The Natural and Beautiful Tension Between Innovation and Standards

On the one hand, standards can drive an entire industry forward on a common basis and offer market economies of scale. Where would we be without common standards on the web or agreed audio andvideo standards or dedicated slices of spectrum that can be used globally with our mobile phones?

Standards are like four lane motorways down which lots of users can drive and benefit. Of course, before that motorway is built, someone has to do the initial trailblazing. But after the motorway is built, how do we keep innovation thriving and leverage an existing foundation to develop a new generation of standards from which we can all benefit? How do we find the balance between, on the one hand, stability and, on the other hand, constant innovation?

The answer may be found in a 45 year old biological theory that may offer a paradigm helping us to understand the symbiotic interplay of standards and innovation. The theories are from the biologist Stuart Kauffman who has studied the origin of life and behaviour of molecular self-organization. Kauffman argues that complex systems spontaneously self-organize into entities that are far more than the sum of their parts (which is also a key topic in the emerging discipline of network science).

Specifically, Kaufman argues that biological and other types of networks tend to both self-organize and attempt to expand into what he calls “the adjacent possible” to increase the diversity of what can happen next. He notes that if they try to expand too fast, they destroy their own internal organization. And if they try too slowly, they fail to adapt. In other words, there may be a natural law that this expansion happens only as fast as they can get away with it.

How does this relate to standards? Well, if Kaufmann’s law of the adjacent possible is a reasonable paradigm to accept, it makes it easier to understand that there can be little innovation without standards nor can there be standards without innovation. Standards and innovation are intertwined in a symbiotic relationship. The trick is figuring out how to innovateas fast as we can get away with it.

On that topic, the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) recently  created a Focus Group entitled Bridging the Gap: From Innovation to Standards. I’m sure they’ll be exploring some of these issues at their first meeting to be held 19-21 March 2012 at ITU. The meeting includes a workshop on ICT Innovations, particularly as it relates to what is happening in developing countries. It’s an open workshop so do consider participating and hear about some of the amazing innovations taking place in developing countries in the ICT space.

Google Offers Encyclopedia Entries in Search Results

Recent update places results pulled from the company’s Knowledge Graph under small popup panels next to search results. Knowledge Graph is Goggle’s database which contains encyclopedia entries on over 570 million concepts, relationships, facts and figures.

Google’s software engineers announced they strive to help users learn more about the websites they see in search results, and therefore now everyone can see more information about them directly on the results page. You can access the panels through a small clickable link located on the 2nd line of applicable search results.

Although Google believes this update is likely to enhance search for users, it can cause problems for those website owners who appear in search results with the added data panels. The matter is that such popup will add up to 3 more links to the search result which don’t lead to your website. In case this becomes a popular feature with the Internet users, it could lead some to click away from the actual site that is included in the initial search results.

Nevertheless, Google has already started this small trial, and is planning to continue expanding the number of websites which bring search results with Knowledge Graph entries included. The latest update is based on the largest change to the search algorithm the company had made in 3 years (“Hummingbird”). The latter focused on Knowledge Graph and natural language interpretation to make the core search better at answering longer, more complex and spoken queries.

US Accused Russia of Spying

After it became known that the United States has been spying on everyone in the world, it looks like the country feels the need to warn the world that the Russians are doing the same thing. One of the American cyber security companies said that it has collected evidence that the Russian government spied on American, European and Asian companies.

This is the first time Russia has been linked to cyber attacks for alleged economic gains. Maybe they finally run out of money with their Sochi Olympics? Cybersecurity experts made a statement that the victims of Russian spying included energy and technology companies, some of which have lost valuable intellectual property. The experts claimed that the cyber attacks have been motivated by the Russian government’s interest in helping domestic industries in key areas of national importance.

Actually, governments have been electronically spying on each other for over three decades under surveillance programs conducted by almost every nation. But it is only in the last ten years that some countries have started using online espionage for gaining information to help promote their own economic interests.

The US cyber security firm pointed out that the snooping has been carried out by Russian group of hackers known as “Energetic Bear” for 2 years already. The experts think that it is the Russian government behind the campaign, due to some technical indicators and analysis of the targets chosen and the information stolen. They admitted that the Russians copied the Chinese play book, as cyber espionage is very lucrative for economic benefit to a country.

Almost 1/3 of the World Care about Online Privacy

This significant uptake in anonymity tools must be explained by the gathering crisis of trust around consumer online services along with the fallout from Edward Snowden’s revelations. Netizens continue their battle with censorship and efforts to assert their right to web privacy.

