ahead of the 2023 presidential elections, presidential candidates face hard choices to choose their running mate. So look at this on the programme this morning. Also on the breakfast groups including the Christian Association of Niger and Catholic Society of Niger have won political parties against filing a Muslim-Muslim ticket in the 2023 presidential elections. We also have newspaper analysis on the press. Very good morning to you. Welcome to the programme right here on Plastivia Africa. The breakfast is what we call it. My name is Kofi Bartels. I am Mr Boko. Beautiful morning to you. All right, we have interesting conversations for you lined up as we early advertise and of course we usually would start off with a trending segment on the programme. It was a sort of chase last night on Twitter to try and find out the location and whereabout of a young woman who had raised the alarm that she had been kidnapped. And Twitter was, I wouldn't say a gog, but quite busy because at the time people were trying to inform the police and the authorities that a young woman had been kidnapped. She put up the information and shared it on Twitter. So people were given some sort of a live location to try and get where she is so that they could at least get the authorities to find her. You know, it was quite a sight to behold. Indeed, the authorities had to put out something, but the name is Amira Soufian. And this is the tweet she put out. Please, whosoever has my WhatsApp number, I sent a broadcast message of my location. We were abducted at gunpoint by people with police uniforms and a van from our houses from different parts of Abuja. We're 17, including three pregnant women and two little kids they didn't see my phone. It was all over Twitter. People were trying to get a location of friends and all that put it out. And not long after that the FCT police commandeer out on Twitter, they replied to her tweet that investigation is in progress. We thank everyone for the many helpful information. They put it coming from all quarters and I urge all to exercise calm and patience as we get to the root of this. Kindly check your DM, Amira Soufian. This is what the police said. Kindly check your DM. Thank you. First, it's very commendable of Nigerians. I mean, the fact that everyone should consent trying to come to the aid of the young lady and every other person according to the information. And as much as we would say that social media has ills, it also has, you know, it's important. Well, it's also very saddening that we have to talk about this every other time. The issue of kidnapping and we constantly ask ourselves, do we have a government? That's the question. What is the responsibility of a government, you know, and any civil crime among other issues? Now, the fact that, you know, among some of the issues that were raised is that these kidnappers were confidently telling their victims of how they will be transported from one point to the other. It brings us back to the question of, on our roads, we ought to have, you know, security checkpoints.   But as much as we would say that security is, you know, government's responsibility, it's also important that we stay very alert and we are very vigilant in the cost of our transaction and going about our businesses because it feels like we're living in, doesn't feel like, we do really living in a very difficult time as a people. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. As a matter of fact, it's also a concern that this is happening in the FCT, you know, people are raised that concern as well, that this is happening in the federal capital territory and that if you're having location, kidnapping locations in the FCT within Abuja, it calls for concern. Is this one of those kidnappings that you have with banditry, you know, is terrorism? Or is it a regular, you know, it's no more kidnapped for ransom by people who are not terrorists? We don't know. But I mean, people also concern that the authorities could not, you know, give a better response than telling her to check her DM. I mean, how does that sound? You're telling the victim to check your DM. It's not, you know, an encouraging sign from the police. But it's good that at least a lady was able to message across and tweet holding her phone. But some people are also doubting the whole story.  Why can't you mention where you were picked from? You know, it's what some people are saying. You didn't tell us exactly where you picked from. Were you telling us they picked from different locations? And people are doubting the tweet saying, hey, you should have at least given us the exact location where you picked from so that we can at least know. You know, he said we picked from different locations. It sounds fishy. But yeah, that's what some people are saying. I really, but I also don't know if we also remember the incident that happened, the Abuja train kidnapped or attack that happened where someone had also tweeted at the time that she was dying. And there was also a response on Twitter. I mean, Twitter can be just be a place where you have different kind of energy all around. And so someone was like, when are you dying at the time? Because most times we don't understand. Now you don't want to be in a situation where you are in danger. You can't really tell. Sometimes you find people and you ask them, why didn't you do XYZ at the time? It is not a time where there's a lot of logic or reasoning, because at some point, the medical practitioners would say that your body would be responding differently. You would just have a lot of hormones being secreted into your system because of the situation that you're faced with. And so you don't expect someone who is facing danger, whose life is under threat to begin to act very rational and be very detailed. That is really a lot of bravery to even tweet. So I think that that might just be a lot because if you've never faced, if you've never been in a situation where your life is under threat, then I'm not sure you would understand what it is. You don't expect that time to begin to say, oh, you know exactly, and you're very detailed about the situation. So I understand that for some reason, a lot of people have used the social media platform as a means of causing or generating, attracting attention to themselves, but might not also be in some cases. I think it's important that we call some of this persons slack and see if it's a situation because people have found out that Twitter and social media has helped a lot. And so if you have your phone and you think you're in danger, that one of the things you would do is just to put it out there, just in case someone can stumble and help can come. So yes, that's it. And moving away from that, another on the top trending list is the fact that according to statistics, 42% of Nigerian or young people are unemployed and it's something we talk about every other time. I really don't know how true this data is because it's also another thing. What census was conducted? You're doubting the data. I'm not doubting the data. I'm not, but I'm saying- Typical African woman. No, I'm not doubting the data. I'm just saying that it's possible that it can be more if you look at it, if you were talking about 42% and all of that. But before you arrive at all of these statistics, you have seen it fully employed 37% undi-employed 21% and unemployed 42%. So we're looking at 100%. That's not a pass mark. If you were a lecturer, you would not say, that's good. But I'm thinking that this 42% might just be a little bit above. Well, it's very sadding that we have to talk about this, especially in a country of us where, I mean, there's a lot that's going on where we have what it takes. And so you find out that unemployment seem to be topping the chart because that 42% is not a good thing at all to your recon with. And how do you now describe the rate of crime and criminality? There's a correlation according to those who would be speaking. It's quite an interesting one, the Twitter handle of the company StatiSense put out this piece of information. It's raised some concern because it is data from the year 2020 that they put out because they were asked by some people on their Twitter handle, what is the source of your information? And then they said that people should check the 2020, I don't know if it's a mistake, but Labour Force reports, Labour Force statistics report 2020. So reply they gave to a young person, I don't know someone, I don't know age because we assume already he's into this young. By the name, I.B. Kenney, I.B. Kenney actually says what's the source and StatiSense, that Twitter account put out the information said it's the