Author: Christopher Parsons

Policy wonk. Torontonian. Photographer. Not necessarily in that order.

Categories
Photography

2022.7.31

Processed With Darkroom
Fungi by Christopher Parsons

After spending far too much time agonizing over what to get printed I finally put in an order for 21 prints. Most are black and white from the past 2-3 years, and will be used to create 1-2 gallery walls and refresh another wall.

Untitled by Christopher Parsons

I’m looking forward to getting them through I’m working with a new printer so have some minor degrees of anxiety over what I’ll end up with. I’ve generally had good luck with local printers but the past few personal photo books I’ve had printed (albeit from international companies) have been disappointing when I’ve gotten them in my hands.

The next step will be to purchase a raft of frames for all the prints. And then, finally, actually add them all to my walls!

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Links

Adding Context to Facebook’s CSAM Reporting

In early 2021, John Buckley, Malia Andrus, and Chris Williams published an article entitled, “Understanding the intentions of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) sharers” on Meta’s research website. They relied on information that Facebook/Meta had submitted to NCMEC to better understand why individuals they reported had likely shared illegal content.

The issue of CSAM on Facebook’s networks has risen in prominence following a report in 2019 in the New York Times. That piece indicated that Facebook was responsible for reporting the vast majority of the 45 million online photos and videos of children being sexually abused online. Ever since, Facebook has sought to contextualize the information it discloses to NCMEC and explain the efforts it has put in place to prevent CSAM from appearing on its services.

So what was the key finding from the research?

We evaluated 150 accounts that we reported to NCMEC for uploading CSAM in July and August of 2020 and January 2021, and we estimate that more than 75% of these did not exhibit malicious intent (i.e. did not intend to harm a child), but appeared to share for other reasons, such as outrage or poor humor. While this study represents our best understanding, these findings should not be considered a precise measure of the child safety ecosystem.

This finding is significant, as it quickly becomes suggestive that the mass majority of the content reported by Facebook—while illegal!—is not deliberately being shared for malicious purposes. Even if we assume that the number sampled should be adjusted—perhaps only 50% of individuals were malicious—we are still left with a significant finding.

There are, of course, limitations to the research. First, it excludes all end-to-end encrypted messages. So there is some volume of content that cannot be detected using these methods. Second, it remains unclear how scientifically robust it was to choose the selected 150 accounts for analysis. Third, and related, there is a subsequent question of whether the selected accounts are necessarily representative of the broader pool of accounts that are associated with distributing CSAM.

Nevertheless, this seeming sleeper-research hit has significant implications insofar as it would compress the number of problematic accounts/individuals disclosing CSAM to other parties. Clearly more work along this line is required, ideally across Internet platforms, in order to add further context and details to the extent of the CSAM problem and subsequently define what policy solutions are necessary and proportionate.

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Solved

Solved: Changed Name Server and Apple Custom Email Domain Stopped Working

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

I recently moved a self-hosted WordPress website from a shared hosting environment to WordPress.com. The migration was smooth: I had to export the XML for the self-hosted WordPress installation and import it to the WordPress.com CMS, and then fix a few images. The website is functioning well and the transition was smooth.

However, shortly after doing so I started having issues with receiving emails at my custom email which was set up with Apple’s iCloud Custom Email Domain. Not good!

The Problem

I changed the name servers with the domain registrar (e.g., Bluehost or Dreamhost) so that my custom domain (e.g., example.com) would point to the WordPress.com infrastructure. However, in doing so my custom email (user@example.com) that was using Apple’s iCloud Custom Email Domain stopped sending or receiving email.

This problem was surfaced because email could not be sent/received and, also, I could not verify its domain in Apple’s “Custom Email Domain”. Specifically, iCloud presented the dialogue message “Verifying your domain. This usually takes a few minutes but could take up to 24 hours. You’ll be able to continue when verification is complete.” The “Reverify” button, below the dialogue, was greyed out.

Background

When you have registered the domain with a registrar other than WordPress (e.g., Bluehost, Dreamhost, etc) and then host a website with WordPress.com you will have to update the name servers the domain uses. So, you will need to log into your registrar and point the name servers at the registrar to NS1.Wordpress.com, NS2.Wordpress.com, and NS3.Wordpress.com. In doing so, all the custom DNS information you have provided to your registrar, and which has been used to direct email to a third-party email provider such as Apple and iCloud, will cease to work.