56% of Internet users around the world feel that the worldwide web is eroding their personal privacy, with 415 million people or 28% of the entire online population using privacy tools to disguise their identity or location. 11% of Internet users prefer Tor, recognized as the most high profile for anonymizing access to the web. It means that Tor could be regularly used by over 45 million people, mostly in Indonesia (21% of users), Vietnam (18%) and India (15%).

By the way, Indonesia showed the highest penetration of general anonymity instruments among its citizens: 42% of them use proxy servers or VPNs. They are followed by 34% of the Chinese, hiding from 2 million of “Internet analysts” hired by the local government to block “inappropriate” content. 60% of people using VPN or proxies say they want to access YouTube, and 55% say they want to access Facebook and Twitter. This means that China’s Facebook and Twitter userbase could be much larger than first thought. For example, China’s VPN-using audience alone could account for 160 million people, most of whom are incorrectly identified as located somewhere in the US. In the meantime, the location of IP address is normally used to deliver relevant regional advertising and offer version of the site in the local language.

VPN is used by 38% of the online population in Vietnam, 36% in Brazil and Thailand, 34% in Mexico, India and China, 32% in the UAE and Argentina, 17% in the US, UK, Germany and Ireland, and 5% in Japan.

It should also be noted that the recent research underscores the shift from text messaging to mobile messaging clients like WeChat, with 20% of its users being in China. Facebook remains the most popular social network with 1.1 billion active users, and the company’s $1bn acquisition of Instagram proved a sound bet. The most common activity on Facebook includes sharing content, instant messaging and comments. Finally, MySpace languishes at the bottom of the charts, because it hasn’t integrated sharing with other networks.

Speech Recognition Feature in Chrome Exploited by Spies

Cyber attackers have found a way to use the speech recognition feature in Chrome to spy on ordinary users of the worldwide web. They managed to switch on a microphone using bugs in the Google Chrome browser. The exploit was discovered by one of the developers, who found it when working on a popular JavaScript Speech Recognition library. This allowed the developer to find many bugs in the browser and to come up with an exploit which combines all.

The developer was quick to report the exploit to Google’s security team in private back in September 2013. In less than a week, Google’s engineers have found the bugs, suggested fixes, and in the next five days a patch was ready. By the way, the developer’s find was nominated for Chromium’s Reward Panel.

The strange thing was that as time passed, the fix wasn’t released. When asked why, Google’s team answered that there was an ongoing discussion within the Standards group, to agree on the best course of action. In other words, the company couldn’t decide what to do, though there were not many options.

It’s 2014 already, but Google is still waiting for the Standards group to agree on the correct behavior, while leaving Chrome browser vulnerable. Indeed, all it takes is a user to visit a website exploiting speech recognition to offer some interesting new functionality.

Music Industry against Google

The IFPI and RIAA, music industry entities, have resumed their attacks on the search giant, accusing Google of breaking its promise to tone down piracy portals in its search rankings. The outfits have both published articles in a coordinated campaign in order to call for Google to adopt a 5-point plan to fight digital piracy.

This move is the latest in a fight between the entertainment industry and Google, even though the tech giant is an increasingly strong partner for various music labels and publishers via its YouTube and Google Play services. Nevertheless, the industry remains cross, claiming that their anger is justified, but the outfits don’t suggest any clear plan to resolve the argument.

In the meantime, the tech giant points at its 100 millionth takedown notice received from music copyright owners. The notices have been received within the last 2.5 years, at an accelerating pace: in December 2013 alone, the British music body the BPI sent 5.2 million notices, while the Recording Industry Association of America sent 2.3 million. The copyright owners consider Google the largest piracy discovery website in the world.

In response, Google published a report last September hitting back at the claims that it fails to address piracy and questioning whether the issue is as huge as the music industry claims. The report broke down Google’s activities, including such legitimate services as YouTube and Google Play, as well as Content ID system for helping copyright owners make money from uses of their music on someone’s videos. The company also emphasized its efforts within its advertising business – Google ensured that its adverts weren’t appearing on piracy websites.

Google pointed out that turnaround time on takedown notices was less than 6 hours, and keeps decreasing despite the rocketing volume of requests. Finally, the tech giant reminded that search was never a major driver of traffic to pirate sites. Indeed, all traffic from Yahoo, Bing, and Google combined accounts for only 15% of traffic to BitTorrent trackers.

