False Positives: The New Normal
January 1, 2019
And this is why so many people are wary of handing too much power to algorithms. TechDirt reports, “School Security Software Decided Innocent Parent Is Actually a Registered Sex Offender.” That said, it seems some common sense on the part of the humans involved would have prevented the unwarranted humiliation. The mismatch took place at an Aurora, Colorado, middle school event, where parent Larry Mitchell presumably just wanted to support his son. When office staff scanned his license, however, the Raptor system flagged him as a potential offender. Reporter Tim Cushing writes:
“Not only did these stats [exact name and date of birth] not match, but the photos of registered sex offenders with the same name looked nothing like Larry Mitchell. The journalists covering the story ran Mitchell’s info through the same databases — including Mitchell’s birth name (he was adopted) — and found zero matches. What it did find was a 62-year-old white sex offender who also sported the alias ‘Jesus Christ,’ and a black man roughly the same age as the Mitchell, who is white. School administration has little to say about this botched security effort, other than policies and protocols were followed. But if so, school personnel need better training… or maybe at least an eye check. Raptor, which provides the security system used to misidentify Mitchell, says photo-matching is a key step in the vetting process….
We also noted:
“Even if you move past the glaring mismatch in photos (the photos returned in the Sentinel’s search of Raptor’s system are embedded in the article), neither the school nor Raptor can explain how Raptor’s system returned results that can’t be duplicated by journalists.”
This looks like a mobile version of the PEBCAK error, and such mistakes will only increase as these verification systems continue to be implemented at schools and other facilities across the country. Cushing rightly points to this problem as “an indictment of the security-over-sanity thinking.” Raptor, a private company, is happy to tout its great success at keeping registered offenders out of schools, but they do not reveal how often their false positives have ruined an innocent family’s evening, or worse. How much control is our society willing to hand over to AIs (and those who program them)?
Cynthia Murrell, January 1, 2018
Beyond Search for 2019
January 1, 2019
I started Beyond Search to focus on new developments in enterprise search. That was in 2008. After 10 years of focusing on search, I have decided to retain the url but shift Beyond Search to cover the hidden Internet and lesser known Internet services. The blog will undergo a modest redesign and be called “DarkCyber Annex.”
Why an annex?
The modified Beyond Search blog will include information which supplements my weekly DarkCyber video. DarkCyber has been in production for one year, and it is—as far as I know—the only weekly video news program reporting about intelware, hidden Internet sites, and cyber crime.
To keep the videos in the 10 minute range, my team and I have to prune stories and content.
DarkCyber Annex, therefore, will be the online location for some of our additional content. We will continue to include links in the weekly videos, but now a version of the video story will appear in the DarkCyber Annex and include hyperlinks to source documents.
The flow of stories to Beyond Search will go down, and those assisting me in creating content for DarkCyber Annex will increase the flow of stories on the themes I have identified.
I plan to leave the Beyond Search content online. The 16,899 stories will be searchable but frozen. Looking back, enterprise search companies often described a fantastical world in which instant access was both marketed and sold.
That contributed to the implosion of the enterprise search sector. Today, if one wants search, many choose Lucene / Solr. Vendors of old school proprietary information retrieval systems will still market aggressively, pay consulting firms to sing the praises of the systems, and hold conferences which recycle words and concepts which are decades old.
Enough. Stale conferences. Endless repetition of hard-to-believe claims. Weird Eisenhower / BCG charts comprised of subjective silliness. Flaccid essays in online blogs and news services about “content management.” Yada yada yada.
For me, the subject is not just uninteresting. Enterprise search is a case study in what is likely to happen to other technologies in search of a solution informed by watching Star Trek. Explaining enterprise search in terms of “governance” in our Facebook world is shallow.
In 2019, I will try to make clear that intelware, not search, is where information access is today. Banging in key words still works, but the innovators are pushing into function spaces that deliver on some of the wild and crazy claims made in the salad days of Autonomy, Convera, Endeca, Fast Search & Transfer, and the dozens upon dozens of other companies I tracked in my career.
Enterprise search has fallen on its sword. New solutions have become available, but so far enterprises remain unaware of some of the most promising vendors.
DarkCyber videos and DarkCyber Annex will try to fill the information void. After all, we know traditional search is not too useful, right?
Stephen E Arnold, January 1, 2018
DarkCyber for January 1, 2019, Now Available
January 1, 2019
DarkCyber for January 1, 2019, is now available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and on Vimeo at https://www.vimeo.com/308764040. 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… novelty currency and email collection services… Primer, a next-generation investigative tool with NLG… and homemade explosive device constituents become a regulators’ focal point.
First, there is confusion between novelty currency (a banknote worth one million dollars) and counterfeit currency. BuyBillsOnline.com seems to offer counterfeit bills one can use as a legal banknote. DarkCyber points out that the Surface Web service is an odd combination of useful information about how government’s protect their banknotes and a too-good-to-be-true offer of counterfeit currency. DarkCyber urges cautions. The Web site may be an online service designed to gather the email addresses and other information of unsuspecting, online users.
Second, DarkCyber profiles a company which has deployed smart software which uses NLG or natural language generation. Primer’s technology processes large volumes of information collected in an investigation, identifies the key entities in the content, and produces a report automatically. The company has clients in law enforcement, intelligence, and financial services. DarkCyber highlights the important innovations the company has revealed in its patents for its intellectual property.
The final story reports that homemade explosive devices can be created with easy-to-get chemicals and compounds. In 2019, more stringent controls may be placed on certain materials; for example, concentratged forms of hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid. An individual with some training in chemistry can assemble explosive devices, some of which can generate about 80 percent of the force of commercial TNT.
Kenny Toth, January 1, 2019
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