I'd like to introduce Chris Sumner and Dr. Randall Wald. All right, just checking the audio there. Thanks for making it this early hour or for rolling by on your way home. Either way, very much appreciated. As the gentleman there said, I'm Chris Sumner and representing a small charitable organization called the Online Privacy Foundation or Privacy in the US. And part of our remit is that we look at behavioral residue. That's the sort of stuff you do. And we look at that in an online context to see if you're giving away stuff without actually knowing that you're giving away. So in this experiment, we're looking at susceptibility to interacting with a social bot on Twitter or you could perhaps say a stranger. So before I begin, I was also on the CFP review board panel for DEF CON. So I know there are a ton of awesome talks and there's a couple even running parallel to this one. So what I wanted to do is just highlight some areas of this talk which some of you may already know about. So if you're familiar with the web ecology project, Tim Wang, you're sort of familiar with astroturfing, the term swift boating and a gentleman called Yazan Boschmaf, then approximately 50% of the presentation may be, how can I put it? A touch on the light side for you. But if these terms are fairly new, then hopefully it'll be pretty interesting. And the other thing is that we... Oh yeah, sorry, that's what I added later. It also contains about five minutes of maths in specifically machine learning which can get a little bit heavy. So just so you're aware, there is some of that in there. Okay, so moving on, because we're in Las Vegas and part of Las Vegas is all about trying to win money or in your case, hack things and win money or just hack things. The goal of this experiment wasn't to laser, with laser accuracy, pinpoint somebody who's susceptible to a social bot on Twitter. It was more to improve the odds in your favour. So, or at least improve the odds over a baseline performance. So that's what we were really aiming for. So if you're expecting laser precision to find the most susceptible person in an organisation, you'd probably be disappointed. But if you want to move the odds slightly and give you a bit more of an advantage, then stick around.  So moving on, starting the presentation for real, this gentleman is called Tim Huang and in 2011, he ran a competition called the social bots competition. And essentially how that worked is he had three teams with social bots competing to win a prize which I think was a small amount of money and then just props essentially. So they were given a target audience of 500 Twitter users to go and apply their bots to and they were given, all of these Twitter users had something in common, it was that they had tweeted or had some interest in cats. And that, okay, so that's a lot of Twitter users, but the social bot teams were scored, they got one for a follow back, they got three points for a social response and they got killed 15 points, docked 15 points if they were killed by Twitter. So, you know, sort of suspended accounts. So that was the scoring mechanism for the social bots competition. It was described as blood sport for internet social science and network analysis nerds. So I'm not gonna go into this in too much detail because there's a really nice Ignite video, that's about five minutes, you can watch that where Tim explains the competition and it's really pretty good and all of that stuff is in the speaker notes. So all of the references and what we're talking or intended to say is in the speaker notes, so don't worry too much about writing notes. One team won, obviously, and it was a team led by a gentleman called at AeroFade on Twitter and his bot got 198 responses out of the 500, which is pretty good, almost 40%. So we're gonna come back to AeroFade and his social bot in just a short while. Now he was in the audience when we talked about this at Blackout, if you're in the audience today, then make yourself known, AeroFade, then we'll get you on stage or something. So most research in this area is focused on actually looking at identifying social bots or bots on Twitter or social networks or other social networks, but there's far less research in looking at the human factors involved with who responds to social bots or who interacts with potential strangers online. So as the Goon mentioned at the beginning of the talk, last year we were looking at psychopathy. We weren't trying to identify clinical psychopaths. We were looking at psychopathy as a range to see if you could actually, if it was possible to improve the odds in your favor of being able to, whether they had certain traits or not on whether you could reduce the chance of hiring one potentially. And that was kind of what we were looking at, not saying that that's what it should be used for, but that's what we were looking at. And as part of that research, we thought, oh, this would be really neat to actually start having a look at social bots as well, because that was the sort of same time we became aware of the social bot competition from Tim Wang, so we were like, okay, what can we do? We asked a subset of those users that took part in this experiment if they'd also take part in an experiment where they'd receive an unsolicited tweet at some point in the future. And you might think, okay, well that taints the experiment to begin with, but people get unsolicited tweets all the time. So we felt that that was quite reasonable. And we had a pool of roughly 700 people tick the box to be part of that part of the experiment out of 3,000. So we had two main questions. The first was, are some users more naturally predisposed to interacting with strangers or social bots online? And the other was, is it possible to increase the odds of getting a response from a Twitter user based on this for any social bot so that the social bot in context can avoid Twitter jail accounts suspended? So a good question at this point would be who cares? Now for the younger people in the audience, you may not remember different strokes, but it's well worth trying to find on YouTube or whatever because it was an awesome program from my childhood. So one group that are really interested in or have a lot of vested interest in this is marketing and sales types. So the reason they're interested is because previously all of their work was based on my likes and what have you on Facebook, for example, or follow account, but now that's shifting to engagement because companies paying for marketing services have got wise to the fact that it's easy to generate fake likes and friend counts and blow them through the roof, but it's less hard or it's less easy for them to fake engagement. So it behooves them to actually try and create some engagement. The next group that are interested are propagandists and we'll talk about that in some more detail, trying to spread a message or their message and highlight that through social media. Another group, and this uses a mock-up of a tool called ModTego, which is a fantastic tool, may be interested in taking a group of social users from a particular corporation and trying to identify which of those groups are more likely to respond to your social, your stranger request or your social bot request. So again, picking out the users who are least likely to, focusing on the ones that are most likely to respond. Then the other group that are interested in this kind of research, privacy researchers, and this chap is called Earhard Grafe at MIT, and he's got an excellent paper called what we should do before social bots take over online privacy protection and the political economy of our near future. And he's concerned, or one of the things he's concerned about in his paper is that social bots may be able to harvest a lot of otherwise private information by engaging with users who are, I don't want to say gullible, but are trusting enough to provide certain information which they wouldn't provide if they knew it was a fake account or a robotic account. So he was quite worried about that, we'll talk about that in a little bit more detail. And the final group are social network providers. So Facebook, for example, have their Facebook immune system and it's kind of this constant battle of they're trying to find fake accounts and the fake account creators are constantly evolving to try and beat the Facebook immune system, but they're actually pretty good at it. And also I have to say that, you know, Twitter have done a pretty good job. If you look at spam, maybe it was like 2011, they've done a really good job of throttling that down. So these are the bigger social networks and obviously they've been applying more time to this kind of activity. So we set about creating some social bots to actually go in and have a look at this. So let me go over some of the history in this sort of sphere of research. So the talk's gonna proceed really with a history of some of the current research. Then we'll talk about the experiment method, discuss the findings that we had and just wrap up with some conclusions.  So Wagner at all, who are the only other people that we've found doing research into social bots on Twitter, provided this working definition of the social bot. The social bot is a piece of software that controls a user account in an online social network and passes itself off as human. So kind of well-derbed, but you know, that is a reasonable working definition. You might also hear the term Sibyl. Sibyl was coined by a chap called John Deucer at Microsoft Research and it looks also, I mean that's kind of the same thing with fake accounts and it derives its name from a lady who had like 16 different personalities and there's a movie and a book of the same name. And some of you might well be going, well, social bots aren't anything new because we had chat bots on IRC and all of that sort of stuff and you're right as well about that because this paper here was published in 1994 and there may be earlier ones too. So I mentioned popularity being a driving factor. We've certainly had a lot of that in Twitter where you've got fake accounts just in Bieber's got whole raft of fake followers apparently but it does make you look a little bit popular. Who's gonna trust a brand that's only got maybe 10 followers? Maybe not that many. The other thing of course is spam. So you know, you get DMs. I'm wondering whether this was just a sort of hint that maybe I should lose some weight. But you know, I didn't lose nine pounds using whatever that stuff is, a case of berries. But anyway, that was kind of what you saw a lot on Twitter of spam and you're always thinking, who clicks on that stuff, right? The other thing is that you can get some social bots that are actually quite amusing. So in this one, for example, we've got this chap called Kevin who tweets to his followers, whoever his followers are, I had a successful auction yesterday, thank you universe, to which the universe promptly replies, no problem Kevin, get out there and do your thing.  