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Blue patches represent publicly owned land in Seattle that could support housing. (CityBldr Graphic)

Engineers at CityBldr knew they were sitting on a goldmine of zoning and land data. After all, thats how the Bellevue, Wash.-based big data company helps large corporations know the most cost-effective way to expand operations.

Then five years ago, staff members realized the data might lend itself toward solving one of the biggest social problems in the urban United States: affordable housing. The same information that could show a company where to build its next warehouse could also show a housing nonprofit or a city planner the entire inventory of underutilized, publicly owned land.

Moreover, it could immediately show them how many people could be housed on each parcel under existing zoning. Today, the company is launching a free demonstration website called Public to show in a sharply limited-access way what the software can do.

And with the launch, CityBldr is kicking off a campaign to get corporations to sponsor affordable housing nonprofits in order to get full access to the complete data that could reveal anything from low-hanging housing fruit to the underpinning of a long-term housing plan.

We spent five years building the Rosetta Stone of zoning, said Bryan Copley, CEO and co-founder of CityBldr. And we think it can really help change the amount of housing available.

That data could come in handy in Seattle come November. Should the Compassion Seattle Initiative get voter approval in the next election, the city will be required to build 2,000 units of housing over the following two years.

Copley said CityBldr has compiled a vast and deep land database of 100 U.S. cities with 255 different zoning standards. In those cities, Public data can show everything from land valuation, parcel size, current zoning, what currently is on the land, and how many people could be housed on the land under existing regulations.

For land that has multi-use zoning, a user can click through parameters for single-family, townhome, or multi-family dwellings to find out how many people or units the land could legally hold. A city planner could find out in minutes how many additional people could be housed on all available public land within the city limits.

After consulting with urban planning experts at U.C. Berkeley, M.I.T. and Harvard University the Harvard expert researched how best to help cities with the data Copley said the search was restricted to publicly owned land for two reasons: it can be easier to get a city to unload underused land to a nonprofit and cities sometimes dont have a simple way to track their own land inventories.

That said, the database someday could be opened to privately owned land as well, he said.

We built it so people could make use of it, Copley said. You cant make a private individual sell. Some people just want to sit on the land. But publicly owned land can be different.

Copley said CityBldr representatives have spoken to housing officials and government leaders in Seattle and across the country and the reception has been enthusiastic. He said the cost of getting the data for each city will run $10,000 so that is what a corporation will pay to sponsor a nonprofit.

Ideally, he said, CityBldr wont make a dime on Public. The plan is to collect money to pay for five full-time staff to help housing nonprofits and cities wade through and understand the data while continually updating the database as local regulations and land inventories change.

The dream, Copley said, is to make this zero out, cost wise. Were not doing this for the money.

See original here:
Mining its own data, CityBldr builds tool to show cities the best places to build affordable housing - GeekWire

For the National Whistleblower Centers National Whistleblower Day celebration, which Whistleblower Network News (WNN) co-sponsored, WNN had the pleasure of interviewing Thomas le Bonniec. In 2019, le Bonniec worked in Ireland for a subcontractor employed by Apple. When he first started the job, he was enthusiastic about the location and good pay, but he quickly took issue with what the job entailed: listening to user recordings from Siri, Apples virtual assistant.

I disagreed from the first day with what I was supposed to do at my job, le Bonniec says during the interview. He stayed at the job for two months, but when he listened to a recording from a pedophile, he decided he couldnt stay on any longer. That was also the moment le Bonniec decided that the public needed to know what was going on.

Since leaving Apple, le Bonniec has been urging the data protection authorities in Europe to take action about his allegations, because they are responsible for these kinds of violations. They are the ones who should investigate that. During the interview, he talked about his whistleblowing experience and how he tried to flag the recording to no avail. He also talked about how he was unable to blow the whistle on these issues internally, because it was the job itself that is extremely objectionable. These recordings were made on a massive scale, le Bonniec emphasizes.

