Censorship Gains Traction at an Individual Point
May 23, 2025
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No AI, just the dinobaby expressing his opinions to Zillennials.
I read a somewhat sad biographical essay titled “The Great Displacement Is Already Well Underway: It’s Not a Hypothetical, I’ve Already Lost My Job to AI For The Last Year.” The essay explains that a 40 something software engineer lost his job. Despite what strike me as heroic efforts, no offers ensued. I urge you to take a look at this essay because the push to remove humans from “work” is accelerating. I think with my 80 year old neuro-structures that the lack of “work” will create some tricky social problems.
I spotted one passage in the essay which struck me as significant. The idea of censorship is a popular topic in central Kentucky. Quite a few groups and individuals have quite specific ideas about what books should be available for students and others to read. Here is the quote about censorship from the cited “Great Displacement” essay:
I [the author of the essay] have gone back and deleted 95% of those articles and vlogs, because although many of the ideas they presented were very forward-thinking and insightful at the time, they may now be viewed as pedestrian to AI insiders merely months later due to the pace of AI progress. I don’t want the wrong person with a job lead to see a take like that as their first exposure to me and think that I’m behind the last 24 hours of advancements on my AI takes.
Self-censorship was used to create a more timely version of the author. I have been writing articles with titles like “The Red Light on the Green Board” for years. This particular gem points out that public school teachers sell themselves and their ideas out. The prostitution analogy was intentional. I caught a bit of criticism from an educator in the public high school in which I “taught” for 18 months. Now people just ignore what I write. Thankfully my lectures about online fraud evoke a tiny bit of praise because the law enforcement, crime analysts, and cyber attorneys don’t throw conference snacks at me when I offer one of my personal observations about bad actors.
The cited essay presents a person who is deleting content into to present an “improved” or “shaped” version of himself. I think it is important to have in original form essays, poems, technical reports, and fiction — indeed, any human-produced artifact — available. These materials I think will provide future students and researchers with useful material to mine for insights and knowledge.
Deletion means that information is lost. I am not sure that is a good thing. What’s notable is that censorship is taking place by the author for the express purpose of erasing the past and shaping an impression of the present individual. Will that work? Based on the information in the essay, it had not when I read the write up.
Censorship may be one facet of what the author calls a “displacement.” I am not too keen on censorship regardless of the decider or the rationalization. But I am a real dinobaby, not a 40-something dinobaby like the author of the essay.
Stephen E Arnold, May 23, 2025
We Browse Alongside Bots in Online Shops
May 23, 2025
AI’s growing ability to mimic humans has brought us to an absurd milestone. TechRadar declares, “It’s Official—The Majority of Visitors to Online Shops and Retailers Are Now Bots, Not Humans.” A recent report from Radware examined retail site traffic during the 2024 holiday season and found automated programs made up 57%. The statistic includes tools from simple scripts to digital agents. The more evolved the bot, the harder it is to keep it out. Writer Efosa Udinmwen tells us:
“The report highlights the ongoing evolution of malicious bots, as nearly 60% now use behavioral strategies designed to evade detection, such as rotating IP addresses and identities, using CAPTCHA farms, and mimicking human browsing patterns, making them difficult to identify without advanced tools. … Mobile platforms have become a critical battleground, with a staggering 160% rise in mobile-targeted bot activity between the 2023 and 2024 holiday seasons. Attackers are deploying mobile emulators and headless browsers that imitate legitimate app behavior. The report also warns of bots blending into everyday internet traffic. A 32% increase in attack traffic from residential proxy networks is making it much harder for ecommerce sites to apply traditional rate-limiting or geo-fencing techniques. Perhaps the most alarming development is the rise of multi-vector campaigns combining bots with traditional exploits and API-targeted attacks. These campaigns go beyond scraping prices or testing stolen credentials – they aim to take sites offline entirely.”
