Google Protest: An Insulting Anniversary
November 2, 2019
DarkCyber noted this write up in CNet, an online information service, which may not be capturing too many Google ads in 2020. Here’s the title and subtitle of the story:
The headline is Googley; that is, it is designed to make the story appear in a Google search results list. The jabber may work. But what may not be as efficacious is building bridges to the Google itself. For example, the write up states:
The Google protests [maybe about sexual matters, management decisions, money?] didn’t achieve everything their organizers were seeking. Several Google workers and former workers are dissatisfied with the company’s response. Organizers say the company has done the bare minimum to address concerns, and employees allege that it has retaliated against workers and sought to quash dissent. “They’ve been constantly paying lip service,” said one Google employee who was involved with the walkout. “It’s insulting to our intelligence,” said the person, who requested anonymity because of fear of retribution from the company.
Then the observation:
Google declined to make its senior leadership team, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, CEO Sundar Pichai and human resources chief Eileen Naughton, available for interviews. In a statement, Naughton touted changes Google has made over the past year, including streamlining the process for people to report abuse and other problems.
A few observations may be warranted:
- Google’s management methods may follow the pattern set in high school science clubs when those youthful wizards confront something unfamiliar
- A problem seems to exist within the GOOG
- Outfits like CNet are willing to explain what may be a Google shortcoming because Google is not longer untouchable.
Interesting? If paid employees won’t get along and go along, how will that translate into Google’s commitment to enterprise solutions? What if an employee inserts malicious code in a cloud service as a digital protest? What if… I don’t want to contemplate what annoyed smart people can do at 3 am with access credentials.
Yikes. Insulting.
Stephen E Arnold, November 2, 2019
China and Its Data Method
November 2, 2019
China continues to expand its authority to surveil anything and everything that occurs electronically within its borders, and its latest plan could pose a legal bind for any foreign companies doing business there. China Law Blog sums up the problem in, “China’s New Cybersecurity Program: NO Place to Hide.” China’s Ministry of Security plans to access all raw data that crosses Chinese networks and/or resides on Chinese servers and to employ renowned big-data expert Wang Yingwei to analyze it in his new role as head of the Cybersecurity Bureau. Reporter Steve Dickinson emphasizes the Ministry intends to intercept every scrap of data from every corner of society, from businesses to fellow ministries to even the Internet of things. Note that foreign businesses are included, and the methods such entities used to rely upon to avoid the surveillance will no longer apply. Dickinson writes:
“They did this primarily by establishing VPN internet servers in their own offices. These servers used VPN technologies to isolate data from the Chinese controlled networks, allowing for the use of a company intranet that maintained the secrecy of emails and data stored on the company servers in China. As cloud computing has advanced, foreign owned companies typically use the same VPN technologies to isolate their cloud based servers from the Chinese controlled system. Though the Chinese authorities often complained about these VPN systems, foreign companies were usually able to claim that their special WFOE status exempted them from Chinese data controls. However, with the roll-out of the new system, that will all change. First, the Cybersecurity Law and related laws and regulations are very clear that they apply to all individuals and entities in China without regard to ownership or nationality. There are no exceptions. More important, the new Foreign Investment Law that goes into effect on January 1, 2020 eliminates any special status associated with being a WFOE or other foreign invested enterprise. Foreign owned companies will be treated in exactly the same way as Chinese owned companies.”
Not only does this mean foreign companies will be unable to secure their own trade secrets on Chinese networks or at offices within China, neither will they be able to adhere to U.S. or EU laws on protecting client confidentiality, restricted emerging technologies, or other sensitive information. To avoid prosecution for breaking these laws simply by doing business within China, some companies may have no choice but to shutter any operations in that country.
Cynthia Murrell, November 2, 2019
Google and Commitment
October 31, 2019
Google may have an uphill battle. Instead of a big rock, the GOOG must move trust from Death Valley to the top of Huascarán in Peru. Google’s TensorFlow comes with a three year commitment. However, Google has a reputation for abandoning projects. Google Groups, Web Accelerator, etc. etc.
New Scientist has some questions about Google too. Navigate to “Will Google Bail If Its Quantum Computer Doesn’t Turn a Quick Profit?”
