The Covid-19 pandemic has been a boon for the global tech giants. While millions of people have died, many more have lost their jobs, and innumerable others have struggled under the isolation of global lockdowns, the biggest Western platforms have seen their revenue soar. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are on their way to a record-breaking $1.4 trillion in sales over the course of 2021, a figure larger than the GDP of Australia. Profits have followed, with nearly half a trillion dollars expected over the course of the 2020 and 2021 financial years. And investors have driven the stock prices of these companies skyward: up more than 50% between March 2020 and March 2021.

Amazon has been a particularly large beneficiary of the global pandemic. The move to ecommerce globally is one of the most obvious ways that lockdowns accelerated the scale and profits of the company. With bricks and mortar stores closed, and people fearful to leave their homes, consumers turned to the internet to meet their shopping needs. In countries like the US and UK, ecommerce’s share of retail grew significantly. But the more noteworthy story concerns those countries that had previously been hesitant about online shopping. Lockdowns led vast numbers of consumers toward  the conveniences of clicking and ordering from one’s home for the first time. Despite being one of the most hesitant European countries before the pandemic, for example, three quarters of Italians soon found themselves turning to online shopping during the first lockdown. 

Less well known, perhaps, are the ways in which Amazon has benefited from the widespread shift to online communication and remote work. Amazon’s profit engine is not ecommerce, but rather its cloud computing unit known as Amazon Web Services (AWS). With companies moving online, both for remote work and for general IT purposes, AWS has consolidated itself as the dominant cloud service. Zoom and Netflix, for instance – those two bedrocks of lockdown life – are both based on AWS’ servers. It is no wonder then that operating income (an important measure of Amazon’s profitability) grew by a brisk 33% year-over-year in 2021.

But is what’s good for Amazon good for everyone?

Cheap prices and rapid delivery appear to offer immense benefits for consumers – and Amazon relies on this one-sided benefit for political leverage to resist any restraints on its actions. But these are borne on the backs of a vast army of low-paid and highly exploited workers – an inconvenient reality that is all too easy to ignore when sitting in front of a computer screen. Amazon warehouse workers are far more likely to be injured than other warehouse workers; delivery drivers have been forced to urinate in bottles to meet intense delivery requirements; and in the US, six warehouse workers recently died when Amazon managers reportedly refused to let them leave before a tornado struck. Amazon touts its pay as being above minimum wage, while neglecting to mention it is below industry averages.

There are also the impacts that Amazon has on smaller businesses, who find themselves unable to compete with the scale or deep pockets of the Bezos behemoth. As small businesses become ever more reliant on Amazon to sell their wares, Amazon is becoming ever more predatory in return, extracting significant fees. The recent €1.129 billion fine imposed by the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (AGCM) is one reflection of this, targeting practices whereby Amazon used its monopoly position to coerce small businesses into further dependence and expenditure on its services.

Amazon, along with all the other platform giants, is also an adept practitioner of tax  avoidance. For instance, its European arm generated €44 billion in sales in 2020, but clever accounting allowed it to claim a loss and avoid paying any corporate tax. In fact, by basing its European operations out of the low-tax Luxembourg, Amazon has managed to receive tax credits despite record revenues arising from the pandemic. While governments around the world opened their pocketbooks in response to the challenges of the pandemic, big tech companies have resolutely failed to pay their fair share of taxation. The result is more fiscal pressure placed on states, less room for social expenditures, and more tax pressure placed on average workers and citizens. We pay in rising taxes, in crumbling infrastructure, in exhausted healthcare systems – but at least that book we ordered arrives the next day.

In this context, recent actions against Amazon – significant fines imposed by the AGCM and tax deals made with the Italian revenue service – are clearly important but woefully insufficient. Efforts to increase competitiveness and decrease dependency for small businesses are only one small part of the solution. There also needs to be a reckoning with Amazon’s imposition of intense and dangerous working conditions, with their failures to pay a fair share of taxes, and with the dependency being created by their sprawling digital infrastructure. As the revived antitrust movement in the US has argued, monopolies are bad not only as a result of their impacts on prices but more importantly because they are concentrations of unaccountable power. In the case of platform giants, and perhaps particularly in the case of Amazon, this concentration of power and profit is being exacerbated by the pandemic and reaching historic levels. A broad-based movement for workers and for democracy is needed to combat this.

What might such a movement involve? Minimally, it could mean pushing for democratic accountability over these platforms and basic public utility regulation. It might mean building things like platform cooperatives and even some sort of public ownership whether that be at the level of municipal, regional or national government. In the past, when a natural monopoly offering key public services became dominant – think of railways, for example, or electricity grids, or postal services – it became subject to significant public oversight and, at times, outright public ownership. We need to be bold and reimagine such efforts for the digital age if we are to avoid having our world carved up between a handful of corporations.

L'articolo Platforms and Pandemics proviene da InsideOver.

The criminal world has gone digital. Crime syndicates are sinking their dirty teeth into cybercrime and today it is the fastest growing criminal activity on earth.

Trillions of Dollars are at Stake

Accenture, considered one of the world’s top companies, numbers digital and technology consulting in its stable of services. The firm predicts businesses will lose US$5.2 trillion to cybercrime globally over the next five years.

Cue the mafia and other nefarious organizations. Cyberattacks cost businesses from large to small on average $200,000 annually, according to Hiscock, a commercial liability insurance company. And the little guy is the easiest target.

