Countries Want Technological Backdoors
December 11, 2019
“Think of the children” is usually a weak claim people use to justify questionable actions, but law enforcement officials across the world are protecting children the correct way by teaming together to prevent child exploitation on the Internet. Ars Technica shares the story in the article, “Think Of The Children: FBI Sought Interpol Statement Against End-To-End Crypto.” Law enforcement officials, including the US Department of Justice, want there to be backdoors in technology for warranted search and surveillance.
US Attorney General William Barr and his UK and Australian peers asked Facebook to delay its plan to use end-to-end encrypt for all its company’s messaging tools. The FBI and the Department of Justice are encouraged other international law enforcement organizations to join their plea at the International Criminal Police Organization’s 37th Meeting of the Interpol Specialists Groups Group on Crimes Against Children. Delaying end-to-end encryption would find child sexual exploitation. Interpol has not officially supported the delay plea yet.
“The draft resolution went on to lay responsibility for child exploitation upon the tech industry: ‘The current path towards default end-to-end encryption, with no provision for lawful access, does not allow for the protection of the world’s children from sexual exploitation. Technology providers must act and design their services in a way that protects user privacy, on the one hand, while providing user safety, on the other hand. Failure to allow for Lawful Access on their platforms and products, provides a safe haven to offenders utilizing these to sexually exploit children, and inhibits our global law enforcement efforts to protect children.’”
Barr and his peers want technology experts should to agree with them about backdoors. Facebook and other social media companies already comply by terms in the CLOUD Act, a law to provide law officials with data no matter in the world it is located. Barr claims that if Facebook and other companies do not comply, they are allowing children to be exploited further. Research has shown, however, that encryption has had little effect on impeding law officials.
Facebook and other companies state there is not a backdoor skeleton key to any technology and if they did design one it would put people at risk.
Law enforcement officials have the right mindset, but they are missing the essential purpose of encryption and how a backdoor could be exploited by bad actors, including those who harm children.
Whitney Grace, December 11, 2019
Amazon Fraud Detection: A Possible Application
December 11, 2019
DarkCyber noted “The AI Enabled Taxman.” The write up explains that smart software is in use to assist government tax authorities in their work. What countries are using the smart systems? Nordic countries, according to the write up. Plus, India is heading down this path as well. With Amazon’s fraud detection capabilities, perhaps that company will move in a similar direction.
The write up points out:
For instance, in Denmark, AI tools are said to flagged 85 of every 100 cases, with 65 of them found to outright tax frauds. Since then, various governments have been exploring the potential of AI to nab culprits.
Stephen E Arnold, December 11, 2019
Digital Tentacles: Feels Good, Squishy Yet Firm
December 11, 2019
The large tech companies are insinuating themselves into every field imaginable; this time, it is financial services. South Africa’s Daily Maverick considers, “Google and Facebook Want your Bank Account. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” Ever eager to capitalize on revenue streams and data streams alike, big tech sees the financial services field as a wealth of opportunity. Reporter Tim Cohen summarizes what we know about each major tech company’s plans so far:
“In November 2019, Alphabet, Google’s owner, became the latest tech company to announce it would enter the financial services space, saying it would launch actual, formal bank accounts. But its announcement had an interesting little twist; it would not be doing so alone, but in conjunction with one of the big US banks, Citigroup, and even more bizarrely a tiny bank, the Stanford Federal Credit Union. Facebook’s approach has been very different and much more ambitious; a whole new currency, Libra, which has been the subject of much controversy. But less well known is that Facebook has upgraded its existing payments system, and it’s become clear that if Libra fails for regulatory reasons, the fallback is to build out a payments system. Apple’s approach is different again — more or less. It released earlier this year a credit card in association with credit card provider Mastercard and US bank Goldman Sachs. The card has some tech features, like being both virtual and physical, and uses the existing Apple Pay system. Amazon, meanwhile, has been considering its options, hiring banking experts, and it is also expected to make some kind of foray into the financial services sphere.”
