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French government report says thousands approached by Chinese spies on LinkedIn
by Alberto Cammozzo Nov. 4, 2018

Nov. 4, 2018

Reclutamento online in Francia e UK. Sta succedendo anche in Italia? <https://intelnews.org/2018/10/24/01-2423/> A French government report warns of an “unprecedented threat” to security after nearly 4,000 leading French civil servants, scientists and senior executives were found to have been accosted by Chinese spies using the popular social media network LinkedIn. The report was authored by France’s main intelligence agencies, the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) and the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE). According to the Paris-based Le Figaro newspaper, which published a summary of the classified report, the two intelligence agencies presented it to the French government on October 19. The report describes Chinese efforts to approach senior French scientists, business executives, academics and others, as “widespread and elaborate”, and warns that it poses an “unprecedented threat against the national interests” of the French state. It goes on to state that nearly 4,000 carefully selected French citizens have been approached by Chinese intelligence operatives via the LinkedIn social media platform. Of those nearly half, or 1,700, have leading posts in French industry, while the remaining 2,300 work in the public sector. In their totality, those targeted are involved nearly every area of industry and government administration, including those of nuclear energy, telecommunications, computing and transportation, said the report. According to Le Figaro, those targeted were approached online by Chinese spies who employed fake identities and identified themselves as headhunters for Chinese corporations, think-tank researchers or consultants for major companies. They then invited targeted individuals to all-expenses-paid trips to China for conferences or research symposia, or offered to pay them as consultants. The DGSI-DGSE report concludes that most of those targeted displayed shocking levels of “culpable naivety” and a “completely insufficient” awareness of online espionage methods. To address this, French intelligence agencies have produced guidelines on detecting and evading attempts at recruitment or luring from intelligence operatives using social media, said Le Figaro. French civil servants are now being informed of these guidelines through a concerted campaign by the French intelligence community, said the paper. The report, however, did not say whether similar efforts were taking place in the French private sector. <http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2018/10/22/01016-20181022ARTFIG0024…> <http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2018/10/22/01016-20181022ARTFIG0030…>

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Father of Web says tech giants may have to be split up
by gianlucaquaglia＠gmail.com Nov. 2, 2018

Nov. 2, 2018

Father of Web says tech giants may have to be split up by Guy Faulconbridge, Paul Sandle LONDON (Reuters) - Silicon Valley technology giants such as Facebook and Google have grown so dominant they may need to be broken up, unless challengers or changes in taste reduce their clout, the inventor of the World Wide Web told Reuters. continua qui https://www.reuters.com/article/us-technology-www/father-of-web-says-tech-g…

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Happy with a 20% chance of sadness
by J.C. DE MARTIN Nov. 2, 2018

Nov. 2, 2018

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07181-8 (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Toward Community-Oriented, Public & Transparent Copyleft Policy Planning
by Giacomo Tesio Nov. 2, 2018

Nov. 2, 2018

Una lunga filippica che suggerisce, in pratica, di porre barriere all'ingresso nella creazione di licenze libere per consolidare un duopolio OSI - FSF (viene messa in mezzo anche Debian, ma direi impropriamente). We de-facto instituted what my colleague Richard Fontana once called the > “Rule of Three” — assuring that any potential FOSS license should be met > with suspicion unless (a) the OSI declares that it meets their Open > Source Definition <https://opensource.org/osd>, (b) the FSF declares that > it meets their Free Software Definition > <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html>, and (c) the Debian > Project declares that it meets their Debian Free Software Guidelines > <https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines>. E nonostante il fatto che le prime due versioni della GPL siano stata redatte in privato da Stallman e Cohen, ora che qualcuno osa mettere in discussione il loro diritto divino di sancire cosa sia Free Software o Open Source si propone: By submitting this license to OSI for approval without any public community > discussion, and without any discussion whatsoever with the key charities in > the community, is unacceptable. The OSI should now adopt a new requirement > for license approval — namely, that licenses without a community-oriented > drafting process should be rejected for the meta-reason of “non-transparent > drafting”, regardless of their actual text. This will have the added > benefit of forcing future license drafters to come to OSI, on their public > mailing lists, *before* the license is finalized. > https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2018/oct/16/mongodb-copyleft-drafting/ Direi che è proprio ora di pubblicare qualche nuova licenza Copyleft fatta in casa. Giacomo

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Tech giants may have to be broken up, says Tim Berners-Lee | Technology | The Guardian
by J.C. DE MARTIN Nov. 1, 2018

Nov. 1, 2018

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/01/tim-berners-lee-says-say… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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Apple CEO backs privacy laws, warns data being ‘weaponized’
by Alberto Cammozzo Nov. 1, 2018

Nov. 1, 2018

il titolo poteva anche essere "Apple weaponizes data protection". <https://wtop.com/world/2018/10/apple-ceo-backs-privacy-laws-warns-of-data-w…> BRUSSELS (AP) — The head of Apple on Wednesday endorsed tough privacy laws for both Europe and the U.S. and renewed the technology giant’s commitment to protecting personal data, which he warned was being “weaponized” against users. [...] Cook warned that technology’s promise to drive breakthroughs that benefit humanity is at risk of being overshadowed by the harm it can cause by deepening division and spreading false information. He said the trade in personal information “has exploded into a data industrial complex.” “Our own information, from the everyday to the deeply personal, is being weaponized against us with military efficiency,” “This is surveillance. And these stockpiles of personal data serve only to enrich the companies that collect them,” he said. “This should make us very uncomfortable. It should unsettle us.” Cook’s appearance was one-up on his tech rivals and showed off his company’s credentials in data privacy, which has become a weak point for both Facebook and Google. That is facilitated also by the fact that Apple makes most of its money by selling hardware like iPhones instead of ads based on user data. [..]

