Category Archives: IT

January 28, 2016 · 20:41

Bitches of Technology

There are multiple issues in play, first there is the continuation of the previous part, which I will address here. The second is the article the Guardian published (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/25/uk-should-be-punished-if-it-leaves-european-union-to-deter-other-exits) titled ‘UK should be punished if it leaves EU to deter other exits, say former ministers‘.

My first response in regards to this would be “are you bitches out of your mind?” which sounds highly emotional and it is. You see, Brexit (and the possible upcoming Frexit) is a direct result of the people in charge of REFUSING to take action when they could, in addition, they decided to hide behind ‘Status Quo’ when they should have acted. In final addition, several acts of change have been pushed forward again for the good of big business, which makes me question their intent.

To illustrate this with evidence (which is always important), in my article ‘Dress rehearsal (part 1)‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/07/01/dress-rehearsal-part-1/), which I published on July 1^st 2015, I included the PDF at the end of the blog too ‘Withdrawal and expulsion from the EU and EMU some reflections‘. On page 33 we get “it is likely that some Member States would object to the introduction of a right of expulsion in the treaties, coupled with an amendment of Article 48 TEU to make that possible, since this would expose them to the risk of being forced out at some future date. Moreover, apart from it being politically almost inconceivable, forcing a Member State out of the EU or EMU would inevitably give rise to tremendous legal complexities. This, perhaps, explains why expulsion has not been, and may never be, provided for in the treaties“, as the members in charge of that piece of paper were already too deep in the mess on non-accountability, they actually set themselves up for a long fall, one the Greece instigated and even now, reflecting back on all the warnings I gave from 2013 onwards, none would have been considered. Now again in this paper we get on page 11 the text “The silence of Community primary law on the existence or otherwise of a legal right of withdrawal was, in any event, inconclusive, lending itself to two fundamentally opposed interpretations. One is that a right of unilateral withdrawal existed even in the absence of any explicit reference to it in the treaties, since sovereign States were, in any case, free to exercise their sovereign right to withdraw from their international commitments“, the text refers to P. Doehring and P. Hill where there seemed to be the case of favouring the theory that it reflects the hope of the drafters of dissuading Member States from withdrawing. That was nice in those days, but the interested parties of today have had enough of the utter irresponsible acts of other so called world leaders. In addition there is the expression ‘Sovereign power’, coming from ‘Sovereign States’ which has been defined as ‘power not subject to limitation by higher or coordinate power held over some territory’ this comes from N. MacCormick’s ‘Questioning Sovereignty‘.

So even after we saw the useless and toothless statements from some in the past regarding “throwing Greece out of the Euro and the EEC“, we see an even more toothless statement from several former ministers at this junction regarding the punishment for those leaving the Euro/EEC. It is given additional voice in the quote “We should not encourage other populist forces campaigning on exit such as National Front in France or Podemos in Spain. This is a very important consideration. This is in the interests of Europe that we do not encourage other EU countries to leave. The common interest of remaining members is to deter other exits. This should have an impact on the terms Britain gets”, words spoken by the former Polish deputy prime minister Leszek Balcerowicz. He is probably realising that his goose is cooked soon after Brexit and Frexit. Even though he looks ‘good’ on paper, 53% debt of GDP still comes to 236 billion dollars, in a nation with 38 million people. They are all panicking now, because the British referendum is not going good (read: the way they want it to go). If only someone had the balls to strongly intervene with Greece, and in better terms clean up legislation a long time ago, this mess would have been speculative at best. Now we see the texts that the writers want us to focus on, but in all this, in that same air, we see the ignored facts. Facts, that (as I see them), Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor is not eager to inform his readers on.

The little part in all this is something that was mentioned twice, including the photo caption. You see, this is an exercise to debunk issues by the Open Europe Think-tank. You might notice some ‘fluffy’ facts, yet the truth is, is that these people are speaking whilst at their backs (read: they are the political shield) for players like Jardine Matheson Holdings (61 billion plus) and British Petroleum (358 billion plus), with a lot more then these two, we see that Open Europe is a shield for the bigger players, all behind a fluffy website (at http://openeurope.org.uk/). These groups are very dependent on keeping the EEC as is, the Status Quo to be, but the people all over Europe have had enough of this non-accountability from both politicians and large corporations. That is exactly why Le Pen and Farage are a worry to them. Even now we see (at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/25/northern-ireland-irish-republic-eu-referendum-enda-kenny) the first mentions that a referendum is not needed until the end of 2017. That stalling is exactly what Farage is hoping for, showing more vigour in this fight! We see that Reuters is giving us “To loud applause, Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party, told a Grassroots Out campaign event that Europe’s policy of taking in migrants with few checks had endangered the lives of those living in the 28-member bloc“, with an additional “Farage was joined on the stage by Britain’s former defence secretary Liam Fox from Cameron’s ruling Conservative party who is also campaigning for an exit“, which is now a growing issue.

Now I need to get back to the previous article, even though this time it is not about the man or the victim, this is about data and data systems. you see, certain amendments were to be made in Serious Crime Bill (at the http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-06/06/cybercrime-bill-life-sentence), Wired informed us regarding “there is no existing offence of owning manuals that offer advice on how to groom or abuse children sexually“, which might not help Breck Bednar and family any regarding the circumstances. In addition, the Serious Crime Act would in this case apply AFTER the damage is done, so no matter how many improvements, Breck Bednar ends up remaining terminally dead no matter what.

When we look at the Serious Crime Act of 2015, we see at section 3 we see ‘Unauthorised acts causing, or creating risk of, serious damage‘, but this is AFTER the fact and even then, many of the facilitating acts will remain unanswered. In my previous blog I got some comments on ‘the Nigerian prince‘ issue. They were fair enough, but in some of these parts we have two issues. We can go with the part that Breck Bednar got himself killed by not listening to his mother. Which to some extent makes sense, yet in the same light, we see that levels of facilitation remain unanswered in many ways.

Consider the following

The administrator of a server service gets to intentionally misrepresent himself or herself. We have two issues, one, is that we already have issues of misrepresentation. The issue given is “He claimed to be a 17-year-old computer engineer running a multimillion pound company“, the fact that this misrepresentation comes with “he was invited into an online gaming group – a ‘virtual clubhouse’“, in the foundation there is no initial cause of imminent danger, but the danger could have been avoided in a few ways.
What if such servers need to be openly registered and linked to a registered corporation or firm, which now gives us the issue that Lewis Daynes would have been better known, moreover, the police would have seen more red flags possibly intervening before Breck Bednar entered a state of being permanently dead. I will go one step further, what if, not unlike ‘Raising the bar’ in IP law (2013), we see, contemplate and try to adjust the validity and the accountability of the facilitator. Now we get that change!

You see, Lewis Daynes would have to answer several questions, logs would have been available for the police to investigate. That is the one step too many sides do not want to consider, because accountability in too many cases seem to deflate maximised profits, yet in all this, is that a valid train of thought for any government to consider?

Consider that on February 17, 2014 Breck Bednar ended up dead, those facts had been in court for a while (he was convicted in January 2015), yet knowing that this issue was already playing we see (at https://www.nspcc.org.uk/fighting-for-childhood/news-opinion/flaw-law-online-grooming-legislation/). The headline ‘PM announces new online grooming offence‘ sounds nice, and there is forward movement, yet there is a massive gap in the prevention of grooming, which is not even correct in this case, when we consider the law. Most laws would have been able to use the path of facilitator, most social media will still be able to hold onto the defence of ‘innocent disseminator‘, yet, the action of Lewis Daynes do not allow for that. His continued interactions stop him from that path giving us an option to grant an additional level of protection to future victims, whilst not hindering business and profit as a whole, because the bulk of all social media is founded on interactions by users and facilitation by the system. Even in the most precise case of scripting, it is not towards ONE individual, it would be towards a spearheaded group of thousands. Breck Bednar would have been in an automated introduction amongst thousands and in this case there is safety in numbers, because the actions of Lewis Daynes would have raised many more flags, enough from barring him from a system he did not control and in his own system he is not the facilitator. It is the lack of many organisations (governments, corporations and legal parties) to dig into the option of setting safety parameters regarding ‘facilitation’.

As seen, there needs to be an additional circle of protection, which addresses the dangers of the ability for grooming. This is a hard issue to address and in light of any Brexit it could become a lot harder, if any law has to be addressed, than in light of all the changes the next 10 years will bring, a massive change to digital devices, for example, the new Huawei P9 will come (read: is rumoured to come) with 4GB RAM, 64GB ROM, 8MP front camera and 16MP back camera, and installed Android 6.0. It comes with a 64-bit processor that outperforms plenty of laptops.

Now we get back to part one, because the two are linked in cyberspace.

You see, the chance of Brexit which was 39% in November 2015 is now surpassing 48%, this means that there are a few issues coming forward, apart from the growing danger that UKIP seems to be. You see, this is not just a Nigel Farage thing. There is a rather massive jurisprudential lag in prosecuting economic crimes, especially economic cyber-crimes.

Some of the information can be found (at http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/news/british-crime-survey-reveals-extent-of-fraud-and-cyber-crime-in-sngland-and-wales-oct15). The article ‘British Crime Survey reveals extent of fraud and cyber crime in England and Wales‘ gives us “the cost of fraud to the UK economy estimated at £30 billion more needs to be done and more resources are needed to assist law enforcement to help victims of crime and prevent further victimisation“, which sounds nice in theory, but the foundation needed is stronger legislation. Yet in all this, there is an issue with the article. The quote “This is new crime in our society and it brings new challenges for policing in prosecuting offenders and protecting victims. Notwithstanding the cuts to police budgets we must find ways of responding to the needs of victims of fraud. Alongside this policing response the UK needs to begin a prevention revolution to educate the public on how to stop hackers and fraudsters from taking our money“, which focusses on the money, just on the money, in all this there are other venues where there is an issue (perhaps the name Breck Bednar sounds familiar).

The issue is to deal with the facilitators without strangling true entrepreneurial options, which is what has been lacking both within the Commonwealth and outside of it. You see, the danger to the many sides of life through technology, including the children is growing on a near exponential level. First of all, the main issue is IPv6, it was essential to conceive this new technology for the mere reason that its predecessor has actually run out of options. With a mobile growth that seems to double on an annual base, the new phones won’t just have IPv6 (as the mobile industry started to adopt it since around 2009), the growth of IPv6 has doubled in the last 12 months. At http://betanews.com/2016/01/05/ipv6-adoption-nearly-doubles-in-a-year/ we see that usage went from just below 6% to well over 10%, falling just short of 84%, here I mean that over 10% of all traffic to websites is now IPv6. For the most, this cannot be clearly monitored, which means that with the next mobile iteration, we will see a growth unlike we have seen before. You see, Statista (at http://www.statista.com/statistics/263441/global-smartphone-shipments-forecast/) forecasts a sale of 1.4 billion phones in 2016. This would include the upcoming Huawei P9, the Apple iPhone 7, Google Nexus 6, HTC One M10, the Samsung Galaxy S7 and a few more. These phones will ship with up to 4GB RAM (in two cases 6GB is rumoured), several of them with 64GB internal storage.

