Filed under: Art, Bruce Schneier, Civil Rights, Constitution, General Musings, Government, Politics, Predictions, Society, Terrorism, Travel
A thought experiment for you: Consider, if you will, at what point the absurdity of “security theatre” crosses the line from the merely annoying to the actively dangerous (to our civil liberties). How would you detect such a point?
How about with a simple American flag?
Metal plates send messages to airport x-ray screeners
One of my favorite artists, Evan Roth, is working on a project that will be released soon – the pictures say it all, it’s a “carry on” communication system. These metal places contain messages which will appear when they are X-Rayed. The project isn’t quite done yet, Evan needs access to an X-Ray machine to take some photos and document. If you have access to an X-Ray machine he’s willing to give you a set of the plates for helping out.
There are two such plates shown at the site, made up as stencils carved into an X-ray opaque plate about the size of your average carry-on bag. One says “NOTHING TO SEE HERE”. The other is an American Flag.
Now, consider, what do you think the reaction would be from your friendly local airport authorities upon seeing such an item in your luggage?
Would you (reasonably, I think) expect to be given additional scrutiny? Have your bags and person checked more thoroughly? Be ‘interviewed’ by the security personnel? Perhaps miss your flight? Have your name added forevermore to the ‘terrorist list’, meaning hassles each and every time you’d try and fly in the foreseeable future?
For having a stencil of an American Flag in your luggage?
I’d say we’ve reached that point.
Perhaps we should reconsider this.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: General Musings
21 years. Old enough to drink, sign contracts, do just about whatever you want, around the country and around the world. A good milestone.
So, Happy Birthday to my marriage! 🙂
Jim Downey
Filed under: Blade Runner, BoingBoing, Bruce Schneier, Civil Rights, Constitution, Cory Doctorow, Emergency, Expert systems, General Musings, Government, Guns, movies, Philip K. Dick, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Ridley Scott, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech, Terrorism, Violence
So, according to FOX News, our friends at the Department of Homeland Security will soon have a new trick up their sleeve: MALINTENT.
Homeland Security Detects Terrorist Threats by Reading Your Mind
Baggage searches are SOOOOOO early-21st century. Homeland Security is now testing the next generation of security screening — a body scanner that can read your mind.Most preventive screening looks for explosives or metals that pose a threat. But a new system called MALINTENT turns the old school approach on its head. This Orwellian-sounding machine detects the person — not the device — set to wreak havoc and terror.
MALINTENT, the brainchild of the cutting-edge Human Factors division in Homeland Security’s directorate for Science and Technology, searches your body for non-verbal cues that predict whether you mean harm to your fellow passengers.
I’m . . . sceptical. Let me put it like this: if this thing actually, dependably, reliably works the way they tout it in the article (go read the whole thing, even if it is from FOX), then the TSA would be perfectly fine with allowing me to carry a gun onto a plane. After all, I have a legitimate CCW permit, have been vetted by a background check and accuracy test, have had the permit for three years, and have never demonstrated the slightest inclination to use my weapon inappropriately. If I could pass their MALINTENT scanners as well, they should be completely willing to let me (and anyone else who had a similar background and permit) carry a weapon on board.
Just how likely do you think that is?
Right. Because this sort of technology does not, will not, demonstrate reliability to the degree they claim. There will be far too many “false positives”, as there always are with any kind of lie detector. That’s why multiple questions are asked when a lie detector is used, and even then many jurisdictions do not allow the results of a lie detector to be admitted into courts of law.
Furthermore, the risk of a “false negative” would be far too high. Someone who was trained/drugged/unaware/elated with being a terrorist and slipped by the scanners would still be a threat. As Bruce Schneier just posted about Two Classes of Airport Contraband:
This is why articles about how screeners don’t catch every — or even a majority — of guns and bombs that go through the checkpoints don’t bother me. The screeners don’t have to be perfect; they just have to be good enough. No terrorist is going to base his plot on getting a gun through airport security if there’s decent chance of getting caught, because the consequences of getting caught are too great.
Contrast that with a terrorist plot that requires a 12-ounce bottle of liquid. There’s no evidence that the London liquid bombers actually had a workable plot, but assume for the moment they did. If some copycat terrorists try to bring their liquid bomb through airport security and the screeners catch them — like they caught me with my bottle of pasta sauce — the terrorists can simply try again. They can try again and again. They can keep trying until they succeed. Because there are no consequences to trying and failing, the screeners have to be 100 percent effective. Even if they slip up one in a hundred times, the plot can succeed.