Most Businesses Woefully Unprepared for Cyberattacks

Small businesses account for almost half of online attacks – 43 percent – but they are woefully unprepared to stave off breaches because only 14 percent have the technology shield to counter the assaults.

“Modern IT infrastructures are more complex and sophisticated than ever and the amount of virtual ground that we’ve got to safeguard has also grown exponentially,” said Jesse Rothstein of security provider ExtraHop. “…(C)yber criminals can launch thousands of digital attacks designed to compromise our operations at every turn, only one of which ever needs to connect to cause serious disruptions.”

But while large companies are the prime organized crime targets, individuals do not escape notice and while the coronavirus pandemic is a plague to most, to syndicates like the mafia it is a blessing, presenting an opportunity to defraud. From March to May in Canada this year, organized crime swindled individuals out of CAN$1.9 million.

The most common method of bilking people is through email or text messages where the recipient clicks on a link to collect the $2,000 a month the federal government offers to those who have lost jobs to the pandemic. The link takes individuals to a phony website asking for financial information, or it could allow the intrusion of malware that can steal, encrypt, delete or hijack data, leading to financial theft.

Cosa Nostra Goes Online

Italy has had its share of cybercrime courtesy of the world’s most infamous crime syndicate.

In May of this year, 91 suspected mobsters were collared by police probing money-laundering and extortion. Authorities were attempting to stop Sicily’s Cosa Nostra from bilking people who were suffering financially due to the coronavirus.

In one conversation recorded by police, a man said “look, we pay cash” for businesses hard hit by the pandemic. The mob was trying to buy legitimate businesses at bargain basement prices so as to illegally launder dirty money gleaned from extortion and drug trafficking.

Gangs also hold businesses for ransom – hence the name ransomware, a malicious software that infects a computer and restricts access until money is paid to unlock it.

In Israel, the chip wear maker Tower – the computer chip used for processors, memory and other information functions – came under ransomware attack and had to shut down some production systems and its IT systems were damaged, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in August. A publicly-traded company with second-quarter earnings of US$310 million, one day of lost work would cost the company an estimated $3.4 million.

Hackers demanded money and Tower’s insurance company said pay up.

Insurance Company Advises Firm To Pay Ransom

“Its insurance company encouraged paying the ransom, which is estimated at several million dollars,” Einat Meyron, who advises companies on cybersecurity and is well acquainted with this attack, as reported by Haaretz. “It definitely wasn’t $250,000, as has been reported in several places.”

The mafia is becoming so pervasive in cyber crime that its involvement is now known as the “New Mafia.” The mafia has hired cybersmart engineers to hack and uncover where shipments of specific goods are being readied for shipment, then sends in drivers in their own trucks to haul the goods away.

The Internet is also used to help facilitate and plan various crime operations.

Brazilian Gangsters Running Drug Networks from Jail Cell Computers

In Brazil, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), Sao Paulo’s mafia corporation is using smart phones so members of its council can call the shots from their prison cells. Sao Paulo prosecutors seized two laptops of senior syndicate members and discovered Excel spreadsheets showing the entire cocaine distribution network for the metropolitan area.

Included was the identity of those marked for punishment – and sometimes death – due to embezzlement or not fulfilling their promised participation in crime.

An Expanding Crime Network

In 2018, 30,000 people were members of the PCC and new recruits were joining each day, reported Rolandburger.com, a respected American-based management consulting firm with 50 offices in 39 countries. The PCC is spreading to other South American countries.

Perhaps Malwarebytes, the ubiquitous anti-virus Internet security company, best sums up today’s evolving criminal use of the internet. “What was once the reserve of hobbyists and enterprising individuals has taken a more sinister turn as the world has become more interconnected.

“In the last decade, cybercrime has evolved from computer viruses that commandeered a select number of PCs to spectacular security breaches and cyberattacks that exceed the imagination. The Internet has allowed criminals to send tentacles out all over the world while sitting in comfort thousands of miles away. A new day has dawned for organized crime.

L'articolo The “New Mafia” Takes Crime Online proviene da InsideOver.

In the technology dispute with China, the White House had planned to ban the TikTok and WeChat apps. Beijing’s initial response came promptly: the Chinese government sought to counter the bans with its own sanctions list. However, on Sunday, the situation changed dramatically.

China’s Initial Reaction

China announced its punitive measures in the dispute over US sanctions against Chinese companies. The government in Beijing put a mechanism for sanctions that they claimed threaten “the People’s Republic’s national security.”

According to the Ministry of Commerce, these sanctions were directed against “foreign companies, organizations, and individuals.” In addition to security concerns, China cited violations of “internationally recognized economic and trade rules” as possible triggers.

Accordingly, fines, import, export restrictions, and investment and entry bans can be imposed. The planned list of sanctioned companies will help “safeguard national sovereignty and security and development interests, uphold a fair and free international economic and trade order, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies, other organizations or individuals,” so the Chinese government. Company names were not mentioned. However, the state-run Chinese newspaper Global Times reported in May that such sanctions could affect US companies such as Boeing, Cisco, Apple, and Qualcomm.

Beijing’s move is aimed at US companies after the US government announced that the download of the Chinese apps TikTok and WeChat would be banned in the US. The ban was initially supposed to come into force on Sunday The US move was justified by threats to national security according to the Department of Commerce in Washington.

For the more than one hundred million TikTok users in the US, the move means that they will no longer receive any updates, although they should still be able to use the app until November 12. For WeChat, the ban applies immediately when the ruling comes into force.