The Solution

When transitioning to using WordPress’ nameservers you will need to re-enter custom domain information in WordPress’ domain management tabs. Specifically, you will need to add the relevant CNAME, TXT, and A records.1 This will entail the following:

  1. Log into your WordPress.com website, and navigate to: Upgrades >> Domains
  2. Select the domain for which you want to modify the DNS information
  3. Select “DNS Records” >> Manage
  4. Select “Add Record” (Upper right hand corner)
  5. Enter the information which is provided to you by your email provider

Apple iCloud Custom Domain and WordPress.com

When setting up your custom domain with Apple you will be provided with a set of TXT, MX, and CNAME records to add. Apple also provides the requisite field information in a help document.

While most of these records are self evident, when adding the DKIM (CNAME record-type) record in WordPress.com, the Host listed on Apple’s website is entered in the “Name” field on WordPress’ “Add a Record” page. The “Value” of the DKIM on Apple’s website is entered as the “value” on WordPress’ site.

TypeNameValue
CNAMEsig1._domainkeysig1.dkim.example.com.at.icloudmailadmin.com
Visualization of Adding iCloud CNAME Record for WordPress.com


Note: Apple will generate a new TXT record to verify you control the domain after pointing the name servers to WordPress.com. This record will look something like “apple-domain=[random set of upper/lower case letters and numbers]”. You cannot use the “apple-domain=“ field that was used in setting up your custom email information with your original registrar’s DNS records. You must use the new “apple-domain=“ field information when updating your WordPress.com DNS records.

Once you’ve made the needed changes with WordPress.com, and re-verified your domain with Apple’s iCloud Custom Domains, your email should continue working.

In the Future

It would be great if WordPress actively and clearly communicated to users who are pointing their name servers to WordPress.com that there is a need to immediately also update and add email-related DNS records. I appreciate that not all customers may require this information, but proactively and forcefully sharing this information would ensure that their customers are not trying to fix broken email while simultaneously struggling to identify what problem actuallyy needs to be resolved.

  1. WordPress does have a support page to help users solve this. ↩︎
Categories
Reviews Solved Writing

So You Can’t Verify Your Apple iCloud Custom Domain

Photo by Tim Gouw on Pexels.com

When you set up a custom iCloud email domain you have to modify the DNS records held by your domain’s registrar. On the whole, the information provided by Apple is simple and makes it easy to set up the custom domain.

However, if you change where your domain’s name servers point, such as when you modify the hosting for a website associated with the domain, you must update the DNS records with whomever you are pointing the name servers to. Put differently: if you have configured your Apple iCloud custom email by modifying the DNS information at host X, as soon as you shift to host Y by pointing your name servers at them you will also have to update DNS records with host Y.

Now, what if you don’t do this? Eventually as DNS information propagates over the subsequent 6-72 hours you’ll be in a situation where your custom iCloud domain email address will stop sending or receiving information because the routing information is no longer valid. This will cause Apple’s iCloud custom domain system to try and re-verify the domain; it will do this because the DNS information you initially supplied is no longer valid.

Should you run into this issue you might, naturally, first reach out to Apple support. You are, after all, running your email through their servers.

Positively: you will very quickly get a real-live human on the phone to help you. That’s great! Unfortunately, however, there is very little that Apple’s support staff can do to help you. There are very, very few internal help documents pertaining to custom domains. As was explained to me, the sensitivity and complexity of DNS (and the fact that information is non-standardized across registrars) means that the support staff really can’t help much: you’re mostly on your own. This is not communicated when setting up Apple custom email domains.

In a truly worst case scenario you might get a well meaning but ignorant support member who leads you deeply astray in attempting to help troubleshoot and fix the problem. This, unfortunately, was my experience: no matter what is suggested, the solution to this problem is not solved by deleting your custom email accounts hosted by Apple on iCloud. Don’t be convinced this is ever a solution.

Worse, after deleting the email accounts associated with your custom iCloud domain email you can get into a situation where you cannot click the re-verify button on the front end of iCloud’s custom email domain interface. The result is that while you see one thing on the graphical interface—a greyed out option to ‘re-verify’—folks at Apple/server-side do not see the same status. Level 1 and 2 support staff cannot help you at this stage.

As a result, you can (at this point) be in limbo insofar as email cannot be sent or received from your custom domain. Individuals who send you message will get errors that the email identify no longer exists. The only group at Apple who can help you, in this situation, are Apple’s engineering team.

