Thursday, July 28, 2005
The Statistical Reliability of Television Ratings in China
This post is inspired by a story in Legal Mirror via Media In China. During a forum, there were questions about the scientific nature of the television ratings from CCTV-SOFRES and Nielsen Media Research. The lament is that "Since CCTV-SOFRES is implementing a system in which the lowest rated program will be eliminated, we program hosts will have to pay attention to the ratings." At this point, it is necessary to disclose that my company has a 50% stake in the Nielsen Media Research service, but I am personally not involved in television audience measurement in China. I am not here to attack a competitor, but I am here to defend my profession against media distortion.
It is axiomatic that every person thinks that their ratings should be better because they know that they are doing good. So I can't get into the specifics here for lack of information.
The more interesting part is the last part of the article. To counterbalance the claim of the television program host, the reporter interviewed a Mr. Hu at CCTV-SOFRES. Here is the translation:
According to him, the calculation of the rating is not based upon "the number of viewers divided by the total number of survey respondents."
First of all, the company will select 300 representative households by considering sex, education, family composition and other factors. Next, in order to reduce the effect of fatigue from participation in the survey, the company will replace 2% of the households in the sample. Furthermore, the calculation for a time period is based on the minute as the basic time unit. Thus, the number of viewing minutes is added up for all persons and divided by "total number of persons in the sample multipled by the total number of minutes in the time period" and the result is the rating for the television program.
Why does the sample consist of 300 households? According to Mr. Hu, "Based upon international standards, 1,067 sample persons is the point of balance between reliable numbers and research value. This number is the number of persons in 300 households in the case of China."
"From a sample of 1,067, we can achieve the international standard of being able to achieve an error tolerance of plus or minus under 3% at the 95% confidence level. If we increase the sample to 1,000 households, the costs will increase geometrically but the increase in reliability and the reduction in sampling error will be quite limited," said Mr. Hu.
I hope that Mr. Hu did not say that, and it is usually the case that the reporters get the technical details wrong.
What do I know about the sampling error around a television ratings? I am going to refer to someone who has the distinction of having calculated more standard errors around television ratings than the sum total of all other persons in the history of mankind, or so I was told (note: when I last checked with him, his running count was 14 million). So I take it that he knows what he is talking about. The following is an excerpt from Roland Soong (1988) The Statistical Reliability of People Meter Ratings. Journal of Advertising Research, February/March, p.51-56.
Televison audience ratings are obtained from samples of television households. The ratings are subject to inherent error due to the fact that different samples will generate somewhat different results. The margin of possible error due to this factor is commonly referred to as sampling error.
The size of the sampling error is measured by a quantity called the standard error. The size of the standard error can be influenced by many factors. If the sample is a simple random sample of size n, then the standard error of a rating (p) is given by SQRT(p(100-p)/n). However, real-life samples are never just simple random samples and the sampling error is influenced by many other factors such as repeated measurement over multiple time units per household or person; the clustering effect of measuring mutliple persons per household; weighting; guest viewing; and so forth.
As a result, the actual standard error can be greater, equal to, or less than the simple standard error.
Let us look at the statements attributed to Mr. Hu.
First, let us assume that the CCTV-SOFRES sample is indeed a simple random sample of 1,067 persons.
- For a rating of 1%, the standard error is SQRT(1/(100-1)/1067) = 0.3.
The 95% confidence interval is plus or minus 1.96 x 0.3 = (0.41,0.59)
- For a rating of 10%, the standard error is SQRT(10(100-10)/1067) = 0.9.
The 95% confidence interval is plus or minus 1.96 x 0.9 = (8.2,10.8)
- For a rating of 50%, the standard error is SQRT(50(100-10)/1067) = 1.5.
The 95% confidence interval is plus or minus 1.96 x 1.5 = (47.1,52.9)
Technically, therefore, it is correct to say that a simple random sample of 1,067 persons does yield a 95% confidence interval of plus or minus 3% or less. But this statement misses the point about how the size of the confidence level depends on the rating level. The more important issue, though, is that the sample is not a simple random sample.
Quoting again from Soong (1988),
Television is a group activity. When persons in a household view television together, there is a decision-making process to choose the programs. In recent years, this has become less important because of the increase in the number of sets per household. Nevertheless, close to 50% of the televsiion households are single-set households. The information relevant to group viewing is contined in the people statistical efficiencies ... [which] relfect primarily the duplication in television viewing of members of the same households ...
So if this is a sample of 1,067 persons living in 300 households, this intra-household clustering effect exists and will make it less reliable than a true simple random sample. For example, Soong (1988) cites discount factors of 16%, 16%, 14% and 30% for adult men, adult women, teens and children 2-11 respectively due to this effect. On this basis alone, the confidence intervals would be larger than those indicated above.