National Bureau of Statistics, Labour Force statistics report 2020. So people said it, some said you know what? Some are asking if this is some 2020, could it be worse or better by now? Why don't you give us a fresh report? But they put out state by state. I mean it's not a new story or news that you know, unemployment is a problem in the country. And of course, we advise coming in as president to have to grapple with this issue of unemployment. It's not just a national issue. You go across states, it differs, you know, state by state. It's not the same in Lagos as it is in maybe River State. And I think it shows that it's not just the job of the president to solve issues of unemployment. The fact that they also reminded us of the state by state statistic, you know, some states have over 50% unemployment rate. They are national of AGC. You saw there's 42%. But some states have 50%, 51%, 55%. So it shows that the state governments also have a role to play in ensuring that unemployment isn't even about it's not just a federal issue. And citizens need to also hold their governance to account, you know, for issues like this. And these are the questions that Nigerians should ask when people come to say a word for me, make a job president, you understand. What are you going to do about unemployment? You see it happen in American elections. People ask what they would do when they become president of the United States. They are judged, they approve our ratings rise and fall on unemployment statistics, you know, unemployment data, unemployment data. But we don't ask these questions. We don't take it important. Important. So I think that it's generic, you know. However, it is that we want to look at it. And however, it is that government would want to say, hey, yes, we know that the statistics vary like you have put it out there. It varies from, you know, the various states that we have. Well, it's a generic thing. It's just basic that there are certain things that government need to do. These theories have been propounded a long time. And if you look at some of the developed climes that we have or some of the countries that were always in temptation to compare ourselves with, as you find out that these countries have been running and been pushing this particular, you know, theory, that it is government's responsibility to provide the basic. In some climes, you find out that the private sector drives every sector, the educational sector, the medical sector. And that can happen if the, you know, the environment, the ease of doing business is nothing to write them about. You have to look at the environment. How friendly is it? We're talking in terms of security because it would discourage. It should, you know, the level of security would attract, you know, foreign investors and local, you know, investors who wants to chunk in their money, who's, I mean, what investor would want to come in and invest in an economy where, or in a country where security is a major issue. So that's on the one hand. So I think before we begin to say yes, it is, you know, the responsibility of individuals as much as government. Government needs to take care of the primary thing of ensuring that, you know, they provide an enabling environment so that the private sector can actually thrive. You also need to begin to look at the taxes as well. There are some states where, because they haven't been able to think outside of the box, then you find out that taxes become, you know, top on the front bonnet. So they begin to tax the people. Who are you taxing? I mean, you're taxing the same civil servants. What is the, you know, the purchasing power in the state and all of that? But so it still brings back to issue that even if we have, you know, the 42% as the entire, and then all the state, it varies. It just shows you that there's a lot of problems. Some states will begin to argue that, oh, we don't have, I mean, the level of sufficiency. We're unable to begin to generate revenue. It brings us back to the system of government that we're operating. Some people say, let's get back to, you know, a true federal system where we're able to harness the resources that we have and control our resources so that we can, we're able to do X, Y. So it's a lot. It's a generic situation. And I'm hoping that, you know, governments at different levels would understand the basic of government or the reason why government actually exists. All right, all right. I mean, I've been scouring the NBS website and accounts that I haven't seen much. I do hope that with the National Bureau of Statistics that the fact that they have a new man at the helm of affairs, Amy Callie, would not mean that the work, sorry, Amy Adinero would not mean that the work that the other man who was there did is going to stop. Because the guy who was there before now at the National Bureau of Statistics did a yeoman's job, did a great job, you know, because they're putting out statistics every now and then. We hope that the NBS will continue to be as vibrant as it was, even more vibrant under the new head of the organization. We don't want to be seeing news and pictures on their Twitter accounts. I'll be looking at it, trying to see whether that information by statistics is recent. And what I see on the NBS is news. You know, I see news on their page. We don't want news. National Statistics, please give Nigerians data. We don't want to see pictures of your meetings around the world. We don't want that. Give us data. Do your work. You know, don't give us news. Give us stats. You were doing a lot before now. I do hope that the NBS is still doing more.  Please give us stats, more stats. You've been doing a great job. Please continue and even do more. Let's believe that with the new man at the helm of affairs that is not so new anymore of the NBS National Bureau of Statistics that we will see better from the organization. But I'm noticing a difference, which is I'm seeing more of news. The head went for a pro-conference. He had a courtesy call from the staff pictures and put there. We want data. More of that than those things. Let's move on. Some of the hazards of the trade, you know, business. You hope to get continuity in government. Someone comes in as governor, does a good job. The next person that comes in should continue. Someone on the side of a ministry panel agency leaves. The person comes and should continue. So let's hope that that's what we'll see with the NBS. I sincerely hope. I sincerely hope. You've done a lot of good work in the past. Abakari has been in the news and of course he's always a fertile ground for people to comment on. It's been an interesting story. The fellow high court sitting in Abuja yesterday sentenced to drug traffic as connected to him. Chibuna Patrick and Emeka Ezenwane who were linked to the suspended rather deputy commissioner of police, Abakari. Debate six years, mercy imprisonment. Six whole good. Yes. I think you remember the video. I remember the secret recording done by NDLEA and then the story that came out and the police response and the press conference called and the NDLEA NDLEA to respond to them as well. You know, so the trial judge justice Emeka Anita convicted the two gentlemen of on counts five, six and seven of the NDLEA charges, so charge, preferred against them. So I think remember that two of them were arrested at Akanobe and International Airport in Inugu while attempting to smuggle cocaine into the country and they were arraigned on March 7th before that court alongside DCP, Abakari and also importantly for other police officers who were handed over by the police to NDLEA. ACP Sunday Ubiya Inspector Simon Agirikba, Inspector John Nuhu and ASP Bawa James. Let's see what happens at the end of the day. But it's important to note that both Umebe and Ezenwane had appointed a remand pleaded guilty to the drug trafficking charge against them. I mean everyone is saying that this should actually, this particular case should serve as a deterrent to those who are in this kind of practice. I'm sure that you probably would have other persons who are involved and I indulge in and so Nigerians are asking that this should actually serve as a deterrent. They're also hoping that Abakari gets a sentence as well and everyone involved gets it just to send a message. I don't know, we can't continue like this. It's quite unfortunate if you ask me. Once upon a time a superhero star all of a sudden this is what's going on. Well I think that's the much we can take at this point in time on our top trending conversation. We'll take a breakdown when we return. We'll be looking at the front pages of the National Dailys. Please stay with us.


