risk

Problems with ID cards

security / /

From Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram of 15 April 2004:

My argument may not be obvious, but it’s not hard to follow, either. It centers around the notion that security must be evaluated not based on how it works, but on how it fails.

It doesn’t really matter how well an ID card works when used by the hundreds of millions of honest people that would carry it. What matters is how the system might fail when used by someone intent on subverting that system: how it fails naturally, how it can be made to fail, and how failures might be exploited.

The first problem is the card itself. No matter how unforgeable we make it, it will be forged. And even worse, people will get legitimate cards in fraudulent names. …

Not that there would ever be such thing as a single ID card. Currently about 20 percent of all identity documents are lost per year. An entirely separate security system would have to be developed for people who lost their card, a system that itself is capable of abuse. …

But the main problem with any ID system is that it requires the existence of a database. In this case it would have to be an immense database of private and sensitive information on every American—one widely and instantaneously accessible from airline check-in stations, police cars, schools, and so on.

The security risks are enormous. Such a database would be a kludge of existing databases; databases that are incompatible, full of erroneous data, and unreliable. …

What good would it have been to know the names of Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, or the DC snipers before they were arrested? Palestinian suicide bombers generally have no history of terrorism. The goal is here is to know someone’s intentions, and their identity has very little to do with that.

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The Pareto Principle & Temperament Dimensions

business, politics, science, social software / /

From David Brooks’ “More Tools For Thinking” (The New York Times: 29 March 2011):

Clay Shirkey nominates the Pareto Principle. We have the idea in our heads that most distributions fall along a bell curve (most people are in the middle). But this is not how the world is organized in sphere after sphere. The top 1 percent of the population control 35 percent of the wealth. The top two percent of Twitter users send 60 percent of the messages. The top 20 percent of workers in any company will produce a disproportionate share of the value. Shirkey points out that these distributions are regarded as anomalies. They are not.

…

Helen Fisher, the great researcher into love and romance, has a provocative entry on “temperament dimensions.” She writes that we have four broad temperament constellations. One, built around the dopamine system, regulates enthusiasm for risk. A second, structured around the serotonin system, regulates sociability. A third, organized around the prenatal testosterone system, regulates attention to detail and aggressiveness. A fourth, organized around the estrogen and oxytocin systems, regulates empathy and verbal fluency.

This is an interesting schema to explain temperament. It would be interesting to see others in the field evaluate whether this is the best way to organize our thinking about our permanent natures.

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How male water striders blackmail females into sex

science / /

From Ed Yong’s “Male water striders summon predators to blackmail females into having sex” (Discover: 10 August 2010):

Water strider sex begins unceremoniously: the male mounts the female without any courtship rituals or foreplay. She may resist but if she does, he starts to actively strum the water surface with his legs. Each vibration risks attracting the attention of a hungry predator, like a fish or backswimmer (above). And because the female is underneath, she will bear the brunt of any assault. By creating dangerous vibes, the male intimidates the female into submitting to his advances. Faint heart, it is said, never did win fair lady.

A male water strider doesn’t have to go through the hardships of pregnancy and he plays no role in raising the next generation. It’s a theme that echoes throughout the animal kingdom and it means that the best strategy for him is to mate with as many females as possible. After all, he has plenty of sperm to go around. A female, however, has a limited supply of eggs and mating opportunities. When she has sex, it has to count, so it suits her to be choosy. And she has the right equipment for the job.

Last year, Chang Han and Piotr Jablonski from Seoul National University found that female red-backed water striders (Gerris gracilicornis) can block their vaginas with hard genital shields. This defence is important because once the male manages to insert his penis, he can inflate it to make him harder to throw off. The female’s only hope is to prevent him from getting through in the first place.

Hyper-violent males can sometimes wear the female down but some opt for a subtler approach – they tap intricate rhythms on the water with their legs. When Han and Jablonski discovered these rituals last year, they suggested that the males might be trying to demonstrate their quality, by tapping out the most consistent rhythms. Now, they have another explanation – the tapping is a form of blackmail, a way of coercing sex from the female with the threat of death.

The duo studied the preferences of the backswimmer – a predatory bug that floats upside-down at the water’s surface and listens out for the vibrations of potential prey. When given a choice between a silent male water strider and a mating pair with a tapping male, the backswimmer always headed towards the vibrating duo. And since these predators attack from below, the female was always the one who was injured while the male strode off to tap another day.

The backswimmer menace is so potent that after a few minutes of tapping from the male, the female relents by opening her genital shield. If she had been previously attacked by predators, she gave in almost instantly. And only when she relented did the male stop his threatening taps.

…

The battle of the sexes between male and female water striders has led to a whole suite of adaptations and counter-adaptations. Some males have evolved special grasping structures to give them a better hold of females, while females have responded by evolving spines and other defences to weaken their grip. Females evolved their impregnable genital shields, which males have countered with a behaviour that makes females more likely to lower their defences.

To be honest, the female water strider has an easy time of it. In other insects, where females have evolved an upper hand in the war of the sexes, males have developed even more extreme counter-strategies. Look no further than the common bedbug – the male bypasses the female’s genitals altogether and stabs his sharp penis straight into the female’s back, a technique known appropriately as traumatic insemination.

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RFID security problems

business, politics, science, security, tech in changing society / /

Old British passport cover
Creative Commons License photo credit: sleepymyf

2005

From Brian Krebs’ “Leaving Las Vegas: So Long DefCon and Blackhat” (The Washington Post: 1 August 2005):

DefCon 13 also was notable for being the location where two new world records were set — both involved shooting certain electronic signals unprecedented distances. Los Angeles-based Flexilis set the world record for transmitting data to and from a “passive” radio frequency identification (RFID) card — covering a distance of more than 69 feet. (Active RFID — the kind being integrated into foreign passports, for example — differs from passive RFID in that it emits its own magnetic signal and can only be detected from a much shorter distance.)

…

The second record set this year at DefCon was pulled off by some teens from Cincinnati, who broke the world record they set last year by building a device capable of maintaining an unamplified, 11-megabit 802.11b wireless Internet connection over a distance of 125 miles (the network actually spanned from Utah into Nevada).

From Andrew Brandt’s “Black Hat, Lynn Settle with Cisco, ISS” (PC World: 29 July 2005):

Security researcher Kevin Mahaffey makes a final adjustment to a series of radio antennas; Mahaffey used the directional antennas in a demonstration during his presentation, “Long Range RFID and its Security Implications.” Mahaffey and two of his colleagues demonstrated how he could increase the “read range” of radio frequency identification (RF) tags from the typical four to six inches to approximately 50 feet. Mahaffey said the tags could be read at a longer distance, but he wanted to perform the demonstration in the room where he gave the presentation, and that was the greatest distance within the room that he could demonstrate. RFID tags such as the one Mahaffey tested will begin to appear in U.S. passports later this year or next year.