The other factor that impacts statistical reliability is the time period. As Mr. Hu described, "the calculation for a time period is based on the minute as the basic time unit. Thus, the number of viewing minutes is added up for all persons and divided by "total number of persons in the sample multipled by the total number of minutes in the time period" and the result is the rating for the television program." From this description, the most basic sampling unit is not a person. It is a minute within a person. And the actual rating is based upon a cluster sample of multiple time units (such as the minutes within a program) with the sample persons. For cluster samples, the more time units, the more reliable the number. The outcome purely depends on the time units involved. For example, the worst case is the single minute 8:00pm-8:01pm on a specific Sunday (July 24, 2005); greater reliability is achieved with the 30 minutes between 8:00pm-8:30pm on the same day; even greater reliability is achieved with the 210 minutes between 8:00pm-8:30pm between Monday-Sunday (July 18-July 24, 2005); and even better for the same program over 3 months (13 weeks x 210 minutes per week = 2,730 minutes).
Thus, if one wants to look a single minute on a particular day, there may be a large standard error. As one looks at the average rating of a one-hour program across multiple weeks, the standard error may be substantially smaller.
Also, there is no such thing as an international standard about acceptable sampling error. In the end, it is all about money (surprise!). When I first started to work in television audience measurement in local markets, my company had 500 households in New York City and Los Angeles, 400 in Chicago, 300 in Philaldephia and San Francisco. Meanwhile, Nielsen Media Research has 7,000 households in the USA national sample today. We would all like to have large samples, but it was all about what the market can afford to pay.
Here is what usually happens. Mr. Hu of CCTV-SOFRES most likely knows exactly what these issues are, and he tries to explain the complexities to the reporter. The reporter may even grasp how many factors can impact the statistical reliability of television ratings. But, in the end, the reporter needs to come up with a simplistic scenario that he/she believes the typical reader can handle and thereby butchered the explanation. And that is a good summary of my professional dealings with the media over the past two decades.
Judy Miller: Do We Want To Know Everything or Don't We?
Not everyone in the Times building is on the same page when it comes to Judy Miller. The official story the paper is sticking to is that Miller is a heroic martyr, sacrificing her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity.
But a very different scenario is being floated in the halls. Here it is: It's July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson's now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times, raising the idea that the Bush administration has "manipulate[d]" and "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Miller, who has been pushing this manipulated, twisted, and exaggerated intel in the Times for months, goes ballistic. Someone is using the pages of her own paper to call into question the justification for the war -- and, indirectly, much of her reporting. The idea that intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller's credibility. So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.
This is why Miller doesn't want to reveal her "source" at the White House -- because she was the source. Sure, she first got the info from someone else, and the odds are she wasn't the only one who clued in Libby and/or Rove (the State Dept. memo likely played a role too)… but, in this scenario, Miller certainly wasn't an innocent writer caught up in the whirl of history. She had a starring role in it. This also explains why Miller never wrote a story about Plame, because her goal wasn't to write a story, but to get out the story that cast doubts on Wilson's motives. Which Novak did.
This version of events has divided the Times into two camps: those who want to learn everything about this story, and those who want to learn everything as long as it doesn't downgrade the heroic status of their "colleague" Judy Miller. And then there are the schizophrenics. Frank Rich is spending his summer in the second camp, while at the same time writing some of the most powerful and brilliant stuff about the scandal: "This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit… is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped up grounds… That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war."
But this unmasking -- if it is to be complete -- has to include Judy Miller and the part she played in the mess in Iraq. Of course, the division over Miller is nothing new… it predates her transformation into media martyr by many months. For an early look at this riff, check out Howard Kurtz' May 2003 reporting on the way Miller ferociously fought to keep Ahmad Chalabi, her top source on WMD, to herself and the anger it caused at the paper. And also the paper's extraordinary mea culpa from May 2004, in which its editors admitted that the Times' reporting on Iraq "was not as rigorous as it should have been" -- yet steadfastly refused to even mention the less-than-rigorous reporter whose byline appeared on 4 of the 6 stories the editors singled out as being particularly egregious. "It looks," the Times' public admission concluded, "as if we, along with the administration, were taken in." And yet just two month earlier, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller called Miller, who was one of the main reporters "taken in" a "smart, well-sourced, industrious and fearless reporter." Nothing about her less than "rigorous" reporting. Nothing about her reliance on Chalabi being less than "well-sourced."
Any discussion of Miller's actions in the Plame-Rove-Libby-Gonzalez-Card scandal must not leave out the key role she played in cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq and in hyping the WMD threat. Re-reading some of her pre-war reporting today, it's hard not to be disgusted by how inaccurate and pumped up it turned out to be. For chapter and verse, check out Slate's Jack Shafer. For the money quote on her mindset, look to her April 2003 appearance on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, where, following up on her blockbuster front page story about an Iraqi scientist and his claims that Iraq had destroyed all its WMD just before the war started, Miller said the scientist was more than a "smoking gun," he was the "silver bullet" in the hunt for WMD. The "silver bullet" later turned out to be another blank -- and the scientist turned out to be a military intelligence official.