Okay, we're back live for SiliconANGLE's Cube, exclusive coverage of IBM Pulse, IBM's premier cloud show. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante there. Special guest, Ray Wang, Principal Analyst, Chairman of Constellation Research, Entrepreneur, Jet Setter, Travel in the World. Ray, welcome back to theCUBE again. Always great to have you on. I know you're going a million miles an hour of one-on-one meetings, a lot of great stuff happening. What's your take on IBM's cloud strategy? Does it hang together? This is the coming out of the cloud. This is Blue Skies on Blue Mix on cloud. Blue Mix, past layer, a lot of battle ground in the middleware. I mean, Enterprise 2.0 is now full on cloud, hybrids, the big story, soft layer acquisition, good leverage there. IBM putting a wrapper around it with open standards, open technologies, and cloud foundry. Open stacks there. What's your take on that?  Is it going to work? No, I think it's really important. When we look at the B2C cloud, what we actually have are four winners, right? Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft. In the B2B world, it is wide open. And one of the things that's happening is, right, you've got HP with a Superdome, you've got Oracle building its kind of red stack, and we actually need a couple other players in the space, and that's where IBM's actually opening up a front. And we see Amazon on the other end, but it's just at the infrastructure as a service level, and so I think that's going to make a big difference. So the question is, how do we get this past layer up and running, and how do you get that past layer to be competitive? And I think everyone's using that as the battleground in the cloud as well as in the mobile. So there's comparisons with Linux, market IBM put billion dollars behind that, so it solidified that movement, and then it just grew like wildfire here, similar movement. But there's some people kind of in and out of this. You've got a rack space playing on the cloud foundry, but Red Hat, where are they? Where are they in all this?  This is a game that requires lots of money, lots of scale, and I think there's only going to be about 10 or 12 players that can do this.  So how far do you think they can go? I think they're going to hold at potentially where the platform as a service is, but you know, Redshift is still the big entry point for these guys. So I think there's a lot more tools that have to get into Amazon before they're going to be competitive head-to-head with an IBM or HPA or anyone else. So the IBM transformation in cloud has been pretty dramatic over the last two years.  I think back then we just looked at it as a bunch of disparate pieces that were just kind of being thrown in the cloud because cloud was cool. What we saw here is really the coming out of the full IBM cloud front attack. So this is really where Bluemix is the beginning of that conversation, but it's the recognition that cloud is going to be their entry point in. How important are the learnings from WebSphere and how do they apply to Bluemix? Oh, I think it's the same learnings. You got to get a developer ecosystem in place. You got to play a role in OEMs. You got to make sure that the partners are happy. I mean, these all come together and I think that's one of IBM's strong suits. So, but Bluemix, my understanding is Bluemix is sort of new, born in the cloud. Is that true from your take? Or is it a lot of WebSphere DNA? Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? I think it's more than the WebSphere DNA. I think the acquisition of SoftLayer was the thing that actually opened up their eyes as to how much more they could do here. Right, okay, so now, Leigh and I, you talk about the horses on the track in the sort of consumer cloud, the public cloud.  It really is wide open right now, right? It's wide open, Salesforce. And then the one thing is the telcos. How could the telcos miss another wave? Think about this. They have the infrastructure, they have the servers, they have the capacity, they own the network, and yet they've missed this again. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't look like they can see it. There's not even going to be a player in this. Okay, got to ask you about it. And it's global, it's not just U.S. I got to ask about the customer impact. Obviously you've been doing a lot of stuff.  You're also going to a lot of other shows, seeing a lot of other activity. What's the landscape look like vis-a-vis the other shows and other vendors and then the customer impact? Well, I'm going to start actually with our CIO survey. We're about to publish our new CIO survey and the interesting thing is we break CISers into four areas. Chief infrastructure officers, chief integration officers, chief intelligence officers, and chief innovation officers. And the chief infrastructure officers are looking at cloud as where they're going to get the cost savings. And that's their big piece. And they're looking at any vendor that can give in an opening to drive down costs. Whether it's app modernization, whether it's testing, whether it's integration, whether it's just taking my infrastructure and actually turning it around. They're looking at that piece. The chief innovation officers, they just happen to buy apps that are in the cloud, which is a very different game. And so I think it's important to segregate whether you're an app dev shop, a vendor management shop, or an innovation shop that's just buying cloud apps. What are you guys seeing with the new CIO, chief data officer? There's a premise out there that says that a data czar has to emerge. It's got to be independent of the CIO. MIT's done a lot of research on this, but it's been confined to financial services, government, maybe healthcare. What do you guys see as emerging as the chief data officer role? We actually see that fit within the chief intelligence officer. And I think part of it is the fact that information governments, all the pieces around data, security, privacy, data usage, data re-usage, it's sitting there. But there's also this other piece that's conflicting with the chief digital officer, right, the other CIO. Let's see how many we're acting as we can make up. But the other CIO, what's interesting there is because they're actually using the information streams of that data. That becomes the value of the company is really, what can we broker in terms of a stream of information that we can resell. And we see companies turning into like Alexis Nexas or Thompson Reuters. What's your take on the developer ecosystem? What does IBM have to do right now to win the developers over? Well, the two types of developers, if you want to get to the consumer, the edgy, the younger developers, it's got to be mobile first, right? Get them on the mobile, help them actually take a consumer grade experience and learn how to be a professional grade enterprise class developer. Because both are very different kinds of skill sets. You can get a wireframe up really quickly, but how do we get the management of the data, the role-based security, the identity, the scaling, all that's used in place? So if they can package that, I think on those developers that would be great. I think for the other developers, it's to show that there's a path, right? If I'm on IBM, I have a job path, a career path that goes out for the next three to five years. So in your view, does IBM have the developer juice in terms of what it takes to penetrate the cloud and actually dominate that market space? I think they do. I think they're going to be able to get there. Because look, who else is in the competition? Microsoft, that's a developer ecosystem that's definitely one to contend with. It's rich, but confined. But confined. And Amazon doesn't have that developer ecosystem yet. So they're building it on the AWS set, but it's very different than what you would see. So you would say they don't have that for the enterprise? For the enterprise. Okay, but they got it first. Salesforce and Oracle quickly set on bites on those guys and their prospects now. Oracle probably has the most integrated and developed backend right now. So I think from a head-to-head short-term, Oracle and IBM in that competition. But I think the bigger threat is going to be Amazon. Salesforce, I think the beauty of the Salesforce group is the customers of Salesforce are pioneers. They're early adopters. So they naturally go out and explore and experiment. And so that's a very different class of developers. And they're active too, very active. Very active. And you tweeted recently, you said Larry's focus is going to be on HCM and customer experience going forward.  