This is a nightmare to the intelligence community, as well as the CPS and the DPP, yet I feel that for parents the worry should be bigger, a lot bigger. As social media gets more and more derived solutions, niche groups will be a consequence, which means that children like Breck Bednar could end up being an even larger target, because there is too much evidence at present that monitoring those groups will become technologically near impossible. IPv6 Now (at http://www.ipv6now.com.au/primers/IPv6SecurityIssues.php) shows us a few issues. The first quote is “With 18 billion billion addresses in a /64 subnet, sequential scanning is pointless. It would take 500,000 years to scan a single /64 at a million probes per second“, I will immediately admit that I left a little part out of it, so there are options, yet let’s see my reasoning.

That part is seen in the quote “In IPv4, multiple addresses are always possible, but rare. But in IPv6 they are very common, arising from SLAAC, temporary DHCPv6, link-local addresses, multiple prefixes, overlapping lifetimes, as well as IPv4 addresses. Admins must be aware of all possible interface addresses and the capacity of network devices to create their own addresses“, this implies that the admin is all on the up and up, but when we consider those with other agenda’s like Lewis Daynes and we see apps appearing that allow for a peer-2-peer approach, a system that piggybacks messages. At some point someone will miss out on checking, especially when they are distributed in other ways. Financial opportunists, organised crimes, schoolkids and monsters in the making a system that cannot be monitored in any way because governments ended up being too lax in a world where those in power requiring ‘space’ and not realising who else they were enabling, or perhaps they did know but did not care.

Now we are beyond running out of time, because of the Statista is even close to correct, the world could have an IPv6 based mobile server park (as well as a data cloud) that ends up being unmonitored. Now, I am not evangelising not allowing for these iterations, yet the need to adjust legislation that additional options exist to hold certain groups to account becomes an increasing essential need.

There is one final side that IPv6 Now gives us. The quote is part of auto configuration (which is too often way more dodgy than I care for) gives us “DHCPv6 (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) allows a server to supply addresses to hosts. DHCP in IPv4 needed external support, but in IPv6 it requires nothing but a working router for the connected host to be immediately reachable“, if we consider that any mobile phone is a router, how reachable will this modern host be and more important, what data could be gotten access to, especially in an unmonitored way?

At this point, we seem to become nothing less than the bitches of technology. I could state that there is a group that will try to align certain paths, but it is already too late for that. People, their lives and whatever they own is streamed on a near 24:7 foundation and in all this there remains a technological lack in the places that cannot afford not to have it. When we see the news on the ‘evolving’ systems fighting fraud and other creative (and sometimes graphical) activities, we see that the gap of our safety and our allowance for accepted acts is widening to the extent that everyone is an evolving target without any clear means of staying safe. There is support for that statement. It comes from the Czech Ministry of Education (at http://services.geant.net/cbp/Knowledge_Base/Network_Monitoring/Documents/gn3-na3-t4-cbpd132.pdf), now we will accept that this is a 2011 document, yet, this does not diminish the quote “IPv6 configured hosts on an IPv4 network can bypass defined security policy or hide their identity using temporary IPv6 addresses“, consider that in conjunction that many users (young and old) tend to use free Wi-Fi locations whenever possible, making monitoring an even lesser option. Now consider those places and the traffic that they could (unintentionally) offer through ‘temporary IPv6 addresses‘, so what safety is there?

Clearly we have become the bitch of technology and the law is falling behind more and more. The EEC has done too little and Brexit could go either way in protecting the people, but the danger here must be acknowledged, if ‘protection’ becomes too draconian it would not become protective and only drive away commerce, a mere lose-lose situation for everyone involved.

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Tagged as Apple iPhone 7, BBC, betanews.com, Breck Bednar, Brexit, British Petroleum, Conservative party, Conservatives, Czech Ministry of Education, David Cameron, France, Frexit, Google Nexus 6, HTC One M10, Huawei P9, IPv6 Now, Jardine Matheson Holdings, Leszek Balcerowicz, Lewis Daynes, Liam Fox, MacCormick, Marine Le Pen, National Front, Nigel Farage, P. Doehring, P. Hill, Pablo Iglesias, Patrick Wintour, Podemos, Poland, Samsung Galaxy S7, Spain, Statista, the Guardian, UKIP, Wired

January 24, 2016 · 22:05

Persecuting the prosecutors

Sometimes things get to me. We all have those moments, we all consider the things that touch us in different ways. For me, I have been a gamer since the beginning of gaming. This world started for me in 1983 with the Vic-20 and was followed up with the CBM-64 a year later. I never stopped gaming, so when I got hit with the article ‘I couldn’t save my child from being killed by an online predator‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/breck-bednar-murder-online-grooming-gaming-lorin-lafave), I kind of lost it. This gaming world is a world I share, virtually and in reality. I talk to my co-workers on the new games, the challenges some games give and how we feel about some games. A few friends are all about GTA, some share my passion for Fallout, Diablo 3 and Minecraft. Whilst some games we all play by ourselves, because we cannot be into every game that is a mere reality. We hunt down the mutants, kill them with our rifles (all by ourselves), and when we get that legendary monster we get to talk about it the next day. This is a world of fun, joy and challenges. We do not ignore the real life, we interact with others too, which is not always about games. So, I was slightly dismayed when Olivia Wilde chose Jason Sudeikis over me (it must have been the beard). Life goes on, so as you see, we have our dreams, our fun, our joy, our fantasies and we go out of our way to get as much joy into our lives without bringing harm. That is as I see it a way of life that the bulk of us gamers have.

Some are a lot more competitive and even relenting on gaming as they kill virtually to be the best, some of them have a too vivid drive to be winners and dissing the losers or at times being the wannabe’s that strike out to winners. In that world we have all kinds, but actual harm, those cases are rare to say the least. So as I read the article, a form of anger flushed over me. This is for the mere reason that, for a large part of my life, I have been driven by logic and common sense (apart from that Olivia Wilde moment). From what I have read, there are several things wrong here. Not towards one person, but towards a few, including the victim himself.

This is the first quote that actually came after the second one “He claimed to be a 17-year-old computer engineer running a multimillion pound company. Sometimes he was in New York, working for the US government. Other times, he was in Dubai, or off to Syria” and “the ringmaster, whose server they played on. While the other members were known to Breck or his friends, Lewis Daynes was not someone they knew in real life“.

These two quotes should have been a red flag to all parties. We cannot blame a 14 year old, but this should have been the red flag to upset the parents. You see, I will never be a multi-millionaire (actually if Larry Page listens to an option I came up with, I could be). What is the issue is that gaming comes at a price, for the most the really wealthy ones work too much to get time to be on gaming servers. In addition, his location should have been all over the place, any Cyber squad could have seen that, it would have been a real orange flag to the victim that not all was on the up and up, the first thread on the loom of disaster would have been dismantled.

The quote “Lewis says I don’t need to finish school as he can get me a Microsoft apprenticeship when I turn 16” is the second flag. It should have been the alert on several levels. The man was either some ‘multi-millionaire‘ working for Microsoft, or again this was a ruse. The additional “I should be allowed to game as long as I want“, should have alerted parents and police. You see, in common Law even at 16 Breck Bednar would have remained a minor. So, why is a stranger deciding on what someone else’s child does?

The final quote on that topic is “I’d be telling Breck to get offline and he’d literally have Dayne’s voice in his earphones telling him not to listen. I could see Breck’s face, torn between me and his cool mentor who had the whole world going for him”, which now gets us a stranger involving themselves in the life of a minor.

The police as well as the cyber groups should have been all over this, in addition, did anyone contact the FBI here (even though after the facts it seemed an irrelevant act)? You see, the events not yet known could have been averted before zero hour, as Lewis Daynes was from Grays, Essex. This could have diffused a lot of issues. His stories out in the open, for Breck Bednar and all his friends to know what kind of a person Lewis Daynes was before he could strike. Now we can blame the police, and I am doing that partially. Yet in all this, we must also expect that there is a limit to the resources the police has, limitations in time and hardware. Not all is a given.

But there is an issue when we go solely from the article we see in the guardian. You see the quote “I told the call handler what I’d heard, what I feared. She obviously didn’t understand online grooming” has more than one side.

The known elements here are that Breck Bednar was a minor and that there was a clear indication that Breck Bednar was unlikely to be the only minor. We have the following parts, when we look from the other side: ‘Cyberstalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk an individual. It may include monitoring, identity theft, threats, or gathering information that may be used to threaten or harass‘, I edited the non-relevant parts out of here. So we see that Lewis Daynes was monitoring, we have identity theft, we can make that case as he assumed to be a person, moreover an industrial who did not exist. This could be seen as a danger to the life and wellbeing of minors.

The elements here are now another matter. You see, in the eyes of the court there is no established guilt, or even crime at this point, yet exposing the elements would have diminished the threat Lewis Daynes was and would most certainly have protected at least one child, leaving us with the reality that Breck Bednar could have been alive today. In this we might consider that the police is to be blamed to some extent, but in equal measure, they did look for the elements, the issue here is the fact that does also count. When we see the quote “Daynes later pleaded guilty to murder with sexual and sadistic motivation“, we are confronted with a combination that is really rare, and with the elements as found, or better stated those that were missing, mainly that the police didn’t find a single image or text about bodies or sex. Certain flags were never raised, but as stated, from what we can see, enough flags should have been raised to take this serious, to give clear indication to Lewis Daynes that he was under open investigation, perhaps enough for him to back off. Enough to diffuse the situation.

Here is my part that is now also an issue. This took me mere minutes, which also beckons on what more precisely happened. You see the police is not lacking or stupid, I would go even further that the involved people might be burdened with guilt. So why is it so clear to me? Well, first of all, to see this in the article is simple, a mere exercise of logic. The true elements over time are a lot less clear, but in all this, the main elements were gamers, gaming platforms and servers, they have time lines and logs. Any level of logs missing would have been another red flag, any other interactions would create even more red flags. So why were these elements missed? Where did the police system fail? In my view there was a clear failure here. Police 101 had failed in a few ways, but it is uncertain whether the failure should allow any level of blame. You see, there is an element that is in the article, but cannot clearly be weighted. it is “Now 18, he was unemployed, living alone in an Essex flat where he bought server space and used it to game with teenage boys“, we are looking at a 2012 system, so what kind of server space? Did he have his own server? Or did he lease hardware? Unemployed and cash for that? If it was a solitary server, we see another element, because it would not be in an enterprise environment, showing even more flags, if it was a personal server, the cyber division had a place to look at, who had Lewis Daynes been interacting with? Even more parents would have been alerted, other gamers would have been informed that he was a jobless no one, and not the 7 figure income person dangling IT jobs from Syria, New York or Dubai.