Besides, Google questioned the methodology music industry used for the rightsholders’ research. The company provided its own statistics showing that people searched for a “song title” 16 times more often than “song title mp3” on Google and found lots of legal links at the top of the results.

US Ban Didn’t Harm Huawei

The Chinese tech giant has made a 40% rise in annual operating profit despite being blacklisted in the United States because of claims of cyber spying. The record growth is attributed to Huawei growing in emerging markets.

The results of 2013 showed that Huawei had a tough year, as two of the largest markets (the US and Australia) refused to let the company take government contracts. Huawei chose another way and placed its hopes in developing markets and Europe, where it has made headway building 4th-generation mobile networks.

The unlisted company has denied any spying links with the Chinese government and recently reported an unaudited 2013 operating profit of $4.8 billion (increase of 43%). Huawei’s revenue was $39.3 billion (8% increase, despite the goal of 10%). The Chinese giant, which ranks behind Ericsson in telecom gear sales, is expected to release audited financial results for 2013 in the 2nd quarter of 2014. Huawei’s flagship carrier business, which provided almost 3/4 of revenue in 2012, sells equipment to telecom operators.

In addition, smartphone shipments reached 52 million units worldwide in 2013, though the goal was 60 million unit target. The company is recognized as the 3rd-largest smartphone maker globally in the 3rd quarter of 2013, with a 5% market share. But the company is far beyond Samsung and Apple, accounting for 35% and 13% share respectively. Finally, Huawei also has an enterprise segment, which builds and sells communications equipment to businesses and institutions.

Google Acquired Nest Labs for $3.2 Billion

The tech giant is expanding its presence in consumer homes: Google announced its acquisition of Nest Labs, a connected device company producing smart thermostats and smoke detectors. Apparently, the company wants to enter a new market of app-controlled household devices.

Nest called the deal momentous but pointed out that they would retain current leadership and brand identity, so not much will change for the company. Industry experts believe that partnering with Google will help Nest realize its vision of the “smart home” faster than if it continued solo, because Google can provide Nest with business resources, global scale, and platform reach.

Mass media named Nest’s smoke alarm as one of the notable technological innovations of last year, as it could distinguish burnt toast from a real domestic threat, speak rather than bleep and switch on its nightlight when detecting people walking underneath in the dark.

Nest products are currently available only in the United States and can be accessed remotely with a smartphone app. The latter can provide you with information on battery power and emergency alerts. The thermostat is able to learn user behavior and find out whether a building is occupied or not through its temperature, humidity, activity and light sensors.

Within the last few years, Nest has created 300 patents for consumer technology and started exploring energy-efficient domestic technologies. Even now, despite the deal with Google, the company is going to allow its customers to continue controlling devices through Apple products.

The acquisition, expected to be completed in the nearest future, demonstrated that Google relies on hardware/software solutions rather than just building OS for other manufacturers to implement.

Apparently, the tech giant will open up the somewhat closed approach that Nest used to date, in order to better integrate with conscious home solutions that emerged in 2013, like SmartThings, AT&T Digital Life, or Revolv.

The acquisition didn’t affect Google’s wallet. A few months ago, the company reported holding almost $57 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities.

FCC Won’t Protect Net Neutrality

ISPs may be able to offer faster connections to preferred online portals and even block their rivals, as an American appeals court decided that regulators could no longer enforce the so-called “net neutrality”.

Recently, the US court of appeals ruled in favor of Verizon. In the case, FCC regulators argued that forcing ISP to provide equal access to worldwide web and bandwidth to all legitimate material is very important for the open Internet and encourages innovation. However, ISPs believe that net neutrality hampers both their ability to strike commercial deals with content providers and ability to provide higher-speed access to premium content – for example, high-definition movies. The broadband providers argue deregulation could spur more growth in emerging markets.

Despite the commercial impact, the court decision drew immediate concern from free speech groups that worry about the consequences of undermining net neutrality all over the world. They claim that the court decision will adversely affect the daily lives of US citizens and change the open nature of the web.

Some claim that court’s ruling grants commercial entities the right to block traffic and give preferential treatment to websites they like, thus steering users to or away from them. The FCC is going to appeal the decision, which may eventually wind up with the US supreme court.

One of the judges pointed out that regardless of the merits of net neutrality, the FCC simply had no legal power to treat ISPs like traditional telephone operators. Of course, Verizon welcomed this court ruling, but insisted that it would extend consumer choice in the future. The company assured that this move won’t affect users’ ability to access and use the Internet, but rather allow Verizon more room for innovation.