That team apparently does not work weekends.

What does this mean for using custom email domains for iCloud? For many people not a lot: they aren’t moving their hosting around and so it’s very much a ‘set and forget’ situation. However, for anyone who does have an issue the Apple support staff lacks good documentation to determine where the problem lies and, as a result, can (frankly) waste an inordinate amount of time in trying to figure out what is wrong. I would hasten to note that the final Apple support member I worked with, Derek, was amazing in identifying what the issue was, communicating the challenges facing Apple internally, and taking ownership of the problem: Derek rocks. Apple support needs more people like him.

But, in the absence of being able to hire more Dereks, Apple needs better scripts to help their support staff assist users. And, moreover, the fact that Apple lacks a large enough engineering team to also have some people working weekends to solve issues is stunning: yes, hiring is challenging and expensive, but Apple is one of the most profitable companies in the world. Their lack of a true 24/7 support staff is absurd.

What’s the solution if you ever find yourself in this situation, then? Make sure that you’ve done what you can with your new domain settings and, then, just sit back and wait while Apple tries to figure stuff out. I don’t know how, exactly, Apple fixed this problem on their end, though when it is fixed you’ll get an immediate prompt on your iOS devices that you need to update your custom domain information. It’s quick to take the information provided (which will include a new DKIM record that is unique to your new domain) and then get Apple custom iCloud email working with whomever is managing your DNS records.

Ultimately, I’m glad this was fixed for me but, simultaneously, the ability of most of Apple’s support team to provide assistance was minimal. And it meant that for 3-4 days I was entirely without my primary email address, during a busy work period. I’m very, very disappointed in how this was handled irrespective of things ultimately working once again. At a minimum, Apple needs to update its internal scripts so that their frontline staff know the right questions to ask (e.g., did you change information about your website’s DNS information?) to get stuff moving in the right direction.

Categories
Links Writing

Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX)

CISA has a neat bit of work they recently published, entitled “Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX) – Status Justifications” (warning: opens to .pdf.).1 Product security teams that adopt VEX could assert the status of specific vulnerabilities in their products. As a result, clients’ security staff could allocate time to remediate actionable vulnerabilities instead of burning time on potential vulnerabilities that product security teams have already closed off or mitigated.

There are a number of different machine-readable status types that are envisioned, including:

  • Component_not_present
  • Vulnerable_code_not_present
  • Vulnerable_code_cannot_be_controlled_by_adversary
  • Vulnerable_code_not_in_execute_path
  • Inline_mitigations_already_exist

CISA’s publication spells out what each status entails in more depth and includes diagrams to help readers understand what is envisioned. However, those same readers need to pay attention to a key caveat, namely, “[t]his document will not address chained attacks involving future or unknown risks as it will be considered out of scope.” Put another way, VEX is used to assess known vulnerabilities and attacks. It should not be relied upon to predict potential threats based on not-yet-public attacks nor new ways of chaining known vulnerabilities. Thus, while it would be useful to ascertain if a product is vulnerable to EternalBlue, today, it would not be useful to predict or assess the exploited vulnerabilities prior to EternalBlue having been made public nor new or novel ways of exploiting the vulnerabilities underlying EternalBlue. In effect, then, VEX is meant to address the known risks associated with N-Days as opposed to risks linked with 0-Days or novel ways of exploiting N-Days.2

For VEX to best work there should be some kind of surrounding policy requirements, such as when/if a supplier falsely (as opposed to incorrectly) asserts the security properties of its product there should be some disciplinary response. This can take many forms and perhaps the easiest relies on economics and not criminal sanction: federal governments or major companies will decline to do business with a vendor found to have issued a deceptive VEX, and may have financial recourse based on contactual terms with the product’s vendor. When or if this economic solution fails then it might be time to turn to legal venues and, if existent approaches prove insufficient, potentially even introduce new legislation designed to further discipline bad actors. However, as should be apparent, there isn’t a demonstrable requirement to introduce legislation to make VEX actionable.

I think that VEX continues work under the current American administration to advance a number of good policies that are meant to better secure products and systems. VEX works hand-in-hand with SBOMs and, also, may be supported by US Executive Orders around cybersecurity.

While Canada may be ‘behind’ the United States we can see that things are potentially shifting. There is currently a consultation underway to regenerate Canada’s cybersecurity strategy and infrastructure security legislation was introduced just prior to Parliament rising for its summer break. Perhaps, in a year’s time, we’ll see stronger and bolder efforts by the Canadian government to enhance infrastructure security with some small element of that recommending the adoption of VEXes. At the very least the government won’t be able to say they lack the legislative tools or strategic direction to do so.

