industryterm:privacy law

  • The guy who made a tool to track women in porn videos is sorry - MIT Technology Review
    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613607/facial-recognition-porn-database-privacy-gdpr-data-collection-poli

    An anonymous programmer based in Germany caused outrage this week for supposedly using face-recognition technology to “catch” women who had appeared in porn. He says he’s since deleted the project and all its data, but that’s not an act of altruism. Such a project would have violated European privacy law anyway, though it would have been okay elsewhere.

    There is still no proof that the global system—which allegedly matched women’s social-media photos with images from sites like Pornhub—actually worked, or even existed. Still, the technology is possible and would have had awful consequences. “It’s going to kill people,” says Carrie A. Goldberg, an attorney who specializes in sexual privacy violations and author of the forthcoming book Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls. “Some of my most viciously harassed clients have been people who did porn, oftentimes one time in their life and sometimes nonconsensually [because] they were duped into it. Their lives have been ruined because there’s this whole culture of incels that for a hobby expose women who’ve done porn and post about them online and dox them.” (Incels, or “involuntary celibates,” are a misogynistic online subculture of men who claim they are denied sex by women.)

    The European Union’s GDPR privacy law prevents this kind of situation. Though the programmer—who posted about the project on the Chinese social network Weibo—originally insisted everything was fine because he didn’t make the information public, just collecting the data is illegal if the women didn’t consent, according to Börge Seeger, a data protection expert and partner at German law firm Neuwerk. These laws apply to any information from EU residents, so they would have held even if the programmer weren’t living in the EU.

    Under GDPR, personal data (and especially sensitive biometric data) needs to be collected for specific and legitimate purposes. Scraping data to figure out if someone once appeared in porn is not that. And if the programmer had charged money to access this information, he could have faced up to three years in prison under German criminal law, adds Seeger.

    Et toujours cette logique de l’excuse qui semble Zurkerbériser un grand nombre de programmeurs.

    Reached last night via Weibo, the programmer (who did not give his real name) insisted that the technology was real, but acknowledged that it raised legal issues. He’s sorry to have caused trouble. But he’s not the only one able to build this technology, or the only one interested in using it for dangerous purposes. Policymakers concerned with global privacy law need to start thinking ahead.

    #Reconnaissance_faciale #Données_provées #Porno

  • Amazon patents Alexa tech to tell if you’re sick, depressed and sell you meds | Ars Technica
    https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/amazon-patents-alexa-tech-to-tell-if-youre-sick-depressed-and-sell-you-

    Amazon has patented technology that could let Alexa analyze your voice to determine whether you are sick or depressed and sell you products based on your physical or emotional condition.

    The patent, titled “Voice-based determination of physical and emotional characteristics of users,” was issued on Tuesday this week; Amazon filed the patent application in March 2017.

    The patent describes a voice assistant that can detect “abnormal” physical or emotional conditions. “For example, physical conditions such as sore throats and coughs may be determined based at least in part on a voice input from the user, and emotional conditions such as an excited emotional state or a sad emotional state may be determined based at least in part on voice input from a user,” the patent says. “A cough or sniffle, or crying, may indicate that the user has a specific physical or emotional abnormality.”

    It’s not clear what ads would be sent based on a user’s emotional state, but someone who is sick might be asked if they want to buy cold medicine.

    “A current physical and/or emotional condition of the user may facilitate the ability to provide highly targeted audio content, such as audio advertisements or promotions, to the user,” the patent said.

    If the Amazon voice assistant determines that you have a sore threat, the system would “communicate with the audio content server(s)” to select the appropriate ad. “For example, certain content, such as content related to cough drops or flu medicine, may be targeted towards users who have sore throats,” the patent says.

    Alexa might then ask, “would you like to order cough drops with 1 hour delivery?” After the order is made, the voice assistant “may append a message to the audible confirmation, such as well wishes, or ’feel better!’”
    System could raise privacy concerns

    Companies get patents all the time for technologies that never make it to market, so there is no guarantee this capability will be implemented in future versions of Alexa.

