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Reader, I Googled It | The New Yorker
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 2, 2019

Sept. 2, 2019

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/02/reader-i-googled-it Reader, I Googled It Amid fears about the death of books, finding new ways to bring them to life. By Dan ChiassonAugust 26, 2019 (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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What People Hate About Being Managed by Algorithms, According to a Study of Uber Drivers
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 2, 2019

Sept. 2, 2019

https://hbr.org/2019/08/what-people-hate-about-being-managed-by-algorithms-… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Facebook scans system libraries from their Android app user’s phone in the background and uploads them to their server
by Giacomo Tesio Sept. 2, 2019

Sept. 2, 2019

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1167463054709334017.html Conoscere le versioni delle librerie installate significa sapere se il device è hackerabile. Dite che potrebbe interessare a qualcuno? Giacomo

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Strike 2.0: how gig economy workers are using tech to fight back | Books | The Guardian
by Alberto Cammozzo Sept. 1, 2019

Sept. 1, 2019

<https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/31/the-new-resistance-how-gig-ec…> [...] And organised resistance by digitally outsourced workers has erupted repeatedly on the streets of major cities in recent years, usually beginning in the back alley spots where delivery riders are encouraged by their apps to congregate and then fanning out rapidly through WhatsApp networks, word of mouth and some technological trickery. In 2016, for example, an announcement by Deliveroo that it would soon be unilaterally altering its rider payment structure prompted a six-day “strike” in which riders acted en masse to make themselves unavailable for orders. Colleagues from Deliveroo’s rivals, Uber Eats, swiftly followed suit, and began taking advantage of a promotional offer within the app that granted new customers £5 off their first order. By repeatedly creating new accounts and ordering low-value meals to be delivered to the picket line, the strikers amassed both a mountain of free food at Uber’s expense and a steady stream of fellow riders, who would turn up with the order only to be met by a sea of radicalised peers cheering their arrival and chanting “Log out, log out!” In the words of one Deliveroo rider, the very technology that was designed to control workers was now being turned against their managers, allowing riders to “occupy the system in a way”. Not unlike the assembly line of the last century, and the auto strikes in Flint that subverted it, a tool engineered for capital was being hacked by the labour force. “It’s like a sit-in,” the Deliveroo rider told Woodcock. This kind of fightback can be found throughout the contemporary economy. New apps abound that allow workers to log abuse by managers, read up on their rights, organise their workplace and compare pay rates both with those in similar jobs in their industry and with their own company’s financial results, a powerful weapon for agitating colleagues and rejecting management explanations for low wages. The information asymmetry at the core of digital platforms such as Uber is gradually being undermined by a vibrant network of driver forums with hundreds of thousands of members sharing stories, advice, communications from Uber received through the app and payment details, including screenshots of receipts and monthly income tallies. These enable drivers to collectively gain an understanding of how the app’s secretive ratings systems and dispatch algorithms actually operate. Among other things, this sort of crowdsourced information provides drivers with the opportunity to game the system, for example by agreeing to log off from the app simultaneously, thereby tricking Uber’s algorithms into thinking there is a shortage of drivers and implementing surge pricing to tempt them back. Worker subversion of new management and surveillance technologies is merely one among many clandestine vulnerabilities inside the current economic system. Another can be found within those long, just-in-time supply chains that may appear to whip car parts and chicken meat and consumer electronics effortlessly across dozens of national borders but that are, in reality, almost entirely reliant on dense physical infrastructure. That network includes factories, warehouses and lorry depots, and the airports, stations, hotels, hospitals and schools that go with them: all firmly embedded in their geographical surroundings, and all highly susceptible to strike actions by those who maintain, guard and – like Fatima – clean them. In Britain, the cleaning sector alone employs 700,000 people. Since 2017, McDonald’s workers have organised themselves to fight back against conditions, and as this McStrike movement indicates, the very precariousness of work is itself a fuel for labour militancy; the more that low pay and casualisation become the norm, the more those on the wrong end of it have nothing to lose by striking back [...]