During the last part of the conversation, le Bonniec gives advice to people who might want to blow the whistle. He advises that a potential whistleblower would need a lot of time of introspection before they decide what path theyre going down to. He recalls that he was told by several people close to him that blowing the whistle would be pointless and an uphill battle, and he concedes that whistleblowing is not something you should do lightly. You should definitely think about it before you start the process, thats not something you go back from, especially when you go public.

It feels good to be able to say youre not going to bow down to pressure, especially when it feels, in my case at least, that its wrong, le Bonniec remarks. So thats a good thing. Other doors, other opportunities are open. You meet different people who have a different view of the world. They may not be in power, but they are at least trying to do things for the betterIm connected to people who are trying to do things for the better, and thats very much whats important to me.

I would also say that you definitely need to bear in mind that your employer is not on your side in these specific cases pretty much anytime, actually. Your employer is not going to be on your side: be careful with what youre going to share with them and what your intentions are and how disgruntled you may seem to them as well. Be careful and dont give anything to them that they might use afterwards, le Bonniec advises.

At the end of the interview, le Bonniec emphasized his commitment to trying to enact meaningful change and urging European data protection authorities to take action. Im not going to let this go, thats for sure, he says.

He also cautions individuals to think critically about their relationship with big tech industries: If you ever think of what kind of data youre just giving away and how much it is worth, actually, to the people who are spying on you, please make sure to check your iPhone settings, your Siri settings. Please make sure that youre not using Google anymore, try another search engine like DuckDuckGo, try to switch from Google Chrome to Mozilla Firefox. Try and get involved with free software and those kinds of actors, such as the Wikimedia Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, and Linux and all those people who are actually doing a great job of fighting that.

le Bonniec was one of the many brave whistleblowers who shared their stories and experiences at this years National Whistleblower Day celebration. His powerful story provides invaluable insights into the tech industry.

Learn more about National Whistleblower Day 2021 here.

Interested in tech and social media whistleblowers? Read an interview with Facebook whistleblower Sophie Zhang here.

Originally posted here:
Apple Whistleblower's Advice to Potential Whistleblowers: Your employer is not going to be on your side. - Whistleblowers Protection Blog

Amazon interfered with a formal election by its warehouse workers in Alabama to unionize and staff ought to be given a second chance to vote again, an official at the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has concluded.

After pro-union employees, represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), working at the BHM1 fulfillment center in Bessemer in the Cotton State lost their unionization election in April, the union swiftly filed objections to the labor relations board.

"A free and fair election was impossible," said [PDF] Kerstin Meyers, an NLRB hearing officer, this week. "Under the circumstances, I recommend that a second election be ordered."

Stuart Appelbaum, the RWDSUs president, claimed Amazon deliberately engineered an unfair election environment that skewed the vote. For instance, Amazon had the US Postal Service install a mailbox right in front of the warehouse, and the mega-corp messaged its workers to encourage them to mail in their ballots via this box. It is said the mailbox was placed in a tent, branded with Amazon's anti-union messaging and a sign on it saying vote here in full view of Amazon's surveillance cameras. It was claimed this was a clear example of Amazon sticking its oar far too deep into the voting process.

The labor official agreed. The employers conduct in causing this generic mail receptacle to be installed usurped the NLRBs exclusive role in administering union elections, Meyers wrote.

Notwithstanding the unions substantial margin of defeat, the employers unilateral decision to create, for all intents and purposes, an onsite collection box for NLRB ballots destroyed the laboratory conditions and justifies a second election.

The e-commerce giant also not only showered workers with messages to vote no, as you might expect, it had them attend mandatory 30-minute meetings that were essentially anti-union lectures. At the end of these meetings, anti-union leaflets and pins were left for staff to pick up, with supervisors watching them as they left.

"I find that by distributing these anti-union materials in the presence of managers, the employer committed objectionable conduct," Meyers noted. "The misconduct herein occurred on numerous occasions at untold number of meetings. Virtually all of the bargaining unit employees were subjected to the misconduct, as these were mandatory employee meetings. Under the circumstances, I find that this conduct is objectionable."

