Big Data & Big Politicswith

SB Consulting Secure - Simplify - Scale

Soren BurkhartNOVEMBER 2, 2016

www.sorenburkhart.com

So who am I?

Soren Burkhart

• I solve complex technology/business problems

• I am a US Citizen

• I am a Latino

• I love my country

• and I worry about the future…

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We all want to know what the truth is

–Walter Cronkite

“Our job is only to hold up the mirror - to tell and show the public what has happened.”

Do you remember when the news was like this?

Venn Diagram about the media, you, and the truth

What the media knows

What you know

The Truth

We only know a tinge of the truth

–Morpheus, The Matrix

“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe

whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you

how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

Red Pill or Blue Pill?

The Situation

1. Who is WikiLeaks and what is their motivation?

2. Are the emails valid?

3. If they are valid how can we best view and determine if they serve the public good?

4. Why bother doing this?

Wikileaks has published a large number of controversial emails from John Podesta.

1. Who is WikiLeaks?

About WikiLeaks

“WikiLeaks is a multi-national media organization and associated library. It was founded by its publisher Julian Assange in 2006.

WikiLeaks specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption. It has so far published more than 10 million documents and associated analyses.

“WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, we analyze them, we promote them and we obtain more.” - Julian Assange, Der Spiegel Interview

WikiLeaks has contractual relationships and secure communications paths to more than 100 major media organizations from around the world. This gives WikiLeaks sources negotiating power, impact and technical protections that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve.

Although no organization can hope to have a perfect record forever, thus far WikiLeaks has a perfect in document authentication and resistance to all censorship attempts.”

https://wikileaks.org/What-is-Wikileaks.html

Are they against the Democrats?

or are they against the Republicans?

or are they against the World?

or are they secretly for the Russians?

www.cnn.com/2016/10/13/politics/russia-us-election/ https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-depart...

www.politico.com/story/2016/10/wikileaks-russia-hillary... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/11/clinton-cam...

But does that make any sense?

If a foreign government has potentially embarrassing or criminal information on a US presidential candidate, wouldn’t it make more

sense for them to help get that candidate elected, and then blackmail them after they are president?

Or does blackmail only happen in Hollywood movies?

If the emails are valid and true, does it really matter where they came from

if they serve the public good?

Corollary

–Former US Senator Christopher Dodd

“When the public's right to know is threatened, and when the rights of free speech and free press are at risk, all of the other liberties we

hold dear are endangered.”

Public’s right to know

2. How can we check if these emails are real?

DomainKey Identified Mail (DKIM) Signature

https://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Best_Practices_on_Email_Protection:_SPF,_DKIM_and_DMARC

Lets look at one of the controversial emails

Is the email valid?

Validate Original Message

Original Message Validation

What if we tried to add some content?

Change the Content

Modified Message Invalid

But couldn’t the DKIM be forged?

https://protodave.com/tools/dkim-key-checker/

unlikely…

3. If they are valid how can we best view and determine

if they serve the public good?

https://wikileaks.org

http://themillenniumreport.com/2016/10/the-top-100-most-

damaging-wikileaks/

Issues with these approaches

WikiLeaks

• Excellent search capabilities, but it is difficult to put the emails into perspective like a normal email viewer

The Top 100 Most Damaging Wikileaks

• Excellent curation of content, but it is difficult to view the emails in context.

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WikiLeaks Email Viewer by SB Consulting

WikiLeaks Email Viewer Requirements

1. All emails/documents reside on wikileaks.org servers

2. The metadata index on all the emails and documents is created from only public data available from the Internet.

3. Tableau is then used to create an easy to use analytical front-end to review emails

4. This analysis can be done either online on Tableau Public, or offline using Tableau Desktop

5. Easy to use interface that provides a variety of analytical capabilities at high speed

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Data available from Google

Information Capture Process1. Create the

metadata index from the Internet

2. Create front end with Tableau

3. Publish to Tableau Public

metadata.xls

metadata.xls

It takes less than 4 minutes to index 40,000+ emails… on a desktop!

Main View

Timeline Coloring

Filter by the issues

Hover Email Preview

Scroll through emails

Select from Timeline

Sort Emails By

View Emails in Local Time

Filter by Attachments

Filter by Timeline

4. Why do this?• “There is no truth in News and there is no news in

Truth.” (Ironically that is an old Russian joke)

• The sensationalizing of news by the media that distracts people from focusing on the facts.

• It forces people to have to research the facts for themselves in order to determine what is truth or just media spin.

• Luckily with technologies like Tableau and Google this kind of analysis can be done very easily and quickly.

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–Thomas Jefferson

“I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if we think

them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them, but to inform them

by education.”

Call to action!

But don’t take my word for it…

Analyze it yourself!

• Tableau Public: https://public.tableau.com/views/2016-11-02emails-Desktopsized/Viewer?:embed=y&:display_count=yes&:showVizHome=no#3

• SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/sorenburkhart/20161102-big-data-and-big-politics-with-tableau

• GitHub: https://github.com/sbcllc/wikileaks-email-viewer

WikiLeaks Email Viewer License

WikiLeaks Email Viewer by Soren Burkhart Consulting, LLC (https://www.sorenburkhart.com) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

Based on a work at https://www.sorenburkhart.com/wikileaks_email_viewer

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at info@sorenburkhart.com.