So every time you mentioned the movie Full Metal Jacket, it would tweet you back and give you a ton of grief. And it was actually hilarious such that you'd want to go out and just mention Full Metal Jacket just to receive the grief. But that no longer does that, which is a real pity. Twitter could somehow work with Neil, I'd love to see that reinstated. Then there was another chap, Nigel Leck, I think in New Zealand or Australia, who got tired of debating climate change deniers. So he created a bot, the clue is kind of in there, it's a, a choring test was the name he used for it. So anytime somebody was talking about climate change or denying climate change, he would have his bot go and pick out bits of research and like email them back and try and set them straight. So you could apply that to religion, politics or anything you like to, to argue on your behalf because you've got other things to do, right? It's a time saving device. Another gentleman, and this is well worth taking a look at was Project Real Boy by a chap called Greg Mara. And he was kind of one of the, one of the first to actually start looking at social bots and creating social bots on Twitter that behaved kind of more like humans really. So well worth checking out, I'm not going to go into too much detail about that because we'll be short on time. Then politics, so I always mispronounce Roulof's second name, but Roulof Tamingi from Poterva fame, the guys that wrote Maltego. Roulof and Kenneth Gears wrote a paper in 2009 called Virtual Plots Real Revolutions and he discusses the concept here of what if both left and right wing blogs were ceded with false but credible information about one of the candidates. Well, a year later on Twitter we saw, you know, there was a vote between Martha Coakley and Scott Brown, but shortly before that vote, there was a lot of, I don't know, misinformation or dragging Martha's name through the mud on Twitter and that escalated pretty quickly so that it was kind of an overwhelming amount of negative information about Martha Coakley and the result, although it may not be related to what happened on Twitter was that Scott Brown won. There was certainly a lot of discussion on the use of Twitter to sort of slate Martha Coakley and that got a name or has been also attributed to a name and the name for that is Swift Boating. No, no, no, that actually went a little bit better in practice, but that's just everything I do. So, but that gained its name not from Taylor Swift, but from the US military veterans where you've got this sort of thing where you question somebody's military record and that apparently has some effect on how popular they're going to be in certain states. So the other thing we've been seeing is that a bunch of Russian students or bloggers or what have you were paid some money to write positive blogs about President Putin in the run-up to his election. It's not a brilliant example of this, but it is an example and that's got a term, it's called astroturfing and that's essentially a fake grassroots campaign to make somebody look popular and to build support for a message, a political agenda, any sort of agenda essentially. There's a group at the Indiana University who've been working on a project called Truthy which aims to detect sort of political and other sorts of astroturfing and the generation of memes and sort of activity like that online and that's worth having a look. They've got some neat videos you can put in a meme or something like that and look at where it originated from. So they're actually doing some really good work because they feel that what's out there on social media has got a real impact in the real world and they need to pay some attention to this space. So really interesting. Then we've got sock puppets. It was HB Gary's email hack, when was that, 2010, 11 or something like that kind of switched me on to the term of sock puppets and it mentioned that US spy operations were or military operations were looking for sort of fake persona management and there was some discussion about whether that had been used in like the Arab Spring context to help nudge a certain group into a certain direction. The interesting thing about that particular concept is that this was cited in Rulof and Kenneth Gears 2009 paper as well. This is states a large virtual population scattered all over the world and encompassing different socioeconomic backgrounds could be programmed to support any personal business, political, military or terrorist agenda. So there's some incentive there. Next, at Christmas this year, there's a mobile phone provider in the UK that was sending out tweets like this to users who were having problems. Please follow us and DM your mobile number, postcode and password, thanks. That was the legitimate account. That got picked up by a gentleman in Australia called Troy Hunt, who some of you may follow on Twitter or maybe read his blogs, but some excellent blogs. And he was tweeting them and got one tweet back from this account. My EE care, which looks a lot like EE, but isn't, it's subtly different. So he's looking, then Troy Hunt responded to this tweet. I'm not saying Troy Hunt's susceptible because I responded to that tweet too. Saying something that was nice to see you sort of taking an engaging approach to tackling the problem to which the my EE care folks said, no we don't really care actually. But the point is that if you can get your bot to work on behalf of a brand and get in there before your brand, a number of users aren't actually gonna check whether it's legitimate one or the non-legitimate one. Then after our black hat talk on Wednesday, gentlemen came up to us and started asking questions about the possibility of misdirecting emergency resources during some sort of unrest. And that made me think, oh yeah, actually there's a chap at Manchester University, Professor Proctor, I wanna say, I might be wrong about that. I'll add that to the speaker notes, but he was looking at fake information in relation to the London riots. And what they'd observed, they were observing rumors. And the rumors were like there's lots of carnage and there's shops on fire, don't go into this high street. And that was perpetuating around Twitter at the time. And yet that high street had almost nobody on it and there was certainly not a riot and no stores were on fire. So they were looking at how long it takes for a rumor to perpetuate and the truth catch up and his statement, which made me chuckle, but I'm sure it's not new, is like the rumor gets halfway around the world before the truth has had a chance to put his pants on. So that's another way you could sort of use it. I mentioned Tim Hwang. He set up an organization called Pacific Social because part of that, the experiment, the social bots experiment, was really looking at, okay, you've got the group of 500 after that, it sort of morphed majorly the social graph. So he was like, oh, can you distort the social graph and maybe stitch two disparate communities together? So that was kind of his position on that topic and wanted to sort of research it a little bit more. The other thing he was interested in is something called emotional contagion and happiness buffering. So you take a group of people who are happy when their happiness levels drop below a certain threshold, then you start injecting happy tweets into the network and using sentiment analysis and turn the sad people happy again. So that's one of the things they're looking at. I'm not sure how far they've got to. And he also mentioned this concept of sort of social penetration testing.  Then this chap here, Yazan Boshmath at University of British Columbia studied bots in quite some depth in relation to Facebook. And he had their social bots steal 250 gigabytes of user data, which ties back nicely to the graph paper from MIT. So Boshmath was one of the first to act, you say actually we need to understand some of the human factors behind who's engaging with social bots and fake accounts. And to that end, there are two groups that are looking at that. The Secure and Trust Werby Cyberspace Initiative out of the US and the Insider Threat Project out of Oxford University. So we set about looking at social bots to find people who will talk with anyone about anything essentially. So our methodology, we used the winning bot code from the social bots competition at AeroFades bot. And we did that with some minor modifications which I'll talk about. But essentially it was the same, it was under MIT license. We had 610 participants. We got their Twitter information, their personality information and their cloud score and then a linguistic analysis of their tweets. We divided them into two groups of 305 each and assigned them each a bot. We assigned them, we did that just so that we could get the whole job done with quicker. That was all. We gave our bot an image of an old lady with a bio along the lines of I've got my own teeth. Whereas the AeroFade bot had like a young dude in New Zealand. So we switched some sort of things around. How the bot works is it takes like a flicker group, in our case dog fashion, but in his case kitten fashion, post it to WordPress and then tweet. So you'd get a picture like that, put it into WordPress like that and then you'd get a tweet out there saying something like new blog post. So this is creating some content for the bot. Then next we use a service called if this then that. Which actually then took, let's see, if the weather went above 20 degrees C in a place where this old lady's supposed to live then she'd post a tweet. And that looked something like this. I wonder if I can switch the heating off now. It's 21 degrees C and sunny in Bournemouth. So this is creating some content at least. Then we got our target users, a 305, and began following them. If any followed back, then we'd log them in an interaction CSV file. That's how technical it got. No databases, just CSV. Yeah, let's hear it for CSV files then. That, that, yeah, yeah, exactly.  And this was not what we tweeted but what Aero, this is what Aero Fade Spot tweeted but we felt that Hose may be interpreted as slightly misogynistic. So we swapped our tweets where we felt that we might get into a little bit of difficulty and had stuff like this instead. And then, you know, like this as well. So these were obvious cues that a bot might not be the person she's pretending to actually be. And here, you know, we swapped any references to cats to dogs. That's essentially all we did. So you might think, yes, that's banal and yes it is because we wanted to keep it as close as possible to the web ecology project. So we only switched dog for cats and removed anything that might be constituted as slightly misogynistic. So all of the responses to that were, as I say, sort of logged in an interactions file and then once we'd targeted all of the users, i.e. followed them all, then we started asking them questions to see if we could generate a response. This was how Aero Fade Spot actually worked. So we had questions along the line of ever milked a cow. What's better? A dog or a cat? And then we'd like, look at trying to get some responses to that or maintain a conversation if a conversation actually occurred. So Aero Fade's blog would just respond randomly from a pool of tweets where our bot actually used an Eliza engine. So you get something like this, hello and it'd say, hey, how's your day going so far? But what I liked about Aero Fade's bot is that it'd actually be pretty funny sometimes. So we wanted to maintain that and embed some of the random tweets in here. So it was a bit of a flip of the coin as to what you'd get. So you could get for I think it'd say interesting or LOL, that's what she said. So it could go kind of random but we also had to consider the problem of ethics. So we'd put some buffering in there so we could actually look at what our bot was gonna tweet out before she tweeted it out. And this is why, this is Aero Fade's bot, James M. Titus. Do you have any pets and if so what? Your avi is adorable, your kitty. Now I don't currently have any pets since my kitty passed away a few years ago. To which Aero Fade's bot responded, LOL, that rules. So props to Aero Fade for making me cry with laughter reading that blog post. So we got a ton of limitations which you're all thinking about and you're right. We use basic measures of personality which you can read about.  