OK, so then why do it? Why introduce these scanners at all? Why intrude on the privacy of people wanting to get on an airplane?
Control. As I noted earlier this year, about the news that the US military was deploying hand-held ‘lie detectors’ for use in Iraq:
The device is being tested by the military. They just don’t know it. And once it is in use, some version of the technology will be adapted for more generalized police use. Just consider how it will be promoted to the law enforcement community: as a way of screening suspects. Then, as a way of finding suspects. Then, as a way of checking anyone who wants access to some critical facility. Then, as a way of checking anyone who wants access to an airplane, train, or bus.
Just how long do you think it will be before you have to pass a test by one of these types of devices in your day-to-day life? I give it maybe ten years. But I worry that I am an optimist.
An optimist, indeed. Because here’s another bit from the FOXNews article:
And because FAST is a mobile screening laboratory, it could be set up at entrances to stadiums, malls and in airports, making it ever more difficult for terrorists to live and work among us.
This is about scanning the public, making people *afraid*. Afraid not just of being a terrorist, but of being thought to be a terrorist by others, of being an outsider. Of being a critic of the government in power. The first step is to get you afraid of terrorists, because then they could use that fear, and build on it, to slowly, methodically, destroy your privacy. Sure, the DHS claims that they will not keep the information gathered from such scanners. And you’re a fool if you think you can trust that.
Jim Downey
Via BoingBoing. Cross posted to UTI.
Filed under: Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Government, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Society
I wanted to follow up this post with a note about what has happened in the two weeks since. Particularly over on UTI there was some discussion about my assessment of the true scope of the situation being wildly overblown:
Trillions? Really? Do you have a source for this prediction other than “I have a degree in economics”? You’re predicting that 10% or more of these loans will go bad, or that interest rates on these mortgage backed securities will go up after the government starts guaranteeing them. Both of these outcomes seem unlikely.
Well, guess where we are just two weeks later:
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is asking Congress to let the government buy $700 billion in toxic mortgages in the largest financial bailout since the Great Depression, according to a draft of the plan obtained Saturday by The Associated Press.
The plan would give the government broad power to buy the bad debt of any U.S. financial institution for the next two years. It would raise the statutory limit on the national debt from $10.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion to make room for the massive rescue. The proposal does not specify what the government would get in return from financial companies for the federal assistance.
And:
Nearly one-in-10 American mortgages is delinquent or in foreclosure. The government would be buying debt backstopped by the U.S. home values that have been falling in value for eight consecutive quarters, according to the S&P Case-Shiller U.S. Home Price Index.
And there is still more to come.
9/21EDIT TO ADD: for an excellent summation of how we got to where we are, how bad it really is, and who is primarily responsible, take a look at this post on Daily Kos.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Art, Artificial Intelligence, BoingBoing, Book Conservation, General Musings, movies, Science, tech
An earlier version of Communion of Dreams had one of the minor characters with an interesting hobby: building his own computer entirely by hand, from making the integrated circuits on up. The point for him wasn’t to get a more powerful computer (remember, by the time of the novel, there is functional AI using tech which is several generations ahead of our current level). Rather, he just wanted to see whether it was possible to build a 1990’s-era desktop computer on his own. I cut that bit out in the final editing, since it was a bit of a distraction and did nothing to advance the story. But I did so reluctantly.
Well, this is something along those lines: video of a French artisan who makes his own vacuum tubes (triodes) for his amateur radio habit:
It’s a full 17 minutes long, and worth watching from start to finish. Being a craftsman myself, I love watching other people work with their hands performing complex operations with skill and grace. I have no need or real desire to make my own vacuum tubes, but this video almost makes me want to try. Wow.
Jim Downey
(Via BoingBoing.)
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, General Musings, Humor, Patagonia, Science Fiction, Society, tech
My phone rang in the grocery store. I set my basket and the six-pack of 1554 down, pulled the phone out of my pocket. Didn’t recognize the number.
“This is Jim Downey.”
“Um, hello. You tried to place an order for some new Nikes this morning?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I figured out why they couldn’t get the order to go through.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, it’s your email address. It’s obscene.”
* * * * * * *
Over the weekend, I tried four times to place an order online for some new walking shoes. I wanted some for my upcoming trip to Patagonia. My current pair of walking shoes are still in decent shape, but I wanted some that could also serve as semi-dressy shoes for the trip. I even created an account with Nike, to simplify ordering. But each time, I always got a glitch at the end of the whole check-out process, after jumping through multiple hoops and entering data time and again.
