Amazon: The Surveillance Mesh Play
September 30, 2019
DarkCyber received a complaint about the small size of the image from my webinar about Amazon Policeware. There are two remedies for tiny images. You can attend my policeware lecture at the TechnoSecurity & Digital Forensics Conference in San Antonio on Wednesday, October 2. Qualified attendees can request a PDF of the image. Second, you can contact DarkCyber at benkent2020 at yahoo dot com and sign up for our LE, security, and intel personnel webinar.
Today, I want to provide several findings from our research related to Amazon Policeware. These are:
- Amazon’s mesh network in the Sidewalk product provides a solution to blanketing a city with a data collection component. This wide field outdoor mesh network may fail. In the meantime, you may be able to locate your dog if it is wearing a Fetch.
- Amazon’s Ring doorbell provides an anchor for fixed video feeds. The resolution is poor and the system is far from comprehensive, but the test mechanism is sufficiently compelling for several hundred police departments to show interest.
- The supplementary data collection devices shown in the figure below feed into the AWS policeware platform. That platform performs a number of analytic functions. Cross correlation is one of these.
© Stephen E Arnold, 2019
So what?
In the US, Amazon is moving forward to put in place a next generation service which provides a new tool to enforcement authorities. The system delivers other benefits to Amazon as well.
DarkCyber identifies some parallels between the efforts the government of China is making with Amazon’s activities.
Will the Epstein friendly academic institution get this story straight? Probably not.
Stephen E Arnold, September 30, 2019
Microsoft and Software Problems
September 30, 2019
Microsoft wants DarkCyber to trust its cloud solutions. Not going to happen.
Navigate to “Windows 10 Problems Are Ruining Microsoft’s Reputation – and the Damage Can’t Be Understated.” The article asserts:
Reputation deflation is the path to damnation…
What? The data dignity company is on the path to hellfire?
We learned from the article:
According to ACSI, customer satisfaction with software for PCs has dropped by 1.3% compared to last year, with Microsoft slipping the most out of all software makers with a 3% decrease. The report further notes: “According to ACSI data, customer perceptions of quality have deteriorated significantly for Microsoft over the past year, as the manufacturer has encountered a host of customer issues with its Windows 10 updates.”
The write up stated:
This bug-related reputational damage isn’t just about desktop operating systems, though. The wider public perception of Microsoft flailing around in an almost amateurish fashion could well have a knock-on effect when it comes to the levels of trust in the company, and all those future dreamy cloud products we mentioned at the outset could be subsequently affected…
Microsoft wants to catch up with Amazon. Amazon, on the other hand, does not seem worried about catching up with Microsoft.
Microsoft may be creating problems for itself.
Stephen E Arnold, September 30, 2019
Roy Cohn Documents Released by FBI
September 30, 2019
If you are interested in Roy Cohn, a New York attorney, new information is available. Released by the FBI, the documents contain about 700 pages of information. You can access the data at this link. The documents are redacted. Mr. Cohn interacted with a number of individuals with a high profile. Mr. Cohn died in 1986, that’s 33 years ago. The New York Post ran a photo of Mr. Cohn with a youthful President Trump and mentioned some of Mr. Cohn’s high profile activities.
Stephen E Arnold, September 30, 2019
The Register Rings the Bell on IBM
September 29, 2019
DarkCyber noted “Analyze This: IBM Punts Off Algorithm Risk Biz.” The main idea is that IBM is exiting the financial risk business. Smart finance and associated analytics is a hot business sector. Even Amazon, the online bookstore, has some capabilities in this area. IBM? Not so much.
We noted this statement:
IBM originally purchased the analytics products from Toronto-based Algorithmics in 2011 for $387m.
The article explains that IBM wants to focus.
One interesting point in the write up struck DarkCyber as:
Kate Hanaghan, chief research officer at TechMarketView, said buying into new areas and selling off legacy ones are part of IBM’s turnaround plan. “The point is that IBM has to make some choices about where it should place its bets and sink its investment spend. Divestments are crucial and will without doubt continue – as will acquisitions.”
Sounds good, but this factoid explains the IBM problem:
IBM CEO, president and chairman Ginni Rometty took to the hot seat in 2011 when revenues came in at $106.9bn. At the end of 2018, revenues stood at $79.6bn.