Amazingly, however, even as her reporting has been debunked -- and her sources discredited -- Miller has steadfastly refused to apologize for her role in misleading the public in the lead up to the war. Indeed, in an interview with the author of Bush's Brain, James Moore, she, in the words of Moore, "remained righteously indignant, unwilling to accept that she had goofed in the grandest of fashions", telling him: "I was proved fucking right."
As recently as March 2005, in an appearance at Berkeley, she stubbornly refused to express regret. Indeed, she showed that she shares a key attitude with the Bush administration: an unwillingness to admit mistakes when faced with new realities. She even compared herself to the president, saying that she was getting the same information he was getting… and suggested that since he hadn't apologized, why should she? Maybe she's angling for the Tenet treatment: promote faulty intel, get a Medal of Freedom. Miller also echoed the words of Don Rumsfeld ("You go to war with the Army you have") when she justified her flawed reporting on WMD by saying "You go with what you've got". Really? Wouldn't it be better to wait until what you've got is right?
It's nice that Bill Keller is visiting Judy in jail giving updates about how hard this is for her, having to be away from her family and friends. But it would be even nicer if we'd had some acknowledgement from Miller of her complicity in sending 138,000 American soldiers away from their family and friends. And, unlike Miller, they won't be returning home in October. Indeed, as of today, 1,785 of them won't be returning home at all.
This story gets deeper with every twist and revelation, including the reminder (via Podhoretz) that Fitzgerald had a previous run in with Miller over her actions in a national security case, and the speculation (via Jeralyn at Talk Left) that Fitzgerald is considering seeking to put Miller under criminal contempt, rather than the civil contempt she's now under.
But one thing is inescapable: Miller -- intentionally or unintentionally -- worked hand in glove in helping the White House propaganda machine (for a prime example, check out this Newsweek story on how the aluminum tubes tall tale went from a government source to Miller to page one of the New York Times to Cheney and Rice going on the Sunday shows to confirm the story to Bush pushing that same story at the UN).
So, once again, the question arises (and you can't have it both ways, Frank): when it comes to this scandal, do you want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth or do you want the truth -- except for what Judy Miller wants to keep to herself?
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Wednesday, July 20, 2005
China Has an Ancient Mariner to Tell You About
By Joseph Kahn
Published: July 20, 2005
China Photos/Getty Images
The 15th-century seafarer Zheng He, now a huge statue in Shanghai. An outward-looking China is celebrating him.
Mwamaka Sharifu, 19, a Kenyan who claims Chinese ancestry because of a shipwreck.
NANJING, China, July 17 - The captivating tale of Zheng He, a Chinese eunuch who explored the Pacific and Indian Oceans with a mighty armada almost a century before Columbus discovered America, has long languished as a tantalizing footnote in China's imperial history.
Zheng He (pronounced jung huh) fell into disfavor before he completed the last of his early 15th-century voyages, and most historical records were destroyed. Authorities protected his old family home in Nanjing, but it was often shuttered, its rooms used to store unrelated relics.
Now, on the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's first mission in 1405, all that is changing. Zheng He's legacy is being burnished - some critics say glossed over - to give rising China a new image on the world stage.
Books and television shows, replicas of Zheng He's ships and a new $50 million museum in Nanjing promote Zheng He as a maritime cultural ambassador for a powerful but ardently peaceful nation.
Officials have even endorsed the theory, so far unproven, that one of Zheng He's ships foundered on the rocks near Lamu island, off the coast of today's Kenya, with survivors swimming ashore, marrying locals and creating a family of Chinese-Africans that is now being reunited with the Chinese motherland.
The message is that Zheng He foreshadowed China's 21st-century emergence as a world power, though one that differs in crucial respects from Spain, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and, most pointedly, the United States.
"In the heyday of the Ming Dynasty, China did not seek hegemony," says Wan Ming, a leading scholar of the era. "Today, we are once again growing stronger all the time, and China's style of peaceful development has been welcomed all over the world."
The Communist Party hopes to signal to its own people that it has recaptured past glory, while reassuring foreign countries that China can be strong and non-threatening at the same time.
Even within China, though, the use of poorly documented history as modern propaganda prop has generated a backlash.
Several scholars have publicly criticized the campaign as a distortion, saying Zheng He treated foreigners as barbarians and most foreign countries as vassal states. His voyages amounted to a wasteful tribute to a maniacal emperor, some argue.
Zheng He resonates, favorably or not, in Asia. Arguably for the first time since his final voyage in 1433, China is vying to become a major maritime power.