Finally, in frustration, I called the customer service number. After going through about a dozen levels of automated phone hell, I got to talk with “Megan”. She was quite helpful, but I still had to repeat to her all the information I had entered on four separate occasions. And at the end, she got the same error message that I did.
“Um, let me put you on hold.”
Sure.
Wait.
Wait.
About five minutes pass. “Hi, sorry about that. No one here can figure out why the system won’t process the order. But I’m just going to fill out a paper request with all the information, and send it over to the warehouse. They should be in touch with you later today to confirm shipment.”
“Thanks.”
* * * * * * *
“My email address is obscene?”
“Yeah. The system thinks so, anyway.”
The email address I gave them is one I use for stuff like this: crap@afineline.org It’s also the one I use over at UTI. Cuts down on the amount of spam I get in my personal accounts.
I laughed. “I use that to cut down on junk I get from businesses.”
A laugh at the other end of the phone. “I understand.” Pause. “But, um, do you have a real email address I can use?”
“Oh, that one’s real. I just want people to know what I think of the messages they send me when they use it.”
“Ah. OK. Well, you should get a confirmation email later today that the shoes have shipped.”
“That’ll be fine. Thanks.” I hung up, and made a mental note to pass along word to others not to offend the computers at Nike – they seem to have rather delicate sensibilities.
Jim Downey
My wife teared-up as we went over the statement from the auction house.
* * * * * * *
I’ve mentioned previously the chaos of the last few months, as we went through distributing Martha Sr’s household items between family members and then packed things up to go to a local auction. Well, things are starting to get sorted out and put away now. And we gave away my old computer on Freecycle to someone who needed it. So, while it still feels like we’re knee-deep in boxes, we’ve been making real progress.
But as I said, it has come at a price: tapping into my energy reserves. Another component of that is that I think I have developed a respiratory infection. I’ve had awful problems with allergies all this year, but in the last couple of weeks things have compounded. I’m scheduled to see a doctor tomorrow for a general check-up (since I just turned 50 and haven’t had one for a while), so we’ll see if there is something else going on.
* * * * * * *
I charge $100 per hour for my conservation services. Oh, I usually don’t bill for all my time – there’s prep, and clean-up, and distractions, and breaks – but that is my rate. So I use that as a rough rule-of-thumb when considering whether it makes economic sense for me to do this or that thing myself (like working on my car). Now, a lot of times I do decide to do things like yardwork or gardening, because they get me out of the house or give me pleasure. But still, that calculation is there, running in the background.
And so it was as we packed up things for the auction last week. I knew that it would probably be more financially sensible to let someone else do it (the auction house will have their people wrap, box, and load things at a flat rate less than mine), or just not bother taking the time to individually wrap up glasses and old dinnerware. I knew that it was unlikely that most of the stuff we were sending to auction would generate much. But I just hate to waste things, to see them damaged, when they are perfectly good and serviceable.
* * * * * * *
My wife teared-up as we went over the statement from the auction house. After all the costs were factored in, and the split with her siblings, our share would come to less than one hour’s worth of my time doing conservation work or her doing architecture work.
But that wasn’t why she was ready to cry. The money didn’t matter, not really. It was because the memories associated with those things were still so strong. Yeah, even the silly chipped dishes and the aging salmon-colored loveseat. And holding the statement and check from the auction house in her hand, it was one more bit of her mom she had lost, along with all the others which had slipped away over the years.
Letting go is hard.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Government, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Society
So, remember the S&L Crisis of the late 1980s? I do. It was a direct result of the deregulation pushed by Reagan which resulted in unwise real estate lending. In the end, it cost American taxpayers something like $160 billion to clean up the mess (that’s about $270 billion in today’s money). Notable names associated with this debacle include John McCain and Neil Bush.
Well, guess what happened this morning?
WASHINGTON — U.S. federal regulators outlined their takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Sunday morning, including control of the firms by their regulator and a Treasury Department purchase of the firms’ senior preferred stock.
The plan, outlined jointly by the Treasury Department and Federal Housing Finance Agency, also includes a plan for the Treasury to purchase mortgage-backed securities from the firms in the open market, and a lending facility through the Treasury from its general fund held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
OK, this is basically S&L Crisis, Part II: Revenge of the Greedoids. You, and me, and every other US taxpayer are now on the hook for trillions of dollars of bailout money. Why? Deregulation and unwise real estate lending.
Yes, that is a gross oversimplification. But it is essentially true, and even one of the men responsible said so last year. Between them, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac control something like half of the mortgages in the US, to the tune of about $12 trillion. Now, not all of those mortgages are going to go ‘bad’. But it’ll probably take trillions of dollars to clean this mess up.
