Praetorian Prefect » Technology in Society

Zuckerburg Apologizes for Facebook Privacy Changes

Prefect — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:32:39 +0000

A video recently went up where Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the time to apologize to Facebook’s users for the multiple recent confusing and “open by default” changes to Facebook’s privacy settings.

I feel better now.

Related Posts:

Give this Man a Haircut and Support a Worthwhile Cause

Prefect — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:52:43 +0000

Gal Shpantzer, friend of the blog, fellow blogger, and a writer for CSO Online asked us to bring some attention to a worthy cause. As part of his talk at Security B-Sides Boston in Cambridge, MA, he will partake in certain unabashed activities for each monetary contribution threshold reached for Hackers for Charity.

If the total amount of money raised is $3,000 or more, he will shave his head into a Mohawk.

At the $5,000 level, he says he will wear a kilt. For this second one, we’re not sure how doing something he likes to do anyway is a personal challenge, but whatever.

The Specifics

To donate via PayPal, start at the following address: http://www.hackersforcharity.org/hackers-for-charity/get-involved/#Long_Journey.

When you receive a receipt from PayPal for the donation amount, please e-mail the relevant portions to: mohawk@security-twits.com. If the above thresholds are reached by April 24th, Gal Shpantzer will really need that hat he’s always pictured in wherever he goes.

About Hackers for Charity

Hackers for Charity is a non-profit organization created by Johnny Long. The overall goals of Hacking for Charity are listed as follows:

We feed children through our “food for work” program
We build computer labs to help students learn skills and land jobs that are key to disrupting poverty’s vicious cycle.
We provide technical assistance to charities that can not afford IT services.

The Jinja, Uganda community center.

A center was recently opened under the initiative in Jinja, Uganda in East Africa. The goal of the center is to provide hands on computer training to a community that will soon reap the benefits of high speed fiber lines such as the ones running from Mombasa. In order to realize job creation in these areas, people who have never before touched a computer require hands on experience, experience that can be gained using the free training resources and heavily discounted computer usage fees available at the new center.

You can read the rest of what is an interesting progression, see which firms have supported the training initiative, and even read the story of one condescending company that wouldn’t help here.

Johnny Long

Johnny Long is a security researcher best known for popularizing Google hacking, using search phrases in the popular search engine to identify vulnerable services on the Internet and for being as he’s described it, a “Christian hacker”. He’s published a book on the Google hacking techniques, and contributed to more than ten other works in information security literature.

Finally

We at Praetorian also think Gal should die the mohawk one color and the rest of his hair another.

Related Posts:

James Lipton says “Don’t tweet your junk”

Prefect — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:46:57 +0000

I’ve often referred to sanctimonious information technology people who say outlandish things at conferences or in news articles as “talking beards”. This is based on having the Dilbert cartoon below hanging in my cubicle for years. James Lipton’s role in new public service announcements (PSA’s) on texting (text messaging) for teenagers gives the concept a whole new meaning. The campaign “Before you text, give it a ponder”, which features videos with Lipton of Inside the Actors Studio loaning his trademark beard to teenagers so that its magical properties of forethought can be temporarily bestowed on them, effectively uses humor to combat the problems of sexting and cyber-bullying.

The fundamental idea of the campaign is that there is a demographic within teenagers and pre-teens that are “bystanders” in the negative behavior exhibited using mobile phones. This more passive (as it relates to negative mobile phone behaviors) group enables bad behavior through reactionary propagation of messages, but potentially would not if they briefly considered the downstream effect of their actions. LG Mobile Phones seeks to reach them with a social responsibility campaign relying on humor.

Here's a nickel kid...

A Broader Campaign

The campaign is another early part of a multi-year continued effort sponsored by LG Electronics MobileComm U.S.A., Inc. (LG Mobile Phones) and created by Young & Rubicam, Inc. (a marketing and communications company) to combat mobile phone misuse and risky behavior. After conducting focus group style interviews with teenagers, LG determined that an awareness initiative based on a heavy handed approach would be largely ineffective, and decided a campaign based on humorous takes of real life situations would resonate better with this audience.