However, net neutrality supporters claim that allowing powerful tech giants to strike deals with ISPs to promote their material over others may hamper the growth of social media. They complain that the ability of the web to spread and share ideas is getting better, so individuals and small groups are now able produce resources that used to be the exclusive domain of large entities.

NEVER LOST AGAIN WITH NEW DIGITAL OBJECT (DO) ARCHITECTURE @~?

Robert E Kahn is considered one of the key Internet pioneers. An engineer and computer scientist, who, along with Vint Cerf, invented the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), the fundamental communication protocols at the heart of the Internet.

His latest project is the Digital Object (DO) Architecture. A key feature of the DO Architecture is the unique persistent identifier associated with each digital object. Imagine a large document or blog post with a lot of embedded URLs. After a certain amount of time those URLs will most likely become non-operational. If you replace those URLs with unique persistent digital object identifiers then, if properly administered, the links will never be lost – because the identifier is now associated with a digital object rather than a port on a machine. That’s only part of the story though, DO Architecture is exciting technology, it also provides security features that can, for example, better enable transactions and rights management. Libraries and the film industry are among early adopters of this technology.

ITU talked to Robert E Kahn about his work on DO Architecture and his motivation for bringing it to ITU.

With DO Architecture were you trying to address current challenges or facilitate new ways of doing things or both?

In the late 1980s, my colleague Vint Cerf and I perceived the need to move beyond the rather static methods being used to manage information in the Internet. This led to an effort which we called Knowbot programing, or more generally, mobile programing. We wrote a report – The Digital Library Project, Vol. 1:  The World of Knowbots (March 1988) – that describes the basic components of an open architecture for a digital library system and a plan for its development. Certain information management aspects of this effort, in particular the identifier/resolution component, were later developed to become the basis for the Digital Object (DO) Architecture, an overview of which is available here.

ITU-T recently approved a global standard for the discovery of identity information (Recommendation ITU-T X.1255) that was based on CNRI’s contribution.  What is Recommendation ITU-T X.1255 and why it is important?

With the proliferation of information systems in the Internet that has developed across the world, and with the associated creativity and innovation,  a critical question has arisen: “What are the basic building blocks available to the public that will enable interoperability across such heterogeneous systems?”

ITU-T X.1255 was based on CNRI’s DO Architecture and expanded by ITU-T Study Group 17, the ITU-T group leading security and identity management (IdM) standards work  Discussions in SG17 took the starting point of analysis from the notion of “digital object,” or more abstractly, “digital entity,” defined as an “entity” that is represented as, or converted to, a machine-independent data structure (of one or many elements) that can be parsed by different information systems, with each such digital entity having an associated unique persistent identifier.

These concepts are the basis for the deployment of systems of registries to improve the discovery and accessibility of not just identity-related management information, but information in digital form, more generally. The Digital Entity Data Model, and associated Digital Entity Interface Protocol, also described in ITU-T X.1255 are basic information infrastructure elements that should span technology generations and stand the test of time.

What contribution can the implementation of the DO Architecture in fields such as banking, healthcare and transportation, make towards addressing security and privacy?

Security is a fundamental capability of the DO Architecture, which is not the case for other distributed management systems for information in digital form in the Internet.

The basic administration of the identifier/resolution component of the DO Architecture is based on a public key encryption (PKI) regime. The creator of a digital object (or more abstractly, digital entity) has the ability to restrict access to their objects to known users; people or machines known to the system by their respective identifiers.

In practice, this system allows for a direct correlation between the security measures deployed and the degree of privacy achieved. Think of the medical records doctors keep on their patients. If a record is structured as a digital entity, access to this confidential information can be limited to authorized users, based on their identifiers and their ability to respond accurately to a PKI challenge. In some cases, access may mean permission to obtain a digital entity in its entirety. In other cases, access may mean permission to perform specific operations on all or part of the digital entity.

How will Recommendation ITU-T X.1255 enable communications and transactions between “things”?

There is a tendency to view “things” in the Internet as being identified with respect to their physical manifestation, but specific information about things is more important. In the Internet today, an IP address is associated with “things” such as a port on a machine, typically a user’s computer or a network-based server, or more generally, a device such as a smart phone or a digitally enabled light bulb socket or a refrigerator.