It was also claimed Amazon hired off-duty cops to patrol its facilities during the election period, though it was able to demonstrate to the labor watchdog that these officers were needed due to recent on-site security incidents. Similarly, Amazon was accused of persuading the county to alter traffic light signal patterns to interfere with pro-union campaigning on street corners, though it was shown that Amazon had merely asked the county to carry out a traffic flow study of the area before union campaigning began.

In the end, 738 votes were cast for joining the RWDSU, and 1,798 votes were cast against from roughly 5,860 possible voters; 505 ballots were challenged, which wouldn't be enough to change the outcome.

That said, now that Meyers has recommended a second vote be carried out, a regional director of the labor board will decide over the summer whether to demand another election.

We support the hearing officers recommendation that the NLRB set aside the election results and direct a new election, Appelbaum said in a statement.

As President Biden reminded us earlier this year, the question of whether or not to have a union is supposed to be the workers decision and not the employers. Amazons behavior throughout the election process was despicable. Amazon cheated, they got caught, and they are being held accountable.

Amazon said it intends to appeal to block another election, adding that its workers "voted overwhelmingly in favor of a direct connection with their managers and the company."

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US labor official suggests Amazon's Alabama workers rerun that unionization vote - The Register

Salesforce-owned application integration biz Mulesoft has gobbled up Servicetrace, a robotic process automation vendor.

In a move that follows Oracle and SAP in the RPA market, the buy is intended to help Salesforce provide integration, API management, and RPA platforms, which would further "enrich" its Customer 360 tool, according to Brent Hayward, Mulesoft CEO.

"The new RPA capabilities will enhance Salesforce's Einstein Automate solution, enabling end-to-end workflow automation across any system for Service, Sales, Industries, and more," he said.

But Salesforce is not the first application giant to see the logic in buying or developing RPA technology to sit alongside their own business platforms.

In 2018, SAP bought French RPA vendor Contextor and followed up last year with the launch of SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation (RPA) 2.0, which "targets developers looking to automate repetitive, manual tasks with software bots."

Similarly, Oracle is also looking to take a chunk out of the RPA market, dominated by vendors including Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, and UiPath, which could be worth $75bn by 2025.

But just to be different, Big Red is calling its effort Intelligent Process Automation. Last year Juergen Lindner, Oracle senior veep of ERP, said it would "leapfrog the RPA approaches" by using machine learning to "auto suggest which tasks can be automated."

Not to be left out, Microsoft has bought Softomotive and last year launched its Power Automate Desktop product.

But Mulesoft sees RPA as part of the process of application integration rather than simply automating desktop tasks.

With a partial regurgitation of the jargon dictionary, CEO Hayward said: "We're continuing to build on our vision of enabling the composable business, making it possible for companies to turn every asset in their organization data, automations, and applications into reusable building blocks to create seamless digital experiences, faster."

Lovely stuff.

This being the IT industry, everyone is trying to eat each other's lunch. RPA and low-code vendor Pega is also having a stab at integration, with its "context-aware" APIs that "dynamically update" as processes change.

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Salesforce follows application rivals into the RPA market with Servicetrace purchase - The Register

Facebook, which has repeatedly touted its transparency efforts, on Tuesday disabled the accounts of independent ad transparency researchers.

The targeted ad biz said it did so in the name of privacy, a source of persistent scandal for the corporation. Facebook said it disabled the accounts, apps, Pages, and platform access for NYUs Ad Observatory Project and participating researchers because their work violated its rules.

"NYUs Ad Observatory project studied political ads using unauthorized means to access and collect data from Facebook, in violation of our Terms of Service," said Mike Clark, product management director at Facebook, in a blog post.

Clark said Facebook did so to comply with the terms of its FTC Order, which followed from the company's 2019 settlement with the US trade watchdog to resolve privacy complaints. And he said Facebook told the researchers their tool would violate the social network's terms a year ago, before it launched.