Oh, but he wants to be in every stack. I mean, look at the deal that they did with Azure to put database onto Azure. Right, right, right. I can expect to see a bunch of other deals where database shows on Azure from other players. Yeah, why not? So yeah. And they just bought the Blue Chi. Blue Chi, social software. What's the strategy with that, you think? That's mobile data management. The data management platforms are hot. So on the marketing side, how to connect with ad networks, real-time bidding, demand-side platforms. That's actually what they're kind of playing in is how to get that data actually pushed out there. Blue Chi is an aerospike backend, I think, John. It might be, actually. It might be, actually. Okay, Ray Wang here inside the cube, always great, quick stop-in, source of great knowledge. Ray Wang, constellation research. He's got an event coming up. Check out a CIO survey coming out. Ray, thank you for stopping by. I really appreciate it. It's the cube, exclusive coverage here at IBM Impact. We'll be right back.


Welcome guys to another episode of Johnny Q makes a painting We're doing more camel colors, but this one's a 16 by 20 as you can see so a little bit bigger Gotta love those squirts. Oh Yeah, more camel colors.  Oh, this is gonna be good. Let's do some brown last time. We could add more brown Okay, let's do this. Let's get this yo That's pretty sick


15 present. Alderman Van Akron is excused. Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next item is the approval of the minutes from our last meeting. Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to approve the minutes of the previous council meeting. Second. Those minutes are before us. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll in the minutes? 15, yes. Motion passes. Next is council appointments. There's a document in your file, but this will lie over until our next meeting, and this is for all the election inspectors for 2014. Is there any public forum this evening? No, sir. OK. Announcements. I had the pleasure of attending the League of Municipalities meeting about a month and a half ago. And at that convention, they give out an annual award for arts in the community. And it was really a lot of fun to go up on stage and see our Sheboygan Performing Arts Association receive the statewide award. I'd like to call Chuck Krebs up to say just a few words and represent the award to him. And we've got a number of people from the different organizations that make up the Sheboygan Performing Arts Association in the back. Charles? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Thank you for having us. The Sheboygan Performing Arts Association began about 10 years ago. Denny Moyer was instrumental in the beginning of that.  Sheboygan Performing Arts is a collaborative association of performing arts organizations within Sheboygan County. And it is our mission to enhance and promote the vital role that the performing arts play in the economic and cultural development of the community. So on behalf of our members, I would like to thank you very much for having us and for attending this event and receiving the award. Thank you. Going on with further announcements, I'd like to thank the Monk community for the invite to speak at their New Year celebration. It was a great get-together. And we had a lot of chance to learn about Monk traditions and customs. I'd also like to thank the Sheboygan JCs for conducting the 21st annual Christmas parade and holiday tree lighting ceremony. The parade really signals the start of the Christmas season here in Sheboygan. And we have several neighborhood meetings that are planned for the Keeney Park neighborhood on Wednesday, 12.11, 6.30. And they'll be meeting at St. Paul's Lutheran School in the lower level. And then the near north neighborhood will meet on Tuesday, 12.17, again at 6.30 at First Presbyterian Church on North Fifth Street, again in the lower level. Next, we'll go on with the consent agenda. And I have to just let you know that there was a change on some of the information in there. Item 2.15, 2.16, 2.17, and 2.18 were originally supposed to lie over and all of those will be put upon their passage. Aldermen Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to accept and file all ROs, accept and adopt all ROCs and put all resolutions and ordinances upon their passage. Second. It's been moved and seconded to put forth the consent agenda for approval. Is there any discussion? Is there any discussion? Will the clerk please call the roll on the consent agenda? 15 ayes. Item 3.1 will be referred to the salary and grievances committee. Aldermen Boren. Thank you, Mayor. When I sent submitted this document to the city clerk's office last week on the document that I sent to Sue Richards, I requested that I go to the salary and grievance committee and also the committee of the whole. And apparently there must have been a clerical error in the clerk's office because it doesn't show on here that I requested that I go to the committee of the whole. So I would like to have it go to the committee of the whole. Thank you for your comments, Aldermen Boren, but there was no clerical error. The chairman of the meeting made a decision that it's bad public policy or procedure to have an item go to a committee like committee of the whole where the salary and grievances committee is a subset of that. And I checked with the city attorney and he agreed with that. And we should send it to one or the other. If you'd like to change that to one or the other, you're welcome to make a motion to do that. Go ahead. I didn't understand. Who made the decision that it wasn't going to go to the committee of the whole? Your mayor did, I did. And it seems that in the past when an Aldermen wants to send in a document to a committee, it hasn't been questioned in the past. Usually the committees that the Aldermen has wanted them to go to, it has gone to those committees. I turn to the city attorney to talk about the ordinance that govern that. Yeah, there's a couple ordinance sections. I had written them down. I guess I left them in my office, but I think it's two dash 231 and two dash 232 that basically say that the presiding officer makes the decisions as far as referral of committee documents, documents to go to committees. Doesn't preclude any council member if they disagree with what the presiding officer has proposed from making a motion to have it referred to somewhere else or have it referred to additional places. But that's what the ordinance calls for is the presiding officer makes that determination and not each individual Aldermen as far as whether or not documents are referred to which committees. Well, I have no problem with it going to the Salgarian grievance committee. That's where I wanted to go in the first place. So I can make a motion to also refer to the committee of the whole. I'll make a motion to also refer to the committee of the whole. Second. It's been moved and seconded to also refer to the committee of the whole under discussion Aldermen Carlson. Thank you, mayor. I will just say that I disagree with this going to the community of the whole. I think we have standing committees for a reason. And that's we're gonna do this for every position that we have inside the city.  