Are we
unable to
conduct CyberWar or just
unwilling to risk the consequences.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/06/an_example_of_d.html
An
Example of Deterrence in Cyberspace
In 2016, the US was successfully deterred from attacking Russia in
cyberspace because of fears of Russian capabilities against the US.
I have two citations for this. The first is from the book
Russian
Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election
of Donald Trump, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.
Here's
the quote:
… The second is from the book
The
World as It Is, by President Obama's deputy national security
advisor Ben Rhodes.
Here's
the
New York Times writing about the book.
… When people try to claim that there's
no
such
thing as deterrence in cyberspace, this serves as a counterexample.
“We just don’t put too much effort into these obsolete
technologies...”
Landline
Phone Service, Which Still Exists, Goes Down Across the U.S.
Comcast’s Xfinity landline service has been experiencing issues
across the U.S. since this morning, with thousands of problems still
being reported this afternoon,
according
to DownDetector.com. The outage map indicates that customers
throughout the U.S. have encountered issues, with the most recent
reports coming from San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, Mountain View,
Denver, Seattle, Atlanta, Houston, New York, and Philadelphia.
… But perhaps most troubling are emergency responder lines
impacted by the massive outage. The
Epping
Police Department and Kingston Fire Department in New Hampshire
have said their phone lines were down, and while
Schuylkill
County Emergency Management in Pennsylvania and
Greater
Spokane Emergency Management in Washington said they weren’t
having trouble fielding calls, both informed locals to use their
mobile phones in the event of an emergency while the landlines were
down.
I have my students design data centers. None of them have thought
of this angle.
https://qz.com/1298583/microsoft-is-now-operating-a-data-center-under-the-sea/
The newest green-tech idea:
drown data centers at sea
In a bid to save the planet while making some money, Microsoft
just drowned one of its data centers at sea. Project Natick is now
operating at about 100 ft below the surface of the North Sea near the
UK’s Orkney islands, fully powered by renewable energy.
The logic is sound: Bringing data centers close to hubs of
computing power benefits customers, enabling smoother web surfing or
game playing by cutting down the back-and-forth between users and
servers. Microsoft says nearly half the world’s population lives
within 150 km (120 miles) of the ocean. And because oceans are
uniformly cool below a certain depth, keeping the machines under the
sea would cut down the cooling costs that make up a large chunk of
the operating budget of data centers.
The Project Natick data center is made up of 864 servers packed in
a 40 foot container that now sits about 22 km (14 miles) from the
coast. That’s a tiny fraction of some of the huge servers—covering
hundreds of thousands of square feet—that tech companies like
Microsoft operate. But it may be enough to do a pilot test, and
prove that the server could be deployed at commercial scale.
So, what is “inadequate security?”
BREAKING
NEWS: Eleventh Circuit vacates FTC order against LabMD
The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has vacated the
Federal Trade Commission’s order:
This is an enforcement action brought by the Federal
Trade Commission (“FTC” or “Commission”) against LabMD, Inc.,
alleging that LabMD’s
data- security program was inadequate and thus constituted
an “unfair act or practice” under Section 5(a) of the Federal
Trade Commission Act (the “FTC Act” or “Act”), 15 U.S.C. §
45(a).1 Following a trial before an administrative law judge
(“ALJ”), the Commission issued a cease and desist order directing
LabMD to create and implement a variety of protective measures.
LabMD petitions this Court to vacate the order, arguing that the
order is unenforceable because it does not direct LabMD to cease
committing an unfair act or practice within the meaning of Section
5(a). We agree and accordingly vacate the order.
I haven’t had time to read it yet, but this is huge news.
Here’s the opinion:
This sounds very strange to my ears. Do they mean to say they
want access to Unencrypted data? Digital requires new tools, but not
new laws.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/06/planned-laws-to-force-tech-firms-to-reveal-encrypted-data
Australia drafts laws
forcing Facebook and Google to reveal encrypted data
Technology companies such as
Facebook
and Google would be forced to give Australian security agencies
access to encrypted data under legislation to be introduced by the
Turnbull government.
But the government has refused to say how the security agencies
would access the data.
… On ABC radio on Wednesday, the cyber security minister,
Angus Taylor, said the bill would “modernise” existing laws to
give security agencies access to information transferred through
encrypted messaging apps.
[That would be the encrypted data.
Bob]
… “Those laws were developed during an analogue era decades
ago and they are now out of date. Much data and information is
transferred through messaging apps and it’s digital not analogue.
There’ve been very substantial changes in the technology and we
need to update the powers.”