There you go. Watson, what do you think?
Stephen E Arnold, September 29, 2019
AI: Of, By, and For the One Percenters
September 28, 2019
I read “At Tech’s Leading Edge, Worry About a Concentration of Power.” You can too if you pay the Gray Lady or have a dead tree version of the estimable newspaper.
The main point of the write up is that doing smart software with machine learning and lots of data is expensive. Therefore, if a person struggles to pay the rent, smart software is going to be out of reach.
Sure, Amazon offers deals, but the fees for big time machine learning can be beyond the reach of the average country club member. Even a pro athlete with a history of interesting tweets may not be able to handle the invoices from Google, Microsoft, and other cloud vendors.
The newspaper observes against these somewhat poorly kept smart software secrets:
Computer scientists say A.I. research is becoming increasingly expensive, requiring complex calculations done by giant data centers, leaving fewer people with easy access to the computing firepower necessary to develop the technology behind futuristic products like self-driving cars or digital assistants that can see, talk and reason.
Is there a fix?
Well, sort of. The New York Times pointed to foundation support; for example:
At the Allen Institute in Seattle, Mr. Etzioni [former professor and online expert] said, the team will pursue techniques to improve the efficiency of artificial intelligence technology. “This is a big push for us,” he said. But Mr. Etzioni emphasized that what he was calling green A.I. should be seen as “an opportunity for additional ingenuity, not a restraint” — or a replacement for deep learning, which relies on vast computing power, and which he calls red A.I.
Net net: Smart software requires big bucks, big brains, big computing, and big effort. Can innovations emerge from a lab like the one beleaguered Tesla operated?
Maybe, just not probable. When big outfits “help”, the opportunity for “borrowing” may be tempting. In an ethics free zone, who wins?
The one percent. What’s different this time?
Stephen E Arnold, September 28, 2019
Amazon Policeware: The Path to IBM-Style Lock In on Steroids
September 27, 2019
Quite a bit of Amazon news has flowed through the DarkCyber system. The problem is that most of the information is oblivious to Amazon’s policeware initiative. DarkCyber’s research suggests that Amazon is building a surveillance system. One DarkCyber team member said, “Amazon is building what China has been working on for several years.” Is this DarkCyber researcher correct? Who knows?
I do want to provide a diagram from our Amazon webinar which puts Amazon’s activities into a context for enforcement. The scope of Amazon’s business strategy extends beyond local law enforcement and the Ring video doorbell activities, beyond the cloud services for several US government agencies, and beyond the company’s online businesses.
Amazon may be positioning itself to provide:
- IRS-related services associated with tax investigations
- Drug enforcement actions related to physicians who allegedly overprescribe or entities which obtain certain compounds using obfuscation methods
- SEC-related services to determine entity interaction, expenditures, and related financial activities
- Credit verification, including other financial analyses, for government and retail financial activities.
Other “extensions” are possible. What’s interesting is that few have noticed and even fewer pay much attention beyond hand waving about Alexa. There’s more than Alexa, which is a low level gateway service.
Here’s the diagram, which is copyrighted by Stephen E Arnold, operator of DarkCyber, and author of the forthcoming monograph, Dark Edge: Amazon’s Policeware Initiative.
© Stephen E Arnold, 2019.
How do you use this diagram? Just map Amazon’s most recent product announcements into the grid.
The DarkCyber Amazon policeware webinar walks through the tactics and the strategy for this “in plain sight” play. Analysts, journalists, policeware vendors paying Amazon to host their systems, and Microsoft-type outfits are oblivious to what is now the end game for a 12 year push by Amazon to make IBM-style lock in seem as quaint as a Model T Ford.
For those who recycle my information and claim it as your own creative output, why not be somewhat ethical and provide attribution. You know. Old-fashioned stuff like a footnote. Yep, that includes a real journalist who writes for the New York Times and the Epstein linked MIT publication, among others.
Stephen E Arnold, September 27, 2019
Google Cemetery
September 27, 2019
Google is mercurial. I assume that others will describe Google in a different way. DarkCyber wants to note this page:
The Google Graveyard does a good job of keeping track of discontinued Google products and services. Each entry includes a brief description, a comment about how long the product lived, and a cheerful icon for the deceased service. Little digital tombstones!