Each user got a different question so maybe the questions had an impact of whether people responded. As the experiment progressed, more people followed the bots and arguably gave it more credibility and we had no user follow up to see if the people knew it was a social bot and we're just playing along. So but either way people interacted and it's pretty much identical to the web ecology project which has already got some research on it as well. Although we looked at the dimension of personality. So what did we find? Well, we got 20% return or response rate whereas the Aero Fade bot had got 40% and that could be for a number of reasons. We targeted a diverse range of people and they targeted people who were liking cats. We also had an old lady, they had a dude from New Zealand and you know. So there are a number of reasons why that could be but we had 124 interactions which were 39 follow backs which could be automated for sure and replies were 85 replies. So the most interactions we had were 10 interactions with one user and two people interacted nine times and there's kind of a steady breakdown to where we had 65 people replied just once. So the difference between us and Aero Fade is pretty clear if we look at it on a sort of percentage scale. We also had some interesting funny events around trolling which Aero Fade had also noticed in his bot. So we had this interaction using no more than 10 nouns and only nouns describe yourself to which the user replied facetious. It rhymes with runt almost 10 times annoying and then our bot with the Eliza engine how do you feel when you say that? Which gave me a chuckle at the time and that was actually one of the major benefits of conducting this research is actually having a laugh at the interactions. So, I'm laughing so hard. Bring it on essentially in bot terms. But we also got spotted as well. So we had some interaction, what do you do for a living? I help and guide. This is pretty clear response here. Write software for administrative organizations and she responds out of Aero Fade's random responses. You're right and when you're right, you're right.  Granny failing during test after one exchange, the singularity is still a fair way off or something like that, brilliant. So, okay, looking at personality, we found during Richard Thiem's talk yesterday, it indicated that people might not be familiar with cultural classics from the 80s. Well, that's Ferris Bueller from Ferris Bueller's Day Off and I used him as a flag for extraversion. We found that extraverted users were more likely to respond statistically significantly more likely to respond than non-extraverted users and that's using a scale called 10 item personality inventory by Professor Sam Gosling in Texas. We found that cloud score was significant as well. There were no other personality traits by the way and we looked at a bunch of them. Cloud score, friends and followers all had some statistical significant relationship, albeit relatively weak. So what? Well, in terms of e-learning for corporations, most e-learning around phishing and social network is kind of a one-size-fits-all approach and we want to, and if you think about that, that's targeted more introverts. There's some papers that look at the effectiveness of e-learning and personality and they cite the introverts to have a better time if they've got less control over the learning experience where extroverts do worse. So I think there's some mileage in exploring this and exploring how this relates in the context to actually developing sort of corporate e-learning experience. So moving on quickly to sort of data mining and machine learning, this was our baseline performance, false positives in red, true positives in green. We want to avoid this bit really because these are the people that are probably gonna try and suspend us like that. Try and aim for this, which is perfection and a precision of 100%, we're gonna go light on some of these terms. And the real aim here for us isn't to achieve perfection, well, it actually is to achieve perfection, but we're not gonna do it. More realistically, what we want to try and do is just reduce the false positive rate a bit so that we're spamming less people and hopefully getting more of the people we are talking to responding. So for the next five minutes, we're gonna go a little bit heavier into some of the machine learning stuff and then we'll wrap up sort of five minutes after that. And so it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Randall Wilde who I met here a couple of years ago in the Q&A room. Hi, I'm Rob here. Okay, as Chris was saying, basically, we had these data, we wanted to actually work with it more and build models, understand what's really going on with our users and what we can use, how that can help us make better predictions and get better results. So this very basic, what data looks like, you've got instances, in this case, we have three instances here. You're gonna see Alice, Bob, and Charles. And each instance has many attributes. In this case, if we see three attributes here, one the class attribute, the one we care about, and then also the independent attributes or features which are the pieces of information we can get on new users. So the concept here is we have a training data set which is labeled where we know all these individuals whether or not they responded to our bot. And we're gonna want to use this to help us build a model which will let us, in the future, say, I have a new person. I have not yet sent any communication to them. Should my bot try to contact them? Should I try to work with them? I'm gonna use the features, the independent facts I can find out about this person to build a model that will let me predict whether or not that individual is going to respond to the bot. So it would be a good target for the bot. So we did two separate experiments on this data. The first was to figure out which features are most important because the data we're working with here, basically we took all the users, we have demographic properties of them. For example, the number of friends, number of followers, clout score, how long they've been on Twitter, how many tweets per day, that sort of thing. We also took the content of their tweet and tried to figure out how many words they're using. Are they using expletives a lot? Are they using like I and me a lot? Are they using like we? There's different types of words like that. Try to figure out which of these is most relevant to the problem of will they interact with the bot, will they reply with the bot? So we wanted to figure out first which of these are most important and then once we figured out which are most important, we wanted to build our models to use that to actually predict whether an individual will interact with or reply to the bot. So all of our experiments here, data mining we're using the WECA open source tool. It's available on all major operating systems. I don't know if it works on BSD, but all major, no, anybody, desktop operating systems. Written in Java, you can extend it. Actually, we've done some research extending it and adding additional tools to it, but it's a very good toolkit. I encourage you all to download and play with it if you're interested in looking further with data mining and machine learning. Our results here were first the interacted. We wanted to see which individuals and most likely to interact. So we used a bunch of different models and we came out with that these three properties of an individual are what tells you if they're going to interact with the bot, if they're going to either follow or reply to the bot. The first is we see cloud score and then number of friends, number of followers. So those were, as Chris was saying, those are the features that are most relevant for interacting with the bot. We also wanted to look at just replies alone though. We found it coming a little bit different. So same concept, all the things and we still see cloud score is number one, but percent follow Friday is the second most important feature here. So that's basically what percentage of tweets mention, you know, hashtag, follow Friday, that sort of thing. And this actually is interesting because we have these two different data sets that are working a little differently. And once we figured out these features, we wanted to build models that could actually classify individuals into whether they're going to interact or not or they're going to reply or not. So we built a number of different models here using different features, et cetera. And we found the best model gave us a true positive rate of 61%, true negative of 71%, or to put it in easier terms, we see here we have true positives, true negatives, false positives and false negatives. Now, you're going to look at this and many of you are going to say, but your model still gave more false positives than true positives. If the model predicted that someone is likely to interact with the bot, it's still going to be wrong more often than not. However, compared to the gray boxes, which are if we use just send messages to everyone and try to see who's going to respond, we're able to eliminate all of these individuals who would otherwise have gotten a message and when they weren't going to respond anyway, so we're improving our odds of hitting that people would care about. So remember, everyone here, the more every time you send a message to someone who's not going to respond, the chance they're going to report your bot. So you want to minimize the number of people in this area to try to maximize the effectiveness of your bot. And we did related models for the applied data set. It's a little more challenging to build model with a performance a little worse here. And we found also that different models perform well. And this is something that data mining is important to understand. You might say, why don't we all these just use the best model? What's the challenge of building different models and looking at how they perform? Different data sets are going to perform differently and the optimal model will vary. We see also here similar performance where, again, more false positives than