I think it needs to go through the proper steps which would be sellers and grievances then back to this committee as come back to this body as a whole and it can be discussed with the entire council. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. Alderman Donahue. Thank you, mayor. I would speak against the motion. It just frankly seems like a waste of time to send it to salary and grievance and then also be talking about it in terms of committee of the whole. What Alderman Bourne is suggesting is looking at the salary schedule for the fire department and for the fire chief. And while I appreciate that, I think that the salary and grievance committee is able to take those matters under advisement. Secondly, I think it is important as we are now initiating the search for our fire chief that to the outside world, Sheboygan still looks like a good place to work. It looks like a place where people are going to want to apply and want to be considered for employment and where their salaries are not really subject to substantial controversy before a person is even interviewed for the position. So I think the referral to salary and grievance is fine. We're in the process of obtaining information regarding salaries. And you know, it really gets into how we want to take a look at how, what it means to work for the city of Sheboygan. And it is of course beyond just the salary. Certainly we can look at that salary. Now, if we're going to go to committee of the whole, then what would keep us from having a committee of the whole meeting regarding the purchase of three motor vehicle division tri-axle dump trucks with plows, solters, controls, and equipment? What, why wouldn't we just do everything that the city does within the context of the committee of the whole? Because we don't do that. This is just not the way that we do business. So I'm going to ask all other persons to vote against this resolution. The matter will be referred to salary and grievance. It'll get a fair hearing. We'll have a good discussion, I think, about not only the salary, but what it is that we expect from our fire chief and so forth. And then come back to the council as a whole with concerns, questions. Alderman Bourne will certainly have a substantial opportunity to present his position both at salary and grievance and at the council. But we don't need salary and grievance, committee of the whole, and council. It's a duplicative effort. Thank you for those comments. Any other discussion? Alderman Bourne. Thanks, Mayor. We'll all do respect Alderman Carlson. I'm not singling out a certain position. Generally when there's somebody leaving a position, whether it be the fire chief, the police chief, the DPW director, the IT director, whoever it is, after that person has been here for a period of four years, I think it's a good opportunity to review whether the new person is gonna be paid enough. Look at whatever the benefit package is. So by no means am I singling out a certain position. I just felt when I brought this forward a couple of weeks ago that after Chief Herman has been here for four years that if we are gonna review a salary and benefit package for the new chief, this is the time to do it. And if we have another opening of a department head and another two or three months, then I think that would be the appropriate time to review the salary and benefit package for that department head. So I'm not singling anybody out.  And I think it's a good opportunity to review the salary and benefit package. Thank you. Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And that's a great idea and something that the Salaries and Grievances Committee has charged to do. I don't know that this is something that we've really ever brought up in front of the Committee of the Whole as to a review of somebody's wage and benefit package. So I would recommend not going to the Committee of the Whole. We don't need another meeting for something that we have a standing committee already to deal with. Thank you. Is there any more discussion on referral? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on referral? We're going to take a voice call. Bellinger? No. Warren? Aye. Carlson? No. Dassler? No. Donahue? No. Hammond? No. Heidemann? Aye. Herrmann? Aye. Lassard? No. Lewandowski? Aye. Penteco? No. Beale? No. Vanderweal? No. Manicheck? Aye. Mercy? Aye. Six ayes, nine noes. Fail. Motion defeated. 3-1 will be joined to salary and grievances. Item 3.2 will be referred to public works. Item 3.3 will be referred to public protection and safety. Item 3.4 will lie over. Let's see, 3.5 will also lie over. And 3.6 will lie over. Under resolutions, 4.1 will lie over. 4.2 will be referred to public works. 4.3 will lie over. Under reports of committees, report of committee by finance to whom was referred resolution number 87 of 1314 by Alderperson Hammond, authorizing a transfer of appropriations in the 2013 budget. Alderman Hammond? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to accept and adopt and put the substitute resolution upon this passage. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. The motion is before us. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? 15 ayes. Motion passes. Under item number six ordinances, 6.1 and 6.2 will both be referred to salary and grievances and respectively. And then the last one will go to the city planning commission. Under matters laid over. Item 7.1 is GO 42 of 1314 by Alderperson's Donahue, Dassler Hammond, and Vanderweal repealing and recreating section 29-3 of the 1975 municipal code relating to residency. Alderman Donahue? Thank you, Mayor. I would move that the ordinance be put upon its passage. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Yeah, the motion is on the floor. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? 12 ayes. Three noes. Motion passes. Next we'll go on to other matters. City attorney. 8.1 is an RO by the city clerk submitting various license applications for the period ending June 30, 2014, and June 30, 2015. That will go to law and licensing. The other two are not numbered, but one is a resolution 8.2 is the resolution approving the capital improvements program recommended by the capital improvements commission for the period 2014 through 2017 and adopting the 2014 program for implementation. That will be lie over. And 8.3 is a resolution to authorize the transfer of appropriations in the 2013 budget. That will lie over. 8.4 is a resolution committing fund balances in accordance with GASB 54 and subs of res number 44-12-13. That will also lie over. Moving on to adjournment. Motion to adjourn. Second. We're moving second to adjourn. The clerk please call the roll. 14 ayes. One noes. We stand adjourned. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Let's give him a second.