All elements, all flags and more issues. All out in the open could have prevented the fatal consequence to Breck Bednar, but that is me talking after the events. As stated, this one article is not a proper setting for it. Yet the BBC article gave a few more issues to consider. The fact “Five other counts against Daynes, including the rape of another boy, were not pursued as there was not a realistic prospect of a conviction, the prosecution said“, so perhaps the fact that the element of rape might have been an additional flag that there was a real risk of danger to Breck Bednar. Yet, the BBC is unclear as per when those criminal elements would have been known. Yet there is additional evidence. If there had been a clear investigation the evidence “encrypted electronic equipment” as stated by the BBC could have given additional issues, because they might have been there validly in an organisational situation, in the case of an unemployed 18 year old, such elements could give rise to flags of a criminal aspect, a criminal aspect that had children in the mix.

Even though there have been investigations and even though a misconduct notice was brought, it took almost no time to find enough flags to raise concerns on several levels. This gives concerns to what else is getting missed. Not because I am so bright (I am that), or that the police is that stupid (they really are not), but the need for an evolving infrastructure. If you think that issues are missed now, what do you think will happen when the transition to IPv6 really gets underway? With handheld and mobile devices all stronger than the average data server in 2007, what was reserved to data servers and corporations, is already in the hands of individuals, most of them having no clue what they are holding onto and what these systems are capable of. How can any police force sustain its workload if it is not reshaped into an evolving infrastructure that is able to adjust to other criminal elements? This level of evolution is currently not happening, moreover, it is not happening in many nations. Which is a worry when we consider the case of Lewis Daynes, you see, in this age of economy, the danger of extreme behaviour in a time when people have no jobs, no outlooks and no prospects, these souls are more likely to become extreme, that is a given, yet the extent to it happening is not known, it cannot be predicted and it requires for a better level of investigation. If we are to lower the dangers that kids like Breck Bednar face, we have no other choice but to evolve and change the way we investigate these issues. There has been a clear call for a long time that legislation requires adaption to all kinds of cyber-crimes and cyber based crimes. This for the mere reason that the jump to IPv6 allows a jump from the 4.3 billion addresses that IPv4 gave, to the amount that every person on the planet would have a unique address for every device it owns. More important, IPv6 will allow for every person on the planet to have 1,000 devices, each with their own address and even after that less than 0.1% of all available IPv6 addresses would have been used. We are pushed into an evolution because IP addresses are no longer available. Our devices, each 1,000 times more powerful than the computer that got Apollo 11 to the moon, the computers required to monitor the satellites is now no more than an app and nearly every mobile phone from the previous generation would be able to run it. We moved technology that far ahead. We are now moving to the situation where we see that almost 4 Exabyte a day is transmitted. All that data, once we are in IPv6, all that data can be identified per person and the amount of data will increase almost exponentially. When we get there, how impossible will it become to find extreme elements like Lewis Daynes? That is just the extremes, we haven’t even considered what organised crime could be up to. A situation that brings more questions than answers. Some answers are being sought by Lorin LaFave and I wonder if enough parties are asking the right questions, because some questions come with the element of costs, and they will grow, yet the costs will already be high to begin with. A dimension many politicians are not ready for because the coffers are empty and budgets constraints will limit the steps that need to be made, many are aware of it and nearly no one are voicing those elements.

There is a reality to that, but the reality we need to address is the nightmare Lorin LaFave is forced to face and she is not the only mother who should be worried.

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Tagged as BBC, Breck Bednar, CBM-64, Diablo 3, Essex, Fallout, FBI, Grays, IPv4, IPv6, Jason Sudeikis, Larry Page, Lewis Daynes, Lorin LaFave, Minecraft, Olivia Wilde, police line 101, the Guardian, VIC-20

January 19, 2016 · 21:54

Calling a centre

It seems that BT is one of the first one making a step back, a step towards the old times. They are moving away from those bulk cheap Indian call centres. I wonder if they are just the first. The title ‘BT hires 1,000 UK staff after complaints over Indian call centres‘ is not wrong, but I feel it is misleading. The article (at http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/bt-hires-1000-uk-staff-after-complaints-indian-call-centres),

I have had my share of experience with Indian call centres. The quote “The recruitment drive follows reports from customers that they preferred speaking to people in UK call centres rather than Indian staff based in Bangalore and Delhi. BT said the new jobs would be “frontline roles” in customer care“. You see, there are many places where the solution might to some degree work, yet the UK is different in many ways. They excel in dialects and expressions, so when an Indian call centre has an employee that would speak ‘English’, the idea that all versions of English are the same, they will come back from a cold turkey dinner with an added icy cold shower.

The fact that 80% of the call must be repeated because the friendly voice on the other side did not understand it is at the core of what is wrong, and it is one of two massive issues. In all fairness, none are actually the fault of the friendly voice on the phone, they are the core of the issue the flaw of the boss of his/her boss, likely even one level higher. Talking to someone in England in BBC English works perfect for the person on the non-Indian side of the phone conversation, the person responding is for the most ignorant of the BBC English condition and before the Indian call centre operator realises it.

So when the call starts and that person hears “I needed a bullseye before going off to Bedfordshire, now the fast sausage and mash machine has gone bollocks and ate me card!”

How long until the call centre operator gets a clue that the man is trying to get $50 from the ATM and it swallowed his bank card? It could take 10 minutes just to get that sentence translated. I know it is an exaggeration, but consider how inaudible some dialects are especially from people in places like Hounslow or Cardiff. Now most UK people have a small problem comprehending people from there, so how will someone in India have a clue? These examples are a little out there, yet considering the vast wealth of expressions and dialects, the issue remains and for BT and some banks, the Indian call centres are not a solution, they never were and I personally talked to people in the late 90’s where that prediction was clearly given, yet it was all about cutting costs and getting a solution where people could live with a degradation from 100% service to 80% service, not just in the UK, this issue is nearly global.

The second issue is even more of a problem, again, the kind Indian voice should not be blamed, for the simple reason that this was all management. To get a certain path, people were ‘taught’ scripts and clear paths of choices. Almost like the automated system when you call places like Telstra, Optus, Vodafone (and Vodafail too) and many others. The system that takes you from choice to choice, a path with 1-5 choices, the call centre person got a similar path, and for 70% it works, for 70% of the issues, that they are receiving a call for, that gets resolved. Yet the other 30% are out of luck. The system is unrelenting and the call centre was not allowed to deviate. Having have worked as a Technical Account Manager in the service field, I saw and have been through many iterations where the customer has that 1% flaw, a dozen a day, data fields can be a relentless one and as more systems interact, more flaws creep into the connectivity. Now add the language to the procedural part and yes, now 1 in 3 would have an issue and the call centre would see new escalations on how one would infect another and soon the system was unworkable, the call centre person never had a clue on how things went from bad to worse and the worst part is that this is not some average count, in this system, the issues stack, so we get issue on issue with an ever increasing population who go from ‘tolerating’ to ‘extremely oppositional’.

A flawed system that came into play from the need of cost suppression. A sales driven industry that would never properly value the power of quality service, interesting is that it took this long to realise it. or is the issue not really costs, but the need for having home shaped jobs, more and more are needed in a current economy where local jobs are essentially more important.

In all this, we now need to consider the following: “But while BT performed badly overall, data on how quickly telecoms firms resolved complaints undermine reports that customers find it hard to communicate with Indian call centre staff“. Here we see two parts, the first one is ‘how quickly telecoms firms resolved complaints‘, there was not a technology part, for the most the issue was communication, clear communication both ways, when you consider that the UK population side does not speak BBC English (apart from perhaps those in the BBC building, and those in that large London donut), so as far as I can tell, most issues could be easily resolved though ‘proper’ English and the actual issue when identified would be resolved almost immediately. The part ‘hard to communicate with Indian call centre staff‘ gives the other part from the resolution, but overall there is another question, how do the numbers hold up when every case from beginning to end is checked on timeframes and quality? The given statement might not hold up, for the simple reason that the operational system is still an issue that path will not be the greatest issue when it is all in the UK, but overall there is an operational side that is not addressed. What operational call centre solutions will become part of the BT frame? Because the data that follows will need to be monitored and even as places are ‘preparing’ for the new solution, the question that follows is ‘are the right metrics being considered?‘ When we take that into consideration, we would need to see who will be looking at those metrics. A sales person will look at different metrics than a solution, service or consultancy manager, even though the consultancy manager is about sales, it will be about the satisfaction of the sold solution, so there will be a much stronger overlap.

The question now becomes, what will be the next hurdles for BT?

The infrastructure and the technology is one, the IT and the call centre system will require different solutions today than most solutions offered a decade ago, are those solutions up to speed to remain scalable, evolutionary and easily deployable? You see, the Indians who developed those solutions have created a decade of infrastructure expertise, that knowledge is partially lost to the UK solution industry.

the final quote to consider is “It said staff had recently agreed to more flexible working hours, to make sure calls could be answered from the UK at the weekend and in the evenings. “This demonstrates the commitment from everyone at BT to work together to improve customer service and to make things easy for our customers,” said Barr“, part of this has always existed, many places, including in the late 90’s required solutions to be working for a longer time. In that part there are two solutions, one is the variable times, which are at the current core of the solutions, in some cases (possibly not in the case of BT) is to have a time zone coverage, where large corporations have coverage in Europe, the US and Australia, creating a near perfect 24 hour coverage. When one call centre shuts down, the other one starts, or has been operating a few hours, meaning that any issue not dealt with in call centre one, the one to the east will pick up those issues as well as the ones they receive until they shot down, this moves forwards and in that solution a global service system comes to play, that level of service is now more and more required, because saving money was only an option where sales is king, in a system where sales is no longer staying up to speed, services needs to create a pillow for new sales and new steps to higher revenue.

That time is now returning, or perhaps better stated, the core of business needs to return to their home fields. In a state where mobiles rule, where Telco’s can be started from a living room with the mere need to have access to bandwidth to sell on, the home field advantage relies on service and interactive response, that step is now the place for the larger home players to get back their consumer base and from that step, reclaim the foundation of income to return to those large players. The sharks are returning and they are getting rid of the pilot fish that have been feeding themselves on too much food, the shark has been hungry for too long.

In that example, we all understand that in the healthy environment the shark will need, allow and even require the pilot fish. Yet as its food supply has been reduced to a mere fraction of what it was, the shark needs to evolve into being better and more efficient in devouring the food it gets, as there is less. So it sucks to be the pilot fish, but for too long every shark had not one but 5-10 pilot fish around its teeth, that part can no longer continue, whether those 5-10 were ‘validly’ there. In the end, cutting costs for those banks might have been a jump that is a lot more expensive than they bargained for, which will be at the centre of the numbers that the new call centre solutions would be trying to show in the pursuit of growing their grades, qualities and key result areas. So where is the flaw in my last statement?

You see, past the shark we get the issue that it was about cheap that was not, which is not completely correct, it is the change towards the new location that is the new cost, not the lack of old profits. We can argue that the not predicting that change is short sighted, but is that the flaw of the past, or our obsessive need to lay blame in the now?