Stephen E Arnold, September 27, 2019
Dumbing Down Search and Making More Money?
September 27, 2019
Google makes changes that benefit Google. Forbes Magazine, the capitalist tool, however, does not understand this simple fact about the world’s largest online advertising outfit.
“Google Makes It More Difficult To Find Old Images” points out that the ad giant made it more difficult for 99 percent of Google Image search users to locate “old” images. Most of Google’s advanced search features don’t get much click love.
As a result, why make the feature available? The benefit of making Google Image Search dumbed is related to several factors tangential; my thought is:
- Legal hassles related to making images findable
- Cost reduction. If content is not searched, why spend money verifying links and storing pointers
- Ads. Clicking a Web page for an image can display a current ad. Clicking an old picture like the one below is unlikely to provide an ad payout for the GOOG.
There are some options:
- Use Google search operators like those on this list
- Include a date in the image search string; for example, IBM mainframe 1964
- Use the Google advanced image search form which is at this link.
What’s Forbes’ take?
I reached out to Google for comment on this story. I have yet to hear back and will update this article if I do.
Yep, the capitalist tool.
Stephen E Arnold, September 27, 2019
MIT and Mendacity
September 27, 2019
I am back from a fun series of locations. Nifty USSR style apartment blocks, big statues, and weird refrigerator magnets. I missed the thrill and excitement of MIT’s struggles with ethics and money. (Spoiler: Money won it seems.)
I noted this write up a few moments ago:
This MIT Press Reader article observes:
It isn’t possible for everyone to live on principle; as a practical matter, many of us must make compromises in asymmetrical relationships, without the control or consent for which we might wish. In those situations — everyday 21st-century life — there are still ways to carve out spaces of resistance, counterargument, and autonomy.
Good to know about the irrelevance of principle. MIT thinking in full bloom.
Embrace obfuscation; for example:
Obfuscation assumes that the signal can be spotted in some way and adds a plethora of related, similar, and pertinent signals — a crowd which an individual can mix, mingle, and, if only for a short time, hide.
You get the idea. Deception.
John Kenneth Galbraith was on the right track. He allegedly said:
Among all the world’s races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.
On my flight back to the US, I read “How an Élite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.” The New Yorker makes clear that MIT’s attempts to cover up (obfuscate) its relationship with Mr. Epstein, the deceased person of interest with allegedly improper interests in young girls, did not work.
But there’s more. I read “M.I.T. Media Lab, Already Rattled by the Epstein Scandal, Has a New Worry” which stated in the typical New York Times manner:
Four researchers who worked on OpenAg said in interviews with The New York Times that Mr. Harper had made exaggerated or false claims about the project to its corporate sponsors, a group that included the retail giant Target, as well as in interviews with the news media.
Enough already.
How does one spell “mendacity”? Does it start with the letter “M”?
I wonder if top flight academic institutions are what they seem. Maybe some institutions are obfuscating but failing.
I wonder if there is a Bulgarian refrigerator magnet for doing the best one can under difficult circumstances.
Stephen E Arnold, September 27, 2019
Apple, Google, and Avid: The Perils of Complexity and Arrogance
September 27, 2019
Apple wants to make Mac users safe. The technology Apple uses requires passwords. Behind the scenes, Apple’s zeros and ones are beavering away to make Mac use a breeze. The trick? Just stick with Apple.
Google wants to point fingers at Apple iPhone and get Chrome on every Mac computer. Ads, surveillance, and real estate are probably motives. The Googlers are darned confident that their code is just peaches. Imagine the pain and shame of posting an admission of sorts that Google nukes some Macs. See this post. (Bonus time?)
Then there is Avid. To prevent the ethical lads and lasses in Hollywood and other video hot spots from pirating software, dongles are the answer. That’s Avid’s policy. No dongle, no go.
The problem is that none of these confident (maybe arrogant?)outfits think about the unknown dependencies within users’ computers. There are too many users. There are too many combinations of software and dongles.
The solution is to assume that everything will work. But when it doesn’t, the arrogant outfits have to explain that:
- Their code may not be perfect
- The security procedures may cause problems
- The dongle things add complexity.
Will these types of issues become more frequent? Will smart software avoid these problems? Will pigs fly?
Stephen E Arnold, September 27, 2019
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