Moving away from identifying information about things to identifying the information itself, represented in digital form, makes it possible to associate this information with other types of information. This ability to link related kinds of information in digital form holds great promise for enabling new ways of doing business in the Internet. ITU-T X.1255 describes metadata registries that are interoperable, and may be federated to ensure the long-term discoverability and utility of information structured as digital entities with resolvable persistent identifiers that endure over time.

What next for the DO Architecture?

The basic structure of the DO Architecture is applicable to information management needs of all kinds, but its development over the coming years will likely see the creation of multiple metadata schemas for different domains. We can expect the ability to search DO Registries to benefit from advances in search technology. Keyword search is still a primary technique, but other techniques including image understanding, speech analysis and pattern matching in large data sets will prove very useful.

In 2014, the DO Architecture will reach a significant juncture with a change in the administration of one of its key components, the Global Handle Registry (GHR). CNRI has maintained control over the administration of the GHR since it was first made available in the Internet by CNRI in 1994.

Plans are now well underway to transfer overall administration of the GHR to the DONA Foundation, a non-profit organization to be based in Geneva. The Foundation, once established, will be responsible for determining the set of system administrators, for digitally signing critical system information, and for establishing the overall policies and procedures governing the GHR’s operation. Multiple independent parties, which are authorized and credentialed by the Foundation, will be responsible for the distributed operation of the GHR.

Robert E. Kahn is Chairman, CEO and President of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), which he founded in 1986 after spending thirteen years at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Dr. Kahn was responsible for the system design of ARPANET, the first packet-switched network. He is a co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols and was responsible for originating DARPA’s Internet Program. In his recent work, Dr. Kahn has been developing the concept of the Digital Object Architecture, which provides a framework for interoperability across heterogeneous information systems. After receiving a B.E.E. from the City College of New York in 1960, Dr. Kahn earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton University in 1962 and 1964 respectively. He is a recipient of the 1997 National Medal of Technology, the ACM Turing award, the 2004 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Japan Prize in 2008 and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2013.

Samsung and Apple Ready for Mediation

Mass media revealed that the companies have agreed to attend a mediation session in February before meeting in court in March. Apple and Samsung CEOs have agreed to attend the session with in-house attorneys only, after their legal teams had met in the beginning of January to discuss settlement options. The companies didn’t reveal the details of the meeting, but it looks like they really want to end the silly court actions started by Steve Jobs.

Apple was going to patent troll Samsung out of the market by any means, being insulted that Samsung had stolen Apple’s idea which the latter stole from Nokia for a touch screen smartphone. This battle involved many court actions all over the world that has ultimately failed to stop either Apple or Samsung producing their devices. The funniest part is that Apple’s only real win owed to a patent of inventing the rounded rectangle, something that is being appealed. Within the last 2 years, the parties have gone to trial twice, and US juries have awarded Apple a total of about $930 million, but European courts didn’t favor Apple.

The industry experts admit that although two high profile leaders meeting does bode well, they don’t believe the companies will come to an arrangement. The situation has reached a point where they have been fighting so long that they might have already forgotten why. Apparently, the only winners in this war are corporate legal teams, who have no reason to stop it.

French & Arabs Upset with US Security Obsession

An oncoming deal between the United Arab Emirates to purchase a couple of intelligence satellites from France worth $930 million seems to be in trouble after the National Security Agency tried to put backdoors into the technology. Two military observation satellites contained a couple of specific US-supplied components providing backdoors to the highly secure information transmitted to the ground station.

The Arabs have asked the French to come up with some components that won’t leak their plans to the US, saying that they would rather prefer Russian or Chinese firms to take over the project. Actually, only the US believes that Chinese and Russians are spying on people.

So, the United Arab Emirates is ready to scrap the whole deal. Apparently, the country is hugely miffed that it bought French and found itself spied on by the US. In reality, the French only won the deal because the American State Department had been such an arse about how the system could be used.

In the meantime, the UAE likes Russian technology a lot - for example, it used the GLONASS space-based navigation system fitted as a redundancy feature on a Western European weapon system. As for France, defence experts can’t find out why the French were using the American technology in the first place.

Media reports say that France operates the Pleiades spy satellite in a kind of a critical piece of the country's sovereignty. Taking into account that core competence, it seemed weird that France would use American technology, though there’s an agreement between Paris and Washington over transfer of capabilities.

Finally, the deal is also problematic because Israel may want to limit the ability of the system to work. The matter is that the French satellites sold to the Arabs, a very high optical resolution and encrypted code may be used to guide a cruise missile to a target in Iran.