Structure News: Apple's security showdown with the feds

Where We've Always Been In Cockroach Mode February 20th, 2016 / by Tom Krazit This week, we'll talk about the doom and gloom hanging over Silicon Valley, the race for the AI prize, and Apple's decision to take on Washington. STRUCTURE NEWS THE STRUCTURE SHOW: IBM AND AI, NETFLIX AND THE CLOUD, AND STORMS HEAD FOR SILICON VALLEY? On this week's show Derrick Harris and Barb Darrow join me to marvel at how quickly startups went from unicorns dancing in the fields to cockroaches just trying to survive. We also speculate a bit about the future direction of AI business at IBM (more on that in a bit), and recognize a milestone in Netflix's relationship with Amazon Web Services. Don’t forget that Structure Data 2016 is right around the corner, March 9th and 10th at the UCSF Mission Bay conference center. Derrick has put together a really cool lineup of speakers, including Rob High of IBM, who can shed some more light on the AI discussions taking place at Big Blue. You can find more information about the event here, and register here.   INDUSTRY NEWS BOSSES TAP OUTSIDE FIRMS TO PREDICT WHICH WORKERS MIGHT GET SICK From this week's edition of there-are-lots-of-humane-uses-for-data-but-that's-kinda-creepy beat, The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) highlights companies like Castlight Healthcare, which helps other companies comb employee medical records for signs they might need some medical help. The companies involved say they have only good intentions for their use of this data, and some of them undoubtedly do, but it's still a bit disconcerting that your HR department might get a push notification that you're stopped filling your birth control prescription and might be trying to get pregnant. TABLEAU TRIES TO FIX MISSTEPS AS IT SEES SLOWER GROWTH The all-out quest for growth that has characterized this latest startup boom might be draining public companies, too. Bloomberg interviews Tableau CEO Christian Chabot, who admits that the data analysis company probably grew too fast in the previous couple of years, and is now hoping to wring productivity gains out of its existing sales organization. THE USER EXPERIENCE: WHY DATA -- NOT JUST DESIGN -- HITS THE SWEET SPOT Design thinking is one of the most important concepts to evolve in the tech industry over the last decade, but when it comes to user experience, data must play a key role, at least according to Scott Snyder of Mobiquity and Jason Hreha of Dopamine, writing for Knowledge@Wharton. "… the reality is that all users are not the same — and they don’t all want to interact with your app in the same way," they write. X PRIZE AND IBM ANNOUNCE A $5 MILLION ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COMPETITION The X Prize has been a boon for several emerging technologies, such as self-driving cars and robotics, and it's now teaming up with IBM to offer one of its prizes for artificial intelligence research. It's a little unclear exactly how this competition is going to work, since the X Prize didn't set a specific goal and won't announce how it is defining AI until May, according to The Verge, but it's still cool. THE KEY TO SECURITY IS BEING OPEN Apple might disagree with the headline of this piece on Medium (more on that in a bit), but Alex Stamos, CSO of Facebook, argues that the best way to protect tech companies from outside attackers is to band together. You can bet this theme will be on the agenda at Structure Security, our brand-new conference, this September. HERE'S WHY IBM IS DROPPING $2.6 BILLION ON TRUVEN HEALTH After buying up The Weather Channel's treasure trove of weather data for its Watson program last year, IBM is now adding to its health-care data set. Fortune reports that IBM paid $2.6 billion for Truven Health, which will give Rob High of IBM something else to talk about at Structure Data.   BIG PICTURE Apple has flown somewhat under the radar in Washington compared to some of the other tech titans, namely Microsoft and Google. But this week the company put itself in the middle of one of the most important fights between tech companies and government surveillance interests in the post-Snowden era. The details are familiar by now: the FBI wants Apple to tweak iOS to allow it to brute-force attack (and pry open) an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernadino attackers. In a strong rebuke, Apple CEO Tim Cook (above) basically told the FBI to pound sand, and you can be sure at least a year's worth of litigation is about to break out. Ben Thompson's Stratechery blog has a good overview of the situation. As we prepare for Structure Security, I've been talking to lots of security professionals about issues such as these: when do tech companies cooperate with government requests for user data (and how), and when do they choose to fight back? After years of security gains, government-mandated backdoors into popular software like iOS could open the floodgates for all sorts of bad actors who want to do everything from installing malware to stealing money. At the heart of this dispute is a simple question: will the U.S. government allow tech companies to make products that its spies can't break into? If the FBI wins this case, it's not hard to see a drumbeat of similar cases springing up all across the tech world. From mobile phones to cloud services, Silicon Valley companies are being put on notice that the federal government thinks it has a right to access their user data. While requests backed by a warrant are one thing, forcing products to be designed around government surveillance requirements is quite another. The outcome of this dispute will have an enormous impact on the way future tech products and services are designed. (Tim Cook portrait courtesy Flickr user thierry hermann)       DISCOVER MORE   Click here to unsubscribe from this list. Our mailing address is: Structure 405 El Camino Real, #215 Menlo Park, CA 94025 Add us to your address book Copyright (C) 2016 Structure All rights reserved. Forward this email to a friend. Update your profile.