A group of Muslim-Americans filed a class-action lawsuit against the United States’ use of a terrorist watch list, which they say has created “an injustice of historic proportions”.
Eighteen plaintiffs, including a four-year-old known simply as Baby Doe, say their constitution rights were violated after being placed on the federal terrorist watch list.
The lawsuit, initiated by the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan Chapter (CAIR-MI), was filed against several high-ranking US officials, including Christopher Piehota, director of the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC).
...
The plaintiffs, all of whom are American citizens, have been “falsely stigmatised as ‘known or suspected’ terrorists” and “denied a meaningful opportunity to challenge their designation on the federal watch list,” the lawsuit states.
Gadeir Abbas, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told Middle East Eye that being on the watch list has turned thousands of Americans into second-class citizens.
Now we know why Obama won't say the words "radical islam". His people maintaining the Watch List think that 4 year old Baby Doe is a radical muslim ...
And so we must ask: why do Democrats want to deny Muslim Americans their second amendment rights?
This moment of schadenfreude is brought to you at no additional charge. It's all part of being a full service blog.
It seems that if you're willing to do a fair amount of leg work, this sort of silliness actually gets cleared up. So well done to Mr. Brown, and I guess to the TSA for making the skies safe for cuteness.
Mr. Brown makes a good point, that there's nothing to tell you that you're on the list, and need to grovel your way through the TSA's unhelpful web site to find the required form. You could plausibly claim that this is a security feature - if the special someone on the list actually were a terrorist, you wouldn't want to let them know.
Which ignores the issue that it's idiotic to have someone so dangerous that they shouldn't be allowed to fly, but not dangerous enough to arrest. That's a discussion for another day. Today, the issue is false positives, the erroneous report that someone or something matches a particular categorization, when they actually don't.
This is why you get a second opinion when your doctor tells you that you have a serious disease. Any diagnosis will be less than 100% accurate, and you don't want to go on an expensive and invasive regime if you're one of the 2% that don't actually have the disease.
An anonymous commenter left this, over in Brown's comments:
They efficiently shifted the cost of false positives to you.
If we really thought these folks were actually terrorists, we'd investigate them. A reasonable investigation involves a lot of effort - wire taps (first, get a warrant), stakeouts, careful collection of a case by Law Enforcement, prosecution. Probably a million dollars between police, lawyers, courts, etc - probably a lot more, if there's a trial. For each of the 700 [people in our thought experiment]. We're looking at a billion dollars, and this assumes a ridiculously low false positive rate.
There are on the order of a hundred thousand people in TSA's no-fly or watch databases. Not 700. If you investigated them all, you're talking a hundred billionbucks. So they turn the system off.
And that's actually the right answer. The data's lousy, joining lousy data with more lousy data makes the results lousier, and it's too expensive to make it work. How lousy is the data? Sky Marshals are on the No-Fly list. No, really. 5 year olds, too.
Actually, they haven't turned the system off. Rather, they've shifted the cost of the investigation to Mr. Brown and people like him.
From the TSA's perspective, this makes sense. From our perspective, it's annoying. It's double-plus annoying when there's nothing that tells you that you're likely a false positive in their system. There is, of course, a sure-fire way to reduce your chance of triggering a false positive in the TSA's system to zero. Guaranteed to work every time.
Politics aside, it cannot possibly work - technically speaking. At least not "work" to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists. This post from nearly eight (!) years ago explains why.
And an added note: the Democrats aren't pushing the No-Fly list for gun bans. There are around 70,000 people on that list (including, at one time, the late Senator Edward Kennedy). Instead, they're pushing the Terrorism Watch List, which has on the order of a million people on the list. The number of people on there for no good reason (or for no reason at all) is certainly astronomical.
And so, to the motivations in play. Eric Raymond explained what was up a couple years back: Destroying the Middle Ground. The system and politics are corrupt, and the Agencies tasked with implementing the law will do so corruptly.
One of the biggest problems in Internet Security is getting the "False Positive" rate down to a manageable level. A False Positive is an event where your security device reports an attack, where there's no actual attack happening. It's the Boy Who Cried Wolf problem, and if it's too high, people turn the security off.
Apple had a hilarious ad that spoofed Vista's UAC security a while back. The security is so good that the whole system is unusable:
Surprise! Seems that identifying terrorists by mining a bunch of databases isn't any better:
A report scheduled to be released on Tuesday by the National Research Council, which has been years in the making, concludes that automated identification of terrorists through data mining or any other mechanism 'is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts.' Inevitable false positives will result in 'ordinary, law-abiding citizens and businesses' being incorrectly flagged as suspects. The whopping 352-page report, called 'Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists,' amounts to [be] at least a partial repudiation of the Defense Department's controversial data-mining program called Total Information Awareness, which was limited by Congress in 2003.
The problem is not so much one of technology, as it is of cost. Suppose you could create system where the data mining results gave you only one chance in a million at false positive. In other words, for every person identified as a potential terrorist, you were 99.9999% likely to be correct. This is almost certainly 3 or 4 orders of magnitude overly optimistic (the actual chances are likely no better than 1 in a thousand, and may well be much less), but let's ignore that.
