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Google chief: I'd disclose smart speakers before guests enter my home - BBC News
by Alberto Cammozzo Oct. 19, 2019

Oct. 19, 2019

<https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50048144> It's an admission that appears to have caught Google's devices chief by surprise. After being challenged as to whether homeowners should tell guests smart devices - such as a Google Nest speaker or Amazon Echo display - are in use before they enter the building, he concludes that the answer is indeed yes. "Gosh, I haven't thought about this before in quite this way," Rick Osterloh begins. "It's quite important for all these technologies to think about all users... we have to consider all stakeholders that might be in proximity." And then he commits. "Does the owner of a home need to disclose to a guest? I would and do when someone enters into my home, and it's probably something that the products themselves should try to indicate." To be fair to Google, it hasn't completely ignored matters of 21st Century privacy etiquette until now. As Mr Osterloh points out, its Nest cameras shine an LED light when they are in record mode, which cannot be overridden. But the idea of having to run around a home unplugging or at least restricting the capabilities of all its voice- and camera-equipped kit if a visitor objects is quite the ask. [...]

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How Abusers Are Exploiting Smart Home Devices - VICE
by Alberto Cammozzo Oct. 19, 2019

Oct. 19, 2019

<https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/d3akpk/smart-home-technology-stalking-ha…> Ross and Catherine Cairns had been married for 16 years. He was an electronics expert, she an accountant, and by their early 30s they were living with their two young daughters in Hale, in Greater Manchester. The village is one of the wealthiest areas in the UK, home to upmarket restaurants and Premier League football players. The Cairns household was fitted out with an ELAN smart home system. The house’s security alarm, lighting and heating were all controlled centrally by a tablet mounted on the kitchen wall. With the touch of one button, the tablet let you turn off the lights and ensure the doors were locked. Using a smartphone app, you could remotely activate security cameras or change the music playing through the entertainment system. Ross was the administrator; Catherine mainly used it to turn lights on and off. “Monitoring your home has never been so easy!” declares the ELAN website. Perfect for parents to keep a distant eye on their kids while working late, but when used maliciously, also for jealous partners to spy on their spouses. Internet-connected devices – wearable trackers, smart TVs, voice-activated assistants, app-controlled locks and lights and thermostats – promise a utopia of convenience, a world in which we don’t need to get out of bed to turn off a ceiling light or fumble for house keys in the bottom of a bag. But as these devices – the internet of things, as it’s known – become ever more pervasive, so too does their use by domestic abusers as tools for surveillance and harassment. “Perpetrators of domestic abuse like to keep tabs on their partners. They like to know what you’ve been up to and where you’ve been,” says Sara Kirkpatrick, Research and Services Development Manager at Respect. “Being tracked is so much easier than it ever was.” As of January 2019, domestic violence charity Refuge has documented more than 2,500 people seeking their support services who have reported experiences of technology-facilitated abuse. Ross and Catherine separated in 2016. They remained friendly and the children spent time with both parents. Ross moved in with his mother in the neighbouring town of Altrincham, a five-minute drive from Hale. On August 12, 2017, Ross visited the family home to fix a fish tank. While he was there, she handed him her mobile, as she also wanted him to check the security system. “When he was on it, he read messages I had sent to a man I had been on a date with,” Catherine would later testify in Manchester Magistrates’ Court. Ross became agitated. He left the house, then came back inside, crying. “He ran upstairs and got the wedding rings and said that I wouldn’t need them.” Catherine told her parents about the incident. Standing in the kitchen with her mother, she said that she no longer loved Ross. “The next thing I knew, he was downstairs telling the kids he was moving back in,” testified Catherine. “He repeated the conversation that I had with my mum. He said, ‘Oh, you don’t love me anymore.’” Ross later admitted to accessing the ELAN system remotely through an app on his iPhone to eavesdrop on conversations. He also hacked into her Bumble accounts, posting an intimate picture and sending explicit messages. Catherine switched off the control tablet’s camera function and asked an IT engineer to change the system password. But even after this, the system logged more remote connections on October 14 and 15. “It looks like he was using the system as normal, but hadn't informed her exactly how it works,” says Bill Hensley, a spokesperson for ELAN. The password was likely changed for only the security system, he says, but not for the overriding administrator account. “It doesn't look like there was a breach.” “Prosecuting cases involving the use of technology in order to commit offences present real difficulties,” says Neil White, who was the prosecutor in the Cairns case. “With offences like harassment, this can be especially difficult, as there can be issues like shared IP addresses, or of one party having the technological knowledge, and being able to abuse it, when the other doesn't.” In May 2018, Ross was convicted of stalking and harassment. In court, he claimed that he had accessed ELAN remotely only to switch lights on or off, or adjust television volume. The stalking conviction was later quashed on appeal, but the harassment offence was upheld and he was banned from contacting Catherine for three years. The Cairns court case marked one of the first convictions involving IoT technology, says Leonie Tanczer, a gender and IoT researcher at University College London. The rise of smart devices, she believes, creates a new arsenal of tools that can be used against people already at risk of domestic abuse. Tanczer leads a research project on the topic in collaboration with the London Violence Against Women and Girls Consortium, comprising 29 organisations. Discussions with support groups have identified examples such as spying via smart TVs and security cameras at entrances, tracking location via GPS-enabled smartwatches, and physical gaslighting – remotely changing the temperature in a room by meddling with the heating system. Refuge, which is part of the consortium, has found a rise in women whose kids’ video game consoles have been hacked by perpetrators to trace information including a child’s location. [...]