It seems to me that BT is only the first in many, for those who have the quality and the knowledge, this will be an evolving field of need. Personally I see that this could be a potential job bringer to places like Scotland and Wales. When this evolves into a separate global call centre with a global coverage, those who have it will come to a decent growing field, a field of need where for the last few years there was none.

You see, there is another side in this, in the last few weeks there have been reports from places like Digital India we see titles like ‘Digital India will take off on the strength of call centres in small towns‘ (at http://indianexpress.com/article/business/business-others/digital-india-will-take-off-on-the-strength-of-call-centres-in-small-towns-ravi-shankar-prasad/) which makes perfect sense for their local market, a local market that has been evolving for some time now. Now consider the quote “There is enough data work available in the country (to be handled by these centres)”, which remains a fair call, yet the article is absent of international parts, which is a little odd, considering that this is about Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Communications and Information Technology. Yet, in that same line of thinking we now get lines like ‘Serco on the road to recovery with £250m sale of Indian call centre business‘, Serco seems to be on a road, leaving that outsourcing solution to Blackstone.

The issue is a little hard to set, as Serco has had its fingers in so many pies, many failing to a larger extent, so that issue on Call centres is not easily settled here, but consider the dive they took by ridding themselves of it at this time and at the massive discount it was sold at, it starts to form a speculated pattern. You see, the fact that Indian call centres are all growing in their local market, and ‘speculated’ must remain the operative word here, because the needs of one Telco, does not give way to an early summer feeling in the employment market. For that we need to take one additional look to the BBC article (at http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31762595), called ‘The country training people to leave‘, the quote there is ““British companies love us because our English is not accented. The brightest graduates from our universities fight to get a job here. We only take the smartest kids. And after we’ve finished training them they even get your British sarcasm,” says Tubbs“, which is actually at the heart of the matter for one of the Indian issues, yet the part that is not addressed is that India had grown a strong infrastructure. That part was shown in the NY Times a year earlier, “The 2.2 million vehicles a day that grind away on Manila’s crumbling road system cost the country 876 billion pesos a year, or more than $20 billion, in lost productivity and wasted energy, according to a recent study by the Japan International Cooperation Agency. That is a serious drain on an economy of about $250 billion“, now add to that “Manila is plagued by power failures, chronic water shortages and an antiquated telecommunications system“, I am taking the airport out of that equation, which remains an issue too. The bottleneck was not addressing the growing options that required a massive overhaul, now it is too late, the power from Manilla in language was shown, making the move back to the UK an easy step. Consider the earlier BBC article, which gave “the government teaches thousands of people the skills they need to get jobs abroad“, we now have a rolling economy moving back to the UK, with additional options for workers who could be relocated to the UK should the call centres run dry on willing staff, even more optional is getting a hold of all that call centre staff, should the UK market not be providing enough early on, the UK has options to home grow a market they had lost, even more important is that this is a service filed Scottish workers could be trained in, giving additional solutions when the cost of corporate costs in the greater London area falls short, that is providing Birmingham does not pick up this opportunity.

As stated, it is speculated, but I see that BT has opened a door, a door that remains ajar for others to consider. Even if they are not in the UK, large US and Japanese corporations requires more and more the need for service solutions in the European timeline, the Indian solution was not the success they expected and the Manilla crises will continue at least 4-5 years, that is, if the infrastructure gets a massive overhaul as per immediate, if not, they lose the market too and Europe is hungry for real revenue, revenue that requires a service solution, one they had abstained form for too long.

Will this pan out correctly?

Even as the Philippine government is projecting a 15% growth from 2014 onwards, getting it from $11 billion, to $15 billion this year, the issue remains infrastructure, they have no real solution and the issues started to play in 2014, whilst no true overhaul had commenced, which means that it needs to address a near 32% growth and need in resources, whilst Manilla has no way to deal with it. This means that the summer drains will leave systems collapsing, something that we would start to see soon enough, it also means that those with Manilla support choices will need an alternative they did not bargain for. So the BT move is timely (in Philippine terms), if not essential to their path to repair.

Whatever comes next will be interesting to watch, because when that move does go forward, it becomes interesting to see how the larger corporations deal with their vested interest in places like Germany and France. In that regard, BT’s step (as stated by the Financial Times) comes with additional needs, as Sir Mike Rake saw the outsourcing as an ‘Achilles heel’, which might have been an understatement. In all that, Deutsche Telekom, who is connected in all this, might be seeing new trends to insourcing (pushing for could be a better word), as it also closes the door for the UK to leave the EEC as insourcing becomes more and more successful, which means many business players will be pushing for this success.

That part has additional reasons when we see that Sir Mike Rake, possibly UK’s largest Europhile in history gets to voice on how UK business at large does not want any form of Brexit, a move that can be given strength as call centres will grow in need within the EEC, which is just what the UK Conservatives hoped for, they just never expected to get saved by a call centre, which is amazingly hilarious in its own right.

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Tagged as Bangalore, BBC, BBC English, Brexit, British Telecom, BT, Call centre, Delhi, Deutsche Telekom, Digital India, EEC, France, GCHQ, Germany, Indian call centre, insourcing, London, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Philippines, Ravi Shankar Prasad

January 18, 2016 · 19:43

The line of privacy

I have a decent grasp on privacy. I tend to give it to others as much as possible, moreover as I on average do not really care about their private lives. This sounds harsh, but consider the facts. When the person isn’t family, or directly connected to you, how much do you actually care? Some people do care to know everything, but that is another matter entirely. So when ZDNET and a few others published ‘61 agencies after warrantless access to Australian telecommunications metadata‘, I was initially in that mood of, ‘oh yea, whatever!’ You see, when I see names like ‘Australian Financial Security Authority’, I reckon financial planners will get jumpy, but is that about possible ‘dubious’ choices, or their need for privacy? You see, one implies the element of a transgression, as such it becomes debatable whether those actions are to be lauded with non-access.

With a player like Clean Energy Regulator we see an industrial access need, and I very much doubt whether they are interested in individuals. But what happens when we see that groups like Bankstown City Council, Racing Queensland, Office of the Racing Integrity Commissioner (VIC) and the National Measurement Institute, I start having questions (especially regarding levels of sanity).

Let’s consider the access: “warrantless access two years’ worth of customers’ call records, location information, IP addresses, billing information, and other data stored by Telco’s“.

Now, I will be the last one to questions access by ‘valid’ organisations and even looking that the ‘alphabetical’ list the locations of the redacted names does not seem to include ASIO and ASIS, who have a clear need for that access, but can anyone explain why Bankstown City Council needs that access? In that same line we can add both Racing Queensland and the Office of the Racing Integrity Commissioner (VIC). If there is an investigation, it should go via the police of the correct channels. I see zero, I say again, zero reason to give those three access. Before we know it, we see Waverly City Council and perhaps even Chatswood City Council. How long then until all that data becomes available ‘for a special price’?

There are a few others on that list that require scrutiny. Do you really think that industrial transgressors wanted by the Department of the Environment will use their own phones? How much wasted man-years will we face as those untrained individuals try to make sense of 23,644 burner phones, which is just Sydney. In all this it seems to me that those requiring access will after that have an issue with processing data, which means more software, more failed levels of security and even more data transgressions. This must be the heaven that Rupert Murdoch dreams of. Data all accessible behind a server guarded with the admin password ‘qwerty’ or perhaps even ‘password’.

Yes, there is a massive issue here and the magazines including ZDNET (at http://www.zdnet.com/article/61-agencies-after-warrantless-access-to-australian-telecommunications-metadata/) mention the names (minus the redacted ones), we see the additional quote “Of the agencies and departments given access to existing information or documents to enforce a criminal law over the 12-month period, and not included on either list released by AGD, or known to be an enforcement agency already“, we now see names like RSPCA Tasmania and The Hills Shire Council, when we look at one of the websites (http://www.rspcatas.org.au/ for example).

We see in the about section: “The RSPCA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) is the voice for the animals of Australia. We defend their dignity and fight to stop cruelty. We offer shelter, education, medical attention and love. We are animal protectors, carers and guardians. We bring solace to abandoned, surrendered and injured. We prosecute those who would harm them. And we fight for the humane treatment of all living things. Our job does not stop at animals. We believe behind every animal is a human being who is in need of guidance, encouragement and help“, which is a nice fluffy and caring text. Nothing wrong there. So explain to me, how a place like that has a decent level of cyber security, with in their office pool an IT person with CCSP certification or higher and a few other skills. You see, when these skills are absent your data will be up for grabs. Perhaps that is outsourced, meaning that additional people have access to all that data, have those places been properly vetted? So on an island of 515,000 we see this level of personal data access requirements? My initial follow up questions would than become, of all those funds required from the donations, how much ends up going to animals?

In the case of the Hills Shire Council we can have a lot more fun, their community profile (at http://profile.id.com.au/the-hills/population) gives us “The Census population of The Hills Shire in 2011 was 169,873, living in 57,205 dwellings“, why for the love of whatever is holy (or named Cthulhu) would THEY need that level of access to data?

In my view we should start asking a few questions regarding the mental health of whomever gave that level of access. I am guessing that this was Attorney General, George Brandis, which basically gets confirmed in the Guardian Article (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/18/dozens-of-agencies-want-warrantless-access-to-australians-metadata-again). As we see the quote “the government narrowed the definition of an “enforcement agency” that was eligible to access telecommunications data to a shortlist of law enforcement agencies, including the Australian federal police and state and territory police forces“, my initial thought was ‘that makes perfect sense’, yet in that light, how the flipping Divine Comedies did RSPCA Tasmania make that list?

The Guardian in light of all this ends with a comical quote “This method was taken to allow the Australian Border Force to gain access to telecommunications data without needing to gain approval from the Attorney General’s Department or the intelligence committee“, which is interesting as this implies that the Australian Border Force has less access than RSPCA Tasmania, which would make perfect sense if you are a golden retriever.

So apart of the access and the lack of insight here, has anyone considered how that data is to be read, analysed and processed? In addition, when we consider the access level of applications, the support and very likely (read: extremely likely) the levels of consultancy needed, what else is missing what will this cost the taxpayers in the end? I can tell you now that such solutions are not cheap, not easily implemented and did I mention the security needed for keeping that data safe? Even if this all goes through clouds and remote access, how long until a volunteer looking after cats will leave that password accidently out in the open, or even worse leave that system logged in and unattended?

As stated, I would never object to the actual law-enforcement agencies to get that access, but it seems to me that too large a group on that list is nowhere near that level and even (read: especially) when we consider groups like Greyhound Racing Victoria, why are they not going through police channels?

I see both articles and no one seems to be asking the questions that need to be asked. Questions that had to be asked extremely loud and very nearby after a mere 30 seconds of reading those articles. By the way, when reading the ZDNET article, it is the article that follows that is cause for even more questions.

