Moving the Google: Right to Be Forgotten Has an Impact
January 23, 2019
I have heard that it can be difficult to reach a human at Google. It appears that a Dutch surgeon and her attorneys were successful. “Right to Be Forgotten Used to Force Google to Remove Medical Negligence Link” states:
Amsterdam’s district court has forced Google to remove search results relating to a Dutch surgeon’s past medical suspension…
The difference between printed information and digital information is becoming discernible. Print can exist in multiple copies in tangible form in many places; for example, university libraries, archives, and personal information collections. Making a change to a printed document can be tricky, but it can be done.
However, changing the digital record is a bit easier; for example, deleting a pointer in an index.
The question becomes, “What happens when a person wants to reconstruct the details of a particular matter?”
The answer is that information is relative. Figuring out what happened becomes a bit more difficult and expensive.
What happens?
I can’t look up the answer online, but I could ask IBM Watson. These types of answers may have to suffice with Silly Putty information.
A court decision may leave behind a paper trail. But the actions of a single system administrator may be impossible to identify and verify.
Epistemology may be due for a renascence when setting the record straight.
Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2019
Factualities for January 23, 2019
January 23, 2019
Statistics, statistics—More plentiful than snowflakes. Believe these or not.
- 8,600. The number of molly tabs a drug dealer in Tacoma, Washington, had in his possession. Source: The News Tribune
- 16 million. The number of US households receiving over-the-air TV. Source: TechCrunch
- $56 million. The amount of “dark net market” transactions in a single month. Source: Reuters
- 77 million. The number of Americans who talk to their vehicles. Source: Recode
- $500 million. The amount Microsoft is “providing” to address housing issues in Seattle. Source: Quartz
- 773,000,000. Number of email addresses offered for sale. Source: Wired
- $1 billion. The amount Disney lost in 12 months with its video streaming endeavors. Source: CNBC
- 20 to 40 percent. The percentage price increase for Tesla recharges. Source: The Verge
- 74 percent. The percentage of Facebook users in a Pew sample who did not know that Facebook keeps track of user interest and clicks in order to sell ads. Source: TechCrunch
Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2019
Iceland Criminal Moxie: Not Chilling in the Lock Up
January 22, 2019
ZDNet published “Iceland’s Bitcoin Bandit Sentenced for Stealing Mining Rigs.” A “mining rig” is one or more computers set up to do the calculations necessary to make a digital currency exist.
What’s interesting about this report is the malefactor was convicted for stealing equipment from three data centers in Iceland, a country about the size of Cuba except a bit more nippy.
The number of computers removed numbered about 600. Three separate robberies were conducted to snag the gear. The theft was not hijacking a computer’s cycle. The theft involved physical hardware.
A total of seven people were charged with the alleged crime.
One of these individuals — Sindri Þór Stefánsson — received the most severe sentence. Held in a low security prison, Mr. Stefánsson walked off the grounds and hopped a flight to Stockholm. Once in Stockholm, the bad actor traveled to Amsterdam. Upon his recapture, he was returned to Iceland.
Two key points:
- The missing 600 computers have not been found
- Mr. Stefánsson booked his escape flights using a mobile phone he operated from prison.
Interesting digitally enabled crime. Now about the use of mobile phones by prisoners while in custody? And boarding security checks?
Stephen E Arnold, January 22, 2019
Facebook and Twitter: Russia Targets US Social Media
January 22, 2019
Russia has initiative proceedings against Facebook and Twitter. The allegation is that social networks did not explain “how and when” Russian users’ personal data would be localized. CNBC reports that Facebook is in touch with the government agency bringing the legal action. CNBC states:
The new rules provide the Russian government with the ability to block websites that illegally process Russian citizens’ personal data. The communications regulator can also issue small fines to firms that fall foul of its data laws.
Facebook and Twitter may find that vacationing in Russia could become problematic. Does it seem as if American companies are in constant legal trouble in Europe? Both companies may have money, so why not go where the money is—by legal means, of course.
Perhaps Russia will offer a discount on the financial penalty if Facebook and Twitter place their servers in Moscow. Do you think someone in Mr. Putin’s IT unit will think of this idea?
I do.