    Amazon would have to consider the privacy implications of letting its voice assistant analyze the emotional and physical states of Amazon customers. Amazon and other tech companies last month were called to a Senate Commerce Committee hearing to testify about consumer data privacy, and senators are considering whether to write a new privacy law.

    Besides analyzing your physical or emotional states, Amazon’s patent says the system would take into account the user’s browsing history and purchase history:

    Embodiments of the disclosure may use physical and/or emotional characteristics of a user in combination with behavioral targeting criteria (e.g., browse history, number of clicks, purchase history, etc.) and/or contextual targeting criteria (e.g., keywords, page types, placement metadata, etc.) to determine and/or select content that may be relevant for presentation to a user.

    The system would use a “voice processing algorithm” to determine a user’s emotional state. The voice analysis would be able to detect “happiness, joy, anger, sorrow, sadness, fear, disgust, boredom, stress, or other emotional states.” It would make those determinations “based at least in part on an analysis of pitch, pulse, voicing, jittering, and/or harmonicity of a user’s voice, as determined from processing of the voice data.”

    The system would apply tags to each physical or emotional characteristic. Those tags may be “associated with or linked to a data file of the voice input,” and “used to determine content for presentation to the user.”

    The emotion-detecting system would be tailored to each user, determining the user’s “default or normal/baseline state” so that it can detect changes that indicate that “the emotional state of the user is abnormal,” the patent says.

    Amazon’s analysis would presumably be more accurate when tailored to a specific user, but the patent says the technology can also determine the emotional state of “any user” regardless of whether they normally use that device.

    #Le_Meilleur_des_Mondes #Folie #Amazon #Brevet

  • Google Emerges as Early Winner From Europe’s New Data Privacy Law
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/eus-strict-new-privacy-law-is-sending-more-ad-money-to-google-1527759001

    Le RGPD est une forme de colbertisme adaptée à l’ère numérique : l’UE définit un nouveau terrain de jeu... mais les euls à apprendre à bien jouer sont les géants du web. Les autres parlent “d’intérêt légitime”, s’appuyant sur l’exception à la règle, alors même que cela ne marchera pas pour la pub. Cette manie de notre vieux continent de miser sur les passe-droit.

    Digital ad giants are gathering individuals’ consent for targeted ads at far higher rates than many competing online-ad services, early data show

    By

    Nick Kostov and

    Sam Schechner

    May 31, 2018 5:30 a.m. ET

    GDPR, the European Union’s new privacy law, is drawing advertising money toward Google’s online-ad services and away from competitors that are straining to show they’re complying with the sweeping regulation.

    The reason: the Alphabet Inc. GOOGL 1.74% ad giant is gathering individuals’ consent for targeted advertising at far higher rates than many competing online-ad services, early data show. That means the new law, the General Data Protection Regulation, is reinforcing—at least initially—the strength of the biggest online-ad players, led by Google and FacebookInc.

    Hundreds of companies along the chain of automated bidding and selling of digital ads—from ad buyers to websites that show ads—have been scrambling to comply with the law while continuing to target people based on the personal information such as web-browsing histories, offline purchases or demographic details.

    Since the law went into effect Friday, Google’s DoubleClick Bid Manager, or DBM, a major tool ad buyers use to purchase targeted online ads, has been directing some advertisers’ money toward Google’s own marketplace where digital-ad inventory can be bought and sold, and away from some smaller such ad exchanges and other vendors. That shift has hurt some smaller firms, where Google says it can’t verify whether people who see ads have given consent.

    Google is applying a relatively strict interpretation of how and where the new law requires consent, both on its own platforms and those of other firms. The stringent interpretation helps Google avoid GDPR’s harsh penalties and pushes the company to buy more ad inventory from its own exchange, where it is sure to have user consent for targeted advertising.

    Havas SA, one of the world’s largest buyers of ads, says it observed a low double-digit percentage increase in advertisers’ spending through DBM on Google’s own ad exchange on the first day the law went into effect, according to Hossein Houssaini, Havas’s global head of programmatic solutions.