Why do it? Well, the argument is that this is just too large a component of the US economy to allow things to spiral down. So the government has stepped in to secure ‘preferred stock’ in these two entities – the kind of stock held by other banks and foreign governments – in order to cushion the impact of the ongoing credit crisis.
But there is a problem in doing this. From the Wikipedia entry on the 2007 Subprime Mortgage Crisis:
A taxpayer-funded government bailout related to mortgages during the Savings and Loan crisis may have created a moral hazard and acted as encouragement to lenders to make similar higher risk loans.[68]Additionally, there is debate among economists regarding the effect of the Community Reinvestment Act, with detractors claiming it encourages lending to uncreditworthy consumers[69] [70] and defenders claiming a thirty year history of lending without increased risk.[71][72][73]Some have argued that, despite attempts by various U.S. states to prevent the growth of a secondary market in repackaged predatory loans, the Treasury Department‘s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, at the insistence of national banks, struck down such attempts as violations of Federal banking laws.[74]
Yeah, you got that right: the feds *stopped* individual states from enacting legislation which would have limited the damage.
Your tax dollars at work. In the service of the big national banks who wanted to operate under the easier rules on the Federal level.
And now, we’re going to wind up with the tab for the bulk of the mess. And, in doing so, will once again establish that we’re not willing to let big businesses suffer the consequences of their errors in judgment (in this case the monetization of bundled subprime mortgages). I hold the current administration predominantly responsible for this debacle, just as I held the Reagan administration predominantly responsible for the failure to regulate the banking industry in the 1980s, but both political parties share some of the blame for refusing to stand up to the special interests who wanted to be insulated from their bad business practices.
I believe in the free market. But intelligent regulation has to temper the excesses of business. We learned that lesson in the 1930s. It looks like we’re going to have to learn it again.
Jim Downey
(PS: yeah, I do have a degree in Economics. It doesn’t usually come up here, but I actually understand this stuff.) Cross posted to UTI, where there are more comments you may find interesting.
We were watching some of the first season episodes of The West Wing last night, and in this episode the White House Press Secretary comments that a news story is already “on the Internet” and will be in the newspapers the next day.
I turned to my wife and made note of this, how it shows the evolution of our language in just 8 years. Because the usual word choice today to say the same thing would likely be that a news story is already “online” – it would be understood that meant on the Internet.
Just thought I’d share that.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Babylon 5, General Musings, Humor, J. Michael Straczynski, JMS, Predictions, Science Fiction, Society, tech
As noted previously, I’m a big fan of the SF television series Babylon 5. One of the things which exists in the reality of the series is the ability to erase the memories and personality of someone, and then install a new template personality. This is called a “mindwipe” or “the death of personality.” It’s an old science fiction idea, and used in some intelligent ways in the series, even if the process isn’t explained fully (or used consistently).
Well, I’m about to mindwipe my old friend, the computer here next to this one. It’s served me faithfully for over seven years, with minimal problems. But old age was starting to take a real toll – I could no longer run current software effectively, and web-standard tech such as modern flash applications caused it a great deal of difficulty. The CD player no longer worked, and the monitor was dark, bloated. One side of the speaker system had quit some time back. My phone has more memory, I think – certainly my MP3 player does.
So, about six weeks ago I got a new computer, one capable of handling all the tasks I could throw at it. It allowed me to start video editing, and was perfectly happy to digest my old files and give them new vigor. The monitor is flat, thin, and quite attractive. It plays movies better, and will allow me to archive material on CD/DVDs once again. The laser mouse is faster and more accurate, and I’ll never have to clean its ball. Both sides of the sound system actually work. There’s more memory than I can possibly ever use . . . well, for at least a couple of years, anyway.
And today I finished migrating over the last of my software and data files. I’d been delaying doing this, taking my time, finding other things I needed to double check. But now the time has come. There is no longer a reason for me to keep my old system around. In a few moments I will wipe its memory, cleaning off what little personal data is on there. And in doing so, I will murder an old friend. A friend who saw me through writing Communion of Dreams, who was there as I created a lyric fantasy, who kept track of all my finances during the hard years of owning an art gallery. A friend who gave me solace through the long hours of being a care provider. A friend who allowed me to keep contact with people around the world, who brought me some measure of infamy, who would happily play games anytime I wanted (even if it wouldn’t always let me win).
So, goodbye, my old friend. I will mindwipe you, then give you away to someone else who needs you, who will gladly give you a home for at least a while longer, who will appreciate your abilities as I no longer can.
Farewell.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 