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RSS FeedOctober 3rd, 2010
Commonwealth Games 2010 – New Delhi
Ok, finally the Commonwealth Games 2010 are on the way in New Delhi. This is the first time India is hosting an event of this magnitude since the Asian Games of 1982. The media frenzy that preceded the event notwithstanding, the opening ceremony seems to have gone very well and the first videos on Youtube have started appearing.
I feel bad to have missed the opening ceremony, but as far as I was able to read, the conch shells from India, the Tibetan ‘Dung Chen’s and various other musical instruments have left a great impression on the people who witnessed it.
So, what do we make of all the media hoopla leading up to the event? There is a strange case of media bias. Many of the atomic complaints that the media highlights were all true – things lagged, schedules slipped, etc, and the problem isn’t really in reporting that – that is what the media is here for. The bias starts becoming apparent however, when the next day, the same exact information is repeated as “news” with the only addition being perhaps of a quote from one other person. So, the feeling is that the news agencies have to keep a focus on the chaos that existed before. Having found nothing today, they need to keep stretching the ghosts of yesterday. And if some day turned out to be good, the media simply doesn’t have to report it, turning its attention to other important matters of the universe. This is all subjective however, and if it weren’t for a very repetitive pattern, it would really be fine.
CNN takes a different take. It begins with the very neutral headline: Commonwealth Games begin in India “amid security”. One might ask, as opposed to what? Did CNN expect a free movement of people across the parliament, the presidents house and the capital with no security in place. Did the Olympics begin in Beijing (or even in pre-911 Atlanta) without security? Which part of the title is the news?
And then, don’t even get me started on the BBC. I stopped being its reader back when BBC stopped being anti-India covertly (and became overtly anti-Indian). Incidentally – on that note – BBC still hasn’t found any further details on the “gunmen” of 26-11, although it continues to end every piece on India with the standard 3-sentence paragraph about the 3 wars with India’s western neighbor. That’s really great for about two kinds of readers – those who have in coma for about 64 years, and those who want to have 3 sentences for every country so they can get on the big boss or some other reality show. It meets BBC’s agenda of always hyphenating India so that it doesn’t challenge UK’s rightful place (as what, I don’t really know). [I routinely get some emails from UK readers - something like "Please stop equating BBC with UK!" - and I always tell them the same thing - "I cannot distinguish, because BBC is FUNDED by the UK - it isn't just a UK company."]
Anyway, back to the games, the medals tally can be found here: CWG 2010 Medalls Tally.
February 20th, 2010
Lack of Fairness in News Media
From calling killers “terrorists” in London, and “gunmen” in Mumbai (British Biased Corporation), to something as simple as a recent news story on AFP: India restaurant bombing toll ‘rises to 12′ (note the quotes), lack of fairness exists at many levels in news media.
Here is how the story extends:
“The death toll from a blast that ripped through a packed restaurant last weekend in western India, which was claimed by a previously unknown Islamist group has risen to 12, a report said Saturday.”
A little later it says: “The latest fatality was a 26-year-old Sudanese student, Amjad Elgazoli, who was studying at college in Pune…”
So, my question – what part of the title made the editor so nervous that he had to put the toll in quotes? What part of the news report was debatable or not solemn enough to justify adding some quotes?
December 14th, 2008
BBC (Biased Broadcasting Corporation)
Apparently, it turns out, when I slammed BBC last week I was not alone. Rather, I was in distinguished company. Well-known thinker and editor-in-chief of Covert magazine, MJ Akbar has slammed BBC in even more stringent terms. My list of grievances with BBC has went past the levees, and I have dropped it from my bookmarks. Guardian it is for now, for the British source of news.
December 8th, 2008
BBC’s anti-India bias
Despite its best attempts, BBC has never been a neutral media outlet. Observer (observer.guardian.co.uk) has published a detailed report that confirms that one of terrorists who killed 160+ people in Mumbai on Nov 26th is indeed from Pakistan. Here is the link to their website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/07/mumbai-terrorism-india-pakistan1. The article also tells that this person’s parents were led away by the authorities about a week ago.
BBC has only published a one page on Pakistan’s scepticism to whether or not this terrorist is from Pakistan. Here is the relevant link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7757871.stm. It is difficult to believe that BBC does not have access to the same investigative reports that Observer and MSNBC have as it has one of the largest networks inside Pakistan.
No wonder that BBC has lost ground to Observer and other news sources over these years.
January 27th, 2007
Statistics Hacking – BBC as a Propaganda Tool
BBC is one of the leading news websites. It is often ranked in top 10 most visited websites. Due to this, it wields an enormous amount of influence.
BBC monitors the popularity of a news item on at least two counts (i) Number of times the news item was read, and (ii) Number of times the news item was emailed. These correspond to the “Most E-mailed” and “Most Read” segments of the BBC website.
As we show next, any hacker can propel a selected news item to the top of the “Most E-mailed” news story. The effect of this is quite significant and is self-feeding, as the news story that stays on the most emailed section then continues to get attention, and therefore continues to be emailed.
What is Statistics Hacking?
We define Statistics Hacking to be a process in which a malicious user manages to modify the system usage statistics. Statistics Hacking explicitly refers to the situation where the resource (website or system) is available to the malicious user for acceptable usage, but the user is able to modify the system usage statistics using some unacceptable methodology.
Basic Vulnerability in the BBC’s System
This section highlights in detail the vulnerability in the BBC’s “Email this to a friend” system, and how it can be exploited by Statistics Hackers.
As of now, BBC does not employ any of the advanced methods to prevent statistics hacking. Instead, it only uses a small hash value, that is hardcoded inside the HTML form. It is not clear if this hash was intended as a security mechanism at all, anyway it has zero impact in this respect.
Hacker’s Code
In the scenario below, we assume that the Statistical Hacker is a dedicated health services professional, who wants to highlight the availability of HIV Home Screening Kit, a news story carried by BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6212467.stm.
Hacker begins by opening that page manually in a web browser, and then manually clicking on the “Email this to a friend” link. When the smaller window with email form opens, the hacker views the source of that page. The source of the page reveals most of the information that the hacker requires to submit that form.
Hacker’s Code involves a very basic Java program, in which a URL connection is obtained to the URL of the “Email this to a friend” page. Using the hidden variables and their values obtained from the form source, hacker creates the content that is then written to the output stream of the URLConnection object.
[Specific code for this story can be found in the PDF version cited below.]
Methods of Protection Against Statistics Hacking
Following categories of methods are available against Statistics Hacking.
- Use Computerized Turing Test to Distinguish Humans from Computers
- Use clustering techniques or improved counting to ignore double counts when analyzing statistics
Summary
This is a simplified version of an in-print journal paper. Full pdf version of paper can be found below.
Reference
[1] “Statistics Hacking – Exploiting Vulnerabilities in News Websites”, Amrinder Arora, International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, March 2007.
Download PDF.