    On the selling side, companies that help publishers sell ad inventory have seen declines in bids coming through their platforms from Google. Paris-based Smart says it has seen a roughly 50% drop. Amsterdam-based Improve Digital says it has experienced a similar fall-off for ads that rely on third-party vendors.

    “It’s still early, but we’ve seen an increase in volumes on Google’s platform and a decline overall,” said Luc Vignon of Regie 366, which sells advertising space for 12 groups of French regional newspapers and websites.

    A Google spokesman says it has been working on interim solutions to “minimize disruption.” Google says it is showing nonpersonalized ads on websites that can’t prove they have users’ full consent and will deploy other workarounds until it fully joins a third-party system for websites to transmit consent, run by IAB Europe, an online-ad trade group.

    Over the weekend, some bigger companies, including New York-based ad exchange AppNexus Inc. and French video-ad vendor Teads, said they have struck temporary deals assuring Google they have consent, so ad buyers could use DBM to purchase targeted ads from the companies again. The two companies said demand coming through their platforms from Google was almost back to normal this week after an initial disruption.

    Brian O’Kelley, AppNexus chief executive, said he thinks Google’s conservatism on the issue of consent is justified. “If you’re big, you can’t take privacy risks,” Mr. O’Kelley said, citing the potential for enormous fines under GDPR. “I’m terrified because I have a real business to protect. So I’m not going to take privacy risks here.”

    Google has been offering up about 15% fewer ads for bidding via its own ad exchange, but all of those ads have consent of end-users for targeting based on personal information, according to Dataxu Inc., a company that helps advertisers bid for ads.

    By contrast, Dataxu says competing ad exchanges haven’t seen their ad volume fall significantly, but as of Wednesday two-thirds of their spots weren’t transmitting the consent Google says is necessary for targeting, Dataxu says. That means rival exchanges often can’t sell ads targeted with personal information, which often cost four or five times as much as traditional ads.

    “It’s a huge advantage for Google’s ad exchange if they maintain their very high consent rate and the others don’t improve,” said Bill Simmons, co-founder and chief technology officer for Dataxu, based in Boston.

    Arndt Groth, president of mobile ad-exchange Smaato, said that with a smaller supply of targeted ads, their price is going up significantly. “It’s a pure supply-and-demand thing,” he said.

    Facebook, the second-largest player in the digital-ad ecosystem, doesn’t play the same role as Google, which interfaces with many other ad-tech companies to place and measure ads across the internet. Instead Facebook mostly sells ads directly and places them through its own audience network. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week indicated that his company has also had success gathering user consent for ad targeting under GDPR.

    “The vast majority of people choose to opt in,” to see targeted ads on Facebook based on their use of other websites and app, Mr. Zuckerberg said at a tech conference in Paris.

    Google and Facebook do face big legal risks from GDPR. Privacy activists filed lawsuitsagainst the companies in recent days, over issues including how freely given users’ consent actually is.

    Some online-ad companies say they have seen marketers shift ad money away from Google ad-buying tools to some smaller competitors that don’t demand explicit consent. That is possible because some publishers and companies, unlike Google, are relying on an alternate justification under GDPR called “legitimate interest,” which lets companies use personal information without asking for consent so long as they take other strict privacy measures.

    Regulators have said, however, that relying on legitimate interest for online tracking for marketing purposes may not pass legal muster—and Google has avoided it.

    “Others haven’t put as many restrictions on their buyers,” said Sebastiaan Moesman, chief executive at Improve Digital.

    Write to Nick Kostov at Nick.Kostov@wsj.com and Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com

  • A flaw-by-flaw guide to Facebook’s new GDPR privacy changes | TechCrunch
    https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/17/facebook-gdpr-changes

    Facebook is about to start pushing European users to speed through giving consent for its new GDPR privacy law compliance changes. It will ask people to review how Facebook applies data from the web to target them with ads, and surface the sensitive profile info they share. Facebook will also allow European and Canadian users to turn on facial recognition after six years of the feature being blocked there. But with a design that encourages rapidly hitting the “Agree” button, a lack of granular controls, a laughably cheatable parental consent request for teens and an aesthetic overhaul of Download Your Information that doesn’t make it any easier to switch social networks, Facebook shows it’s still hungry for your data.