Now why would they do that? To ransom retail sites during the height of holiday shopping, perhaps? Defending against these new attacks, Udinmwen warns, requires new approaches. The latest in DDoS protection, for example, and intelligent traffic monitoring. Yes, it takes AI to fight AI. Apparently.
Cynthia Murrell, May 23, 2025
Some Outfits Takes Pictures… Of Users
May 23, 2025
Conspiracy theorists aka wackadoos assert preach that the government is listening to everyone with microphones and it’s only gotten worse with mobile devices. This conspiracy theory has been running circuits since before the invention of the Internet. It used to be spies or aluminum can string telephones were the culprit. Truth is actually stranger than fiction and New Atlas updated an article about how well Facebook is actually listening to us, “Your Phone Isn’t Secretly Listening To You, But The Truth Is More Disturbing.”
Let’s assume that the story is accurate, but the information was on the Internet, so for AI and some humans, the write up is chock full of meaty facts. It was revealed in 2024 that Cox Media Group (CMG) developed Active Listening, a system to capture “real time intent data” with mobile devices’ microphones. It then did the necessary technology magic and fed personalized ads. Tech companies distanced themselves from CMG. CMG stopped using the system. It supposedly worked by listening to small vocal data uploaded after digital assistants were activated. It bleeds into the smartphone listening conspiracy but apparently that’s still not a tenable reality.
The mobile cyber security company Wandera tested the listening microphone theory. They placed two smart phones in a room, played pet food ads on an audio loop for thirty minutes a day over three days. Here are the nitty gritty details:
“User permissions for a large number of apps were all enabled, and the same experiment was performed, with the same phones, in a silent test room to act as a control. The experiment had two main goals. First, a number of apps were scanned following the experiment to ascertain whether pet food ads suddenly appeared in any streams. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the devices were closely examined to track data consumption, battery use, and background activity.”
The results showed that phones weren’t listening to conversations. The truth was on par and more feasible given the current technology:
“In early 2017 Jingjing Ren, a PhD student at Northeastern University, and Elleen Pan, an undergraduate student, designed a study to investigate the very issue of whether phones listen in on conversations without users knowing. Pretty quickly it became clear to the researchers that the phones’ microphones were not being covertly activated, but it also became clear there were a number of other disconcerting things going on. There were no audio leaks at all – not a single app activated the microphone,’ said Christo Wilson, a computer scientist working on the project. ‘Then we started seeing things we didn’t expect. Apps were automatically taking screenshots of themselves and sending them to third parties. In one case, the app took video of the screen activity and sent that information to a third party.’”
There are multiple other ways Facebook and companies are actually tracking and collecting data. Everything done on a smartphone from banking to playing games generates data that can be tracked and sent to third parties. The more useful your phone is to you, the more useful it is as a tracking, monitoring, and selling tool to AI algorithms to generate targeted ads and more personalized content. It’s a lot easier to believe in the microphone theory because it’s easier to understand the vast amounts of technology at work to steal…er…gather information. To sum up, innovators are inspirational!
Whitney Grace, May 23, 2025
Sharp Words about US Government Security
May 22, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby who gets revved up with buzzwords and baloney.
On Monday (April 29, 2025), I am headed to the US National Cyber Crime Conference. I am 80, and I don’t do too many “in person” lectures. Heck, I don’t do too many lectures anymore period. A candidate for the rest home or an individual ready for a warehouse for the soon-to-die is a unicorn amidst the 25 to 50 year old cyber fraud, law enforcement professionals, and government investigators.
In my lectures, I steer clear of political topics. This year, I have been assigned a couple of topics which the NCCC organizers know attract a couple of people out of the thousand or so attendees. One topic concerns changes in the Dark Web. Since I wrote “Dark Web Notebook” years ago, my team and I keep track of what’s new and interesting in the world of the Dark Web. This year, I will highlight three or four services which caught our attention. The other topic is my current research project: Telegram. I am not sure how I became interested in this messaging service, but my team and I will will make available to law enforcement, crime analysts, and cyber fraud investigators a monograph modeled on the format we used for the “Dark Web Notebook.”