  1. You can access a locally hosted version if the CISA link fails. ↩︎
  2. For a nice discussion of why N-days are regularly more dangerous then 0-Days, see: “N-Days: The Overlooked Cyber Threat for Utilities.” ↩︎
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Links

Housing in Ottawa Now a National Security Issue

David Pugliese is reporting in the Ottawa Citizen that the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command (CFINTCOM) is “trying to avoid posting junior staff to Ottawa because it has become too expensive to live in the region.” The risk is that financial hardship associated with living in Ottawa could make junior members susceptible to subversion. Housing costs in Ottawa have risen much faster than either wage increases or inflation. Moreover, the special allowance provided to staff that is meant to assauge the high costs of living in Canadian cities has been frozen for 13 years.

At this point energy, telecommunications, healthcare, and housing all raise their own national security concerns. To some extent, such concerns have tracked with these industry categories: governments have always worried about the security of telecommunications networks as well as the availability of sufficient energy supplies. But in other cases, such as housing affordability, the national security concerns we are seeing are the result of long-term governance failures. These failures have created new national security threats that would not exist in the face of good (or even just better) governance.1

There is a profound danger in trying to address all the new national security challenges and issues using national security tools or governance processes. National security incidents are often regarded as creating moments of exception and, in such moments, actions can be undertaken that otherwise could not. The danger is that states of exception become the norm and, in the process, the regular modes of governance and law are significantly set aside to resolve the crises of the day. What is needed is a regeneration and deployment of traditional governance capacity instead of a routine reliance on national security-type responses to these issues.

Of course, governments don’t just need to respond to these metastasized governance problems in order to alleviate national security issues and threats. They need to do so, in equable and inclusive ways, so as to preserve or (re)generate the trust between the residents of Canada and their government.

The public may justifiably doubt that their system of government is working where successive governments under the major political parties are seen as having failed to provide for basic needs. The threat, then, is that ongoing governance failures run the risk of placing Canada’s democracy under pressure. While this might seem overstated I don’t think that’s the case: we are seeing a rise of politicians who are capitalizing on the frustrations and challenges faced by Canadians across the country, but who do not have their own solutions. Capitalizing on rage and frustration, and then failing to deliver on fixes, will only further alienate Canadians from their government.

Governments across Canada flexed their muscles during the earlier phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having used them, then, it’s imperative they keep flexing these muscles to address the serious issues that Canadians are experiencing. Doing so will assuage existent national security issues. It will also, simultaneously, serve to prevent other normal governance challenges from metastasizing into national security threats.

  1. As an aside, these housing challenges are not necessarily new. Naval staff posted to Esquimalt have long complained about the high costs of off-base housing in Victoria and the surrounding towns and cities. ↩︎
Categories
Photography Writing

Thoughts on Developing My Street Photography

(Dead Ends by Christopher Parsons)

For the past several years I’ve created a ‘best of’ album that summarizes the year’s best photos that I made. I use the yearly album to assess how my photography has changed and what, if any, changes are common across those images. The process of making these albums and then printing them forces me to look at my images, how they work against one another, and better understand what I learned over the course of taking photos for a year.

I have lots of favourite photographs but what I’ve learned the most, at least over the past few years, is to ignore a lot of the information and ‘tips’ that are often shared about street photography. Note that the reason to avoid ignore them is not because they are wrong per se, or that photographers shouldn’t adopt them, but because they don’t work for how I prefer to engage in street photography.

I Don’t Do ‘Stealth’ Photography

Probably the key tip that I generally set to the side is that you should be stealthy, sneaky, or otherwise hidden from the subjects in the photos that I capture. It’s pretty common for me to see a scene and wait with my camera to my eye until the right subjects enter the scene and are positioned where I want them in my frame. Sometimes that means that people will avoid me and the scene and other times they’ll clearly indicate that they don’t want to have their photo taken. In these cases the subject is communicating their preferences quite clearly and I won’t take their photograph. It’s just an ethical line I don’t want to cross.

(Winter Troop by Christopher Parsons)

In yet other instances, my subjects will be looking right at me as they pass through the scene. They’re often somewhat curious. And in many situations they stop and ask me what I’m taking photos of, and then a short conversation follows. In an odd handful of situations they’ve asked me to send along an image I captured of them or a link to my photos; to date, I’ve had pretty few ‘bad’ encounters while shooting on the streets.