Stephen E Arnold, January 22, 2019
DarkCyber for January 22, 2019, Now Available
January 22, 2019
DarkCyber for January 22, 2019, is now available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and on Vimeo at https://www.vimeo.com/312358055. The program is a production of Stephen E Arnold. It is the only weekly video news shows focusing on the Dark Web and lesser known Internet services.
This week’s story line up includes… a report about a cyber crime volunteer program in the Netherlands … a profile of the intelware company Numerica… a new Europol report about the hidden Web… and a Los Angeles’ online service points the finger at Craigslist with drug related allegations.
DarkCyber’s first story reports that Dutch police have begun a cyber crime volunteer program. Individuals with an interest in assisting law enforcement in researching Dark Web and related topics can participate in the new program. Skills required by the police include advanced mathematics and physics. More than 200 people have stepped forward to assist. An initial group of 14 individuals has been selected. One volunteer holds down a full time job but wants to contribute to the government’s efforts to reduce cyber crime.
The second story presents information about Numerica, a company which provides intelligence software or intelware to the US Department of Defense and law enforcement organizations. The Numerica approach relies on advanced technology and intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces for its products. The Lumen product allows jurisdictions to share data about incidents and suspects from a desktop computer or a mobile phone. The system can generate maps with geo-locations marked, brief “bubble gum” card summaries of suspects, and reports which include event and time information. The company is listed on the GSA schedule, which speeds procurement of the company’s solutions.
DarkCyber reviewed a 2018 Europol report about hidden Internet services. The report contains useful information about the relationship among digital currency, hidden Internet sites, and drug sales. Plus, the report identifies chat services as one communication channel which bad actors are using more frequently. The reason is that government efforts to shut down Tor centric Dark Web sites are forcing bad actors to find other means of hiding their activities. One of the chilling findings is that modern distributed services create more challenges for government authorities. Many hidden Internet services do not have a single focal point.
The final story reviews allegations by LA Taco, an online information service, that Craigslist is listing drugs in its online advertising service. The report alleges that Craigslist does not filter ad listings for code words used to allow insiders to locate certain drugs like fentanyl. According to LA Taco, dealers describe drugs as “white china plates.” The savvy drug buyer contacts the seller of what appears to be dinnerware and buys the controlled substances. These are serious allegations, but filtering for common words can delete many legitimate listings from the online service. No easy solution exists in the view of the DarkCyber research team.
A new blog Dark Cyber Annex is now available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress. Cyber crime, Dark Web, and company profiles are now appearing on a daily basis.
Kenny Toth, January 22, 2019
Google: More EU Pushback Coming?
January 21, 2019
I read “Google Is Expected to Get Hit With a Third Antitrust Penalty.” The point of contention is AdSense, the once helpful way for some online publishers to generate revenue. The AdWeek story provided zero context for the action nor did AdWeek explain why putting online ads on a Web page via AdSense was an alleged crime.
The original Bloomberg story stated:
Regulators were probing whether Google’s advertising contracts unfairly restricted rivals.
Bloomberg included one passage which I found interesting:
The EU said in 2016 that Google hindered competition for online ads with its AdSense for Search product which places advertising on websites, including retailers, telecommunications operators and newspapers. While its European market share is more than 80 percent, AdSense contributed less than 20 percent of Google’s total ad revenue in 2015, a percentage which has declined steadily since 2010.
Why did AdSense, possibly influenced by the Oingo technology, lose traction?
DarkCyber thinks that this is an interesting question.
Have Web site operators been affected as the AdSense program appears to have lost traction?
Perhaps more information will be forthcoming. Questions include:
- Did payout percentages of AdSense to Web participants decrease systematically?
- What were those payout percentages?
- Was the cost of the program a form a technical debt which contributed to the deplatforming of AdSense?
- Was AdSense inefficiency a way to push publishers to buy ads?
- What part did Google’s ad dispersion or inventory work down play in AdSense’s “decline”?
If another fine rolls in, Google will have won the trifecta for EU antitrust horse races it seems. One would hope that AdWeek would dig into these or similar questions.
Stephen E Arnold, January 21, 2019
Fortnite: A LE and Intel Gold Mine
January 21, 2019
Fortnite is not something that old folks like me spend much effort understanding. That might be a problem if you are over 35 and engaged in enforcement activities.
Next Friday (January 25, 2019), I will giving a lecture to computer science students at one of Kentucky’s more interesting universities. I won’t define “interesting.” There is a reception with yummy university snacks, and I do not want to be dis-invited.
