DOD Cloud Program JWCC Pushed Back Until December
April 13, 2022
Turns out it takes longer to evaluate the options in the cloud than the DOD thought. Nextgov reveals, “Pentagon’s Effort to Supply Departmentwide Cloud Capabilities is Delayed, Again.” Reporters Lauren C. Williams and Brandi Vincent write:
“The Defense Department is delaying the award for its latest multibillion-dollar program to provide enterprise-wide commercial cloud services to the end of the year—which means certain solutions likely won’t be deployed until at least mid-2023. Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Oracle were named by the Pentagon as contenders for the potentially massive $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract in November and invited to submit proposals. But DOD Chief Information Officer John Sherman said ‘conducting the due diligence with four vendors’ is taking more time than previously anticipated and that is contributing to the shift from the original award scheduled for April 2022.”
At stake are four separate contracts worth up to $9 billion in total. Each will have a three-year base period with two one-year options. The Joint War fighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) will replace the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), which became bogged down by protest and litigation. The DOD’s Deputy CIO for Information Enterprise Danielle Metz tells us what has changed:
“What sets JWCC apart from the other current cloud service offerings that we have is that this is going to be a direct partnership with a cloud service provider. So, it’s going to enable us to be able to have commercial parity and to hold into account the cloud service providers from a cybersecurity perspective. We’ll be able to glean a lot and work closely with the cloud service providers, which will set the stage for our future acquisition activities.”
The article tells us this direction marks a purposeful shift for the DOD—focusing on multiple vendors and interoperability should speed up the entire contracting, acquisition, and funding process so personnel will get the capabilities they need faster. Sounds great in theory, but as this recent delay shows, that cloud stuff can be more complicated than it looks.
A bureaucracy bureaucratizes.
Cynthia Murrell, April 13, 2022
NSO Group Knock On: More Attention Directed at Voyager Labs?
April 12, 2022
Not many people know about Voyager Labs, its different businesses, or its work for some government entities. From my point of view, that’s how intelware and policeware vendors should conduct themselves. Since the NSO Group’s missteps have fired up everyone from big newspaper journalists to college professors, the once low profile world of specialized software and services has come to center stage. Unfortunately most of the firms providing these once secret specialized functions are, unlike Tallulah Bankhead, ill prepared for the rigors of questions about chain smoking and a sporty life style. Israeli companies in the specialized software and services business are definitely not equipped for criticism, exposure, questioning by non military types. A degree in journalism or law is interesting, but it is the camaraderie of a military unit which is important. To be fair, this “certain blindness” can be fatal. Will NSO Group be able to survive? I don’t know. What I do know is that anyone in the intelware or policeware game has to be darned careful. The steely gaze, the hardened demeanor, and the “we know more than you do” does not play well with an intrepid reporter investigating the cozy world of secretive conferences, briefings at government hoe downs, or probing into private companies which amass user data from third-party sources for reselling to government agencies hither and yon.
Change happened.
I read “On the Internet, No One Knows You’re a Cop.” The author of the article is Albert Fox-Cahn, the founder and director of STOP. Guess what the acronym means? Give up. The answer is: The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.
Where does this outfit hang its baseball cap with a faded New York Yankees’ emblem? Give up. The New York University Urban Justice Center. Mr. Fox-Cahn is legal type, and he has some helpers; for example, fledgling legal eagles. (A baby legal eagle is technically eaglets or is it eaglettes. I profess ignorance.) This is not a Lone Ranger operation, and I have a hunch that others at NYU can be enjoined to pitch in for the STOP endeavor. If there is one thing college types have it is an almost endless supply of students who want “experience.” Then there is the thrill of the hunt. Eagles, as you know, have been known to snatch a retired humanoid’s poodle for sustenance. Do legal eagles enjoy the thrill of the kill, or are they following some protein’s chemical make up?
The write up states:
Increasingly, internet surveillance is operating under our consent, as police harness new software platforms to deploy networks of fake accounts, tricking the public into giving up what few privacy protections the law affords. The police can see far beyond what we know is public on these platforms, peaking behind the curtains at what we mean to show and say only to those closest to us. But none of us know these requests come from police, none of us truly consent to this new, invasive form of state surveillance, but this “consent” is enough for the law, enough for the courts, and enough to have our private conversations used against us in a court of law.
Yeah, but use of public data is legal. Never mind, I hear an inner voice speaking for the STOP professionals.
The article then trots through the issues sitting on top of a stack of reports about actions that trouble STOP; to wit, use of fake social media accounts. The idea is to gin up a fake name and operate as a sock puppet. I want to point out that this method is often helpful in certain types of investigations. I won’t list the types.
