Foreshadowing 2022: Specialized Software Companies May Face Bumps in the Information Highway
January 6, 2022
At one international intelligence conference, representatives of NSO Group were in good humor. The revelations about the use of their Pegasus system were, according to one person in attendance, great marketing. It struck me that this person who was sharing his impressions with me about NSO Group’s participation in a cocktail party, did not appreciate the power of marketing.
Specialized software vendors are now becoming part of the software landscape. “Former US Intelligence Analysts Sued For Hacking A Saudi Activist’s Phone On Behalf Of The United Arab Emirates” reports that there are risks to those who sign on to work for certain firms who obtain access to quite interesting software, tools, and and systems which allow confidential information to be made un-confidential.
The write up explains:
Three former US intelligence community analysts (two of which worked for the NSA) were fined $1.68 million for utilizing powerful hacking tools to target dissidents, activists, journalists, and the occasional American citizen for the UAE government.
Additional lawsuits are likely to be filed.
Here’s my take on the specialized software vendors in 2022:
- Scrutiny and discussion of the companies providing governments with sophisticated surveillance and intelligence gathering systems will increase
- The attention is going to make clear additional details about how these tools and systems accomplish their tasks. That information is going to diffuse. Actors will innovate and accelerate their efforts to increase the capabilities of unregulated and uncontrolled surveillance software.
- Some of the specialized software vendors will have to shift their strategy. News releases about tie ups between specialized software companies may not be helpful in closing deals.
My hunch is that specialized software vendors will have to lower their profiles, rethink their marketing and positioning, and find a way to take more responsibility for their innovations. Since many specialized software vendors operate networks which validate and monitor their software’s operations, isn’t that a mechanism to take a more responsible approach to the use of what some like the Citizen’s Lab and the Electronic Frontier Foundation consider weapons?
My thought is that the Facebook-type approach has become popular among some specialized software vendors. But I don’t think 2022 will see a significant change in the vendors’ behavior. Those who monitor the sector, however, will amp up their activities.
Stephen E Arnold, January 5, 2022
Voyager Labs: Another NSO Group Moment?
January 6, 2022
Facebook has called out the significant but low-profile firm Voyager Labs, which creates and sells popular AI-based investigation tools, for helping the Los Angeles police department breach its terms of service. We learn from LaptrinhX News, “LAPD Allegedly Warned by Tech Giant to Stop Creating and Using Phony Accounts to Spy on Criminal Suspects.” The write-up reproduces the warning letter interspersed with commentary. The missive states Facebook learned of the dummy accounts from nonpartisan law and policy institute The Brennan Center for Justice. It warns:
“To the extent these practices are ongoing they violate our terms of service. While the legitimacy of such policies may be up to the LAPD, officers must abide by Facebook’s policies when creating accounts on our services. The Police Department should cease all activities on Facebook that involve the use of fake accounts, impersonation of others, and collection of data for surveillance purposes.”
The letter goes on to avow Facebook’s commitment to creating a safe haven for free expression and respect for users’ First Amendment rights. The line about concern for user safety comes across a bit strained amid the company’s current struggles, but no matter. We are more interested in the outfit that reportedly handed the LAPD a tool to make managing fake personas on Facebook easy. The letter states:
“It has also come to our attention that the LAPD has used a third-party vendor to collect data on our platforms regarding our users. Under our policies, developers are prohibited from using data obtained on our platforms for surveillance, including the processing of platform data about people, groups, or events for law enforcement or national security purposes. . . . We regard the above activity as a breach of Facebook’s terms and policies, and as such, we will disable any fake accounts that we identify and take action against third-party vendor conduct that violates our terms.”
Though Facebook did not name the vendor in its letter of admonishment, Breitbart reports The Brennan Center specified Voyager Labs as the culprit. That firm sells to government and law enforcement agencies and to private companies around the world. Founded in 2012 by a former Israeli intelligence agent of two decades, Voyager Labs keeps its R&D department in Tel Aviv, its headquarters in New York City, and satellite offices in Europe, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific.
