Amazon: Emulating GeoSpark?
October 28, 2020
Despite pandemic-related networking challenges, analytics database firm GeoSpock is making its move. Tech in Asia reveals, “UK-Based Database GeoSpock Bags $5.4m to Expand Further into Asia.” Lead by nChain and Cambridge Innovation Capital, this investment round brings GeoSpock to over $32 million in capital raised to date. It seems these and other investors see merit in the company’s claim to offer “the most advanced analytics database,” tailor-made to provide analytics, visualization, and insights for today’s ultra-connected world. Reporter Doris Yu writes:
“The company plans to use the new funds to improve its product and technical capabilities, as well as accelerate the development and adoption of its database in the market, according to a statement. What problem is it solving? ‘With the emergence of connected vehicles, smart cities, and the deployment of internet of things (IoT) sensors, the amount of data produced globally has exploded,’ the company told Tech in Asia, adding that traditional databases are ‘too slow and cumbersome.’ GeoSpock said it aims to produce a ‘cost-efficient, scalable, and fast database.’ … GeoSpock CEO Richard Baker said the company aims to disrupt the US$386 billion IoT big data analytics market. It works with customers on a subscription basis and charges for compute nodes that are available for use. With the increasing adoption of digitization throughout Asia, the company said its expansion plans will initially focus on Singapore and Japan as it develops teams and partnerships across the region.”
GeoSpock already has footholds in Asia, where it is working with both public and private organizations on smart city, automotive, maritime, and telecommunications projects. Launched in 2013, the company is based in Cambridge. GeoSpock now employs about 40 folks worldwide, but expects to hire more technical and customer-service staff in Singapore and Japan within the next year.
What’s interesting is that there is a company called GeoSpark Analytics. Coincidence?
Cynthia Murrell, October 19, 2020
Palantir Round Up: The Beyond Search Commentary
October 27, 2020
I received a request for the links to my Palantir Technologies coverage. Here’s a hot linked list to the 17 essays, news items, and analyses which appeared in Beyond Search / Dark Cyber from March to October 2020. Stories prior to this year’s may be located using the search function on the Beyond Search / Dark Cyber blog.
- “Two Palantir Profiles: Some Peculiar Omissions.” This essay identifies several Palantir activities not included in the September 2020 New York Magazine profile of the company and the October 2020 New York Times Magazine article. Why were this events ignored or overlooked by the respective publishing companies?
- “Palantir Technologies: Minor Questions Remain.” A list of nine questions which have not been answered comprehensively. This article appeared in early October 2020.
- “Palantir Technologies: A Problem for Intelware Competitors?” This essay compares Palantir Technologies to Autonomy. Both companies have something in common: Revenue. But Autonomy had generated more revenue than Palantir, and Autonomy chose to sell itself to Hewlett Packard. This essay appeared in September 2020 and included the names of the five prime movers at the company.
- “Palantir: Will Investors Embrace Intelware Outfit Generating Consistent, Substantial Losses for More Than a Decade?” This article appeared in September 2020 and focuses on Palantir’s consistent record of losing money in a boom market for policeware.
- “Palantir Has Only Unicorn Scorn for Fellow Travelers.” The essay identifies Palantir’s signal that it is different from other unicorns. The story appeared on September 7, 2020.
- “Palantir: Planning Ahead.” This is a September 4, 2020, essay about the company’s desire to have a special type of control after the initial public offering.
- “Palantir: Stakeholders May Know Whom to Blame If Money Does Not Flow.” This August 2020 essay considers founder control in perpetuity.
- “Palantir Technologies: Maybe Stealth Is Better for Specialized Services Companies?” This essay explores the upside and downside of a policeware company which goes public, thus exposing more of its information to outsiders. This article appeared on August 24, 2020.
- “Palantir Technologies and Semi Hard Numbers.” A short item about Palantir’s revenues. The story appeared on July 10, 2020.
- “A Peek into Google and Palantir Contracts: The UK National Health Service Versions.” This article provided links to Palantir’s agreements with the UK NHS and was published in June 2020.
- “Palantir Technologies: A Very Unusual Emission from a Specialized Services Firm.” This May 26, 2020, essay points to challenges NSO Group faces and raises the question, “Will Palantir face similar scrutiny when it goes public?”
