Percipient.ai: A Promising Innovator
October 4, 2019
Intelware refers to software designed to support the work of intelligence officers, analysts, and related personnel. Percipient.ai is one of the leading “artificial intelligence, machine learning and computer vision firm in Silicon Valley focused on intelligence and national security missions. Mirage’s modules provide state-of-the-art computer vision and correlation to operators and analysts in front line missions.”
According to “Percipient.ai delivers Mirage into the US National Security Market and Closes its Series B”, the company received confirmation of:
…the operational procurement of Mirage’s Full Motion Video Module and Mirage’s Geospatial Module by organizations in the US Intelligence Community and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA), respectively.
The company was founded in 2017 and has attention from the intelligence community.
The company’s funding is less than $25 million, which is peanuts compared to Palantir Technologies’ intake of about $2 billion.
Stephen E Arnold, October 4, 2019
Google: Practical, Pragmatic, and Logical
October 3, 2019
I am not sure if this news item about the GOOG is accurate. Nevertheless, it does provide a Googley solution to a thorny problem; namely, where can one get images with which to train a facial recognition system.
One could scrape Ancestry.com. One could scrape Yandex Images. One could retain the enterprising Yahoo engineer who hacked accounts for interesting images.
Or
One could snap pix of homeless people. Atlanta. Hmmm. Atlanta?
The allegedly accurate factoids appear in “Google Contractors Reportedly Targeted Homeless People for Pixel 4 Facial Recognition.” I noted:
a Google contractor may be using some questionable methods to get those facial scans, including targeting groups of homeless people and tricking college students who didn’t know they were being recorded. According to several sources who allegedly worked on the project, a contracting agency named Randstad sent teams to Atlanta explicitly to target homeless people and those with dark skin, often without saying they were working for Google, and without letting on that they were actually recording people’s faces.
Legal? Illegal? I don’t care.
The idea and the execution is troubling.
If true, classy. Like the yacht death involving drugs and an alleged person for hire. Somehow Googley.
Stephen E Arnold, October 3, 2019
Memos: Mac Search Tool for Images
October 3, 2019
You need a Mac. You need photos with text. You need Memos. (Apple account may be required to snag the software.) The software identifies texts in images and extracts text. Enter a query and the software displays the source image.
You can take a pix of text and Memos will OCR it. You can search across images for in photo text.
Cost? About $5.
On the App Store. Use the link on the Memos Web site. When we search the App Store, Memos was not findable.
Does it work? Still some bugs if the user comments are on point.
Stephen E Arnold, October 3, 2019
Will the Real Disintermediating Entity Step Forward?
October 3, 2019
Big Microsoft day. It’s back in the mobile phone business. Sometime next year, probably coincident with a delayed Win 10 update, the Microsoft Surface Dual Screen Folding Android Phone becomes available. You can get the scoop and one view of Microsoft’s “we’re in phones again strategy” in “Microsoft’s Future Is Built on Google Code.” Do I agree? Of course not, that’s my method: Find other ways to look at an announcement.
The write up posits:
Google underpins Microsoft’s browser and mobile OS now.
I noted this statement as well:
… it could come as quite a shock that the CEO of Microsoft doesn’t care that much about operating systems. But there it is, in black and white. Microsoft obviously isn’t abandoning Windows — it announced a new version of it today — but it matters much more to Microsoft that you use its services like Office. That’s where the money is, after all.
Money. A phone that is not here?
But there’s another side to Microsoft. Amazon, the evil enemy, makes it possible run Microsoft on the AWS platform.
Now who is going to disintermediate whom?
Will Google get frisky and nuke Microsoft’s Android love?
Will Amazon just push MSFT SQLServer and other Microsoft innovations off the AWS platform and suck up the MSFT business.
Will Microsoft find that loving two enemies is more a management hassle than getting a Windows 10 server out the door?
Will Amazon and Google escalate their skirmishes and take actions that miss one enemy and plug the Redmond frenemy?
The stakes are high. Microsoft has done a pivot with an double backflip.
Perfect 10 or broken foot? Enron tried something like Microsoft’s approach. The landing was bumpy. The cloud may not cushion a lousy landing.
Stephen E Arnold, October 3, 2109
Smart Dubai: An Amazon AWS Connection
October 2, 2019
Amazon AWS provides the plumbing for the Amazon owned Souq.com. Amazon has a “region” and “edge location” in the United Arab Emirates. Amazon is supporting an educational push to infuse those with an interest in computer science in the ways and lingo of AWS. There was an Amazon summit in the UAE as well.
I thought about these Amazon actions when I read “Smart Dubai to Have a Marketplace for Sharing and Exchanging Data by 2021.” I learned:
Smart Dubai is building a data marketplace in a bid to monetise data through centralised and decentralised platforms, a top official said.
This initiative may be a glimpse of the smart data system disclosed in US 9947043. The Dubai activity may be the testing ground for a service which may be rolled out in the US as Amazon edges toward broader investigative services for the US government’s enforcement agencies, the IRS, and the SEC, among others.
Worth monitoring or you can express your interest in DarkCyber’s AWS policeware webinar by writing benkent2020 at yahoo dot com.
Stephen E Arnold, October 2, 2019
An Interesting View of Snowden
October 2, 2019
DarkCyber noted “Looking Back at the Snowden Revelations.” This essay highlights the “cryptographic” angle of the leaked documents. Key points in the essay are:
- Explanation of the collect everything method
- The importance of signals intelligence
- The “problem” of encryption.
