[uMap] [Important: Action required] Your software might be used for terrorism

[Cascafico Giovanni]

Hello Eugenia,

I will be glad to help, but such requests seem rather impossible to be
fulfilled: most aerial imagery used by umap or openstreetmap mappers do not
have metadata and could be years old, hence such farm(s) could be actually
there.
In my opinion, this monitor activities should be done by local communities,
the best source of on-the-ground truth.

Besides, I don't understand "making the source code available upon a
verified request". AFAIK source is already available for everybody: maybe
such request should be ment for Google.

Finally, you mentioned "we" some times. Can you be more specific? Such
actions should be accomplished on behalf of?

Thanks, and take care.

Gio


Il mar 1 mar 2022, 21:40 Eugenia Soroka <eugenia.soroka at gmail.com> ha
scritto:

> Hi,
>
> I'm a concerned Ukrainian, writing to ask you to evaluate the options of
> your software being used for acts of terrorism / war, and reduce them.
>
> As you probably know, Putin has recently started an unprovoked war on
> Ukraine, which is still ongoing. Today, we've noticed that new tags popped
> up in many places on the territory of Ukraine in Google maps, marked as
> "ФЕРМЕРСЬКЕ ГОСПОДАРСТВО" or "ФГ"(which translates to a "farm"), in places
> where there is no farm, which we think can be used for adjusting the fire
> on our gas stations and government agencies.
>
> Here's a message about it sent to Google:
>
> https://support.google.com/maps/thread/152809911/terrorists-use-google-maps-tags-to-adjust-the-fires-please-help
> They are aware of the problem and are working on resolving it.
>
> *Could you evaluate the ways your map software can be used by terrorist
> groups, e.g. for marking points for attacks / correction of fire by
> airstrikes, please? And try to block this functionality before it starts,
> or monitor such suspicious activity and report it and mitigate it? If your
> software is open-source, could you consider making the source code
> available upon a verified request?*
> We would like to prevent the usage of your software for violent attacks
> causing deaths of people. But you know your software best, so we ask you to
> please think about the ways your software could be (ab)used and work to
> prevent it.
>
> *Please confirm the receipt of this message and that you routed it to the
> developers / appropriate teams for processing this request.* Otherwise,
> we will reach out to you again with the same plea for help. We have
> contacted all major map software companies with this message.
>
> Thank you,
> _______________________________________________
> Umap mailing list
> Umap at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/umap
>
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