Beijing has upgraded its navy with Russian-built Sovremenny-class guided missile destroyers, Kilo-class diesel submarines and a new nuclear submarine equipped to carry intercontinental ballistic missiles. It has flirted with the idea of building an aircraft carrier, according to conflicting reports in state media.
Sustained double-digit increases in defense spending have helped make China one of the largest military powers in the world, though still well behind the United States. China says it aims only to defend itself. But others are skeptical.
"Since no nation threatens China, one wonders: why this growing investment?" Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asked recently in a speech on China's buildup during a visit to Singapore last month.
Beijing clearly hopes history will help answer the question.
Zheng He was a Chinese Muslim who, following the custom of the day, was castrated so he could serve in the household of a prince, Zhu Di.
Zhu Di later toppled the emperor, his brother, and took the throne for himself. He rewarded Zheng He, his co-conspirator, with command of the greatest naval expedition that world had ever seen. Beginning in July 1405, Zheng He made port calls all around Southeast Asia, rounded India, explored the Middle East and reached the eastern coast of Africa.
The three ships Columbus guided across the Atlantic 87 years later, the Niña, Pinta and Santa María, could fit inside a single large vessel in Zheng He's armada, which at its peak had up to 300 ships and 30,000 sailors. Some of China's maritime innovations at the time, including watertight compartments, did not show up on European vessels for hundreds of years.
Zheng He was China's first big ocean trader, presenting gifts from the emperor to leaders in foreign ports and hauling back crabapples, myrrh, mastic gum and even a giraffe.
In time, though, the emperor turned against seafaring, partly because of the exorbitant cost, partly because of China's religious certitude that it had nothing to learn from the outside world. By the latter part of the 15th century the country had entered a prolonged period of self-imposed isolation that lasted into the 20th century, leaving European powers to rule the seas.
For Chinese officials today, the sudden end of China's maritime ambitions 600 years ago conveniently signals something else: that China is a gentle giant with enduring good will. Zheng He represents China's commitment to "good neighborliness, peaceful coexistence and scientific navigation," government-run China Central Television said during an hourlong documentary on the explorer last week.
Earlier this month, authorities opened a $50 million memorial to Zheng He. Tributes to him fill courtyard-style exhibition halls, painted in stately vermillion and imperial yellow. A hulking statue of Zheng He, his chest flung forward as in many Communist-era likenesses of Mao, decorates the main hall.
As the Zheng He anniversary approached, delegations of Chinese diplomats and scholars also traveled to Kenya to investigate the claims that islanders there could trace their roots to sailors on Zheng He's fleet.
On one remote island, called Siyu, the Chinese found a 19-year-old high school student, Mwamaka Sharifu, who claimed Chinese ancestry. Beijing's embassy in Nairobi arranged for her to visit China to attend Zheng He celebrations. Beijing has invited her back to study in China, tuition-free, this fall.
"My family members have round faces, small eyes and black hair, so we long believed we are Chinese," Ms. Sharifu said in a telephone interview. "Now we have a direct link to China itself."
The outreach effort has generated positive publicity for China in Kenya and some other African countries, as well as around Southeast Asia, where Zheng He is widely admired.
But Zheng He has been more coolly received by some scholars in China and abroad.
Geoff Wade, a China specialist at the National University of Singapore, argued in an academic essay that Zheng He helped the Ming state colonize neighboring countries. His far-flung expeditions aimed at enforcing a "pax Ming" through Southeast Asia, allowing China to wrest control of trade routes dominated at that time by Arabs, he wrote.
Several Chinese experts also questioned whether Zheng He's legacy is as salutary as government officials hope.
Ye Jun, a Beijing historian, said the official contention that Zheng He was a good-will ambassador is a "one-sided interpretation that blindly ignores the objective fact that Zheng He engaged in military suppression" to achieve the emperor's goals.
"These matters should be left to scholars," Mr. Ye said.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
I like to think I'm pragmatic
More from Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman:
I've never met anyone I'd classify as self-aware: It's been my experience that most extroverted people think they're introverts, and many introverted people make a similarly wrong-headed juxtaposition about being extroverts. Maybe that's why extroverts won't shut up (because they always fear they're not talking enough) while introverts just sit on the couch and do nothing (because they assume everybody is waiting for them to be quiet). People just have no clue about their genuine nature. I have countless friends who describe themselves as "cynical," and they're all wrong. True cynics would never classify themselves as such, because it would mean that they know their view of the world is unjustly negative; despite their best efforts at being grumpy, a self-described cynic is secretly optimistic about normal human nature. Individuals who are truly cynical will always insist they're pragmatic. The same goes for anyone who claims to be "creative." If you define your personality as creative, it only means you understand what is perceived to be creative by the world at large, so you're really just following a rote creative template. That's the opposite of creativity. Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Charles Wang's Early Exit from Computer Associates
(Updated Thursday, Jan 2, 2003, 09:53:46 AM)
He's brash, hard-nosed, touchy, greedy and hated. He's also playful, generous, loyal and filthy rich. He lives in a magnificent Oyster Bay estate, owns the New York Islanders and plies the world in a Gulfstream IV.