There are roughly 700 Million air passengers in the US each year. One chance in a million means the system would report 700 likely terrorists (remember, this thought experiment assumes a ridiculously low false positive rate). The question, now, is what do you do with these 700 people?
Right now, we don't do anything, other than not let them fly. If they're Senator Kennedy, they make a fuss at budget time, and someone takes them off the list; otherwise, we don't do anything. So all this fuss, and nothing really happens? How come?
Cost. If we really thought these folks were actually terrorists, we'd investigate them. A reasonable investigation involves a lot of effort - wire taps (first, get a warrant), stakeouts, careful collection of a case by Law Enforcement, prosecution. Probably a million dollars between police, lawyers, courts, etc - probably a lot more, if there's a trial. For each of the 700. We're looking at a billion dollars, and this assumes a ridiculously low false positive rate.
There are on the order of a hundred thousand people in TSA's no-fly or watch databases. Not 700. If you investigated them all, you're talking a hundred billion bucks. So they turn the system off.
And that's actually the right answer. The data's lousy, joining lousy data with more lousy data makes the results lousier, and it's too expensive to make it work. How lousy is the data? Sky Marshals are on the No-Fly list. No, really. 5 year olds, too.
So the Fed.Gov sweeps it under the rug, thanks everyone involved for all their hard work, and pushes the "off" button.
As expected, the Slashdot comments are all over this:
I'd take their "no fly" list and identify every single person on it who was a legitimate threat and either have them under 24 hour surveillance or arrested.
The mere concept of a list of names of people who are too "dangerous" to let fly... but not dangerous enough to track... that just [censored - ed] stupid.
At least everyone's looking busy. The analogies to gun control pretty much write themselves.
I've written a lot about how an alternative to College is to study Internet security. The pay is good, you can work wherever you like, and the problem is getting worse - this field will be booming for a while.
This isn't a College scholarship. It is instruction at a Cisco authorized training center, but quite frankly in this field nobody cares where (or even if) you went to College. The entry requirements for the program don't mention University at all:
Basic competency (one or more of the following):
Cisco certification (Cisco CCENT certification or higher)
Relevant industry certification [(ISC)2, CompTIA Security+, EC-Council, GIAC, ISACA]
Cisco Networking Academy letter of completion (CCNA 1 and CCNA 2)
Windows expertise: Microsoft (Microsoft Specialist, MCSA, MCSE), CompTIA (A+, Network+, Server+).
Linux expertise: CompTIA (Linux+), Linux Professional Institute (LPI) certification, Linux Foundation (LCFS, LCFE), Red Hat (RHCSA, RHCE, RHCA), Oracle Linux (OCA, OCP)
If you're young and looking for a change of direction (or if you have a kid who is), you might want to check into this.
Infosec 2016 Government regulation of the Internet of Things will become inevitable as connected kit in arenas as varied as healthcare and power distribution becomes more commonplace, according to security guru Bruce Schneier.
“Governments are going to get involved regardless because the risks are too great. When people start dying and property starts getting destroyed, governments are going to have to do something,” Schneier said during a keynote speech at the Infosecurity Europe trade show in London.
Probably right. He talks about "connected" cars as well. Recommended for a view into our future.
At the Defense One Tech Summit on Friday, NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett said, “We’re looking at it sort of theoretically from a research point of view right now.”
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Ledgett, according to The Intercept, claimed surveillance via biomedical devices might be “a niche kind of thing … a tool in the toolbox.”
They say there's enough there to indict her, but thinks that the FBI will cut a deal with her in hopes of getting more power under a Clinton administration. The source site seems down from the traffic load, so this link goes to Slashdot.
A thief in New York City was able lift more than $16,000 worth of Apple merchandise by dressing up as a store employee.
The brazen bloke walked into the SoHo Apple Store location at around 5.30PM on June 1, and took 19 iPhones from the store without being detected.
His clever disguise? A blue t-shirt that police said was "similar" to the uniform worn by Apple's retail store workers.
We're told the thief was able to pass as an employee long enough to walk through the store and into a repair room, where he accessed a drawer containing the iPhones. He then passed off the plundered handsets to an accomplice, who stuffed them under his shirt. Both of them exited the store without being stopped by security.
But war between people from different cultures is interested in you. Trotsky's dictum rungs true nearly a century later. As a bunch of people from regions hostile to gays immigrate here, you can expect a rise in homophobia.
This is as clear as 2 + 2 = 4, which means that the dimwits who run the country are mystified as to how this could have happened. I haven't heard them blame the NRA yet, but give them time.
Today is Helsinki Day, celebrating the founding of that city. Likely 100,000 people will turn out for a day celebrating all things Suomi. When you think of classical music and Suomi, you think of Jean Sibelius. I'm quite surprised that in four years of sunday classical posts I haven't done this song.