South Africa is vehemently opposed to last week's unilateral decision by the African Union Commission to grant Israel an official observer status as the organization. The country says it is appalled at the unjust and unwarranted decision. South Africa stands in part due to Israel's bombardment and continued illegal settlements of the West Bank according to its foreign ministry. The EU handed Israel the observer status on Thursday. A movie hopes would enable Israel to further help Africa battle the coronavirus pandemic and terrorism.


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So all databases look a little different. This is of course would be Google Scholar So I just did a quick search for distance learning and higher education. These are the results that came up See for example, this first one is something I want. I click on it put it up Now if I go up to my connector, this is where sometimes there's a problem So it says save to Zotero web page with snapshot, but this isn't a web page This is actually a journal article and I want to save it as such because I want to make sure I get all the information Like the journal title the author the year and stuff so I would download it and Then when you go into Zotero, I Already downloaded this a second ago so you can see so it saved it to my desktop again. There's kind of a weird PDF title there, but if I just drag it in there it is and it filled out the Some of the information Some of it appears to be missing so there's no date no issue So I would have to go in and open it up and put the year and the issue in the volume if that if that were the case If I go back to Google Scholar Another instance might be a Google book. So if I clicked on that I Come up here. This icon has changed and now it's recognizing it as a Google book and if I save it It dumped it in such but it did not give me a full text, right? Because typically these things cost money So it's it's not a sure thing, but at least now I can get back to the book and I haven't lost that information


Presentation, we have unclear ballot, automated ballot image manipulation with Carl Kandula. Is that correct? Oh sorry, Cart Kandula, graduate student of University of Michigan. Cart Kandula received his BSE degree in computer science engineering from the University of Michigan in 2019 and is currently pursuing an MSc in the same area. He conducts research in the UM security lab under the supervision of Professor J. Alex Halderman. Currently, his research interest lies in problems affecting society and public policy, specifically election security. He has held internships at Microsoft and JP Morgan in the past and also Jeremy Wink, undergraduate student University of Michigan. Jeremy Wink is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan currently pursuing a BSE in computer science. He has taken multiple security courses and spent time researching topics surrounding election cybersecurity also under J. Alex Halderman. Thank you so much. So Jeremy's going to get us started. Alright, hey everyone, thanks for coming. I'm Jeremy Wink. And my name's Cart Kandula. We're undergraduates from the University of Michigan and we're presenting unclear ballot, which is an attack based on automated ballot image manipulation which we developed jointly with Matt Bernard and Professor Alex Halderman from the University of Michigan. So to first give some background on our attack, post-election audits are one of the most important factors in guaranteeing the integrity of election results. If an attacker is somehow able to breach an election system in order to manipulate the outcome of the election, post-election audits should serve as a strong layer of defense in order to allow us to detect these breaches. There are several types of post-election audits including risk limiting audits in which a small random sample of paper ballots are inspected in order to give us statistically significant results. Another type of post-election audit is an image audit. In this case, an audit is conducted not on physical paper ballots but instead on images of the ballots which are taken when the ballots are originally scanned. This tends to be quicker and a lot more convenient than actually looking through the paper ballots, so this type of audit has been gaining a lot of popularity in recent years and was actually used by the state of Maryland following the 2016 presidential election. This is pretty scary because it turns out this type of audit actually does not hold up under adversarial conditions. If an attacker is able to breach an election system in order to manipulate the results of an election, they could just as easily get access to these digital images of the ballots. If they were then able to manipulate these ballot images in order to change the apparent votes within them, then image audits would offer zero security whatsoever and would effectively be useless. To demonstrate this vulnerability, we've developed an attack which focuses on automatically altering ballot images to change the votes within them. This attack targets tabulation machines which have been shown in the past to not be the most secure devices, and in fact numerous vulnerabilities have been documented in the past demonstrating how an attacker could potentially infiltrate these voting machines. The strategy of our attack is simple. Alter the votes within a ballot image in a way that is both undetectable and also consistent with the voters' original markings. In order to do this, we leveraged a variety of computer vision techniques operating under the assumption that the attacker knows what the ballot looks like in advance. This is a pretty reasonable assumption to make considering many jurisdictions publish sample ballots well ahead of the actual elections. The first step in our attack is to extract bounding boxes around the individual races within the ballot. This can be done by using a template match with a blank copy of the original ballot. The next step in the attack is to extract bounding boxes around the individual names and vote bubbles of each candidate. This is typically done with a huff line transform which you can picture here in the slides. For some ballot styles, the title of the race needs to be separated from the top candidate's name in order to prevent the title of the race from interfering with the rest of the attack. This can be done by running a vertical sweep on the image and using pixel intensities to find an area of white space above the candidate's name. It's also worth noting here that the exact algorithm using this attack varies slightly from ballot style to ballot style, but these same techniques are used pretty consistently across the board. The final step in the attack is to extract bounding boxes around the actual vote bubbles corresponding to each candidate. This is done by using a series of linear sweeps across the image, once again using pixel intensities to determine the