true positives, but we're significantly able to improve the performance of our model, improve the chances that our bot is going to hit those people we care about, people who are going to reply to the bot. And that makes us build a better bot that'll be able to get a better response and last longer before it gets reported on Twitter. So overall, we found throughout this part here is that we have our model able to find the features that are most important for interaction and replies to the bot. We also found that the two data sets, interaction and reply, are different. So it's actually, well, cloud score, which is related to extra version, is important for interaction and reply. Whether the number of friends and followers actually matters more for interaction, while the fall of Friday matters more for replies. And even though our models are not perfect, by any means, we still have a large number of false positives able to build models that let us build bots that can attack those that are more likely to be susceptible to the bot. So with that, I'm going to give it back to Chris here. Thanks, Rando. So wrapping up with some conclusions here. So again, we found that extroverts perhaps presented the greatest risk because they're maybe more impulsive. We can look at that in maybe just a little bit more depth in a second. And bot masters could use machine learning to improve the performance of their bot. So the key here isn't that they take our model or what we looked at to improve their bot because that was specific to our particular bot. When Wagner all looked at the AeroFade bot, they got a sort of pretty reasonable performance gains because they had a larger majority or a smaller minority, larger minority class. However, so you create a bot, you target a few users, you use machine learning to improve your chances and then you target it on the wider audiences, kind of how we think this could be employed. We're not suggesting people do that, but the marketeers have got a vested interest in actually looking into that sort of behavior. And marketeers, if you ever go to a marketing or digital media conference, are actually sort of hell-bent on actually trying to improve engagement and understand click-through rates and all of that sort of stuff. They're kind of light-years ahead in some respects. Propagandists, of course, could use this to find people who are more likely to respond and interact with them, maybe propagate false messages. And social engineers. Randall mentioned that Weka's got a command line interface while you can build that model into Maltego, for example, so that you get a bunch of Twitter users return back the likelihood in a different color here if whether somebody's going to respond. So find the most gullible, potentially the most gullible people in your organization and reduce your scope appropriately. The other thing, this is what Yassin Boschmaf mentioned, is that this could be used in terms of usable security. So help people understand if they're sort of more susceptible or more at risk from a social bot. We see that with browsers. And now the challenge is, how do you do that in a social network environment? So probably want to avoid this fellow, though. So training, I mentioned training in, you know, focus on the people who are perhaps most at risk. So maybe it's your sales team who are more extroverted naturally. Then in terms of future research here, likely focus on more detailed areas of the big five, specifically an extroversion, which has many facets. Specifically, I'm thinking impulsivity. Impulsivity seems to be related to people responding to phishing messages. So you could use something that's called cognitive reflective test to see if that has an impact. So here's an example of one of the questions in the cognitive reflective test. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. A bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? So getting that wrong is an indicator of impulsivity. I think there are three questions or something like that in the CRT. So also maybe a target-centric approach for the social bot. Ours was one-size-fits-all, pretty dumb bot, but you could actually start looking at the language of the core group that you're following and maybe do some work in that area. But it's not all negative necessarily. As a tall German gentleman by the name of Lutz Finger, who does a lot of work in this field, and you can take a look at some of his videos from the Strata conference, he mentioned that OKCupid had a problem with bots. So they created their own bots. And what they did when they identified a bot is they created a replica of their dating site entirely for bots, and had those bots talk to other bots. So now there's an entire area, apparently, of OKCupid where you've just got what you could describe as some bot on bot. Loving. So I have no idea whether that's true or not, but he states it in his video, I have no reason to distrust him because he's taller than I am. So wrapping up then on the last slide, this gets back to Rulof and Kenneth Gears' paper. Illustrations from the Turing test suggest that sufficient interactivity with the computer should reveal that it's human or not. But maybe that's going to be extending so that you're going to need more and more time to figure out whether it's human or not. Or maybe you don't care. But the key thing here is that I think you could apply machine learning to improve a performance of a social bot, but it also shows that that's actually a problem that the security community and folks in general need to start thinking about tackling because this sort of behavioral residue on social media could be making users sort of flagging users who are more likely to respond and therefore perhaps need more awareness and more training. So that, ladies and gentlemen, is the end of our presentation. We'll take questions in the Q&A room, I guess. Thanks a lot.


Proudly, we hail. New York City, where the American stage begins, here is another program with a cast of outstanding players. Public service time has been made available by this station for your Army and your Air Force to bring you this story. As proudly we hail the doctors, the medical services. Our story is entitled, Magic Dust. A tale of the wonders of medical science has applied to preventive medicine. Our first act curtain will rise in a moment, but first... Registered nurses. Here is a chance to be of service to your country during one of the most critical periods in America's history. As you know, our Army has expanded rapidly due to the tech and urgently needs more nurses to help safeguard the health of our soldiers. You'll be a commissioned officer with good pay and liberal allowances and you'll have priceless opportunities for furthering your professional career. You'll have the benefit of working with some of the finest medical equipment in the world and the chance of learning the newest techniques in the medical profession. Get all the facts today. Right or wire, the Surgeon General, United States Army, Washington 25 D.C. Do it now. And now your Army and your Air Force present the proudly we hail production, Magic Dust. The dictionary definition of the word Army is a large organized body of men armed for war and designed for land service. Side by side with this large organized body of men, in fact, a very important part of this group is the medical service. Doctors, nurses, men charged with the health and well-being of the men of our armed forces, whether it be peace or war. One of the important branches of this medical service is the preventive medicine section. This branch of medicine has made great strides in our battle against disease. The United States Army Medical Service devised means to purify the water supply of soldiers in the field. The medical service fought and won the fight against yellow fever in Cuba and Panama. The medical service protected the American soldier against malaria, typhoid, smallpox, and typhus. That's just the beginning of the story. We're out of the problems of the past, but we're out of the shadow of war. Have come the means to protect the civilian population of this nation against most of the disease that flesh is air feed. This has been going on for a long, long time. Water is a necessity of war. Thirst can make a soldier very vulnerable. Contaminated water can make that soldier very sick. And during previous wars, the medical service cut down the incidents of typhoid and dysentery by insisting on water purification for the Army. In World War I, our Army went into Europe for the first time in history. The medical service successfully protected our men from smallpox, typhus, and the other ills that lurk within the shadows of war-wrecked countries. And then came global war. The maps were spread out on the huge tables in the mapping rooms. Strange names appeared on the maps were spoken in the secret moons. Names that we were to learn much, much later. Names that are forever to be remembered. Guadalcanal and Casserine. Fincheven, Hlandi and Salerno. Bugampion and Casino. Karachi and Moritai. These places would come to know American men. American men would come to know these places and the dangers lurking there. Within the medical service, the maps were laid out too, and earnest men poured over them. But the talk was not of landing craft and tanks. There's no doubt in my mind or in any of yours, gentlemen, we know that we have the toughest problem on our hands, the army of offensive. If the enemy is spreading as fast as they are, our supplies of fine iron will be cut off almost from time. I have a hunch we'll lick that pretty soon. That's adamant synthetic. Well, it will help. However, gentlemen, there's one disease we can be certain will appear. And I have a hunch it will be a potent enemy. The enemy, gentlemen, is Typhus. Typhus. Louse-born, filth-carried bread with poverty and wretchedness. Infecting soldier and civilian alike, responsible for thousands of deaths in World War I, more deadly than bullets, and as silent in its coming as the shadows of night. This is the enemy. He's very old, son. Very old. But must he now? There's little I can do. Grandfather dies now. There'll be nobody left but me. There's no if about it. You must make up your mind of that. But I had the fever, too. Why didn't I die? Because you're young and strong. It stops their hearts. Like that, my boy. Yes, sir. Bad. Doctor, what do doctors call a fever grandfather died from? It's always followed wars everywhere, my boy. It's called Typhus. Typhus, the champion of the four horsemen. This was the battle. Beat Typhus and millions marked for death would live. Yes, this was the battle. And this battle was joined by the Army Medical Service in 1941. And then, in 1942, the men of the Typhus commission went to work. The established bases wherever it appeared necessary and the job went ahead. In the meantime, the millions of men under arms within the borders of the United States had to be protected against the menace they would meet overseas. The first step was... Okay, you guys. Line up. Roll up your left sleeve. Not more shots, Sarge. Shots, it is. Just one this time. What for?  