2006

From Joris Evers and Declan McCullagh’s “Researchers: E-passports pose security risk” (CNET: 5 August 2006):

At a pair of security conferences here, researchers demonstrated that passports equipped with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can be cloned with a laptop equipped with a $200 RFID reader and a similarly inexpensive smart card writer. In addition, they suggested that RFID tags embedded in travel documents could identify U.S. passports from a distance, possibly letting terrorists use them as a trigger for explosives.

At the Black Hat conference, Lukas Grunwald, a researcher with DN-Systems in Hildesheim, Germany, demonstrated that he could copy data stored in an RFID tag from his passport and write the data to a smart card equipped with an RFID chip.

From Kim Zetter’s “Hackers Clone E-Passports” (Wired: 3 August 2006):

In a demonstration for Wired News, Grunwald placed his passport on top of an official passport-inspection RFID reader used for border control. He obtained the reader by ordering it from the maker — Walluf, Germany-based ACG Identification Technologies — but says someone could easily make their own for about $200 just by adding an antenna to a standard RFID reader.

He then launched a program that border patrol stations use to read the passports — called Golden Reader Tool and made by secunet Security Networks — and within four seconds, the data from the passport chip appeared on screen in the Golden Reader template.

Grunwald then prepared a sample blank passport page embedded with an RFID tag by placing it on the reader — which can also act as a writer — and burning in the ICAO layout, so that the basic structure of the chip matched that of an official passport.

As the final step, he used a program that he and a partner designed two years ago, called RFDump, to program the new chip with the copied information.

The result was a blank document that looks, to electronic passport readers, like the original passport.

Although he can clone the tag, Grunwald says it’s not possible, as far as he can tell, to change data on the chip, such as the name or birth date, without being detected. That’s because the passport uses cryptographic hashes to authenticate the data.

…

Grunwald’s technique requires a counterfeiter to have physical possession of the original passport for a time. A forger could not surreptitiously clone a passport in a traveler’s pocket or purse because of a built-in privacy feature called Basic Access Control that requires officials to unlock a passport’s RFID chip before reading it. The chip can only be unlocked with a unique key derived from the machine-readable data printed on the passport’s page.

To produce a clone, Grunwald has to program his copycat chip to answer to the key printed on the new passport. Alternatively, he can program the clone to dispense with Basic Access Control, which is an optional feature in the specification.

…

As planned, U.S. e-passports will contain a web of metal fiber embedded in the front cover of the documents to shield them from unauthorized readers. Though Basic Access Control would keep the chip from yielding useful information to attackers, it would still announce its presence to anyone with the right equipment. The government added the shielding after privacy activists expressed worries that a terrorist could simply point a reader at a crowd and identify foreign travelers.

In theory, with metal fibers in the front cover, nobody can sniff out the presence of an e-passport that’s closed. But [Kevin Mahaffey and John Hering of Flexilis] demonstrated in their video how even if a passport opens only half an inch — such as it might if placed in a purse or backpack — it can reveal itself to a reader at least two feet away.

…

In addition to cloning passport chips, Grunwald has been able to clone RFID ticket cards used by students at universities to buy cafeteria meals and add money to the balance on the cards.

He and his partners were also able to crash RFID-enabled alarm systems designed to sound when an intruder breaks a window or door to gain entry. Such systems require workers to pass an RFID card over a reader to turn the system on and off. Grunwald found that by manipulating data on the RFID chip he could crash the system, opening the way for a thief to break into the building through a window or door.

And they were able to clone and manipulate RFID tags used in hotel room key cards and corporate access cards and create a master key card to open every room in a hotel, office or other facility. He was able, for example, to clone Mifare, the most commonly used key-access system, designed by Philips Electronics. To create a master key he simply needed two or three key cards for different rooms to determine the structure of the cards. Of the 10 different types of RFID systems he examined that were being used in hotels, none used encryption.

Many of the card systems that did use encryption failed to change the default key that manufacturers program into the access card system before shipping, or they used sample keys that the manufacturer includes in instructions sent with the cards. Grunwald and his partners created a dictionary database of all the sample keys they found in such literature (much of which they found accidentally published on purchasers’ websites) to conduct what’s known as a dictionary attack. When attacking a new access card system, their RFDump program would search the list until it found the key that unlocked a card’s encryption.

“I was really surprised we were able to open about 75 percent of all the cards we collected,” he says.

2009

From Thomas Ricker’s “Video: Hacker war drives San Francisco cloning RFID passports” (Engadget: 2 February 2009):

Using a $250 Motorola RFID reader and antenna connected to his laptop, Chris recently drove around San Francisco reading RFID tags from passports, driver licenses, and other identity documents. In just 20 minutes, he found and cloned the passports of two very unaware US citizens.

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The limitations of Windows 7 on netbooks

business, tech in changing society / /

From Farhad Manjoo’s “I, for One, Welcome Our New Android Overlords” (Slate: 5 June 2008):

Microsoft promises that Windows 7 will be able to run on netbooks, but it has announced a risky strategy to squeeze profits from these machines. The company plans to cripple the cheapest versions of the new OS in order to encourage PC makers to pay for premium editions. If you buy a netbook that comes with the low-priced Windows 7 Starter Edition, you won’t be able to change your screen’s background or window colors, you won’t be able to play DVDs, you can’t connect it to another monitor, and you won’t see many of the user-interface advances found in other versions. If you’d like more flexibility, you’ll need to upgrade to a more expensive version of Windows—which will, of course, defeat the purpose of your cheap PC. (Microsoft had originally planned to limit Starter Edition even further—you wouldn’t be able to run more than three programs at a time. It removed that limitation after howls of protest.)

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Open source & patents

business, law, politics, tech in changing society / /

From Liz Laffan’s “GPLv2 vs GPLv3: The two seminal open source licenses, their roots, consequences and repercussions” (VisionMobile: September 2007):

Cumulatively patents have been doubling practically every year since 1990. Patents are now probably the most contentious issue in software-related intellectual property rights.

…

However we should also be aware that software written from scratch is as likely to infringe patents as FOSS covered software – due mainly to the increasing proliferation of patents in all software technologies. Consequently the risk of patent infringement is largely comparable whether one chooses to write one’s own software or use software covered by the GPLv2; one will most likely have to self-indemnify against a potential patent infringement claim in both cases.

…

The F.U.D. (fear, uncertainty and doubt) that surrounds patents in FOSS has been further heightened by two announcements, both instigated by Microsoft. Firstly in November 2006 Microsoft and Novell1 entered into a cross- licensing patent agreement where Microsoft gave Novell assurances that it would not sue the company or its customers if they were to be found infringing Microsoft patents in the Novell Linux distribution. Secondly in May 2007 Microsoft2 restated (having alluded to the same in 2004) that FOSS violates 235 Microsoft patents. Unfortunately, the Redmond giant did not state which patents in particular were being infringed and nor have they initiated any actions against a user or distributor of Linux.