    The new privacy change and terms of service consent flow will appear starting this week to European users, though they’ll be able to dismiss it for now — although the May 25th GDPR compliance deadline Facebook vowed to uphold in Europe is looming. Meanwhile, Facebook says it will roll out the changes and consent flow globally over the coming weeks and months with some slight regional differences. And finally, all teens worldwide that share sensitive info will have to go through the weak new parental consent flow.

    First up is control of your sensitive profile information, specifically your sexual preference, religious views and political views. As you’ll see at each step, you can hit the pretty blue “Accept And Continue” button regardless of whether you’ve scrolled through the information. If you hit the ugly grey “Manage Data Setting” button, you have to go through an interstitial where Facebook makes its argument trying to deter you from removing the info before letting you make and save your choice. It feels obviously designed to get users to breeze through it by offering no resistance to continue, but friction if you want to make changes.

    Overall, it seems like Facebook is complying with the letter of GDPR law, but with questionable spirit. Sure, privacy is boring to a lot of people. Too little info and they feel confused and scared. Too many choices and screens and they feel overwhelmed and annoyed. Facebook struck the right balance in some places here. But the subtly pushy designs seem intended to steer people away from changing their defaults in ways that could hamper Facebook’s mission and business.

    Making the choices equal in visible weight, rather than burying the ways to make changes in grayed-out buttons and tiny links, would have been more fair. And it would have shown that Facebook has faith in the value it provides, such that users would stick around and leave features enabled if they truly wanted to.

    When questioned about this, Sherman pointed the finger at other tech companies, saying he thought Facebook was more upfront with users. Asked to clarify if he thought Facebook’s approach was “better,” he said “I think that’s right.” But Facebook isn’t being judged by the industry standard, because it’s not a standard company. It’s built its purpose and its business on top of our private data, and touted itself as a boon to the world. But when asked to clear a higher bar for privacy, Facebook delved into design tricks to keep from losing our data.

    #Facebook #RGPD #Design

  • Facebook moves 1.5bn users out of reach of new European privacy law
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/19/facebook-moves-15bn-users-out-of-reach-of-new-european-privacy-law

    Company moves responsibility for users from Ireland to the US where privacy laws are less strict Facebook has moved more than 1.5 billion users out of reach of European privacy law, despite a promise from Mark Zuckerberg to apply the “spirit” of the legislation globally. In a tweak to its terms and conditions, Facebook is shifting the responsibility for all users outside the US, Canada and the EU from its international HQ in Ireland to its main offices in California. It means that those (...)

    #Facebook #terms #données #Règlement_Général_sur_la_Protection_des_Données_(RGPD) #data-mining

    ##Règlement_Général_sur_la_Protection_des_Données__RGPD_

  • Exclusive: Facebook to put 1.5 billion users out of reach of new EU privacy law
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-privacy-eu-exclusive/exclusive-facebook-to-put-1-5-billion-users-out-of-reach-of-new-eu-privacy-

    Facebook members outside the United States and Canada, whether they know it or not, are currently governed by terms of service agreed with the company’s international headquarters in Ireland.

    Next month, Facebook is planning to make that the case for only European users, meaning 1.5 billion members in Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America will not fall under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which takes effect on May 25.

    The previously unreported move, which Facebook confirmed to Reuters on Tuesday, shows the world’s largest online social network is keen to reduce its exposure to GDPR, which allows European regulators to fine companies for collecting or using personal data without users’ consent.

    That removes a huge potential liability for Facebook, as the new EU law allows for fines of up to 4 percent of global annual revenue for infractions, which in Facebook’s case could mean billions of dollars.

    #internet #vie_privée #GDRP #RGPD #DSGVO

  • That guy who tried to get an undocumented classmate deported has been expelled from his school
    https://babe.net/2018/01/30/that-guy-who-tried-to-get-an-undocumented-classmate-deported-has-been-expelled

    Citing privacy law, Principal Shelnutt would not specify precisely how he expunged the racist teen from his school’s roster within 24 hours of his postings being published by babe, but he did add: “I hope it will also serve as a learning opportunity for our students.”

    #bonne_nouvelle

  • Foodora strikes in Italy – the dark side of the sharing economy | Struggles in Italy
    https://strugglesinitaly.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/foodora-strikes-in-italy-the-dark-side-of-the-sharing-ec

    1. The sharing economy?
    2. Foodora in Italy
    3. New conditions and first strikes
    4. Evolution of the struggle
    5. Flexibility and the Italian labour market
    6. Sources
    1. The sharing economy?

    Newspapers report every day how our world is changing because of digital technologies. We often read about full automation, digitalization of life and the end of work. All these themes are interwoven in the sharing economy: apps that connect supply and demand to share a particular good. Foodora is not one of them, as nothing is shared. Foodora is part of the gig-economy, like Uber, MechanicalTurk or Task Rabbit.

    Foodora offers restaurants the possibility of new customers by providing a flexible fleet of couriers. An app monitors purchases and assigns them to the couriers based on an algorithm that calculates speed and distances. Restaurants get new orders without employing any more people, paying 30% only on completed deliveries, meaning they have no additional costs. Customers get the food they want from a great variety of restaurants, at home, by paying €2.90 per delivery. Young cyclists, who the company calls “riders” (even in Italian), get to earn some money by moving through the city in their free time. Foodora, the once-small Berlin-based startup has grown into an international business, located in 10 countries and 36 cities. It opened in Italy two years ago, starting in Turin and Milan (northern Italy) and will soon be expanding to Rome, with prospective sales volume growing at a rate of 75% every month.

    Currently the riders, roughly 300 in Turin and 600 in Milan, are not directly employed by the company. Instead, they are employed using a contract structure known as “co.co.co” (“contract for continued collaboration on a project”). These contracts effectively result in the riders being regarded as autonomous workers collaborating with the company, which enables the company to bypass several labour regulations which apply to direct employees.

    2. Foodora in Italy

    It’s been sold for a figure of several tens of million of euros yet Foodora has the typical appeal of a startup: young and friendly international people working in an open space office in #Berlin and young students delivering food by bike as an easy side-job.

    It landed in #Turin as a mirror image of the Berlin base. The managers, all under 30, meet every so often in a co-working space in the city center, are informal and speak using English words. The fleet of couriers are also young, educated, and are paid €5 per hour.

    This image started to crack when in August Deliveroo couriers in London went on strike and a month later their counterparts in Paris also protested. The reason was, oversimplifying, that once the company had attracted enough “workers”, pay shifted from a fixed scheme to per-delivery compensation only.

    Ever since the company opened in Italy, workers had been meeting and talking to one another informally, especially where they are waiting for new deliveries. They had held informal assemblies, sometimes even meeting with management in order to discuss many issues. When a change in contract similar to London and Paris happened at Foodora in Turin, the protest flared up.

    The usual problems affecting all delivery workers are that deliveries may be in harsh weather conditions and usually involve moving a lot (60-80 kilometers per shift in Foodora’s case). Nor is it new that there are long waits for the food to be ready or the next delivery.

    There are, though, completely new aspects connected to the digital nature of the work relationship. Working time is 24/7 meaning there is no such thing as work/non-work division. Riders can theoretically decide when they are available, though they do not know whether they will actually work as the management decides to accept, modify or even delete the shifts, at any time, even during the shift itself. As an algorithm decides in real time the work rhythms (according to volume of requests and positions of the couriers), there are hours of absolute rush and hours of complete stand-still. Not to mention that both bike and phone are provided by the courier, with all the related costs of maintenance and repair. In some interviews workers even mentioned privacy issues as continual geolocalization goes against privacy law, especially if done by an app from the Apple and Google Play stores.

    All of this for €500 a month, working 25 hours a week.

    3. New conditions and first strikes

    Riders demanded better working conditions. In May 2016, they wrote a letter signed by 85 out of 100 workers, but the requests were answered with a mix of procrastination and excuses, such as that the head of the company was elsewhere at the time. Finally, in July, a meeting took place but management said the contract could not be modified. What turned dissatisfaction into protest was that the contract could actually be changed, and the company did that.

    In September Foodora issued a new contract, applying to all new riders, and from November 30, to all riders. This new contract eliminates the fixed income and replaces it with a variable one: €2.70 per delivery. The number of deliveries per shift is not a factor that riders can influence, as if they were factory workers, but it will still determine their income. For an income of €500, they will have to make a delivery every half hour, at any hour, regardless of the day, time or period of the year.

    The managing director, Gianluca Cocco, refused to discuss the new terms with the base union, SiCobas, that the workers had chosen to represent them, saying that autonomous workers have no right to unionise. The management agreed only to face-to-face meetings with individual workers and many were removed from the group used to communicate with them or blacklisted.

    The informal connections between riders turned into the platform for a strike: on October 8th in Turin there was the first strike in Italy of workers employed through an app. Around 50 riders blocked the service for the whole Saturday, biking through the city distributing leaflets in the restaurants affiliated to Foodora. There were basically three demands:

    abolition of the “temporary collaboration” contract described above, as well as the per-delivery pay, and introduction of a flexible part-time (20 hours minimum) contract. This kind of contract guarantees sick leave, insurance and vacation.

    a basic salary (€7.50 per hour) with a variable bonus (€1 per delivery).
    halting of any threat towards and disciplinary sanctions of the protesting workers.

    Further demands include a proper formal communication channel with the employer (rather then a whatsapp group and an app), fair assistance from the company towards the cost of bike and phone, and proper insurance covering not only accidents but also recovery days and illness.

    4. Evolution of the struggle

    The protest was so successful that it carried on all day, was joined by many locals and was immediately reported by newspapers, mainly because of the newness of the technologies involved. There was significant disruption of the brand image: ‘modifications’ of the company logo (from a hand carrying a tray to one carrying an iron ball with chain) and a “shitstorm” on social media where the company had to delete insults and messages of solidarity. The over-exposure of Foodora’s brand on these platforms made them a great place to show digital solidarity. All this was linked to local assemblies and street action: going to each restaurant to give out leaflets and speeches. The message spread wider, a proper boycott was launched, and restaurants started to join it. In the end a meeting with the managing director to discuss their requests was fixed for October 10. At the end of this meeting the management, both Italian and German, promised to issue a statement in response to every point. It’s worth mentioning that during the meeting a group of people from the co-working space used by Foodora came together to show solidarity and that the co-working space dissociated itself from any connection to Foodora.

    While management was deciding how to answer, an indirect answer came through a ‘rather strange layoff’. Two promoters who went to a riders’ assembly to understand and show solidarity were excluded from the app. Their contract was not over, but they were effectively laid off as they were not being given any shifts. The clear written answer to the protesters arrived at 00.02 of the 14th (despite a deadline of the 13th): not €2.70 euro per delivery but €3.70. The same morning the riders went to the Turin office but found it empty. No one from management showed or picked up the phone. Two labour inspectors were sent directly from the Ministry of Labour, though, to check the legality of the situation, while the Minister himself expressed solidarity with the riders. Unfortunately more and more riders were locked out of the app as they spent their day giving out leaflets about their protest. A group went to the main HQ in Milan twice, once finding it unexpectedly closed and the next time forcing the management to lock themselves in the office for three hours. Both occasions were used to meet some colleagues in the city, organizing info-events for the coming week and spreading the strike.
    Under the pressure from the workers the company decided to answer at least one of the demands. It issued a statement that three bike shops were authorized to give 50% discount. According to the riders, no-one has ever received such a discount. The company’s real reaction, though, was to employ a massive number of new riders, promising them at least two deliveries per hour, a promise that has been broken by either fewer deliveries per hour or fewer hours per week, and blame laid at the door of the striking riders.