Save the chatter, soldiers. This time, you get Typhus. Holy cow. What do they think of next? Every man in the Army and Navy in the Typhus zones receive those Typhus shots. Every man was protected by a vaccine made... Well, this is how it's made if you can conceive it without seeing it. The organisms that cause Typhus are called Rickettsia from the scientist Ricketts who discovered them. Now, the process of developing Rickettsia is as follows. Lice are infected with Typhus. The infected insects are destroyed and their intestines are then injected into eggs that have been incubated for six or seven days. After a period of development, the crop of Rickettsia is harvested, purified, and, as we say, phenylized into a vaccine. The dry voice of a scientist makes it all so simple, doesn't it? Inoculate eggs. Harvest a crop. Make a vaccine. Not a word about the infinite care and patience. About the time and money spent on this one process of preventive medicine. But it pays off. It certainly did pay off. The use of this vaccine was insurance against death from Typhus. The use of this vaccine greatly reduces the incidence of Typhus. A gross understatement. When our troops served alongside the troops of other nations that were not protected in this manner and in the midst of civilian populations actually infected with the disease, the only cases of Typhus that appeared in American soldiers were so mild that it took laboratory tests to establish that they had the disease at all. But this is only one side of the picture. This is the bright side. The dark side is black indeed. What about the millions destined to die if the disease is not controlled for them? What about the children and the old men and old women? What can be done for them? Captain Clayn, I'd say it'd be awesome to be blunt about it. I've seen those outfits with the dry heaters and the steam we've built on trailers. Sure, if this type of stuff is carried by lice, kill the lice! Sounds so easy. But stop a minute. Granted that you could build places for thousands of people to wait for their clothing. Granted that you could dry and cool off their clothing fast enough to give it back to them before the next batch came in. Granted all this. What happens in the first hour they're back in their old haunts? What happens then? That's it. Five seconds, ten seconds, a hop, a skip, and a jump. And you can start the cleaning process all over again. No, it won't do. It just won't do.  Give them all the protection the American soldier gets. Not so easy, not so easy at all. First, there's the production of the vaccine. Slow, pain's taking, careful. Then there's the problem of inoculation. Yeah, I suppose they would gripe like the soldiers do. Shots, shots, shots. What do you mean? So what do we do? Let them die? That's better than that. The word preventive doesn't stand for anything like that. No, the Army Medical Service knew they had to find a way to stop the spread of typhus, to stop all those unnecessary deaths. There was the problem. And the problem was solved. You are listening to the proudly we hail production of magic dust. We'll return to our story in just a moment after this important announcement. Our Army has expanded tremendously to create the challenge of the forces of aggression which are threatening the peace of the world. And there is an urgent need for professional women to fill the ranks within the women's medical specialist corps. The occupational and physical therapists and the dieticians who comprise the corps have never had a greater opportunity to serve where they are needed most. Right now, there are only a few hundred of these highly trained specialists serving throughout the Army and the Air Force. Despite the fact that the need for their services has never been more acute. To the women of this profession, your Army and Air Force offers not only the opportunity to fulfill a patriotic duty, but a commission as an officer in the Army or the Air Force of the United States. And with that commission goes the pay, the privileges, the security, and the opportunities for continued study that is available to every officer. The opportunity for a lifetime career is great, but the need is greater. So if you are a qualified occupational or physical therapist or a dietician, here is your chance to serve your country in an hour of great need. Write or wire the Surgeon General United States Army or the Surgeon General United States Air Force, Washington 25 D.C. Remember, you're needed now. You are listening too proudly we hail. Now we present the second act of magic dust. The first blow against typhus was struck 72 years ago by an obscure student in the University of Strasbourg, a chemistry student, Othman Zeidler, who had a thesis to write. In the course of the experiment described above, I succeeded in synthesizing a little unknown combination called dichlorodifino trichloroethane. It is a powerful poison whose effect on life has yet to be determined. And that was all that was known about dichlorodifino trichloroethane, commonly called DDT today. Othman Zeidler wrote his thesis and it was buried, as so many things are, deep in the library of the University. And then in 1939, there was a plague of potato bugs in Switzerland. Little, I think. Ah, little isn't enough. If something isn't found quickly, there will be no potatoes in Switzerland this year. And that will mean a food shortage. Now, what have you got? I have checked and tested a number of formulas, sir. The only thing that seems at all effective is dichlorodifino trichloroethane. It seems to kill insects practically on site. The potato bug is a hardy fellow. Yeah, I tried that, sir. Just let the potato bug touch this stuff. And it's dead. Confirmation? Yes, sir. And get in touch with our department of agriculture. Have them perform experiments. If they want it, we'll make it for them. They wanted it all right. The potato crop was saved in Switzerland that year simply by spraying the plants with the rediscovered chemical. In 1942, Paul Müller called on the American military attaché in Baal, Switzerland. What can we do for you, Mr. Müller? That is not the question, sir. It is what we can do for you. In the name of the United States government, a chemical formula free of charge for the duration of the war. Well, let me thank you in advance, Mr. Müller. And now then, what is this formula? We call it dichlorodifino trichloroethane, sir. We have used it as marked success against agricultural pests. And we have great reason to believe it will be tremendously effective against the typhus bearing louse. And so it came to the United States, this old, new chemical with the long, almost unpronounceable name. It came here in the Army's Department of Preventive Medicine was interested at once. Perhaps this was the agent of death for insects we'd been searching for. 100 pounds of the stuff went to the Department of Agriculture. It next appeared in a laboratory in Orlando, Florida. Why, you're spraying an empty cage.  Well, you see those cages over there? Well, they were sprayed yesterday, just as this one was. Yeah? What's so terrific about that? I'm gonna place some of these mosquitoes in those cages. Yeah, that should do it. Let's get to the point. What is it that's so terrific? Oh, you'll see, Dave. Let's take a break for a smoke. That'll be good. Hey, they're all dead. Yes. That's the stuff the Swiss sent over. Knock some old dead, all kinds of mosquitoes, flies, fleas, lice, every insect we have in the lab. But what does it do to animals and humans? Well, that's the next step. But safe to use, we've licked some pretty big problems. Let's find out, Dave. Let's find out. And find out they did. Patiently, quietly, in the deepest secrecy, 29 scientists at the Orlando Laboratory worked faithfully in the tradition of Walter Reed, Joseph Goldberger, Ricketts, Nicole, and all the others. They checked and double-checked every possibility. They proved and reproved, tried and retried. And then they reported... From the results of our experiments, we feel we can say that dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane is the most effective insecticide ever discovered by man. We've found that it retains its effectiveness on the treated surfaces for as long as two weeks after treatment, despite of laundering, cleaning, and even the forces of nature such as rain and heat. It'll be of great use to the armed forces under all conditions of battle, weather, or temperature. What was this, anyway, this jawbreaker? Dynamite? What could we use? What could we really do with it? The name DDT, a typically American abbreviation, took hold and has been used since. DDT, born in Strasburg and buried there in 1874, resurrected in Switzerland in 1939, grown to maturity in Florida in 1942 and 43. DDT, dynamite for insect pests. And all this while, the Typhus Commission was in the field, working, working against the day when the first American soldier would place his boots on the soil of Europe. On Europe? But Africa was birthed. Hey, you kids, you speak English? Me. Ali speak little English. Yeah? What about your two friends? They don't understand. Me, Ali, me speak border. You got chocolate candy chewing gum, yes? Yeah, okay. I got chocolate candy chewing gum, yes. Here. Thank you. Hey, hold everything. There's something else, too. Something else? Yeah, I'm scratching, will you? Yes. Look, kid, what I got, it'll stop all that scratching for you. No, me, I scratch. Friend scratch. My father, my mother? Yeah, yeah, I know.  Dust? There was much dust. You make more? Oh, this is a special dust. It'll stop the scratching. No, too much dust here now. Uh, for, um, 10 francs? You pay money? Yeah, I pay money to you. Do your friends go? If you let me dust your powder. You pay money first? Ah, ah, ah, I know that guy. I pay money second, first dust. See? Like this. Smells funny. You pay money now. Yeah, just a shade more dust. Like this. Yeah, okay. Now, here's your 10 francs. Now, let me at you two friends. Can you talk with me? Yes, but no more dough. Dough? No more money. Yes, no money. Alley very happy now. You make dust, no more scratching. Alley and friends tell whole village. Oh, that's fine. Nothing like publicity, I would say. You say? Yes, give it to you. What's on your mind? What do you want? My father had mad. He say, you make dust on whole village. Whole village lets you make dust. Not again, kid. Whole village likely to make dust on it. Alley, you're in. Hey, you guys, here we go. The whole village is coming out to be dusted off. It was something. It was the beginning. 