Emergent ChaosAs part of its regular "risk management" service, which provides screening, tracing, and identity and background checks on potential clients or trading partners, MicroBilt will now offer a "watch list" service that checks these individuals against 63 different lists from 35 sources, including OFAC, the FBI, and Interpol, Bradley says. ("Companies May Be Held Liable for Deals With Terrorists, ID Thieves", DarkReading)I say more than 63 because some unknown number are secret. The poor souls who find themselves on these lists have, in essence, no recourse. Convincing 35 or more agencies that their presumption of your guilt is incorrect might, in theory, be possible. In reality, the agency has no reason to do anything but drag its feet: there are no penalties to them for declaring you guilty. In contrast, a failure to put your name on the list risks them not having prevented you from your future thoughtcrime.
But there's hope. And it's not in MicroBilt's stock price (MicroBilt is a subsidiary of First Advantage). Rather, it's in the courage of a judge, who ruled that any American who has been routinely detained because they are on a watch list knows that they are on a list, and thus the government's 'State Secrets' privilege isn't applicable:
since the government admits it has stopped the six men and two women more than 35 times, federal Magistrate Judge Sidney Schenkier of the United States Northern Illinois District Court dismissed that argument. Instead he found that the government "failed to establish that, under all the circumstances of this case, disclosure of that information would create a reasonable danger of jeopardizing national security." (" Court: Government Must Reveal Watch-List Status to Constantly Detained Americans," Wired's excellent 27B-6 Mk IIa blog)
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Unfortunately, no progress on the "fake tape" issue:
The authenticity of the two-hour audio recording posted on an Islamic Web site could not be independently confirmed. But the voice sounded like past audiotapes from the terror leader, and the posting where it was found bore the logo of Al-Sahab, al-Qaida's official media arm.(Via Orin Kerr at Volokh.)
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Or something like that. You have to know how to use a Mac and be British. Her Majesty needs you.
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Recently, a group of passengers on the London Underground performed the dance from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in front of an unsuspecting audience. Shockingly, no one panicked. You can see one passenger move out of the way, but people otherwise just sat there and watched.
When the performance was done, the fellow-passengers applauded. Security was not called. No one was arrested nor harangued. In short -- nothing happened. The Sun wrote a bemused article, Thrillseekers hi-Jackson train. Transport for London kept a stiff upper lip and said:
There are clearly occasions, like this, when everyone enjoys being entertained by some talented people.There are other occasions where inconsiderate behaviour can spoil a journey for other passengers. Our message is simply that a little consideration to your fellow passengers can make a real difference to everyone.
I suppose that means to stay in tune, make sure you hit your marks, and try not to hit the passengers. Or else.
Well done. It should go without saying that Transport for London passengers have been terrorized. It is a tribute to the very notions of civilization and society that guerrilla theatre, properly done, is safe again. Other cities could do well to learn from London's example as well as remember Calvin's immortal words.
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OK.
So while researching the stock tout scam noted in another post, I came across a blog which discussed a similar mechanism, but one using text messages. An obvious variant, but the part I absolutely adored was when they linked to this August 31, 2007 article from MaineToday.com (emphases added to save your time):
An abbreviated text message on a state mail-delivery truck driver's official unlisted cell phone had police scrambling for several hours this morning.Maine Capitol Security Chief Russell Gauvin said the driver received a text message that read “Stcks poised to explode, ticker FDKE, Fred.”
Gauvin said the driver brought the phone to his Capitol Security office in the state’s Cross Office Building just west of the Statehouse.
Gauvin alerted the state Computer Crimes Task Force, which determined after several hours and a subpoena to U.S. Cellular that the message was an advertising message referring to stock trading, not an explosive.
Gauvin said he seized the phone from the driver and kept it for investigation, but he said when the driver returned to his office at the Muskie Federal Building, postal officials there decided to isolate the truck and have it searched with the assistance of an Augusta Police Department bomb-sniffing dog and State Police.
A portion of the Muskie building’s parking was closed off as a precaution until the search was completed.
What is it with New England and this stuff? I thought they were all stoic realists up there. If the guy's phone had an LED, they'd have probably called in NASA to shoot it into the sun.
