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Google Is Basically Daring the US to Block Its Fitbit Deal | WIRED
by Alberto Cammozzo Nov. 24, 2019

Nov. 24, 2019

<https://www.wired.com/story/google-fitbit-project-nightingale-antitrust/> Google’s plan to buy Fitbit took chutzpah from the start. The company was already being investigated by Congress, state attorneys general, and federal antitrust regulators, a reflection of growing alarm over a conglomerate whose dominant market share is built on unrivaled access to personal data. Now it was announcing a $2.2 billion acquisition of a firm with troves of the most intimate details of its users’ physical health, from their heart rate to their exercise routines to how many hours they sleep at night. Fitbit was apparently worried enough about the threat of the deal being blocked that it negotiated a $250 million breakup fee in case of “a failure to obtain Antitrust Approvals.” A week later, almost on cue, Makan Delrahim, the top antitrust official at the Department of Justice, suggested at a conference at Harvard that federal enforcers might start treating data privacy as a relevant issue in evaluating mergers. “It would be a grave mistake to believe that privacy concerns can never play a role in antitrust analysis,” he said. So there was some reason to wonder whether the Google-Fitbit deal would be the first casualty of the growing antitrust techlash. And that was all before the Wall Street Journal reported this week on Google’s Project Nightingale, a mostly secret deal with one of the country’s largest nonprofit hospital networks granting Google free access to tens of millions of complete, nonanonymized patient records, which it is using to train an AI platform that will be able to customize patient care. (This is apparently legal, somehow, under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.) In return for the data, according to the Journal, the hospital network, Ascension, will get free use of the new software, which Google intends to sell to other health care providers. In a blog post after the story came out, Google Cloud executive Tariq Shaukat wrote, “All of Google’s work with Ascension adheres to industry-wide regulations (including HIPAA) regarding patient data, and come [sic] with strict guidance on data privacy, security and usage.” That didn’t stop the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services from announcing an investigation into the project on Wednesday. Together, the Fitbit merger and Project Nightingale present an immediate challenge to Delrahim’s claim that antitrust regulators are ready to treat data collection as a competition issue. Since the late 1970s, the federal government’s approach to merger review has essentially narrowed to the question of whether the reduction in competition caused by two companies combining will be bad for consumers. That analysis has in turn tended to focus even more narrowly on whether the post-merger firm will raise prices. Bringing user data concerns into antitrust, as Delrahim suggested, would require asking a similar question: Will the reduction in competition lead to consumers having to accept inferior privacy protections? “What I’m telling my students is, this is a great test case,” said Maurice Stucke, an antitrust expert at the University of Tennessee College of Law. “The agencies say they’re concerned about these data-opolies. They’re going to scrutinize their data-driven acquisition of these smaller firms. Here you have this established firm that’s already established a significant treasure trove of personal data. So, is anything going to change?” [...]

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"Google Is Basically Daring the Government to Block Its Fitbit Deal"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Nov. 24, 2019

Nov. 24, 2019

*Google Is Basically Daring the Government to Block Its Fitbit Deal* /The company’s moves into health data will test how serious antitrust enforcers are about privacy issues.// / Google’s plan to buy Fitbit took chutzpah from the start. The company was already being investigated by Congress, state attorneys general, and federal antitrust regulators, a reflection of growing alarm over a conglomerate whose dominant market share is built on unrivaled access to personal data. Now it was announcing a $2.2 billion acquisition of a firm with troves of the most intimate details of its users’ physical health, from their heart rate to their exercise routines to how many hours they sleep at night. Fitbit was apparently worried enough about the threat of the deal being blocked that it negotiated a $250 million breakup fee in case of “a failure to obtain Antitrust Approvals.” […] Continua qui: https://www.wired.com/story/google-fitbit-project-nightingale-antitrust/

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burocrazia ricorsiva (autoreferenziale)
by Giovanni Biscuolo Nov. 24, 2019