Cynthia Murrell, January 6, 2022
Meta (Facezuck) Tries More Adulting
January 6, 2022
Facebook is one of the biggest purveyors of possibly questionable information and malware during the pandemic and into the present day. The social media’s platform has been to slap bandaids over its problems, however, that does not prevent Facebook from hemorrhaging blood. TechDirt states that Facebook could be turning a corner and becoming a more responsible company: “Facebook Blocks Seven Malware Purveyors, Deletes Hundreds Of Accounts, Notifies 50,000 Potential Hacking Targets.”
Malware purveyors, including Israel-based company NSO Group, are facing lawsuits from Facebook and Apple. These large tech companies are upset that these bad acting companies exploited their technology to hack average consumers as well as journalists, religious leaders, and activist:
“Facebook has disrupted the operations of seven different spyware-making companies, blocking their Internet infrastructure, sending cease and desist letters, and banning them from its platform. ‘As a result of our months-long investigation, we took action against seven different surveillance-for-hire entities to disrupt their ability to use their digital infrastructure to abuse social media platforms and enable surveillance of people across the internet,’ said Director of Threat Disruption David Agranovich and Head of Cyber Espionage Investigations Mike Dvilyanski. ‘These surveillance providers are based in China, Israel, India, and North Macedonia. They targeted people in over 100 countries around the world on behalf of their clients.’”
In total, there are seven companies, one hundred countries, 1,500 Facebook/Instagram accounts, and 50,000 potential victims involved with the lawsuit. Facebook alerted the 50,000 accounts. When Facebook and other tech companies deny these bad acting companies access to data, they are halting the supply chain.
Many of the malware companies are based in Israel. The Israeli government funds some specialized software firms. Even Meta does not relish more bad press.
Whitney Grace, January 6, 2022
TikTok: Innocuous? Maybe Not Among Friends
January 5, 2022
Short videos. No big deal.
The data about one’s friends are a big deal. A really big deal. TikTok may be activating a network effect. “TikTok Tests Its Own Version of the Retweet with a New Repost Button” suggests that a Twitter function is chugging along. What if the “friend” is not a registered user of TikTok? Perhaps the Repost function is a way to expand a user’s social network. What can one do with such data? Building out a social graph and cross correlating those data with other information might be a high value exercise. What other uses can be made of these data a year or two down the road? That’s an interesting question to consider, particularly from the point of view of Chinese intelligence professionals.
“China Harvests Masses of Data on Western Targets, Documents Show” explains that China acquires data for strategic and tactical reasons. The write up doses not identify specific specialized software products, services, and tools. Furthermore, the price tags for surveillance expenditures seem modest. Nevertheless, there is a suggestive passage in the write up:
Highly sensitive viral trends online are reported to a 24-hour hotline maintained by the Cybersecurity administration of China (CAC), the body that oversees the country’s censorship apparatus…
What’s interesting is that China uses both software and human-intermediated systems.
Net net: Pundits and users have zero clue about China’s data collection activities in general. When it comes to specific apps and their functions on devices, users have effectively zero knowledge of the outflow of personal data which can be used to generate a profile for possible coercion. Pooh pooh-ing TikTok? Not a great idea.
Stephen E Arnold, January 5, 2022
More Search Excitement: Apple Google Payoff Alleged
January 5, 2022
I read “Class Action Lawsuit Filed in California Alleging Google Is Paying Apple to Stay Out of the Search Engine Business.” Now that lawyers are digitally aware professionals cades after the online money magnets began operations, interesting allegations are zipping around. I commented about the shallowness of some pundits’ understanding of the fuzzy wuzzy concept of “search.” (Chemical informatics, anyone or train movement in Ukraine?)