Taylor has said the legislation will avoid introducing
“weaknesses” in encrypted data devices by avoiding using
“backdoor” methods of accessing data, such as a so-called “key”
to de-encrypt data.
… But Taylor hopes to avoid those roadblocks by legislating to
allow
alternate access to
data.
[I have
no idea what that would mean. Bob]
… What he is proposing though is unclear. On Wednesday he
dodged multiple questions about whether the legislation would mean
forcing companies to include surveillance codes in devices, so that
agencies could access data before it is encrypted.
… But Nigel Phair, from the Centre for Internet Safety at the
University of Canberra, said if the legislation avoided having to use
a backdoor entry to encrypted data then it was likely that it would
use a “frontdoor”, a means of accessing the information before it
was encrypted.
Is “no ads” better than a few Russian ads? Is this a “baby
with the bath water” moment? (Should all laws give enough lead
time for technology companies to comply?)
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/google-will-pause-election-ads-washington-state-unprecedented-response-new-law/
Google will pause election
ads in Washington state in unprecedented response to new law
Google says it will stop running state and local election ads in
Washington state, citing new rules that require what amounts to
real-time disclosure of detailed information about election ads in
response to public records requests.
The company has never before paused election ads in a U.S. state.
Google says it wants to comply with the law, but its systems aren’t
prepared for the rules as implemented. Starting Thursday, Google
AdWords won’t accept ads for candidates or ballot measures in the
state.
Google’s decision was announced Wednesday evening in
an
AdWords policy update. The new state rules go into effect
Thursday, less than a month after they were approved by the state
Public Disclosure Commission as part of implementing
HB
2938.
… The company did not provide a timeline for resuming
political ads in the state.
… Earlier this week, Washington state Attorney General Bob
Ferguson
filed
suit against Facebook and Google, alleging that they hadn’t
followed existing state law for disclosing campaign finance
information.
…
The
new rules approved by the Public Disclosure Commission add extra
requirements to state campaign finance law. They say digital
communication platforms must provide information including
“approximate description of the geographic locations and audiences
targeted, and total number of impressions generated by the
advertisement or communication” in response to public disclosure
requests.
The rules say the information “must be made available as of the
time when the advertisement or communication has initially received
public distribution or broadcast.”
Facial recognition, starting with the biggest crooks?
https://open.nytimes.com/how-the-new-york-times-uses-software-to-recognize-members-of-congress-29b46dd426c7
How The
New York Times Uses Software To Recognize Members of Congress
Even if you’ve covered Congress for The New
York Times for a decade, it can be hard to recognize which member
you’ve just spoken with. There are 535 members, and with special
elections every few months, members cycle in and out relatively
frequently. So when former Congressional Correspondent Jennifer
Steinhauer tweeted “
Shazam,
but for House members faces” in early 2017, The Times’s
Interactive News team jumped on the idea.
Our first thought was: Nope, it’s too hard!
Computer vision and face recognition are
legitimately difficult computer science problems. Even a
prototype would involve
training a model on the faces of every member of Congress, and
just getting the photographs to train with would be an undertaking.
But we did some Googling and found the
Amazon Rekognition API. This service has a “RecognizeCelebrity”
endpoint that happens to include every member of Congress as well as
several members of the Executive branch.
… To use the prototype, a congressional reporter could snap a
picture of a congress member, text it to a our app, and get back an
annotated version of the photograph identifying any members and
giving a confidence score.
… If you’re interested in running your own version,
the
code for Who The Hill is open sourced under the Apache 2.0
license.
Not sure this is significant, yet.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/06/did-cambridge-analytica-actually-change-facebook-users-behavior/562154/?utm_source=feed
People Are Changing the Way
They Use Social Media
Posts are getting less personal—and
privacy breaches like Cambridge Analytica could be partly to blame,
an Atlantic survey finds
I try to include a little history of technology in all of my
classes and these tools could help.
https://www.bespacific.com/5-tools-to-help-you-search-the-archived-internet/
5 Tools to Help You Search
the Archived Internet
Tech.Co
– Adam Rowe: “The archived internet deserves more
recognition. Online security has been a hot button topic in the tech
community recently, with data scandals and privacy policy updates
constantly driving the conversation. But, keeping the internet a
stable and reliable network isn’t all about data security – it’s
also about data preservation. Anything that’s low tech is
dismissed as “from the stone age,” but stone is by far the most
stable way to record information. Not only will the hard drives and
networked routers of today never last a thousand years, but plenty of
information online won’t even last the decade. As local newspapers
or long-in-the-tooth startups go under, they all leave dead links
scattered across the internet, constantly replaced with fresh links
that will themselves eventually die. Wow, sorry, didn’t mean to
get too dark there. My point is, memories that you might want to
keep are increasingly likely to exist only on the internet —
rambling G-Chat conversations with your best friend, say, or your
first WordPress blog. If you want to preserve, protect, or search
through your online footprint, read on to learn which five online
tools can best help you comb through the archived internet.
