New Zealand a pioneer in Big Data surveillance technology

A Royal Commission of Inquiry will be convened in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosques atrocity.

In the short term also there will be departmental inquiries to evaluate who knew what and when?

Among the issues, the questions, in the longer term inquiry, the Royal Commission and also in the more immediate departmental inquiries are:-

- Was the suspect identified as a consistent user of extremist social media sites, and if so, when?

- Was the suspect’s application for gun license approval and his subsequent acquisition of the approved weaponry at any time matched with any extremist site visits?

- Was the suspect’s visit to North Korea, a nation with which New Zealand is still technically at war, and attested by the photo posting, registered by surveillance agencies in connection with the granting of the gun license approval?

- Was the suspect’s peripatetic lifestyle and absence of visible means of support and over a long period of time in terms of not having a job, permanent or otherwise, registered prior to the granting of the gun approval?

- Were the suspect’s finances investigated at any time and in relation to the weaponry acquisitions in terms of money transfers and deposits and especially the source of these?

In the background of all this is the question of the security agencies and the degree to which they were, and are, confined and hobbled in their operations by legislated privacy restrictions – and in the more abstract sense, human rights ideals.

Information technology and its application naturally follows on the heels of this.

Big data refers to the method in which information from every conceivable electronic source including social media is run through an analytic sieve in order to pin point departures, exceptions, from a pre-defined norm.

Under this approach the suspect’s gun licence application procedure might have exposed:-

- Visitations to certain social media sites

- Absence of visible means of support i.e. a job

- That he was in fact a loner i.e. absence of postings showing the suspect with other people in the conventional context of a male in their late 20s.

Using this example and if the above had rung bells this same approach might have run the suspect’s financial transactions though this same sieve in order to discover where his money was coming from?

Similarly, the issue will be raised at some stage during all these deliberations to the effect: was it known if the suspect sought treatment at any stage from medical clinicians, and if so why?

These last two points will be intensively relevant to the various ensuing inquiries.

New Zealand was a pioneer in what is now described as big data and data mining.

The National Law Enforcement Database in Wanganui was opened in 1976.

It featured a modus operandi routine which allowed investigators to sort through suspects and persons of interest based on the suspects’ known preferred criminal techniques and instruments.

Coincidentally, the world’s major security/surveillance technology supplier now is Palantir which is controlled by New Zealand part-time resident Peter Thiel.

New Zealand’s own entry into this growth market was the launch on the NZX of Wynyard Group which owed its roots to the same programme-generation technology that had proved so successful in the Anglo-New Zealand crime fighting networking installed at Wanganui.

Wynyard in a reprise of New Zealand being either too early or too late in electronics, dismayingly rapidly faded from the NZX, and the security enforcement market.

Royal Commissions and the promise of them have the immediate effect of drawing the sting, acting as a symbolic salve, in instances when the public is considered to have cause to believe that it has been ill-served by the institutions that are supposed to be acting on their behalf, in this instance, watching over them.

Even so the immediate run of departmental investigations will render practical information in the shorter and therefore much more useful term.

A new marine refit facility is proposed to be developed in Wynyard Quarter that will have the ability to create hundreds of jobs and deliver significant marine and tourism spending.

Apr 23 - SeaLink, the indispensable link from Auckland to Waiheke and Great Barrier Islands will operate all its services under the SeaLink name from Monday 23 April.

A Chinese company trying to get visas for nearly 200 workers from China for a waterfront hotel build in Auckland is under attack from unions over its tactics.

A Chinese development company planning to fly in 200 overseas tradies for an Auckland hotel build are prepared to pay only three-quarters of the normal hourly rate - with further deductions to workers' pay for travel and accommodation.

A return to 100 per cent jet fuel allocations at Auckland Airport is a great start to the school holidays for airlines and their customers, Energy and Resource Minister Judith Collins says.

Two weeks ago the fuel allocation was reduced to 30 per cent following the disruption to supply through the Marsden Refinery to Auckland pipeline. Fuel allocations were increased incrementally to 50 per cent then 80 per cent as alternatives to transporting fuel to Auckland Airport were found.