The NYU Ad Observatory created a browser extension called Ad Observer that scrapes data from Facebook in a way that avoids the tech giant's detection systems, said Clark, claiming some of that data was not publicly viewable on the site.

"Todays action doesnt change our commitment to providing more transparency around ads on Facebook or our ongoing collaborations with academia," Clark insisted.

The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a phone interview with The Register, Ashkan Soltani, a privacy researcher and former Federal Trade Commission technologist, dismissed Facebook's justification and the idea that the consent decree requires such drastic action.

"It's selective enforcement," he said, noting that Facebook often permits other analytics tools on their websites. "Yet again Facebook is trying to use privacy to fulfill a policy goal of reducing transparency around ad serving."

The reason Facebook would do so, he said, is that the company has faced a lot of criticism around how it targets ads, and not just political ads, which the NYU researchers are studying.

FB's stance, he said, is particularly ironic given its failure to defend against the scraping of actual consumer data that produced the massive spillage of personal info from 533m Facebook accounts in April.

The Ad Observer extension, he said, isn't collecting personal information about Facebook users. It's collecting information about ads that are meant to be shown publicly.

Mozilla said as much back in October last year when Facebook initially threatened to block Ad Observer. "Facebook claims its motive for threatening Ad Observer is that browser plugins and extensions, like Ad Observer, could violate Facebook users privacy," Moz said in an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

"But Ad Observer only collects information about the ads people see, not personal posts or users personal information. What is true is that the Ad Observatory project has revealed serious flaws in Facebooks advertising transparency policies."

According to the NYU Ad Observatory, the Ad Observer extension collects: the advertiser's name and disclosure string; the ad's text, image, and link; the information Facebook provides about how the ad was targeted; when the ad was shown to you; and your browser language. The project claims it does not collect any identifying or personal information.

"[Ad Observer] essentially pulls back the veil on their underlying algorithms," said Soltani, adding that regulators have a legitimate interest in such information. "The HUD investigation was made possible through this type of analysis."

In 2018, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development sued Facebook for discriminatory advertising [PDF]. Facebook settled the charges a year later, agreeing to make changes to its ad system.

Researchers involved in the project an attempt to expose social media threats to democracy promptly denounced the move.

Laura Edelson, a doctoral candidate at NYU said, "Over the last several years, weve used this access to uncover systemic flaws in the Facebook Ad Library, identify misinformation in political ads including many sowing distrust in our election system, and to study Facebooks apparent amplification of partisan misinformation."

"By suspending our accounts, Facebook has effectively ended all this work. Facebook has also effectively cut off access to more than two dozen other researchers and journalists who get access to Facebook data through our project."

Other academics involved in the project expressed similar dissatisfaction.

It is disgraceful that Facebook is attempting to squash legitimate research that is informing the public about disinformation on their platform

"It is disgraceful that Facebook is attempting to squash legitimate research that is informing the public about disinformation on their platform," said Damon McCoy, associate professor of computer science and engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, in a statement.

"With its platform awash in vaccine disinformation and partisan campaigns to manipulate the public, Facebook should be welcoming independent research, not shutting it down. Allowing Facebook to dictate who can investigate what is occurring on its platform is not in the public interest."

So too did politicians, like US Senator Mark Warner (D-VA).

"This latest action by Facebook to cut off an outside groups transparency efforts efforts that have repeatedly facilitated revelations of ads violating Facebooks Terms of Service, ads for frauds and predatory financial schemes, and political ads that were improperly omitted from Facebooks lackluster Ad Library is deeply concerning," said Warner in a statement, urging legislative action to deal with "shadowy world of online advertising."

Despite years of calling on social media platforms to work with independent researchers to improve platform integrity, he said, Facebook appears to have done the opposite.

The political pique rippled across the pond, prompting UK MP Damian Collins to state, "Facebook is closing down legitimate academic research into targeted advertising on its platform. This shows once again that they are more concerned about protecting their interests than allowing independent scrutiny of how their ad tools are used & abused."

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Facebook takes bold stance on privacy of its ads: Independent transparency research blocked - The Register