Adtech uses the basic lifeblood of digital commerce—the trail of data that comes off nearly all mobile phones—to deliver valuable intelligence information. Edward Snowden’s 2013 leaks showed that, for a time, spy agencies could get data from digital advertisers by tapping fiber-optic cables or internet choke points. But in the post-Snowden world, more and more traffic like that was being encrypted; no longer could the National Security Agency pull data from advertisers by eavesdropping. So it was a revelation—especially given the public outcry over Snowden’s leaks—that agencies could just buy some of the data they needed straight from commercial entities. One technology consultant who works on projects for the US government explained it this way to me: “The advertising technology ecosystem is the largest information-gathering enterprise ever conceived by man. And it wasn’t built by the government.”
In a company of 10,000, stuff like that happens with clockwork regularity; your security team is pitted against the sum of human ingenuity. You work to lower the base rate of security lapses, but even with the best tooling and education efforts, there’s that 1% or 5% you’re bound to miss. A breach is only a matter of time; your average CISO is losing sleep over this, not over buffer overflows.
We are also pleased to announce that StopNCII.org will integrate an updated version of Microsoft's PhotoDNA technology into our platform allowing for wider implementation and potential for more industry platforms to join the initiative.
Glad to see that PhotoDNA is still around and gotten some significant upgrades to support reporting non-consensual intimate imagery in a privacy-preserving way.
Obscurity is vital to our well-being for several reasons. It gives us breathing room to go about our daily routines with little fear of being judged, sent unwanted ads, gossiped about or needlessly shamed.
Obscurity makes meaningful and intimate relationships possible, ones that offer solidarity, loyalty and love. It allows us to choose with whom we want to share different kinds of information. It protects us from having everyone know the different roles we play in the different parts of our lives. We need to be able to play one role with our co-workers while revealing other parts of ourselves with friends and family. Indeed, obscurity is one reason we feel safe bonding with others over our shared vulnerabilities, our mutual hopes, dreams and fears.
As Drs. Woodrow Hartzog and Evan Selinger write, "[O]ur failure to collectively value this idea shows where we’ve gone wrong in the debates over data and surveillance."
“When we had electromechanical systems, we used to be able to test them exhaustively,” says Nancy Leveson, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has been studying software safety for 35 years. [...] “We used to be able to think through all the things it could do, all the states it could get into.” [...]
Software is different. Just by editing the text in a file somewhere, the same hunk of silicon can become an autopilot or an inventory-control system. This flexibility is software’s miracle, and its curse. Because it can be changed cheaply, software is constantly changed; and because it’s unmoored from anything physical—a program that is a thousand times more complex than another takes up the same actual space—it tends to grow without bound. “The problem,” Leveson wrote in a book, “is that we are attempting to build systems that are beyond our ability to intellectually manage.”
The systems analysis community has a lot of lore about leverage points. Those of us who were trained by the great Jay Forrester at MIT have all absorbed one of his favorite stories. “People know intuitively where leverage points are,” he says. “Time after time I’ve done an analysis of a company, and I’ve figured out a leverage point — in inventory policy, maybe, or in the relationship between sales force and productive force, or in personnel policy. Then I’ve gone to the company and discovered that there’s already a lot of attention to that point. Everyone is trying very hard to push it IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!”
An excellent primer on stock, flow, positive and negative feedback loops, and systems thinking.
Perhaps we’ve all gotten a little hungry for meaning. Participation in organized religion is falling, especially among American millennials. In San Francisco, where I live, I’ve noticed that the concept of productivity has taken on an almost spiritual dimension. Techies here have internalized the idea — rooted in the Protestant work ethic — that work is not something you do to get what you want; the work itself is all.
One day, I asked Otis what he thought of Hobbes. “What do you believe? Is he real or is he stuffed?” In a tone that connoted my knucklehead status, my son answered, “He’s a real tiger, but for some reason grown-ups think he’s a stuffed animal. I guess they just don’t know any better.”
His explanation silenced me. I realized I’d made a grave mistake. [...] Whether Hobbes was live or stuffed was beside the point. To believe in Hobbes is to believe in the power of imagination.
A Times investigation reveals how Israel reaped diplomatic gains around the world from NSO’s Pegasus spyware — a tool America itself purchased but is now trying to ban.