    Two weeks after the first strike not only workers but even restaurants that expressed solidarity have been denied access to the app. From the beginning the striking riders have used different methods to decentralize their struggle: frequent change of the representative speaking with management, use of fake names and distorted voices. Once Foodora identified who it thought were the leaders, they were completely banned from any communication, although not officially fired. There are, though, interviews where workers who were ready to accept the new contract were subjected to the same sanctions, just because they took part in assemblies. How the management knew about their participation is a matter of speculation.

    Meanwhile labour inspectors are investigating and the workers have been received by both the municipality and the Labour Ministry. Since both occasions proved unfruitful (Foodora failed to attend the meeting with the municipality), the strikers kept on organizing several public meetings. The role of social centers and squats cannot be underestimated: media reporting and coverage as well as practical solidarity and support came immediately from local grassroots movements. Public assemblies in Milan were held at social center COX, and in Turin assemblies were promoted by activists at the local university and at the social center Cavallerizza, while a solidarity dinner was held in anarchist squat Asilo.

    5. Flexibility and the Italian labour market

    Further reflection should be given to the bigger picture. The truth is that Foodora was able to offer such low salaries (compared, for instance, with France where a rider gets €7.20 an hour + €2 per delivery) because the Jobs Act and previous reforms have deregulated the Italian job market and removed general protection for workers. When the deregulated market meets the hyper-fragmented employment form of Foodora it results in a terrible mix. Furthermore, Foodora has been accused of taking advantage of the high youth unemployment rate in Italy (around 40% in 2015, according to ISTAT): what the company terms a “side job” is, for the riders, one of the only ways to have an income.

    Luckily the struggles of the riders and many others keep our eyes open and our hopes high.

    You can find info and statements (in Italian) about the striking riders on their FB page: Deliverance Project. Feel free to express your solidarity to them, or on the Foodora FB page.

  • Microsoft cloud system wins EU privacy regulators’ approval
    FT April 10, 2014 By James Fontanella-Khan in Brussels
    http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/aeeb7350-c0a1-11e3-a74d-00144feabdc0.html

    “The EU’s data protection authorities have found that Microsoft’s enterprise cloud contracts meet the high standards of EU privacy law,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Counsel, said on Thursday.
    “Other companies talk about their commitment to comply with EU privacy law – but we’ve enshrined that commitment in our contracts.”

    The approval granted by the EU’s privacy watchdogs is significant for #Microsoft as its cloud operation will not be affected if the EU decides to go ahead and scrap a key EU-US data transfer agreement.

    “Should the EU suspend the Safe Harbour Agreement with the US, as called for recently by the European Parliament, our enterprise customers won’t need to worry that their use of our cloud services on a worldwide basis will be interrupted or curtailed,” said Mr Smith.
    Microsoft consumer services, however, remain the subject of an investigation which started in 2012.

    #UE #régulation_numérique

    Microsoft to shield foreign users’ data
    FT January 22, 2014 By James Fontanella-Khan in Brussels and Richard Waters in San Francisco (#paywall)
    http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e14ddf70-8390-11e3-aa65-00144feab7de.html

  • Alan F. Westin, Who Transformed Privacy Debate Before the Web Era, Dies at 83 - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/alan-f-westin-scholar-who-defined-right-to-privacy-dies-at-83.html

    Through his work — notably his book “Privacy and Freedom,” published in 1967 and still a canonical text — Mr. Westin was considered to have created, almost single-handedly, the modern field of #privacy_law. He testified frequently on the subject before Congress, spoke about it on television and radio and wrote about it for newspapers and magazines.

    His argument prefigured the current national debate about privacy engendered by post-9/11 legislation like the Patriot Act, which Mr. Westin, in a 2003 interview, called “a justified piece of legislation.”