Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems or any other entity or phenomenon vulnerable to unwanted change. Security mostly refers to protection from hostile forces, but it has a wide range of other senses: for example, as the absence of harm (e.g. freedom from want); as the presence of an essential good (e.g. food security); as resilience against potential damage or harm (e.g. secure foundations); as secrecy (e.g. a secure telephone line); as containment (e.g. a secure room or cell); and as a state of mind (e.g. emotional security).
Back when I started writing this blog, hacking was something that was done against ‘the man’, usually as a political statement. Now breaches are part of organised crime’s day to day operations. The Chinese government so thoroughly hacked Nortel that all its intellectual property was stolen along with commercial secrets like bids and client lists. The result was the firm went bankrupt. Russian ransomware shuts down hospitals across Ireland. North Korean government sanctioned hackers robbed 50 million dollars from the central bank of Bangladesh and laundered it in association with Chinese organised crime.
Now it has spilled into the real world with Chinese covert actions, Russian contractors in the developing world and hybrid warfare being waged across central Europe and the middle east.
Korean American security researcher Brian Pak looked at Clubhouse and some of the findings were very interesting. Pak posted a full analysis in Korean here. The key takeouts for me where:
Some (probably early adopter) Koreans have been buying used iPhones so that they can try Clubhouse, since the app is currently iOS only.
The concept of an audio chat app that isn’t new. Pak identified Clubhouse’s key strength as having an intuitive UI/UX and a large number of participants from various backgrounds.
I found it interesting that Pak felt there might be technical difficulties in having Clubhouse for desktop (macOS / Windows) or Android. I suspect that the reason was more about managing the scaling of the app.
Clubhouse is a closer to a mashup than a ‘real app’. It’s voice functions are based on Agora, a Chinese provider. Most of the rest of the features are using the Pubnub communications service platform. The way protocols have been handled was highlighted as a security risk. Stanford Internet Observatory got into this in more detail here.
I can also recommend this coverage about how Clubhouse usage has evolved in Hong Kong, China, Japan and Nigeria.
There was a major fall of snow in the US last week. It unfolded as a catastrophe across Texas. NBC’s New York affiliate set up a live stream at New York’s Time Square. It is amazing to zone out and watch. It could be considered to another entry in the slow TV genre pioneered by Norway’s public broadcaster NRK.
I watched Adam Curtis’ Can’t Get You Out Of My Head last week and wanted to track down some of the films in it. Here are some of them.
Bloodshed on Wolf Mountain was a film about opposition to the Japanese invasion of China. filmed during the pre-communist phase of China.
Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy is a Communist propaganda film describing how a communist infiltrated a bandit gang and helped the communists to destroy them. It was apparently based on an incident that happened during the Chinese civil war. Like the other Communist films featured here, it is extremely stylised using Peking opera techniques mixed with ballet.
A ‘slave’ girl on Hainan island runs away and joins a female group of communist soldiers who are fighting a local warlord in The Red Detachment Of Women. The film was made just prior to the cultural revolution at Shanghai Tian Ma studio.
https://youtu.be/zoPM9d18e9o
Finally The East Is Red is musical dramatising from the Chinese communist party perspective; the decline of the Qing dynasty through to the communist takeover.
The original film was produced in 1965, right before the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. The prologue seems to have been added after the ‘Gang of Four’ were put on trial. There is certainly a touch of the classic MGM musical to the production style, alongside Beijing opera and ballet.
Filipino brand Jollibee did a pandemic themed Valentine short films which was really clever. All of the films were made by local directors and are emblematic of the COVID-19 experience. Tonally it hits the right spot for the Philippines. What might seem to be too cute and emotional for UK audiences resonates well in that market. Thankfully, it isn’t the tear-jerking emotional rollercoaster that Thai ads can take you on.
I particularly like the second one because of the twist in the plot.
Jollibee’s overall approach on brand as media makes sense when you think about the nature of the Philippines media market and the good number of diaspora that they need to reach.