One of the quotes is ‘the Many Layers and Tools of Digital Collaboration Today‘, which is nice when it is a mere graph of generic data. In that we might not care, but in the issue of ‘call records, location information, IP addresses, billing information, and other data stored by Telco’s‘, which includes all your personal data. Consider the following quotes “employees and departments are helping themselves to the tools they believe they really need. At the same time, companies are steadily dealing with what is now too many categories of communication and collaboration software to adequately manage and govern, much less individual apps” and “The issue itself is perhaps best demonstrated by the rapid rise of Slack, the current darling of team chat and wildly popular with its users. In many of my recent conversations with IT managers, I find that Slack is invading the workplace on many fronts, regardless whether it’s sanctioned or not” and finally “The top categories of apps today include VOIP, Web conferencing, e-mail, unified communications, IM/chat, file shares, file sync, CMS/DMS, intranets, discussion forums, enterprise social networks, relationship management platforms (including customer-facing CRM), and last but not least, online community“.

Now remember, the second article (on the same page) is not connected to the first, but consider the cloud and the explosive growth of so called ‘tool apps’ and the utter lack of in-depth security and access checking, how many back doors are organisations creating through such tools, with access to your data? Weirdly, I would never hold a bad thought for a volunteer organisations like the RSPCA, which is exactly why they should have never ever been given access to data like that. For the mere reason that cyber security cannot viably be maintained.

Whomever boasts on the security of places like Slack is in my view decently nuts. When we see interested players like Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, KPCB, Spark, and Social+Capital, the first thing we will see fail is a pressure to release a new version and there will be the need of security patches (which is a reality), this also means that data would have been unprotected. The mere intense need for Common Cyber Sense is that boss who wants that new version, because the presentation looks cooler. Even when we ignore the issue of Slack, we still see an exponential growing app base, with access all over the place, which means danger to the data. Even when remotely accessed, even if that connection is secure, too many places get access to data they should not have access to.

When we hear people state that servers have access limitations and more of the mumbling, here is a simple word of caution, something I personally witnessed. There was a financial software program. It was a good and legitimate program. The small issue was that when the program accidently crashed, that person remained on the data server with rights of an administrator. It took them 2 weeks to figure out it was happening and another 3 weeks to repair their system. Consider something like that happening today and with the ‘upgrades’ Microsoft requires on a too regular a basis, can we even risk this level of access to the expanded group that has too limited a grasp (as I see it) on what constitutes Common Cyber Sense?

I wonder how long until we get a carefully phrased apology from certain high ranking IT elements, who will offer their resignation and walk away with a 7 figure handshake.

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Tagged as Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Attorney General, Attorney-General George Brandis, Australian Border Force, Australian Financial Security Authority, Bankstown City Council, Cthulhu, George Brandis, Greyhound Racing Victoria, Index Ventures, KPCB, National Measurement Institute, Office of the Racing Integrity Commissioner (VIC), Racing Queensland, RSPCA Tasmania, Social+Capital, Spark, the Guardian, The Hills Shire Council, ZDNet

January 7, 2016 · 21:20

Comprehension

At times, I am at a loss. This is one of those times, and it started as I was confronted with the article ‘Treat surrogate parents as sex offenders, says Italian minister’ (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/06/treat-surrogates-sex-offenders-italian-minister-angelino-alfano). You see, here I have two levels of confusion.

Let me explain. The first level involves the women that do this. I do not mean this in any negative way! I get it when it is family, but even then, there is part of me that does not quite grasps it. There is nothing as noble as ‘to give thine own body’. You see, no matter how noble it is, I could never fathom a surrogate mother, not her way or her intent, but the fact that once the baby was born that she would have the strength to part with it. We see and read on how teenage girls offer children up for adoption, mainly because they were not ready and they are unable to care for the child and the child might end up having a much better life. In those instances we try to be understanding, but we all realise that this could eat away at the soul of the young woman who did this. There have been many books and many movies, yet the reality is that only that mother can truly state and express what it felt like.

I think it would not be a pretty picture.

So in that light, understanding that a surrogate mother might actually be capable of raising that child, the willingness to part with it is incomprehensible to me, and I need not comprehend. In all this, I never looked negative against the woman who made that choice. So when I read ‘Angelino Alfano says ‘wombs for rent’ should be punishable with prison, as he suggests new laws will make it easier for gay couples to use surrogate mothers‘, I wonder what kind of an idiot Angelino Alfano actually is. Is he just anti-gay, is he anti-surrogate? From what I read I feel certain that he is anti-intelligent!

Now we get to the religious part, because Italy is all about Catholics. At times I think that Italy is all about Catholics, food and adultery, but we get to that soon enough. So, you’ll see some scriptures, but again, reasoning later.

So Angelino Alfano, answer me this, of all your friends who committed adultery, Leviticus 20:10 “If any man commit adultery with the wife of another, and defile his neighbour’ s wife, let them be put to death, both the adulterer and the adulteress“, so how many of those ‘friends’ did you put to death? Or perhaps we should take a look at his actions as stated by the Financial Times on October 2nd 2013 (at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a142b3a8-2b46-11e3-a1b7-00144feab7de.html#axzz3wXhbQy5b), where we see: “the young Sicilian lawyer has been compared to Judas Iscariot in leading a betrayal of his long-time mentor“. Interesting, so who was that Judas Iscariot person? I wonder if there was a punishment for treason, so in all that, it should be clear that Angelino Alfano should not be making too many statements for a few reasons (read: I will not remove his freedom of speech, just request he keeps a centre of discretion with all his alleged transgressions).

Now, for the other side.

In the Epistle Of Saint Paul To The Philippians 2:3 we see “Let nothing be done through contention, neither by vain glory: but in humility, let each esteem others better than themselves“, it seems that the happiness for the others is taken in much higher regard. In following there is Timothy 1, where at 6:18 we see “To do good, to be rich in good works, to give easily, to communicate to others,” and finally in Corinthians 10:23-24 we see: “All things are lawful for me, but all things do not edify. Let no man seek his own, but that which is another’s”

At face value women who did this have done a Samaritan act of sacrifice and goodness against their nature but not an unnatural one. In a tale of two villages where a storm destroys the bakery of one, should the other baker not make available the oven so that the other village will not perish? Is that such a far stretch? So in that same light should a man of such hypocritical disposition not be shunned for his words and actions? When we read “Treating couples who use surrogate mothers as sex criminals, as Alfano suggested, would entail harsh penalties“, you see the subtext ‘couples who use surrogate mothers‘ is part of this and he seems to be driven to label this as ‘forms of human sexual behaviour that are crimes‘, are they? You see, legally speaking, the intent was given as ‘who use‘, yet this is not the case, the surrogate mother volunteered, which is not the same, she offered and was not used. This now gives us the path he might try to walk which is ‘Treating surrogate mothers who volunteer assistance to same sex couples as sex criminals‘. It seems to get a little dicey now, doesn’t it! As any Samaritan act of good intent is usually not prosecutable. So what started this?

You see, surrogacy is illegal in Italy and that, even if some would considered it to be ‘the act of a non-enlightened nation‘, it is the legal premise that Italy is allowed to make, so when Angelino Alfano comes with the quote “We want ‘wombs for rent’ to become a universal crime. And that it is punished with prison. Just as happens for sexual crimes”, we should all question what is in his mind, perhaps it is the voice of some obscure cleric from Sicily (his origins) who has a massive anti-gay agenda. Perhaps this is not about any of that! Remember the Financial Times part? That is a while ago, but his position is nowhere stable, in addition, in Politico we see “Last month, Angelino Alfano, Italy’s interior minister, described as a “symbol of victory” a plane carrying 19 young Eritreans from Ciampino airport in Rome to Luleå in Sweden. Italy, he said, would send an additional 100 people “in the next few days”” (at http://www.politico.eu/article/why-eu-refugee-relocation-policy-has-been-a-flop-frontex-easo-med/), the UNHCR reveals that on December 31^st 2015 153,600 refugees had arrived in Italy, 97,584 on Angelino’s island of Sicily (read: 63.53125% roughly). So is this really about the surrogacy issue, or is he just making waves especially as he heralded a new home for 19 of those refugees (aka 0.000012369%) with the additional 100, meaning he got a solution for 0.000077473%, yes we can all see where the importance of Angelino Alfano is. It is in the smallest of margins where we see his actions, so as I read this, I am not convinced it is his ‘anti’ approach in all this, it is his need for visibility as I see it and he is not doing it in the most intelligent way imaginable.

Instead of an actual effort to solve the logistics of the refugee tsunami that hits Italy and his island Sicily, we see a surrogacy and an anti-gay tainted pass ono a group that can find a sheltered solution outside of Italy, so instead of solving the problems Italy does have (aside of the 2,230,198,602,275 € debt Italy has at present), we see another politician waste time, space and energy on a topic that is not his to solve and one that has absolutely no solving value for Italy at all.

In all this I feel decently certain that even the Bishop of Rome would side with me that although it is a discussion worthy of the Cardinals Conclave, these women might be beautified for their divine compassion 100% sooner than Angelino Alfano ever will.

Now for me, I have always been leaning towards man-made or positive laws. I feel that the interpretation is important and that we do not always have the wisdom to properly interpret, which is why I have always been a fan of Dr BJ McEniery’s article ‘Physicality in Australian patent law’, which was published in the Deakin Law Review. You see Intellectual property has always been under powerful evolutions, yet the fact that long ago there was a clear understanding that physicality was something that would evolve and the law had no way off seeing how and towards what is always in the back of my mind. Ignoring Natural law is therefore equally stupid. As a Catholic I tend to be more Christian than Catholic, where it is important to see and weigh the intent on the person, so even as I do not rule out the less Samaritan paths a surrogate mother could be on, the powerful drive within any mother would counter this strongly whenever possible, which gets me to the positivity of their act against the trivial and self-righteous mindset of Angelino Alfano and on that scale he does not fare well.

So even if you disagree with my choices of bible passages, there is almost no way where you can consider in favour of the trivial path Mr Alfano is on. I would hope that his holiness the Bishop of Rome would sooner rather than later (as well as several members of the curie) would consider speaking out that the need to solve the suffering of 153,600 refugees take a massive priority over the possible issue that a handful of surrogate mothers might bring, especially when they are openly and voluntarily offering their Samaritan womb on this. So if Angelino Alfano ever (in a legal Samaritan way) rescues the plight of 1536 refugees (aka 1%), only then if any energy is left should he look at small and insignificant issues. but by that time his political reign has ended and the press will not have any time for him as they will be wanting to hear from the next elected official.

There are many issues that plague Europe, some we might never fix, some we can possibly fix and some can be fixed, do we really need to look at issues that do not presently require fixing?