I have to mention the new mechanisms bad actors use to evade surveillance. One of the handy dandy tools is a game. Yep, Fortnite. That’s the game you probably don’t think about.
Consider these data points from one of my go to, real news, frightened of acquisition sources, USA Today:
- One in five parents find it “moderately difficult” to get their progeny to stop playing
- 27 percent of teens play Fortnite when in school classes
- 50 percent of the teens in the survey use Fortnite to “keep up” with their friends
- 44 percent have made a “friend” online within the game
- 47 percent of teen girls play as well
- 61 percent of teens have played.
Ah, the digital cocktail: Chat, in game money which can be used for money laundering, audio, an opportunity for grooming, learning new dances like the one Athletic Madrid’s Antoine Griezmann does when he scores a goal.
Now this game has made news in a different way.
Newsweek reported that Fortnite data have been compromised. “Fortnite Hack Could Have Accessed Accounts, V-Buck Purchases, & Chat” states:
Fortnite boasts more than 200 million active players, and a recent exploit found by Check Point Software Technologies could have put all of them at risk. The vulnerability, first discovered in November and patched by developers at Epic Games, could have been devastating. If leveraged, it would give third-parties full access to user account details, payment information and even in-game chat audio.
What’s the big deal?
Wherever there are young people, chat, digital currency, and minimal parental understanding, the game may provide:
- A Petri dish for sexual predators looking for young people to groom
- A mechanism for exchanging messages about drugs, weapons, and terrorist plans in plain view if one knows how and where to look
- A conduit for money laundering. My hunch you, gentle reader, may not know how game currencies can be used to convert illegal gains into a hot property which can sell quickly to motivated buyers.
Net net: Fortnite may be more than a game, and it may be time to do more than say, “Put down that game. Come to dinner. Now.”
I will ask the audience on Friday, “Who plays Fortnite?” I will let you know if I learn anything or just get grumbles and blank stares from students and faculty alike.
Stephen E Arnold, January 21, 2019
Amazonia for January 21, 2019
January 21, 2019
The online bookstore has been busy. Developments we noted at DarkCyber included:
Amazon Wants to Make Coding Easier
GeekWire reported that Amazon has a secret “low code / no code project. The idea is “anyone to create business applications around their custom needs.” Disintermediation may be one consequence if this initiative takes root and bears fruit. The catchphrase for the project may be “AWS for everyone.” Source: GeekWire
Build AWS Using AWS
With Amazon becoming a development platform, one can use the Amazon command line environment. A user can also use Microsoft Visual Studio. You may need the AWS command line interface and Python. What are the implications for developers? Amazon is in your future. Source: Virtualization Review
How to Build a Serverless Solution
A how to which makes what might be a complex process less complicated. The article includes nods to developers who use Microsoft tools. There are code snippets too. The Amazon system screenshots are legible and labeled. The message is, “Use Amazon.” Source: Medium
Rackspace Embraces AWS
Rackspace, a vendor of cloud services, rolled out a suite of Amazon friendly services. The company suggested its services is designed to help companies leverage adoption of Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift, AWS Glue and Amazon Athena. Why embrace a competitor. The company’s rationale is “the database service gives customers the ability to prep, load and query data sets while reducing operational costs and time to market.” Source: ZDNet
Amazon Is Your Backup
The company rolled out a centralized backup service. The idea is that if you deal direct with Amazon, backups can be automated. The services meshes nicely with some other Amazon services. Our source said: [The new services helps] “customers more easily meet their business and regulatory backup compliance requirements. AWS Backup makes protecting storage volumes, databases, and file systems easier by giving customers a single service to configure and audit the AWS resources they backup, automate backup scheduling, set retention policies, and monitor recent backups and restores in one place.” Cloud and on premises data can be handled with the backup service. Source: AsianAge
Where Does One Run and AWS Workload?
Amazon now has an answer. The online bookstore purchase TSO Logic. The company’s software was developed to “find the optimized spot to place each and every workload.” No more trial and error for AWS developers. Amazon also purchased CloudEndure, a firm with disaster recovery tools. The deals suggest that Amazon wants to accelerate rounding out its offerings to developers. Source: SDX Central
Trade Publication Identifies MongoDB As a Target
Amazon’s document oriented database is an example of Amazon’s Bezos biceps flexing. According to CRN:
Amazon is simply trying to offer a more feature-rich document database.