In short, Charles Wang is an outsized embodiment of the Asian American Dream.
But his 26-year dream seemed to come to an abrupt end on November 18 when Wang resigned the chairmanship of Computer Associates (CA), the company he had founded and built into the world's third biggest independent software company. For several months he had been under federal investigation for possible improprieties connected with CA's May 1998 grant of $1.1 billion worth of stock options to Wang, then-COO Sanjay Kumar and then-EVP of R & D Russ Artzt. What amounted to a $670 million payday for Wang had come on the heels of four consecutive years as America's highest-paid CEO. Eyebrows were really raised when, a month later, CA's stock plunged from $58 to $30.
Multiple shareholder suits followed. Based on the company's failure to follow a procedural technicality, Wang was ordered to return a quarter of the stocks acquired in the option grant. In mid-2001 Wang faced a proxy fight by combative Texas billionaire Sam Wyly following CA's $4 billion acquisition of Wyly's Sterling Software. Wang emerged with his control intact thanks to the support of CA's biggest shareholder. The 90-year-old Swiss multi-billionaire rejected Wyly's plea for votes on the ground that Wang had caused his 21% stake in CA to increase tenfold since 1987. Wyly began a second proxy contest in early 2002 but withdrew after CA paid him off $10 million.
Most worrisome, for the past few months the Justice Department and the SEC have begun investigating CA's accounting procedures, especially as they relate to the granting of the 1998 stock options. Regardless of the probe's ultimate merits, a shrewd operator like Charles Wang could not have failed to recognize in himself a prime candidate for a highly telegenic media lynching. In building a software empire valued at $50 billion as recently as January of 2000, Wang has engaged in 50 takeovers followed by immediate firing of top management and key employees. His strategies had provoked descriptions like "rapacious", "heartless" and "Attila-the-Hun".
Charles Wang had also alienated many in and out of CA by his paternalistic, family-oriented management style. In 1979, three years after CA's founding, Wang had installed his older brother Tony, a onetime corporate lawyer, as president and COO. It was a post Tony was to keep until he retired in 1992 to make way for Sanjay Kumar. None too early, in the opinion of an investment community mistrustful of such cozy arrangements. It was no less leery when Nancy Li, Charles Wang's second wife, was named CA's chief technology officer in 1997. It didn't help when in August of 2000 she was named CEO of iCan-ISP Inc, CA's initiative into the fast-growing field of application service provision. The fact that Li had been an unusually capable CA employee since 1980 didn't seem to matter. Wang must have sensed that the investment community was punishing CA's stock because of his refusal to override his sense of familial loyalty to avoid the appearance of nepotism.
In the quarter century since he took CA public, his paternalistic style had become an anachronism.
One more factor may have influenced Wang's decision to bow out. Despite his enormous success and wealth, Charles Wang had tasted the power of racial prejudice. In 1998 Wang had initiated a $9 billion hostile tender offer for the shares of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). The Washington Post weighed in on the side of CSC's management by alluding to CA's "ties to foreigners". It was a pointed reference to Wang's origin and CA's clients in China. The suggestion was that becoming linked with CA would jeopardize CSC's contracts with U.S. government agencies. After much agonizing, Wang dropped the tender offer. The episode remained in his mind as his first encounter with overt racial discrimination in the business world. That his ethnicity might negatively influence the government's pending investigation would certainly have entered his mind.
To stay on as CA's chairman under a cloud, Wang seems to have concluded, might well invite doom for the company he founded.
But for CA's press release he put a happy face on his resignation.
"I am pleased to have completed the transition of leadership to Sanjay, who has been a trusted colleague and a valuable partner, in a smooth and orderly way,² Wang is quoted as saying. ³It is very gratifying to have completed this important step successfully by grooming and recommending my successor.... I am confident that Computer Associates, with a new generation of strong leadership, is well positioned for its next great period of growth and success."
There's little doubt that Wang accelerated his departure to defuse mounting pressures. As recently as March of 2000 he had told BusinessWeek that he had no intention of kicking himself upstairs to chairman as Bill Gates had done that January. "I feel like I'm just starting my business," he said, ''except that the opportunity is greater now."
But by August 2000 he had named Sanjay Kumar President and CEO. When he took the final step of giving up his chairmanship on November 18, investment community observers applauded the move as beneficial for the company in which Wang still retains 28 million shares, slightly less than 5%.