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According to court papers referenced in this VOA report, U.S. sniper teams in Iraq are using an interesting tactic:
[A] so-called baiting program developed at the Pentagon by the Asymmetrical Warfare Group....the baiting was described as putting items, including plastic explosives, ammunition and detonation cords on the battlefield then killing suspected insurgents who picked up the objects.
These claims are being made by men accused of murder, so bear that in mind. If true, however, this technique would seem very likely to suffer from a large number of false positives. Assuming the process was designed by someone intelligent, that either means they do not care about false positives, or that (contrary to my prior belief as asserted above) the likelihood of a curious true bad guy happening by is so large that the false positive rate is tolerably low.
Scary either way, I'd say.
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A lot of people are saying she got what she deserved, or that she's lucky to be alive. These people probably think that Jean Charles de Menezes should have worn different clothing before getting on the London Metro, and that Andrew Meyer should have never asked a question of John Kerry.
I think this is a tremendously dangerous trend for society, and not just the creative or strange types. Should we give police such broad license to use force that everyone needs to consider, first and foremost, if their actions, their legal actions, might freak out a policeman?
If we do so, there are substantial costs. They're not visible. A few moments of time every day, considering how the police feel about you. A little less bizarre or riqsue public art. A little less creativity and verve in life, as we all ask "what if a cop shoots me?"
What would have happened to the first people designing and testing cell phones, if homemade electronics with a battery had been cause for concern? How would we test keyless car entry systems, if a police officer had shot people walking up to cars without unlocking them? Even Dave Maynor would be in trouble. Just look at his art:
When I was a kid, Radio Shack sold breadboards (like the one the student was wearing.) Tinkering with electronics was a key part of what launched the Homebrew computer club. Tinkering with dangerous chemicals was an important part of the development of modern photography.
Do we want everyone who tinkers, invents, hacks or makes projects to have to worry that cops with submachine guns are going to show up and ask agitated questions? Are those filters good for society?
Here at Emergent Chaos, we're fans of, well, emergent chaos that happens when those filters go away.
Photos: Lisa Poole, AP, and Dave Maynor, Errata, respectively.
[Update: Chris Soghoian makes the useful point that lots of bombs have no visible wires at all, being hidden inside other things. And while protecting against dumb terrorists is useful, it's not worth giving up our ability to tinker, build or innovate.]
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In Australia, Jeffrey Ismail has been convicted of "using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend" meaning using his mobile to coördinate reprisal attacks against a rival gang.
Despite registering his phone under the name "John Gotti" and being careful enough to tell his "clerics" to "bring 'ankshays' and 'atbays'" police recorded his calls and managed to decode the message. Recognizing it as Pig Latin, and careful explaining the lexical analysis required, police extracted a confession and obtained a conviction this week.
Photo courtesy of shutterberry.
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The New York Times reports, "U.S. Will Allow Most Types of Lighters on Planes"
Three cheers for them learning! I can only hope that the stupid liquids ban will fall next. We know that we've trained people to be efficient at finding water bottles over finding bombs, even when they're in the same bag.Federal aviation authorities have decided to stop enforcing a two-year-old rule against taking cigarette lighters on airplanes, concluding that it was a waste of time to search for them before passengers boarded.
The ban was imposed at the insistence of Congress after a passenger, Richard Reed, tried to ignite a bomb in his shoe in 2001 on a flight from Paris to Miami.
Lawmakers said that if Mr. Reid had used a lighter, instead of matches, he might have been able to ignite the bomb, but Kip Hawley, assistant secretary for the Transportation Security Administration, said in an interview on Thursday that the ban had done little to improve aviation security because small batteries could be used to set off a bomb.
Matches have never been prohibited on flights.
“Taking lighters away is security theater,” Mr. Hawley said. “It trivializes the security process.”
The policy change, which is to go into effect on Aug. 4, applies to disposable butane lighters, like Bics, and refillable lighters, like Zippos. Torch lighters, which have thin, hotter flames, will continue to be banned.
Security officers have been collecting some 22,000 lighters a day nationwide, slowing down lines at check points. Even so, many smokers had found ways to sneak lighters through checkpoints, often by placing more than one in a carry-on bag. Disposing of the seized lighters has cost about $4 million a year.