boundaries of the vote bubbles. Once we've extracted bounding boxes around the vote bubbles of every candidate, all we need to do to alter the votes within the image is simply swap the pixels between bounding boxes. So here are a couple examples of votes that we've swapped using this attack. We've also recorded a video demo to better illustrate our attack in action. Before I show this, I just want to clarify that this demo was recorded solely for visualization purposes. The actual attack happens much faster and also has no visual components to it whatsoever. So here we have our target ballot. We first use a template match to extract the individual races within the ballot. Once we've done this, we use a huff line transform to separate the individual candidates. We now crop out the title of the race from the top candidate's window. Once we've done this, we can extract the bounding boxes around each candidate's vote bubble by using a series of linear sweeps. Once we've done this, we simply swap the pixels inside of these boxes and we've altered the votes. So I'll now be passing it off to Kurt to talk further about our attack. Thank you, Jerry. So unclear ballot is our POC implementation of this attack, which we did in C++ and we packaged this as a window scanner driver. We also tested this on the Fujitsu FI-7180 scanner, which is an EAC certified... Which is certified by the EAC for use in elections as part of Clear Balance Clear Vote System. So our malicious micro driver wraps around the original driver for the Fujitsu scanner and serves as an interface between the actual scanner and the election administration software, as shown in the image at the bottom of the slide. So to ensure the versatility of our attack, we tested it across six different ballot styles. For these are in use by the largest election vendors in the U.S. These are ESNS, Hart, Dominion, and also Clear Ballot. We also used two older styles of ballot from Hart and Divehold. So you can see all six of those styles on the slide. So to test our attack, we prepared 720 marked contests using the Bachi systemization. 120 per each of the ballot styles shown in the slide previously. So for each of these 120, 60 of these would be what Bachi would consider filled ballots. And we would have 10 of each of the marginal marks shown on the bottom and also 10 empty ones, which ends up giving us 120. So one key insight behind our attack is that an attacker would not have to alter a significant fraction of the votes in order to change the results of most elections. Because this gives us a lot of leeway with our attack because if we're not confident that we can move a marking without leaving trace artifacts that could be visible upon inspection, we can just skip over this ballot and move on to the next one. So at the bottom of the slide, you can see an image of a ballot that we would not attempt to alter. As you can see that it's an overfilled ballot. And if we were to attempt to create a bounding box around this marking, it would overlap with the candidate's name. So because of this, if we were to attempt to swap it with another candidate, the vote to another candidate, we would be taking part of the candidate's name along with the ballot. And this would be very apparent upon visible inspection. So shown here is the performance of unclear ballot upon each of the six different ballot styles that we used. So as can be seen, for the 60 ballot marks for each of the ballot styles, we were able to move at least 50% of the marks except for the case of heart e-scan. And across invalid and ballot marks for each of the ballot styles, we were able to move at least 18% of ballot marks. Given if we were to watch this attack and at this rate, we would have been able to swap the results in 48 out of 51 of the districts in the 2016 US presidential election. The only red districts that we could not have turned blue are Wyoming and West Virginia. Wyoming was won by Donald Trump, 68 to 22. And West Virginia was won by Trump, 68 to 26. And on the other hand, D.C. is the only blue district that we could not have interned as it was won by Hillary Clinton, 91 to 4. However, even if we were to be able to alter Wyoming's results, this would not be realistic as it would not be believed by the people, by the public. However, in a close election, it is very possible that we would be able to change the results to either one of the candidates. So along with the 720 mark ballots that we tested on, we were able to attain a corpus of around 181,000 ballots from the November 6, 2018 general election in Clackamas County, Oregon. So these votes were of the heart-barity style, and the votes were centrally counted with an optical scanner. Because they were centrally counted, this would have been an ideal target for our described attack. As an attacker, we would only have to inject malware onto devices in one location. So shown on this slide are the results of our testing on the ballots from Clackamas County. Our program rejected around 20,000 of these ballots, which amounts about 11%, which when we inspected a subset of these 20,000, and on many of these ballots, we noticed that there were scanning glitches. For example, on many of these, we noticed pixelated lines that ran through the length of the ballot image, which messed up our Huff line transform. We wanted to emulate the behavior of a real attacker, and a real attacker would want to ensure that they would not be leaving any trace artifacts upon swapping. So we used pretty conservative parameters with this attack. And even with these conservative parameters, we were able to alter around 62,000 votes, which amounts to 34% of the ballots. We sampled 1,000 of these ballots randomly that had been altered, and there were no visible artifacts that we could just by looking at them, we were not able to determine any visible artifacts. The alteration time for this was 279 milliseconds per ballot, while the fastest heart scan time was 352 milliseconds per ballot, which puts us well below the threshold we need to be at to conduct this attack. However, it should also be noted that we did not conduct any optimization on our algorithm, and if we had done so, we'd further be able to bring down our alteration time. So our image audience serve any use if they can be used to detect attacks. It turns out they're very good at certain things, such as catching non-adversarial error. So two examples of this are in Maryland in 2016. 