But Wang won't be lacking ways to keep busy. At around the time he gave up the CEO title to Kumar in August 2000, he became majority owner of the New York Islanders, a hockey team in need of much work to return to anything like its 1980s championship glory. Through his namesake charitable foundation, Wang has donated generously to numerous causes benefitting children, education and Asian Americans. The most visible among these is the 120,000-square-foot Charles B. Wang Center at New York State University at Stony Brook. The $40-million Center is the biggest single private gift ever received by the university and will be used in part to promote Asian culture. Wang has also contributed several million dollars to build schools in rural Cambodia.
Yet after a lifetime of success, being forced to leave one's own company prematurely and under a shadow will surely strike some as a bitter and regretful end. Should Charles Wang have retained his chairmanship until after the conclusion of the federal investigation? Or was his early departure really the best move for all concerned?
Thursday, July 07, 2005
ORG: Wi-Fi cloaks a new breed of intruder
Wi-Fi cloaks a new breed of intruder
Though wireless mooching is preventable, it often goes undetected.
By ALEX LEARY, Times Staff Writer
Published July 4, 2005
ST. PETERSBURG - Richard Dinon saw the laptop's muted glow through the rear window of the SUV parked outside his home. He walked closer and noticed a man inside.
Then the man noticed Dinon and snapped his computer shut.
Maybe it's census work, the 28-year-old veterinarian told his girlfriend. An hour later, Dinon left to drive her home. The Chevy Blazer was still there, the man furtively hunched over his computer.
Dinon returned at 11 p.m. and the men repeated their strange dance.
Fifteen minutes later, Dinon called police.
Police say Benjamin Smith III, 41, used his Acer brand laptop to hack into Dinon's wireless Internet network. The April 20 arrest is considered the first of its kind in Tampa Bay and among only a few so far nationwide.
"It's so new statistics are not kept," said Special Agent Bob Breeden, head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's computer crime division.
But experts believe there are scores of incidents occurring undetected, sometimes to frightening effect. People have used the cloak of wireless to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats, according to authorities.
For as worrisome as it seems, wireless mooching is easily preventable by turning on encryption or requiring passwords. The problem, security experts say, is many people do not take the time or are unsure how to secure their wireless access from intruders. Dinon knew what to do. "But I never did it because my neighbors are older."
A drive through downtown St. Petersburg shows how porous networks can be. In less than five minutes, a Times reporter with a laptop found 14 wireless access points, six of which were wide open. "I'll guarantee there are tons of people out there who have their wireless network being exploited but have no idea," Breeden said. "And as we see more people utilizing wireless, we'll see more people being victimized."
Prolific Wi-Fi growth
Wireless fidelity, or "Wi-Fi," has enjoyed prolific growth since catching on in 2000. More than 10-million U.S. homes are equipped with routers that transmit high-speed Internet to computers using radio signals. The signals can extend 200 feet or more, giving people like Dinon the ability to use the Web in the back yard of his Crescent Heights home but also reaching the house next door, or the street.
Today someone with a laptop and inexpensive wireless card can surf the Web via Wi-Fi at Starbucks or eat a bagel and send instant messages at Panera Bread. Libraries, hotels, airports and colleges campuses are dotted with Wi-Fi "hotspots." Even entire cities are unplugging.
"The information age is over. The information is out there," said Jim Guerin, technology director for the city of Dunedin, which will soon be the first city in Florida to go completely Wi-Fi. "Now it's the connectivity age. It opens up a whole new area for ethics, legal boundaries and responsibilities. It's a whole new frontier."
There's a dark side to the convenience, though.
The technology has made life easier for high-tech criminals because it provides near anonymity. Each online connection generates an Internet Protocol Address, a unique set of numbers that can be traced back to a house or business.
That's still the case with Wi-Fi but if a criminal taps into a network, his actions would lead to the owner of that network. By the time authorities show up to investigate, the hacker would be gone.
"Anything they do traces back to your house and chances are we're going to knock on your door," Breeden said.
Breeden recalled a case a few years ago in which e-mail containing death threats was sent to a school principal in Tallahassee. The e-mail was traced back to a home, and when investigators arrived, they found a dumbfounded family. The culprit: a neighborhood boy who had set up the family's Wi-Fi network and then tapped into it.
In another Florida case, a man in an apartment complex used a neighbor's Wi-Fi to access bank information and pay for pornography sites.
But he slipped up. The man had sex products sent to his address. "The morning we did a search warrant, we found an antenna hanging out his window so he could get a better signal from his neighbor's network," Breeden said.
Last year, a Michigan man was convicted of using an unsecured Wi-Fi network at a Lowe's home improvement store to steal credit card numbers. The 20-year-old and a friend stumbled across the network while cruising around in a car in search of wireless Internet connections - a practice known as "Wardriving."
(The name has roots in the movie WarGames, in which Matthew Broderick's character uses a computer to call hundreds of phone numbers in search of computer dialups, hence "war dialing.")