…

The FOSS community have reacted to these actions by co-opting the patent system and setting up the Patent Commons (http://www.patentcommons.org). This initiative, managed by the Linux Foundation, coordinates and manages a patent commons reference library, documenting information about patent- related pledges in support of Linux and FOSS that are provided by large software companies. Moreover, software giants such as IBM and Nokia have committed not to assert patents against the Linux kernel and other FOSS projects. In addition, the FSF have strengthened the patent clause of GPLv3…

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US government makes unsafe RFID-laden passports even less safe through business practices

business, history, law, politics, security, tech in changing society / /

From Bill Gertz’s “Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security” (The Washington Times: 26 March 2008):

The United States has outsourced the manufacturing of its electronic passports to overseas companies — including one in Thailand that was victimized by Chinese espionage — raising concerns that cost savings are being put ahead of national security, an investigation by The Washington Times has found.

The Government Printing Office’s decision to export the work has proved lucrative, allowing the agency to book more than $100 million in recent profits by charging the State Department more money for blank passports than it actually costs to make them, according to interviews with federal officials and documents obtained by The Times.

The profits have raised questions both inside the agency and in Congress because the law that created GPO as the federal government’s official printer explicitly requires the agency to break even by charging only enough to recover its costs.

Lawmakers said they were alarmed by The Times’ findings and plan to investigate why U.S. companies weren’t used to produce the state-of-the-art passports, one of the crown jewels of American border security.

…

Officials at GPO, the Homeland Security Department and the State Department played down such concerns, saying they are confident that regular audits and other protections already in place will keep terrorists and foreign spies from stealing or copying the sensitive components to make fake passports.

“Aside from the fact that we have fully vetted and qualified vendors, we also note that the materials are moved via a secure transportation means, including armored vehicles,” GPO spokesman Gary Somerset said.

But GPO Inspector General J. Anthony Ogden, the agency’s internal watchdog, doesn’t share that confidence. He warned in an internal Oct. 12 report that there are “significant deficiencies with the manufacturing of blank passports, security of components, and the internal controls for the process.”

The inspector general’s report said GPO claimed it could not improve its security because of “monetary constraints.” But the inspector general recently told congressional investigators he was unaware that the agency had booked tens of millions of dollars in profits through passport sales that could have been used to improve security, congressional aides told The Times.

…

GPO is an agency little-known to most Americans, created by Congress almost two centuries ago as a virtual monopoly to print nearly all of the government’s documents … Since 1926, it also has been charged with the job of printing the passports used by Americans to enter and leave the country.

…

Each new e-passport contains a small computer chip inside the back cover that contains the passport number along with the photo and other personal data of the holder. The data is secured and is transmitted through a tiny wire antenna when it is scanned electronically at border entry points and compared to the actual traveler carrying it.

According to interviews and documents, GPO managers rejected limiting the contracts to U.S.-made computer chip makers and instead sought suppliers from several countries, including Israel, Germany and the Netherlands.

…

After the computer chips are inserted into the back cover of the passports in Europe, the blank covers are shipped to a factory in Ayutthaya, Thailand, north of Bangkok, to be fitted with a wire Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, antenna. The blank passports eventually are transported to Washington for final binding, according to the documents and interviews.

The stop in Thailand raises its own security concerns. The Southeast Asian country has battled social instability and terror threats. Anti-government groups backed by Islamists, including al Qaeda, have carried out attacks in southern Thailand and the Thai military took over in a coup in September 2006.

The Netherlands-based company that assembles the U.S. e-passport covers in Thailand, Smartrac Technology Ltd., warned in its latest annual report that, in a worst-case scenario, social unrest in Thailand could lead to a halt in production.

Smartrac divulged in an October 2007 court filing in The Hague that China had stolen its patented technology for e-passport chips, raising additional questions about the security of America’s e-passports.

Transport concerns

A 2005 document obtained by The Times states that GPO was using unsecure FedEx courier services to send blank passports to State Department offices until security concerns were raised and forced GPO to use an armored car company. Even then, the agency proposed using a foreign armored car vendor before State Department diplomatic security officials objected.

…

Questionable profits

…

The State Department is now charging Americans $100 or more for new e-passports produced by the GPO, depending on how quickly they are needed. That’s up from a cost of around just $60 in 1998.

Internal agency documents obtained by The Times show each blank passport costs GPO an average of just $7.97 to manufacture and that GPO then charges the State Department about $14.80 for each, a margin of more than 85 percent, the documents show.

The accounting allowed GPO to make gross profits of more than $90 million from Oct. 1, 2006, through Sept. 30, 2007, on the production of e-passports. The four subsequent months produced an additional $54 million in gross profits.

The agency set aside more than $40 million of those profits to help build a secure backup passport production facility in the South, still leaving a net profit of about $100 million in the last 16 months.

…

GPO plans to produce 28 million blank passports this year up from about 9 million five years ago.

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Problems with airport security

history, law, security, tech in changing society / /

From Jeffrey Goldberg’s “The Things He Carried” (The Atlantic: November 2008):

Because the TSA’s security regimen seems to be mainly thing-based—most of its 44,500 airport officers are assigned to truffle through carry-on bags for things like guns, bombs, three-ounce tubes of anthrax, Crest toothpaste, nail clippers, Snapple, and so on—I focused my efforts on bringing bad things through security in many different airports, primarily my home airport, Washington’s Reagan National, the one situated approximately 17 feet from the Pentagon, but also in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Chicago, and at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport (which is where I came closest to arousing at least a modest level of suspicion, receiving a symbolic pat-down—all frisks that avoid the sensitive regions are by definition symbolic—and one question about the presence of a Leatherman Multi-Tool in my pocket; said Leatherman was confiscated and is now, I hope, living with the loving family of a TSA employee). And because I have a fair amount of experience reporting on terrorists, and because terrorist groups produce large quantities of branded knickknacks, I’ve amassed an inspiring collection of al-Qaeda T-shirts, Islamic Jihad flags, Hezbollah videotapes, and inflatable Yasir Arafat dolls (really). All these things I’ve carried with me through airports across the country. I’ve also carried, at various times: pocketknives, matches from hotels in Beirut and Peshawar, dust masks, lengths of rope, cigarette lighters, nail clippers, eight-ounce tubes of toothpaste (in my front pocket), bottles of Fiji Water (which is foreign), and, of course, box cutters. I was selected for secondary screening four times—out of dozens of passages through security checkpoints—during this extended experiment. At one screening, I was relieved of a pair of nail clippers; during another, a can of shaving cream.

During one secondary inspection, at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, I was wearing under my shirt a spectacular, only-in-America device called a “Beerbelly,” a neoprene sling that holds a polyurethane bladder and drinking tube. The Beerbelly, designed originally to sneak alcohol—up to 80 ounces—into football games, can quite obviously be used to sneak up to 80 ounces of liquid through airport security. (The company that manufactures the Beerbelly also makes something called a “Winerack,” a bra that holds up to 25 ounces of booze and is recommended, according to the company’s Web site, for PTA meetings.) My Beerbelly, which fit comfortably over my beer belly, contained two cans’ worth of Bud Light at the time of the inspection. It went undetected. The eight-ounce bottle of water in my carry-on bag, however, was seized by the federal government.