Nov. 24, 2019

Buon giorno, il buon Andrea Trentini mi ha segnalato questa, che voglio condividere con voi. A pagina 3 di questo documento http://famiglia.governo.it/media/1718/faq.pdf (rif. http://famiglia.governo.it/it/notizie/notizie/avvisi-e-bandi/nuovo-avviso-c…) si legge: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- La procedura prevede prima l’invio tramite PEC da parte del soggetto proponente, alla casella conciliamo(a)pec.governo.it, della proposta progettuale al Dipartimento. Successivamente il soggetto proponente dovrà procedere all’invio tramite PEC, alla medesima casella conciliamo(a)pec.governo.it, della ricevuta di avvenuta consegna della PEC contenente la proposta progettuale. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Viva la PEC ricorsiva! Saluti. Gio' P.S.: non so se è l'unico caso, ma mi diverte moltissimo :-) -- Giovanni Biscuolo Xelera IT Infrastructures

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Vostro evento NEXA sull'innovazione ... alcune considerazioni alla femminina :-)
by Agata Lo Tauro Nov. 24, 2019

Nov. 24, 2019

Buongiorno a tutti... Se parli d'innovazione prima devi avere l'idea (il proposal/abstract) e poi implementi networking / *partnership* ... Devi anche parlare di bandi e di opportunità, ovviamente... poche parole e tanti fatti? :-) (ho anche lavorato all'*Innovation Relay Centre*... "si fa quel che si può") Bastano pochissime considerazioni alla femminina? :-) Please let me know if I can be of further help. Have a great day agata https://it.linkedin.com › agata-lo-tauro-6723257b <https://it.linkedin.com/in/agata-lo-tauro-6723257b>

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L’Unione Europea a sostegno delle imprese ICT
by Agata Lo Tauro Nov. 23, 2019

Nov. 23, 2019

Vi inoltro il seguente link sperando di fare cosa gradita https://www.assintel.it/eventi/ue-sostegno-delle-imprese-ict/ cari saluti, agata https://it.linkedin.com › agata-lo-tauro-6723257b <https://it.linkedin.com/in/agata-lo-tauro-6723257b>

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Turkey adds autonomous facial recognition kamikaze drones to military portfolio | Biometric Update
by Alberto Cammozzo Nov. 23, 2019

Nov. 23, 2019

<https://www.biometricupdate.com/201911/turkey-adds-autonomous-facial-recogn…> A major player in the engineering and defense industries, Turkish defense contractor Defense Technologies Engineering and Trade Inc. (STM) is providing 30 KARGU (Autonomous Tactical Multi-Rotor Attack UAV) kamikaze drones with biometric facial recognition that will be part of the Turkish Armed Forces portfolio as of 2020, writes Daily Sabah. Deployed in military operations at the Syrian border and equipped with higher ammo capacity and accuracy, the drones can easily destroy an entire brigade and warship. They have artificial intelligence systems and can carry a variety of explosives. The drones use facial recognition to detect human targets and can “autonomously fire-and-forget through the entry of target coordinates,” according to a new PAX report. Although the report warns about the negative effects AI-driven military weapons could have if weapons are allowed “autonomously select and attack targets,” thus losing human control over them, there are a number of lethal autonomous weapons either already in use or in development. Similar to the Turkish drones, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has developed the Mini Harpy that “loiters in the air waiting for the target to appear and then attacks and destroys the hostile threat within seconds.” “These companies are on a slippery slope to an all-out AI arms race,” said Frank Slijper, author of the report surveying 50 arms producers. “Publicly, arms companies claim they will never develop weapons that can operate without human control on lethal action, but they are developing that very technology with no safeguards that require a human in the loop.” STM first presented the drones at DSEI (Defense & Security Equipment International) 2019 in London in September. The drone family consists of three platforms ALPAGU (Fixed Wing, Portable Smart Munition System), KARGU (Rotary Wing, Portable Smart Munition System), and TOGAN (Multi-Rotor Surveillance UAS). “Technologies we develop and produce with local and national capabilities undertake important tasks for the security of Turkey while we continue to strengthen our position in the international defense market with foreign demands for our products and services,” explained Omer Korkut, STM Chief Technology Officer. “We have export and business development activities in more than 20 countries from the Far East to South America. On the international stage provided by DSEI 2019, we aim to develop new business partnerships, especially for our target markets while taking our existing partnerships to the next level. We are confidently moving towards becoming a global player by continuing our investments with the goal of export-oriented growth.” According to the Dutch peace organization, in the past ten years, the number of autonomous weapons manufacturers has skyrocketed, with China, Russia, Poland and Turkey stepping up as top investors, over ranking the US and Israel. After examining 50 companies, PAX is not only pushing for human control, but also for a government-backed international treaty to outlaw lethal autonomous weapons.