I will let you be the judge of that, but for those who do have a Christian background they still adhere to remember the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (7:1) “Judge not, that you may not be judged, for with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged: and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again“, which is good advice, advice that might be a little too late for Angelino Alfano if we are to believe the Divine Comedy. For was it not Antenora where the transgressors of treason of party and nations ended up, to be frozen in ice up to the neck? Now, let’s be fair, Mr Alfano is no Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, yet as we see the credits he heralds in whilst Italy remains in dire need and he voices his view to a ‘universal solution’ where Italy has no problem, where is his actual allegiance and as such is that not utterly detestable? Yes it is, which does not make it treason or treacherous, yet as Italian Minister of the Interior, his responsibility is for internal security and the protection of the constitutional order. As such he can prosecute surrogacy within Italy, yet it does not mean that it is his job to waste time for the change of a ‘universal solution’, especially as surrogate mothers are in no way an internal security issue, yet the 153,481 (if he ever got the additional 100 towards refugees towards Sweden) might be. As I see it, the refugee logistics fall squarely in his lap, an issue he does not seem to be addressing, which we should regard as a failed level of comprehension on his side.

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Tagged as adultery, Angelino Alfano, Antenora, Bishop of Rome, Cardinals Conclave, catholics, Christians, Corinthians 10:23, Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, Deakin Law Review, Dr BJ McEniery, Epistle Of Saint Paul, Financial Times, Italy’s interior minister, Luleå, Philippians 2:3, Physicality in Australian patent law, Politico, Saint Matthew, Saint Matthew 7:1, Sicilia, surrogacy, surrogate mothers, Sweden, the Divine Comedy, the Pope, UNHCR

January 5, 2016 · 20:30

Where is the egg timer?

There is an old saying that there is never an egg timer around when you need one. This being the usual response to a person shouting out: ‘watch this’, which is closely followed by moments of chaos. These things happens, they happen even more so when we act ‘ad-hoc’. Yet what should be the issue when we see ‘The 25 most anticipated video games of 2016‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/30/video-games-2016-dishonored-2-uncharted-4-xcom-2) by Keith Stuart and Kate Gray, which was published on December 30^th, whilst a mere 22 minutes ago, @gamespot presents: ‘Scalebound release date delayed to 2017‘ (at http://l.gamespot.com/1Z2AZVS), which was actually published yesterday. So when we see gamespot flaunt the title “Platinum Games says postponement was necessary to ‘deliver on our ambitious vision’”, now let’s face it, the timeline does not shift that much (2016 -> 2017) within 5 days. We could speculate that at the end of the year Keith Stuart and Co were casually careless at the end of the year, a speculation I myself reject because, even though I do not always agree with Keith, the man is a professional and he tends not to be careless in that regard. In the second, Platinum marketing might have tried to ride the waves of free publicity as much as possible, which is more likely than not the case, yet that would be a casually stupid path to take.

Perhaps there is the idea that instead of trying to feed (or create) hypes (especially in the gaming and movie world), the media at large needs to stop feeding us ‘junk’ (read: rehashed news) when a game is more than 20 weeks away. So, perhaps not mentioning any title that is more than 20 weeks away might not be the worst idea. It would stop hypes to a larger extent, it could result in a focus from the media towards the games of ‘now’ or ‘soon’, which offcourse would include a lot more independent developers. How much have we seen in the media, not on half-baked triple ‘A’ ‘publishers’, but on titles like Adrift, which comes from Three One Zero and will launch this quarter on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One? Is it not most anticipated, perhaps because the media ignored it?

It is my biggest issue with many gaming ‘pages’, especially in main stream media. Too many ignore interesting indie games that would be highly anticipated if more people were aware of it, yet many are pushed into the shadows as two ‘Big-Uns’ (EA and Ubisoft) get overly exposed on products well over a year away. I think that with the consumer in mind, these practices need to stop (or massively lessen). For example, it was only by accident that I stumbled upon Ghost of a Tale, an upcoming game for PC and XB1, I personally believe that this is not an anticipated game because the media seemed to have ignored it, but they kept on rehashing the same news on No Mans Sky again and again.

Which for a short time was understandable, but many kept on going when we heard the official news that the game was coming in June 2016, but as there were more speculations to be made, No Man’s Sky remained on the publications. The interesting part is that Ghost of a tale is a stealth game that would be very appealing to gamers that reside on the lower end of the Teenager scale (a rarity to say the least), what I saw reminded me of Don Bluth, specifically An American Tail and The Secret of NIMH. It came to life as a successful Indie go-go crowd-funding campaign and from what I saw it surpasses loads of games by ‘established’ software houses. How come not more information has seen the light through the media in regards to this title? You can see a lot more about the game at http://www.ghostofatale.com, they show the issues, the upgrades and more important just how amazing parts already look. The game got delayed from 2015 and it seems that 2016 could be the year of the mouse.

Just such a shame that the media at large does not take more time and space to see the wonderful world of the independent developer, with Technomancers on more than one platform and let’s not forget Kingdom Come by Warhorse Studios, it might initially not sound massively interesting as it seems to be released much later for Nextgen consoles, but the fact that the initial release includes both Linux and OS X should be massive as decent games for OS X tend to be really rare events. The fact that it is a Q2 release in 2016 makes it interesting to keep tabs on, as it would be released half a year earlier than games that are already receiving way to much exposure.

So as we look back on the egg timer, we must acknowledge two things, the first is that a sudden shift to another year is not the main reason, that’s just bad luck for some, but the fact that plenty of interesting games tend to not make the media (especially in their online editions) seems to be a lot less acceptable, especially when we see more and more lacking quality reviews. Yet these games all show that timing is still an issue to some degree, yet personally I find the shifting time lines a lot more acceptable from independent developers who try to get through with limited resources than the shifts we see in larger houses that are either close to or exceeding the billion dollar mark, there it is too often a failed form of managing expectations by not in the least of the culprits their own marketing departments; in addition, when I see what a mere independent mouse can show us graphically, I am happy that the group if independent developers is growing, because a mere dozen independent developers have shown me more to look forward to than several of the established branders of gaming. In all this I must point out that the Guardian article does give a fair bit of indie games attention, but they are one of few amongst way too many, which is a real shame.

For me, it is not about the 25 most anticipated games! I, like many others am a man on a budget. For me the important equations is, which games are released in the next 8-12 weeks, as my budget will allow me to purchase only one game, the hype creators seem to ignore that part, knowing that I have a few more options than many families with two working parents who are in possessions of often more than one playing growing young-ling, I would state that the media is ignoring a mainstream niche, one that should be rectified in 2016.

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Tagged as An American Tail, Don Bluth, EA, Gamespot, Ghost of a tale, independent developers, Indie developers, Kate Gray, Keith Stuart, Kingdom Come, Microsoft Windows, No man's sky, Platinum Games, PlayStation 4, Technomancers, the Guardian, The Secret of NIMH, Ubisoft, Xbox One

January 3, 2016 · 11:12

An outlying frame of prediction

The Guardian had another interesting article to present, it came online on Jan 1st, but I just read it a mere moment ago. The nice part that this is about data, it is a little bit more about statistics, but I am not a statistician, I am a Data Miner. The title ‘Alarmingly for pollsters, EU referendum poll results depend heavily on methods‘ gave me the jolt I needed (at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/01/eu-referendum-polling-results-depend-methods). From my point of view, the entire exercise is a failed event, no matter how you slice it. Before we go into the results, let’s take a quick look at the nations involved:

UK, population 65,081,276
France, population 67,063,000
Germany, population 81,276,000
Italy, population 60,963,000
Spain, population 46,335,000
Sweden, population 9,816,666
Finland, population 5,475,000
Denmark, population 5,673,000
Portugal, population 10,311,000

Now look at two quotes: “It found strong support for the UK’s continuing membership, with an average of 53% of respondents favouring Britain’s continuing membership across nine other countries surveyed“, which might be fair enough, but then we get quote two, which is “Only in Norway, which is not a member of the European Union, would a slight plurality, of 34% to 27%, prefer to see the UK leave and join it outside the club“, this is interesting, because Norway is not one of the nine countries in the mix, which now implies that additional nations had been interviewed, so what happened, the others were less in favour?

Now we add the optional considerations “ICM also investigated the appetite in all these countries to call time on their own membership, in the event that their country staged an in/out referendum“, So ICM had another reasoning entirely, the ‘in the event that their country staged a referendum‘ is central to this, because that means that the questionnaire, the hypotheses and the methodology would be different from the get go, which is not even that central in my thinking process, but it is elemental to the entire event. Now, the question becomes whether this is all part of ICM Research a UK Market Research company, was it done as part of the umbrella called Creston Insight, or perhaps even a third part and I am linking the wrong ICM to the wrong company.

These are all valid considerations and in my case the assumption was done intentionally (and most likely to be correct).

You see the paragraph in the Guardian “Alarmingly for the polling industry, however, the result substantially depends on the method used. Nineteen of the 21 polls were done online, and among these the average advantage for remain shrivels to a dangerously slim two points. But the two telephone surveys that have been undertaken point to far bigger pro-EU leads of 17 and 21 points” shows the issue for me. The paragraphs result in the question, were 19 nations interviewed? If so, why are they not all mentioned, in another option, were two methodologies used in the nine countries? One via phone and one via online, which makes perfect sense, but then an even amount of polls should have been used. All the article does is wonder how reliable the approach is, and if at all, are politicians even interested in doing it fair and square?

You see, if the results can sway a lingering vote (which is a given fact) than we can see that the poll could be used to sway some to ‘follow’ the largest group (with a tie a much harder thing to influence), but influence is a given.

For me, the number one issue were none of these items, in my case it was the mention at the very end. The quote “ICM interviewed a representative sample of at least 1000 adults online in each of nine European countries on 15 and 30 November 2015. Interviews in each country have been weighted to the profile of adults living within it” this is the issue, because a sample of 1,000 can never ever be representative of a population of 81 million, not even representative of a population of 46 million, there is no amount of weighting that can give anything but the roughest of estimations. The more representative the sample is for households, the larger the interviewing sample needs to be. There might have been the slightest reliability if a sample of at least 10,000 was used per nation and I use the word ‘slightest’ in the most liberal of ways. The moment we introduce, gender, income and education 10,000 might not slice it either. You see, yes, weighting can be applied, but than a single response could represent a group of 50,000-100,000, how reliable do you think that one voice would be regarding the other 49,999-99,999?

1,000 might be budget based, but this would then reflect a budgeted population that holds no reliability at all.

Sampling can be a real science, but when we see frequency weighing to this amount, we can safely say that science has been replaced by educated guessing, which is not the way to go. Consider France for a moment. Consider that in regions people feel very different, the two regions where Le Pen are powerful, they will not be in favour of the EEC at all, the others regions might be (read: might be). Now consider that France has 22 administrative regions, so in fairness we get roughly 50 responses per region, 25 males and 25 ladies, so per education level en perhaps even per age group, how much remains? How representative are these 25 people for that region? Now consider that not every region has the same population, so the 50 people representing the 11 million that make up for get a very different weight from those representing the 4 million in Normandy. Are you catching on how utterly unreliable those numbers have become? And how is this done for the UK? Or did ICM decide to get in quick and fast so the capitals make up for the bulk of the votes, which in case of Sweden makes sense as the bulk lives in Stockholm, Goteborg or Malmo. So as there is a hint of truth that it might all be about methodology, the required setting can never be met by 1,000 responses per nation as I see it, in addition there is still the unlisted Norway. So ether the article made a few jumps (which could be fair enough) or the reference to ICM in all this should be answerable to a lot more questions than the article is currently giving.