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NYRB: "The Oligarch Threat"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Sept. 1, 2019

Sept. 1, 2019

*The Oligarch Threat** * /Tamsin Shaw // / On July 24, 2019, a buoyant Boris Johnson swept past crowds shouting “Bollocks to Brexit! Bollocks to Boris!” and was ushered into the hushed splendor of Buckingham Palace. There, he shook hands with the antique, bejeweled Queen Elizabeth II, and became the prime minister of Great Britain, elected not by popular mandate but by members of his Conservative Party. That same day, on the other side of the Atlantic, a frail and reluctant Robert Mueller took his oath before giving public testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, and later the House Intelligence Committee, on a controversial and difficult twenty-two-month-long investigation—made more challenging by multiple witnesses’ lying under oath—in which he had painstakingly examined Russian interference in the 2016 election of Donald Trump. […] Continua qui: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/08/27/the-oligarch-threat/

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NYRB: "Beware the Big Five"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 31, 2019

Aug. 31, 2019

*Beware the Big Five* Tamsin Shaw April 5, 2018 Issue / //The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace // //by Alexander Klimburg// //Penguin, 420 pp., $30.00// / The big Silicon Valley technology companies have long been viewed by much of the American public as astonishingly successful capitalist enterprises operated by maverick geniuses. The largest among them—Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Google (the so-called Big Five)—were founded by youthful and charismatic male visionaries with signature casual wardrobes: the open-necked blue shirt, the black polo-neck, the marled gray T-shirt and hoodie. These founders have won immense public trust in their emergent technologies, from home computing to social media to the new frontier, artificial intelligence. Their companies have seemed to grow organically within the flourishing ecology of the open Internet. [...] continua qui: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/04/05/silicon-valley-beware-big-five/

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Cryptographic key used to sign one of Facebook’s Android apps compromised
by Giacomo Tesio Aug. 30, 2019

Aug. 30, 2019

The security of Android app updates hinges on the secrecy of a given app’s signing key. It’s how app updates are verified as secure, and if it falls into the wrong hands, false updates could be distributed containing nefarious changes. As a result, developers usually guard signing keys quite closely, but someone at Facebook seriously messed up. A key used by the company to digitally sign its Free Basics by Facebook app has been compromised, and third-party apps reusing the key have been spotted online. After APK Mirror and Android Police owner Artem Russakovskii discovered the issue and reported it to Facebook, the original app listing was pulled from the Play Store and replaced with a new appusing a new signing key. Since then, the company has not publicly divulged the nature of the compromised key or the precise reason for the re-released app to its users, placing them at risk if they still have the old version installed. Before the listing was removed, the original Free Basics by Facebook app had over five million downloads on the Play Store. > In the past several weeks, I noticed a bunch of random APKs > being uploaded with @facebook's crypto signature > used in its Free Basics app. > > Upon closer examination, they either used a public > debug key or the key got leaked. > > Either way, this is dumb, FB. https://t.co/71uSMPO8YP > >— Artem Russakovskii (@ArtemR) August 9, 2019 ## What happened? Android Police’s sister site APK Mirror hosts Android apps for download. We do it for several reasons: to circumvent censorship, so enthusiasts can download updates before they’re widely rolled out, to mitigate geographic restrictions, and to provide a historical archive for comparison and ease of rolling back updates, among other reasons. We’re especially concerned about security, given how dangerous downloading apps from third-party sources can be, so we go out of our way to manually review and vet every APK that hits the site. In the last month, we’ve spotted third-party apps using a debug signing key which matched the key used by Facebook for its Free Basics Android app. (As an aside, using a “debug” key in production is also not a best practice for developers, let alone one of Facebook’s reach and stature.) We notified Facebook about the leaked key earlier this month, and the company verified it, pledging to address the issue in a new version of the app, which the company claims it has prompted users to upgrade to from inside the old app. Based on details provided to us by Facebook, the precise reason why customers need to upgrade isn’t included in that prompt, and it hasn’t published details regarding it elsewhere. The listing for the Free Basics by Facebook app has since been pulled from the Play Store and replaced with a new listing utilizing a new app signing key. We aren’t sure of precisely when the app was de-listed, as the last Internet Archive backup of the listing was in July, and the replacement app landed on August 14th. Facebook claims that it released a new version of the app within 24 hours of Russakovskii’s report. APK Mirror is also not accepting uploads that use the compromised key. ___ Continua su http://web.archive.org/web/20190830171739/https://www.androidpolice.com/201…

