Category: Computer Crimes

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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.

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A Homicide Investigation And The (Still Alive) Data Retention Regulation

The young girl homicide investigation I’ve talked about in a previous post reveals other interesting information, this time about the Telcos’s role in supporting the public prosecution service through the traffic data retention.

The media are reporting (italian only, sorry) that more than 120.000 single mobile calls are under scrutiny spanning from a few months before the kill. But since the fact is more than three years’old, these data aren’t even supposed to exist since the Data Retention Directive forbade its preservation once the (maximum) two-years term expired.

So, hopefully for the justice and the family of the poor girl, at the beginning of the investigation the public prosecutor, as required by law, did issue a traffic data “freezing” order or, better, seized it as dictated by the Italian Criminal Rule of Evidence.

As in the case of the DNA-based evidence, the collection of traffic data without complying the Rule of Evidence might allow the defense lawyers to challenge the reliability of these information especially because the original traffic data have (or should have been) destroyed once collected by the public prosecution service, thus preventing the possibility of double-checking during the trial their actual evidence “weight”.

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Lone Wolf Terrorism and Open Source Intelligence

Tomorrow I shall give a talk about Open Source Intelligence and Lone Wolf Terrorism at the “Terrorism and Crime” ? international conference hosted by the University of Chieti.

It will be a chance to debunk the next “national security excuse” invoked to increase mass surveillance and social control for the sake of our “safety”.

Here is the full programme

International Conference on “Terrorism and Crime”

Dedicated to the memory of Prof. Enrico Todisco

University “G. d’Annunzio”, Viale Pindaro 42, Pescara

THURSDAY, JUNE 19 – 2014

Room “Paolo V”

O9 :00-09: 20 – Welcome and greetings

O9: 20 – 11:00 – “Lone Wolf Terrorism“

Chair: Yair Sharan

(09:20 – 09:40) Yair Sharan (General Director of the EPI/ first group – Israel)

History of LW terrorism

(09:40 – 10:00) Theodore J.Gordon (co-founder, The Millennium Project):

The Possible Evolution of Lone Wolf Terrorism; an RTD Study

(10:00 – 10:20) Yair Sharan (General Director of the EPI/ first group – Israel)

Prospects for Bio- terrorism

(10:20 – 10:40) Elizabeth Florescu (Director of Research, The Millennium Project)

Lone Wolf Profiling and Social Implications

Discussion

11:00 – 11:30 – Coffee Break

11:30 – 13:30 – Terrorism: Contrast and future prevention

Chair: Arije Antinori Discussant: Gianmarco Cifaldi

(11:30 – 11:50) – Arije Antinori (Sapienza University)

The evolution of the LWT through the web

(11:50 – 12:10) – Salvatore Rapuano (Comando GDF Regione Molise)

The security at airports: prospects and scenarios

(12:10 – 12:30) – Gianmarco Cifaldi – Tatiana Yugay (Un. “G. d’Annunzio“, Moscow

State University) – Smart security versus Smart crime

(12:30 – 12:50) – Antonio Cilli (G. d’Annunzio University) – Computer crime and

terrorism

(12:50 – 13:10) – Marco Rosi (Ten. Col. C.C.) – New scenarios of Islamist terrorism:

the phenomenon of the italian homegrown and Foreign fighters

(13:10 – 13:30) – Andrea Monti(University of Milan) – Open Source Intelligence e

Big Data

Discussion

13:30 – 15:30 – Lunch

(15:30 – 16:00) lecture dedicated to the memory of Prof. Enrico Todisco

Prof. Raimondo Cagiano De Azevedo – (Sapienza University)

Live broadcast on: www.unich.it

16:00 – 19:00 – Round table on the future of terrorism

Organizer: Sergio Sorbino Gen C.A. (ris) CC – Moderator:Gianmarco Cifaldi

Participants:

– Arije Antinori (Sapienza Univ.) – Gianmarco Cifaldi (Univ. G. d’Annunzio) – Antonio Cilli (Univ. G. d’Annunzio) – Elizabeth Florescu (Millennium Project, World Federation of UN Associations) – Theodor J. Gordon (Millennium Project, “Edward Cornish Award” winner, Futurist of the Year 2010) – Salvatore Rapuano (GdF) – Marco Rosi (Ten. Col. CC) – Carlo Disma (Col. Rivista Italiana Difesa) – Aurelio Soldano (Ufficiale GdF) – Yair Sharan (Director General of EPI/FIRST) – Tatiana Yugay (Moscow ?State ?Univ.) – Augusta Marconi (Univ. G. d’Annunzio)

17:30 Coffè Break

FRIDAY, JUNE 20 – 2014

Room “Paolo V”

Sessions on “The Future Of Crime”

O9 :00-09: 15 – Welcome and greetings

09:15 – 10:50 – Crime and economic activity. Future trends

Chair: Tatiana Yugay – Discussants: Andrea Ziruolo

(09:15 – 09:30) – Gianmarco Cifaldi – Tatiana Yugay (University “G. d’Annunzio“,

Moscow State University) Deoffshorization of the Russian economy as a fight against economic crime

(09:30 – 09:45) – Augusta Consorti, Massimo Sargiacomo, Michela Venditti

(University “G. d’Annunzio) – Accounting for illegal activities organized

(09:45 – 10:00) – Andrea Ziruolo(University “G. d’Annunzio) – Bodies of Independent