30 francs spent on three Arab boys led to the permission to use DDT on their whole village on the population of North Africa all along our line of march. Yes, there were other preliminary victories in Africa besides Tunis and Berserk. Now, the lines on the maps moved forward. Sicily, Salerno on the march on Naples. Casinos splashed block across our headlines and Anzio was written down in the blood of young Americans. While our eyes were fastened on the maps and our eyes were filled with gunfire, there was menace in the silence out of other places. Dark, spreading insidious menace. A city of a million souls crowded with the flotsam and jutsam of war with homes wrecked, water supply meager, with thousands living in the bomb shutters because there was no other place to go. Into this city came thousands upon thousands of American boys. Out of that city, word flashed. Epidemic in Naples, Typhus. Typhus, within the shadows of war, breeding, spreading, claiming the lives of young and old. The charts at the overcrowded, overworked hospitals began to show the figure, began to speak the truth. Ten cases admitted today. Twenty-two cases admitted today. Forty-six cases today. Sixty-three cases today. Many people died. They always do with Typhus. It strains the heart, and the disease spreads on. From victim to victim, from Typhus' patient to healthy human, on it went. The order came from headquarters to the Typhus Commission to the teams of medical corps men charged with fighting this creeping, silent enemy. Get there and get there now. They got there, rolled into the city, rolled up their sleeves and went to work. Are we going to dust all of them? You know the orders, guy. All of them. Looks like a million. No, but it's liable to be before we get through. Hey, you, come here. Now, look, you guys. This is how it's done. I take this one, see? And I give it home with the dust. Up each sleeve on his collar, up his pants, round his waist inside his belt. That's all. And the next one. We got no time to waste. There was dust in Naples then, dust with DDT. The teams went out, dusting Typhus' patients, their families, their homes, their furniture and their clothing. The teams went out and dusted the bomb-shutter dwellers, 40,000 of them. The teams went out and in one day, 73,000 people were protected with DDT. Then one month after the job was started, the hospitals reported... In the past 24 hours, the rate of admissions of Typhus cases has dropped from 63 to a mere 10. At a point in the epidemic where we expected a sharp rise. The battle that was joined in 1942 with the creation of the Typhus Commission gave us our first great victory in Naples in 1944. DDT was the weapon that preventive medicine experts of the Army Medical Service provided the fighters. The dividends were enormous. The methods proved in Naples have beaten the disease in every part of the world where American troops are today. And this was the work we did while our enemy deliberately infected people with Typhus in an attempt to wipe out whole populations. This is the difference between us and them. This will always be the difference between a compassionate government by the people and an oppressive dictatorship of slavery. Well, Sergeant, here we are again. The same job, different location. Yeah, Sewell instead of Naples. Orientals instead of Occidentals. There's just as many of them and just as many lice. Even with Lundane instead of DDT. You know, back there in Naples, dusting them civilians, many of them, innocent bystanders in the pathway of war, wasn't so bad.  Yeah, and then we'd have to inoculate every man, woman and child in the country. Oh, thank you. Besides, what if this dear lousing does give the guy a little pleasure?   Yes, Sergeant, it is too bad that your magic dust can't get at the real thing that's lousing up the existence of an awful lot of people in the world today. But we're mighty grateful for the part it's playing in helping to control the dreaded diseases of the world. And we're real proud of the men and women of the medical service who made possible the use of DDT, the magic dust. Registered or graduate nurses, answer your country's call for service in the Army Nurse Corps. The need is great, and the need is urgent. There just aren't enough nurses to handle the nursing requirements of our greatly expanding Army, and you as a nurse can appreciate perhaps better than anyone else, the fact that an Army's efficiency is largely dependent upon the state of its health. So here's your opportunity to be of immeasurable service to your country at a time when the need is great. The Army Nurse Corps has plenty to offer you, too. The pay is good, and the allowances are liberal. You'll be in a job that challenges the best that's within you, and you'll have endless opportunities to grow in your professional capacity. The Army's vigorous medical research program has developed many new medical techniques, and you'll learn how to apply them. But most of all, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you are serving at a time when you are needed most. So make your decision to serve now. Write or wire the Surgeon General, United States Army, Washington, 25 D.C. This has been another program on Proudly We Hail, presented and transcribed in cooperation with this station by the United States Army and the United States Air Force Recruiting Service. This is Kenneth Banghart speaking, and inviting you to tune in this same station next week for another interesting story on Proudly We Hail.


)? The people in the United Kingdom are still coming to terms with the outcome of the referendum on EU membership. It's very early and difficult to know precisely when and how the Brexit process will actually work and how it will unfold. That is preliminary stage. There are five godwc chi'n wir mater? The first is in some ways the most immediately important is the UK is still a member of the European union and although it may not feel like it in a sense it's still business as usual. European Union Law still applies in the UK. European Union Citizens still have the right to live and work yr ysgol yn y Brith yn ymgyrch. Rhaid ynghylch gynllun yng Nghymru yn unedol. Y 1972 yw'r Europeth Cymunitid, sy'n gwybod y gynllun i'r Llywodraeth Ymgyrch yn y Llywodraeth Ymgyrch. Wrth gwrs, mae'n gwybod o ddwy'r arwad i ddwy'r ysgol, a'r rhai ddweud oherwydd oedd y leol ddod oherwydd ymgyrch yn ymgyrchol i'r traethaf. Felly mae'r blaenau ddim yn gweithio, ond bydd y ddweud o'r blaenau o'r traethaf mae'n gweithio yng nghylch gyda'r etymlu ar gyfer yr adeilfynu ar 50, a ydych yn llwyth i'r cyflwyno ar gyfer yr adeilfynu. Felly y ddweud o'r adeilfynu ar 50 o'r adeilfynu mae'r adeilfynu yn llwyth i'r adeilfynu o'r gives notice to the European Council, and at that point a two-year period starts to run. The idea is that that two-year period gives the departing members days and the EU and the remaining member states a time to negotiate the terms of the departure. If they reach agreement before the end of the two years yn ymdeg yw ychydig yn gallu ymlaen. If they haven't reached agreement by the end of the two years, then unless they agree to extend negotiations, at that point the treatise simply stop applying to the departing state. At that point, if there wasn't an agreement, there would be a sort of hard Brexit where the UK would simply be out of the EU ac yn y gynhyrch, mae'n gynhyrch. Mae'r gweithio yma yn y ddweud, ychydig yn ymwneud yma ym mhwyaf yma yma yma yma yma yma'r proses yn ymdweud. A dyna'r ddweud yma yn ymdweud yma, ond nid oes ymdweud o'r rhaid o'r cyfnod fel ydych chi'n rhaid o'r llyfr yn y Llyfrgell Unedig yma, o'r Brytyn i'r ymdweud yma'r 50 ar gyfer y proses. Simply because we've had a referendum, with a particular outcome, that doesn't in itself start off that 2 year negotiation period. Equally there's nothing in British Law that requires the government to begin negotiations, or press the button, trigger the article 50 process. That is because that legislation that allowed the referendum to happen, doesn't say anything Fen o'r rhan o'r gweithio'r referendum ac mae hyn yn cael eu fawr yn cyflawni'r adrefforddiant. Felly, rwy'n rhan o'r rhan o'r achyfen wedi'i gweld i'r Llyw Llywodraeth i'r Rhysgu Llywodraeth yn ymgyrch. Ond mae'r defnyddio'r holl o'r pwysig i'r rhan o'r holl yw bod yn cael eu pwylltigol o'r Llywodraeth yn rhoi'r holl yw. the Prime Minister has clearly indicated that the will of the people are to be implemented. But that still leaves a question as to when this would happen, and it's certainly possible legally for the UK to buy at its time. It may want to wait for a short time while it begins to think about its negotiating strategy, it may want to wait another three months or so until a new Prime Minister is in office. It might be pressure from the European Union to speed things up and to get things started, and the president of the European Council has said that he expects the UK to start its process as soon as possible. But there's nothing that the European Union can legally do to require it to start. So that's to do with the international law side of things. The fourth point is about domestic law. Mae'r cymdeithasol o'r amser yn ymgyrchion unol dinghynol yn ysbyn nhw'n gyda'r gwybod y Gweithredu Cyngor o'r cyflwyno'r Cyngor yn ddodol, oherwydd ymweld yn mynd i'w ei gwybod yr ysbyn nhw'n mynd. Ymddai y Llywodraeth Uned ddweud yn ymgyrchw'r cyflwyno'r cyflwyno'r cyflwyno'r cyflwyno'r cyflwyno'r Cyngor. That's something that is legally possible as a matter of domestic law if our parliament passed legislation like that, then if it was clear enough our court would implement it. But that would be highly inadvisable. Until the process of ending Britain's treaty obligations runs its course, the UK will remain bound in international law by those obligations. Trying to sort the problems out unilaterally on a domestic level would play to UK and EU law on a collision course while Britain was still a member. And that would be in nobody's interests. For one thing it would cause serious reputational damage because Britain would be repudiating international obligations that were still binding on it. It would also overlook the need for a measured and orderly withdrawal but a time of immense instability. But that said the European communities that will need to be repealed once the treaty obligations have ceased to bite. And alongside that there will be the larger almost infinitely large task of disentangling 40 years worth of European law from British law. That will be a Herculean effort that will take years rather than months. The fifth and final point I want to mention is not to do with the European Union but with the Union that the four constituent nations of the UK sit in together. The First Minister of Scotland has said that the referendum outcome makes clear that the people of Scotland see their future as part of the European Union. If that's so then the implication must be that they don't see their future as part of the UK. And the likelihood of a second Scottish independence referendum is now very much greater. It's highly likely the First Minister has said. And there's no room for compromise here because however flexible the British constitution might be it isn't so flexible that it can accommodate bits of the UK staying in the EU and bits of the UK coming out. Only states can be members of the EU and the UK's constituent nations can only acquire statehood if they first leave the UK itself. Like I said at the beginning these are very early days events are moving very quickly and inevitably quite unpredictably. But even allowing for that it's no exaggeration to say that the vote to leave the EU represents a tangible existential threat to the UK as a state. And for that reason along with many others it's hard to overstate the constitutional significance of the decision that the British electorate has taken.


