augmentation

Dirty Tricks, Cyber-style

2011-02-11T10:01:00.000-08:00

ThinkProgress is reporting that the law firm of the US Chamber of Commerce (an NGO) hired several cyber-security firms to help them sabotage their political opponents:

"[A] law firm representing the US Chamber of Commerce ... is working with set of “private security” companies and lobbying firms to undermine their political opponents ... with a surreptitious sabotage campaign."
"According to e-mails ... the Chamber hired the lobbying firm Hunton and Williams [whose] attorney Richard Wyatt ... was hired by the Chamber in October of last year. To assist the Chamber, Wyatt and his associates, John Woods and Bob Quackenboss, solicited a set of private security firms — HB Gary Federal, Palantir, and Berico Technologies (collectively called Team Themis) — to develop tactics for damaging progressive groups and labor unions, in particular ThinkProgress, the labor coalition called Change to Win, the SEIU, US Chamber Watch, and StopTheChamber.com."

This sabotage campaign included feeding false information to discredit opponents, but also spying on the personal lives of opponents and their families:

"New emails reveal that the private spy company investigated the families and children of the Chamber’s political opponents. The apparent spearhead of this project was Aaron Barr, an executive at HB Gary. Barr circulated numerous emails and documents detailing information about political opponents’ children, spouses, and personal lives. One of the targets was Mike Gehrke, a former staffer with Change to Win. Among the information circulated about Gehrke was the specific “Jewish church” he attended and a link to pictures of his wife and two children ..."

Given how amazing their software is, I'm a bit bummed that Palantir was involved in this.

"Night Dragon" stalks big oil

2011-02-10T11:35:00.000-08:00

According to a new report by McAfee (pdf):

"Attackers using several locations in China have [waged] attacks against global oil, gas, and petrochemical companies, as well as individuals and executives in Kazakhstan, Taiwan, Greece, and the US to acquire proprietary and highly confidential information."

These attacks (nicknamed "Night Dragon" by McAfee analysts) include social engineering, shrink-wrapped toolkits, and a handful of IE exploits. Hackers have been able to access sensitive data, both business-related and personal.

McAfee is calling 2010 a watershed year for computer security, at which hacking evolved from dangerous nuisance (e.g., Code Red, Sasser, Conficker) to genuine threat (e.g., Stuxnet). For a long time, hacking was brushed off as vandalism and petty crime. As critical systems discover the magnitude of their vulnerability, computing security is rapidly becoming part of national security.

Internet 'kill switches'

2011-02-01T12:31:00.000-08:00

Shutting off the Egyptian Internet has (finally) drawn attention to a US Senate bill that seeks to permit the same sort of thing here. CNET has a nice summary:

In December, a Senate committee approved a bill introduced last summer and scheduled to be re-introduced soon, by senators Lieberman (I-CT) and Collins (R-ME) [with the support of at least some Democrats], which would [give American presidents] power over privately-owned computer systems during a "national cyber emergency." The latest public version includes controversial new language saying that the federal government's designation of vital Internet or other computer systems "shall not be subject to judicial review."

Say it ain't so, Joe.

Science enters the network age

2011-01-30T23:55:00.000-08:00

Writing at SEED magazine, John Wilbanks has drawn attention to the transformation currently taking place in academic publishing, namely the slow shift from paper to digital that is also gradually opening models of knowledge sharing in bold new ways.

"Publishers like Hindawi and BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science use Creative Commons copyright licenses to grant all rights to their users to make and distribute copies, to remake and remix the knowledge, reserving only the mandate for attribution. ... This is how we maximize our societal investment in science: by making sure it can be read, understood, and used by the network culture."

Imagine a world where scientific knowledge were not trapped behind proprietary walls, where anyone could access cutting-edge research, participating according to their ability. Imagine how this might accelerate the pace of innovation and change, speed discovery of errors, and expand the community of scholars.