Oh, and don’t miss the write up’s subtitle:
Google is famous for ditching projects it loses interest in. The road to workable quantum computers will be long, but we must stick with it…
The idea is that Google is spending money on a high school science project. Granted the project has promise, but the reality of the Google is that its costs are becoming more and more difficult to control.
The crazy PR battle with IBM over quantum supremacy makes Google look — how shall I put it? — like a high school math whiz without a date to the homecoming dance. But staying home and playing an online game is way better, right?
Trust? Who needs that. Just climb the mountain or zap it with a nifty digital weapon.
Stephen E Arnold, October 31, 2019
IBM and the UK Military
October 31, 2019
After trying its hand at everything from recipes to healthcare, Watson branched out into the military a few years ago. Now, IBM is using its AI tech to help out an old ally. NS Tech reports, “Revealed: IBM’s £4m Deal to Build Prototype AI Software Platform for UK Military.” Writer and NS Tech editor Oscar Williams cites a contract notice from the Ministry of Defense (MoD), which considers the forthcoming platform a way to gain an operational advantage. We’re told IBM won the £3.8m (or about $4.9m) contract in September, and has a year to demonstrate its worth. Williams writes:
“The contract notice, identified through Tussell’s procurement database, states that the proof of concept will be cloud-hosted and reliant on a large computer processor to analyze existing commercial data sources. The data sources could include mapping data from Ordinance Survey and weather data from the Met Office, as well as flight paths and navigation channels, said [former MoD IT director Gerry] Cantwell. The deal was struck around six months after the US government awarded an $800m battlefield software contract to Palantir, a big data analytics firm founded by the Paypal billionaire and Trump supporter Peter Thiel. NS Tech revealed in August that Palantir has won nearly £11m [about $14m] of MoD contracts over the last four years. An MOD spokesperson said: ‘We have awarded a contract to IBM to assist with the development of a standalone AI proof of concept, using commercially available data.’”
Not surprisingly, the MOD spokesperson refused to explain the similarities or differences between their upcoming platform to the US battlefield platform. IBM likewise declined to comment.
Cynthia Murrell, October 31, 2019
Procurement Bias Alleged in Amazon Microsoft Procurement Competition
October 28, 2019
DarkCyber noted “Trump Ordered Mattis to “Screw Amazon” Out of Pentagon Contract, Book Alleges.” If the allegation is accurate, the Federal procurement process is not above influence. If the allegations are not accurate, firing people who get quoted may be a bad idea. Maybe both statements are accurate?
The write up reports second or third hand:
Trump called Mattis in the summer of 2018 and directed him to “screw Amazon” out of a chance to bid on a $10 billion cloud networking contract.
Interesting.
The shift to the cloud is an important step for the Department of Defense. An error might have a few minor downsides: Loss of life, intelligence failures, increased and unbudgeted triage expenses, and increased friction in data-centric processes.
The upside is that the Department of Defense has made a decision.
Several questions arise and may be worth considering:
First, will there be review processes? The allegation about instructions from the White House are, if true, reasonably clear.
Second, will Microsoft be able to deliver the cloud solutions the Department of Defense requires? There are a few—how shall I phrase it—impediments to effective use of information technology which must be addressed. These are a bit more challenging than shipping software updates which create problems for users.
Third, can Microsoft navigate around Amazon’s patent fences? Some of the functionality which seems to be important to the DoD are within an Amazon patent fence. If Microsoft crawls under one of these fences, Amazon may sue. The litigation and any penalties might chew into Microsoft’s profit from the hard-won deal. (Are there examples? Yes, and I address these in my chapter for a forthcoming book, but the information is not for a free blog post on a chill Sunday morning, gentle reader. Alas!)
Net net: DarkCyber has a premonition that the MSFT JEDI assertions may make Holding the Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon with Secretary Mattis a best seller.
Intriguing. Mad Dog becomes a celebrity author.
Stephen E Arnold, October 28, 2019
Amazon Loses JEDI: Now What?