By lifting the ban, Mr. Hawley said, security officers could spend more time looking for bombs or bomb parts. “The No. 1 threat for us is someone trying to bring bomb components through the security check point,” he said. “We don’t want anything that distracts concentration from searching for that.”
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USA Today tells us, "Sci-fi writers join war on terror," in which, "the Homeland Security Department [sic] is tapping into the wild imaginations of a group of self-described "deviant" thinkers...."
There are many available cheap shots as well as fish to shoot in that barrel. I'm going to take a cheap shot at one not in the barrel. The writers brought in are: Jerry Pournelle, Arlan Andrews, Greg Bear, Larry Niven and Sage Walker.
Do you notice anyone missing who should be there? How about Tom Clancy, who wrote a novel in which a Boeing 747 is used as a cruise missile to take out the US Capitol and much of the government?
I can almost excuse the DHS, after all, they're the ones who admit to not having enough imagination. But look at this:
During a coffee break at the conference, Walker, Bear and Andrews started talking about the government's bomb-sniffing dogs. Within minutes, they had conjured up a doggie brain-scanning skullcap that could tell agents what kind of explosive material a dog had picked up.
Oh, wow! Brain-scanning dogs. (Incidentally, this shows how ignorant they are of how sniffer dogs work. They're playing "find the ball" by smell. They don't know explosives from treats.) Why did none of the writers ask each other in a coffee break, "Hey, why isn't a guy who actually predicted this sort of thing here?"
Probably because, "for this group, Walker says, there's no such thing as an 'unthinkable scenario.'"
Sometimes with imagination, less is more.
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Woo hoo! I feel so much safer! The TSA reports, "Transportation Security Officers SPOT Passenger in Fake Military Uniform at Florida Airport." Picture at right is my foofification of the picture on the TSA site.
Our brave protectors write:
A TSA behavior detection team at a Florida airport helped catch a passenger allegedly impersonating a member of the military on May 10 as he went through the security checkpoint.The passenger, who was en route to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, exhibited suspicious behavior that caught the attention of officers. In addition, he was in a military uniform but had long hair, which is not consistent with military regulations, and had conflicting rank insignias on the uniform.
When officers asked for his military identification, the passenger said he had none. He was then questioned about the irregularities of his uniform. The passenger first claimed that the uniform was his brother's, and later, that it was his nephew's.
TSA contacted law enforcement partners at the airport who interviewed the passenger. The passenger was arrested on a state charge of impersonating a U.S. soldier.
Behavior detection officers are trained to focus on behavior and not physical characteristics as part of TSA's Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program.
I have questions:
Based solely on the information above, it does not appear that he actually impersonated a soldier. It appears that he was walking around with irregular bits of regalia, and someone called him on it, and he got nervous. Many people get nervous when confronted with authorities like police or TSA, and actually, the better a person you are, the more likely it is that you'll say "brother" when you meant "brother's kid."
I got this courtesy of Bruce, who advocates procedures like "SPOT" which look for "hinky" behavior.
I agree with Bruce, that it's better to look for hinky than rip apart every laptop bag, but the TSA needs to look at this as a failure, even if this guy was actually guilty of a crime worthy of punishment stronger than an afternoon with Carson Kressley. This ain't what we're paying you for.
Let me finish with an anecdote. Like many people in this industry, I have clothing with NSA logos on it, or embroidery that says, "National Security Agency." The NSA sells them in the gift shop of the National Cryptologic Museum as part of their widows-and-orphans fund.
A few Defcons ago, I was wearing such a shirt as I checked out of my hotel. The doorman pointed at the logo as he was getting me a cab and asked, "Do you work for them?"
I met his gaze, smiled and replied, "If I did, I wouldn't be able to answer that question, would I?"
I locked my eyes to his as he went compute-bound for a good three seconds, which is a long time when someone's not flinching. He finally nodded sharply, said, "Right," and pulled my cab over.
Here are some essay questions:
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In 27 B Stroke 6 Threat Level, Kevin Poulsen writes, "News from Bizzaro World: Ashcroft Opposed Taps."
Kevin, your reality tunnel is showing. There are many things that Ashcroft was (I apologize for using the past tense), starting with prig and prude. I'm not particularly a fan of his, but the Venn diagram of what he valued and what I value looks more like the Mastercard logo than the Hooters logo, and I don't think that this is an ipso facto surrealism.