Further they identified that opposed to the conventional wisdom that this behavior is in essence bullies seeking out weaker victims in the digital age, that the group actually most likely to engage in negative behavior is a demographic identified as “tabloid teens”. These are teenagers who are part of a social circle that trade in gossip as a form of social currency and are as a result both the highest level perpetrators and victims of negative mobile phone behavior. LG has instead focused the campaign on a demographic of teens who are bystanders, persons who are enabling the negative behaviors but only in a passive or reactionary way (those who spread messages but do not create or target them).

Quick Statistics

The Usage:

Today, approximately 79% of all teens (17 million) have a mobile device – a 36% increase since 2005.
Teens are a huge consumer market segment and spend more than $100 billion annually.
57% of teens view a cell phone as key to their social life. 80% say their cell phone provides a sense of security.
The average teen sends and receives 1,700 text messages a month. Across the country they’re sending 20,000 texts every second.

The Downside:

1 in 5 teens has received a naked picture on their mobile devices, referred to as sexting.
50% of youths said they’ve been the victim of some form of digital abuse.
22% of respondents indicated they’d been the target of lies spread through digital media.
8% of respondents indicated they’d been threatened with some form of digital blackmail.

The Video PSA’s

Locker Room

Angry

Catfight

Unicorn

What do we want?

The features teens most want according to the same CTIA survey? They want security that guarantees only they have access to their data on the phone. Good teenagers…

The expectations of teenagers...

Campaign Elements

LG has covered all their social media bases with this campaign:

PonderBeard on Twitter.

DTXTR

This part of the campaign follows the release earlier in the year of the DTXTR (DEE-text-ER) which translates the shorthand normally used in texting and instant messaging into English that the uninitiated (parents of teenagers ostensibly) can understand. As an example, the tool should allow MOS (Mom over shoulder) to better understand what she’s reading.

LG's DEE-text-ER

Finally

We commend LG Electronics not only for launching a campaign designed to address some of the risky behavior teenagers and tweens are engaging in, but for doing it in a thoughtful, creative, and somewhat risky way. This approach, employing multiple delivery mediums and using humor, is generally known to increase the effectiveness of awareness campaigns. The same concepts can be applied to security awareness campaigns within your own firm.

The campaign will likely get some flak for using terms like “junk”, appearing at first glance flippant about the issues of sexting and cyber-bullying, and for being somewhat uncompromising in their approach (no sugarcoating). For that LG is exercising some level of corporate courage, for being more concerned about the effectiveness of the campaign than potential criticisms thereof, and we hope they continue to stay with it.

References

Related Posts:

LoJack for children

Prefect — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:20:31 +0000

Available for $99.99 is the ability to track the location of your children, or anyone else, using a combination of GPS and cellular technology. It is ostensibly the LoJack for kids.

You can even set up safety checks to ensure your child is within a certain zone during certain times. We’ll let the product pitch explain it:

“Keep tabs on your child at all times with this small but sophisticated device that combines GPS and cellular technology to provide you with real-time location updates. The small and lightweight Little Buddy transmitter fits easily into a backpack, lunchbox or other receptacle, making it easy for your child to carry so you can check his or her location at any time using a smartphone or computer. Customizable safety checks allow you to establish specific times and locations where your child is supposed to be — for example, in school — causing the device to alert you with a text message if your child leaves the designated area during that time.”
Source: Best Buy

“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
H.L. Mencken

Insignia's Little Buddy Child Tracker

Here is a writeup of a similar type of product:

“House-arrest monitoring is achieved through the usage of an ankle bracelet. The bracelet is attached to the prisoner’s ankle at the commencement of the sentence and remains throughout the duration of the time served. The bracelet contains an electronic signal, similar to a geographic positioning system, which tracks the whereabouts of the wearer. In the event the convicted person travels outside of the confinement area, the bracelet automatically will send a signal to the police department.”
Source: http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5129741_house-arrest-ankle-bracelet-work.html

Make sure Jenny does not leave the safety zone you have setup.