At Audiology Associates of Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing. You'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 Northlake Drive in Prestonsburg. Following the deaths of three local police officers in Floyd County, Music Paradise in Prestonsburg will be hosting a fundraising event with music and food towards the end of the month. From July 29th through the 31st, the community as well as people from all across different states and stuff, as people know, we had a tragic event happen in Allen. We lost some of our, you know, everyday heroes. They paid the ultimate sacrifice because freedom's not free. So we're having an event called Back in the Blue Weekend. It starts on the 29th, goes through the 31st. There's going to be different bands each day. We have a little bit of every type of music. We've got bluegrass, rock, Christian rock, classic rock, blues, just a little bit of everything. With three nights of music and fundraising, all proceeds will be presented to the families of the fallen officers. The main point about it is all the money that's raised, all the money that's brought in through the admission fees, through the concessions, through the raffles that we're having and the tips from each band. I'm having them bring a five gallon bucket. Each band's going to play for one to two hours and, like I said, there's going to be all different types of music. Once they play for those one to two hours, all the tips they make, all this money's going to be donated to the Floyd County Sheriff's Department of President of the City Police Bank account at People's Bank. Leslie continues to mention that the families of the officers will be admitted for free and that anyone is welcome to share memories of the fallen. All immediate family to the fallen police officers getting for free the whole weekend, eating first responder in uniform, they're free the whole weekend. We'll take care of them. We'll take care of the families because that's what this is for. All this money, like I said, is going to be donated. I'm going to have a representative from the Sheriff's Department or the city police come each night and collect the money to take it and put it into the account. But that's really what it is, back in the blue. The back in the blue event is July 29th through the 31st at Music Paradise in Prestonsburg, Kentucky. For Mountain Top News, I'm Joel Korgel.


Welcome to Think Tech on OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Haley Kedah. And I'm Diamond Cabildo. For today's show, we will discuss the issues transgender students in Hawaii face and what the Department of Education is doing to alleviate them. But first, happy Pride Month everyone! Yes, the month of June is all about love, pride and acceptance. And we hope you'll join us in celebrating the LGBTQA community. Diamond, what does LGBTQA stand for? Why, Haley, I'm glad you asked!  That's a lot to remember, but today we're going to focus on the T in LGBTQA, transgender. The question is, what is transgender? Okay, so my name is Janea Purcell and I'm transgender of the LGBT community. My name is Jason, I was born here on Maui, Hawaii and I am trans. My name is Kaia and I'm a transgender girl. Transgender means a person who is born as a gender, as a wrong gender. So it's basically someone who's transitioning from one to the other to be them true selves. I think it means just expressing yourself how you want to be. So if you don't feel comfortable with how you are right now, then you can change it for real life. A boy that would be a girl and a girl that would be a boy. People always talk about how being transgender is a choice. They're always saying, oh, you're choosing to live your life this way.   So they don't wake up and they don't say things like that. It's just the way that they are. I think maybe one of the myths is that it's a choice or it's a phase or they're just going to grow out of it or it's just going to go away. Some of the transgender adults that I know that I've talked to, they also knew it four, five, and six years old. They just weren't in a safe environment that they could express it. But most of everyone that I talked to has told me that they knew very young and they were very aware. And they were very aware of their environment and whether it was safe or not. I think the most telling thing about the process is that the child needs a safe environment to express themselves and be able to talk about it and know that they're going to be loved and not rejected. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the term transgender refers to any person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex. People often use the terms transgender, transsexual and transvestite interchangeably. However, these words have very distinct meanings. The term transsexual refers to a person who emotionally and psychologically feels that they belong to the opposite sex and seeks to acquire medical assistance such as hormone treatment and or sex reassignment surgery. Meriam Webster defines transvestite as a person who adopts the dress and often the behavior is typical of the opposite sex. Transgender is usually like the umbrella to everybody falls under transgender. Transsexual, from what I learned, was people who decide to have surgeries because not everybody decides to have surgeries. Transvestite, sometimes or also known as cross-jesser, are people who dress the opposite sex, but that's not how they really identify. They like the activities of dressing the opposite gender. In Hawaii, from my experiences, they don't really like that word, we say queen. We don't use transvestite or cross-jesser. It's kind of like an old term that we don't really use anymore. We just say queen or girl or sister instead of saying words like that. When it comes down to it, the term transgender is usually the go-to word. Transgender is often used as an umbrella term for anyone whose gender identity is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. This umbrella covers people who identify as a gender, bi-gender, pan-gender, poly-gender, gender-less, gender-fluid, gender-queer, gender-nonconforming, gender-neutral, gender-flux, feminine presenting, masculine presenting, non-binary, demi-boy, demi-girl, two-spirit, mahu, the list goes on and on. As you can see, gender identity goes beyond just male and female. Due to the fact that many people are not openly transgender, it is difficult to determine the exact population of transgender individuals. According to a frequently cited study in 2011 by the Williams Institute, nearly 700,000 people in the U.S. identify as transgender. That's just below 0.3% of the U.S. population. But then this about a month before school ended this year, she fully came out as CHI at school. So she's fully transitioned at school and it was a positive experience. Her teachers, the counselor, the principal, the SSC, the whole school has been very supportive. So there hasn't been any negative or responsive. First they were like, wow, and then they got used to it. The teachers have been supportive. Of course, you know, I'm there and I'm being vocal about it. So I do wonder about other kids that maybe, you know, don't have that kind of support, you know. But I, lots of times I like to think that it's not malicious. I think it's just because the teachers and the people in the school, they're not educated about the topic or they're just afraid to talk about it. Or they have some kind of religious bias that for reasons why they would not want to talk about it in school. Personally, I haven't witnessed it. I have heard stories through the media and through reading and things like that. But I personally, I'm not witnessed discrimination. But I am aware that it does happen. I think most definitely I was discriminated a lot by my school, even faculty and staff. And it was kind of hard for me to go through school just because sitting in class, nothing will be said to me, but I just have that vibe like, ugh, I'm not welcome here. And it's that's because I go there to learn and to be bullied and be taken away from my education is not fair. Over the years, I had good and bad. The majority of them were bad, I'll have to admit. I also got like a lot of hate and upsetting comments and remarks from my own friends. Okay, so kids are being discriminated against in many, in a variety of ways. Not being called by their, their pronouns, their preferential pronouns. They're not being called by preferential names in the school, like put on a roster. To me, what I feel is the most simplest thing is calling them by their preferred name and preferred gender pronouns, you know, like his, her. And sometimes teachers get confused because like after a number of years of seeing the student on campus and then the student, you know, decides to transition and then being stuck in that, that, you know, previous he or she and having a hard time calling them by their preferred names. But that's probably one of the, the biggest cryouts from our trans kids is that I just want to be known as like who I am, you know, and part of their identity. That's part of their identity. That's like a huge part of their identity. Fortunately for Jason, being able to use the bathroom that he chooses hasn't been a problem. But, you know, I'm sure it can be a, without, I think, a standard policy in place across all of the schools, you know, we're fortunate that we were at a good school that was supportive. But I'm sure that there are schools that maybe don't understand. And other kids have been discriminated against in the sense that they weren't able to use the bathroom of their choice to actually use the bathroom. So what happened was they were holding it to like the end of school, rushing home and then using the bathroom when, and that's, that's like, that's not healthy, you know, for them to do. It's not, it's not cool. Then schools are like, okay, well, you can use this bathroom in the health room. And the kids are like, why do I have to walk across campus or up a few floors to use the restroom because everybody else feels uncomfortable. Hawaii's Department of Education has been working to right these wrongs and has recently released a draft of guidelines Hawaii schools should follow with regard to transgender students. If this draft is approved, those who work for the DOE will have to be trained in enforcing these guidelines, which require that schools should accept and respect students gender identity without confirmation from professionals or changes to their official records. However, transgender students are advised to meet with a school counselor or administrator so the staff can understand how they can assist them. If a student's gender identity subsequently changes, they could hold another meeting so the staff may adjust the support plan as needed. With or without a designated plan, there is a great need for schools to address transgender students by their preferred name and gender pronouns. Allow them to dress however they choose as long as it conforms to their school's dress codes and grant them access to facilities and activities that align with their gender identity. So the new guidelines that were in place were saying that, you know, one of the things bathrooms came up and one of the things was that kids were allowed to use the bathroom of their choice. However, if any kid should feel uncomfortable, then that kid can go use the health room bathroom or that kid can go use the, you know, the other stall two levels up or across campus. What we set as safe for LGBT kids is safe for all kids in our schools. They should be allowed to use the bathroom