I need to end this with one final quote: “if the huge differences between online and telephone surveys persist, one method or the other can expect to face a bruising referendum, because they cannot both be right“, from the parts I responded to, there is another option all together, neither are correct. They are not flawed, but wrong for the simple fact of sampling size and the quote given “in the event that their country staged an in/out referendum“, which means that there would have been a different hypothesis that needed answering and even then, the sample of 1,000 would never been have anywhere near useful.

A group of 9,000 can never be representative of a group surpassing a third of a billion that should be massively clear to anyone from the get go, even more so when you consider the different lifestyles and values held in Scandinavian nations versus most of Western Europe and that is just the tip of the statistical considerations.

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Tagged as Île-de-France, Creston Insight, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, ICM, Italy, Le Pen, methodology, Normandy, polling, polling data, Portugal, Spain, statistics, the Guardian, UK

December 30, 2015 · 11:57

The valiant never taste of death but once

An initial thought when I saw the title ‘Assassin’s Creed star Michael Fassbender had ‘never played the game’‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/dec/28/assassins-creed-star-michael-fassbender-never-played-video-game), now, my curiosity was peaked as it should be known to my readers that me and Ubisoft are at odds. i think they demolished what could have remained a legendary brand. Will the movie change that? Not sure, more important, does it matter? A movie fan can enjoy a good game and a gamer can enjoy a good movie. Yet, we must admit that our passion also instils the dangers of our folly when we do not see the result we expected. That danger is a lot more intense when it crosses platforms (Hobbit anyone?)

The article is a little shallow and it alerts us to what comes (which might have been the intent). The quote that got to me was “Michael Fassbender, the star of the highly anticipated film adaptation has admitted never having played it prior to being offered the lead role“, I think that this might not be a bad thing, actors and their roles are about getting ready for them and we can all agree that Michael Fassbender has the stellar experience to excel so this should not be an issue. I did like his response on @Fassbender_Way (Twitter) stating “I don’t need anyone’s permission“, which is not quite right, he needs the permission of Ubisoft, but they asked him, so that is OK, is it not?

The issue with the movie is not the movie, it will be our perception on the transfer. If the movie becomes too much of a Prince of Persia steeplechase then it could falter, if it is too much on ‘massive’ fights (like the intro to Revelation) the same thing could happen, but if it is the dark, the deep and the shady cutthroat version of an assassin getting in and out, it could be a hit. Well, that is my take on it. Is it yours? A game that sold so many millions will spawn millions of views, which is the challenge not for the actor, but for the director to give vision to. In that the second quote comes to view “the actor said he first got to grips with the video game only after being approached by Ubisoft to join the production“, this is fair enough, he cannot remain unaware, but how to prepare best? Playing is one, watching a few play throughs is another (almost an essential secon), he will do what he thinks is best that’s why he gets the big bucks!

Yet this is not about Michael Fassbender, it is about Ubisoft. There is no denying in the wisdom of making a movie which in turn will give loads of cash to Yves Guillemot. A mere statement of fact, my worry is not what is now, but what comes next. As I see it Unity massively damaged the brand and certain sidesteps are equally dangerous. As we see the unfolding of AC Syndicate, we also see that repairing the brand will take more than one game and in this Yves Guillemot himself needs to stay focussed and involved in whatever follows Syndicate because in this many gamers feel that their bucket got prefilled by sources that lost their reliability (like Gamespot). The Verge had this headline ‘Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is everything that’s great and terrible about the series‘ (at http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/23/9602584/assassins-creed-syndicate-review), which gives us the issue. The quotes “there’s so much that grounds the experience; boring missions, overly complicated side activities, and stories that straddle the line between dull and nonsensical“, which was already in play for some time. Now we get “you can commandeer one anytime you need, GTA-style“, which is another side I hate. More of something else. These two quotes do not represent the full article, which is also why I added the link, but it gets to the core of the issue Yves has ignored for too long. When you add too many other sides, when your business model is all about not getting a failure, you in equal measure forget to focus on that what makes a game truly exceptional. Shades of grey will not allow for the blackness of failure and it will in equal measure not allow for the whiteness of utter victory. It is the price of compromise that issue has been around since AC3, involving little Connor with bow and arrow.

the final quote “Unfortunately, the button used to hop in the cart was the same used for picking up his dead body, so instead of getting away safely, a cop shot me while a corpse was draped around my shoulders” was the most fun for me to read, because this glitch (read: interface bug) has been around since AC Brotherhood, Yves has let the brand slide to this extent!

In this we also need to name the man that does highly matter, because the pressure is not on Michael Fassbender, it will be on Justin Kurzel, the director. I am actually curious how he pulls it off. He has loads of things to start with, as stated on several occasions, part of Ubisoft might have failed, but not the graphics department, they delivered above and beyond with every AC game. Black flag is just one of the amazing graphical achievements that even today can be held up as an equal against any game released in 2015 and it will hold up and in most cases surpass many 2015 releases. In equal measure, the soundtracks of all AC games from the AC2 has been above many big screen productions, so Justin has many supporting sides making it all slightly easier for him, yet it will be his vision that matters to the public at large. And I refuse to make any speculation at present, I will await and see the final result.

So where are we?

You see, as stated earlier, AC Syndicate did not undo the massive damage of Unity, and there are other issues within Ubisoft that matters, because as it linked the experience to Uplay, the failing of Uplay as I have experienced it in equal measure drags down the product, the inability of their support to settle issues, link issues between accounts when a player has multiple systems, I cannot get the points of accounts to link, which is frustrating as it does not enable me to unlock certain parts, other parts are not acknowledged which just accelerates issues into the negative. Which is the downside of social media, a part certain player within Ubisoft are eager to ignore 7 days after release date, which does not help gamers and fans of the franchise any either.

So as we renew the view to the title in Shakespeare view of what constitutes the hero, we can see both Michael Fassbender and Justin Kurzel for their willingness to undertake the loaded challenge of the Assassins creed, which might reap great rewards, not just financially if they pull it off, in this I also feel that any failure might not be on their side, it might and up in the lap of Yves Guillemot as the brand waned to the massive degree it did on his watch. It gets us to the question we need to ask ourselves (as gamers mind you), a question both Michael and Justin should ask themselves to within the scope of vision that they are exposed to.

What makes for an assassin?

Is it a person with a sniper scope in 1983, one shot in Kirbat Al-Adas? Is it a knife thrown from an alley, a stab from a bench, a poison dart? Is it slicing your target then taking on 8 guards and a Templar? The game allowed for many ‘solutions’, but in the movies it is about pleasing the mass with an image, it is not interactive, which makes for the challenge Justin and Michael face, in all this the weight of previous decisions allowed by Yves makes for something else. The question is, will it make things better for the movie? It is not a fair question for those making the movies, but it will influence it all. So far, we know that the movie will play in the 15^th century in Spain, which means that either that game will follow, or the movie line will become separate. The latter one being a better option in my personal frame of mind. Let’s not forget that the game started with Subject 17, so there are plenty of option for the movies and the bloody mosaic of bodies that we refer to as history allows for plenty of options for a movie based franchise.

As stated, I will await the final version of the movie and I do intent to watch it (as one cannot ignore a Fassbender movie). In all this it is not just about the movie, it is about what will Yves do next that matters, because in my personal view, Ubisoft has been running on borrowed time for a little too long and whatever happens next will impact the gaming industry, not because of a movie, but if we believe Shakespeare that a coward dies a dozen times over, than in my view Yves Guillemot had relied on marketing for too much and at the expense of a brand that could (read: should) have remained at high for a lot longer, so what is the value of a brand that has regained the same flaws for 6 iterations, I wonder why that question had not been asked by a 90% granting Gamespot, they are supposed to be a critical reviewer. Too many around the brand have dropped the ball and left things unspoken and un-investigated. The many delays that Ubisoft has should give way to massive improvements to gameplay, yet overall this was not achieved. At present only For Honor still seems to hold up to the expected hype of scrutiny, which is interesting, one in a dozen? I need to hold off on the final verdict as I feel that fairness needs to take centre seat and a review needs to remain fair, absent from hype. It is harder to do, but essential to give fair verdict to a project dozens of people put their life and faith into, I will not attack them like that, but Yves needs to realise that his billion is slimming down as he has fell short again and again, now the upcoming movie will be part of it. Whether the choice was a good one, is something we will see at the end of 2016.

Let’s all see what happens.

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Tagged as Assassins Creed, Assassins Creed Syndicate, For Honor, Gamespot, Justin Kurzel, Michael Fassbender, Prince of Persia, Shakespeare, Templar, Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot

December 29, 2015 · 11:19

Ignorance is not an option

Moments of scandal within the IDF are rare, but oh boy, when they do happen, they don’t seem to be light ones. That was the first thought I had when I updated my news brief last night and the news ‘Israel’s armed forces shocked at dismissal of missile defence chief‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/28/israel-armed-forces-shocked-dismissal-missile-defence-chief-yair-ramati) caressed my pupils. Yair Ramati an Israeli veteran was sacked for a “grave breach of information security”, the added quote “Israeli media reports said Ramati had broken protocol when he transferred documents to his computer, making them easier to steal” was an additional reason for concern. Israel, a nation that has been under attack for decades, where Muslim fanatics will seek any way to get a hold of information that can further any anti-Israeli cause got a little help when Yair Ramati transferred documents to his personal computer. Now the issue is not that simple, because I myself tend to hold much higher levels of protection on my own computer than the corporate networks tend to have, as such it would be safe, but infrastructure and the rules on them are clear in most networks, even more so in the slightly less trusting environment of the IDF, so what gives?

In the world of cyber, ignorance is no longer an option, ignorance can quite literally get you and your friends killed. Socially, Financially or actually killed in a death certificate kind of way, the IDF (read: Mossad Cyber division) is very aware of that and for a person like Yair Ramati to make a mistake like that, is it complacency or just plain stupidity?

Well, I am less on the side of stupidity, because stupid people do not head the Iron Dome project, they just remain janitors; so should we ‘over-analyse’ this? Yes we should, mainly because complacency is a massive issue. We all do this at times. Any person who states no is either lying to you or will soon be lying to you. We all drop the ball at times, the error might be small and it will not be to the extent of copying files to a personal computer, but those moments will happen. Phishers, hackers and others are all awaiting you to make that basic flaw one day. The only excuse where such a flaw might be excused (to some extent) is burnout. We get to be too exhausted and in one moment we think ‘oh whatever’ the moment you endanger it all.

That is the moment we need to worry about, because it will always happen.