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Project **Nightmare** - raccolta segreta dati sanitari in USA
by Giovanni Biscuolo Nov. 23, 2019

Nov. 23, 2019

Buon giorno! vi inoltro sotto un articolo appena letto su Il Fatto Quotidiano l'articolo originale del Wall Street Journal è (via Wayback Machine :-D ) https://web.archive.org/web/20191112002342/www.wsj.com/articles/google-s-se… Mi "diverte" il fatto che Ascension [1] sia una no-profit cattolica Ci sarà pure un giudice in Illinois?!? :-D Non sono sicuro che in Europa gli addetti ai lavori abbiamo adeguata sensibilità per evitare che certi giochini vengano perpetrati anche in salsa "continental welfare", d'altronte lo farebbero per il nostro bene: “improve outcomes, reducing costs, and saving lives” saluti, Giovanni. https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2019/11/12/%e2%80%8egoogle-avrebbe-raccolt… --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- Google avrebbe raccolto in segreto i dati sanitari di milioni di pazienti statunitensi, scrive il Wall Street Journal Milioni di dati sanitari personali di pazienti statunitensi sarebbero finiti nelle mani di Google senza alcuna autorizzazione esplicita, nell’ambito di quello che viene chiamato Project Nighingale. A rivelarlo è il Wall Street Journal. Secondo il prestigioso quotidiano, ‎Google sta lavorando a fianco di uno dei più grandi sistemi sanitari della nazione, Ascension, per raccogliere e analizzare i risultati di laboratorio dei pazienti, le diagnosi dei medici e i registri di ospedalizzazione dei pazienti di ben 21 stati, creando così una storia sanitaria completa per ciascuno di loro, includendo anche dati come nome e data di nascita. L’obiettivo è di mettere a punto un nuovo software che usa Intelligenza Artificiale e deep learning per fornire suggerimenti sulle cure, ma per farlo Google non ha ricevuto il consenso esplicito dei pazienti o dei loro medici.‎ I dati raccolti riguardano decine di milioni di pazienti e sembrerebbe che siano accessibili ad almeno 150 dipendenti Google. Una situazione che suscita forti perplessità ma che a quanto pare non è esattamente illegale. Secondo alcuni esperti statunitensi in materia di privacy, infatti, questo tipo di raccolta dati sarebbe ammissibile ai sensi dell’Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, una legge del 1996 che consente agli ospedali di condividere i dati con le imprese senza avvisare i pazienti.‎ Al di là della legalità formale di certe azioni restano però molti dubbi sulla facilità con cui gli attuali colossi del Web possono collezionare e usare i dati di milioni di utenti inconsapevoli al fine di sviluppare nuove soluzioni commerciali, come in questo caso, per non parlare delle numerose situazioni in cui sono i dati stessi a rappresentare il prodotto da cui ricavare nuovi introiti. Non scopriamo infatti oggi che assai spesso i nostri dati, benché aggregati e non riconducibili ai singoli, siano ceduti a terze parti al fine di effettuare profilature per campagne pubblicitarie e, purtroppo, sempre più spesso anche politiche. Negli Stati Uniti le associazioni per i diritti civili come le ACLU (American Civili Liberties Union), sono da tempo sul piede di guerra e in generale il dibattito sulla possibilità di utilizzare o meno database formati da dati sensibili di cittadini inconsapevoli è assai caldo, soprattutto per quanto riguarda il riconoscimento facciale. Di recente ad esempio nell’Illinois una class action intentata nei confronti di Facebook potrebbe costare al colosso una stangata da ben 35 miliardi di dollari, proprio a causa dell’utilizzo dei dati biometrici senza previa autorizzazione esplicita, operazione che analogamente a quella di Google sui dati sanitari, è legale, ma non nello Stato dell’Illinois. --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(company) -- Giovanni Biscuolo Xelera IT Infrastructures

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Raccolta di dati "for Common Good"... sounds good? :-)
by Agata Lo Tauro Nov. 23, 2019

