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Head of research at Promising Trouble, and freelance research and writing on work, welfare, technology. Plus cats and gardens
abdconsultancy.co.uk
Promising Trouble - part-time day jobhttps://www.promisingtrouble.net/
Freelance mehttps://www.abdconsultancy.co.uk/

🇫🇷 Yesterday, the French parliament passed a law authorizing algorithmic surveillance. The goal is to automatically detect "abnormal behavior". Abnormal behavior shall be defined at a later point by the government.

https://www.lemonde.fr/sport/article/2023/03/23/jo-2024-les-deputes-autorisent-la-videosurveillance-algorithmique-avant-pendant-et-apres-les-jeux_6166681_3242.html

JO 2024 : les députés autorisent la vidéosurveillance algorithmique avant, pendant et après les Jeux

L’Assemblée nationale a adopté, jeudi, l’article du projet de loi olympique qui autorise le recours aux algorithmes pour le traitement des images enregistrées par des caméras ou des drones.

Le Monde

🇳🇱 Lighthouse Reports just released an investigation of Rotterdam's welfare fraud detection algorithm.

https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/suspicion-machines/

The main finding may not surprise you (the system zeroes in on marginalized groups and it's not very good at its job). But the perfection of the execution will make this investigation a new milestone, a European version of what ProPublica did with COMPAS.

Suspicion Machines

Unprecedented experiment on welfare surveillance algorithm reveals discrimination

Lighthouse Reports

Accessible, practical and inspiring toolkit for community organisations to get engaged in digital sustainability: thanks to the Green Web Foundation for putting it together!

https://www.communitytech.network/blog-community-tech/green-web-foundation-handbook

Community Tech meets Digital Sustainability: A Green Handbook for Community Tech Practitioners — Community Tech

Today we’re launching a new Green Handbook for community tech practitioners, commissioned by Promising Trouble and Power to Change, and produced by the Green Web Foundation.

Community Tech
The differential impact of recent inflation in the UK across the income spectrum remains *horrible*. The lowest income households are experiencing inflation rates 4.6 percentage points higher than those on the highest incomes.

Oh sweet, my other #FOSDEM talk is online now.

Getting to a fossil free internet by 2030: A tour of the tech and policy changes to get us there

If you've ever thought about tech and sustainability, in 25mins, I've tried to share a model to help navigate this confusing space, point to some cool open projects, and give an overview of the policy and regulatory drivers at play influencing it.

Downloadable slides and the rest are in the link:

https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/energy_fossil_free_internet/

#climateActionTech #greenweb

FOSDEM 2023 - Getting to a fossil free internet by 2030

"algorithmic wage discrimination allows firms to personalize and differentiate wages for workers in ways unknown to them, paying them to behave in ways that the firm desires, perhaps for as little as the system determines that they may be willing to accept"

https://lpeproject.org/blog/the-house-always-wins-the-algorithmic-gamblification-of-work/

The House Always Wins: The Algorithmic Gamblification of Work

Recent technological developments are transforming the basic terms of worker compensation. Rather than receive a salary or predictable hourly wage, workers in the on-demand economy are often paid…

LPE Project

*work post*

We're working with UK funder Power to Change to develop a community of practice to support makers and users of community-powered tech. If you'd find it helpful to be part of that, please fill out this survey and tell us more about the help you need - whether it's with funding, contracts and HR , ways of working, or building and documenting the software you're making. Please share!

http://tiny.cc/CommTechSurvey

Enketo Express for KoboToolbox

Do I have a follower who speaks Lithuanian and could explain to me the connotations associated with "Maskolija" ?

Boosts are appreciated 😘

The bit about a lawyer being stopped from entering a music hall in the US because its facial recognition system picked up that she's part of a law company that's suing them is even crazier than I thought.

The law company isn't suing the music hall - it's suing a restaurant, in another state, which is owned by the hall's parent company MSG Entertainment. MSG gone ahead and harvested photos of all the lawyers in the firm and fed it to an image recognition system to ban them from every MSG Entertainment owned location.

People always tell me that if you've got nothing to hide then you've got nothing to fear. She's got nothing to hide and they still went after her.

If this doesn't start making people worried about facial recognition then there's serious trouble coming.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/facial-recognition-flags-girl-scout-mom-as-security-risk-at-rockettes-show/
MSG defends using facial recognition to kick lawyer out of Rockettes show

MSG Entertainment began using facial recognition at venues in 2018.

Ars Technica
Enjoying my pre-Christmas tradition of filling in my tax return. Happy Christmas one and all! ⛄