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Google keeps adding Pixel features it claimed it didn’t need - The Verge
by J.C. DE MARTIN Oct. 19, 2019

Oct. 19, 2019

Google keeps adding Pixel features it claimed it didn’t need Just like everyone else By Jon Porter on October 17, 2019 7:30 am https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/17/20916996/google-pixel-4-second-telephot… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Re: [nexa] nexa Digest, Vol 126, Issue 28
by Agata Lo Tauro Oct. 19, 2019

Oct. 19, 2019

Alcuni chiarimenti: Io non faccio vedere MAI video del Papa nelle mie lezioni... Io non insegno religione... Thanks for your understanding! Ci pensano i miei colleghi di religione, ovviamente, non io! Ovviamente l'arte nel Medioevo è piana di architetture religiose (solo per fare un esempio)... ma fa parte del programma ministeriale... Io seguo i dettami MIUR. Io non insegno in una scuola religiosa... E comunque non l'ho MAI fatto neppure all'Università... Ripeto: Io non insegno teologia... Chi vuole sostenere AVSI o Il Banco alimentare ci persa il DS a fare circolare delle circolari... Chiaro adesso? Buon Week-End a TUTTI, Agata Il giorno sab 19 ott 2019 alle ore 12:00 <nexa-request(a)server-nexa.polito.it> ha scritto: > Send nexa mailing list submissions to > nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > nexa-request(a)server-nexa.polito.it > > You can reach the person managing the list at > nexa-owner(a)server-nexa.polito.it > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of nexa digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. The Algorithm Society: Governance Without Government > (Diego Giorio) > 2. Re: Perdonate il link :-) spero di non disturbarvi > (altrimenti perdonatemi perfavore) (Giacomo Tesio) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2019 08:51:57 +0000 > From: Diego Giorio <dgiorio(a)hotmail.com> > To: Nexa <nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it> > Subject: [nexa] The Algorithm Society: Governance Without Government > Message-ID: > < > MN2PR13MB3136F60138657744009E3C5ABE6F0(a)MN2PR13MB3136.namprd13.prod.outlook.com > > > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Interessante articolo del prof. Della Morte > > > https://www.ispionline.it/en/pubblicazione/algorithm-society-governance-wit… > > Buon fine settimana a tutti > D. >

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The Algorithm Society: Governance Without Government
by Diego Giorio Oct. 19, 2019

Oct. 19, 2019

Interessante articolo del prof. Della Morte https://www.ispionline.it/en/pubblicazione/algorithm-society-governance-wit… Buon fine settimana a tutti D.

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The Algorithm Society: Governance Without Government
by Diego Giorio Oct. 19, 2019

Oct. 19, 2019

Interessante articolo del prof. Della Morte https://www.ispionline.it/en/pubblicazione/algorithm-society-governance-wit… Buon fine settimana a tutti D.

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Artificial Intelligence and Work – Building a New Employment Paradigm | Corvalán | Revue Internationale des Gouvernements Ouverts
by J.C. DE MARTIN Oct. 18, 2019

Oct. 18, 2019

Artificial Intelligence and Work – Building a New Employment Paradigm Juan Gustavo Corvalán, Luis Cevasco, Enzo Maria Le Fevre Cervini Résumé This book is the result of the work done within the scope of the Innovation and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the School of Law of the University of Buenos Aires and the Public Prosecutor ́s Office of the City of Buenos Aires. Apart from promoting the development of the artificial intelligence Prometea, we will investigate and analyze the impact of artificial intelligence within the general interests of society, a project that takes place within the framework of a more extensive work linked to the impact of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). We would like to thank and highlight the collaboration of Melisa Raban, Gustavo Sa Zeichen, Inés Iribarne, Julián Palumbo, Denise Ciraudo, Fiorella Vigo, Carina Papini, Antonella Stringhini, Victoria Vázquez and Estefanía Mullally. Also, we are very grateful to Matías Puig, for his work in the development and expansion of Prometea. To William Gilles and Irene Bouhadara, world references, for their work and dedication to encourage the relationship between ICT and human rights. http://ojs.imodev.org/index.php/RIGO/article/view/309 (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Onward! Another #GoogleWalkout Goodbye
by Giacomo Tesio Oct. 18, 2019