This news release may be a way for a law firm to generate some buzz, or it may be a valid proposition. Either way, the allegation is interesting. The source document states:
The complaint charges that Google and Apple agreed that Apple would not compete in the internet search business against Google. The complaint claims that the means used to effectuate the non-compete agreement included; (1) Google would share it’s search profits with Apple; (2) Apple would give preferential treatment to Google for all Apple devices; (3) regular secret meetings between the executives of both companies; (4) annual multi-billion-dollar payments by Google to Apple not to compete in the search business; (5) suppression of the competition of smaller competitors and foreclosing competitors from the search market; (6) acquiring actual and potential competitors.
Plus, I love the word “effectuate.”
This is worth watching. From my point of view, the effort seems like trying to alter the characters in a film like the “Wolf of Wall Street.”
Stephen E Arnold January 5, 2022
Palantir at the Intersection of Extremists and Prescription Fraud
January 5, 2022
Blogger Ron Chapman II, ESQ, seems to be quite the fan of Palantir Technologies. We get that impression from his post, “Palantir’s Anti-Terror Tech Used to Fight RX Fraud.” The former Marine fell in love with the company’s tech in Afghanistan, where its analysis of terrorist attack patterns proved effective. We especially enjoyed the rah rah write-up’s line about Palantir’s “success on the battlefield.” Chapman is not the only one enthused about the government-agency darling.
As for Palantir’s move into detecting prescription fraud, we learn the company begins with open-source data from the likes of census data, public and private studies, and Medicare’s Meaningful Use program. Chapman describes the firm’s methodology:
“Palantir then cross-references varying sets of Medicare data to determine which providers statistically deviate from the norm amongst large data sets. For instance, Palantir can analyze prescription data to determine which providers rank the highest in opiate prescribing for a local area. Palantir can then cross-reference those claims against patient location data to determine if the providers’ patients are traveling long distances for opiates. Palantir can further analyze the data to determine if the patient population of a provider has been previously treated by a physician on the Office of Inspector General exclusion database (due to prior misconduct) which would indicate that the patients are not ‘legitimate.’ By using ‘big data’ to determine which providers deviate from statistical trends, Palantir can provide a more accurate basis for a payment audit, generate probable cause for search warrants, or encourage a federal grand jury to further investigate a provider’s activities. After the government obtains additional provider-specific data, Palantir can analyze specific patient files, cell phone data, email correspondence, and electronic discovery. Investigators can review cell phone data and email correspondence to determine if networks exist between providers and patients and determine the existence of a healthcare fraud conspiracy or patient brokering.”
Despite his fondness for Palantir, Chapman does include the obligatory passage on privacy and transparency concerns. He notes that healthcare providers, specifically, are concerned about undue scrutiny should their patient care decisions somehow diverge from a statistical norm. A valid consideration. As with law enforcement, the balance between the good of society and individual rights is a tricky one. Palantir was launched in 2003 by Peter Theil, who was also a cofounder of PayPal and is a notorious figure to some. The company is based in Denver, Colorado.
Cynthia Murrell, January 5, 2022
Can Policeware Make Corporate Sales?
January 5, 2022
How can makers of policeware jump into the corporate market and thrive? One approach: scare private companies into believing their current techniques are dangerously inadequate. That is the approach Cobwebs Technologies is taking with its recent open letter to corporate security teams. Miscw reproduces an excerpt from their missive in, “Overcoming the Pitfalls of Poor Corporate Intelligence: What Security Teams Need to Get Ahead.” Cobwebs director/ letter writer Johnmichael O’Hare warns:
“Organizations naturally settle on practices that have worked in the past. They may limit their threat scanning to a limited number of social media platforms, for example. Such narrowly focused inquiries, however, fail to account for fast-moving changes in web-based platforms, forums, and chat groups. Users discouraged from posting inflammatory messages on one mainstream platform will frequently move to lesser-known, alternative platforms. … Corporate security teams must also keep tabs on information sources and repositories housed in the deep web and the dark web, both of which are not indexed by conventional search engines. Those web layers contain a multitude of data that could threaten a business. The dark web, in particular, harbors numerous sites and markets trafficking in login credentials, trade secrets, email addresses, credit card numbers, and tools for engaging in cyberattacks. Dark web forums, which suddenly surface and just as rapidly disappear, can also contain information relevant to a corporate security investigation. In short, the organization still dependent on social media channels for threat assessment needs to broaden its horizons.”
And what better way to do so than to enlist the aid of an outfit like Cobwebs? This is not the first Israeli-founded government-agency vendor to try penetrating the corporate market; it follows the likes of Voyager Labs and others. Founded in 2015, OSINT-centric firm Cobwebs is now headquartered in New York City.
Cynthia Murrell, January 4, 2021
Meta Covets Kiddie Instagrams
January 5, 2022
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri’s recent testimony before Congress shows Facebook continues to deny truths revealed by whistleblower Frances Haugen: The company’s own research demonstrates Instagram is harmful to children and teens. Vox Recode reports that “Facebook Still Won’t Give Up Instagram for Kids.” Mosseri was asked whether the company would permanently halt development of Instagram for Kids, a platform intended for children ages 10–12. All the CEO would commit to was that if such a project were launched it would require parental permission. So that is a long-winded no. Writer Shirin Ghaffary observes:
“The exchange reveals a deeper takeaway from the hearing: Instagram — and its parent company Meta (formerly Facebook) — do not seem to believe their product is harmful enough to children and teens that it needs radical change. That’s in spite of internal company research leaked by Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, which showed that one in three teenage girls who felt bad about their bodies said Instagram made them feel worse. The research also showed that 13 percent of British teenage users and 6 percent of American teenage users who had suicidal thoughts traced the desire to kill themselves to Instagram. … [Mosseri’s] answers seemed to do little to reassure the remarkably bipartisan group of US lawmakers at the hearing, who say they believe Instagram is damaging teenagers’ mental health. These lawmakers say they are committed to passing legislation that could force Facebook and other tech companies to change their businesses to better protect children.”
But are they really? We also learn:
“Right now, there are several bills out to create stronger privacy laws, to establish penalties for Facebook if it allows damaging content to surface, and to mandate that Facebook must share more data with outside researchers to assess the harms of its products. So far, none of these bills have passed or are even close to passing.”
It sounds like Meta intends to ride out the wave of outrage until something displaces it in the public’s awareness, as is bound to occur, then reintroduce its platform for tweens. Perhaps it will give the product a different name. Certainly it will continue to spin social media as a net good for children, as Mosseri did at that hearing. Given both the public’s limited attention span and Congress’ tortoise-like speed, it seems like a solid plan.
Cynthia Murrell, January 5, 2022
The Collision of Search Thinkers and the Wide World of Finding
January 4, 2022
To get some insight into the vibrations set off when search thinkers run into market behaviors, you will want to scan the Twitter thread about the need to create an alternative to Google. The focus is medical information. The idea is to return results for a health query without “clickbait sites riddled with crappy ads.” The criticism of the Google was not ignored. No less a luminary than Danny Sullivan replied with Google’s “we are always looking to keep improving our results.”
Digital Don Quixotes saddled up and asserted in this Tweet stream that Google can be beaten. The fix is to create a niche search engine tailored to provide results where Google is just thrilled to present “spam.” Assorted Tweeters added comments.
What do these two Tweeter threads suggest to me?
First, there are niche search engines(what I call vertical search services) that deliver on point results. These are probably not ones most people think about because users of free or ad-supported systems do not know much about finding high value information. Also, I know from my decades in the commercial database business that most “online experts” don’t want to pay for access to commercial online services. Academics get “free” access to content pools like Lexis Nexis, and the “old” Dialog type files because institutions pay the license fees. To the academic user, high value information is “free.” It is not.