The write up pointed out:
The MongoDB stock plunge after publication of an AWS blog revealing the new service… illustrates the tremendous muscle AWS has in the market and impact development of its services can have on independent software vendors.
TechCrunch describes the new database service and its license in a less decorous way. The phrase “middle finger” suggests the nature of the Amazon tactic.
Sources: Computer Reseller News and Techcrunch
Amazon’s Government Push Gains Momentum
DCD reported that “AWS will host the UK government’s Crown Marketplace.” Will the GSAAdvantage service be a target for Amazon’s sales team. The write up points out that when entities embrace large providers:
This approach has cost some small companies dearly. In 2017, Salford-based cloud provider DataCentred shut down after its largest customer, the tax collection agency Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, moved to AWS.
Source: Data Center Dynamics
Amazon Opens Its AI Conference to a Wider Audience
For conference organizers who dismissed Amazon as a worthy subject, a wake up call has been sounded. CNBC reported that “Amazon is launching a public version of its invite-only robotics and AI conference.” DarkCyber assumes that the conference will address Amazon’s policeware initiative. What’s Amazon’s policeware? Source: CNBC
Stephen E Arnold, January 21, 2018
With Q, Whither Watson?
January 20, 2019
It was a trying summer for IBM’s Watson as its Oncology software received some harsh criticism. Will new leadership improve the program? We learn IBM replaced Watson Health’s former head, Deborah DiSanzo, with John Kelly, previously their senior V.P. of Cognitive Solutions and Research, from Computerworld’s article, “Did IBM Overhype Watson Health’s AI Promise?” We would say the answer to that rhetorical question is, you bet!
Writer Lucas Mearian describes the troublesome July report published in Stat News. That report revealed that Watson Oncology, which is being used in several real-life healthcare facilities, had recommended “unsafe and incorrect” treatments for hypothetical patients. The Computerworld article touches on the company’s defense (or denial, depending on who you listen to), as well as covering some early problems that plagued the program. See the piece for those details. We are reminded that it takes time to fully train machine learning software, and told the AI has simply not had enough time or quality data to meet the hype generated by the sales team. Not yet.
The article closes with a look ahead, citing IBM’s relatively recent purchases of healthcare data analytics-firm Explorys, patient communications company Phytel, and Truven Health Analytics. Quoting Cynthia Burghard of IDC Health Insights, Mearian writes:
Upon completing all three acquisitions, IBM boasted its Watson Health Cloud housed “one of the world’s largest and most diverse collections of health-related data, representing an aggregate of approximately 300 million patient lives acquired from three companies. They all in their own right, before they were acquired, were very successful companies and had good, strong, loyal client bases and were plugging along.”… In late October, IBM announced plans to seed its new hybrid cloud model for Watson by first moving data from insurance payer systems. For that, Truven will be key. Once payer data is moved to the hybrid cloud, the electronic medical records (EMRs) acquired through the Explorys acquisition will follow, Kelly said.
IBM is not the first company to have its sales team outrun its developers, with an IBM quantum computer ready for prime time, what happens when one combines the two?
One possible answer is more marketing.
Cynthia Murrell, January 20, 2019
Smart Software and Academics
January 19, 2019
In a world overcome with scientific studies that make life-changing claims, only to be debunked, maybe it is time for AI to throw a life preserver. Nowhere is this more obvious than in higher education, where there is virtually no oversight of academic studies, as we discovered in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education story, “Sokal Squared: Is Huge Publishing Hoax.”
According to the story, a group of academics:
…spent 10 months writing 20 hoax papers that illustrate and parody what they call “grievance studies,” and submitted them to “the best journals in the relevant fields.” Of the 20, seven papers were accepted, four were published online, and three were in process when the authors “had to take the project public prematurely and thus stop the study, before it could be properly concluded.”
While some think this prank snuffs out the fallibility of academia, others claim it is destructive to the trust of those outlets. Either way, this seems like an optimal time for big data and AI to step in to help verify things. Schools already use similar software to check whether students are plagiarizing papers.
With non reproducible results and bogus research finding their way into august professional journals, smart software has its work cut out for its zeros and ones.
Patrick Roland, January 19, 2019
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