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"Mysterious iOS Attack Changes Everything We Know About iPhone Hacking"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 30, 2019

Aug. 30, 2019

Mysterious iOS Attack Changes Everything We Know About iPhone Hacking For two years, a handful of websites have indiscriminately hacked thousands of iPhones. https://www.wired.com/story/ios-attack-watering-hole-project-zero/

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Justice Department Opposes Google's Undersea Cable From China
by J.C. DE MARTIN Aug. 29, 2019

Aug. 29, 2019

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-28/justice-department-oppos… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents
by Giacomo Tesio Aug. 29, 2019

Aug. 29, 2019

https://wwwhive.com/2019/08/14/huawei-technicians-helped-african-government… Huawei employees have provided other services, not disclosed publicly. Technicians from the Chinese powerhouse have, in at least two cases, personally helped African governments spy on their political opponents, including intercepting their encrypted communications and social media, and using cell data to track their whereabouts, according to senior security officials working directly with the Huawei employees in these countries. [...] Huawei has “never been engaged in ‘hacking’ activities,” said a Huawei spokesman in a written statement. “Huawei rejects completely these unfounded and inaccurate allegations against our business operations. Our internal investigation shows clearly that Huawei and its employees have not been engaged in any of the activities alleged. We have neither the contracts, nor the capabilities, to do so.” The spokesman added: “Huawei’s code of business conduct prohibits any employees from undertaking any activities that would compromise our customers or end users data or privacy or that would breach any laws. Huawei prides itself on its compliance with local regulations and laws in all markets where it operates.” [...] A senior police commander relayed a presidential order to access Mr. Wine’s encrypted written and spoken communications, including those through WhatsApp and Skype, to a six-man cyber team based at police headquarters, according to the security officials. They spent days trying to penetrate the communications using the Pegasus spyware but failed. They asked for help from Huawei technicians—who then cracked Mr. Wine’s encrypted communications using Pegasus within two days, the security officials said. “It was very clear he was organizing a political event, not a music show. We had to act quickly,” one of the officials said. In a WhatsApp chat group, Uganda’s cyber team saw a list of 11 lawmakers Mr. Wine was planning to secretly insert into the concert program. The rally, at Mr. Wine’s beach club, was scheduled unusually early to throw off the security services. Using information from the cyber hub, hundreds of police swarmed the venue, arresting dozens of organizers and attendees. Some were arrested before they could reach the club. “We were shocked. They knew everything about the event and the speakers, who we hadn’t announced,” Mr. Wine said. One of the security officials showed the Journal screenshots of Mr. Wine’s WhatsApp chats with the Firebase crew where participants were exchanging details on the planned events. The official said the operation would have been impossible without the skills of Huawei’s technicians. Mr. Wine, whose attempts to organize subsequent rallies have also been foiled, said the surveillance has spread to his family, his entourage and the people who frequent bars where his music is played. He now switches between several phones and uses devices of sympathetic members of the public, but he said he is outgunned by Mr. Museveni’s expanding machine. “The deal with Huawei is a survivor strategy to consolidate power,” he said in an interview in his Kampala home. “It’s an all-out assault.” [...] _____ Credo ci siano due aspetti interessanti in questa storia (vera o falsa che sia): - il coinvolgimento di singoli impiegati, non della azienda - la diffusione della tecnologie in questione anche in Europa Giacomo

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