Back in 1998 as a Senator, Ashcroft was a supporter of Goodlatte's SAFE (Security And Freedom through Encryption) Act, not to be confused with the 2003 "Security and Freedom Ensured" act, which was an attempted limitation of the PATRIOT Act. When that SAFE Act was destroyed in the House, he with Patrick Leahy and Conrad Burns introduced the E-PRIVACY (Encryption Promotes the Rights of Individuals in the Virtual Arena Using Computers) bill. Despite the fact that there was no "Y" in their acronym (perhaps it was a silent "Y'all"), it's a pity it never was passed. The EFF gave a good news/bad news assessment with the good news being:
EFF is pleased to say that the E-PRIVACY Act is the most thoughtful piece of encryption legislation to date. Introduced by Senators John Ashcroft (R-Mo.), Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), and Conrad Burns (R-MT), the new bill sharply varies from proposals favored by the Clinton Administration and law enforcement/national security agencies by easing export controls on mass market encryption products, limiting government access to decryption keys, and prohibiting the government from requiring key recovery mechanisms.
The bad news was that it created a new crime of using encryption as part of a criminal act. I'm not in favor of that, but we got that part, and we never got the good news.
After E-PRIVACY never went anywhere, there was the 1999 PROTECT Act, and you can find Ashcroft saying it doesn't go far enough fast enough.
Despite many quirks, such as being bothered by bare breasts, he favored bearing arms and clothing communications. His successor as AG, Alberto "Schultzie" Gonzales, often seems to be to be the incarnation of the cynical adage, "be careful what you ask for." Take a look through the EFF archives from '98, and feel a bit wistful. Read Dahllia Lithwick in Slate, and feel moreso. Ashcroft was a complex person with whom many of us had disagreements, not an inhabitant of Bizarro World.
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So we here at Emergent Chaos have carefully refrained from using the phrase "astronaut in diapers" not because we think that it is now incumbent apon the blogosphere to maintain what little dignity remains in American journalism, but because, within about nine minutes of the arrest of Lisa Nowak, the blogosphere had thoroughly digested the story, and there was apparently nothing left to say.
However, when the New York Times published "Astronaut’s Arrest Spurs Review of NASA Testing" with the lead words "NASA is reviewing its psychological screening and checkup process in the wake of the arrest of Capt. Lisa M. Nowak, the astronaut accused of attempted murder, space agency officials said yesterday," it occurred to me that we could, after all, jump on the `astronaut in diapers' bandwagon.
You see, we're concerned with the idea of screening. We think it's way over-applied, and reduces the emergence of chaos with which we are enamoured. And we're forced to ask, if NASA, who, after all, can put a man on the moon, can't screen its 100-odd astronauts successfully, what odds does the TSA have of screening for terrorists?
The TSA, you'll recall, is an agency that has never put anything but a gloved hand where it doesn't belong. And TSA wants to screen millions of Americans every day. They want to screen us for a set of criteria that remain extremely fuzzy. (As we covered in a review of the book, "Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?")
Setting (our) silliness aside for a moment, screening for rare conditions, like being a terrorist, or a willingness to don diapers and drive 15 hours to wave a BB gun in someone's face, is hard. It's hard because you don't have good indicia of what to look for. It's hard because every small over-reach will result in thousands of false positives, because, after all, most Americans aren't terrorists, any more than most astronauts are murders.
Trying to screen for either is a waste.
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That's what "ridiculous" means, worthy of ridicule. If you're fond of etymologies, it comes from the Latin word ridiculus, which means "laughable."
Right after 9/11, I decided to show my patriotism and devotion to freedom by getting on airplanes. I got great cheap trips all over the world. Sadly, this means that my answer to "what did you do during The War On Terrorism, Daddy?" would have to be that I lounged on beaches and stayed in swanky Mayfair hotels. However, during the first of my trips (to Hawaii), we were gripped not only in airplane-and-bomb fever, but white powder fever, too. A couple of times a day some hotel had the hazmat crew from the fire department visiting.