“Getting back to 100 per cent fuel allocation this morning is great news for the start of the school holidays. It is the result of the co-operation between government and industry in managing a complex logistical exercise in moving fuel through alternative routes by land, air and sea,” Ms Collins says.

“It should be noted that the Marsden Refinery to Auckland pipeline while repaired, will be operating at 80 per cent capacity into the New Year. However, the industry is confident that the pipeline will be able to deliver the amounts of jet fuel airlines need to operate normally.

“Trucks will continue transporting the 1.5 million litres of jet fuel stored at Wynyard Wharf until the tank is empty, which is expected to be toward the end of next week.

“It’s also good to hear from the industry that there are no longer any short-term outages at stations in Auckland. The pipeline is increasingly being used to deliver petrol and diesel into Auckland, which is continuing progress to normal supply. The fuel companies are looking at their logistics to ensure use of the pipeline and fuel being trucked in from outside of Auckland is balanced, and continues to ensure demand is met.”

| A Beehive release  ||  October 2,  2017   |||

As part of the The New Zealand Institute of Architects 2017 Festival of Architecture, ArchitectureNow, in association with Atelier Aitken, Monmouth Glass Studio, The Sawmill Brewery, Open Media Lab and ACE - Architecture and Civil Engineering Association, presents a technology-focused exhibition between 9 and 17 September in Silo Park, Wynyard Quarter. For more info, see here: http://architecturenow.co.nz/calendar/exhibitions/future-intelligence-in-architecture-exhibition/ And while you're here.... check out this cool video by Atelier Aitken on bio-design below.

1. (Source ArchitectureNow)
2. vimeo.com

Will purchase appease shareholders and their class action?

The acquisition by Toronto’s Resolver Inc of assets of Wynyard Group points up the need for an international partner by New Zealand technology companies.

Resolver has taken over a slew of products from the Wynyard Group which went into liquidation. In doing so the Canadian company also acquires a user base, notably in the public sector.

Resolver’s activities in the crime-fighting, counter insurgency, and security IT application sector mirrored those of Wynyard.

The failure of Wynyard much earlier to acquire a big league international collaboration is all the more strange bearing in mind that Wynyard sprang out of Jade which achieved its global market share through an initial tie up with Unisys, and then with the UK’s Skipton Building Society.

Even so, collaboration poses a special threat for risk systems producers.

The less people in on the codes, the better. The less diluted their allegiance, the less the risk of leaks.

These systems require input from law enforcement authorities. Tolkien buff and New Zealand resident Peter Thiel’s Palantir is an example.

It is not known if the acquisition by Resolver of the Wynyard Group product line is sufficient to appease the formerly NZX main board company’s shareholders with their class action.

Meanwhile, the transaction reinforces a long tradition of Canadian IT involvement in this country which started with the introduction of the first PC portable, as they were then known, the Hyperion, then the Commodore, and much more recently the BlackBerry, long the Parliamentary standard.

Canadian manufacturers that played a big part in the telecommunications ramp-up included Mitel, Norpak, and Brian Tolley’s Bell Block cable extrusion process factory Canzac.

| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |  Wednesday 15 March 2017  ||

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          IMAGE CREDIT: KOREN ALLPRESS

Ξ   Timaru stone to form part of commemorative garden in Belgium

Ξ   Strike action still looming at Lyttelton Port, talks to continue Friday

Ξ   5000 NZ dairy cows heading to China on Saudi businessman's ship

Ξ   While you were sleeping: Wall St mixed

Ξ   Tony Alexander's Weekly BNZ Overview

Ξ   Government accounts ahead of forecast

Ξ   Underpinning Mr Thiel’s right to New Zealand citizenship is his passion for Tolkien.

Ξ   Phitek sold to NYSE-listed Amphenol in $60M deal

Ξ   Callaghan appoints panel to help firms leverage their IP

Ξ   NZ budget deficit smaller than forecast in first 5 months as GST, corporate tax beat estimates