A more recent threat to emerge is the "evil twin" attack. A person with a wireless-equipped laptop can show up at, say, a coffee shop or airport and overpower the local Wi-Fi hotspot. The person then eavesdrops on unsuspecting computer users who connect to the bogus network.
At a technology conference in London this spring, hackers set up evil twins that infected other computers with viruses, some that gather information on the user, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Not all encryption is rock solid, either. One of the most common methods called WEP, or Wired Equivalent Privacy, is better than nothing but still can be cracked using a program available on the Web.
"Anybody with an Internet connection and an hour online can learn how to break that," said Guerin, the Dunedin network administrator. Two years ago when the city of Dunedin first considered Wi-Fi, Guerin squashed the idea because of WEP's inadequacy.
Dunedin's network, however, will be protected by the AES encryption standard, used by the Department of Defense. Passwords will be required, and each computer will have to be authenticated by the network. There also will be firewalls. "I'm confident to say our subscribers are at zero risk for that kind of fraud," Guerin said.
Leaving the door open
Not everyone has sinister intentions. Many Wardrivers do it for sport, simply mapping the connections out there. Others see it as part public service, part business opportunity. When they find an unsecured network, they approach a homeowner and for a fee, offer to close the virtual door.
Some Wi-Fi users intentionally leave their networks open or give neighbors passwords to share an Internet connection. There is a line of thought that tapping into the network of a unsuspecting host is harmless provided the use is brief and does not sap the connection, such as downloading large music files. "There is probably some minority of people who hop on and are up to no good. But I don't know there is any sign it's significant," said Mike Godwin of Public Knowledge, a public interest group in Washington, D.C., focused on technology.
"We have to be careful," Godwin said. "There's a lot of stuff that just because it's new triggers social panic. Normally the best thing to do is sit back and relax and let things take their course ... before acting on regulation."
Randy Cohen, who writes "The Ethicist" column in the New York Times Magazine , was swayed by Godwin's thinking. When asked by a Berkeley, Calif., reader if it was okay to hop on a neighbor's Wi-Fi connection, Cohen wrote:
"The person who opened up access to you is unlikely even to know, let alone mind, that you've used it. If he does object, there's easy recourse: nearly all wireless setups offer password protection."
But, Cohen went on to ask, "Do you cheat the service provider?" Internet companies say yes.
"It's no different if I went out and bought a Microsoft program and started sharing it with everyone in my apartment. It's theft," said Kena Lewis, spokeswoman for Bright House Networks in Orlando. "Just because a crime may be undetectable doesn't make it right."
"I'll probably never know'
In a way Dinon was fortunate the man outside his home stuck around since it remains a challenge to catch people in the act. Smith, who police said admitted to using Dinon's Wi-Fi, has been charged with unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony. A pretrial hearing is set for July 11.
It remains unclear what Smith was using the Wi-Fi for, to surf, play online video games, send e-mail to his grandmother, or something more nefarious. Prosecutors declined to comment, and Smith could not be reached.
"I'm mainly worried about what the guy may have uploaded or downloaded, like kiddie porn," Dinon said. "But I'll probably never know."
--Times staff writer Matthew Waite contributed to this report. Alex Leary can be reached at 727 893-8472 or leary@sptimes.com
MINIMIZING THE RISKS
Here are a few tips to minimize potential threats to a Wi-Fi network:
Enable WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy). Even though WEP uses weak encryption and is breakable, it still provides an effective first measure of defense by encrypting the traffic between your wireless card and access point. Use 64-bit WEP to gain some security benefit without slowing down your network unnecessarily. You can also use WPA, a similar security protocol that's tougher to crack. Make sure both your access point and card support it.
Change your SSID (service set identifier) to something nondescriptive. You do not want to give out your name, address, or any other useful information to potential hackers. Also, don't use the default SSID.
Change the default password on your access points. The defaults of most network equipment are well known.
Enable MAC based filtering. Using this feature, only your unique wireless cards can communicate with your access point.
Turn off your access points when you are not using them. Why risk being scanned or being broken into if you are not using your wireless network?
Position your access points toward the center of your house or building. This will minimize the signal leak outside of its intended range. If you are using external antennas, selecting the right type of antenna can be helpful in minimizing signal leak.
Don't send sensitive files over Wi-Fi networks. Most Web sites that perform sensitive transactions like shopping with a credit card or checking bank account information use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology.
Sources: Force Field Wireless, www.forcefieldwireless.com TampaBay.com columnist Jeremy Bowers.
Friday, July 01, 2005
Working your way through vacationThursday June 30, 6:00 am ETJenny McCune Can't stand idling away your vacation time on a beach or a cruise? Then consider taking a break from work by working on your vacation.
Use your time off to help out your favorite cause or take a "learning" vacation. Opportunities abound both in the United States and abroad.
Best of all, you might be able to save some bucks.