I am in a security mindset before the conference. I am on the lookout for useful information which I can use as a point of reference or as background information. Despite my age, I want to appear semi competent. Thus, I read “Signalgate Lessons Learned: If Creating a Culture of Security Is the Goal, America Is Screwed.” I think the source publication is British. The author may be an American journalist.
Several points in the write up caught my attention.
First, the write up makes a statement I found interesting:
And even if they are using Signal, which is considered the gold-standard for end-to-end chat encryption, there’s no guarantee their personal devices haven’t been compromised with some sort of super-spyware like Pegasus, which would allow attackers to read the messages once they land on their phones.
I did not know that Signal was “considered the gold standard for end-to-end chat encryption.” I wonder if there are some data to back this up.
Second, is NSO Group’s Pegasus “super spyware.” My information suggests that there are more modern methods. Some link to Israel but others connect to other countries; for example, Spain, the former Czech Republic, and others. I am not sure what “super” means, and the write up does not offer much other than a nebulous adjectival “super spyware.”
Third, these two references are fascinating:
“The Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon campaigns out of China demonstrate this ongoing threat to our telecom systems. Circumventing the Pentagon’s security protocol puts sensitive intelligence in jeopardy.”
The authority making the statement is a former US government official who went on to found a cyber security company. There were publicized breaches, and I am not sure comparable to Pegasus type of data exfiltration method. “Insider threats” are different from lousy software from established companies with vulnerabilities as varied as Joseph’s multi-colored coat. An insider, of course, is an individual presumed to be “trusted”; however, that entity provides information for money to an individual who wants to compromise a system, a person who makes an error (honest or otherwise), and victims who fall victim to quite sophisticated malware specifically designed to allow targeted emails designed to obtain information to compromise that person or a system. In fact, the most sophisticated of these “phishing” attack systems are available for about $250 per month for the basic version with higher fees associated with more robust crime as a service vectors of compromise.
The opinion piece seems to focus on a single issue focused on one of the US government’s units. I am okay with that; however, I think a slightly different angle would put the problem and challenge of “security” in a context less focused on ad hominin rhetorical methods.
Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2025
AI: Improving Spam Quality, Reach, and Effectiveness
May 22, 2025
It is time to update our hoax detectors. The Register warns, “Generative AI Makes Fraud Fluent—from Phishing Lures to Fake Lovers.” What a great phrase: “fluent fraud.” We can see it on a line of hats and t-shirts. Reporter Iain Thomson consulted security pros Chester Wisniewski of Sophos and Kevin Brown at NCC Group. We learn:
“One of the red flags that traditionally identified spam, including phishing attempts, was poor spelling and syntax, but the use of generative AI has changed that by taking humans out of the loop. … AI has also widened the geographical scope of spam and phishing. When humans were the primary crafters of such content, the crooks stuck to common languages to target the largest audience with the least amount of work. But, Wisniewski explained, AI makes it much easier to craft emails in different languages.”
For example, residents of Quebec used to spot spam by its use of European French instead of the Québécois dialect. Similarly, folks in Portugal learned to dismiss messages written in Brazilian Portuguese. Now, though, AI makes it easy to replicate regional dialects. Perhaps more eerily, it also make it easier to replicate human empathy. Thomson writes:
“AI chatbots have proven highly effective at seducing victims into thinking they are being wooed by an attractive partner, at least during the initial phases. Wisniewski said that AI chatbots can easily handle the opening phases of the scams, registering interest and appearing to be empathetic. Then a human operator takes over and begins removing funds from the mark by asking for financial help, or encouraging them to invest in Ponzi schemes.”
Great. To make matters worse, much of this is now taking place with realistic audio fakes. For example:
“Scammers might call everybody on the support team with an AI-generated voice that duplicates somebody in the IT department, asking for a password until one victim succumbs.”