The TikTok Grace Period

The grace period for TikTok was supposed to enable the app to be sold to a US company. Corresponding negotiations with the technology group Microsoft have dragged on. Twitter is said to have been interested in a purchase. Most recently, the software company Oracle was considered a possible buyer. As a compromise, a takeover of 60 percent of TikTok by Microsoft, Walmart, and Oracle had been under discussion.

US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said if there was no sale by November 12, TikTok would be shut down. However, if concerns about TikTok could be dispelled by then, the order could be lifted again.

TikTok initially sought legal action against this and has lodged a complaint with a federal court in Washington to block the download lock. In it, she accuses Trump of having exceeded his powers. His actions have political reasons; TikTok did not pose a threat to national security.

‘China Will Take the Necessary Steps’

The Chinese government called the procedure harassment and immediately threatened the countermeasures it has now announced. “If the US insists on going its own way, China will take the necessary steps to protect Chinese companies’ legitimate rights and interests firmly,” she said.

The United States also has a list of sanctioned companies. In this way, the US government has, for example, excluded the Chinese mobile phone company Huawei from setting up 5G networks in the US and put it in a difficult position by banning the use of Google software.

A Dramatic Turn of Events

On Sunday, however, the situation changed drastically because of an agreement between TikTok and the United States was reached.

Shortly before an announced download stop for the app came into effect, President Trump agreed to a new agreement. The US government, therefore, postponed the download ban planned for Sunday by at least a week. The Secretary of Commerce announced that the decision was made “in view of the recent positive developments.”

TikTok could thus continue to be operated in the USA. The app’s global business should be located in the United States and employ 25,000 people, Trump said. “It will be a brand new company,” Trump said, adding “it will have nothing to do with China.”

The New American TikTok

According to Trump, two American companies will play a leading role at TikTok Global: Oracle and the supermarket giant Walmart. Accordingly, it is planned that Oracle will become a technology partner for the Chinese company’s US branch, and Walmart will become a trading partner.

“We are pleased that TikTok, Oracle, and Walmart’s proposal will resolve the US government’s security concerns and clarify questions about TikTok’s future in the US,” said a TikTok spokeswoman.

As for WeChat, a US Judge temporarily halted the administration’s WeChat ban on Sunday. The Commerce Department has yet to respond to the injunction.

L'articolo TikTok: First Banned, then Sold proviene da InsideOver.

Reportage / Society 11.05.2020

Electronic Heroin

In 1997 there were 300,000 computers in China and 620,000 citizens were able to surf the web. Now, over two decades later that number has exploded. According to the government agency China Internet Network Information Center, 802 million Chinese people…

Antonio Faccilongo

There are some 198 million e-sports fans worldwide, with around 75 million living in China. This is the largest concentration of fans globally.

The economic interests at stake are high. It is estimated that the Chinese video game industry alone is worth $30 billion in annual revenues and currently involves over half a billion people. In recent years, the gaming industry lobbyists have even attempted to have e-ports included at the Olympics, so far without success.

Professional players train up to 14 hours per day, 7 days a week. They are assisted by professional teams that guide their careers and egg them on to give their best for the good of the team and to accrue higher earnings. Usually each team is made up of 15 players and also includes a coach, a physiotherapist, a doctor and various managers.

The stakes are high. Those who make mistakes are immediately replaced and are unlikely to be given a second chance.

The stakes and level of professionalism in this sector are so high that some Chinese universities have launched special courses in e-sports to train future champions. Here, the students mainly study advanced gaming techniques. After the first year they are divided into different classes. The best ones focus on becoming professional players while the others are taught the administrative, financial, promotional and planning part of the business.

Growing numbers of young people in China dream of becoming professional e-sports athletes. But only a small number will really make it. And many of them run into serious problems in trying to achieve their dream. In 2008, the first country to declare internet addiction a clinical disorder was China, de facto recognizing the danger of internet addiction to people and society.

This compulsion, often likened to heroin addiction, is currently affecting a whole generation of young Chinese men and women. Beijing has taken some steps to try and curb its effects. For instance, a law has been enacted that regulates the length of gaming sessions by a single player. The result is that “zapping” has become common. The time limit on video gaming is eluded by jumping from one game to another using the maximum number of minutes allowed but on an almost unlimited number of games, effectively nullifying the measure.

Rigor and discipline are paramount. Those who break the rules risk solitary confinement. On many occasions such centers have been criticized for the harshness of their treatments. One center became notorious after it emerged they were using electroconvulsive therapy to treat some intense forms of addiction. Over the years, stories of abuse have prompted the Chinese government to regulate them more carefully. The Zheng Xin center in Weifang is one of the most important in China for diagnosing and treating internet addiction.

Day at the camp begins at 6 a.m. After the usual cleaning and the Marines-style roll call of standing to attention, training begins. First, campers march at an impeccable rhythm and then do gymnastics to activate body and mind. At the end of this first phase, they all run to the canteen where they will eat a well-earned breakfast.

L'articolo Electronic Heroin proviene da InsideOver.

The extrapolation of a recent report compiled by IHS Markit has revealed that American citizens are almost as likely to be spied on as are the Chinese, each by their respective regimes. While China boasts one security camera for every 4.1 people, America ranks at 4.6 people per camera deployed, notes the report’s author, IHS Markit analyst Oliver Philippou. Activists bemoan the fact that China is constantly and unashamedly pushing video surveillance into civil society, but the US state and private monitors are almost as ubiquitous.