ABC had an interesting quote “Three people familiar with Mr Ramati said, on condition of anonymity, that he had improperly handled classified documents but was not accused of criminal misconduct like espionage“(at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-28/israeli-missile-defence-director-dismissed-over-security-breach/7056400). From the data I have on Yair Ramati I feel like I should explicitly agree (not that my view can be expertly vetted), but a man like Yair Ramati with decades of loyal service does not commit espionage as I see it, the state of Israel will use his services again and again and with the last three years of missile attacks, I reckon burn out set in and Yair Ramati had his ‘oh whatever‘ moment. This event is a wakeup call for the Israeli security services in more than one way, because this situation could have more than one person in such a predicament. Some of the boffins at the IDF are in dire need of some mental health support, not in the way that they are unbalanced, they actually are, as some of them are exhausted!

A side Hamas and Hezbollah might be hoping for at present, you see when the really good ones are too tired mistakes are made and those mistakes will be exploited. And these exploitation might be on an additional side too. You see, as ABC reported “Israel has received hundreds of millions of dollars in US funding for the three missile defence systems, whose private contractors include Boeing Co, Raytheon, and Elbit Systems“, what happens when its main conductor is no longer creating the symphony? What will that mean for the product at large? We might focus on Iron dome, but the stretch goes a lot further than this. Consider places like Ashot Ashkelon Industries Ltd. People like Haim Defrin and Julian Cohen, unlike the board with people like Avi Felder, Yoram Shechter, Yehuda Gai et al. Haim and Julian are in the thick of things. With additional military pressures and of course the responsibility to get the highest quality, they are under constant need (read: pressure) to deliver, when were they taken aside, to unwind, educate them on common cyber sense and when were their stress levels reduced? Not to mention their parent company IMI (Israel Military Industries). For every organisation, there tends to be an In Bitching Mode overall whining umbrella corporation, nes paz?

So in that light, it is not entirely impossible that Udi Adam and Avi Felder at IMI could be facing dilemmas of a similar kind within their infrastructure, the question becomes, is it happening, is it containable and unlike the step made now by sacking Yair Ramati, can a solution be found to reinvigorate the soul of the loyal population that has been pushed and pushed again and again?

You see, some might see the transgression by Yair Ramati as a part of legal and security (not debating that), but we all forget that Common Cyber Sense is equally Operations, Strategy and HR. HR has a much bigger role to play, because if this is stress and burnout, than it is clear in my view that HR failed the people who have been loyal to their infrastructure, success all the time is an illusion, a person will fail to some extent, the issue is to make sure that the damage is averted. I cannot state whether this was an option for Yair Ramati due to the size of the transgression, but certain questions are asked to the lesser extent. It is the Guardian quote “The former director of the Israeli atomic energy commission, Uzi Eilam, told Israel Radio he had known Ramati for 30 years and found the news hard to believe“, in a place like Israel, when a person with 3 decades of knowledge has an issue, my view is that the dismissal might not be an overreaction, but the issues leading to this are a lot more important than we realise and another set of proper investigations (by the right people) is an essential next step.

Ignorance is not an option and the question becomes was that ignorance just in the court of Yair Ramati, or had that ball been dropped by his superiors in another field at an earlier stage?

It is not a question I can answer with the information I have, but there are enough indicators to ask that question out loud, now it is up to the right people over there to ask a similar question and it is up to them to do some proper investigations.

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Tagged as ABC, Ashot Ashkelon Industries Ltd, Avi Felder, Boeing Co, Elbit Systems, General Udi Adam, Haim Defrin, IDF, IMI, Iron Dome, Israel, Israel Military Industries, Julian Cohen, Raytheon, the Guardian, Udi Adam, Uzi Eilam, Yair Ramati, Yehuda Gai, Yoram Shechter

December 24, 2015 · 09:33

Where the insane runs the asylum

The Guardian had an unsettling article yesterday (at http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/dec/22/david-cameron-us-america-refuses-british-muslim-family-disneyland). Now we all know that US protocol is not completely up to scrap. It gets enforced by people and certain systems are updated by people, so things will go bump into the night. For a family of 11, trying to get their Christmas dream in play, that fact must be overwhelmingly unsettling. You see, they were refused to get to the US. The issue “a family party of 11, about to embark on a dream holiday for which they had saved for months, were approached by officials from US homeland security as they queued in the departure lounge and told their authorisation to travel had been cancelled, without further explanation“.

On the one side… No scrap that!

There are two sides, either there is a genuine issue and in that case DHS would have had to have updated the British security services. If that is not the case than we have a first case of evidence that the DHS data systems are now so garbled it can no longer distinguish between friend or foe, which is another matter entirely.

So “Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, has written to the prime minister she is concerned that a growing number of British Muslims are saying they have had similar experiences of being barred from the US without being told the reasons for the exclusion“, this is indeed an issue.

Friedrich Nietzsche: A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything

First we must acknowledge that the US has not given a reason, so we are merely speculating, yet why avoid tourist income? Well, the Canadian Star had reported on a similar issue in March 2015, here we see the following quote: “United States Customs and Border Protection refused to comment on the Al-Rawi incident, but said travellers are responsible for proving their innocence“, so a tourist is regarded as guilty until proven innocent? How does that relate to the Law that is unless the Supreme Court states that presumption of innocence does not apply to tourists and Muslims and that should be a barrel of fun for everyone all over!

From my side, I always tend to keep an open mind, but here I have too many questions. refusal means flags, flags means data, that data should be shared with British Security services, if not, then why are we allies with America? Because they are so powerful? They remain utterly bankrupt in my eyes, the fact that they buckled a few times and the fact that the press is now looking at Russia as the possible salvation for the Syrian situation should be ample signs that America has outlasted their power base. The fact that the Canadian example involves a physician from Toronto General Hospital gives way to even more questions as this was not some plumber with a small business, it was a doctor with a position and a solid foundation for the future of his family, the idea that he wants to throw that away for an uncertain live in a nation now ruled by bigotry is not really that reliable a source, is it? I would choose live in any town in Canada over any city in the US any day of the week, but that’s just me!

Havelock Ellis: The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum

“The MP, having “hit a brick wall” in her own attempts to get answers from the American embassy, has asked the prime minister to press US officials for an explanation for the Mahmood family’s exclusion“, which is interesting, the fact that an elected official is not receiving any answers leans towards the fact that the issue is not founded and that the lack of foundation implies unreliable data.

You see, an individual might not get an answer, an elected official (in this case Labour MP Stella Creasy, would have had access to a higher echelon of staff, meaning the answer ‘security flag’ could have been received. It will then be up to the British Security Services to resolve this (or investigate this). At which point the mere notice “We apologise, yet information has been obtained that regards you and your family a possible risk“. Now that might not be nice to hear, but that also means there is something to work from. As British Security Services are on average 300% more efficient than the US alphabet teams, more info would have been begotten. In my mind the question now becomes, if US data is unreliable, how come, who has been filling up that part of the system? The old ‘Garbage in Garbage out’ applies, even to today’s systems (even a little more when you see some of the assumptionary techniques Palantir Government allows to use). That last part needs a little explanation, actually Palantir has a good handle on it. You should read ‘THE POKÉMON PROBLEM: A NEW ANTI-PATTERN‘ (at https://www.palantir.com/2009/03/the-pokemon-problem/). As I see it (read: assumption), some analysts have been rehashing data, iteration upon iteration. So as such, some given elements will become the anchor while it should be nothing more than a passing event that is linked to an ACTUAL anchor. You see the article has ‘the’ solution with ‘the visitor pattern‘, yet consider, when someone makes these files, using temp files (as any analyst will do), now consider that those temp files are not properly managed and over a set of iterations that value was saved in the file for speed reasons. So the end of that article reads: “We now have easy re-factoring, no resource leaks, and have simplified calling code. And finally: there are no new bugs to be introduced by callers that aren’t sure how to use our resource. Looks like we caught ‘em all!”

True, there were no resource leaks, they were possibly written in a temporary variable by an analyst and not correctly wiped when needed. In this instance groups of people are wrongly classified, more irritating is that it could also clear people who should not have been. This solution is nothing more than an indication on how easily a mere flag can go wrong. The US manages bulk data on a massive scale on a daily basis, so one mistake is not an assumption, it is a guarantee, a system drained, stretched and under resourced is leaving a mark, now on people in different ways, a massive problem for the US government no matter how you slice it.

James L. Petigru: South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum

The quote “Mahmood said neither he nor his brother, Mohammad Zahid Mahmood, had ever been in trouble with the police. They have been told by the airline they were to travel with that the £9,000 cost of their flights, for which they had been saving for many months, will not be refunded” gives way to even more issues. Not only were they deprived of status, they are deprived of funds. At which point we could see either an immediate refund, or if not given an overhaul of the US tourist industry. You see, the US would be required to give mandatory answers before the flight is paid for, that means that any interest in travelling to the US must be met with clearance, so not the 25,000 travelers, no the 354,000 interested parties must be vetted, which means that the DHS would run out of resources almost instantly, implying that they become useless even before they are needed. In addition, it also seems that they have a brother in Southern California. Perhaps there is an issue with data there (too)?

So how does this sit with the Prime Minister?

A Downing Street spokeswoman said Cameron would consider the issues raised in Creasy’s letter and respond in due course, which is of course fair enough, immediate response would not possible without all the facts and the US Embassy does not seem to be given any.

From the view I have, I don’t have one perse! You see data is at the core of this, but beyond the core there is the policy and the policy in play has been broken for some time now, the issue is that even in a broken policy, or should I say especially in a broken policy things will go wrong and the wrong people are labelled, it happens and for this family that is unfortunate, yet in all this the equal stress is that those who should be labelled are not, because that is a reality the US might not be properly investigating, mainly because it can’t, the data could realistically have become that cross contaminated.

How much value should you hold to my view?

Oscar Levant: There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line

My knowledge of data got me partially here, my knowledge/experience part of that way, you see on one side you do not go lightly with such rejections, not even the US, so we should expect smoke, but the two examples shows clear questionable issues and I do not believe that this is only two instances, the real amount will be much larger, especially when we consider the UK, Canada, France and a few others. So how to use a data system where the data is no longer reliable? Because that is the question that is currently in question. If it turns out to be mere policy than the US will be in more problem than they realise because discrimination of that magnitude will not go unanswered for long.

So can this still be a mere security issue?

Yes, that remains possible but in that case another response should have been voiced by more than one party, no matter what, the cancellation of funds in excess of £9,000 will be another topic still, because the cancellation was not due to any fault of the travelling party, which is an issue the UK Watchdog should address and they should address it very soon.

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Tagged as Al-Rawi, British Security Services, Canadian Star, David Cameron, Friedrich Nietzsche, Havelock Ellis, James L. Petigru, Mohammad Zahid Mahmood, Oscar Levant, Palantir, Stella Creasy, Stella Creasy MP, the Guardian, Toronto General Hospital, UK Watchdog, Walthamstow

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