October 26, 2019
Friday (October 25, 2019) Amazon and the Bezos bulldozer drove into a granite erratic. The Department of Defense awarded the multi-year, multi-billion dollar contract for cloud services to Microsoft. “Microsoft Snags Hotly Contested $10 Billion Defense Contract, Beating Out Amazon” reported the collision between PowerPoint’s owner and the killing machine which has devastated retail.
CNBC reports:
If the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure deal, known by the acronym JEDI, ends up being worth $10 billion, it would likely be a bigger deal to Microsoft than it would have been to Amazon. Microsoft does not disclose Azure revenue in dollar figures but it’s widely believed to have a smaller share of the market than Amazon, which received $9 billion in revenue from AWS in the third quarter.
The write up pointed out:
While Trump didn’t cite Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos by name at the time, the billionaire executive has been a constant source of frustration for the president. Bezos owns The Washington Post, which Trump regularly criticizes for its coverage of his administration. Trump also has gone after Amazon repeatedly on other fronts, such as claiming it does not pay its fair share of taxes and rips off the U.S. Post Office.
There are other twists and turns to the JEDI story, but I will leave it to you, gentle reader, to determine if the Oracle anti-Amazon campaign played a role.
There are some questions which I discussed with my DarkCyber team when we heard the news as a rather uneventful week in the technology world wound down. Let’s look at four of these and the “answers” my team floated as possibilities.
Question 1: Will this defeat alter Amazon’s strategy for policeware and intelware business?
Answer 1: No. Since 2007, Amazon has been grinding forward in the manner of the Bezos bulldozer with its flywheel spinning and its electricity sparking. As big as $10 billion is, Amazon has invested significant time and resources in policeware and intelware inventions like DeepLens, software like SageMaker, and infrastructure designed to deliver information that many US government agencies will want and for which many of the more than 60 badge-and-gun entities in the US government will pay. The existing sales team may be juggled as former Microsoft government sales professional Teresa Carlson wrestles with the question, “What next?” Failure turns on a bright spotlight. The DoD is just one, albeit deep pocket entity, of many US government agencies needing cloud services. And there is always next year which begins October 1, 2020.
Question 2: Has Amazon tuned its cloud services and functions to the needs of the Department of Defense?
Answer 2: No. Amazon offers services which meet the needs of numerous government agencies at the federal as well as local jurisdictional levels. In fact, there is one US government agency deals with more money than the DoD that is a potential ATM for Amazon. The Bezos bulldozer drivers may be uniquely positioned to deliver cloud services and investigative tools with the potential payout to Amazon larger than the JEDI deal.
Amazon AWS Revenue
October 25, 2019
Amazon’s third quarter 2019 results revealed that net sales went up. The number of interest in Harrod’s Creek is AWS. The company’s data report:
- AWS revenue hit $9 billion, up from $6.7 billion in the third quarter of 2018
- Amazon rolled out a fully managed service for business forecasting
- The Quantum Ledger Database is now available as a fully managed service
- AWS cut prices of storage for several classes of service.
Net net: Plenty of cash but Microsoft’s cloud service may be nibbling at some service areas in which Amazon had minimal competition for a number of years.
Stephen E Arnold, October 25, 2019
Security Industry Blind Spot: Homogeneity
October 24, 2019
Push aside the mewlings about Facebook. Ignore Google’s efforts to quash employee meetings about unionization. Sidestep the phrase “intelligent cloud revenue.”
An possibly more significant item appeared in “Information Security Industry at Risk from Lack of Diversity.” The write up states:
The Chartered Institute of Information Security (CIISec) finds that 89 percent of respondents to its survey are male, and 89 percent over 35, suggesting the profession is still very much in the hands of older men.
Furthermore, the security industry is wallowing in venture funding. That easy money has translated into a welter of security solutions. At cyber security conferences, one can license smart monitoring, intelligent and proactive systems, and automated responses.
The problem is that this security country club may be fooling itself and its customers.
The write up quotes from the CIISec report, presenting this segment:
“If the industry starts to attract a more diverse range of people whilst spreading awareness of the opportunity available, we could be well on the way to truly modernizing the industry,” adds Finch. “Key to all this will be both organizations and individuals having a framework that can show exactly what skills are necessary to fulfill what roles. This will not only help hire the right people. It will also mean that it the routes to progress through an individual’s career are clearly marked, ensuring that individuals who enthusiastically join the industry don’t over time become jaded or burn out due to a lack of opportunity.”