What is kind of bizarre is that the majority of customer reviews seem to acknowledge the Orwellian overtones of this product, and go on to suggest that this device would be good for keeping track of your car. Example: “Instead of criticizing this device as big brotherish, as many sites have, people should think outside the box. What about putting it under your car seat. Someone steals your car, then track its location.” I think that’s what the actual LoJack is for, although this product may be cheaper as LoJack seems to start at more then $300. Regardless, tracking your car is not how this product is being marketed.

One customer points out that kids lose bags, and the device could easily be removed or misplaced. This is a good point, if only there were a way the tracked subject could not remove the tracking device. Perhaps some manner of implanted transmitter would work better?

People will invariably argue that this is better than a kidnapping, citing the immediately obvious worst case scenario. In single cases it definitely is a good risk trade off, most would readily trade a child’s loss of privacy for getting a child returned. That is an easy risk assessment.

But what about on scale? Do you remove the freedom of movement of thousands of children, the ability to not be tracked, for what will statistically be a low number of kidnapping cases (something like 2 out of 1,000 kids are abducted by non-family members) that would justify such tracking? Put another way, based on the actual probability of when this tracking would be useful, combined with the serious threat of kidnapping, does the overall risk justify trading in one’s child’s freedom of movement as well as nominally the cost of the device and the time spent monitoring it? Parents will have to do the risk assessment for themselves.

The whole thing makes you wonder how your freedom of movement will be taken away. These types of changes usually follow a pattern: first it comes under the guise of security, when it starts it allows you to opt in, and it always begins by infringing on the rights of those who are least able to defend themselves: like children.

References:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Insignia+-+Little+Buddy+Child+Tracker+(Blue)/9540703.p?skuId=9540703&productCategoryId=pcmcat193100050013&id=1218123143064

Related Posts:

Yahoo! and the Objectification of Women

Prefect — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:18:35 +0000

During Yahoo!’s Hack Days, developers create web applications relying on Yahoo’s APIs (application program interface) or open source libraries. Initially started as an internal Yahoo event in 2005 by the then CTO Chad Dickerson, Hack Days for the public are also scheduled with the first one appearing in 2006 at the company headquarters in Sunnyvale California. The event typically involves scheduled talks along with hacking time, demo sessions, and prizes for the top hacks. This year’s event on October 17th in Taiwan added a somewhat controversial aspect to the gathering, the objectification of women.

In addition to the winning entry, Location Plus, which shows hot topics by location in Taiwan, this years event featured what appear to be lap dances by scantily clad ‘hack girls’. The ‘hack girls’ actually aren’t new, they featured in the 2008 event also, but this year brought more risque pictures and more of a backlash.

In its initial positive coverage, Yahoo! Developer Network provides references to this aspect of the event as follows: The evening entertainment (Hack Girls) was an interesting contrast to Girltalk at Sunnyvale Open Hack Day the weekend before.

But after sharp negative public reaction on Monday, Chris Yeah the Head of Yahoo Developer Network issued this statement:

All, 

I wanted to acknowledge the public reaction generated by the images of female dancers at our Taiwan Open
Hack Day this past weekend. Our hack events are designed to give developers an opportunity to learn about
our APIs and technologies. As many folks have rightly pointed out, the “Hack Girls” aspect of our Taiwan 
Hack Day is not reflective of that spirit or purpose. And it’s certainly not the message we want to send 
about our values here at Yahoo!. Hack Days are about making everyone feel welcome, including women 
coders and technologists. 

This incident is regrettable and we apologize to anyone that we have offended. Rest assured, it won’t 
happen again. 