I Don’t Imitate Others

I’ve spent a lot of time learning about classic photographers over the past couple years. I’ve been particularly drawn to black and white street photography, in part because I think it often has a timeless character and because it forces me to more carefully think about positioning a subject so they stand out.

(Working Man by Christopher Parsons)

This being said, I don’t think that I’m directly imitating anyone else. I shoot with a set of focal ranges and periodically mix up the device I’m capturing images on; last year, a bulk of my favourite photos came from an intensive two week photography vacation where I forced myself to walk extensively and just use an iPhone 12 Pro. Photos that I’m taking, this year, have largely been with a Fuji X100F and some custom jpg recipes that generally produce results that I appreciate.

Don’t get me wrong: in seeing some of the photos of the greats (and less greats and less well-knows) I draw inspiration from the kinds of images they make, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone out to try and make images like theirs. This differs from when I started taking shots in my city, and when I wanted to make images that looked similar to the ‘popular’ shots I was seeing. I still appreciate those images but they’re not what I want to make these days.

I Create For Myself

While I don’t think that I’m alone in this, the images that I make are principally for myself. I share some of those images but, really, I just want to get out and walk through my environment. I find the process of slowing down to look for instances of interest and beauty help ground me.

Because I tend to walk within the same 10-15km radius of my home, I have a pretty good sense of how neighbourhoods are changing. I can see my city changing on a week to week basis, and feel more in tune with what’s really happening based on my observations. My photography makes me very present in my surroundings.

(Dark Sides by Christopher Parsons)

I also tend to use my walks to both cover new ground and, also, go into back alleys, behind sheds, and generally in the corners of the city that are less apparent unless you’re looking for them. Much of the time there’s nothing particularly interesting to photograph in those spaces. But, sometimes, something novel or unique emerges.

Change Is Normal

For the past year or so, a large volume (95% or more) of my images have been black and white. That hasn’t always been the case! But I decided I wanted to lean into this mode of capturing images to develop a particular set of skills and get used to seeing—and visualizing—scenes and subjects monochromatically.

But my focus on black and white images, as well as images that predominantly include human subjects, is relatively new: if I look at my images from just a few years ago there was a lot of colour and stark, or empty, cityscapes. I don’t dislike those images and, in fact, several remain amongst my favourite images I’ve made to date. But I also don’t want to be constrained by one way of looking at the world. The world is too multifaceted, and there’s too many ways of imagining it, to be stuck permanently in one way of capturing it.

(Alley Figures by Christopher Parsons)

This said, over time, I’d like to imagine I might develop a way of seeing the world and capturing images that provides a common visual language across my images. Though if that never happens I’m ok with that, so long as the very practice of photography continues to provide the dividends of better understanding my surroundings and feeling in tune with wherever I’m living at the time.

Categories
Writing

Hopes for WWDC 2022

Judgement
(Judgement by Christopher Parsons)

Apple’s Word Wide Developer Conference starts tomorrow and we can all expect a bunch of updates to Apple’s operating systems and, if we’re lucky, some new hardware. In no particular order, here are some things I want updated in iOS applications and, ideally, that developers could hook into as well.

Photos

  • The ability to search photos by different cameras and/or focal lengths
  • The ability to select a point on a photo to set the white point for exposure balancing when editing photos
  • Better/faster sync across devices
  • Enable ability to edit geolocation
  • Enable tags in photos

Camera

  • Working (virtual) spirit level!
  • Set burst mode to activate by holding the shutter button; this was how things used to be and I want the option to go back to the way things were!
  • Advanced metering modes, such as the ability to set center, multi-zone, spot, and expose for highlights!
  • Set and forget auto-focus points in the frame; not focus lock, but focus zones
  • Zone focusing

Maps

  • Ability to collaborate on a guide
  • Option to select who’s restaurant data is running underneath the app (I never will install Yelp which is the current app linked in Maps)

Music

  • Ability to collaborate on a playlist
  • Have multiple libraries: I want one ‘primary’ or ‘all albums’ and others with selected albums. I do not want to just make playlists

Reminders

  • Speed up sync across shared reminders; this matters for things like shared grocery shopping! 1
  • Integrate reminders’ date/time in calendar, as well as with whom reminders are shared

Messages

  • Emoji reactions
  • Integration with Giphy!