The write up then describes Voyager Labs’ specialized software and services this way:
Voyager Labs claims to perceive people’s motives and identify those “most engaged in their hearts” about their ideologies. As part of their marketing materials, they touted retrospective analysis they claimed could have predicted criminal activity before it took place based on social media monitoring.
Voyager Labs’ information was disclosed after the Los Angeles government responded to a Brennan Center Freedom of Information Act request. If you are not familiar with these documents, you can locate at this link which I verified on April 9, 2022. Note that there are 10,000 pages of LA info, so plan on spending some time to locate the information of interest. If you want more information about Voyager Labs, navigate to the company’s Web site.
Net net: Which is the next intelware or policeware company to be analyzed by real news outfits and college professors? I don’t know, but the revelations do not make me happy. The knock on from the NSO Group’s missteps are not diminishing. It appears that there will be more revelations. From my point of view, these analyses provide bad actors with a road map of potholes. The bad actors become more informed, and government entities find their law enforcement and investigative efforts are dulled.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2022
Zuckerberg and Management: The Eye of What?
April 12, 2022
I am not familiar with Consequence.net. (I know. I am a lazy phat, phaux, phrench bulldog.) Plus I assume that everything I read on the Internet is actual factual. (One of my helpers clued me into that phrase. I am so grateful for young person speak.)
I spotted this article: “Mark Zuckerberg Says Meta Employees Lovingly Refer to Him as The Eye of Sauron.” The hook was the word “lovingly.” The article reported that the Zuck said on a very energetic, somewhat orthogonal podcast:
“Some of the folks I work with at the company — they say this lovingly — but I think that they sometimes refer to my attention as the Eye of Sauron. You have this unending amount of energy to go work on something, and if you point that at any given team, you will just burn them.”
My recollection of the eye in question is that the Lord of the Rings crowd is recycling the long Wikipedia article about looking at someone and causing no end of grief. Mr. Zuck cause grief? Not possible. A “Zuck up” means in Harrod’s Creek a sensitive, ethical action. A “Zuck eye”, therefore, suggests the look of love, understanding, and compassion. I have seen those eyes in printed motion picture posters; for example, the film “Evil Eye” released in the Time of Covid.
The article points out:
Without delving too deeply into fantasy lore, it is canonically nefarious, and bad things happen when it notices you. Zuckerberg’s computer nerd demeanor doesn’t quite scream “Dark Lord” to us, but we don’t deny that Meta employees would compare his semi-autocratic mode of operation to that of the Eye.
Interesting management method.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2022
Online Advertising: A Yesterday Business? What?
April 12, 2022
Heresy, sour grapes, truth? It is often difficult to tell even with experts explaining disinformation without stumbling over baloney in college textbooks, news in esteemed entities’ publications, and outputs from Facebook’s chief truth stater.
I read “I Stopped Advertising Everywhere and Nothing Happened.” I thought some of the information was pretty close to dead center; for example, the title of the article. The key phrase was “nothing happened.”
Now things did happen; these events were not visible to the author of the write up. The sales professional handling the account had to report a downturn in spend. That person had to explain the downturn. Maybe the sales professional found him- her- them-self invited to find his her them future elsewhere? (I do struggle with New Speak.)
The write up points out:
Some multi-national organizations have turned off hundreds of millions of pounds of advertising, and seen, no discernible change in sales or conversion.
I underlined this passage:
be aware that in the direct to consumer market, instant conversions are hard.
Do the vendors of online advertising opportunities explain that online advertising may not work as the advertisers’ believe? Nope. The reason in my opinion is that online advertising like full page print ads in a Wall Street Journal type of publication is an artifact from the ruins of Madison Avenue. The chatter about data and hard numbers disguises a simple shift: TikTok-type influencers, athletes wearing stuff after the game, and nudges from YouTube-type outputs are carrying the water. Online advertising has to look as if it is objective and influencer approved to work. Your mileage may vary, particularly if you are the 20 something charged with buying online advertising run by old managers who are living in a world described in a brain filled with accounting tricks and MBA baloney.
Here’s a test: Name the SUV model advertised on YouTube when you searched for “suv.” Give up?
Stephen E Arnold, April12, 2022
DuckDuckGo Metasearch Service Causes Quacks
April 12, 2022
DuckDuckGo followed its technology brethren by rescinding most of its services in Russia due to the unfortunate invasion of Ukraine. The unbiased search engine CEO Gabriel Weinberg stated on March 9 that it would down rank Russian Web sites that spread disinformation. Much to DuckDuckGo’s surprise (as well as many others), the search engine was attacked by right-leaning, pro-free-speech supporters. The privacy search engine unintentionally attracted these supporters but did not discourage them.