Imagine.

The Tweet of Damocles

2011-01-30T23:29:00.000-08:00

Clearly, social media are expanding dialogue throughout the world, and have the potential to radically reduce the costs of grassroots organizing. But they can also make it easy to track the words (if not deeds) of users, especially those naive enough to believe new media can somehow transcend traditional power politics. Writing for the New York Times, Scott Shane writes of how repressive governments are using social platforms like Facebook and Twitter to build profiles of dissidents, map the networks of their friends and allies, and to sow misinformation.

"The Iranian police eagerly followed the electronic trails left by activists, which assisted them in making thousands of arrests in the crackdown that followed. The government even crowd-sourced its hunt for enemies, posting on the Web the photos of unidentified demonstrators and inviting Iranians to identify them."

Of course, the ability to track the movement of memes through networks can also be used for good. It's also likely that savvy users may always find lower-risk ways to connect. But there's a serious problem with assuming that any technology is an unqualified social good, or rather, that any technology is beyond corruption. While they may not have anticipated that the Mubarak government would completely quash the Egyptian Internet, organizers were well aware that both Facebook and Twitter could be used against them, and urged protesters to communicate by more direct means (photocopies and faxes).

The same tools that move us towards a world of ends can also be used by those who desperately want to hold the center of that world. Mind the gap.

How Egypt pulled the plug

2011-01-28T12:54:00.000-08:00

GigaOM has an interesting piece on how Egypt Switched Off the Internet.

"Plenty of nations place limitations on communications, sometimes very severe ones. But there are only a few examples of regimes shutting down communications entirely — Burma’s military leaders notably cut connectivity during the protests of 2007, and Nepal did a similar thing after the king took control of the government in 2005 as part of his battle against insurgents. Local Chinese authorities have also conducted similar, short-lived blockades."

That Egypt's Internet could be smothered so easily should be sobering for the "Internet will set us free" crowd, but that news is still emerging shows that it's still not so easy to control the external message.

Perhaps we'll ultimately see support for Keck and Sikkink's "boomerang effect," but events in Egypt (and Iran) show how the power of social and mobile media to coordinate collective action at local levels can be blunted. Moreover, it shows why protest organizers should be prepared for the sudden loss of such tools.

Egypt: 404

2011-01-27T23:55:00.000-08:00

CNET and many others are reporting that all Internet traffic in Egypt has gone offline.

I hadn't realized we would be importing the Internet kill switch. Perhaps Malcolm Gladwell and Evgeny Morozov are onto something?

Addendum: It appears that the darkness is not (yet) total.

Sedition in a box

2011-01-22T21:00:00.000-08:00

Symantec just released its Mid-Term Internet Security Threat Report, and surprise, surprise - the Wild West is getting wilder. It used to be that knocking a server offline, or stealing confidential data took programming savvy. Not anymore.

According to Symantec, the greatest threat to the Internet today are plug-and-play "Web Attack Toolkits," which enable script kiddies to roll with the big boys.

Nerdcore could rise up

2011-01-11T20:49:00.000-08:00

Estonia could get elevated - NCS is reporting that the country has formed the Computer Emergency Response Team of Estonia (CERT-E, also known as the Cyber Defense League), a militia intended to protect the country should someone try to out-do the 2007 attacks on the country:

"The league, made up of a group of Estonian programmers, computer scientists and software engineers would be the country’s main leg of defense in the event of a second cyberwar, but an all-volunteer unit may not pack enough nerdpower for confident security. Instead, Estonian officials are considering a draft among the country’s IT work force, Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo told NPR this week."

"We are thinking of introducing this conscript service, a cyber service,” Aaviksoo said. “This is an idea that we’ve been playing around [with]."

Sort of like the Global Frequency, but with uniforms.

US strategy to prevent leaks, leaked

2011-01-09T21:41:00.000-08:00

TechSpot News is reporting that MSNBC has received a memo detailing the US' government strategy to prevent leaks in a "post-Wikileaks environment."