User domestication was an interesting phrase that I noticed in an essay about the growth of WhatsApp. In the essay the author highlighted a number of factors in WhatsApp’s success:
Having a proprietary messaging client that didn’t support industry standards for messaging such as the XMPP protocol supported by Google Talk. (Google later abandoned the XMPP open protocol itself in favour of its proprietary Google Hangouts).
WhatsApp had a low learning curve of adoption through to a well designed user experience.
The user experience of WhatsApp was easy to learn
WhatsApp worked across both Android and iOS devices which helped its adoption through network effects
This led to a number of things, which the author identified as user domestication factors:
A high level of user dependence on WhatsApp
No control over the software. (it can’t be modified, it prevents migration to another platform – a la Facebook and people’s address book)
Exploitation of ‘captive users’ who would find it difficult to resist
If all of this sounds familiar, its because it was the Facebook playbook from the get-go. Like organising export of your address book from Yahoo! to Facebook, but not the other way around.
Captured attention
The author makes clear that WhatsApp is just an illustrative example.
This probably explains why the essay doesn’t seem to match up with the WhatsApp story pre-Facebook. Founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum originally had a nominal subscription model. Acton went on to help set up the Signal Foundation, after leaving WhatsApp post Facebook takeover. His reason for leaving was concerns over the monetisation of WhatsApp by Facebook.
But I think that there can be little argument that Facebook thought of WhatsApp as a user domestication opportunity.
The relationship that the media industry has with consumers through the use of DRM (digital rights management) is a similar form of user domestication mentioned in his essay.
Another example of this ‘user domestication’ in action is the apparent failure of Google’s search choice screen to have any effect on its monopoly market share in Europe.
It differs from previous generations of technology lock-in exercised by the likes of Microsoft, IBM and Apple in that the costs of these obvious upfront. In user domestication, the costs are less apparent and the value extraction happens on an ongoing basis.
Signal has become a popular messaging clients among my contacts for privacy orientated messaging. I’ve shared this guide a number of times, so I thought I would share it here. More on Signal messaging here. I use Signal on my phone and my desktop computer, both of which are an integrated experience.
Innovation
FISCAL YEAR 2020 a great report by the UD Department of Defence – a U.S. business climate that has favored short-term shareholder earnings (versus long- term capital investment), deindustrialization, and an abstract, radical vision of “free trade,” without fair trade enforcement, have severely damaged America’s ability to arm itself today and in the future. Our national responses – off-shoring and out-sourcing – have been inadequate and ultimately self-defeating – punchy, but I don’t see much attention being paid to it (PDF)
Quad’ nations sign up for meta think-tank to advance ‘Techno-Democratic Statecraft’ • The Register – Universities and think tanks from Australia, the USA, Japan, and India have come together in a new group that together hopes to advance discussions on the intersection of information technology, regional security, and internet freedom. Dubbed the “Quad Tech Network”, the group is managed by the National Security College at The Australian National University, an organisation backed by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
China Blocks Clubhouse App After Brief Flowering of Debate – The New York Times – At times, the conversation went off the rails, as when one man who identified as Taiwanese chimed in to curse out mainland Chinese people, before quickly signing off. But for the most part, users said that the app’s use of moderators and real-time voice sharing promoted a civility and intimacy lacking on other popular social media platforms like Twitter and its Chinese equivalent, Weibo. – interesting given its reputation for racism and sexism
PRWeek poll: A third of PR businesses predict Brexit revenue hit | PR Week – “First, whereas previously the UK would always be the gateway for new entrants to the European market, we’re now seeing Germany emerge on par as the primary entry point. Historically, Germany would almost always be the secondary priority after the UK, then followed by France, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. “Second, we’ve seen clients proactively ask to have multinational teams lead their account in Europe, as opposed to the traditional approach of having a UK-led European approach. In our mind, this is because the UK no longer has the same authority to lead. “This is one of the softer impacts of Brexit in terms of the UK’s perceived influence and leadership in the region.” Mark Pinsent, managing director of The Hoffman Agency Europe, has also noticed a trend for UK-based clients to “explicitly tell us that they’re keen to be positioned as European companies rather than UK”. “That can be tricky if they’re headquartered in the UK [or] don’t have a significant presence on mainland Europe,” he said. “It’ll be interesting to see whether, over time, the UK becomes less of a priority market for international businesses looking to market in Europe… certainly for UK-founded start-ups, I could see it accelerating their need to have EU-based businesses.” – the psychology of the UK’s diminished image is fascinating
New Balance wins $3.9m in damages from China logo copycats | Financial Times – The two defendants, Fujian-based footwear maker New Barlun and its distributor Shanghai Shiyi Trade, have expanded quickly in China’s smaller cities and sold knock off shoes at below half the price of New Balance. – Damages are still pretty low, only 2.5m pounds or so
I haven’t driven a BMW in well over 20 years, so Doug DeMuro’ update on the BMW brand was fascinating.