…

Schnei­er and I walked to the security checkpoint. “Counter­terrorism in the airport is a show designed to make people feel better,” he said. “Only two things have made flying safer: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.” This assumes, of course, that al-Qaeda will target airplanes for hijacking, or target aviation at all. “We defend against what the terrorists did last week,” Schnei­er said. He believes that the country would be just as safe as it is today if airport security were rolled back to pre-9/11 levels. “Spend the rest of your money on intelligence, investigations, and emergency response.”

…

We took our shoes off and placed our laptops in bins. Schnei­er took from his bag a 12-ounce container labeled “saline solution.”

“It’s allowed,” he said. Medical supplies, such as saline solution for contact-lens cleaning, don’t fall under the TSA’s three-ounce rule.

“What’s allowed?” I asked. “Saline solution, or bottles labeled saline solution?”

“Bottles labeled saline solution. They won’t check what’s in it, trust me.”

They did not check. As we gathered our belongings, Schnei­er held up the bottle and said to the nearest security officer, “This is okay, right?” “Yep,” the officer said. “Just have to put it in the tray.”

“Maybe if you lit it on fire, he’d pay attention,” I said, risking arrest for making a joke at airport security. (Later, Schnei­er would carry two bottles labeled saline solution—24 ounces in total—through security. An officer asked him why he needed two bottles. “Two eyes,” he said. He was allowed to keep the bottles.)

We were in the clear. But what did we prove?

“We proved that the ID triangle is hopeless,” Schneier said.

The ID triangle: before a passenger boards a commercial flight, he interacts with his airline or the government three times—when he purchases his ticket; when he passes through airport security; and finally at the gate, when he presents his boarding pass to an airline agent. It is at the first point of contact, when the ticket is purchased, that a passenger’s name is checked against the government’s no-fly list. It is not checked again, and for this reason, Schnei­er argued, the process is merely another form of security theater.

“The goal is to make sure that this ID triangle represents one person,” he explained. “Here’s how you get around it. Let’s assume you’re a terrorist and you believe your name is on the watch list.” It’s easy for a terrorist to check whether the government has cottoned on to his existence, Schnei­er said; he simply has to submit his name online to the new, privately run CLEAR program, which is meant to fast-pass approved travelers through security. If the terrorist is rejected, then he knows he’s on the watch list.

To slip through the only check against the no-fly list, the terrorist uses a stolen credit card to buy a ticket under a fake name. “Then you print a fake boarding pass with your real name on it and go to the airport. You give your real ID, and the fake boarding pass with your real name on it, to security. They’re checking the documents against each other. They’re not checking your name against the no-fly list—that was done on the airline’s computers. Once you’re through security, you rip up the fake boarding pass, and use the real boarding pass that has the name from the stolen credit card. Then you board the plane, because they’re not checking your name against your ID at boarding.”

What if you don’t know how to steal a credit card?

“Then you’re a stupid terrorist and the government will catch you,” he said.

What if you don’t know how to download a PDF of an actual boarding pass and alter it on a home computer?

“Then you’re a stupid terrorist and the government will catch you.”

I couldn’t believe that what Schneier was saying was true—in the national debate over the no-fly list, it is seldom, if ever, mentioned that the no-fly list doesn’t work. “It’s true,” he said. “The gap blows the whole system out of the water.”

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Bruce Schneier on security & crime economics

business, security / /

From Stephen J. Dubner’s interview with Bruce Schneier in “Bruce Schneier Blazes Through Your Questions” (The New York Times: 4 December 2007):

Basically, you’re asking if crime pays. Most of the time, it doesn’t, and the problem is the different risk characteristics. If I make a computer security mistake — in a book, for a consulting client, at BT — it’s a mistake. It might be expensive, but I learn from it and move on. As a criminal, a mistake likely means jail time — time I can’t spend earning my criminal living. For this reason, it’s hard to improve as a criminal. And this is why there are more criminal masterminds in the movies than in real life.

…

Crime has been part of our society since our species invented society, and it’s not going away anytime soon. The real question is, “Why is there so much crime and hacking on the Internet, and why isn’t anyone doing anything about it?”

The answer is in the economics of Internet vulnerabilities and attacks: the organizations that are in the position to mitigate the risks aren’t responsible for the risks. This is an externality, and if you want to fix the problem you need to address it. In this essay (more here), I recommend liabilities; companies need to be liable for the effects of their software flaws. A related problem is that the Internet security market is a lemon’s market (discussed here), but there are strategies for dealing with that, too.

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50% of people infected with personality-changing brain parasites from cats

science, weird / /

From Carl Zimmer’s “The Return of the Puppet Masters” (Corante: 17 January 2006):

I was investigating the remarkable ability parasites have to manipulate the behavior of their hosts. The lancet fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum, for example, forces its ant host to clamp itself to the tip of grass blades, where a grazing mammal might eat it. It’s in the fluke’s interest to get eaten, because only by getting into the gut of a sheep or some other grazer can it complete its life cycle. Another fluke, Euhaplorchis californiensis, causes infected fish to shimmy and jump, greatly increasing the chance that wading birds will grab them.

Those parasites were weird enough, but then I got to know Toxoplasma gondii. This single-celled parasite lives in the guts of cats, sheddding eggs that can be picked up by rats and other animals that can just so happen be eaten by cats. Toxoplasma forms cysts throughout its intermediate host’s body, including the brain. And yet a Toxoplasma-ridden rat is perfectly healthy. That makes good sense for the parasite, since a cat would not be particularly interested in eating a dead rat. But scientists at Oxford discovered that the parasite changes the rats in one subtle but vital way.

The scientists studied the rats in a six-foot by six-foot outdoor enclosure. They used bricks to turn it into a maze of paths and cells. In each corner of the enclosure they put a nest box along with a bowl of food and water. On each the nests they added a few drops of a particular odor. On one they added the scent of fresh straw bedding, on another the bedding from a rat’s nests, on another the scent of rabbit urine, on another, the urine of a cat. When they set healthy rats loose in the enclosure, the animals rooted around curiously and investigated the nests. But when they came across the cat odor, they shied away and never returned to that corner. This was no surprise: the odor of a cat triggers a sudden shift in the chemistry of rat brains that brings on intense anxiety. (When researchers test anti-anxiety drugs on rats, they use a whiff of cat urine to make them panic.) The anxiety attack made the healthy rats shy away from the odor and in general makes them leery of investigating new things. Better to lie low and stay alive.

Then the researchers put Toxoplasma-carrying rats in the enclosure. Rats carrying the parasite are for the most part indistinguishable from healthy ones. They can compete for mates just as well and have no trouble feeding themselves. The only difference, the researchers found, is that they are more likely to get themselves killed. The scent of a cat in the enclosure didn’t make them anxious, and they went about their business as if nothing was bothering them. They would explore around the odor at least as often as they did anywhere else in the enclosure. In some cases, they even took a special interest in the spot and came back to it over and over again.

