home. Video conferencing tools and other remote means of communication make this possible, transforming our homes into our offices. They also help keep us connected with friends and family, regardless of where they are. Video conferencing tools literally open a lens into our homes. The personal and professional spheres are increasingly merging. We phone with our parents and children, discuss business strategy with our colleagues, and perhaps relax with our yoga teacher after work, following her flow in front of our screen. While we appreciate how video conferencing tool providers facilitate all this, the intimacy they permit calls for an equally intimate look into their compliance with EU data protection law. We zoomed in on the privacy policies of six tools: Zoom, Webex Meetings (Cisco), Meeting (LogMeIn), Skype and Teams (both Microsoft), and Wire. While the video quality of the investigated tools may often be crystal clear, and the user interfaces well-thought out, the service providers’ privacy policies do not meet this standard. Static in the form of “may” or “might”, “as necessary”, or “as required by law” cloud the picture. Sometimes whole parts are missing, such as information about basic GDPR rights. Finally, poor structure makes accessing the available information challenging. Video conferencing providers need to work on meeting their information obligations under the GDPR. Read the full report <https://noyb.eu/sites/default/files/2020-04/noyb_-_report_on_privacy_polici…>

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Palantir in Talks With Germany, France for Virus-Fighting Tool
by Enrico Bergamini April 3, 2020

April 3, 2020

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/palantir-in-talks-with-g…

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SARS-CoV-2 Tracking under GDPR - Max Shrems -NoYB- Ad hoc Paper (V0.2)
by Alberto Cammozzo April 3, 2020

April 3, 2020

<https://noyb.eu/sites/default/files/2020-04/Ad%20hoc%20Paper_Corona%20Track…> In the wake of the Corona crisis, many governments and non-governmental institutions consider the usage of infection tracking systems to fight the pandemic. They float different ideas how these systems shall look like (see examples here). While reviewing some of those ideas, noyb has prepared this ad hoc paper on legal requirements for virus tracking systems. While this paper can give a general and superficial overview of the minimal requirements of the GDPR and possible compliance strategies, it naturally remains abstract and needs to be adapted to any specific tracking project. We feel that compliance with baseline privacy protections is crucial for the acceptance of any such tracking system by the public. This paper is not a policy document and does not make any political assessment of different tracking approaches. It also does not attempt to assess which processing operations would be necessary from a medical or statistical perspective. Max Schrems Chairperson, noyb.eu We intend to update this paper over the next days and weeks. Please check for the latest version of this paper on noyb.eu. 1. SCOPE OF THIS PAPER (TRACKING APPS) This paper is focused on known technical methods to tracking infections of individuals with SARS-CoV-2. These approaches focus on interactions between individuals where such interaction happens in a sufficiently close physical proximity and long enough for the virus to be transmitted – but between individuals that are not intimate enough to inform each other about their infection status without the use of a digital tracking system. Realistic scenarios are e.g. encounters with co-travelers on a train or bus or longer interactions in stores, restaurants and alike. In contrast, the tracking of briefly passing stranger on the street (as the interaction is usually not intense enough) or the tracking of co-workers or family members (as they are known to the infected person anyways) seem to be of limited benefit. This paper does not cover the use of personal data for statistical purposes or policy assessments (like mobile phone data analysed for movement statistics) or the use of personal data for the surveillance of quarantined persons. [...]

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Biometrics entrepreneurs say they're talking to governments fighting Covid-19 | Biometric Update
by Alberto Cammozzo April 3, 2020

April 3, 2020

<https://www.biometricupdate.com/202004/biometrics-entrepreneurs-say-theyre-…> Facial recognition was so hot for a while that most elevator pitches for biometrics seemed to at least name-checked it, hoping some cool would rub off. Now, facial recognition is hot in a different sense and some biometrics entrepreneurs are adamant that their idea is not facial recognition. Take for example the biometrics startup Traces AI (formally known as Traces Inc.), which sells services based on algorithms that track people appearing on video by noticing 2,000 parameters of a person, none of which is on their face. In an interview with Forbes.com, Traces AI Founders Veronika Yurchuk and Kostyantyn Shysh said they are talking with multiple Asian nations about using their service after the fact — to trace the contacts of people who test positive for the novel coronavirus. No further details have been released. Working from an image or a description, the software pores over frames from standard camera networks as small as eight (and with no top end). It searches for and tracks attributes including age and build, hair color and style, clothing and bags, watches and jewelry, phones and glasses. Faces are blurred. The Palo Alto, California company is a product of Y Combinator, which invested $150,000 in Traces AI last August. The founders have acknowledged in news coverage that during live searches, such as after a crime, its service’s usefulness degrades rapidly. Limitations on facial recognition continues to be debated, with a handful of states, cities and counties banning or debating a ban of the use by public agencies, businesses or both. Then there is the infamous case of web scraper Clearview AI, which has, without permission trawled social media to collect billions of face images posted to social media. But even factoring out opposition to face scanning, there still are practicalities to consider. Most significant, CCTV cameras as a rule are placed above people in order to monitor medium to large areas. And much of the urban population of Asia — especially in pollution-choked China — wear masks, making faces less useful in surveilling people. Traces AI is not the first player in biometrics to see bodies as valuable bits of evidence that artificial intelligence can gather. Researchers at the University of Maryland’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, for example, have developed an algorithm capable of correctly reading a person’s mood 82 percent of the time by analyzing how a person walks.

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epidemic control with digital contact tracing - Science
by Giuseppe Attardi April 3, 2020

April 3, 2020

Articolo su Science. Quantifying SARS-CoV-2 transmission suggests epidemic control with digital contact tracing A contact-tracing App which builds a memory of proximity contacts and immediately notifies contacts of positive cases can achieve epidemic control if used by enough people. By targeting recommendations to only those at risk, epidemics could be contained without need for mass quarantines (‘lock-downs’) that are harmful to society. We discuss the ethical requirements for an intervention of this kind. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/30/science.abb6936 <https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/30/science.abb6936>

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A few links of interest [notsp]
by Diego.Latella April 3, 2020

April 3, 2020

Dear All, A few links of interest, I hope Diego 1) Interview by Lucas Perry with Paul Scharre: AI Alignment Podcast: On Lethal Autonomous Weapons with Paul Scharre https://futureoflife.org/2020/03/16/on-lethal-autonomous-weapons-with-paul-… 2) AI and Facial Recognition: Challenges and Opportunities https://edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/blog/ai-and-facial-rec… 3) It is useful to circulate this message from ACA https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2020-04/focus/pandemic-reveals-misplaced-pr… -- Dott. Diego Latella - Senior Researcher - CNR/ISTI, Via Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, IT (http:www.isti.cnr.it [1]); FM&&T Laboratory (http://fmt.isti.cnr.it) http://www.isti.cnr.it/People/D.Latella - phone: +39 0503152982 - mob: +39 348 8283101 - fax +39 0503152040 Links: ------ [1] http://www.isti.cnr.it

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Automated decision-making systems and the fight against COVID-19 – our position – AlgorithmWatch
by J.C. DE MARTIN April 2, 2020

April 2, 2020

https://algorithmwatch.org/en/our-position-on-adms-and-the-fight-against-co… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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