Volunteer vacations are ideal for travelers seeking spiritual as well as financial rewards. In addition to helping out a cause, travelers find that it's generally cheaper to go on a working vacation with a charitable organization than pay individual rates for hotels and dining, especially when visiting a foreign country. Plus, a portion of the costs might be tax-deductible. Individual circumstances do vary and the rules are strict, so read the program's fine print closely and always double-check with your accountant.
If your favorite nonprofit doesn't offer travel opportunities or you simply rest best by getting active, don't worry. There are plenty of other energetic excursions that could be your ticket to a refreshing holiday.
Help on an archaeological dig. Study how native Australian animals respond to fire to help that country develop a better wildfire strategy. Work at the Gettysburg Civil War battle site. Build residential housing here or abroad. Those are just a few of the assignments you can find as a working vacationer.
One of the pioneers of the volunteer vacation is the Earthwatch Institute, founded in 1972. It places John Q. Public on scientific expeditions. These short (10 to 14 days on average) volunteer opportunities include projects on ecology, zoology and archaeology. In 2005, Earthwatch expects to support more than 130 expeditions in 47 countries with over 4,000 volunteers. Sites can be found from Inner Mongolia to the Outer Hebrides, from Hudson Bay to Uruguay. Prices range from $700 to $4,000 per person, excluding travel to and from the rendezvous point.
Wilderness Volunteers, a nonprofit organization created in 1997, offers people age 18 and up a chance to help and maintain national parks, forests and wilderness areas across the United States. Everything from trail maintenance to revegetation projects are on the agenda. Most Wilderness Volunteers trips last about a week and cost around $219. Participants provide their own camping gear and share campsite chores. Tools and supervision are provided by Wilderness Volunteers and the government public land agencies it works with. Its 2005 itinerary includes trips throughout the United States, ranging from Tonto National Forest in Arizona to Acadia National Park in Maine.
Habitat for Humanity's mission is to help provide people worldwide with affordable housing. It is always on the look out for volunteers who want, as the organization puts it, "to blend recreation, perspiration and inspiration." The organization and its volunteers work on more than 365 home projects each year in countries such as Fiji, Mexico, New Zealand, Northern Ireland and Madagascar. In June 2005, Habitat's most famous volunteer, former President Jimmy Carter, will help build 225 homes throughout Michigan.. Costs are typically between $1,500 to $1,700 plus round-trip air fare.
Elderhostel Service Programs, a subset of Elderhostel, matches seniors (defined as those 55 or older) with working vacations. Its Web site promises vacationers the chance to "put your time and energy to work for worthy causes" ranging from tutoring schoolchildren in China to building homes in Guatemala to assisting with dolphin research in Belize. Costs vary depending on the trip.
Learning as you go
In addition to service-oriented vacations, Elderhostel also offers educational tours that include active vacations (combining a sport with educational opportunities), as well as "intergenerational" trips for those who want to bring along younger companions. Counting all its vacation options, Elderhostel annually hosts more than 10,000 trips in over 90 countries.
TraveLearn of Hawley, Pa., bills itself as the choice "for people who take their minds with them on vacation." Its vacations resemble more typical vacations: You stay in hotels, enjoy fine dining, etc. But the company's programs add an educational component so travelers can learn more about the countries they visit. For example, Dr. Abdellatif Kriem, professor at Mohammed V University, will lecture on "Moroccan Traditions and Islam" to TraveLearn clients, while Marvin Rockwell, one of the original Quaker settlers of Monteverde, Costa Rica, will recount his family's journey to that country and efforts to build a wildlife sanctuary there.
TraveLearn clients can attend as many or as few lectures as they want while on the trip. The vacations tend to be a bit more costly because of the educational component, as well as small group sizes and higher-end lodging and meals. The company's lowest-priced trip, a seven-day trek through Belize, costs $1,795. On the other end of the scale, TraveLearn's 18-day deluxe trip to Australia costs $5,495.
If you're interested in learning a language while abroad head to the National Registration Center for Study Abroad, a clearing house for such programs based in Milwaukee, Wis. Click on the country you want to visit (Argentina to Uruguay) or the language you're interested in (Basque to Zapotec) and you'll find a series of outings. NRCSA also categorizes its programs for "budget travelers," as well as for "mature adults" or "families." Although the primary emphasis of NRCSA is language, it also offers other learning programs and can connect travelers to opportunities to stay in the home of a family in the country they choose to visit.
For an even broader selection of classes abroad, consult ShawGuides. Its Web site boasts more than 5,700 vacation and career programs worldwide. You can browse by month, interest or destination. Learn how to climb mountains in Alaska, Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico or Pakistan. Find the best golf camps here and abroad. Because of the variety, excursion prices vary widely, but the selection should give you some maneuverability room if your budget, not destination, is your prime travel consideration.
Jenny C. McCune is a contributing editor based in Montana.