The write up states:
…the world that Snowden brought to our attention isn’t necessarily a world that Americans have much say in. As an example: today the U.S. government is in the midst of forcing a standoff with China over the global deployment of Huawei’s 5G wireless networks around the world. This is a complicated issue, and financial interest probably plays a big role. But global security also matters here. This conflict is perhaps the clearest acknowledgement we’re likely to see that our own government knows how much control of communications networks really matters, and our inability to secure communications on these networks could really hurt us. This means that we, here in the West, had better get our stuff together — or else we should be prepared to get a taste of our own medicine.
Interesting write up. Should the focus be on government collection and analysis?
Stephen E Arnold, October 2, 2019
Today in Subjective Search: What Are You Not Allowed to Know
October 2, 2019
When you review information, is that information comprehensive, complete, and objectively displayed?
No.
No.
No.
Let’s look at three examples.
First, Boris Johnson allegedly uses certain words to skew search results. This is the allegation of Remoaning Myrtle. You can find the assertion at this link. Does this mean that wordsmithing now fiddles search results on Bing, Google, and Yandex? Interesting question about an interesting person’s ability to use language as a weapon.
Second, Twitter has introduced new filters. “Twitter Rolls Out Filter for Potentially Offensive DMs” reports:
Twitter is quickly acting on plans to filter potentially offensive direct messages. It’s rolling out the filter to all users on Android, iOS and the web. As during the test, there isn’t much mystery to how this works. If a message contains questionable language or is likely spam, it’ll be tucked away in an “additional messages” folder.
Third, “YouTube Moderation Bots Punish Videos Tagged as ‘Gay’ or ‘Lesbian,’ Study Finds” bluntly asserts:
A new investigation from a coalition of YouTube creators and researchers is accusing YouTube of relying on a system of “bigoted bots” to determine whether certain content should be demonetized, specifically LGBTQ videos.
DarkCyber finds it interesting that shaping or alleged shaping of search results is now garnering attention. Researchers looking for historical information may discover that “old” information is either unindexed or not online. Investigators and analysts looking for facts like Cisco’s acquisition of certain firms requires manual review of SEC documents. Individuals looking for information about CMS contractors conducting medical fraud information may find that these data are very, very difficult to locate.
Why?
Reasons vary.
It is important for those who assert that “my team consists of expert online researchers” may be fooling themselves.
Stephen E Arnold, October 2, 2019
Google: A Big Play
October 1, 2019
Google’s walled garden is getting a glass roof. AMP was a good first step, but there is a world of other Internet-enabled services which are not likely to be AMP-lified. What’s the fix? DarkCyber believes that Google wants to become the Internet. Stopping Amazon is not working with the GOOG’s standard line up of services. “Why Big ISPs Aren’t Happy about Google’s Plans for Encrypted DNS.”
The write up states:
Google and Mozilla are trying to address these concerns by adding support in their browsers for sending DNS queries over the encrypted HTTPS protocol. But major Internet service providers have cried foul. In a September 19 letter to Congress, Big Cable and other telecom industry groups warned that Google’s support for DNS over HTTPS (DOH) “could interfere on a mass scale with critical Internet functions, as well as raise data-competition issues.”
Consider Google’s point of view. Google has user security in mind. Sure, there are others who see benefits in putting Google in a superordinate position with regards to DNS. What happens if Google filters certain addresses? An apology for sure.
The stakes are high. How will Amazon (an ISP of sorts) respond?
This will be interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, October 1. 2019
Information and the More Exposure Effect
October 1, 2019
The article “Why Do Older People Hate New Music?” caught my attention. Music is not a core interest at DarkCyber. We do mention in our Dark Web 2 lecture that beat sharing and selling sites which permit message exchange are an important source of social content.
This “oldsters hate new” angle is important. The write up contains this assertion:
One of the most researched laws of social psychology is something called the “mere exposure effect.” In a nutshell, it means that the more we’re exposed to something, the more we tend to like it. This happens with people we know, the advertisements we see and, yes, the songs we listen to.
Like many socio-psycho-econo assertions, this idea sounds plausible. Let’s assume that it is correct and apply the insight to online information.
Online news services purport to provide news for me, world news, and other categories. When I review outputs from several services like SmartNews, News360, and Google News, for example, it is clear that the information presented looks and conveys the same information.
If the exposure point is accurate, these services are conditioning me to accept and feel comfortable with specific information. SmartNews shows me soccer news, reports about cruise ship deaths, and write ups which underscore the antics of certain elected officials.
These services do not coordinate, but they do rely on widely used numerical recipes and feedback about what I click on or ignore. What’s interesting is that each of these services delivers a package of content which reflects each service’s view of what interests me.
The problem is that I look at less and less content on these services. Familiarity means that I don’t need to know more about certain topics.
Consequently, as the services become smarter, I move way from these services.
The psychological write up reports:
Psychology research has shown that the emotions that we experience as teens seem more intense than those that comes later. We also know that intense emotions are associated with stronger memories and preferences. All of this might explain why the songs we listen to during this period become so memorable and beloved.
Is familiarity making me more content with online news? Sorry, no.
The familiarity makes it easier to recognize that significant content is not being presented. That’s an interesting issue if my reaction is not peculiar to me.
How does one find additional information about the unfamiliar? Search does not deliver effectively in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, October 2, 2019
Amazon: Airport Purchases
October 1, 2019
DarkCyber spotted a report on the CNBC Web site. Its title was “Amazon Is in Talks to Bring Its Cashierless Go Technology to Airports and Movie Theaters.” Data about movie attendee purchases is interesting, but date about what an airport passenger is quite interesting. Location, method of payment, items purchases, date, and time are likely to be of considerable interest to investigators and intelligence professionals. With cross correlation a number of interesting questions could be answered. Will Amazon dominate airport sales? DarkCyber is not a prediction business. We will go as far as saying, “Worth watching.”
Stephen E Arnold, October 1, 2019
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