Best,
Chris Yeh
Head of YDN
twitter: @ydn
email: cyeh at yahoo-inc dot com
Posted at October 19, 2009 5:20 PM

Source: Sorry

Women in Technology

As Chris Yeh noted, the Hack Days event in spirit is about making everyone including women technologists welcome. The photos released from this event come at a bad time as the industry and companies like Yahoo struggle to recruit young women into technology roles. As many on Twitter noted, this controversy does little to promote women in technology and reinforces negative views that technology career paths are difficult for women. As the chart from the NY Times below shows, the number of women entering the technology field has been in a slow decline since the 1970’s, a negative harbinger for productive capacity in information technology.

Alarming Trends

The widening gap of prospective computer scientists

Some statistics:

Women account for 46% of the labor force, but hold only 22% of science jobs (National Science Foundation).
Women make up 5% of computer programmers, 10% of systems analysts, and lead only 6% of high technology companies.
In 1984, women made up 37% of computer science graduates, by 1995 this number fell to 28.4% (National Center for Education Statistics). By 2005 it was 22% (NY Times).
Only 17% of the takers of the AP Computer Science examination in high schools are female (American Association of University Women).
The AAUW in a 1998 report states that stereotypes of appropriate careers for girls, a lack of female role models, and the absences of career information is responsible for the low level of interest in technology related careers.

The Big Upside – Women in Technology

One does not have to look far for major technology companies that benefited from having women founders or co-founders. A very short sample as example:

Cisco: Sandra Lerner
Mozilla: Mitchell Baker
Flickr: Caterina Fake
Slideshare: Rashmi Sinha
Sunlight Foundation: Ellen Miller
Huffington Post: Arianna Huffington

Information security has its share of prominent women innovators as well:

Dorothy Denning, author of four books including Information Warefare and Security
Mary Ann Davidson, Chief Security Officer, Oracle
Susan Hansche, author of The Official (ISC)2 Guide to the CISSP Exam
Shon Harris, author of two CISSP books, former instructor in the Air Force Information Warfare unit

…and many more. Finally we would be remiss if we didn’t mention Yahoo’s own CEO: Carol Bartz.

Past Events

Ironically, until now, Yahoo’s Hack Day event had been known for providing visibility for women in technology:

Women are present and in droves. On a trip out to an internal Yahoo! Hack Day about a year ago, I was surprised to enter the final presentation room and find that over one third of the presenters were female. Not only were there a surprising number of females presenting, the winning team also happened to be made up of two females. The winning hack was the ability to transfer your Yahoo! Travel data to your iPod for easy portability…”Where are all of those awesome hacker women I witnessed at Yahoo! Hack Day?”
Hunt, 2007.

A False Argument

Some have made the argument that this is simply a cultural difference. We’re not sure we agree, woman’s rights movements in Taiwan appear to have similar values as those in the west albeit with a regionally specific approach: Selling a Feminist Agenda on a Conservative Market–The Awakening Experience in Taiwan. Further, a company such as Yahoo!, founded and headquartered in the United States, must consider how its corporate actions abroad reflect on the firm here at home.

A second point is put forth in many comments suggesting that this is simply America exporting its values abroad inappropriately in condemning an activity happening in Taiwan that is normal in Taiwan. So assuming that this is culturally acceptable in Taiwan, what is the issue? Well, let’s follow some thought experiments/examples:

Would it be wrong of a citizen of Canada to object to Canadian mining companies in Guatemala manipulating the country’s political structure? How about U.S. citizen’s objection to the American United Fruit Company’s interference? Instability was the norm in the politics of the time regardless, can these company’s actions, or their influence on government actions, be condemned at home?
Would a citizen in an Arabic country be wrong to object to an Arabic garment company that has a U.S. office that sells T-shirts picturing Islamic religious leaders? But depicting Jesus, Moses, whomever will produce little reaction from an American, why should an Arabic citizen get to object?
Can a U.S. citizen object to Union Carbide’s handling of the industrial disaster in Bhopal, India? The disaster happened in 1984, India only addressed it legally after the fact in 1985 with the Bhopal Gas Leak Act. So it wasn’t necessarily illegal in India, a number of companies operate unsafely in India, and it didn’t happen in the U.S.. Can U.S. citizens still object to the company’s actions?
Can citizens of every tier one economic country in the world object to companies that import goods made through child labor or related worker exploitation in China? Workers lack of rights there making exploitation normative, can European, Japanese, or American citizens openly object to countries incorporated within their borders taking advantage of this exploitation for cheaper goods?