BMW Twitter account
The BMW brand issue hadn’t been on my radar until Doug DeMuro talked about it. A number of things seem to be happening with BMW.
The company’s customer base is predominantly gen-x and baby boomers; because their cars are expensive. For decade these people have been told that the BMW brand represents the ultimate driving machine.
An important part of the visual BMW brand: the design language that it is implementing on is problematic. In particular the ugly ‘beaver teeth grill. This is ironic given that an electric car doesn’t need a grill for its engine.
It didn’t help things that from a certain angle the rear of the BMW iX has a resemblance to the Nissan Juke.
Nissan Juke 1.6 Advance 2017 by RLGNZLZ
It has at least an internal perception that it has lost its BMW brand mojo as there is a slow steady move away from the internal combustion engine.
If you look at other YouTube automotive channels, BMW seems to be having reliability issues with its current cars and the repairs are expensive to do. Back in the early 1970s the BMW brand was tarnished with negative perceptions about the cars being rust buckets and the company managed to lick that. The current engineering problems sound more complex.
All of this makes the BMW brand sound more difficult to fix than being on the socials and being up to date with their yoofspeak.
Canada concerned as Hong Kong starts to force dual citizens to choose status – The Globe and Mail – individuals who declare themselves Canadian could now lose their residency rights to live in Hong Kong.“It’s the beginning of the end for people in Hong Kong with Canadian status,” said Vancouver immigration lawyer Richard Kurland. The policy on dual citizenship stems from a 1980 law in mainland China that was then applied to Hong Kong when the United Kingdom handed over the city to Beijing in 1997. “The law was on the books for years but it wasn’t always enforced,” Mr. Kurland said. – interesting move
The Longer Telegram: Toward a new American China strategy – Atlantic Council – single most important challenge facing the United States and the democratic world in the twenty-first century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian and aggressive China under Xi Jinping. China has long had an integrated, operational strategy for dealing with the United States. The United States has so far had no such strategy with regard to China. This is a dereliction of national responsibility – interesting read. Right on with its diagnostics, but off base with its proposed solution. The west thought that Xi was a moderate when he came into power. He has extended his loyalists in every aspect of the party. The Jiang Zemin faction of the party, which would be an alternative aren’t liberal; they used the army to put down student protests in 1989.