Oct. 18, 2019

July 10th was my 13-year Google anniversary, and today is my last day. My experience at Google shaped who I am and the path I’m on. It’s hard to overstate how grateful I am for the teachers, mentors, and friends along the way, or how surreal this moment is. I still can’t imagine my badge not working. The reasons I’m leaving aren’t a mystery. I’m committed to the AI Now Institute, to my AI ethics work, and to organizing for an accountable tech industry — and it’s clear Google isn’t a place where I can continue this work. This has been hard to accept, since this work urgently needs doing. Google is one of the most powerful organizations on the planet; I’ve had the privilege to see it grow from a few thousand committed people to the behemoth it is today.[1] The company has emerged as a global leader in AI (the result of some combination of strategy, luck, timing, and massive centralized data and compute resources).[2] This has helped propel Google’s entry into “new markets” — healthcare, fossil fuels, city development and governance, transportation, and beyond.[3] The result is that Google, in the conventional pursuit of quarterly earnings, is gaining significant and largely unchecked power to impact our world (including in profoundly dangerous ways, such as accelerating the extraction of fossil fuels and the deployment of surveillance technology). I’m certain many in leadership — who learned what Google was and why it was great over a decade ago — don’t truly understand the direction in which Google is growing. Nor are they incentivized to.[4] Continua su https://medium.com/@GoogleWalkout/onward-another-googlewalkout-goodbye-b733… (di Luglio 2019, ma me l'ero completamente persa e penso possa essere di interesse per la lista) Giacomo

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Big tech, big government: Courts having a hard time balancing privacy with traceability, but don’t forget individual rights
by Giacomo Tesio Oct. 18, 2019

Oct. 18, 2019

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/big-tech-big-govern… In India, and in other advanced societies, governments and courts are beginning their reckoning with the extraordinary difficulties posed by presently existing centralised “social media” and the “platform” companies that, by operating these media, are changing human civilisation. These social media or platform companies surveille the daily social behaviour of billions of individuals – reading their mail, spying on their social interactions, presenting them edited news feeds and personalised advertising, keeping track of everything they read and watch. The companies have acquired a breadth and depth of social power over our impulses and behaviour patterns that exceeds any similar form of influence, private or public, in human history. This has happened in the blink of an eye on the timescale of history, barely more than a decade. For context, the first Apple iPhone was launched in 2007. The power of these “technology companies” to amplify human emotions; to generate outrage and stoke anger; to channel aggression; above all, to move goods and merchandise, leaves the more traditional powers of law and government staggering, deeply unsure how to respond. [...] The platform companies, under pressure to respect the privacy rights of their users, have integrated “end to end” encryption into services such as WhatsApp. Because the platform intermediary cannot see the content of the messages it handles, it cannot trace a message as it is forwarded, redistributed or transferred among parties. Any regulation requiring the intermediary company to render messages traceable, destroying parties’ anonymity, will inevitably also break the company’s laudable attempts to protect the confidentiality of users’ conversations. [...] Moreover, it is hardly appropriate to regard the platform companies, powerful as they are, as the sole source of the problem of social media misuse. All of the world’s largest democracies (including Brazil and the United States as well as India) have experienced unsettling transformations of political campaigning practices in the last half decade. Political parties and other actors have adopted large-scale disinformation and influence campaigns based around opaque social media messaging. A recent global report on computational propaganda, published by Oxford University researchers, shows the comparative sophistication and intensity of governments to shape and control public opinion by these means. Treating the problem of social media misuse as though it were primarily a problem of private defamation, that can be fully resolved by regulating the platform companies, ignores the much larger problems that are caused by governments, political parties and their supporters. These can only be remedied by strengthening individual rights and limiting governmental power, not by the reverse. The problems we face are as complex as the changes our technology has wrought. There are no simple answers or quick fixes. [...] ___ L'unica vera risposta, l'unica soluzione che permette di rafforzare i diritti individuali e restituire autonomie alle comunità è l'educazione storica e informatica. Non c'è alternativa. L'ignoranza è troppo pericolosa. Fintanto che un insegnante di scuola media può arrivare a minacciare 4 agli studenti che non si iscrivono a Edmodo, diffondendo ignoranza e sottomettendo gli studenti (e i genitori) culturalmente inermi ad una piattaforma di sorveglianza o all'altra, non c'è speranza che la Democrazia possa funzionare. Giacomo

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AI and Climate Change: How they’re connected, and what we can do about it
by J.C. DE MARTIN Oct. 18, 2019

Oct. 18, 2019

https://medium.com/@AINowInstitute/ai-and-climate-change-how-theyre-connect… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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