Recode via Vox has the entire story: “The Free Speech Search Engine That Never Was.”
Weinberg tweeted his support for user privacy, but conservative supporters who used DuckDuckGo to search for content without Big Tech censorship were angry. They did not like that DuckDuckGo was demoting Russian propaganda Web sites. Oddly enough, these people also were pro-Putin’s invasion on Ukraine.
Right-wing supporters flocked to DuckDuckGo, because it was supposedly free of censorship that plagues other search engines like Google. These conservatives believe that information relating to their political and social beliefs was censored in all search engines except DuckDuckGo. These conservative supporters are more of the alt-right, conspiracy theorist type, i.e., anti-vaccination, DC capital insurrection. DuckDuckGo was okay with this:
“So DuckDuckGo surely knew what many of its new fans were coming to it for. They leaned into it a bit, too. Weinberg told Fox News and Quartz that Google’s search results were biased because Google collects data on users, which it then uses to target results to them. That, he said, created filter bubbles that further polarized society. Because DuckDuckGo didn’t collect data, its results were unbiased and searchers were free from Google’s echo chamber. This was a bit of a dodge; conservatives accused Google of intentionally keeping conservative sites and content off of its results, not just returning results influenced by a searchers’ interests. But it was an answer that seemed to satisfy users of all political persuasions. The alt-right wingers do not like that, but DuckDuckGo explained they are doing what search engines should be doing: “ensure that users were getting the best results for their searches.”
DuckDuckGo is one of many platforms that the alt-right adopted: Rumble, MeWe, Telegram, Substack. These platforms did not sky away from the users, because it meant more investments. We like the idea of a metasearch service protecting user privacy and, as a byproduct, false propaganda. Now how about better results?
Whitney Grace, April 12, 2022
Amazon: Is the Company Losing Control of Essentials?
April 11, 2022
Here’s a test question? Which is the computer product in the image below?
|
[a] |
[b] |
 |
 |
If you picked [a], you qualify for work at TopCharm, an Amazon service located in lovely Brooklyn at 3912 New Utrecht Avenue, zip 11219. Item [b] is the Ryzen cpu I ordered, paid for, and expected to arrive. TopCharm delivered: Panties, not the CPU. Is it easy to confuse a Ryzen 5900X with these really big, lacy, red “unmentionables”? One of my team asked me, “Do you want me to connect the red lace cpu to the ASUS motherboard?”
Ho ho ho.
What does Clustrmaps.com say about this location””?
This address has been used for business registration by Express Repair & Towing Inc. The property belongs to Lelah Inc. [Maybe these are Lelah’s underwear? And Express Repair & Towing? Yep, that sounds like a vendor of digital panties, red and see-through at that.]
One of my team suggested I wear the garment for my lecture in April 2021 at the National Cyber Crime Conference? My wife wanted to know if Don (one of my technical team) likes red panties? A neighbor’s college-attending son asked, “Who is the babe who wears that? Can I have her contact info?”
My sense of humor about this matter is officially exhausted.
Several observations about this Amazon transaction:
- Does the phrase “too big to manage” apply in this situation to Amazon’s ecommerce business?
- What type of stocking clerk confuses a high end CPU with cheap red underwear?
- What quality assurance methods are in place to protect a consumer from cheap jokes and embarrassment when this type of misstep occurs?
Has Amazon lost control of the basics of online commerce? If one confuses CPUs with panties, how is Amazon going to ensure that its Government Cloud services for the public sector stay online? Quite a misstep in my opinion. Is this cyber fraud, an example of management lapses, a screwed up inventory system, or a perverse sense of humor?
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2022
NSO Group, the PR Champ of Intelware Does It Again: This Time Jordan
April 11, 2022
I hope this write up “NSO Hacked New Pegasus Victims Weeks after Apple Sought Injunction” is one of those confections which prove to be plastic. You know: Like the plastic sushi in restaurant windows in Osaka. The news report based on a report from Citizen Lab and an outfit called Front Line Defenders delineates how a Jordanian journalist’s mobile device was tapped.