Assessment of local authorities, by overseeing the performance to yet another bureaucratic structure

(10:00 – 10:15) – Fabizio Lisi (Guardia di Finanza)

Future Trends of economic crimeand perspectives of contrast

Discussion

10:30 – 10:45 – Coffee Break

10:45 – 12:00 – Organized Crime. Future Trends

Chair: Giammarco Cifaldi – Discussants: Arije Antinori

(10:45 – 11:00) – John Gale (Miami judge) – Intenational crime: case study

(11:00 – 11:15) – Franco Sivilli(University “G. d’Annunzio) – From digitization to

datizzatione: the phenomenon of the Big Data in the era of Cloud

Computing

(11:15 – 11:30) – Arije Antinori (University La Sapienza) – The integration of Osint,

Webint and Socint in the analysis of complex criminal phenomena

(11:30 – 11:45) – Gianmarco Cifaldi – Tatiana Yugay (University “G. d’Annunzio“,

Moscow State University) – Smart security versus Smart crime

(12:00 – 12:15) – Elisabetta Narciso (Dirigente Polizia Postale) – New criminal

phenomena in the web

(12:15 – 12:30) – Paolo Piccinelli (Col C.C.) – Micro-crime and prevention strategies Discussion

12:30 – 13:45 –Violence, crime and justice. Temporal and spatial Trends

Chair: Francesco D. d’Ovidio – Discussant: Elizabeth Florescu

(12:30 – 12:45) – Mara Maretti – Elizabeth Florescu ?(University “G. d’Annunzio,

Millennium Project) – Gender-based violence: a sociological reading of

past, present and future

(12:45 – 13:00) – Francesco D. d’Ovidio, Rossana Mancarella, Laura Antonucci

Spatial relationships between changes in crime and the efficiency of

riminal justice in recent years

(13:00 – 13:15) – Antonio Cilli(University “G. d’Annunzio) – Digital investigations

and crime mapping

(13:15 – 13:30) – Pasqualino Cipolla – Italo Cucci(University “G. d’Annunzio,

Journalist) – Violence in sport and criminal tendencies

(13:30 – 13:45) – Gianmarco Cifaldi (University “G. d’Annunzio) – Violence against

children: from virtual to real

Discussion and Interview to Italo Cucci – Live broadcast on: www.unich.it

14:00 – 15:30 – Lunch

15:30 – 16:00 – Theodore J. Gordon“Some Future Ethical Issues”

16:00 – 18:30 – Round table on future of crime

Organizer: Sergio Sorbino (Gen C.A. (Ris) CC) – Moderator: Antonio Cilli

Participants:

– Vincenzo D’Antuono (Prefect of Pescara) – Arije Antinori (Coordinator CRI.ME LAB, Rome University) – Filippo Barboso (Quaestor of Chieti) – Angelo Battisti (Sapienza University) – Giuseppe Falasca (Magistrate) – Giovanni Febo (Quaestor of Teramo) – Paolo Passamonti (Quaestor of Pescara) – Paolo Piccinelli (Col. CC) – Fabio Santone (V.Q.A. Polizia di stato) – Yair Sharan (Director General of EPI/FIRST – Israel) – Aurelio Soldano (Cap. GdF) – Armando Tartaro (Univ. G. d’Annunzio)

Conclusions

17:00 Coffè Break

SATURDAY, JUNE 21 – 2014

Room “Paolo V”

Seminars

(09:00 – 09:45) – Arije Antinori – 10 Years of Digihad. The Evolution of Global Digital

Jihadism

(09:45 – 10:00) – Debate

(10:00 – 10:45) – Yair Sharan – New Technologies and Their Implications

(10:45 – 11:00) – Debate

11:00 – 11:15 – Coffee Break

(11:15 – 12:00) – Theodore J. Gordon – New data sources and The Evolution of

Analysis

(12:00 – 12:15) – Debate

(12:15 – 12:45) – Antonio Pacinelli, Simone Di Zio

Conclusions, thanks and future opportunities

13:00 – Lunch

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The XP’s EOL. History Will Teach Us Nothing

Windows XP is dead in Redmond, but alive and kicking in a huge quantity of devices such ? ATMs. When the news hit the media, waves of “concerns” for the security of our money and safety stormed the public, with no actual effect on the Microsoft’s strategies. And history keeps repeating with domotics, wearable technologies and in-car systems.

This aftermath was easy to foresee when some “clever” IT manager chose to go proprietary when moving its ATM infrastructure “to the next step”, but between this and the open source alternative a third option would have spare us all the current trouble: just put into the agreement a source-code escrow provision, to guarantee the (big) client against the End-of-Life of the software.

Sure, this wouldn’t have been a cheap solutions (we’re not talking about a bunch of PHP code, here) but there are no free beers and easy life can’t last forever. If you go proprietary and enjoy the safety(?) of having somebody else who cares about bugs, patches and updates, you need to have a contingency plan for the moment when your licensor plugs-off the cord that keeps alive the software you’re using.

And now history is re-repeating itself. We’re on the edge of a new invasion of pervasive technology based on Apple’s OSX or – again – Microsoft Windows Whatever, and in a bunch of years we will complain again that because of a copyright issue we can’t enter our home, use the fridge, watch the television, start the car, know what’s the time, have a medical diagnosis and so on…

A final, collateral, question: where do the corporate lawyers were, when those agreement have been signed?