2,000 ballots were discovered with the help of image audits, and a plough was discovered in the ESNS DS850 high-speed scanner where ballots were sticking together and being scanned in at the same time. So if there were two ballots to stick together and only one of them would be counted. However, these image audits cannot be relied upon in adversarial environments. What about image detection? Is it possible that vendors can implement detection into their systems in order to discover if alterations have occurred? It turns out that image detection ends up becoming an arms race at best because as detection algorithms improve, so do the manipulation algorithms to counteract them. So it's very likely that an attacker would be able to get their hands on detection code if it were implemented into a system, and with this detection code, they would be able to improve their manipulation algorithms to beat this. Another thing that an attacker could do to defeat a detection algorithm is they could use it as part of their mark-moving algorithm. So let's say our attacker has a ballot and they alter the ballot with their algorithm. They would then run that, the altered ballot through the detection algorithm, and if the detection algorithm detects that it's been altered, they would skip the ballot and just move on. But regardless of any of this, to our knowledge, no election vendor in the US has even minimal image detection in their systems today. So how can we protect against this? The best solution is to use risk limiting audits where people are looking at physical ballots. With these risk limiting audits, you ensure that the process is fully solved for independent and cannot be manipulated at any point. These risk limiting audits ensure that there's a high probability of detecting errors, there's a high probability of detecting fraud, and also of error. And even if every single machine in the voting system is infected, you will still be able to determine whether an alteration has occurred. So what do we take away from this? These image audits involve checking digital photos of ballots and then the actual physical ballots. However, as we have shown, an attacker can use computer vision methods to automatically alter and manipulate these images and change the results to their desired candidates. We implemented this with an EAC certified scanner, the Fujitsu F5-7180 scanner. And this scanner is part of Clear Ballot's Clear Vote system. And we showed that our attack works across all the ballot styles from all major vendors in the US. The best defense against this is for people to audit the ballots physically. So the work that we presented today, we compiled into a research paper and this will be presented at E-Vote ID and also known as the International Joint Conference of Electronic Voting. And we're releasing it to the public today on these two links. So if you go to those links right now, you can access the full papers. So we'll now be opening up before any questions. Yeah. One of the things I'd like to ask you is the images in comparison to the actual ballot, you find the attack. Yeah, you would. If you compare to the physical ballot. The same thing that we found in the Harrier attack, the Harrier attack, basically it only worked if you didn't examine the actual paper at all. Yeah. If you examined a portion of the ballots against the images using the Clear Ballot, this attack would fail. This would. Yes, it would. Which is why you need to, at some point, you need to go back to the physical ballots. That is correct. Yeah. Great work. When Boiney took the question, it seems to me what you described, that the bounding boxes around Mark's ballots, is probably the largest that Boiney's ballots are. So how do you swap pictures? Do I take this one? What is logic in place to normalize the size between all of the bounding boxes for like an individual race? I think it's a real difficult thing to guess. We're not going to be making it available just to. What was that? Yeah, that's correct. It's on the back end. Yeah. It's a flexible attack. Like every scanner is going to have a driver to interface with the actual system. And so this is, you can just adjust it to work with a different type of scanner. Yeah. So for the transfer of that to a computer, would it be a problem or the other? So our attack is on the drivers. So we create a malicious driver. However, you could also implement this attack at different points in the stack. You could implement it on the actual election administration system. And also you could also implement this attack on the actual scanner firmware. So that's a possibility. So if you were to implement it on the actual firmware, then that would be a possible attack on what you described. Yeah. We were manipulating the bitmaps that are returned from the actual Fujitsu driver. So before they're rendered as any type of actual image, there's a stream of bitmap data. That's correct. Yeah. I'm going to get to him. I can get to you after. Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned a hash. For the hash to be secured, you'd have to ensure that the key that's being used with the hash is also secured, that what it's being hashed with is also not publicly available. And it's possible that an attacker would be able to get that and recreate a hash for the manipulated ballot. There are systems such as Skintagrity and Predebotare that this attack would fail with. And it would be very hard to make this work with those type of systems. So those are some systems similar to what you said. For example, Predebotare, the candidate order is randomized. And when you cast a ballot, you rip off the actual markings from the candidate list. So you cannot tell based on the ballot. So the ballot markings are tied with a key. And so you cannot tell just from looking at the ballot who someone voted for, because that order is randomized and it's removed from the candidate list. That's true. But with such a system, you could create a public bulletin for users to verify their votes. However, then you run into issues of selling votes. Not with Predebotare? Okay. My apologies. Professor Vanallo definitely knows better. Yeah. So that would not be an issue, actually. Yes? So that's correct. That case is when the tabulation occurs. Like the tabulation occurs with different scans from the actual scans used with the image audit. However, with something like that, you would have to attack both the systems and somehow coordinate it to ensure that you're getting the same results with the attack. That would be a little bit, that would be a more complicated scenario. However, our attack focuses on if the tabulation, if the scan for the tabulation and the image audit occurs at the same time. Right. Okay. Any other questions? Yeah, we have time. That's correct. So I think that's how the scan integrity system works, if I'm correct. So that would be more difficult. However, we could adapt our attack to that. Instead of actually swapping the ballot boxes, we could, for example, have a data file of marks that we could insert and remove. Yes? No, we have not done that. That would be a good stuff. I think we have one more time for one more question. To attack the voting machine? It's a post-exploitation tool, so we're assuming that someone has hacked the machine, which is very possible. There's a lot of publications regarding that. I think that's all we have time for. Thank you, everyone, for coming.