The scientists speculated that Toxoplasma was secreted some substance that was altering the patterns of brain activity in the rats. This manipulation likely evolved through natural selection, since parasites that were more likely to end up in cats would leave more offpsring.

The Oxford scientists knew that humans can be hosts to Toxoplasma, too. People can become infected by its eggs by handling soil or kitty litter. For most people, the infection causes no harm. Only if a person’s immune system is weak does Toxoplasma grow uncontrollably. That’s why pregnant women are advised not to handle kitty litter, and why toxoplasmosis is a serious risk for people with AIDS. Otherwise, the parasite lives quietly in people’s bodies (and brains). It’s estimated that about half of all people on Earth are infected with Toxoplasma.

…

Parasitologist Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague administered psychological questionnaires to people infected with Toxoplasma and controls. Those infected, he found, show a small, but statistically significant, tendency to be more self-reproaching and insecure. Paradoxically, infected women, on average, tend to be more outgoing and warmhearted than controls, while infected men tend to be more jealous and suspicious.

… [E. Fuller Torrey of the Stanley Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland] and his colleagues had noticed some intriguing links between Toxoplasma and schizophrenia. Infection with the parasite has been associated with damage to a certain class of neurons (astrocytes). So has schizophrenia. Pregnant women with high levels of Toxoplasma antibodies in their blood were more likely to give birth to children who would later develop schizophrenia. Torrey lays out more links in this 2003 paper. While none is a smoking gun, they are certainly food for thought. It’s conceivable that exposure to Toxoplasma causes subtle changes in most people’s personality, but in a small minority, it has more devastating effects.

50% of people infected with personality-changing brain parasites from cats Read More »

Trusted insiders and how to protect against them

security, tech in changing society / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “Basketball Referees and Single Points of Failure” (Crypto-Gram: 15 September 2007):

What sorts of systems — IT, financial, NBA games, or whatever — are most at risk of being manipulated? The ones where the smallest change can have the greatest impact, and the ones where trusted insiders can make that change.

…

It’s not just that basketball referees are single points of failure, it’s that they’re both trusted insiders and single points of catastrophic failure.

…

All systems have trusted insiders. All systems have catastrophic points of failure. The key is recognizing them, and building monitoring and audit systems to secure them.

Trusted insiders and how to protect against them Read More »

If concerts bring money in for the music biz, what happens when concerts get smaller?

art, business, history, law / /

From Jillian Cohen’s “The Show Must Go On” (The American: March/April 2008):

You can’t steal a concert. You can’t download the band—or the sweaty fans in the front row, or the merch guy, or the sound tech—to your laptop to take with you. Concerts are not like albums—easy to burn, copy, and give to your friends. If you want to share the concert-going experience, you and your friends all have to buy tickets. For this reason, many in the ailing music industry see concerts as the next great hope to revive their business.

…

It’s a blip that already is fading, to the dismay of the major record labels. CD sales have dropped 25 percent since 2000 and digital downloads haven’t picked up the slack. As layoffs swept the major labels this winter, many industry veterans turned their attention to the concert business, pinning their hopes on live performances as a way to bolster their bottom line.

Concerts might be a short-term fix. As one national concert promoter says, “The road is where the money is.” But in the long run, the music business can’t depend on concert tours for a simple, biological reason: the huge tour profits that have been generated in the last few decades have come from performers who are in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. As these artists get older, they’re unlikely to be replaced, because the industry isn’t investing in new talent development.

When business was good—as it was when CD sales grew through much of the 1990s—music labels saw concert tours primarily as marketing vehicles for albums. Now, they’re seizing on the reverse model. Tours have become a way to market the artist as a brand, with the fan clubs, limited-edition doodads, and other profitable products and services that come with the territory.

“Overall, it’s not a pretty picture for some parts of the industry,” JupiterResearch analyst David Card wrote in November when he released a report on digital music sales. “Labels must act more like management companies, and tap into the broadest collection of revenue streams and licensing as possible,” he said. “Advertising and creative packaging and bundling will have to play a bigger role than they have. And the $3 billion-plus touring business is not exactly up for grabs—it’s already competitive and not very profitable. Music companies of all types need to use the Internet for more cost-effective marketing, and A&R [artist development] risk has to be spread more fairly.”

The ‘Heritage Act’ Dilemma

Even so, belief in the touring business was so strong last fall that Madonna signed over her next ten years to touring company Live Nation—the folks who put on megatours for The Rolling Stones, The Police, and other big headliners—in a deal reportedly worth more than $120 million. The Material Girl’s arrangement with Live Nation is known in the industry as a 360-degree deal. Such deals may give artists a big upfront payout in exchange for allowing record labels or, in Madonna’s case, tour producers to profit from all aspects of their business, including touring, merchandise, sponsorships, and more.

While 360 deals may work for big stars, insiders warn that they’re not a magic bullet that will save record labels from their foundering, top-heavy business model. Some artists have done well by 360 contracts, including alt-metal act Korn and British pop sensation Robbie Williams. With these successes in mind, some tout the deals as a way for labels to recoup money they’re losing from downloads and illegal file sharing. But the artists who are offered megamillions for a piece of their brand already have built it through years of album releases, heavy touring, and careful fan-base development.

Not all these deals are good ones, says Bob McLynn, who manages pop-punk act Fall Out Boy and other young artists through his agency, Crush Management. Labels still have a lot to offer, he says. They pay for recording sessions, distribute CDs, market a band’s music, and put up money for touring, music-video production, and other expenses. But in exchange, music companies now want to profit from more than a band’s albums and recording masters. “The artist owns the brand, and now the labels—because they can’t sell as many albums—are trying to get in on the brand,” McLynn says. “To be honest, if an artist these days is looking for a traditional major-label deal for several hundred thousand dollars, they will have to be willing to give up some of that brand.

”For a young act, such offers may be enticing, but McLynn urges caution. “If they’re not going to give you a lot of money for it, it’s a mistake,” says the manager, who helped build Fall Out Boy’s huge teen fan base through constant touring and Internet marketing, only later signing the band to a big label. “I had someone from a major label ask me recently, ‘Hey, I have this new artist; can we convert the deal to a 360 deal?’” McLynn recalls. “I told him [it would cost] $2 million to consider it. He thought I was crazy; but I’m just saying, how is that crazy? If you want all these extra rights and if this artist does blow up, then that’s the best deal in the world for you. If you’re not taking a risk, why am I going to give you this? And if it’s not a lot of money, you’re not taking a risk.”

A concert-tour company’s margin is about 4 percent, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino has said, while the take on income from concessions, T-shirts, and other merchandise sold at shows can be much higher. The business had a record-setting year in 2006, which saw The Rolling Stones, Madonna, U2, Barbra Streisand, and other popular, high-priced tours on the road. But in 2007, North American gross concert dollars dropped more than 10 percent to $2.6 billion, according to Billboard statistics. Concert attendance fell by more than 19 percent to 51 million. Fewer people in the stands means less merchandise sold and concession-stand food eaten.