Chances are good someone eventually will. Whether video bots are a threat (yet) is up for debate. Wisniewski, for one, believes convincing, real-time video deepfakes are not quite there. But Brown reports the experienced pros at his firm have successfully created them for specific use cases. Both believe it is only a matter of time before video deepfakes become not only possible but easy to create and deploy. It seems we must soon learn to approach every interaction that is not in-person with great vigilance and suspicion. How refreshing.
Cynthia Murrell, May 22, 2025
Employee Time App Leaks User Information
May 22, 2025
Oh boy! Security breaches are happening everywhere these days. It’s not scary unless your personal information is leaked, like what happened to, “Top Employee Monitoring App Leaks 21 Million Screenshots On Thousands Of Users,” reports TechRadar. The app in question is called WorkComposer and it’s described as an “employee productivity monitoring tool.” Cybernews cybersecurity researchers discovered an archive of millions of WorkComposer-generated real time screenshots. These screenshot showed what the employee worked on, which might include sensitive information.
The sensitive information could include intellectual property, passwords, login portals, emails, proprietary data, etc. These leaked images are a major privacy violation, meaning WorkComposer is in boiling water. Privacy organizations and data watchdogs could get involved.
Here is more information about the leak:
“Cybernews said that WorkComposer exposed more than 21 million images in an unsecured Amazon S3 bucket. The company claims to have more than 200,000 active users. It could also spell trouble if it turns out that cybercriminals found the bucket in the past. At press time, there was no evidence that it did happen, and the company apparently locked the archive down in the meantime.”
WorkComposer was designed for companies to monitor the work of remote employees. It allows leads to track their employees’ work and captures an image every twenty seconds.
It’s a useful monitoring application but a scary situation with the leaks. Why doesn’t the Cybernews people report the problem or fix it? That’s a white hat trick.
Whitney Grace, May 22, 2025
Stolen iPhone Building: Just One Building?
May 21, 2025
Just the dinobaby operating without Copilot or its ilk.
I am not too familiar with the outfits which make hardware and software to access mobile phones. I have heard that these gizmos exist and work. Years ago I learned that some companies — well, one company lo those many years ago — could send a text message to a mobile phone and gain access to the device. I have heard that accessing iPhones and some Androids is a tedious business. I have heard that some firms manufacture specialized data retention computers to support the work required to access certain actors’ devices.
So what?
And what happens? The weird orange newspaper published “Inside China’s Stolen iPhone Building.” The write up is from a “real news” outfit, the Financial Times. The story — if dead accurate — may be a reminder that cyber security has been gifted with another hole in its predictive, forward-leaning capabilities.
The write up explains how phones are broken down, parts sold, or (if unlocked) resold. But there is one passage in the write up which hip hops over what may be the “real” story. Here’s the passage:
Li [a Financial Times’ named source Kevin Li, who is an iPhone seller] insisted there was no way for phone sellers to force their way into passcode-locked devices. But posts on western social media show that many who have their phones stolen receive messages from individuals in Shenzhen either cajoling them or threatening them to remotely wipe their devices and remove them from the FindMy app. “For devices that have IDs, there aren’t that many places that have demand for them,” says Li, finishing his cigarette break. “In Shenzhen, there is demand . . . it’s a massive market.”
With the pool of engineering and practical technical talent, is it possible that this “market” in China houses organizations or individuals who can:
- Modify an unlocked phone so that it can operate as a node in a larger network?
- Use software — possibly similar to that developed by NSO Group-type entities — to compromise mobile devices. Then these devices are not resold if they contain high-value information. The “customer” could be a third party like an intelligence technology firm or to a government entity in a list of known buyers?
- Use devices which emulate the functions of certain intelware-centric companies to extract information and further industrialize the process of returning a used mobile to an “as new” condition.
Are these questions ones of interest to the readership of the Financial Times in the British government and its allies? Could the Financial Times ignore the mundane refurbishment market and focus on the “massive market” for devices that are not supposed to be unlocked?