A genuine overreaction that happened at about that time was that somewhere someone had called in suspicious white powder and found that it was a crushed Altoid. Despite the fact that snorting a crushed Altoid would sure make your eyes water, this was a newsworthy gaffe. I took to referring to all such false alarms as "someone stepping on an Altoid." I made the point to say with a wry grin to the obviously bored and irked fire department guys, "What, did someone step on an Altoid again?" and got some laughs. I even heard people people start to pick up my line.
This week, we have something else happen that is ridiculous. Bruce Schneier has a good overview of the events. My summary: Cartoon Network puts up magnetic signs with blinking LEDs advertising some cartoon in ten cities, including Boston. Photo of one of these in Cambridge is the accompaning photo. After two to three weeks, people in Boston notice them and think, "Oh, my God! Blinking lights, wires! It must be (cue organ) terrorists!" They shut down half the city. They postured, they arrested the perps.
This brouhaha is worthy of ridicule for two reasons. First, they were embarrassingly wrong. Second, they were two weeks late! Comparing Boston's Finest to the Keystone Kops is a grave insult to the memory and bravery of those immortal boys in blue.
I have a new word for the vocabulary of Thomas Menino, Deval Patrick, Ed Markey, and others. That word is, "oops." It's an easy one, devoid of 'r's. You can say it. We'll forgive you. Really. I speak for the President of the United States when I say that admitting you were wrong will improve your popularity. It will have brightened up an otherwise depressing week.
For the rest of us, after they say, "oops," we can forget the exact details (as I have forgotten the exact details of the Altoid), simply refer to future incidents as "finding a cartoon sign."
My army of loyal fact-checkers have come up blank, so I may be misremembering and am likely misquoting, but I remember Asimov having Hari Seldon say, "There is no tower so high, nor throne so mighty that it cannot be rocked by laughter." If I'm wrong, then maybe I said it. If you know who did, tell me, and I'll post an update here.
Nonetheless, it's time for us all to stop being terrorized, it's time for us to ridicule the ridiculous.
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My 10-y.o. son, like many kids, believes that backpacks have to be overloaded to work.
Recently, at LAX T-6 (shoe carnival central), the TSA removed 2 partially full water bottles from his backpack after x-ray screening.
On the return flight, at JFK T-9, they found 2 more, both of which had been in there all along and been missed at LAX. As we rode the escalator down in T9, I told him that if this happened again, he would never get upgraded until he was 21 (it's a harsh threat...) -- and he reached in to his backpack and took out another partially empty water bottle.
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Thanks to manfromlaramie for finding this.
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Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts and leaves his body @4:50 AM on binary date 01/11.All Hail Eris!
On behalf of his children and those who cared for him, deepest love and gratitude for the tremendous support and lovingness bestowed upon us.
(that's it from Bob's bedside at his fnord by the sea)
RAW Memorial February 07
date to be announced
There are too many reasons why RAW was important. One of the ones most relevant to this jazz combo is that in Illuminatus! he and Robert Shea concern themselves with the problem of loss of liberty in the face of terrorist threat. (And they even use those words.) One of the things they discuss as part of the plot is the unwitting alliance between the authorities and the terrorists. It is only because of the terrorists that repressive authority can make repression palatable. And the repression itself makes the terrorists more than mere whackos.
It's a roller-coaster ride of a book (meaning bumpy and thrilling), but every bit as important as We, Gravity's Rainbow, or Animal Farm.
Edit (11 Jan 2007, 17:57):
See also Quinn Norton's missive on 27B Stroke 6.
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How'd you like to be the person at British Airways who has to write the letter to 30,000 people explaining that they might have been exposed to a radioactive poison while traveling on BA flights?
Remarkably, authorities will not confirm that the substance detected was Polonium, yet passengers on the flights are being asked to talk to their doctors. About what? The general risks of ionizing radiation? No need for that, since BA helpfully has that information right on its web pages.
I know little about such things, since the only physics lab I studied in had a telescope as its main instrument, but if I am going to ask my doctor how much I need to worry, she's going to want to know what kind of radiation I was exposed to, and for how long. I don't see that information as being available, so it seems as though asking the passengers to speak to their doctors is really asking doctors to giver their patients a pat on the head.
Meanwhile, the contrast between the official reaction to this incident, which I would describe as quite measured, and the reaction to the "chemical explosive threat" could hardly be more stark.
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