Now add this wrinkle: if you pour tens of millions of dollars into a 360 deal, as major labels and Live Nation have done with their big-name stars, you will need the act to tour for a long time to recoup your investment. “For decades we’ve been fueled by acts from the ’60s,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the touring-industry trade magazine Pollstar. Three decades ago, no one would have predicted that Billy Joel or Rod Stewart would still be touring today, Bongiovanni notes, yet the industry has come to depend on artists such as these, known as “heritage acts.” “They’re the ones that draw the highest ticket prices and biggest crowds for our year-end charts,” he says. Consider the top-grossing tours of 2006 and 2007: veterans such as The Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Barbra Streisand, and Roger Waters were joined by comparative youngsters Madonna, U2, and Bon Jovi. Only two of the 20 acts—former Mouseketeers Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera—were younger than 30.

These young stars, the ones who are prone to taking what industry observer Bob Lefsetz calls “media shortcuts,” such as appearing on MTV, may have less chance of developing real staying power. Lefsetz, formerly an entertainment lawyer and consultant to major labels, has for 20 years published an industry newsletter (now a blog) called the Lefsetz Letter. “Whatever a future [superstar] act will be, it won’t be as ubiquitous as the acts from the ’60s because we were all listening to Top 40 radio,” he says.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, music fans discovered new music primarily on the radio and purchased albums in record stores. The stations young people listened to might have played rock, country, or soul; but whatever the genre, DJs introduced listeners to the hits of tomorrow and guided them toward retail stores and concert halls.

…

Today, music is available in so many genres and subgenres, via so many distribution streams—including cell phones, social networking sites, iTunes, Pure Volume, and Limewire—that common ground rarely exists for post–Baby Boom fans. This in turn makes it harder for tour promoters to corral the tens of thousands of ticket holders they need to fill an arena. “More people can make music than ever before. They can get it heard, but it’s such a cacophony of noise that it will be harder to get any notice,” says Lefsetz.

…

Most major promoters don’t know how to capture young people’s interest and translate it into ticket sales, he says. It’s not that his students don’t listen to music, but that they seek to discover it online, from friends, or via virtual buzz. They’ll go out to clubs and hear bands, but they rarely attend big arena concerts. Promoters typically spend 40 percent to 50 percent of their promotional budgets on radio and newspaper advertising, Barnet says. “High school and college students—what percentage of tickets do they buy? And you’re spending most of your advertising dollars on media that don’t even focus on those demographics.” Conversely, the readers and listeners of traditional media are perfect for high-grossing heritage tours. As long as tickets sell for those events, promoters won’t have to change their approach, Barnet says. Heritage acts also tend to sell more CDs, says Pollstar’s Bongiovanni. “Your average Rod Stewart fan is more likely to walk into a record store, if they can find one, than your average Fall Out Boy fan.”

…

Personally, [Live Nation’s chairman of global music and global touring, Arthur Fogel] said, he’d been disappointed in the young bands he’d seen open for the headliners on Live Nation’s big tours. Live performance requires a different skill set from recorded tracks. It’s the difference between playing music and putting on a show, he said. “More often than not, I find young bands get up and play their music but are not investing enough time or energy into creating that show.” It’s incumbent on the industry to find bands that can rise to the next level, he added. “We aren’t seeing that development that’s creating the next generation of stadium headliners. Hopefully that will change.”

Live Nation doesn’t see itself spearheading such a change, though. In an earlier interview with Billboard magazine, Rapino took a dig at record labels’ model of bankrolling ten bands in the hope that one would become a success. “We don’t want to be in the business of pouring tens of millions of dollars into unknown acts, throwing it against the wall and then hoping that enough sticks that we only lose some of our money,” he said. “It’s not part of our business plan to be out there signing 50 or 60 young acts every year.”

And therein lies the rub. If the big dog in the touring pack won’t take responsibility for nurturing new talent and the labels have less capital to invest in artist development, where will the future megatour headliners come from?

…

Indeed, despite its all-encompassing moniker, the 360 deal isn’t the only option for musicians, nor should it be. Some artists may find they need the distribution reach and bankroll that a traditional big-label deal provides. Others might negotiate with independent labels for profit sharing or licensing arrangements in which they’ll retain more control of their master recordings. Many will earn the bulk of their income from licensing their songs for use on TV shows, movie soundtracks, and video games. Some may take an entirely do-it-yourself approach, in which they’ll write, produce, perform, and distribute all of their own music—and keep any of the profits they make.

There are growing signs of this transition. The Eagles recently partnered with Wal-Mart to give the discount chain exclusive retail-distribution rights to the band’s latest album. Paul McCartney chose to release his most recent record through Starbucks, and last summer Prince gave away his newest CD to London concertgoers and to readers of a British tabloid. And in a move that earned nearly as much ink as Madonna’s 360 deal, rock act Radiohead let fans download its new release directly from the band’s website for whatever price listeners were willing to pay. Though the numbers are debated, one source, ComScore, reported that in the first month 1.2 million people downloaded the album. About 40 percent paid for it, at an average of about $6 each—well above the usual cut an artist would get in royalties. The band also self-released the album in an $80 limited-edition package and, months later, as a CD with traditional label distribution. Such a move wouldn’t work for just any artist. Radiohead had the luxury of a fan base that it developed over more than a dozen years with a major label. But the band’s experiment showed creativity and adaptability.

If concerts bring money in for the music biz, what happens when concerts get smaller? Read More »

Bush’s Manicheanism destroyed him

1 Comment / history, law, politics / /

From Glenn Greenwald’s “A tragic legacy: How a good vs. evil mentality destroyed the Bush presidency” (Salon: 20 June 2007):

One of the principal dangers of vesting power in a leader who is convinced of his own righteousness — who believes that, by virtue of his ascension to political power, he has been called to a crusade against Evil — is that the moral imperative driving the mission will justify any and all means used to achieve it. Those who have become convinced that they are waging an epic and all-consuming existential war against Evil cannot, by the very premises of their belief system, accept any limitations — moral, pragmatic, or otherwise — on the methods adopted to triumph in this battle.

Efforts to impose limits on waging war against Evil will themselves be seen as impediments to Good, if not as an attempt to aid and abet Evil. In a Manichean worldview, there is no imperative that can compete with the mission of defeating Evil. The primacy of that mandate is unchallengeable. Hence, there are no valid reasons for declaring off-limits any weapons that can be deployed in service of the war against Evil.

Equally operative in the Manichean worldview is the principle that those who are warriors for a universal Good cannot recognize that the particular means they employ in service of their mission may be immoral or even misguided. The very fact that the instruments they embrace are employed in service of their Manichean mission renders any such objections incoherent. How can an act undertaken in order to strengthen the side of Good, and to weaken the forces of Evil, ever be anything other than Good in itself? Thus, any act undertaken by a warrior of Good in service of the war against Evil is inherently moral for that reason alone.