News

  • When I block a publication actually block it instead of giving me the option to see stories from publications I’ve blocked
  • It’d be great to see News updated so I can add my own RSS feeds

Fitness

  • Need ability to have off days; when sick or travelling or something it can be impossible to maintain streaks which is incredibly frustrating if you regularly live a semi-active life

Health

  • Show long-term data (e.g. year vs year vs year) in a user friendly way; currently this requires third-party apps and should be default and native

Of course, I’d also love to see Apple announce a new MacBook Air. I need a new laptop but don’t want to get one that’s about to be deprecated and just don’t need the power of the MacBook Pro line. Here’s hoping Apple makes this announcement next week!

  1. In general I want iCloud to sync things a hella lot faster! ↩︎
Categories
Writing

Mitigating AI-Based Harms in National Security

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Government agencies throughout Canada are investigating how they might adopt and deploy ‘artificial intelligence’ programs to enhance how they provide services. In the case of national security and law enforcement agencies these programs might be used to analyze and exploit datasets, surface threats, identify risky travellers, or automatically respond to criminal or threat activities.

However, the predictive software systems that are being deployed–‘artificial intelligence’–are routinely shown to be biased. These biases are serious in the commercial sphere but there, at least, it is somewhat possible for researchers to detect and surface biases. In the secretive domain of national security, however, the likelihood of bias in agencies’ software being detected or surfaced by non-government parties is considerably lower.

I know that organizations such as the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency (CSIS) have an interest in understanding how to use big data in ways that mitigate bias. The Canadian government does have a policy on the “Responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI)” and, at the municipal policing level, the Toronto Police Service has also published a policy on its use of artificial intelligence. Furthermore, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has published a proposed regulatory framework for AI as part of potential reforms to federal privacy law.

Timnit Gebru, in conversation with Julia Angwin, suggests that there should be ‘datasheets for algorithms’ that would outline how predictive software systems have been tested for bias in different use cases prior to being deployed. Linking this to traditional circuit-based datasheets, she says (emphasis added):

As a circuit designer, you design certain components into your system, and these components are really idealized tools that you learn about in school that are always supposed to work perfectly. Of course, that’s not how they work in real life.

To account for this, there are standards that say, “You can use this component for railroads, because of x, y, and z,” and “You cannot use this component for life support systems, because it has all these qualities we’ve tested.” Before you design something into your system, you look at what’s called a datasheet for the component to inform your decision. In the world of AI, there is no information on what testing or auditing you did. You build the model and you just send it out into the world. This paper proposed that datasheets be published alongside datasets. The sheets are intended to help people make an informed decision about whether that dataset would work for a specific use case. There was also a follow-up paper called Model Cards for Model Reporting that I wrote with Meg Mitchell, my former co-lead at Google, which proposed that when you design a model, you need to specify the different tests you’ve conducted and the characteristics it has.

What I’ve realized is that when you’re in an institution, and you’re recommending that instead of hiring one person, you need five people to create the model card and the datasheet, and instead of putting out a product in a month, you should actually do it in three years, it’s not going to happen. I can write all the papers I want, but it’s just not going to happen. I’m constantly grappling with the incentive structure of this industry. We can write all the papers we want, but if we don’t change the incentives of the tech industry, nothing is going to change. That is why we need regulation.

Government is one of those areas where regulation or law can work well to discipline its behaviours, and where the relatively large volume of resources combined with a law-abiding bureaucracy might mean that formally required assessments would actually be conducted. While such assessments matter, generally, they are of particular importance where state agencies might be involved in making decisions that significantly or permanently alter the life chances of residents of Canada, visitors who are passing through our borders, or foreign national who are interacting with our government agencies.

As it stands, today, many Canadian government efforts at the federal, provincial, or municipal level seem to be signficiantly focused on how predictive software might be used or the effects it may have. These are important things to attend to! But it is just as, if not more, important for agencies to undertake baseline assessments of how and when different predictive software engines are permissible or not, as based on robust testing and evaluation of their features and flaws.

Having spoken with people at different levels of government the recurring complaint around assessing training data, and predictive software systems more generally, is that it’s hard to hire the right people for these assessment jobs on the basis that they are relatively rare and often exceedingly expensive. Thus, mid-level and senior members of government have a tendency to focus on things that government is perceived as actually able to do: figure out and track how predictive systems would be used and to what effect.