Each initial assessment should be completed by January 28, 2011, and should include the following ...

Assess what your agency has done or plans to do to address any perceived vulnerabilities, weaknesses, or gaps on automated systems ...

Assess weakness or gaps ... and formulate plans to resolve the issues or to shift or acquire resources to address those weaknesses or gaps.

Assess your agency's plans for changes and upgrades to current classified networks, systems, applications, databases, websites, and online collaboration environments as well as for all new classified networks, systems, applications, databases, websites or online collaboration environments that are in the planning, implementation, or testing phases ...

Assess all security, counterintelligence, and information assurance policy and regulatory documents that have been established by and for your department or agency.

Censorship, Digg?

2010-08-05T13:56:00.000-07:00

Alternet has posted an article about an effort by self-identified conservatives to censor Digg rankings. For those unfamiliar with Digg, it's essentially a platform for crowd-sourced submission and ranking of websites and postings.

A year-long investigation has uncovered a rather effective campaign to "bury" new submissions contrary to the agenda of these conservative activists. These "Digg Patriots" (there are several similar groups) gave such Diggs an avalanche of negative votes (thus elevating "conservative-supporting" posts), coordinating their attacks and using multiple account profiles.

So much for the inherent democracy of the Interwebs.

Secrets from the Future

2010-07-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

Wired is reporting on public-private intelligence projects which mine relational and other data from broad swaths of the Interwebs. Nothing terribly new here, but it's interesting seeing more approaches like this emerge. Here's an overview promo from one such company, Recorded Future:

You can't hide from the future.

Senate partisan networks

2010-06-17T23:24:00.000-07:00

SNA in R

2010-06-13T11:47:00.000-07:00

Last summer, Drew Conway (NYU) gave an excellent introduction to using the igraph package for basic Social Network Analysis in R:

Gephi GEXF

2010-06-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

It appears to offer the best of all worlds (h/t to Dr. Pangloss).

PdF 2010 is NOW!

2010-06-03T09:35:00.000-07:00

If you are in NYC over the next two days (June 3-4) and have both time and interest (as well as the $500-600 registration fee), consider attending the sixth annual Personal Democracy Forum at CUNY.

PDF is the place to be if you're interested interrelations of informational technology and governance. Full schedule can be found here.

Interwebs and regime change

2010-06-02T19:16:00.000-07:00

Information Policy has an interesting report on a presentation that Evgeny Morozov (Georgetown Institute for the Study of Diplomacy) gave at Foreign Policy's Washington office:

"Authoritarian regimes have learned how to block certain computers from accessing the Web... The Internet is not the first free speech facilitator to fall short of expectations. ... Since the Cold War, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the US-funded broadcaster, has used shortwave frequencies to report news to countries that ban free press. But throughout history, oppressive regimes have countered with espionage and misinformation campaigns to discredit the broadcasts"

e-scholarship

2010-06-02T19:09:00.000-07:00

The Rise of Crowd Science

The Chronicle just posted an article on Big Data:

"Crowdsourcing is a natural solution to many of the problems that scientists are dealing with that involve massive amounts of data," says Haym Hirsh, director of the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems at the NSF. Findings have just grown too voluminous and complex for traditional methods, which consisted of storing numbers in spreadsheets to be read by one person, says Edward Lazowska, a computer scientist and director of the UW eScience Institute. So vast data-storage warehouses, accessible to many researchers, are going up in several scholarly fields to try to keep track of the wealth of information. Persuading scientists to fully embrace the age of big data, though, will require a change in academic reward structures to give new currency to papers with more authors than ever and to scientists who spend their careers crunching other peoples' numbers."