We’ll ignore that near free speech is a fundamental philosophical value shared the world over for a moment whether a country’s citizens are actually able to practice it or not. In these above cases, a plurality of people would think that whether or not they agree with the point of view of the home country on what’s acceptable versus not acceptable, they would respect the rights of the company’s home country’s citizens to object to corporate behavior abroad that would not be acceptable at home. Further they would realize that whether they respect the views of the citizens of the corporations home country or not, the company must take into account those views. Why? Because the company found its original success in its home market, hires workers from that country, sells its products there, and must operate within the law, social morays, and politics of that country.

Don’t get hung up on the examples above, we’re not here to make some grand political statement on any of them and there are those of you who understand each better then we do, just see if you agree with one. If you don’t, consider whether you believe you have the right to criticize the actions of a company headquartered in your country if they did do something you don’t agree with abroad, and conceive of your own example.

Don’t confuse these examples with the Yahoo Taiwan case, no point about relative severity is being made here one way or the other. The point is that whatever the norm in the country where the controversial corporate action took place, the home country’s citizens can reasonably object to those actions as inappropriate when the company is from that home country.

Others have suggested that Yahoo cannot be responsible for the actions of its subsidiary, that likely no one in the U.S. had anything to do with this. Only Yahoo can comment on who approved what, but sufficed to say Yahoo is responsible for its global brand and how it is perceived in all the countries in which it goes business, especially in the country where it is headquartered.

In that sense, whatever Yahoo slaps its brand on around the world it takes responsibility for. A U.S. company can operate in Taiwan in a way that would be acceptable to a majority of people in Taiwan, and yet still face criticism in the United States for the actions of a subsidiary or division in Taiwan. You may not care, but Yahoo does, because it must operate in the U.S. market, hire U.S. workers including women, trade on U.S. stock exchanges, and market its services to women to be successful.

Reactions:

In the age of Twitter, its not hard to measure people’s general reaction:

Robert Scoble: “This is NOT cool Yahoo! Someone should be fired for this…”
@iamdanw: “…there seems to be a slight gender imbalance at hackdays. I don’t think lap dancers are going to help that.”
@anna_debenham “I hope there were some nice male dancers at Taiwan's Yahoo Hack Day but somehow I doubt it.”
@simonw: “Yahoo! Hack Day Taiwan had lap dancers!? That’s SO not cool – way to alienate 50%+ of the population”
@estellevw: “Are the only women at Yahoo’s Open Hack Day in Taiwan scantily clad lap dancers? How offensive and degrading. Shame on you @yahoo.”

We mentioned Caterina (@Caterina), co-founder of Flickr, earlier in the article, here is what she had to say: “@Yahoo, for shame : I’m frankly disgusted.”

And you remember from the beginning of the article we mentioned Chad Dickerson (@chaddickerson), here’s what he tweeted: “i am so disappointed: http://flic.kr/p/78btX1. remember, a team of women delivered the winning hack at the 1st one”

Finally

Yahoo has not yet come to grips with the impact of the images of this event, the apology was a good but incomplete first step. The apology did not go far enough, an apology ‘if you were offended’ does not fully acknowledge that there is a problem. More needs to be done, and this includes being transparent about the actions that will allow all to “rest assured that this won’t happen again”. This kind of thing can happen to any company, the culture of that company is best revealed in the effectiveness and timeliness of its response to controversy.

Updates

Based on analysis/research provided by xiaoma, we’re removing the statistic on wage disparity between the genders, as it does not appear to hold up to scrutiny or at the very least is effectively debated/contested to the level where it is no longer reliable.

References

Related Posts: