Author: Andrea Monti

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The responsibility of media and intellectuals for the power of big-tech and the safety of Institutions

Media and intellectuals no longer anticipate reality, but merely follow it. The building of a civil conscience pays the price by Andrea Monti

After Twitter decided to close former US president Trump’s accounts, Italian media and intellectuals  “discovered” the power of technological platforms and launched a “democracy alarm”.

They come good last and more than twenty years late (better late than never) on such an issue desperately signalled at international level by civil rights associations such as the American EFF, in Europe by EDRI) and, in Italy, since 1994, by ALCEI. Continue reading “The responsibility of media and intellectuals for the power of big-tech and the safety of Institutions”

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The assault on the US Capitol and the culture of law and order

The handling of the assault by former President Trump supporters has provoked strong criticism of the American security apparatus, responsible for not having foreseen what would happen. Ensuring public order, however, requires means, but also a philosophical choice in the management of security by Andrea Monti Professor of Law and Order, University of Chieti-Pescara – Originally published in Italian by Formiche.net

The scenes of the assault on the American Capitol evoke images more suited to other latitudes than that of the country universally accredited as a flagship democracy. Leaving aside why such a disconcerting event happened, and therefore disregarding the political consequences of having triggered a violent protest, it is worth making a few considerations on “how” the public order emergency looks from an Italian perspective. Continue reading “The assault on the US Capitol and the culture of law and order”

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The Zyxel’s Firewall Bug. Twenty Years Passed Invain

by Andrea Monti – originally published in Italian by Infosec.News

Routers … are affected by a severe vulnerability that makes it possible, without any artifice or hack, to obtain the router’s access password.
Therefore, it is possible to block the operation of the device, making services inaccessible and, in some cases, accessing the user’s internal network. It would make it possible to intercept e-mails and, more generally, the information contained therein— all without the user’s knowledge. We wonder … how is it possible that equipment with such vulnerabilities to the privacy of citizens and the activities of companies can be placed on the market without any control, without any information or caution, without any assumption of responsibility on the part of manufacturers and distributors and without any protection for defenceless (and unsuspecting) users? Continue reading “The Zyxel’s Firewall Bug. Twenty Years Passed Invain”

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Who owns your computer, and more importantly, can you trust it?

Operating systems and software manage the usability of machines by Andrea Monti – Originally published in Italian by Infosec.News

Adobe announces the end of Flash Player and that it will block content based on this standard, which is considered inherently unsafe and the subject of constant security updates.

It is a subject for another article to investigate why it was possible to allow such software (and those of other manufacturers) to burden and weaken computers around the world . For the time being, we are interested in the relationship between obsolescence management, licensing, the ‘ownership’ of a computer (or a smartphone or a tablet, or – when the IoT will, unfortunately, become a reality – any household appliance).

In short: buying a computer does not mean becoming its owner, because its usability depends on the strategies of operating systems and software’s producers to keep it running. The subject is certainly not new (Richard Stallman wrote about it at the dawn of free software), but today it has reached worrying dimensions.

Continue reading “Who owns your computer, and more importantly, can you trust it?”
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USA, China and the Weaponisation of Culture

The invasion of a sovereign state implies fighting the internal ‘resistance’. Therefore the adoption of counterinsurgency strategies is necessary. What does this mean in a Second Cold War scenario? The analysis of Andrea Monti, Adjunct Professor of Law and Order, University of Chieti-Pescara – Originally published in Italian by Formiche.net

The inoculation of values and lifestyles of an adversary civilian population plays a fundamental role in any form of conflict. Disrupting the adversary’s social structures is the prerequisite for weakening its resistance, facilitating the acceptance of the foreign presence in one’s territory in case of invasion or domination, in case of defeat.

Theoretically, the reasoning is coherent and shareable from a strategic point of view but, as counterinsurgency experts know, its concrete application in a state of waged war (even ‘by proxy’) is very complicated. Continue reading “USA, China and the Weaponisation of Culture”