Commission chief tells charities not to be ‘captured’ for politics | Charities | The Guardian – Charities that support politically or culturally contentious causes should expect their charitable status to come under regulatory scrutiny even if they are acting within the law, according to the outgoing chair of the Charity Commission. The Tory peer Tina Stowell, who is stepping down after three years in the post, warned charities against being “captured” by unnamed people who wish to push a partial view of the world and use charity platforms to wage war on “political enemies”. – this is going to be interesting
Looking downstream – Tortoise – as a long time netizen I am less certain that regulating platforms for content will work and worry about the precedent it would set for authoritarian regimes. Should OTT platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ or Amazon Prime carry news? Here my first question is how do you define news? Should they do real time news reporting, probably not even if they could. Should they do current affairs analysis – they already do if you look at the kind of documentaries that they have. I think that there should be real questions about those documentaries in terms of quality and bias? While we’re on about documentary making, surely the BBC could be doing more work with Adam Curtis or Bellingcat and have those people training the documentary film makers of tomorrow
Liu Yifei Announced as Face of Louis Vuitton China | Radii China – LVMH betting on woke western liberals not being their customer base and choosing polarising star. It also shows how far Fan Bingbing’s star has fallen since her tax troubles. Crystal Liu was the protagonist in the car crash live action version of Mulan. She’s also not as beautiful as Fan Bingbing
How Europe Became a Model for the 21st Century – DER SPIEGEL – Despite its long list of crises in recent years – including the most recent vaccine snafu – the European Union has become a global pacesetter. Its laws and regulations have established global norms. This has made the bloc a 21st century model. – I agree with the direction of this article, even if some of the examples could be debated
Silicon Valley’s iron grip on venture capital is slipping — Quartz – the shift to smaller tech hubs that’s been going on for years is set to move even faster, according to Stanford. “The pandemic has thrust the VC ecosystem into new territory where Zoom meetings and alternative deal sourcing methods reign supreme,” he wrote in an analyst note. “This shift has, at least somewhat, leveled the playing field for investor attention…Over Zoom, it doesn’t matter if the company is in the same building, city, state, or country.” – no credit given for the dissipation technology start-ups to places like Singapore and Shenzhen. For instance, social darling Clubhouse is based on Chinese voice technology. But there’s also a bigger issue about the decline in hard innovation which is easier to do in a tight cluster. Since its no longer happening, the cluster makes less sense. More on innovation here.
Bases for Trust in a Supply Chain – Lawfare – With a supply chain attack, there is a potentially long delay between the introduction of a vulnerability and its exploitation. In addition, infiltrating a supplier generally requires a well-resourced adversary and interaction with that supplier. So compared to the alternatives, preparations for a supply chain attack take longer and have a higher risk of discovery. The risks of discovery can be reduced, however, if inserted vulnerabilities resemble ordinary flaws and, thus, the malicious intent is disguised. The digital systems on which individuals and nations increasingly depend are large and complex, so today they are likely to be rife with vulnerabilities. Many of those vulnerabilities will be known, some unpatched, and others easily discovered by analysis. In short, such systems are easy to compromise.
Russian hack brings changes, uncertainty to US court system – new rules for filing sensitive documents are one of the clearest ways the hack has affected the court system. But the full impact remains unknown. Hackers probably gained access to the vast trove of confidential information hidden in sealed documents, including trade secrets, espionage targets, whistleblower reports and arrest warrants. It could take years to learn what information was obtained and what hackers are doing with it – you can’t hack paper
Massive Brazilian Data Breach – Schneier on Security – some 220 million people affected in the Brazilian data breach. So it is one of the biggest data breaches to date. I do wonder why the Brazilian data breach has not a lot of coverage outside of Portuguese language media? More related content here.
Why Ericsson took on its own government to defend rival Huawei | Financial Times – China’s support of Huawei, through cheap funding and much else, is well known, and has led to a commercial advantage that Ericsson and Nokia can find hard to counter on their own. Will Europe, for which 5G is a rare technological sector where it enjoys a clear lead over the US, stand up for its homegrown talent?
Should Universities Try to Capture More Value from Their Research? – Knowledge@Wharton – university research has produced pathbreaking innovations across many disciplines, many of which have been commercialized successfully. Yet, on average, universities capture 16% of the value they help create through licensing revenues or equity stakes in the startups their research spawns. Furthermore, some researchers and universities are much better able to commercialize their discoveries compared to others, even holding constant the discovery itself
How China’s delivery apps are putting riders at risk | Financial Times – in legal disputes, a high level of management by the platform can be taken as evidence that it has a labour relationship with the driver. In 2018, a Shansong courier who had been injured while driving won a court ruling on this basis. One might place some of the responsibility on the engineers who maintain the apps. But they too are victims of labour exploitation, working the infamous “996” shift of 9am-9pm, six days a week. Like delivery drivers, they have decided such an occupation is, so far, their best option. But a country that prides itself on its tech innovation and its booming economy should be able to provide better choices