Long demonised as a totalitarian state, the People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong was, indeed, an unashamedly totalitarian construct. The historical vestiges linger, notwithstanding China’s modernisation of the last two decades, and the Communist Party remains the sole political option, with dire consequences for detractors.

That said, whether it is better or worse to watch third party infiltration as is happening in the US, rather than surveillance by the state itself, is debatable. The report noted that the highest number of surveillance cameras in the US were deployed by private enterprise, such as those in hotels, malls and office complexes. For many, it remains a moot point as to whether a camera is installed by state or private entities, as both the Chinese and US regimes can legally commandeer just about anything in the name of national security, thus making private surveillance footage state property.

A billion cameras for the kids

The youth of 2019 will likely be growing up in a world filled with all-seeing eyes. IHS Markit has estimated there will be around one billion surveillance cameras in operation by 2025. The growth in surveillance is being driven by price competition and technological advances – allowing for greater deployment at a lower cost – but also respective government funding and a pressing need for public safety, as is the official line.

Critics disagree, and note that the wanton abuse of privacy through surveillance “for the public good” is a precedent set long ago. They fear that in spite of the impetus being public safety – something yet to be definitively and unambiguously linked to increased surveillance – the likelihood that the state will use it to spy on its citizens, crush dissent and broadly and quietly impose whatever stranglehold best suits its purposes, is almost a foregone conclusion.

With China leading the pack and North America a close second, third place for monitoring its citizens goes to Taiwan, with one camera for every 5.5 residents, the UK in fourth position at 6.5 citizens per camera deployed, and Singapore in fifth place, sporting one surveillance camera for every 7.1 people.

With the current figures being 349 million cameras deployed in China and 70 million in North America, Big Brother has never looked so ominous. Or seen so much. Philippou notes that reporting from the surveillance arena has largely focused on Beijing’s roll-out of monitoring via cameras and AI in public spaces, whereas the US deployment has been almost as ambitious. He concludes by saying that “future debate over mass surveillance is likely to concern America as much as China.”

Even though a larger percentage of surveillance is currently being funded by private enterprise in North America, government agencies have not been absent from the arena. For many years, the Baltimore Police Department enacted aerial surveillance of its citizens, and Detroit has cameras pointed at public housing residents. Many police departments are also advocating tech giant Amazon’s Ring, essentially creating a network of citizens monitoring one another.

Civil rights advocates are warning of the dangers of such enhanced surveillance, disputing any real link between increased surveillance and a reduction in crime, while noting that the technology is all too often abused by political agendas, where innocent people are spuriously targeted or privacy completely eradicated through such surveillance.

L'articolo US Domestic Video Surveillance Almost On Par With China proviene da InsideOver.

The fourth presidential election after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was held on September 28. The use of Biometrics Voters Verification (BVV) and voter lists were the most distinctively novel features of the 2019 presidential election.

Around 9.6 million people registered to vote and the Afghanistan Independent Election Commission (AEIC) had set October 19 to announce the preliminary result of the election. However, despite the euphoria of having the technology to ensure transparency and efficiency in the election, It is almost more than a month since the election was held and neither the exact number of the credible voters nor the preliminary results have been announced.

Shocking news soon leaked into the country revealing that the locks of the doors of the Data Server of AIEC, where biometric data was kept, were found broken. 

Initially, the Independent Election Commission had denied any such incident. However, a day later on October 22 the AIEC member, Raheema Zarifi, announced the confirmation of the intrusion into the Data Server room of biometric devices at a press conference, and said that an investigation into the incident had been launched.

The presidential candidates blamed the incumbent President Ashraf Ghani, who is attempting to hold the office for another five-year term. Speaking at a press conference, Ali Ahmad Osmani, the head of the opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah’s election campaign claimed that “members of the rival team have also accompanied the security forces while they have entered into the data centre”.

Weeks later, November 14 was determined as the new day for the preliminary result announcement, by the Head of Afghanistan Independent Election Commission, Hawa Alam Nuristani. The delay in announcing the preliminary result of the presidential election frustrated the candidates and people, raising their suspicions about potential behind-the-door manipulation of the final result.

The technology in use

The previous presidential elections were marred with massive fraud and ballot stuffing. For example, the presidential election in 2014 was damaged by extensive systematic fraud, which resulted in a powering sharing deal between the two top candidates.

To create transparency and accountability in voting, the political parties deemed the use of BVV imperative to prevent any fraud in the election. The idea of using BVV technology guarantees the candidates that the election will be transparent and provides the people who are risking their lives, defying the Taliban threats and voting to elect the candidate of their choice with reassurance that their vote is fairly administered and meaningful.

The method used in the 2019 election is a combination of manual voting and the BVV machines. The BVV did not replace the old system, but has been applied as an additional anti-fraud measure.

At the polling station, a voter’s biometric data is registered before the voters cast their votes. The data is then entered into a central database, printed and attached in encrypted form to the ballot paper. According to the IEC, this will enable them to identify those who vote more than once and to invalidate duplicate votes and ballots that are without biometric verification sticker or that have fraudulent voter details.