of their choice or play the sport of their choice. They should be allowed to wear the uniform of their choice or the clothing of their choice to school. People shouldn't dictate that for the student as long as it's within the regulations of the school. So if wearing a short skirt is not acceptable by the girls in the school, then wearing a short, short, short skirt shouldn't be accepted by a trans girl that's in the school either. But if a girl is allowed, a cisgender girl is allowed to wear the skirt uniform, then a trans girl should be allowed to wear the skirt uniform in school as well. And right now it's in the AG's office, the Attorney General's office. And what they're doing right now is to see if the guidelines are within like the laws, you know, making sure that federal laws and the guidelines are within those laws. I actually had the privilege of reading them prior to them being implemented. I was working with the superintendent's office as a consultant, so I thought they were very inclusive. They addressed all the different needs, addressed the bathroom issues and the locker room issues and the, you know, and the DOE's policies anyway are supposed to be addressing bullying and treating all kids equally and with respect. Teaching other kids too what is going on, that way they can know, you know, that it's not, it's not like a, it's not like taboo or anything. You know, nobody should be put down for it and kids should know that. So they should teach the kids that too. As far as the draft that they're forming for transgender students now, I definitely feel like, yes, like I had something to do with it. Like I had, you know, a big, I played a big part in this for this policy to happen and it's been definitely needed because I feel that if someone's not going to be calling me the pronouns that I want to be called or being the name that I want to be called, it's kind of like disrespecting because I don't call you out of your name. Whether you're my friend, family, teacher, staff, administration, anybody, you want to be called a certain way, a certain name, that's how I address you. So to be addressed as something that I'm not or someone who I'm not is like disrespectful to me. So I'm definitely happy that the DOE is finally coming up with some sort of policy and then also with like bathroom goals, locker room goals. I think it's definitely a smart idea because when I was in high school going to like the men's bathroom in the boys' locker room, it wasn't, I didn't feel safe. I didn't feel comfortable. A safe school environment for a transgender child would be a school without harassment, without bullying, without name calling. A child is allowed to use the bathroom of their choice. A child is allowed to dress in the clothing of their preferred gender expression. A child is allowed to use the bathroom of their gender identity.  And they should just feel safe and comfortable in their school and supported by their teachers, their counselor, and their classmates. And as a parent, a safe school to me is I want to know that my child can go to school and be, you know, participate in everything that everybody else can participate in, be respected, especially by the teachers and the administrators and supported by them, and also have them watching out for him, you know, with the other students. You know, there may be students that don't understand or, you know, haven't, and that's fine. But if there's, you know, bullying going on or there's anything like that, the administration, the teachers got to be there to step in right away and to help educate the students and protect these students. Administration and staff faculty, just to be open, accepting, loving, supporting. Because when I was going to high school, I did not feel the love that I, as a student, should feel. And I didn't, like, that made me not feel safe. So I feel like if the adults, you know, the supervisors, the people who we're supposed to look up to, like, are in the certain light of loving everyone equally, we will feel more safe. Like, being nice to people and, like, being friends with them. And help people to feel like they understand that they, you know, they're educated and, you know, and create this safe environment so that our kids want to go to school, so that our kids don't feel like suicide is an option or dropping out of school is an option. In their upcoming draft, the DOE has brought this to attention and is responding to the struggles transgender students face in schools today. Hopefully, these new school policies will not only serve to protect young transgender kids, but also encourage all parents and students to learn more about transgenders and what they can do to help those who lack support.  Trans people aren't out to get to get cisgender kids, you know, they're not out to get you.  You know, they're trying to be accepted and be loved and be safe in the same school that a cisgender is accepted, loved and safe in their school.  And it is a spectrum and the people that we need to listen to are... The person themselves. The person themselves, exactly. And respect that. And ask them what they prefer, you know, what pronouns, you know, if there's a question just ask them. If somebody, I'd rather have somebody ask me a question that they're unsure about than watch them, you know, having to struggle with it and be uncomfortable. And I don't want anybody to feel uncomfortable or having to, like, step on eggshells around me.     It's be who you are enjoying. Be true to who you are.  It's okay to be you. You know, there's going to be a lot of people who are going to gun you down, but just not to let anybody's judgment determine your happiness. We all want to see our children happy and healthy and living life and doing well in school.  And I think parents are slowly learning that they can still, life is not over because your child is trans. Like, life is better because your child is trans, you know. I think one of the hardest things as a parent is to sometimes give up your own ideas and expectations that you have for your child. But if you hold on to those and it doesn't match up with who your child is or what they want, then there's going to be conflict.  You know, there's a ton of information out there. It's a process. It's a learning process. It's something that I had to learn about. I had to read about, ask a lot of questions, find out. I went online. I made phone calls. I actually called some universities on the mainland to get more information. So I did my research to find out what to do as a parent and how to respond and what kind of processes are there that you go through. To parents, I'll definitely say, like, you know, it's going to be hard as a parent because you're going to be standing next to your child.  But even though it's going to be hard, they should also be, you know, strong for their child. Just stick through it. Love your child regardless. And because I feel like if a parent doesn't love their child no matter what the reason is, the child will definitely, like, just, it's going to be hard to love themselves. Because I feel like your family, it's kind of like an obligation to love your family, right? If you look at these people that you love with your heart, like deep in your heart, you've loved them so much, but they don't feel the same way that you do for them. It's kind of like you're going to start second-guessing yourself and like, what's wrong with me? Is this, what did I do? What did I say? Why do I look like? And they start asking questions about themselves and start doubting themselves and then it's going to be hard for them to love themselves. And a lot of that, you know, goes into depression and goes into like suicidal thoughts and more on. So I feel like parents just love your kid no matter what. And also it will get better for you too. Because, you know, soon you will understand or people will understand you. And it's not your fault. You did nothing wrong. You did nothing wrong. Find a supportive adult, find a counselor or a teacher or somebody that can support you through that process. Hopefully you have a safe family that you can talk to about it and parents that will be supportive. I do know that there are some cases of children that do not have supportive parents and that's a shame. But hopefully they can find somebody in their life that can be supportive and help them through that process. There's people you can talk to. There's people everywhere. And there is nothing wrong with asking questions or looking for help. Because it's out there. You can stick up for a trans person and you can be their ally or you can be their enemy. You know, and I don't think people would want to walk around and say, I am that kid's enemy or I caused that kid so much pain. You know, I think generally kids want to keep that safe environment and want to be loving. They just don't know how.  My final remarks as a transgender in Hawaii, I would have to say that let's just keep pushing on and raising awareness for all genders of spectrum. You know, just find the right group of people to hang out with and don't try to be anything that you're not. And, you know, find the right place for yourself to be in. And just be happy with who you are and do whatever makes you comfortable because it will get better.  If you want to be that person, be it. A big mahalo to all those incredible individuals we interviewed, as well as Marianne Sasaki, without whom we would not have been able to meet and talk with all of these wonderful people. Thank you to everyone watching. And again, happy Pride Month. We hope that you will continue to learn more about and support the LGBTQA community and its endeavor to create a safe and rich learning environment for queer and gender non-conforming students. And now let's take a look at our ThinkTech calendar of events going forward. ThinkTech broadcasts its talk shows live on the Internet from 11am to 5pm on weekday afternoons. And then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long. And some people listen to them all night long. If you missed a show or you want to replay or share any of our shows, they're all archived on demand on ThinkTechHawaii.com and YouTube. For our audio stream, go to ThinkTechHawaii.com slash radio. Visit ThinkTechHawaii.com for a weekly calendar and our live stream and YouTube links, or better yet, sign on to our email list and get the daily docket of our upcoming show. ThinkTech has a high-tech green screen video studio at Pioneer Plaza. We invite you to come down, see our studio and join our live audience. Contact Jay at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Be a part of our civic engagement and raise your awareness on ThinkTech. Join us and raise your awareness about the critical changes affecting and taking place in Hawaii. See what's going on. Be a part of the conversation and check it out at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Go ahead, give us a thumbs up on YouTube or send us a tweet at ThinkTechHI. Want to join the conversation? Now you can call in and be included in our live shows. While you're watching any of our live shows, just call our hotline<PHONE_NUMBER> and you can pose a question or make a comment. We look forward to getting your call. We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of ThinkTech. But first, we want to thank our underwriters. Thank you so much for being a part of our ThinkTech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification, and globalism in Hawaii. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important weekly episode. I'm Haley Kedah. And I'm Diamond Cabildo. Aloha everyone.