Saturday, July 30, 2016

Did British intelligence attempt to derail the Arab Spring?

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/gchq-url-shortener-twitter-honeypot-arab-spring

"In the fall of 2010, I was an early member of the AnonOps IRC network attacked by JTRIG and used by a covert GCHQ agent to contact P0ke, and in 2011 I co-founded LulzSec with three others. The leaked document also shows that JTRIG was monitoring conversations between P0ke and the LulzSec ex-member Jake Davis, who went by the pseudonym Topiary.
Through multiple sources, I was able to confirm that the redacted deanonymizing link sent to P0ke by a covert agent was to the website lurl.me."

Well this is weird.  and sad.

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Coup plotters; ignore the Internet at your peril

https://medium.com/@thegrugq/cyberpower-crushes-coup-b247f3cca780#.3kaa9mipq

"Today, the TV and radio are not the only means available to get information to people. The Turkish putsch took over some TV stations and did the standard coup style announcement: “we’re doing this for you, blah blah blah.” But they failed to eliminate the Internet, and any blocking that they were able to do was ineffective. In no small part because the Turkish people have spent years learning how to circumvent the social media blockades that Erdogan has put in place at various times. This made the population resilient against attempts to mitigate the cyber weapons they deployed."

This is a really well done article.  It explains mainly that the Internet is a method of communication that must not be ignored.  

Thursday, July 7, 2016

How to "smarten up the hive mind"

https://aeon.co/essays/a-mathematical-bs-detector-can-boost-the-wisdom-of-crowds

"One reason that crowds mess up, he notes, is the hegemony of common knowledge. Even when people make independent judgments, they might be working off the same information. When you average everyone’s judgments, information that is known to all gets counted repeatedly, once for each person, which gives it more significance than it deserves and drowns out diverse sources of knowledge. In the end, the lowest common denominator dominates. It’s a common scourge in social settings: think of dinner conversations that consist of people repeating to one another the things they all read in The New York Times."

Solution?  Sort out who actually knows pertinent things and give their view more weight.