However, the regular focus on the resource-related challenges of predictive software assessment raises the very real question of whether these constraints should just compel agencies to forgo technologies on the basis of failing to determine, and assess, their prospective harms. In the firearms space, as an example, government agencies are extremely rigorous in assessing how a weapon operates to ensure that it functions precisely as meant given that the weapon might be used in life-changing scenarios. Such assessments require significant sums of money from agency budgets.

If we can make significant budgetary allocations for firearms, on the grounds they can have life-altering consequences for all involved in their use, then why can’t we do the same for predictive software systems? If anything, such allocations would compel agencies to make a strong(er) business case for testing the predictive systems in question and spur further accountability: Does the system work? At a reasonable cost? With acceptable outcomes?

Imposing cost discipline on organizations is an important way of ensuring that technologies, and other business processes, aren’t randomly adopted on the basis of externalizing their full costs. By internalizing those costs, up front, organizations may need to be much more careful in what they choose to adopt, when, and for what purpose. The outcome of this introspection and assessment would, hopefully, be that the harmful effects of predictive software systems in the national security space were mitigated and the systems which were adopted actually fulfilled the purposes they were acquired to address.

Categories
Links Writing

A Brief Unpacking of a Declaration on the Future of the Internet

Cameron F. Kerry has a helpful piece in Brookings that unpacks the recently published ‘Declaration on the Future of the Internet.’ As he explains, the Declaration was signed by 60 States and is meant, in part, to rebut a China-Russia joint statement. Those countries’ statement would support their positions on ‘securing’ domestic Internet spaces and removing Internet governance from multi-stakeholder forums to State-centric ones.

So far, so good. However, baked into the Kerry’s article is language suggesting that either he misunderstands, or understates, some of the security-related elements of the Declaration. He writes:

There are additional steps the U.S. government can take that are more within its control than the actions and policies of foreign states or international organizations. The future of the Internet declaration contains a series of supporting principles and measures on freedom and human rights, Internet governance and access, and trust in use of digital network technology. The latter—trust in the use of network technology— is included to “ensure that government and relevant authorities’ access to personal data is based in law and conducted in accordance with international human rights law” and to “protect individuals’ privacy, their personal data, the confidentiality of electronic communications and information on end-users’ electronic devices, consistent with the protection of public safety and applicable domestic and international law.” These lay down a pair of markers for the U.S. to redeem.

I read this, against the 2019 Ministerial and recent Council of Europe Cybercrime Convention updates, and see that a vast swathe of new law enforcement and security agency powers would be entirely permissible based on Kerry’s assessment of the Declaration and States involved in signing it. While these new powers have either been agreed to, or advanced by, signatory States they have simultaneously been directly opposed by civil and human rights campaigners, as well as some national courts. Specifically, there are live discussions around the following powers:

  • the availability of strong encryption;
  • the guarantee that the content of communications sent using end-to-end encrypted devices cannot be accessed or analyzed by third-parties (include by on-device surveillance);
  • the requirement of prior judicial authorization to obtain subscriber information; and
  • the oversight of preservation and production powers by relevant national judicial bodies.

Laws can be passed that see law enforcement interests supersede individuals’ or communities’ rights in safeguarding their devices, data, and communications from the State. When or if such a situation occurs, the signatories of the Declaration can hold fast in their flowery language around protecting rights while, at the same time, individuals and communities experience heightened surveillance of, and intrusions into, their daily lives.

In effect, a lot of international policy and legal infrastructure has been built to facilitate sweeping new investigatory powers and reforms to how data is, and can be, secured. It has taken years to build this infrastructure and as we leave the current stage of the global pandemic it is apparent that governments have continued to press ahead with their efforts to expand the powers which could be provided to law enforcement and security agencies, notwithstanding the efforts of civil and human rights campaigners around the world.

The next stage of things will be to asses how, and in what ways, international agreements and legal infrastructure will be brought into national legal systems and to determine where to strategically oppose the worst of the over reaches. While it’s possible that some successes are achieved in resisting the expansions of state powers not everything will be resisted. The consequence will be both to enhance state intrusions into private lives as well as to weaken the security provided to devices and data, with the resultant effect of better enabling criminals to illicitly access or manipulate our personal information.

The new world of enhanced surveillance and intrusions is wholly consistent with the ‘Declaration on the Future of the Internet.’ And that’s a big, glaring, and serious problem with the Declaration.