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Content type: Case Study
Como is one of the most advanced cities in Italy in the use of facial recognition technology (FRT). An investigation for the Italian Wired magazine published in June 2020 exposed how the system had been bought, installed and tested for months with little transparency and despite the lack of a clear legal framework.
The investigation was entirely based on tools available to everyone, such as Freedom of Information requests (FOI requests. Similar to PI’s campaign 'Unmasking policing, inc', it…
Content type: Examples
In late May, shortly before Italian domestic travel was set to reopen, Stefano Bonaccini, the governor of Emilia-Romagna, called Sardinia’s proposed health passports “unmanageable”, although Sicily and some other southern regions popular among tourists were also in favour of using them to ensure that the virus did not spread from hard-hit northern areas such as Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, and Lombardy. Bonaccini also objected to characterising some regions as virus spreaders.
https://www.ansa.it/…
Content type: Examples
In April, as the crisis in Italy began to ease, some Italian health officials and politicians, among them Luca Zaia, the regional president of the northeastern region of Veneto, began to propose a “Covid Pass” that would Italians who have antibodies showing they have had and recovered from the coronavirus to exit the lockdown and go back to work. Veneto, adjacent to the hardest-hit area, Lombardy, planned to begin collecting 100,000 blood samples from people across the region for the purpose of…
Content type: Examples
Italy has launched Immuni, one of the first contact tracing apps based on the Apple-Google API. The app is opt-in, and includes an explanation of the privacy and security measures in its setup. The app collects anonymously bluetooth tokens that are automatically randomised, but does not collect GPS or location data and performs all processing on the device.
Source: https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/01/italy-apple-exposure-notification-api-app/
Writer: Michael Potuck
Publication: 9 to 5 Mac
Content type: Examples
Using mobile phone data to verify the movements of their owners, the Italian region of Lombardy found that between February 20, when the first COVID-19 case was discovered, and March 10, movement by its 2 million inhabitants dropped by just under 60%. Lombardy has also used cell phone data, obtained from the telecommunications companies and transferred to the ISI Foundation for a public impact research project, to monitor how many people move around the district. Because of privacy laws, the…
Content type: Examples
The former Big Brother reality TV star Matías Schrank was arrested by the Cybercrime division of the Misiones provincial police, after publishing tweets that claimed that Eduardo Rovira, the president of the Misiones legislature, had contracted COVID-19 on his recent trip to Thailand and was reckless in not immediately going into quarantine but continuing to hold meetings with other high-level government officials. Schrank was charged under Article. 211 of the Criminal Code, which…
Content type: Examples
The Argentinian company Urbetrack is developing a "Cuidate en casa" (Take Care of Yourself at Home) app that it will pitch to government agencies throughout the country. The goal is to contribute to remediating the health crisis by helping enforce quarantine. The plan is that users will download the app and complete a form with their personal details as chosen by the local authority. The app will then generate a "radial geofence" defined by the local authority, within which the user must stay.…
Content type: Examples
The Argentinian Ministry of Transport, working with the state-owned satellite company ARSAT and the telecoms regulator,ENACOM, proposed to the Executive on 31 March 2020 a platform that uses cell tower data to track people on public transport and ensure they comply with quarantine laws. By 28 March, the Ministry of Security had detained 13,006 people for violating the rules. The government believes that although compliance is high, it will deteriorate if quarantine is extended much longer…
Content type: Examples
The San Francisco-based big data company Grandata has created a heat map to show which areas of Argentina are best complying with the quarantine lockdown. Grandata used an "anonymised" dataset collected from apps that provide third parties with geolocation information. The heat map shows if an individual has moved more than 100 meters from the place where they spend most of their time, apparently without taking into account the socio-economic contexts of different cities, where individuals…
Content type: Examples