Elections since 2001

The election of the president in Afghanistan may have shortcomings, though it has achieved a tremendous goal of rooting out the use of violence to resolve political conflict to some extent. The presidential election in 2004 was destroyed by violence and allegations of fraud. In the presidential election 2004, millions of voters were listed with around 11,612,771 registered and the final voters’ turnout recorded as 8,128,940. Out of which 60 per cent were men and 40 per cent were women. Nonetheless, the fraud perpetrated failed to receive as much attention both nationally and internationally as it did in 2009. Hence, President Hamid Karzai was declared as the victor.

Dr. Abdullah Abdullah who claimed to have succeeded in the 2019 election first appeared as a presidential candidate in the presidential election held in Afghanistan on 20 August 2009. The 2009 election was characterised by a lack of security, low voter turnout and the electorate’s little knowledge about the election process. Cases of widespread corruption, intimidation, and other electoral fraud, forced a second-round run-off vote, under the heavy US and ally pressure. However, the runoff was canceled after Abdullah refused to participate citing the lack of transparency in the election process. The voter’s turn out in the 2009 Presidential Election was 4,823,090.

The 2014 presidential election was a big landmark in the nascent democratic system in Afghanistan with its first projected peaceful transfer of power from President Hamid Karzai to an elected successor since 2001. The 2014 election saw an increase in voter participation across the country, with an additional 1,302,143 votes cast for a total of 7,947,527 votes. With a total voting population of approximately 25,354,494, Afghanistan witnessed a 31.35% voter turnout for the runoff election, versus 26.2 per cent during the first election.

After the runoff election, Afghanistan descended into chaos as both Ghani and his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, accused each other of fraud, which sent the US Secretary of State John Kerry to work out a compromise solution. Thus the top two contenders Dr. Ghani and Dr.Abdullah formed the “unity government” sharing power; Ghani was made President and Abdullah was made the country’s newly created position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

2019 Presidential Election

On October 3, the Afghanistan Independent Election Commission (AIEC) reported that the number of votes cast on September 28 throughout Afghanistan were 2,695,890. They added: “the numbers could change after the verification of invalidated biometric votes”.

After failing to announce the preliminary result on time, Hawa Alam Nuristani Head of Afghanistan Election Commission said “We are not sacrificing quality for the sake of speed. We are committed to the quality result of the presidential election in 2019.”

Although it was criticized by the presidential candidates, however, the US Ambassador John R. Bass wrote on his twitter that the Afghanistan IEC “is fully implementing anti-fraud measures before announcing preliminary results in the #AfghanElections. We agree it is better to release an accurate result instead of a rushed one. Urge all candidates to support the independence of the process”.

On October 26, AIEC member Mawlana Mohammad Abdullah announced that around 900,000 to 770,000  of the votes cast would be invalidated based on the electoral law of Afghanistan, which lacked legal biometrics. The German company Dermalog which provided the BVV technology sent all voter information to the IEC. On the same day, the commission released new vote numbers, saying that the Dermalog Company had identified 1,843,107 valid votes out of the 1,929,333 votes already transferred to the commission’s central database.

Officials in the Independent Election Commission (IEC) said on October 31 that 47,000 cases of underage, duplicate photos, and photos taken of photos had been detected by the Dermalog server and shared with the IEC which would further be invalidated as well. Speaking at a press conference, Mawlana Abdullah said the commission is now waiting for cases of duplicate fingerprints and biometric data captured before 7 am and 5 pm.

According to presidential candidate Dr. Abdullah’s campaign team, “there are 137,000 fraudulent votes and they must invalidate”. But the Election Commission said Dermalog will provide an explanation on the 137,000 votes in the next two days. “These 137,000 votes were sent to the commission’s database only one day after the elections, and these votes are fake” added a member of the campaign team.

“The Council of Presidential Candidates believes that if there is even one fraudulent vote and someone makes his way to the president’s office with that fake vote then this will not be acceptable,” said presidential candidate Shahab Hakimi.

Could technology restore the lost faith in the Election Commission?

Although the biometric technology was brought to end corruption and to ensure the voters that their votes would bring the most voted candidate to the Office, the scenarios unfolding and the delays make the actions of the AIEC more dubious. The utilization of biometric devices was not without any problem, the first was the lack of awareness of how to use it. The second was a number of biometric devices were lost only to be found later.

One of the election observers who goes only by first name Mansoor said “despite the BVV technology being used, the voter’s turnout was very low”, “one could see in every 10 to 15 minutes a voter would come up in a polling centre”, he further added. “The voting procedure has substantially improved, but it will be interesting to see what the final result will be and how the AIEC will handle the outcome” he further added.

“Even though the biometric device was used it will be very difficult to restore the people’s confidence in the Election Commission especially with the way they handle the current election,” said a political and security analyst who preferred to remain anonymous. “The voter’s turnout was the lowest since 2001, nonetheless, the AIEC has still not been able to announce the initial result.” “Initially the turnout numbers were around two million 600 thousand, it has since reduced to 1.8 million, it will further cut by few hundred thousand and the actual number will be just slightly above a million vote”, he further added.

The number of people registered to vote was around 9.6 million people, it the lowest percentage of a voter casting their vote on Election Day since 2004. Had the AIEC managed the election in a professional and timely manner, it would have helped in building confidence over the institutions but it has further made people uncertain about the progressive transfer of power in Afghanistan.

L'articolo Election and Technology: Will the Biometric Voting Save Democracy in Afghanistan? proviene da InsideOver.

Almost five years after the industry development plan was announced, growth in GDP and development are needed both for China, and investors into this country. Will “Made in China 2025” will be able to create this boost?