Nov. 23, 2019

https://www.norden.org/en/news/data-common-good-nordic-approach-artificial-… cari saluti a tutti & have a great week-end, :-) agata https://it.linkedin.com › agata-lo-tauro-6723257b <https://it.linkedin.com/in/agata-lo-tauro-6723257b> <https://www.google.com/search?q=agata+lo+tauro&oq=agata&aqs=chrome.0.69i59l…> 1. <https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ACYBGNTTl9voROIq2ErRXzXqIGaXNfCyIQ:1574…>

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Amnesty International: Facebook and Google’s pervasive surveillance poses an unprecedented danger to human rights
by Alberto Cammozzo Nov. 23, 2019

Nov. 23, 2019

<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/11/google-facebook-surveillance…> Facebook and Google’s omnipresent surveillance of billions of people poses a systemic threat to human rights, Amnesty International warned in a new report as it called for a radical transformation of the tech giants’ core business model. Surveillance Giants lays out how the surveillance-based business model of Facebook and Google is inherently incompatible with the right to privacy and poses a systemic threat to a range of other rights including freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of thought, and the right to equality and non-discrimination. “Google and Facebook dominate our modern lives – amassing unparalleled power over the digital world by harvesting and monetizing the personal data of billions of people. Their insidious control of our digital lives undermines the very essence of privacy and is one of the defining human rights challenges of our era,” said Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of Amnesty International. [...]

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Facebook built internal facial-recognition camera app, sources say - Business Insider
by Alberto Cammozzo Nov. 23, 2019

Nov. 23, 2019

FB continua a usare i propri utenti cone cavie inconsapevoli per esperimenti... Alberto <https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-built-internal-facial-recognition-…> Facebook once built an internal app that let employees identify people using facial recognition and their phone cameras. The app, which was developed between 2015 and 2016, utilized Facebook's vast collection of user identities to automatically recognize the person at whom the phone's camera was pointed. The app was not released publicly, and Facebook told Business Insider that it worked only on company employees and any of their friends who opted in to the social network's facial-recognition system. "As a way to learn about new technologies, our teams regularly build apps to use internally. The apps described here were only available to Facebook employees, and could only recognize employees and their friends who had face recognition enabled," a Facebook spokesperson said. The existence of the app illustrates how Facebook has been quick to experiment with technology that could have significant societal implications. Facebook once built an internal facial-recognition app that allowed employees to identify people by pointing their phone cameras at them. The app, which was developed by Facebook employees between 2015 and 2016 and tested internally, relied on information from the social network's vast collection of user-uploaded photos and facial-recognition data to identify people in real life within seconds, sources told Business Insider. It was shown off at an internal all-hands meeting in 2015, one source said, and was presented as an "example of future innovations" that Facebooks' technology and data could enable. A second source said that in 2016 a beta version of the app was made available for download to Facebook employees that used a smartphone camera to identify anyone for whom the social network had enough data — regardless of whether or not they were a Facebook employee. It was subsequently restricted to identify only people recognized as Facebook friends of the app user (still regardless of whether or not they were an employee), and they used the app on their friends only after that change was made, they said. A Facebook spokesperson denied that the app could ever identify strangers who didn't work at Facebook, saying that it was able to recognize only the faces of Facebook employees and of Facebook friends of the user who had enabled the social network's facial-recognition system on their accounts. The app was clearly in its early stages and had a basic camera interface, a source said. When pointed at someone, it would take about three to five seconds to recognize them, and then displayed their Facebook name and profile picture. For years, Facebook has used facial-recognition technology to identify the subjects of photos uploaded to its core social network and recommend "tagging" them — but the version available to consumers has been applied only to photos and never for real-time real-world face recognition. In September, Facebook said it would change to make facial recognition an opt-in feature, rather than assuming by default that users consent to having their faces scanned. The existence of the experimental app, which has not been previously reported, highlights Facebook's willingness to experiment with technologies with major societal implications. And it raises questions about the $564 billion company's historic approach to privacy and consent, and its handling of users' data. A Facebook spokesperson said the company routinely builds experimental apps internally, and that the facial-recognition app has since been discontinued. "As a way to learn about new technologies, our teams regularly build apps to use internally. The apps described here were only available to Facebook employees, and could only recognize employees and their friends who had face recognition enabled," said the Facebook spokesperson in a prepared statement.

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