My students have been asking.
https://hbr.org/2018/06/why-microsoft-is-willing-to-pay-so-much-for-github
Why Microsoft Is Willing to
Pay So Much for GitHub
Microsoft’s
$7.5
billion acquisition of GitHub is a perfect illustration of how
value is ascribed differently in Silicon Valley than in the rest of
the world. GitHub was acquired for close to 30x annual recurring
revenue (an astronomical multiple). To put this in perspective,
Microsoft acquired LinkedIn for $26 billion in 2016 (7.2x revenue),
in what was considered one of the
richest
tech deals ever.
… In Silicon Valley there are basically two ways of creating
shareholder value: financial and strategic. Financial value is the
stuff of business school and stock markets. It’s about multiples
of revenue or earnings, sales growth, profit margins, and management
theory.
… Strategic value, on the other hand, has little to do with
any of those things and almost everything to do with how a company’s
product and/or market position help or hinder another company’s
(usually a bigger one’s) ability to be successful. Strategic value
is realized not by a business’s ability to make money
independently, but by its ability to generate (or in some cases
protect) profit for someone else.
… In other words, Microsoft is not paying $7.5 billion for
GitHub for its ability to make money (its financial value). It’s
paying for the access it gets to the legions of developers who use
GitHub’s code repository products on a daily basis (the company’s
strategic value) —
so
they can be guided into the Microsoft developer environment, where
the real money is made.
No doubt all these locations are low on the tourist wish list.
https://www.bespacific.com/investigative-report-murder-with-impunity-where-killings-go-unsolved/
Investigative report –
Murder with impunity: Where killings go unsolved
“The Post has mapped more than 50,000 homicides in major U.S.
cities over the past decade and found that the nation’s urban areas
contain pockets of impunity — places where killings routinely go
unpunished. The analysis goes beyond what is known nationally about
unsolved homicides, revealing block by block where police fail to
make arrests… The data,
which
The Post is making public, is more precise than the national
homicide data published annually by the FBI. The federal data fails
to distinguish whether a case was closed due to an arrest or other
circumstances, such as the death of the suspect, and does not have
enough detail to allow for the mapping of unsolved homicides…”
[This is outstanding work that reveals critical disparities in the
rate of unsolved homicides specific to neighborhoods throughout
America.]
Explore
The Post’s homicide database – Out of 52,179 homicides in 50
cities over the past decade, 51 percent did not result in an arrest.
For my students.
https://www.bespacific.com/5-streaming-sites-for-people-who-want-more-than-netflix/
5 Streaming Sites for
People Who Want More Than Netflix
Consumer
Reports – These alternatives will appeal to fans of British TV,
classic movies, horror, or other niche content: “When it comes to
streaming video services, Netflix clearly looms large over its
competitors, accounting for
more
than one-third of all peak-time downstream traffic, according to
research firm Sandvine. Maybe that explains why you never hear
anyone say they’re going to a friend’s house to “Hulu and
chill.” But that doesn’t mean there are no worthy streaming
alternatives. Here are five services for people with a taste for
something different. Many offer free plans and access via computers,
mobile devices, smart TVs, and streaming devices such as
Apple
TV and
Roku.
(You should also check our guide to
all
the major streaming services.)…”
Kentucky Fake Chicken? Kentucky Fried Cauliflower?
http://fortune.com/2018/06/06/kfc-fried-chicken-vegetarian/
KFC Plans to Test Out
Vegetarian Fried Chicken in the U.K.
As fast food chains scramble to provide healthier alternatives to
traditional menus known for high caloric fries and sugary sodas,
KFC
U.K. shared
its plans to add vegetarian fried chicken to the registry.
The creation of a new
meat-free,
chicken-inspired option is part of
KFC
U.K.’s mission to cut their calories per serving by 20%.
… In April, White Castle added the option to switch for a
vegan
Impossible Burger on any of their sliders. Burger King also
offers alternative options such as a Morningstar veggie burger, vegan
apple pie, and vegan French toast sticks.
At the start of the year, TGI Fridays introduced its first
plant-based burger, the Beyond Meat Cheeseburger.
If only I could convince my students that this was a fatal
disease.
http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-06-07