The capabilities of “Made in China 2025” to create a GDP boost depend on the execution of the plan. The main parts of the plan are: digitalization of manufacturing, increase of efficiency, and innovation. The main goal of “Made in China 2025” is to push all Chinese manufacturing into one, producing more technical and higher-value products.

The plan will respond to increasing worries about China’s competitiveness beyond simple manufacturing, the growing labour costs, and the competition with cheaper labour countries.

Almost five years after the reveal of the plan, the execution of it has centred around the establishment of manufacturing innovation centres, initiatives for intelligent manufacturing and quality management.

Assessment of the success of “Made in China 2025”, will only be possible a few decades into the future and only when it will be finally realised (according to the same plan). Yet, the past five years of the execution of the plan, have made it possible to analyse some parts of the plan. Particularly, the establishment of new, high tech manufacturing zones.

These zones, each focused on manufacturing a different subset of high tech products are not a new idea. Industrial zones developed with the support of governments have been used by many governments to boost manufacturing. Yet, China’s innovation centres are approaching this idea a bit differently. Promotion of “[…] cooperation and profit-sharing between centres” should boost productivity. Nonetheless, the better know-how of older manufacturing countries, and patents numbers by companies in China still trailing behind, will outweigh this different approach for a long time.

The subsets of the manufacturing industry chosen to be developed in “Made in China 2025” show a move in the right direction. Additional investment into the medical devices subset, is a fitting response to both worldwide trends in health, and trends in the medical sector. As people all over the world are living longer, more health problems are bound to appear. With this, increases on all spending in medicine are due to follow.

Spending in the medical sector shows increases fuelled not only by the increasing life expectancy; increases in spending are also partly caused by spending on medical technology – good news for a country that is working to develop this subset of an industry.

For any industry to enter a stage of growth, an adequate number of workers with the right skills, or willingness to be trained, have to be present. China’s labour force has adapted to work in factories. Yet, the stringent tertiary education admissions could block the growth of an industry, which requires more technical skills.

To meet the demands of a new direction in manufacturing, either more students will have to be accepted into tertiary education institutions, or the number of places intended for non-technical subjects will have to be lowered. The repercussions of these decisions very likely could be the lower value of university diplomas, or a shortage of workers intended for non-technical roles.

China has chosen a bit of an unconventional path to transforming the education of its workforce. By supporting the transformation of universities into applied technology universities, promoting the activities of key businesses in education institutions, and encouraging the establishment of foreign research institutions in China, PRC will largely avoid the devaluation of tertiary education.

The main possible shortcoming of this plan is its more optimistic, than realistic, view of Chinese manufacturing landscape. Movement of both foreign, and domestic manufacturing businesses away from China, because of rising wages, shows that one of the selling points of Chinese manufacturing is its labour costs.

A decision to increase China’s production of more expensive and technical products would appear, at first glance, a good solution to combat this trend. However, this will only work if Chinese businesses will be able to repeat the success that low-cost manufacturing has brought. Will this happen? Time and the ability to attract and develop original ideas will tell.

>Even with perfect execution of the plan, changes in worldwide manufacturing can decrease the probability of this plan succeeding. Manufacturing businesses moving back to developed countries, and the movement of simpler manufacturing to emerging countries, will present a challenge to new high tech manufacturing in China. Both shortly, and a few decades later.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that only the increase of manufacturing firms can deliver sustained growth. If a new factory means more jobs and even higher incomes, then more factories should be the right choice for growth. However, Brandt and Zhu in Accounting for China’s growth have found out that an increase in efficiency, rather than growth in numbers, has delivered growth in China.

It’s impossible to deny that manufacturing, even its most basic operations, has lifted out many lowest-income countries out of poverty. Moving away from agriculture, and onto manufacturing-based economy, leads to production of higher added-value products and a lower dependence on volatile commodities prices.

Following this type of thinking, a development of Chinese manufacturing onto one specialising in the production of high tech products should lead to even higher development. After all, if manufacturing is the way out of poverty, a “higher” level out of manufacturing should bring even higher incomes. This is a very likely possibility, if the role of work culture, know-how, and innovation is forgotten. Without them, a highly advanced businesses simply will struggle to succeed.

Manufacturing is often dependent on natural resources and their extraction. A movement into high tech manufacturing of machines and equipment, still hinges on world commodities prices. Especially, the prices of metals. Since metals prices are volatile even in the context of commodities, China’s sustained growth could be threatened by this volatility.

Manufacturing of high tech goods in the industries that “Made in China 2025” aims to target, has only been a temporary fix for economic growth in developed countries. Instead, many countries, or trade and economics blocks, are moving towards an even greater opening of trade.

China’s free trade potential is limited, and its FTAs are geographically oriented towards Asia. The low western penetration makes trading less geographically and economically diverse – a challenge for growth.

As any other industry, advanced manufacturing can create sustained GDP growth, if constant innovation and competition is present. Competition in this sector is high both in China and in the world. As for constant innovation, it will be a challenge at least in the next few decades. Mainly because of China having to catch up to countries with more advanced high tech manufacturing industries.

The development of the manufacturing industry has been credited with helping China to become a more prosperous and globally competitive country. A new plan for the largest industry of PRC can deliver a similar success story. Nevertheless, the skills and knowledge gap, and a labour force which would have to change, could make this plan less successful.

L'articolo Will “Made in China 2025” Create a New Economic Boost? proviene da InsideOver.

We scroll, we watch, we scroll, we read, we swipe left, we pass, we swipe right, we like. Then we do it all over again. And again, and again. We are all – sparing a principled few – social media addicts. But are we sufferers of addiction? At least one American politician believes so. Senator Josh Hawley’s ‘SMART’ Act looks to reign in digital dependency with tough new restrictions. It’s likely destined for the legislative scrapheap, but the bill has got people talking – and tweeting – about the perils of not-so-social media. 

The Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (SMART) Act hopes to hit the Internet where it hurts. YouTube’s autoplay feature would be scrapped, as would the infinite scrolling of Twitter and Facebook feeds. Swiping would be restricted to three-minute sessions, with default daily limits set at half-an-hour. The measures are stringent, says Hawley, but necessary to protect against Big Tech’s exploitation of “human psychology [and] brain physiology”.    

The Missouri man has launched half a dozen bills since taking his Senate seat in January, each with an anti-tech edge. SMART is probably the most contentious, and – to the dismay of concerned parents – has little hope of being enacted. Skopos Labs, a bill success predictor, gives it a measly 3% chance of victory. But it’s sparking debate nonetheless – and isn’t without some measure of academic merit. 

Social media usage is skyrocketing, particularly among young people. A 2018 study by the Pew Research Center revealed a full 89% of teens are online at least “several times a day”, with just less than half admitting “almost constant” swiping. Strikingly, the numbers represent a two-fold increase since 2014.  

Purveyors of tech would say this is a good thing – evidence of their products’ popularity and mass appeal. But what Silicon Valley deems a coup in connecting and entertaining their customers, is, according to Mr Hawley, a ‘parasitic’ colonisation of attention. Big Tech would dispute this, with one industry group – the Internet Association – mauling the bill’s failure to recognise investment “in programs, partnerships, policies, controls, and resources to promote healthy online experiences”. 

Flashy as they are, these provisions can’t compete with old-fashioned moderation, some experts believe. A team at the University of Pennsylvania found that, when limiting social media use to 30 minutes a day, undergraduates enjoyed “significant improvements in well-being”. Anxiety, depression, loneliness, and the notorious fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) all receded markedly, noted research leader Melissa Hunt.    

The effects were particularly pronounced among more depressed students, reflecting, perhaps, the notion that vulnerable minds seek validation online. This sort of digital dependency is often equated to drug use, where addicts grow physiologically reliant on a substance. But talk of full-blown online addiction is overdone, analysts contend.

“Letting your child use social media is like giving them cocaine, alcohol and cigarettes – all at once, or so we’re told,” says Professor Andrew Przybylski, Director of Research at the Oxford Internet Institute. “Reports that compare social media to drug use are ignoring evidence of positive effects, while exaggerating and generalising the evidence of negative effects. This is scaremongering – and it does not promote healthy social media use”.    

Individual liberty could also be at risk in a cyber-crackdown, critics warn. Certain social media features “substantially impede freedom of choice,” reads the SMART Act – but restricting them would, in effect, diminish a user’s autonomy. “This is pure anti-freedom, anti-innovation,” says Shoshana Weissmann of the R Street Institute, a public policy think tank. “Yes, social media is taking over many people’s lives, and that’s bad. But it’s not the federal government’s job to fix”.

Above all else, law-making on social media’s addictiveness feels premature. It is a worthy talking point – and supreme debate fodder – but the lack of consistent, corroborated academic evidence restricts its legislative legitimacy. Key groups, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), have yet to designate it an illness, whereas similar phenomenon – like excessive video gaming – are deemed bona fide disorders.

The industry is braced for a fight, however, and already their lobbyists are picking apart the proposals. They’re wise to be rolling up their sleeves – the biggest battles are yet to come. The winds in Washington are blowing towards a Big Tech break-up, with regulation dominating the Democrat’s presidential race. Even Donald Trump is said to be considering an executive order against social-media political bias. 

After decades of free rein, the state is clamping down on Silicon Valley. It promises to be an almighty showdown – one that could reshape swiping habits for good.

L'articolo Social Media Addiction: Is It Time To Crackdown On Cyber Dependency? proviene da InsideOver.

For Israel’s two main ultra-Orthodox parties, the Shas and the United Torah Judaism (UTJ), this week’s election was always going to determine the role religion plays in the state. Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition, the Blue and White Party, have been flirting with these potential coalition parties since the last vote in April. The ultra-Orthodox parties have also been part of the government for all but five years since the year 2000.

These parties have succeeded in exempting ultra-Orthodox young men from military service if they are in full-time religious study. They have fought plans to run public transport on Shabbat, the Jewish holy day, and scuppered a compromise over the Western Wall that would allow liberal Jews to organise mixed-gender prayer sessions. It was a secular nationalist party that blocked Netanyahu from forming a minority government after Israel’s last election in April over the issue of ultra-Orthodox military service and plunged the nation into this week’s second vote.

Although they have a phobia of modern technology due to fears that it will corrupt youthful minds with pornography and secularism, the Shas and the UTJ have developed advanced political machinery and keep detailed records of their voters. Shmuel Papenhaim, a Haredi rabbi and former newspaper editor, told The Daily Telegraph that they are ‘very organised.’ To ensure that they continue to dominate future coalition governments, they must proceed with embracing modern technology for one simple reason: the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) population is growing fast.

They currently make up only 12 per cent of Israel’s population, but Eli Berman of the Quarterly Journal of Economics estimates there are 1.5-1.8 million Haredi Jews throughout the globe. She predicts a high birth rate and an absence of interfaith marriage will ensure their numbers continue to grow. Israeli rabbis tell congregations it is their religious duty to vote for Haredi politicians who will secure their place in the afterlife.

Therefore, voter turnout is high among this group. During April’s election, the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Modiin Illit witnessed a turnout of 85 per cent when the national rate was only 68 per cent. Technology is crucial to ensuring the Shas and the UTJ can mobilise their voters.

This is why the UTJ created a Facebook account. They have used their page to encourage their voters to join the UTJ’s WhatsApp group which enabled voters to organise transport for them to reach their nearest polling station at this week’s election. The group also ensured members have ID cards ready to vote. The UTJ also share videos of the Torah Rabbi Haim Kanevsky explaining why it is crucial to vote.

Many of the party’s videos are widely circulated. The New York Times reports that the UTJ’s video clip of one of Kanevsky’s disciples asking him how to communicate with voters who support parties that disregard the Torah’s laws went viral. Israel Cohen, a political analyst for the ultra-Orthodox radio station Kol Berama, said that the mainstream parties want to appeal to Haredi voters like Omer Yankelevich, an ultra-Orthodox Jew who joined the Blue and White Party. This shows the two main parties still believe the Haredi vote matters.

The Shas also use Telegram to connect with its voters from remote locations and coordinate groups of roughly 200,000 members. Israeli firm Check Point Software Technologies warned that hackers can use this technology to break into WhatsApp and Telegram accounts, but this has not prevented the Haredi parties from continuing to use them effectively.

Social media is vital in ensuring the UTJ and the Shas continue to mobilise their voter base and guarantee that these parties maintain a presence in Israeli politics. Although the Haredi population fears modern technology, it helps them record accurate voting figures and helped them engage with their younger electors during this week’s election. For these reasons alone, the ultra-Orthodox community remains a substantial force in Israeli politics, no matter which mainstream party wins the most seats in any election.

L'articolo How Israeli ultra-Orthodox Parties are Deploying Technology Effectively proviene da InsideOver.

In constantly evolving technology, governments – ponderous elephants at the best of times – are having headaches keeping up with developments. Drones are a major problem worldwide, threatening aircraft. Social media giants like Facebook have shown to be used to interfere with democratic elections.

In Canada, with a federal election set for Oct. 19, a Nanos Research poll found that six out of 10 Canadians were certain that Facebook would play a negative influence during the campaign and that the site does not adequately protect against such tactics.

EU officials said before the spring elections earlier this year that Russia has been seeding disinformation for years, attempting to erode citizen trust in EU countries. And in the United States, intelligence agencies said Russia surreptitiously interfered in the 2016 election and helped Donald Trump win the White House. Of course, the Kremlin denies it all.

EU officials in Brussels have confronted the Russian misinformation threat with the formation of the Eastern Stratcom Task Force. Its 15 members are charged with exposing Kremlin involvement in the spread of misinformation designed to confuse the population and sow discord. Russia appears to have caught democracy sleeping, with tactics that undermine elective governments and leave the democracies of the world scrambling to mitigate the damage.

But when acting to curtail such abuse, governments in their zealousness also can run afoul of freedom of expression, a keystone of democracy.

India, the world’s largest democracy, routinely employs internet shutdowns – 134 in 2018 – but such action contravenes freedom of expression and goes against India’s stated goal of using internet technology to feed economic development.

There is no win-win with the internet. Vigilance is the key, and governments will have to set up whole departments dedicated to constantly crawling the internet to identify misinformation, a step the EU took with formation of its task force mentioned earlier.

They are running from behind – not just in social media surveillance – but in other rapidly changing fields. The technology explosion and its misuse are not just digital and limited to political interference.

For example, governments everywhere are grappling with the huge surge in drones. In the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration set up its drone registration with an initial 470,000 of the ubiquitous flying objects. As of February 2019, that number had swelled to 1.3 million. Airports have been forced to halt or delay flights at Gatwick, Heathrow, Newark, Dubai and Dublin thanks to these devices.

Every government is once again scrambling to keep pace with regulations as the drone population mushrooms.

Perhaps the situation is best expressed on the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle website, where drone laws are listed by country accompanied by this disclaimer: “Drone laws are constantly changing. To stay up to date on the latest drone laws changes, sign up for an account to receive drone law notifications…”

But perhaps the most difficult technology facing governments worldwide is Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Alan Turing, the brilliant British mathematician who developed the concept of artificial intelligence and the modern computer circa 1950, and Stuart Russell, a renown computer scientist, all opined that AI would change the world – or maybe “annihilate it”, as an article by VOX put it.

Still in its infancy since current computers can only perform limited tasks such as playing chess, they nevertheless have demonstrated the human trait of deviance. AI computers have shown to employ cheating to win at a game.

And as they get more powerful, computers can get more devious and perhaps surpass the human brain for computation. Elon Musk, of Telsa, PayPal and SpaceX fame, so fears AI that he said it is more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

“If I were to guess, like, what our biggest existential threat is, it is probably that (AI),” Musk said, speaking at a Massachusetts Institute of Technology symposium. “With Artificial Intelligence, we are summoning the demon.” It remains to be seen if the lumbering pachyderm that is government will be able to control the demon.

L'articolo As Technology Relentlessly Advances, Governments Scramble to Keep Up proviene da InsideOver.