The article posits a reason this is happening now—these companies are seeing a leveling-off of profits from their traditional activities. Last year Google, for example, saw its slowest ad-revenue growth since the 2008 recession. Also, Facebook’s share price is about what it was two years ago. Cohen wonders, though, whether it will be as easy as they think; banking in many countries is complicated and/ or dominated by the state. Perhaps they are setting themselves up for disappointment. We shall see.
Cynthia Murrell, December 11, 2019
China Develops Suicide Detecting AI Bot
December 10, 2019
Most AI bots are used for customer support, massive online postings, downloading stuff, and criminal mischief. China has found another use for AI bots: detecting potential suicides. The South China Morning Post shared the article, “This AI Bot Finds Suicidal Messages On China’s Weibo, Helping Volunteer Psychologists Save Lives.” Asian countries have some of the world’s highest suicide rates. In order to combat death, Huang Zhisheng created the Tree Hole bot in 2018 to detect suicidal messages on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. Tree Hole bot finds potential suicide victims posting on Weibo, then connects them with volunteers to discuss their troubles. Huang has prevented more than one thousand suicides.
In 2016, 136,000 people committed suicide in China, which was 17% of world’s suicides that year. The World Health Organization states that suicide is the second leading cause of death in people ages 15-29. Other companies like Google, Facebook, and Pinterest have used AI to detect potential suicidal or self-harmers, but one of the biggest roadblocks are privacy concerns. Huang notes that saving lives is more important than privacy.
The Tree Hole bot works differently from other companies to find alarming notes:
“The Tree Hole bot automatically scans Weibo every four hours, pulling up posts containing words and phrases like “death”, “release from life”, or “end of the world”. The bot draws on a knowledge graph of suicide notions and concepts, applying semantic analysis programming so it understands that “not want to” and “live” in one sentence may indicate suicidal tendency.
In contrast, Facebook trains its AI suicide prevention algorithm by using millions of real world cases. From April to June, the social media platform handled more than 1.5 million cases of suicide and self-injury content, more than 95 per cent of which were detected before being reported by a user. For the 800,000 examples of such content on Instagram during the same period, 77 per cent were first flagged by the AI system first, according to Facebook, which owns both platforms.”
Assisting potential suicide victims is time consuming and Huang is developing a chatbot that can hopefully take the place of Tree Hole volunteers. Mental health professionals argue that an AI bot cannot take the place of a real human and developers point out there is not enough data to make an effective therapy bot.
Suicide prevention AI bots are terrific, but instead of making them volunteer only would it be possible, at least outside of China to make a non-profit organization staffed by professionals and volunteers?
Whitney Grace, December 10, 2019
YouTube Supplied Music Leads To Massive Video Demonetization
December 10, 2019
YouTube cheats its content creators. The video sharing platform is constantly changing its rules, demonetizing videos without notice, and deleting videos for “offensive” content. YouTube claims it loves its creators and offers tools and services for assistance. One of these services is offering royalty free music for videos, but content creators beware of video platforms offering free music. Torrent Freak reports on how, “‘Royalty Free’ Music Supplied By YouTube Results In Mass Video Demonetization.”
Matt Lowne is a popular game streaming YouTuber, think Pewdiepie except he only has 56 million views. To avoid copyright strikes which lead to demonetization, YouTubers avoid copyrighted content such as music and video clips. Lowne used a track called “Dreams” by Joakim Kraud from YouTube’s audio library for his video introductions. Lowne posted a video, then he was barraged with emails stating that he used SonyATV, PeerMusic, Warner Chappell, LatinAutor, and Audiam material.
Now all of Lowne’s profit from ads are split between the claimant companies and he gets the crumbs. Composer Joakim Karud allows anyone to use his music royalty free which makes him a popular artist on YouTube. Lowne filed a claim to contest the copyright violation, but he only did it for one of his videos. If he filed a claim on every one of his videos, he could get three strikes and be suspended indefinitely from YouTube. Lowne is not the only YouTuber with this problem and the companies filing the copyright claim may have legitimate grounds:
“Sure enough, if one turns to the WhoSampled archive, Dreams is listed as having sampled Weaver of Dreams, a track from 1956 to which Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC and Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. own the copyrights. If the trend of claims against ‘Dreams’ continues, there is potential for huge upheaval on YouTube and elsewhere. Countless thousands of videos use the track and as a result it has become very well-known.”
To make matters even worse, YouTube issued an authorized statement that said “Dreams” was never listed in its official audio library. “Dreams” was listed as a royalty free music on an unofficial channel that claimed to be the YouTube audio library. Oh boy! It is even more important to double check if music is royalty free. Maybe it would be better to use music in the public domain or hire someone to compose original music?
Whitney Grace, December 10, 2019
Amazon Ads Frustrate Shoppers
December 10, 2019
Is it wise for Amazon to put advertising revenue above customer satisfaction? The Washington Times reports, “Ad Business a Boon for Amazon but a Turn-Off for Shoppers.” Amazon now intersperses its organic search results with paid ads, distinguishable only by a small gray “Sponsored” label. Those that appear at the top of the results can be misleading—they are not actually the top results.
Amazon started mixing its shopping platform with its ad service in 2014 and has since beat out Microsoft to become the third-largest online ad platform (after Google and Facebook). It has a peculiar advantage—many shoppers have become accustomed to starting their product searches at Amazon, bypassing search engines like Google and Bing altogether. However, will that change as it gets harder and harder for users to find what they are actually looking for on the site? Reporter Joseph Pisani writes:
“Advertising is one of Amazon’s fastest-growing businesses, helping to offset some of its more expensive endeavors like one-day delivery, which is hugely popular with customers but also a drain on the company. Amazon hasn’t said exactly how much it makes from ads, but its ‘other’ business is mostly made up of advertising, which brought in $9.3 billion in the first nine months of this year, up 38% from the same period the year before. Amazon launched its auction-like ad platform in 2014. Advertisers bid for specific keywords, similar to what search giant Google does. Skippy, for example, can bid to show up when someone searches for ‘peanut butter’ or its rival, ‘Jif.’ Some keywords can cost under a buck. Sought-after ones could cost much more. Amazon gets paid only when someone clicks on the ad, even if the product isn’t purchased. The company said its sponsored ads are a way for customers to find products they may be interested in. And it uses machine-learning technology to try and show ads that are relevant to shoppers. But that doesn’t always happen.”
For example, the author of a recent book about human lifespan and aging felt compelled to warn his followers—supplement makers had pegged his readership as potential customers and paid to have their ads show up whenever someone searched for his book. Not only did it make it harder for readers to find the book, it kind of looked like the author endorsed the supplements; he most certainly did not. Though Amazon removed those ads after the Associated Press got involved, the potential for such tactics remains.
Cynthia Murrell, December 10, 2019
Vaporware? You Are Not Aware of Agile?
December 9, 2019
I spotted an item of Slashdot which referred to documents filed in a court. It is possible— maybe, perhaps, sort of — that these documents contain a suggestion of an anomalous situation. Slashdot’s post “Former Oracle Product Manager Claims He Was Forced Out For Refusing to Sell Vaporware” decribes what may be viewed by some as unifornication. Unlike a regular unicorn, the approach is presented in this way:
The problem, according to the complaint, is that Oracle was asking Daramola to sell vaporware — a charge the company denies. “Daramola gradually became aware that a large percentage of the major projects to which he was assigned were in ‘escalation’ status with customers because Oracle had sold his customers software products it could not deliver, and that were not functional,” the complaint says. Daramola realized that his job “was to ratify and promote Oracle’s repeated misrepresentations to customers” about the capabilities of its software, “under the premise of managing the customer’s expectations.” The ostensible purpose of stringing customers along in this manner was to buy time so Oracle could actually implement the capabilities it was selling, the court filing states.
Is the idea worthy of a new word, unifornication? DarkCyber is not sure. What may be hypothesized is that this rare and unusual tactic of selling illusory software is the physical interaction of a marketer and a customer who bought a solution. Hence, unifornication may capture the spirit of such interaction. One promises; another pays. The back and forth without a fully functioning system is one facet of unifornication.
There may be other techniques available. Those may be discussed in the mellow glow of the afterwords.
Stephen E Arnold, December 9, 2019
Amazon: What Does the S Team Do without a Policeware Leader?
December 9, 2019
GeekWire published the members of Jeff Bezos’ S Team. The idea is that the TV show A Team has been upgraded by 17 letters. There is an S Team member for fashion and for Alexa, but none for policeware. You can get the list of S Team members in “Amazon Expands Bezos’ Elite ‘S-Team,’ Adding 6 Execs from Emerging Branches of the Company.” Perhaps the omission of a public sector Amazon manager signals that the company is not interested in government contracts, work for law enforcement departments, and countries interested in using Amazon’s blockchain technology? That is a possibility. DarkCyber believes that there is a commitment at Amazon for policeware and developing services to assist authorities in determining if tax returns are on the up and up. The apparent exclusion of a designated policeware “owner” suggests that the company wants to continue its low profile approach to this high potential revenue sector.
Stephen E Arnold, December 9, 2019
Swedish Ethical Hackers Raise More Funding
December 9, 2019
Have you ever heard the cyber security terms white hat and black hat? They are metaphors for types of hacking. The terms originate from old western movies, where the good cowboys wore white hats while the villains had black ones. In reference to hacking, the black hat hackers are bad actors and the white hat hackers are ethical. Ethical hackers had a big score in Sweden says Bisman Area News in the article, “Detectify Raises Additional €21M For Its Ethical Hacking Network.”
Detectify is a Swedish cybersecurity startup that developed a powerful Web site vulnerability scanner. Detectify has raised another €21 million in funding; Balderton Capital led the fundraising with investors Inventure, Insight Partners, and Paua Ventures. The startup plans to use the funding to hire more white hat hackers to accelerate the company’s growth.
Detectify was founded in 2013 by elite white hat hackers. The team’s scanner is a Web site security tool that is automated to scan Web sites and discover vulnerabilities so users can remain on top of the security. The scanner’s most unique feature is that it is powered and updated by an ethical hacker network a.k.a. crowdsourcing.
Detectify used its first funding round in a clever and innovative way:
“As we explained when the startup raised its €5 million Series A round, this sees top-ranked security researchers submit vulnerabilities that are then built into the Detectify scanner and used in customers’ security tests. The clever part is that researchers get paid every time their submitted module identifies a vulnerability on a customer’s website. In other words, incentives are kept aligned, giving Detectify a potential advantage and greater scale compared to similar website security automation tools.”
The company gained clients in the US, including Spotify, Trello, and King. Detectify plans to continue its expansion by relying on talent acquisitions and crowdsourcing.
Whitney Grace, December 9, 2019, 2019
Google Faces Anti-Trust Allegations in Georgia
December 9, 2019
Countries large and small are thinking about Google.
Once again, Google is being charged with anti-competitive behavior. We have grown used to seeing such lawsuits proceed in the EU, but this time the allegations come from a company based in Atlanta. The Hindu Business Line reports, “Google Accused by Rival of Anti-Trust Violations in Ad Market.” The write-up specifies:
“Advertising technology company Inform Inc alleges that Google has used its monopoly power in internet search and mobile operating systems to undermine competition in the ad market. Inform claims that while it posted revenue of more than $100 million from 2014 to 2016 from its online ad services, Google’s conduct effectively put Inform out of business, according to the complaint filed Monday in federal court in Atlanta. The totality of Google’s illegal and anti-competitive conduct across multiple, inter-related markets demonstrates a frightening march to online and digital dominance, the company said in the suit. The lawsuit comes on the heels of antitrust investigations into Google by state attorneys general, the Justice Department and Congress. Google’s control over the technology that delivers ads across the web are a focus of all the probes.”
Inform provides online video ad services to publishers and advertisers, so it is in direct competition with those services from Google. Interesting timing—earlier this year, Inform agreed to a merger with digital advertising firm Bright Mountain Media, based in Boca Raton, Florida.
Cynthia Murrell, December 9, 2019
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