Partially correct opines DarkCyber. The security offered is a me-too approach. Companies find themselves struggling to implement and make use of today’s solutions. The result? Less security and vendors who talk security but deliver confusion.
Meanwhile those bad actors continue to diversify, gain state support, and exploit what are at the end of a long day, vulnerable organizational systems.
Stephen E Arnold, October 24, 2019
Automating Machine Learning: Works Every Time
October 24, 2019
Automated machine learning, or AutoML, is the natural next step in the machine learning field. The technique automates the process of creating machine learning models, saving data scientists a lot of time and frustration. Now, InfoWorld reports, “A2ML Project Automates AutoML.” Automation upon automation, if you will.
An API and command-line tools make up the beta-stage open source project from Auger.AI. The company hopes the project will lead to a common API for cloud-based AutoML services. The API naturally works with Auger.AI’s own API, but also with Google Cloud AutoML and Azure AutoML. Writer Paul Krill tells us:
“Auger.AI said that the cloud AutoML vendors all have their own API to manage data sets and create predictive models. Although the cloud AutoML APIs are similar—involving common stages including importing data, training models, and reviewing performance—they are not identical. A2ML provides Python classes to implement this pipeline for various cloud AutoML providers and a CLI to invoke stages of the pipeline. The A2ML CLI provides a convenient way to start a new A2ML project, the company said. However, prior to using the Python API or the CLI for pipeline steps, projects must be configured, which involves storing general and vendor-specific options in YAML files. After a new A2ML application is created, the application configuration for all providers is stored in a single YAML file.”
Krill concludes his write-up by supplying this link for interested readers to download A2ML from GitHub for themselves.
Cynthia Murrell, October 24, 2019
Attorneys Are Getting Better at Tech But There Are Still Some Challenges
October 24, 2019
The best attorneys put bad actors in prison, but in order to do that they need to gather evidence to support their cases in court. With the plethora of data types and sources, attorneys must organize it for quick recall, but data also comes with its own mistakes. JD Supra reveals the, “Top Five Data Collection Mistakes” and ways to avoid them in the litigation process.
There are two main data types: traditional and nontraditional. Users create traditional data, organize and place it in workflows. Nontraditional workflows comes from sources there have few or no collection or processing procedures. These usually come from social media, chat applications, cloud platforms, and text messages. Attorneys need to determine what data types they are handling in litigation, but be aware of potential mistakes.
The easiest mistake to make is not realize that different data types require different collection methods. Extracting information from a computer requires knowledge about its operating system and manufacturer. Cell phone data has its own complications, such as if the data is backed up on a cloud or if the vendor must be contacted to retrieve metadata. Discovering who owns data is another issue. Data is stored on personal devices, the cloud, third party systems, and more. Ownership becomes questionable as well as if data must be shared if not physically owned. Governance policies, customer workflows, and data maps are necessary in order to address data ownership.
Proportionality cannot be ignored. A court could rule that retrieving data outweighs its usefulness. Any data, however, could change a case:
“As always, the success of this argument will depend on the specific facts of a case. For example, one federal court held that a request for text messages was disproportional to the burden of collecting and producing them even though they had been produced in a pre-litigation investigation because the text messages only added minimal evidentiary value to the case. Litigators must be able to clearly articulate a proportionality argument in order to successfully avoid the production of minimally relevant/useful data.”
Misunderstanding proportionality is understandable, but not recognizing data structure and storage is a beginner’s mistake. In order for eDiscovery algorithms to work, they need to be programmed to scan data from different database structures and storage devices. Programming the algorithm wrong is the same as expecting a US electric appliance to work in another country. Data structure and storage is not universal. Attorneys need to remember to cover all data points, search everything. Another amateur mistake is forgetting to collect data that does not provide context for raw data, it is like trying to decipher a secret code without the cipher key.
These are simple mistakes to make, but with new technology and data types new mistakes will develop. Keeping abreast of new trends, technology, communication methods, and data laws will prevent them from appearing.
Whitney Grace, October 24, 2019
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