Author: Andrea Monti

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Apple’s New Security Policy: Just a PR Stunt?

Apple announced not to be able anymore to hack into IOS8-based devices because of its “privacy-by-design” development strategy. Thank to this choice, according to Tim Cook, quoted by The Washington Post,

it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8.

Since the fantasy of both lawyers and judges knows no limit, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear, in the next future, about some claim for “contributory criminal activity” filed against Apple based on the deliberate choice of giving “unbreakable weapons” to terrorist, paedophiles and copyright infringers.

When this scenario will become real, it will be interesting to see whether Apple remains stuck into his “libertarian” position risking a trial for contempt of the court, or negotiates over its users with the powers-that-be.

Then, and only then, we will be able to check if this “privacy commitment” was a genuine attitude or just the next marketing trick.

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Does SHA-7 belong to the US NSA?

As everybody knows, the SHA-n is a series of cryptographic algorithm developed by the NSA and published by the US NIST. The current SHA-n lineup includes SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512.

On the contrary, SHA-7 (see this link – italian only, sorry), a “proprietary, patented encryption algorythm” developed by an Italian company doesn’t belong to the original “family”. And doesn’t have any endorsement by the scientific community.

I wonder why SHA-7 designers have choses this confusing name for their code.

 

 

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Google and Germany’s Ministry of Justice: A Wrong Idea of Dominant Position

The Germany’s Ministry of Justice asked Google to disclose its search algorithm because of the Mountain View company dominant position on the relevant market.

The request is not legitimate at least for two main reasons.

First: Google’s current “market position” is not based on a “users’ lock-in” as in the file-format case (for longtime, not being able to open a .doc file has been an effective method to have the users stuck to Microsoft Word). Everybody is free to use whatever search engine of choice. Yes, because Google is not the only kid in town: Yahoo!, Bing, DuckduckGo are in the same business, but steps behind Google. Sure, Google is THE search engine, as Altavista was a few years ago. But who but (some) historians still remember about the Google’s predecessor? And here comes the point: Google’s success is made by the people who use it: give them a better search engine (and additional features) and Google will fall on a fingers’ snap. This is the last iteration of a wrong concept of “dominant position” and “monopoly” when matched with a successful digital business model based on information as quid-pro-quo for providing (partially) free services.

Second: even if the “dominant position doctrine” were relevant to this case, the German solution would be possibly worst than the disease to be cured, because it would set the precedent that a company, for the sake of the “free market”, should be forced to disclose its industrial and trade secrets. Try to tell this to the pharmas or the automotive manufacturers and wait for the answers!

So the bottom line is: If you want to beat Google, instead of tying its hands, do create a better one.

 

 

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The Government Censorship Machine Ready to Start?

Laura Boldrini, the leftwinger president of Italian Low Chamber (Camera dei deputati) has endorsed the settlement of a commission “for the Internet-related duty and rights”.

This commission is the tragical… sorry I meant “logical”, consequence of the dangerous “Internet Bill of Rights” campaign.

Given Boldrini’s attitude toward the Internet, ? I do hope that this commission wouldn’t turn into a trojan-horse ? to bash enterprise and individual rights.

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Net-Threats: How To Lie With Statistics, Again

Another example of how a non-statistical-based research is turned by poorly informed journalists into “scientific truth”. Net-Threats is a survey collecting the opinions of a certain number of “experts”: as its authors clearly state:

Since the data are based on a non-random sample, the results are not projectable to any population other than the individuals expressing their points of view in this sample. The respondents’ remarks reflect their personal positions and are not the positions of their employers; the descriptions of their leadership roles help identify their background and the locus of their expertise.

But this part of the survey – that nobody but the concerned people will ever read – is missed in the ? poor journalistic account of the news and the readers will be given the wrong idea that the figures quoted are for real and that the findings are “true”.

By the way, as in the other “statistical” research about the value of personal data, I’ve written about, the findings of this survey might even be acceptable. But there is no need to beef it up with figures and percentage show off that give the general reader a wrong information.

But in this case, the culprit is the journalist.