- “Schmidt Versus Thiel May Be a Proxy for Google Trying Catch Up with Palantir.” This May 2020 article touches on the relationship between Palantir and the current administration in Washington, DC.
- “Palantir to Help HHS Track Coronavirus.” This April 2020 news item points to Palantir’s contract with the US Department of Health and Human Services.
- “Palantir Technologies: Getting the NSO Treatment.” This April 24, 2020, essay points out that Palantir is getting more attention from publications like the Wall Street Journal.
- “Palantir Technologies: Evidence That Making Big Money Comes from a Financial Play, Not a Product.” This April 12, 2020, article raises the question, “Is Palantir a financial play, not a viable company?”
- “MiningLamp Technology: Another Palantir?” This March 30, 2020, article draws attention to a Chinese company which appears to have duplicated some of Palantir’s functionality.
- “DCGS: Palantir and BAE Seem to Be Winners.” This March 9, 2020, article considers the demise of DCGS as a viable wartime information and the pivot to BAE Systems and Palantir as alternatives.
There are other, earlier stories. These provide a snapshot of the Beyond Search and Dark Cyber coverage of the company. Remember. Each of these articles is anchored to an open source news story.
Stephen E Arnold, October 27, 2020
How-To Information from a Low Profile Company
October 26, 2020
Terminating fake social media profiles, especially on Facebook, has been a high priority since the 2016 US presidential election. Social media companies have task forces that diligently remove scam accounts (supposedly), but as technology advances bad actors always find ways to keep the fakes rolling. It comes as a surprise that a social media monitoring company actually created an instruction manual on fake profiles. Vice has the story: “Surveillance Company Explains How To Keep Facebook From Detecting Fake Accounts In Leaked Manual.”
British owned Blackdot Solutions developed the open source based online investigations platform Videris. Videris is used by government organizations, banks, and other businesses. Motherboard obtained a user manual from Blackdot Solutions that instructed its customers how to create fake Facebook and LinkedIn accounts to collect people’s information. The manual also explains how to avoid Facebook detection.
The guide offered a very insightful behind-the-scenes look at how social media monitoring tools work from a layman’s POV.
More and more businesses and law enforcement agencies use social media monitoring tools to collect information. One common tactic is befriending people of interest on social media to work around privacy settings.
When confronted with the leaked manual, a Blackdot Solution spokesperson denied being aware of its existence and Videris was not used in such a manner:
“Videris does not unravel private networks. It can’t do anything that users couldn’t do themselves if they were to log into social networks in the normal way,” Adam Lawrance-Owen, Blackdot’s head of product, said in an email. “The advantage of our software is twofold. It allows for more effective investigations to help catch fraudsters, money-launderers and terrorists. And it allows those investigations to be carried out in the most secure and discreet way possible, which is absolutely essential when dealing with these sorts of matters.”
The user manual proved otherwise. Videris makes any scrapped data readable and it also includes colorful charts and graphs. Blackdot Solutions has since remained mum about the manual.
Whitney Grace, October 26, 2020
Amazon Rekognition: Helping Make Work Safer
October 22, 2020
DarkCyber noted Amazon’s blog post “Automatically Detecting Personal Protective Equipment on Persons in Images Using Amazon Rekognition.” Amazon discloses:
With Amazon Rekognition PPE detection, you can analyze images from your on-premises cameras at scale to automatically detect if people are wearing the required protective equipment, such as face covers (surgical masks, N95 masks, cloth masks), head covers (hard hats or helmets), and hand covers (surgical gloves, safety gloves, cloth gloves). Using these results, you can trigger timely alarms or notifications to remind people to wear PPE before or during their presence in a hazardous area to help improve or maintain everyone’s safety.
The examples in the Amazon write up make sense. However, applications in law enforcement and security are also possible. For instance, consider saying, “Hands up” to a person of interest:
The system can detect objects held by an individual. You can get more information in the blog post. Policeware and intelware vendors working with Amazon at this time may generate other use cases.
Stephen E Arnold, October 22, 2020
Policeware: Three Products Identified But and That Is a Big But
October 15, 2020
DarkCyber’s eager beaver researcher who works from home spotted “3 Best Law Enforcement Software with Buyers Guide.” The market for policeware is a small one compared to the number of customers for pizzas. However, the money invested by a handful of customers makes some marketers believe that making sales to the government and intelligence sectors is easy. It is not; for example, when big project emerge from the labyrinths of statements of work and the applicable procurement machinations, not many companies know about the opportunities or have the right stuff to land the project. Consider the $950 million ID/IQ contract for SRC Inc. Household name, right?
The three outfits identified as the “best” contains one solid recommendation: ESRI. This is a company which provides a must-have product and service called ArcGIS. The company is in the spatial mapping business and some interesting adjacent fields.
However, Nuance is a fence sitter. DarkCyber thinks of this outfit as a vendor generating some revenue from doctors, lawyers, and police who want to dictate notes and have them converted to text. The company provides its speech-to-text and other products to a wide range of customers. There are some alternatives, including Amazon’s solution.
The inclusion of the Tresit Group’s emergency communication solution is interesting. The Disaster Information Reporting system provides real-time, secure, and logged communications for first responders and police. Secure communications remain an application space of interest. The company provides a communications solution.
The “but” is that the selection of solutions is useful, but there are other companies which provide more widely used solutions. Some of these policeware systems and products are sector leaders.
DarkCyber wants to point out that identifying three products as “best” is difficult. For a researcher or analyst looking for a wider pool of policeware vendors, DarkCyber suggests the Mei@4Sec Catalogue of Existing Technologies and Solutions Deliverable 2.2 European Organization for Security (EOS). You can download this helpful 44-page report at this link without charge. (Verified on October 11, 2020, but the document can be removed at any time.)
Stephen E Arnold, October 15, 2020
Amazon Expands Data Monitoring
October 13, 2020
Here is an optimistic view of the future, at least for areas where residents can afford to purchase these gadgets. CNET reports, “Amazon Sidewalk Will Create Entire Smart Neighborhoods. Here’s What You Should Know.” Yes, Amazon’s vision of the smart home has grown to encompass the whole subdivision. Based on how many Echo devices are backward compatible with the new tech, the plan has been in the works for some time. But what, exactly, is this project about? Reporter Ry Crist writes:
“First announced in 2019, the effort is called Amazon Sidewalk, and it uses a small fraction of your home’s Wi-Fi bandwidth to pass wireless low-energy Bluetooth and 900MHz radio signals between compatible devices across far greater distances than Wi-Fi is capable of on its own — in some cases, as far as half a mile, Amazon says. You’ll share that bandwidth with your neighbors, creating a sort of network of networks that any Sidewalk-compatible device can take advantage of. Along with making sure things like outdoor smart lights and smart garage door openers stay connected when your Wi-Fi can’t quite reach them, that’ll help things like Tile trackers stay in touch if you drop your wallet while you’re out on a walk, or if your dog hops the fence. Maybe most noteworthy of all is that Amazon Sidewalk won’t require any new hardware, at least not for short-range benefits like easier device pairing. Instead, it’ll arrive as a free software update to the Echo speakers and Ring cameras people already have in their homes.”
To take advantage of those half-mile range 900MHz connections, though, one must have newer devices: a Ring Spotlight or Floodlight cam, the fourth generation Echo smart speaker, or Echo Show 10 smart display. (More will follow, of course.) These users will also contribute bandwidth to the cause, but Amazon was wise enough to provide an opt-out option. Not everyone’s community spirit will extend to their Wi-Fi connection, no matter how little bandwidth Sidewalk will use (which is very little, compared to streaming and other functions). Since the change will come in the form of a software update, anyone who wants to decline may have to be on the lookout for that update and find the appropriate checkbox.
Some users will have security concerns, and the company has worked to address them. The Sidewalk server only gets to see packets’ destination information, we’re told, but not any of the actual device data, which will travel under three layers of encryption. They promise to delete routing information every 24 hours. Here is the PDF of the company’s white paper addressing privacy and security for Sidewalk. Customers will have to trust Amazon to safeguard their data for Sidewalk to take off, it tells us. Considering how many have already incorporated the company’s digital potential spies into their homes, we think the project has a good chance at success.
Cynthia Murrell, October 13, 2020
Amazon Policeware: Is the Online Bookseller a Corporate Nation State with Policeware?
October 12, 2020
Who knows if the statements in “Leaked: Confidential Amazon Memo Reveals New Software to Track Unions.” Would a company create policeware to spy on employees? Possibly, but DarkCyber thinks that Amazon’s policeware is simply being repurposed. The Bezos bulldozer is a digital nation state, and some governance methods embrace data gathering, analytics, and predictive outputs. The idea is to be in front of trends, actions, and groups. Nothing new about this.
The write up, however, revels in the “confidential” document and places it in a zippy socio-political context. DarkCyber noted this passage:
The new tool would also track other non-union threats to the company, like crime and weather.
The operative word is “new.” In our analysis of Amazon’s policeware and intelware innovations, the “new” mischaracterizes products, services, partnerships, and features under development for more than a decade. My Amazon policeware lectures for the 2020 National Cyber Crime Conference plus some other presentations for LE and intel professionals have walked through some of the capabilities of the AWS policeware platform. (Want to know more? Write benkent2020 at yahoo dot com. Options and prices will be provided to qualified inquirers.)
The write up reports:
The new technology system — called the geoSPatial Operating Console, or SPOC — would help the company analyze and visualize at least around 40 different data sets, the memo says. Among them are many related to unions, including “Whole Foods Market Activism/Unionization Efforts,” “union grant money flow patterns,” “and “Presence of Local Union Chapters and Alt Labor Groups.” Additionally, one of the potential use cases for the tool is described in the memo as “The Union Relationship Map,” though no other details are provided.
Snappy name but the plumbing is in operation. Here’s a test question for the intrepid “real” journalists bandying the word “new” hither and yon. “What cloud service provides the back end, content processing, and other analytic features for GeoSpark Analytics?” You have one minute to write your answer in your blue book.
And where, pray tell, is the source document?
Interesting but the Amazon policeware and intelware platform is overlooked. Why? One does not know what one does not know I presume.
Stephen E Arnold, October 12, 2020
Google and Its User Privacy: Happy Hunting
October 4, 2020
DarkCyber spotted an open source intelligence tool called GHunt. By the time an open source software becomes publicly available, DarkCyber believes that hardened systems and methods are integrated into specialized policeware and intelware systems. If you want to try to learn more about a particular Google email user, for instance, you may want to take a look at GHunt. There are screenshots and basic information available on Github. Google appears to be taking steps to address some of the “features” which the GHunt software taps. Some interesting open source software becomes available and then disappears; for example, DARPA Memex tools have evidenced this type of behavior. If you want this tool, DarkCyber suggests you move along in a sprightly manner.
Stephen E Arnold, October 4, 2020
Palantir Technologies: Minor Questions Remain
October 1, 2020
DarkCyber noted “Techie Software Soldier Spy: Palantir, Big Data’s Scariest, Most Secretive Unicorn, Is Going Public. But Is Its Crystal Ball Just Smoke and Mirrors?” The write up joins the caravan of publications digging into the ins and outs of the intelware business.
There are precedents for a vendor of specialized services becoming a public company. One example is Verint, and there are others. Sometimes the lineage of an intelware company can be difficult to figure out. There are start ups in Cypress; there are partnerships in Herzliya; and there are Byzantine limited liability operations in midtown Manhattan.
What’s striking about Palantir is that the coverage has been content with the jazzy bits. DarkCyber understands the need to create buzz and capture eyeballs. The write up uses an interesting quotation from Admiral Poindexter, an interesting person who may be qualified to explain intelware:
“When I talked to Peter Thiel early on, I was impressed with the design and the ideas they had for the user interface,” Poindexter told me recently. “But I could see they didn’t have — well, as you call it, the back end, to automatically sort through the data and eliminate that tedious task for the users. And my feedback from the people who used it at the time, they were not happy with it at all. It was just much too manual.”
DarkCyber wondered:
- Why the write up did not explore the i2 Analyst’s Notebook vs.. Palantir legal matter. That activity suggested that Palantir may have had some interest in a proprietary file format and allegedly worked in interesting ways to obtain closely guarded information. A related question is, “Why would bright start up engineers resort to allegedly questionable methods to figure out a file format?” Too bad the write up ignores a legal matter which illuminates Palantir’s methods.
- Why is Palantir running into the revenue ceiling which other vendors of search and content processing systems for government entities hit? Are there too few customers? Did Autonomy, another search and content processing company, bumped into the revenue ceiling too? Is there a elephant standing in a pool of red ink in the accounting departments of some search and content processing companies?
- Why are intelware vendors offering their products and services under generous free trials programs to the known customers with allocated funds for such systems? And in parallel, the vendors are working overtime to find someone with deep pockets to buy these start ups?
- How similar are the products and services of intelware vendors? Why is innovation confined to graphics and innovation confined to recycling ideas in circulation for decades? One of the DarkCyber team observed, “Isn’t Palantir Gotham Titan the old Analyst’s Notebook with a pop up wheel on the right mouse button?” (I hire skeptical and maybe slightly cynical engineers I think.)
- Could it be that in the “real world” of fast-moving events the intelware vendors’ products don’t work all that well? Is it time for deeper analysis of comparable products and services? How does Palantir stack up against Voyager Labs’ offerings or the the LookingGlass system.
- Why doesn’t smart software do a better job of importing data? What has Datawalk figured out that eludes the Palantirians?
- Why do some Palantir Gotham installations remain idle? Is it because even the simpler interface is too quirky to use when real-time events generate pressure? Is it difficult for some licensees to allocate staff to use the system in order to become masters of the dataverse?
- Why haven’t Wall Street pushes generated more revenue? What happened to the Thomson Reuters’ deal?
- How long did it take Palantir to stand up its first version of its system after the core team decided the move forward with Gotham? (If you know the answer, write benkent2020 @ yahoo dot com. We know the answer and the winner will receive a copy of CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access. Free too. Almost like a trial of the products and services from an intelware start up.)
There are other questions the DarkCyber team considers important as well. Perhaps a “real news” outfit will dig into the intelware market, track the technologies, the inter-company tie ups, and the use cases or in some cases the dis-use cases for these products and services?
DarkCyber, however, finds the idea of Palantir’s going public interesting. Was the point of the exercise financial escape for increasingly concerned investors and grousing employees? Too many questions and too few answers still I think.
Stephen E Arnold, October 1, 2020
The Future of Twitter Revealed
September 30, 2020
Twitter is an interesting outfit. Forbes (the capitalist tool, I believe) published “Bitcoin and Blockchain Are the Future of Twitter, CEO Jack Dorsey Reveals”. Twitter is an interesting outfit; for example, it has a new chief information security officer. That’s a good idea, maybe too late for some stakeholders, but it is a step forward.
Forbes reports:
Dorsey, who… said bitcoin is “probably the best” native currency of the internet, has previously gone as far as saying bitcoin has the potential to be the world’s sole currency by 2030…. Now, speaking at the virtual Oslo Freedom Forum 2020, Dorsey has said bitcoin and its underlying decentralized blockchain technology are the future of Twitter.
Forbes quotes Twitter’s top management Zen person as saying:
“The whole spirit of bitcoin, for instance, is to provide a trusted system in a distrusted environment, which is the internet,” Dorsey said…. Earlier this month, Dorsey told Reuters bitcoin is “probably the best” native currency of the internet due to bitcoin being “consensus-driven” and “built by everyone.”
Yep, trust.
A couple of observations:
- Twitter owns a payment system. Perhaps Mr. Dorsey’s confident assertion about the future is influenced by the method of communications and the beneficiary of the digital currency cheerleading?
- Twitter licenses its data selectively to commercial enterprises developing products and services to assist law enforcement and intelligence agencies. With Bitcoin generally perceived as a lubricant for illegal transactions, what’s Twitter’s goal? (Check out the Geospark Analytics – Twitter deal for some color. Geofeedia has not been as fortunate as the virtual intelware vendor.)
- How will enhanced Bitcoin capabilities assist bad actors in money laundering and other possibly questionable activities?
DarkCyber finds Twitter fascinating. A half-time CEO, a messaging system which can spark interesting social consequences, and a peculiar way of supporting law enforcement and other groups simultaneously.
Worth monitoring the dualism.
Stephen E Arnold, September 30, 2020
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