Answer: Nope. Write about what could be said about refurbing iPads, electric bicycles, or smart microwaves. The key paragraph reveals that that building in China is probably one which could shed some light on what is an important business. If specialized hardware and software exist in the US and Western Europe, there is a reasonable chance that similar capabilities are available in the “iPhone building.” That’s a possible “real” story.
Stephen E Arnold, May xx, 2025
How Does One Pay for AI? Maybe Cut Prices and Make Money on Volume? (I Have a Bridge to Sell You Cheap)
May 21, 2025
Just the dinobaby operating without Copilot or its ilk.
Mucho AI marketing from the Google and the Softies. Let’s shift gears and talk about discounts similar to Filene’s Basement sale. A change of pace may put the marketing drag racers in context.
Bloomberg, the terminal people who given Thomson Reuters headaches, published “Salesforce Cuts Slack Price for US Government, Following Google.” The write up explains that lower prices for government customers is now in effect. In my experience, price cutting to get US government sales often leads to some issues. The normal mechanisms involve responding to work in Congress related to appropriations for the coming fiscal year; that is, new money for 2026-2027, one-to-one interaction to move a problem to a Request for Information and then to a project to assist in formulating and writing a Statement of Work, putting bloodhounds on the trail of end-of-year unspent funds, and a couple of other methods.
Price cutting? Well, perhaps if certain conditions have been met. I don’t want to go into these, but you can ask around for individuals who have not had their career path altered with the special deal, lower prices, and annexes to cover what are often inevitable problems with the products or service given a price cut.
Why is this important? For most people, selling services to the US government is handled through specific methods. Fancy dancing is a topic for a luncheon meeting in some organizations, but it is not as popular as talking about Kentucky basketball or the new distillery on the Bourbon Trail.
I find it interesting that Google is cutting prices for the US government. I am not sure what Amazon is doing. There was a burst of activity several years ago, but now the chatter is Microsoft, Microsoft’s deal with Palantir, and Microsoft’s security posture. Google and Salesforce? Sure, maybe.
My concern with price cuts is that Google and Salesforce are infusing smart software into their products and services. Therefore, the investments in said smart technology have to return a profit. How does one return a profit with US government sales by cutting prices? Mind you, those cuts are coming as the pressure on firms to generate a return on their investments in smart software is looking like it is exponentiating. Imagine: Exponentiating text messages, emails, and maybe face-to-face meetings in actual physical conference rooms going up every day or so. Those automated calendars are not a pretty sight in my opinion.
Several observations:
- Price cuts. Hmmm.
- Get more government customers with a K-Mart blue light special. Hmmm
- Assurances of timely service. Hmmm.
Net net: Hmmm. Discounts. Okay.
Stephen E Arnold, May 21, 2025
Google: A Critic Looks in the Rear View Mirror and Risks a Collision with a Smart Service
May 21, 2025
No AI, just a dinobaby watching the world respond to the tech bros.
Courtney Radsch, a director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty, is not Googley. Her opinion about the Google makes this clear in “Google Broke the Law. It’s Time to Break Up the Company.”
. To which facet of the lovable Googzilla direct her attention. Picking one is difficult. Several of her points were interesting and in line with the intellectual stance of the Guardian, which ran her essay on April 24, 2025. Please, read the original write up and do contribute some money to the Guardian newspaper. Their strident pleas are moving, and I find their escalating way to say “donate” informative.
The first statement I circled was:
These global actions [the different legal hassles Googzilla faces with attendant fines and smarmy explanations] reflect a growing consensus: Google’s power is infrastructural and self-reinforcing. It controls the tools that decide what we know, what we see and who profits. The implications are especially acute for journalism, which has been hollowed out by Google’s ad market manipulation and search favoritism. In an era of generative AI, where foundation models are trained on the open web and commodify news content without compensation, this market power becomes even more perfidious.