Second, a number of Web centric search engines provide reasonably useful results. Examples range from iSeek.com to the Metager system. The mechanism for locating specific information is to frame a query, manually or automatically pass the query to numerous search engines, de-duplicate the result sets, and examine the links. Industrious searchers may enlist tools like Maltego or other open source software to identify potentially helpful items to examine initially. Who wants to do this? I suggest that fewer than three percent of online users pursue this approach. People want to have the mobile phone light up when a pizza joint is nearby or the Tesla’s electric gauge is creeping into the “hello, I need a flat bed truck, please” zone.
Third, Google has operated without meaningful regulation, oversight, or competition for decades. The vaunted ad-revenue engine was not a Google invention. Google took advantage of a particular point in time when searching the Web was gaining traction and useful competition from Alta Vista, Exalead, and Fast Search’s AllTheWeb services were distracted. Google sucked up some AltaVista folks; Exalead was decidedly French; and Fast Search chased the enterprise. Other actions transpired, but the result was that the Google used free to get traffic and traffic made the Yahoo, Overture, GoTo revenue model work like a champ. Remember this was decades ago, not yesterday.
Here’s what I think is going on:
- Pundits don’t know or care much about Okeano, Swisscows or other “free” online search systems. How about searching for those Instagram snaps with Picuki?
- Niche search engines are thriving; for example, some of the Israeli specialized software and services firms provide quite helpful access to Facebook content. Who knows? Not too many pundits on the Tweeter and certainly not Google’s PR experts.
- Google is not a search engine. Google is a global content system, a fact I explored in my Google: The Digital Gutenberg, originally a long white paper for a government customer who found my view of the world interesting. BearStearns published a report in 2007 which featured my diagram of the Google “octopus” which identified the digital fabric that the company was weaving. Now Google owns the sheep, the dyes, the weaving machines, and the concept of digital fabrics. The overall quality of the Google outputs is “good enough,” and, believe me, it is tough to knock off a global outfit which satisfies the big hump in the standard distribution with something “better.” Whatever “better” means.
Net net: Search is a very, very fuzzy word. At one end of the spectrum are those who are searching well because they can locate an Uber-type service. At the other end of the spectrum are those who deal in extremely rarified content disciplines and have quite good services available; for example, Daylight chemical informatics.
In the middle? A long-standing, persistent and fundamental disconnect between search and what is actually going on in the datasphere.
Pizza? Google’s got that nailed. Need information to fabricate calandria (nuclear terminology)? Google can’t help too much because who searches for calandria, buys ads related to calandria, or knows anything about calandria?
Stephen E Arnold, January 4, 2021
Is Waymo a Proxy for Alphabet Google in China?
January 4, 2022
Remember 2006. Google launched its China search engine. In 2010, Google caught a flight back to SFO. The issues revolved around control, and the Google was not about to be controlled by a mere nation state. The Google was the new big thing. For some color on this remarkable example of techno hubris, check out How Google Took on China and Lost.” (Note: You may have to pay to read this okay write up from the outfit which found the humanist Jeffrey Epstein A-OK.)
Flash forward to “Future Autonomous Waymo EV Will Be Custom Built for Ride-Hailing with No Steering Wheel.” Tucked into this write up is an item of information I find quite suggestive about China, the Google, and the adage “time heals all wounds.” Well, that’s the adage’s point of view.
The write up’s interesting item is expressed this way:
Waymo today announced an OEM collaboration with Geely, a Chinese automotive company that has several subsidiary brands like Volvo, Lotus, and Smart.
Presumably both the Chinese government sensitive Geely and the money sensitive Google are going to go on these outfits’ version of a Match.com date.
And the misunderstanding of 2006 and Dragonfly, the aborted Chinese centric search engine project (allegedly just a distant memory), is just a another Google project without wood behind it.
What online service will provide maps to the nifty new auto? Who will have access to the data the helpful vehicles will generate? What is one of these slick vehicles routes toward a facility in the US which is covertly owned by a China-affiliated entity or picks up one of those Harvard type academics who is on China’s payroll?
So many questions with what may be obvious answers.
Stephen E Arnold, January 4, 2022
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