It is from these premises that the most amoral or even most reprehensible outcomes can be — and often are — produced by political movements and political leaders grounded in universal moral certainties. Intoxicated by his own righteousness and therefore immune from doubt, the Manichean warrior becomes capable of acts of moral monstrousness that would be unthinkable in the absence of such unquestionable moral conviction. One who believes himself to be leading a supreme war against Evil on behalf of Good will be incapable of understanding any claims that he himself is acting immorally.

…

That is the essence of virtually every argument Bush supporters make regarding terrorism. No matter what objection is raised to the never-ending expansions of executive power, no matter what competing values are touted (due process, the rule of law, the principles our country embodies, how we are perceived around the world), the response will always be that The Terrorists are waging war against us and our overarching priority — one that overrides all others — is to protect ourselves, to triumph over Evil. By definition, then, there can never be any good reason to oppose vesting powers in the government to protect us from The Terrorists because that goal outweighs all others.

But our entire system of government, from its inception, has been based upon a very different calculus — that is, that many things matter besides merely protecting ourselves against threats, and consequently, we are willing to accept risks, even potentially fatal ones, in order to secure those other values. From its founding, America has rejected the worldview of prioritizing physical safety above all else, as such a mentality leads to an impoverished and empty civic life. The premise of America is and always has been that imposing limitations on government power is necessary to secure liberty and avoid tyranny even if it means accepting an increased risk of death as a result. That is the foundational American value.

It is this courageous demand for core liberties even if such liberties provide less than maximum protection from physical risks that has made America bold, brave, and free. Societies driven exclusively or primarily by a fear of avoiding Evil, minimizing risks, and seeking above all else that our government “protects” us are not free. That is a path that inevitably leads to authoritarianism — an increasingly strong and empowered leader in whom the citizens vest ever-increasing faith and power in exchange for promises of safety. That is most assuredly not the historical ethos of the United States.

The Bill of Rights contains numerous limitations on government power, and many of them render us more vulnerable to threats. If there is a serial killer on the loose in a community, the police would be able to find and apprehend him much more easily if they could simply invade and search everyone’s homes at will and without warning. Nonetheless, the Fourth Amendment expressly prohibits the police from undertaking such searches. It requires both probable cause and a judicial warrant before police may do so, even though such limitations on state power will enable dangerous killers to elude capture.

…

The scare tactic of telling Americans that every desired expansion of government power is justified by the Evil Terrorist Threat — and that there is no need to worry because the president is Good and will use these powers only to protect us — is effective because it has immediate rhetorical appeal. Most people, especially when placed in fear of potentially fatal threats, are receptive to the argument that maximizing protection is the only thing that matters, and that no abstract concept (such as liberty, or freedom, or due process, or adhering to civilized norms) is worth risking one’s life by accepting heightened levels of vulnerability.

But nothing in life is perfectly safe. Perfect safety is an illusion. When pursued by an individual to the exclusion of all else, it creates a tragically worthless, paralyzed way of life. On the political level, safety as the paramount goal produces tyranny, causing people to vest as much power as possible in the government, without limits, in exchange for the promise of maximum protection.

Bush’s Manicheanism destroyed him Read More »

Modern piracy on the high seas

business, history, law, security / /

From Charles Glass’ “The New Piracy: Charles Glass on the High Seas” (London Review of Books: 18 December 2003):

Ninety-five per cent of the world’s cargo travels by sea. Without the merchant marine, the free market would collapse and take Wall Street’s dream of a global economy with it. Yet no one, apart from ship owners, their crews and insurers, appears to notice that pirates are assaulting ships at a rate unprecedented since the glorious days when pirates were ‘privateers’ protected by their national governments. The 18th and 19th-century sponsors of piracy included England, Holland, France, Spain and the United States. In comparison, the famed Barbary corsairs of North Africa were an irritant. Raiding rivals’ merchant vessels went out of fashion after the Napoleonic Wars, and piracy was outlawed in the 1856 Declaration of Paris (never signed by the US). Since the end of the Cold War, it has been making a comeback. Various estimates are given of its cost to international trade. The figure quoted most often is the Asia Foundation’s $16 billion per annum lost in cargo, ships and rising insurance premiums.

The International Maritime Bureau (IMB), which collects statistics on piracy for ship owners, reports that five years ago pirates attacked 106 ships. Last year they attacked 370. This year looks worse still.

…

In waters where piracy flourished in the past, the tradition embodied in figures such as Captain Kidd has persisted: off the Ganges delta in Bangladesh, in the Java and South China Seas, off the Horn of Africa and in the Caribbean. Three conditions appear necessary: a tradition of piracy; political instability; and rich targets – Spanish galleons for Drake, oil tankers for his descendants. A fourth helps to explain the ease with which it happens: ‘The maritime environment,’ Gunaratna said, ‘is the least policed in the world today.’

The IMB has not been able to persuade the international community or the more powerful maritime states to take serious action. The Bureau’s director, Captain Pottengal Mukundan, believes there is nothing crews can do to protect themselves. National maritime laws are not enforced beyond national boundaries – which is to say, over more than half the earth’s surface. Beyond territorial waters, there are no laws, no police and no jurisdiction. Many countries lack the will or the resources to police even their own waters. The IMB advises all ships against putting in anywhere near states like Somalia, for instance, where there is a near certainty of attack. … Piracy is a high-profit, low-risk activity.

The IMB urges crews to take more precautions, but owners can’t afford every recommended improvement: satellite-tracking devices, closed circuit cameras, electric fencing and security officers on every ship. Owners and trade unions discourage the arming of merchant ships in the belief that firearms will put crews’ lives at greater risk. Only the Russians and the Israelis are known to keep weapons aboard. Competition in the shipping business forces owners to minimise expenditure on crews as on everything else. A commission of inquiry into the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill that nearly destroyed the Alaskan coast reported that ‘tankers in the 1950s carried a crew of 40 to 42 to manage about 6.3 million gallons of oil . . . the Exxon Valdez carried a crew of 19 to transport 53 million gallons of oil.’ [Quoted in Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas by John Burnett] With the automation of many shipboard tasks, vessels today carry even fewer seamen than they did when the Exxon Valdez ran aground. That means fewer eyes to monitor the horizon and the decks for intruders.

…

Air and land transport routes have come under tighter scrutiny since 11 September 2001, but improvements to maritime security are few. An oil tanker can carry a load that is far, far more explosive than any civil aircraft. And most piracy, including the seizure of oil tankers, takes place near countries with powerful Islamist movements – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Yemen and Somalia. Lloyd’s List reported on 4 November that Indonesia is ‘the global black spot’ with 87 attacks in the first nine months of this year – ‘the number of attacks in the Malacca Straits leaped from 11 in 2002 to 24 this year.’ Indonesia, which consists of two thousand islands, is the world’s most populous Muslim country. It has experienced decades of repression by a kleptocratic military, communal violence and the degradation of a once vibrant economy. Radical Islamists have made it the focus of their activity and recruitment in Asia.