The point abut infrastructure and self-reinforcing is accurate. I would point out that Google has been building out its infrastructure and the software “hooks” to make its services “self reinforcing.” The behavior is not new. What’s new is that it seems to be a surprise to some people. Where were the “real” journalists when the Google implemented its Yahoo-influenced advertising system? Where were the “real” journalists when Dr. Jeff Dean and other Googlers were talking and writing about the infrastructure “innovations” at the Google?
The second one was:
… global coordination should be built into enforcement.
I want to mention that “global coordination” is difficult at the present time. Perhaps if the “coordination” began 20 years ago, the process might be easier. Perhaps the author of the essay would like to speak with some people at Europol about the time and procedures required to coordinate to take down a criminal online operation. Tackling an outfit which is used by quite a few people for free is a more difficult, expensive, and resource intensive task. There are some tensions in the world, and the Google is going to have to pay some fines and possibly dump some of its assets to reduce the legal pressure being applied to the company. But Google has big bucks, and money has some value in certain circles. Coordination is possible in enforcement, but it is not exactly the magical spooky action at a distance some may think it is.
The third statement I drew a couple of lines under was:
The courts have shown that Google broke the law. Now, governments must show that the law still has teeth. That means structural remedies, not settlements. Transformation, not tinkering.
News flash. Google is as I type this sentence transforming. If you think the squishy world of search and the two way doors of online advertising were interesting business processes, I suggest one look closely at the artificial intelligence push at the Google. First, it is baked into to Google’s services. I am not sure users know how much Googliness its AI services have. That’s the same problem will looking at Google superficially as people did when the Backdoor was kicked open and the Google emerged. Also, the AI push has the same infrastructure game plan. Exactly who is going to prevent Google from developing its own chips and its next-generation computing infrastructure? Is this action going to come from regulators and lawyers? I don’t think so. These two groups are not closely associated with gradient descents, matrix mathematics, and semi-conductor engineering in my experience. Some individuals in these groups are, but many are users of Google AI, not engineers developing Google AI. I do like the T shirt slogan, “Transformation, not tinkering.”
In summary, I liked the editorial. I have one problem. Google has been being Googley for more than 20 years and now legal action is being taken for yesterday’s businesses at the company. The new Googzilla moves are not even on the essay writer’s, the Guardian’s, or the regulators’ radar.
Net net: Googzilla is rocking to tomorrow, not transformation. You don’t alter the DNA of Googzilla.
Stephen E Arnold, May 21, 2025
IBM CEO Replaces Human HR Workers with AskHR AI
May 21, 2025
An IBM professional asks the smart AI system, “Have I been terminated?” What if the smart software hallucinates? Yeah, surprise!
Which employees are the best to replace with AI? For IBM, ironically, it is the ones with “Human” in their title. Entrepreneur reports, “IBM Replaced Hundreds of HR Workers with AI, According to Its CEO.” But not to worry, the firm actually hired workers in other areas. We learn:
“IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told The Wall Street Journal … that the tech giant had tapped into AI to take over the work of several hundred human resources employees. However, IBM’s workforce expanded instead of shrinking—the company used the resources freed up by the layoffs to hire more programmers and salespeople. ‘Our total employment has actually gone up, because what [AI] does is it gives you more investment to put into other areas,’ Krishna told The Journal. Krishna specified that those ‘other areas’ included software engineering, marketing, and sales or roles focused on ‘critical thinking,’ where employees ‘face up or against other humans, as opposed to just doing rote process work.’”
Yes, the tech giant decided to dump those touchy feely types in personnel. Who need human sensitivity with issues like vacations, medical benefits, discrimination claims, or potential lawsuits? That is all just rote process work, right? The AskHR agent can handle it.
According to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, IBM is just getting started on its metamorphosis into an AI company. What does that mean for humans in other departments? Will their jobs begin to go the way of their former colleagues’ in HR? If so, who would they complain to? Watson, are you on the job?
Cynthia Murrell, May 21, 2025
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