The surveillance tool supplier Cy4Gate is pitching surveillance tools to track every citizen and their contacts to multiple governments around the world, including their own. In a demonstration of the system, Governments using the system, which Cy4Gate calls "Human Interaction Tracking System (HITS), would track mobile phone users' location via GPS, cellphone tower data, and Bluetooth. Cy4Gateis ready to offer the system for free to Italian authorities, and pitched it publicly on Twitter in…
Content type: Examples
Argentina's Public Prosecutor's Office will start installing an app on the smartphones of those who violate government-ordered quarantine in the cities of Santa Fé and Rosario. The app will be installed by the province's Criminal Investigation Agency to track those who are under criminal investigation for violating quarantine. The app will send reports to the the MPA investigation office and coordinated by the Attorney General's Office. Individuals will be required to sign a document…
Content type: Examples
On March 23, Argentina's immigration agency, Dirección Nacional de Migraciones (DNM), announced that anyone arriving in the country would be required to install the free COVID-19 Ministry of Health app on their phone for 14 days to ensure they comply with quarantine rules in order to protect the population. The Office of the Chief of Staff had instructed the DNM to adopt this policy when it launched the app, also on March 23. Since launch, the number of unnecessary permissions the app requests…
Content type: Examples
The self-testing web app issued by Argentina's Secretariat of Public Innovation asks for national ID number, email and phone as mandatory fields in order to submit the test. The Android version requires numerous permissions: calendar, contacts, geolocation data (both network-based and GPS), microphone, camera, full network access; change audio settings, run at startup; draw over other apps, prevent device from sleeping.
Sources:
https://www.argentina.gob.ar/coronavirus/app
https://play.…
Content type: Examples
The free app Testeate, developed by the company Adrómeda in collaboration with the Association of Information and Communication Technologies of Mar del Plata (ATICMA) and the Chamber of Software and Computer Services Companies of Argentina (CESSI) and launched in the Municipality of General Pueyrredón on March 26, is intended to enable direct information exchange between Argentina's National Ministry of Health and the population by offering constantly updated information in any city and…
Content type: Examples
A group of independent developers in Argentina started CoTrack, a public crowdsourced effort to develop an app to track and slow the spread of the virus. CoTrack registers each user's geographic movements and looks for times when they are close to people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19. When there is a confirmed case, a user who has the app can share their data with the community so others can automatically be notified that they should take precautions. The Ministry of Health for the area…
Content type: Examples
An Argentinian crowdsourcing website is collecting information on flights with passengers who were reported as testing positive for COVID-19. Users are asked to enter their email address and the date, airline, and flight number, and tick a box to indicate that someone on their flight was infected. No information is provided on who operates the site, but the terms and conditions indicate that it uses open data flows alongside the collected data.
Source: http://www.checkmyvirusrisk.com/CO/…
Content type: Examples
In a statement, Vodafone said it is "producing an aggregated and anonymous heat map for the Lombardy region in Italy to help the authorities to better understand population movements in order to help thwart the spread of COVID-19." The company offered to help governments develop insights based on large anonymised datasets wherever technically possible, and legally permissible, Vodafone will be willing to assist governments in developing insights based on large anonymised data sets.
Source:…
Content type: Examples
A task force at the Italian Ministry of Innovation, in collaboration with the University of Pavia to leverage big data technologies to deal with COVID-19, after the WHO advised governments that lockdowns alone are not enough, and that testing, isolation, and contact tracing are crucial. The effort is beginning with anonymised data provided by Facebook; Italian telcos including Tim, Vodafone, Wind Tre, and FastWeb, via their Asstel trade association, have also offered anonymous datasets…
Content type: Examples
A task force at the Italian Ministry of Innovation, in collaboration with the University of Pavia to leverage big data technologies to deal with COVID-19, after the WHO advised governments that lockdowns alone are not enough, and that testing, isolation, and contact tracing are crucial. The effort is beginning with anonymised data provided by Facebook; Italian telcos including Tim, Vodafone, Wind Tre, and FastWeb, via their Asstel trade association, have also offered anonymous datasets…