Computational humanities

... and yet another:

"Data-diggers are gunning to debunk old claims based on 'anecdotal' evidence and answer once-impossible questions about the evolution of ideas, language, and culture. ... Google has changed the landscape. Pouring hundreds of millions into digitization, the company did in a few years what Mr. Unsworth believes would have taken libraries decades: It has digitized over 12M books in over 300 languages, more than 10% of all books ever printed."
"[Yet] some worry that the lure of money and technology will increasingly push computation front and center. ... whether transferring the lab model to a discipline like literary studies really works. Trumpener is dubious. Twenty postdocs carrying out one person's vision? She fears an "academia on autopilot," generating lots of research "without necessarily sharp critical intelligences guiding every phase of it."

Citizen media and oil spills

2010-06-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

Oil Reporter is an iPod app that lets locals help with the spill recovery effort by reporting what they see on the ground.

"Users can upload photos and videos, reporting oil sighting, harmed wildlife sightings and much more.”

Biometrics in crowds

2010-05-31T13:50:00.000-07:00

Wired is reporting on Smart-Iris, a DARPA-funded device that (inventor Marc Christensen et al. claim) can zero in on individual irises in a moving crowd, regardless of angle:

"A long line of people, moving through a line, could be scanned by wall-mounted cameras and they wouldn’t even notice it was happening ... new algorithms are being developed ... to identify individuals based on segments of their iris, rather than a full frontal scan."

Seems Tom Cruise might not be quite so crazy, after all.

The Physics of Data

2010-05-31T10:28:00.000-07:00

If you have time, I recommend watching Marissa Mayer's presentation at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) last Fall. She shows how Google is connecting social data (e.g., search queries) with more tangible ("meatspace") data to create predictive models that are ... well, predictive. Also significant (especially in the light of ...) are Google's efforts to expose data in ways that are more dynamic, such as Fusion Tables and Public Data Explorer (or even within basic search results - click through for more features).

Imagine where we'll be once scholars (of all persuasions) start making their data public and using tools designed for collaborative, cumulative research. Personally, I'm imagining something like a mash-up between an online Provalis suite, Public Data Explorer, and the steadily expanding universe of online data and commentary.

Mobile phones, citizen media

2010-05-31T01:40:00.000-07:00

The Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2010 was held this May 6-7 in Santiago, Chile. MobileActive.org was there, and has an interesting write-up:

"Mobile phones have already played a significant role in advancing citizen media around the world. They were instrumental in helping capture photos and videos on the streets of Tehran during 2009 protests that followed the elections there. A video captured during that time even won a prestigious journalism award. ... at least three distinctive advantages mobile phones have over traditional multimedia capturing devices: (1) they are always in our pockets and therefore always accessible (2) when there is a data connection, they allow instant uploading and live coverage and (3) they allow reporters to capture multimedia in more situations, by being lighter to transport, and appearing more innocuous in situations like protests."

NodeXL: SNA for Excel

2010-05-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

NodeXL is an Excel template that supports network visualization. It's about time (why hasn't MS already made SNA a central feature?).

Anyway, the template offers full network/graph customization, dynamic filtering, ability to calculate basic network metrics, as well as the ability to directly import networks from email and popular social network sites.

Geodata clearing house

2010-05-29T18:25:00.000-07:00

"[G]eospatial data are critically important for disaster response, protecting the environment, and many other challenges. But much of this information is in danger of being lost due to evolving technology and other threats."

"The National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program will fund development of a CIESIN clearinghouse at Columbia's Earth Institute ... These electronic resources are essential to research, education, and sustainable development and only grow more valuable over time."

Interesting links: 05.28.10

2010-05-28T15:35:00.000-07:00

Current: A News Project

"Current shows a snapshot of what the entire internet-using population in America has been thinking for the last 24 hours, in the form of their collective search history.

Primer on searching C-SPAN's Video dbase

["The] C-SPAN Video Library has placed a "how to" brief "how to" search video tutorial online offering a basic introduction to searching this content rich database with a lot of material that's difficult if not impossible to find anywhere else."