Interesting Snippets from 2012-08-14

• Economics Journal: It’s Hard to Measure Indian Productivity - India Real Time - WSJ

  By conventional economic measurements of productivity (defined roughly as how much output one unit of labor or any other input would produce), Mr. Murthy’s shop would be deemed to be at the low tech, low productivity, and decidedly unglamorous end of the economic spectrum. According to the orthodox story, enhanced productivity and high growth follow the structural transformation of an emerging economy such as India away from labor intensive agriculture and services (often in the informal sector) to a greater formalization of the economy and a movement toward manufacturing, higher productivity agriculture and high tech services.

• Elusive FinSpy Spyware Pops Up in 10 Countries - NYTimes.com

  FinFisher is a spyware product manufactured by the Gamma Group, a British company that sells surveillance technology. It says its spyware offers “world-class offensive techniques for information gathering.” According to FinFisher’s promotional materials, the spyware can be “used to access target systems, giving full access to stored information with the ability to take control of the target system’s functions to the point of capturing encrypted data and communications.”

  Security researchers who studied the spyware last month said it can grab images of users’ computer screens, record their Skype chats, remotely turn on cameras and microphones, and log keystrokes. The Gamma Group markets FinFisher as a way for government law enforcement and intelligence agencies to keep track of criminals, but the researchers’ findings suggested that it was being used more broadly.

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