Modern piracy on the high seas Read More »

Do’s and don’ts for open source software development

business, technology / /

From Jono DiCarlo’s “Ten Ways to Make More Humane Open Source Software” (5 October 2007):

Do

  1. Get a Benevolent Dictator
    Someone who has a vision for the UI. Someone who can and will say “no” to features that don’t fit the vision.
  2. Make the Program Usable In Its Default State
    Don’t rely on configurable behavior. It adds complexity, solves little, and most users will never touch it anyway. Usable default behavior is required.
  3. Design Around Tasks
    Figure out the tasks that people want to do with your software. Make those tasks as easy as possible. Kill any feature that gets in the way.
  4. Write a Plug-In Architecture
    It’s the only good solution I’ve seen to the dilemma of providing a complete feature set without bloating the application.
  5. User Testing, User Testing, User Testing!!
    Without user testing, you are designing by guesswork and superstition.

Do Not

  1. Develop Without A Vision
    “When someone suggests another feature, we’ll find a place to cram it in!”
  2. Join the Clone Wars
    “Closed-source program X is popular. Let’s just duplicate its interface!”
  3. Leave the UI Design Up To The End User
    “I’m not sure how that should work. I’ll make it a check box on the preferences screen.”
  4. Make the Interface a Thin Veneer over the Underlying Implementation
    “But it’s got a GUI now! That makes it user-friendly, right?”
  5. Treat UI Design as Babysitting Idiots
    “They should all quit whining and read the manual already.”

Do’s and don’ts for open source software development Read More »

5 reasons people exaggerate risks

commonplace book, science, security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “Movie Plot Threat Contest: Status Report” (Crypto-Gram Newsletter: 15 May 2006):

In my book, Beyond Fear, I discussed five different tendencies people have to exaggerate risks: to believe that something is more risky than it actually is.

1. People exaggerate spectacular but rare risks and downplay common risks.

2. People have trouble estimating risks for anything not exactly like their normal situation.

3. Personified risks are perceived to be greater than anonymous risks.

4. People underestimate risks they willingly take and overestimate risks in situations they can’t control.

5. People overestimate risks that are being talked about and remain an object of public scrutiny.

5 reasons people exaggerate risks Read More »

5 reasons people exaggerate risk

security / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “Movie Plot Threat Contest: Status Report“:

In my book, Beyond Fear, I discusse five different tendencies people have to exaggerate risks: to believe that something is more risky than it actually is.

1. People exaggerate spectacular but rare risks and downplay common risks.
2. People have trouble estimating risks for anything not exactly like their normal situation.
3. Personified risks are perceived to be greater than anonymous risks.
4. People underestimate risks they willingly take and overestimate risks in situations they can’t control.
5. People overestimate risks that are being talked about and remain an object of public scrutiny.

5 reasons people exaggerate risk Read More »

Risk compensation & homestasis

commonplace book, security / /

From Damn Interesting’s “The Balance of Risk“:

What’s happening is a process known as risk compensation. It’s a tendency in humans to increase risky behavior proportionately as safeguards are introduced, and it’s very common. So common, in fact, as to render predictions of how well any given piece of safety equipment will work almost useless.

… Why would we do such a strange thing? Dr. Gerald Wilde of Queens University in Ontario proposes a hypothesis he calls risk homeostasis. In a nutshell it proposes that human beings have a target level of risk with which they are most comfortable. When a given activity exceeds their comfort level, people will modify their behavior to reduce their risk until they are comfortable with their level of danger. So far, that’s not exactly a controversial observation. But risk homeostasis proposes another half to that continuum – according to Dr. Wilde, if a given person’s level of risk drops too far below their comfort level, they will again modify their behavior. This time though, they will increase their level of risk until they are once again in their target zone.

… Fortunately for us, risk homeostasis does not seem to apply in all cases. Safety innovations that are invisible tend not to provoke changes in behavior – for example changing windshields to safety glass does not alter most peoples’ driving behavior. The difference in the windshield is effectively invisible to the driver, and so doesn’t affect the driving.

… An additional complication for the already beleaguered safety engineers is that risk homeostasis is dependent not upon actual danger, but rather the perception of risk. Much of the gender and age differences in risk-taking behavior appear to stem less from differing desires for risk, and more from the individual’s different evaluation of risk. Young people, and particularly young men, tend to evaluate their level of risk as much lower than older people would, even in identical situations. This implies that promoting safer behavior depends more upon altering the perceptions of the target population, rather than improving the safety of the environment – a much trickier proposition.

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The growth in data & the problem of storage

politics, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Technology Review‘s “The Fading Memory of the State“:

Tom Hawk, general manager for enterprise storage at IBM, says that in the next three years, humanity will generate more data–from websites to digital photos and video–than it generated in the previous 1,000 years. … In 1996, companies spent 11 percent of their IT budgets on storage, but that figure will likely double to 22 percent in 2007, according to International Technology Group of Los Altos, CA.

… the Pentagon generates tens of millions of images from personnel files each year; the Clinton White House generated 38 million e-mail messages (and the current Bush White House is expected to generate triple that number); and the 2000 census returns were converted into more than 600 million TIFF-format image files, some 40 terabytes of data. A single patent application can contain a million pages, plus complex files like 3-D models of proteins or CAD drawings of aircraft parts. All told, NARA expects to receive 347 petabytes … of electronic records by 2022.

Currently, the Archives holds only a trivial number of electronic records. Stored on steel racks in NARA’s [National Archives and Records Administration] 11-year-old facility in College Park, the digital collection adds up to just five terabytes. Most of it consists of magnetic tapes of varying ages, many of them holding a mere 200 megabytes apiece–about the size of 10 high-resolution digital photographs.

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Hear someone typing & know what was written

security, writing ideas / /

From Edward Felten’s “Acoustic Snooping on Typed Information“:

Li Zhuang, Feng Zhou, and Doug Tygar have an interesting new paper showing that if you have an audio recording of somebody typing on an ordinary computer keyboard for fifteen minutes or so, you can figure out everything they typed. The idea is that different keys tend to make slightly different sounds, and although you don’t know in advance which keys make which sounds, you can use machine learning to figure that out, assuming that the person is mostly typing English text. (Presumably it would work for other languages too.) …

The algorithm works in three basic stages. First, it isolates the sound of each individual keystroke. Second, it takes all of the recorded keystrokes and puts them into about fifty categories, where the keystrokes within each category sound very similar. Third, it uses fancy machine learning methods to recover the sequence of characters typed, under the assumption that the sequence has the statistical characteristics of English text. …

The only advantage you have is that English text has persistent regularities. For example, the two-letter sequence “th” is much more common that “rq”, and the word “the” is much more common than “xprld”. This turns out to be enough for modern machine learning methods to do the job, despite the difficulties I described in the previous paragraph. The recovered text gets about 95% of the characters right, and about 90% of the words. It’s quite readable.

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