The article reports:
The NSO-built Pegasus spyware gives its government customers near-complete access to a target’s device, including their personal data, photos, messages and precise location. Many victims have received text messages with malicious links, but Pegasus has more recently been able to silently hack iPhones without any user interaction, or so-called “zero-click” attacks. Apple last year bolstered iPhone security by introducing BlastDoor, a new but unseen security feature designed to filter out malicious payloads sent over iMessage that could compromise a device. But NSO was found to have circumvented the security measure with a new exploit, which researchers named ForcedEntry for its ability to break through BlastDoor’s protections. Apple fixed BlastDoor in September after the NSO exploit was found to affect iPads, Macs, and Apple Watches, not just iPhones.
This is “old news.” The incident dates from 2021, and since that time the MBA infused, cowboy software has sparked a rethinking of how software from a faithful US ally can be sold and to whom. Prior to the NSO Group’s becoming the poster child for mobile surveillance, the intelware industry was chugging along in relative obscurity. Those who knew about specialized software and services conducted low profile briefings and talks out of the public eye. What better place to chat than at a classified or restricted attendance conference? Certainly not in the pages of online blogs, estimable “real news” organs, or in official government statements.
Apple, the big tech company which cares about most of its customers and some of its employees (exceptions are leakers and those who want to expose certain Apple administrative procedures related to personnel), continues to fix its software. These fixes, as Microsoft’s security professionals have learned, can be handled by downplaying the attack surface its systems present to bad actors. Other tactics include trying to get assorted governments to help blunt the actions of bad actors and certain nation states which buy intelware for legitimate purposes. How this is to be accomplished remains a mystery to me, but Apple wanted an injunction to slow down the NSO Group’s exploit capability. How did that work out? Yeah. Other tactics include rolling out products in snazzy online events, making huge buyout plays, and pointing fingers at everyone except those who created the buggy and security-lax software.
I am not sure where my sympathies lie. Yes, I understand the discomfort the Jordanian target has experienced, but mobile devices are surveilled 24×7 now. I understand that. Do you? I am not sure if I resonate with either NSO Group’s efforts to build its business. I know I don’t vibrate like the leaves in the apple orchard.
The context for these intelware issues is a loss of social responsibility which I think begins at an early age. Without consequences, what exactly happens? My answer is, “Lots of real news, outrage, and not much else.” Without consequences, why should ethics, responsible behavior, and appropriate regulatory controls come into play?
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2022
An Ad Agency Decides: No Photoshopping of Bodies or Faces for Influencers
April 11, 2022
Presumably Ogilvy will exempt retouched food photos (what? hamburgers from a fast food outlet look different from the soggy burger in a box). Will Ogilvy outlaw retouched vehicle photographs (what? the Toyota RAV’s paint on your ride looks different from the RAV’s in print and online advertisements). Will models from a zippy London or Manhattan agency look different from the humanoid doing laundry at 11 15 on a Tuesday in Earl’s Court laundrette (what? a model with out make up, some retouching, and slick lighting?). Yes, Ogilvy has standards. See this CBS News item, which is allegedly accurate. Overbilling is not Photoshopping. Overbilling is a different beastie.
I think I know the answer to my doubts about the scope of this ad edit as reported in “Ogilvy Will No Longer Work with Influencers Who Edit Their Bodies or Faces for Ads.” The write up reports:
Ogilvy UK will no longer work with influencers who distort or retouch their bodies or faces for brand campaigns in a bid to combat social media’s “systemic” mental health harms.
I love the link to mental health harms. Here’s a quote which I find amusing:
The ban applies to all parts of the Ogilvy UK group, which counts the likes of Dove among its clients. Dove’s global vice president external communications and sustainability, Firdaous El Honsali, came out in support of the policy. “We are delighted to see our partner Ogilvy tackling this topic. Dove only works with influencers that do not distort their appearance on social media – and together with Ogilvy and our community of influencers, we have created several campaigns that celebrate no digital distortion,” El Honsali says.
Several observations:
- Ogilvy is trying to adjust to the new world of selling because influencers don’t think about Ogilvy. If you want an influencer, my hunch is that you take what the young giants offer.
- Like newspapers, ad agencies are trapped in models from the hay days of broadsheets sold on street corners. By the way, how are those with old business models doing in the zip zip TikTok world?
- Talking about rules is easy. Enforcing them is difficult. I bet the PowerPoint used in the meeting to create these rules for influencers was a work of marketing art.
Yep, online advertising, consolidation of agency power, and the likes of Amazon-, Facebook (Zuckbook), and YouTube illustrate one thing: The rules are set or left fuzzy by the digital platforms, not the intermediaries.
And the harm thing? Yep, save the children one influencer at a time.