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Making the GPL more scary (MongoDB e copyright)
by Giacomo Tesio Nov. 1, 2018

Nov. 1, 2018

MongoDB has just announced <https://www.mongodb.com/press/mongodb-issues-new-server-side-public-license…> an immediate shift to its brand-new Server Side Public License (SSPL) <https://www.mongodb.com/licensing/server-side-public-license>. This license is based on the AGPL, but adds some extra text to section 13 with, it is claimed, this effect: The SSPL builds on the spirit of the AGPL, but clarifies the condition for providing open source software as a service. The license retains all of the same freedoms that the open source community had with MongoDB under the AGPL: freedom to use, review, modify and redistribute the software. The only substantive change is an explicit condition that any organization attempting to exploit MongoDB as a service must open source the software that it uses to offer such service. The license itself is more explicit about what software must be released in this manner: "Service Source Code" means the Corresponding Source for the Program or the modified version, and the Corresponding Source for all programs that you use to make the Program or modified version available as a service, including, without limitation, management software, user interfaces, application program interfaces, automation software, monitoring software, backup software, storage software and hosting software, all such that a user could run an instance of the service using the Service Source Code you make available. The affected code must not only be released, it must be made available under the SSPL. This language, thus, extends the reach of the license beyond any modifications that may have been made to MongoDB itself or to anything that could conceivably be considered a derivative work; https://lwn.net/Articles/768670/ L'articolo contiene un certo ammontare di FUD: l'obbligo di licenziare sotto SSPL si applica solo ai software che gli utenti di MongoDB sviluppano (e di cui dunque detengono il copyright) non a quelli che utilizzano (ad esempio il kernel Linux, citato impropriamente nel articolo). Contrariamente a quanto scritto questa licenza non sembra solo dettata da avidità, ma da un effettivo desiderio di diffondere il software libero. Personalmente non credo che colga il cuore del problema, ma trovo interessante che diverse persone inizino a discutere i limiti della reciprocità della GPL: va bene per chi crea cloni liberi di software proprietario, come il progetto GNU. Ma per chi vuole scivere software innovativo, non è abbastanza virale. Giacomo

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Pentagon Wants to Predict Anti-Trump Protests Using Social Media Surveillance - Motherboard
by J.C. DE MARTIN Oct. 31, 2018

Oct. 31, 2018

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7x3g4x/pentagon-wants-to-predict… (Sent from my wireless device; please excuse brevity and typos (if any))

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"Gli algoritmi e i “mostri” della tecnologia"
by J.C. DE MARTIN Oct. 31, 2018

Oct. 31, 2018

*Gli algoritmi e i “mostri” della tecnologia ** * Bruno Saetta /Ho visto lo sventurato, il miserabile mostro che avevo creato (...) demoniaco cadavere a cui avevo così miseramente dato la vita (Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) // / Nel 2007 l’allora sindaco di Washington, Adrian Fenty, era determinato a risolvere un problema: gli studenti di molte scuole non raggiungevano buoni risultati. Si partì dall’idea che la colpa doveva essere degli insegnanti, che non facevano bene il loro lavoro. Per cui si affidò il compito di valutare gli insegnanti ad un software denominato IMPACT. L’algoritmo prendeva in considerazione una serie di elementi, tra i quali dei test da somministrare agli studenti e da ripetere nel tempo. Il modello, detto a valore aggiunto (value added model) è fondamentalmente un modello statistico che cerca di distinguere l’impatto causale di un insegnante sull’apprendimento dei suoi studenti da altri elementi, quali abilità degli studenti e fattori extrascolastici. [...] Continua qui: https://www.valigiablu.it/algoritmo-tecnologia-etica/

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Future of OMEMO (diritto d'autore e GPL)
by Giacomo Tesio Oct. 31, 2018

Oct. 31, 2018

> > [...] OMEMO depends on the wire format used by libsignal [...]. That library however is licensed under the GPLv3 license [...] the wire format used by libsignal is not [openly documented], so any > implementations which want to be compatible to current OMEMO clients must > implement the same wire format by looking into the libsignal source code, > which in turn makes the implementation a derivative of libsignal, which > must be licensed under the GPL as well. https://blog.jabberhead.tk/2018/09/07/future-of-omemo/ L'articolo è piuttosto tecnico, ma questo passaggio sulla viralità della GPL massimizzata dall'assenza di documentazione per la forma serializzata dei messaggi del protocollo mi ha sorpreso: non ci avevo mai pensato. In sé mi sembra molto logico: se io rilascio del codice in GPL, la documentazione di quel codice scritta da una eventuale terza parte è un'opera derivata, così come una implementazione alternativa e compatibile basata sulla stessa documentazione. Di conseguenza tutte andranno rilasciate in GPL. Io sono troppo ignorante in materia, per cui vi chiedo: è possibile confermare o confutare questa interpretazione? Giacomo

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