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2022
AI Helps Out Lawyers
April 11, 2022
Artificial intelligence algorithms have negatively affected as many industries as they have assisted. One of the industries that has benefitted from AI is law firms explains Medium in: “How Artificial Intelligence Is Helping Solve The Needs Of Small Law Practitioners.” In the past, small law firms were limited in the amount of cases they could handle. AI algorithms now allow small law practices to compete with the larger firms in all areas of laws. How is this possible?
“The latest revolution in legal research technology ‘puts a lawyer’s skill and expertise in the driver’s seat…’ New artificial intelligence tools give lawyers instant access to vast amounts of information and analysis online, but also the ability to turn that into actionable insights. They can be reminded to check specific precedents and the latest rulings, or be directed to examine where an argument might be incomplete. That leaves the lawyers themselves to do what only they can: think, reason, develop creative arguments and negotiation strategies, provide personal service, and respond to a client’s changing needs.”
Lawyers used to rely on printed reference materials from databases and professional publications. They were limited on the number of hours in a day, people, and access to the newest and best resources. That changed when computers entered the game and analytical insights were delivered from automated technology. As technology has advanced, lawyers can cross reference multiple resources and improve legal decision making.
While lawyers are benefitting from the new AI, if they do not keep up they are quickly left behind. Lawyers must be aware of current events, how their digital tools change, and how to keep advancing the algorithms so they can continue to practice. That is not much different from the past, except it is moving at a faster rate.
Whitney Grace, April 11, 2022
IBM: Still Buzzwording after All These Years
April 8, 2022
I read “IBM Unveils Industry’s First Quantum-Safe System, IBM z16.” I have no doubt the machine is capable and certainly better than the IBM dog to which I had access in 1962. I loved standing in line to sign up for a card punch machine. I loved standing in line to drop off my pathetic card deck. I loved getting the green bar paper and the deck back days later. What’s not to like? Today’s system is super duper. The write explains that the “new” mainframe can prevent a quantum issue from a computer yet to be deployed as a functional encryption/decryption equipped quantum computer. That’s a pretty good wild and crazy idea: Protect against a future thing not yet in existence. Wow!
However the write up uses more buzzwords than I have seen in the patents filed by an outfit called Kyndi (if you don’t know, this is another enterprise search company with jargonized patent documents). Here’s a short list of some of the gems used to describe a mainframe. Keep in mind this is a mainframe, not a zippy Apple M chip powered gizmo. A mainframe. The words:
Quantum safe system. (Frankly I am not sure what a quantum computer will actually do once the cost, applications, cooling, etc. are figured out.)
Inference requests. (Years ago there was a Web search system called Inference. Today I am not exactly sure what an inference request is. Maybe a query requiring fancy predictive math? The IBM approach is to deliver latency optimized inferencing. I think this means latency reduced inference but maybe not. The number presented without any supporting data is 300 billion inference requests per day. Is this eight hours or 24 hours?)
Integrated on chip AI accelerator. (And what’s AI mean? Probably machine learning but the on chip AI is snappy. How big is this “artificial intelligence” conceptual umbrella? I assume IBM used the word “all” in a previous draft of this buzzwordy phrase.)
Near future threats. (After SolarWinds the threats are here and now and will persist because the attack surface is like the paved parking lots in Paramus, New Jersey. What’s near future? Like tomorrow?)
Cyber resiliency posture. (My hunch is that this means that executives at Microsoft struggling with Azure and Exchange security will sit up straight after 1,000 bad actors working for a nation state use off the shelf exploits to attack those Softies’ systems and software.)
CEX8S. (Is the acronym pronounced like the word for biological actions related to progeny creation or like the breakfast cereal one ate for breakfast? Has the acronym been influenced by Tesla’s cutesy auto labels: Model S, Model 3, and Model X, the one with long lasting performance?)
Quantum-safe cryptographic technology. (At least Kyndi spelled “quantum” this way: Quantom. IBM couldn’t be bothered to nose into Kyndi’s spelling innovation. IBM’s invocation approach may relate to the firm’s experiments with quantum computing which have allegedly ripped the crown of quantum supremacy from the scaled head of Googzilla.)
Wow. This is a mainframe, and it works pretty much like its predecessors. Why not emphasize compatibility, methods of exporting data to lesser systems, and exactly what legacy software will run on the beastie?
Not zippy enough? Certainly not for the IBM marketers. Quantum AI inferencing CEX8S are much zippier. Let’s ask the part of Watson that hasn’t been sold? Here’s the answer I think Watson will output:
IBM deliberately misclassified mainframe sales to enrich execs, lawsuit claims
That seems like a Watson like answer to me.
Stephen E Arnold, April 8, 2022
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