Jean Sibelius was part of the late nineteenth century movement of nationalist composers (broadly including Greig, Dvořák, and even Vaughan Williams). Sibeliuswas perhaps the most influential of all in helping to crystalize a national identity as Finland struggled for independence from Russia. Finlandia is without doubt his most recognizable piece. It premiered in 1899, in the middle of a career than would best be described at the time as "sleeper". His reputation grew to the point where in the 1920s he simply stopped composing. His last thirty years were known as "The Silence of Järvenpää" where his house was).
I'm told that I want to add some handing baskets and the like to the drawbridge here at Castle Borepatch. I'm told that I'll like it. I'm told that I don't mind that it's 90°.
Country music from Russia? Da, tovarich! It's not Bluegrass, it's "Redgrass" ...
Bering Strait was a country music band from Obninsk, Russia - site of the first electricity producing nuclear power plant and sister city with Oak Ridge, TN. Natasha Borzilova's (the lead singer) father was a nuclear scientist who died from radiation exposure at Chernobyl. She recounts the band's origin:
Bering Strait consisted of a group of classically trained child prodigy musicians, all born in Obninsk, Russia, and the children of scientists who came to the United States to pursue their musical dreams. The band was put together by their music teacher who had a love for bluegrass music and introduced them to the genre. As time passed, the band evolved into a country band with bluegrass roots. Natasha was the lead singer and acoustic guitarist.
The band members moved to Nashville after having interest from several major record labels. After being on several labels, they settled down with Universal South Records long enough to release two albums and a few videos. They were nominated for a Grammy in the Country Instrumental category in 2003 and were also on 60 Minutes in a featured piece which aired just before the Grammy Awards and another two times later that same year.
That's a long, long way to the Grand Ole Opry. Their music is perhaps a little surprising in that it sounds like, well, normal country music. It's perhaps a little over-produced but the performances are excellent.
Who will rescue my heart? Who will save my soul? Who will give me strength? Fill my cup with hope?
I could use a sunrise, I could use a rainbow; Someone on a white horse, I could use a hero.
Who will light my way? Take me through the night? Who will hear my voice? Hold me when I cry?
I could use a sunrise, I could use a rainbow; Someone on a white horse, I could use a hero. I could use an angel to guard against the shadows; I could use a strong heart, I could use a hero.
Is there a dream (Is there a dream) waiting for me (waiting for me)? Is that too much to ask?
I could use a hero. I could use a hero. Yeah, I could use a hero.
I just got a printer for Castle Borepatch. The Queen Of The World started a new job and will be doing some working from home, and our old printers were, well, old, slow, and drank lots of expensive ink. And so we got a nifty new color laser printer.
Alas, that's where my problems started. When I changed jobs last fall I chose - no doubt in a fit of curiosity or whimsey - a Mac instead of a Windows laptop. And while the Mac sees the printer over the WiFi, and while the print queue says that everything is happy happy, it won't actually print.
It appears that the print jobs are being sent to the queue as PDF, and from there are going to /dev/null (they sure as heck aren't going to the printer). The little pull down that says "PDF" below has all sorts of PDF options, but nothing else - and there doesn't seem to be any option along the lines of "Screw PDF, just print the dang thing".
Any thoughts, Oh Mac gurus? I did have to pull down the newest driver from support.brother.com, but the laptop found the printer just fine via bonjour.
Of course, the Queen Of The World is printing up a storm from her Windows laptop. And reminding me that technology choices maybe shouldn't be made from whimsey. Oh bother.
UPDATE 10 June 2016 15:15: Success! It turns out that configuring the WiFi from the printer's front panel doesn't enable AirPrint, which is what the Mac was looking for. When I downloaded Brother's WiFi setup utility and ran it to set up the WiFi on the printer, it suddenly showed up in the Add Printer selections. It supposedly will let me print from the phones, too.
So the lesson is that Apple has "Insanely great" but pretty obscure ways of doing basic stuff (like wireless printing).
[Networkworld reports: "Qualcomm today announced its Connected Car Reference Platform intended for the car industry to use to build prototypes of the next-generation connected car. Every category from economy to luxury car will be much smarter than the connected luxury car of today, creating a big opportunity for Qualcomm to supply semiconductors to automakers and suppliers. Qualcomm described the following features of the Connected Car Reference Platform in its release:
Scalability: Using a common framework that scales from a basic telematics control unit (TCU) up to a highly integrated wireless gateway, connecting multiple electronic control units (ECUs) within the car and supporting critical functions, such as over-the-air software upgrades and data collection and analytics. Future-proofing: Allowing the vehicleâ(TM)s connectivity hardware and software to be upgraded through its life cycle, providing automakers with a migration path from Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) to hybrid/cellular V2X and from 4G LTE to 5G. Wireless coexistence: Managing concurrent operation of multiple wireless technologies using the same spectrum frequencies, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy. OEM and third-party applications support: Providing a secure framework for the development and execution of custom applications."]
"Secure". You keep using that word ...
The comments at the link are gratifyingly horrified. This one pretty much sums it up for me:
Problem is matey, I have bought so much high tech junk over the last few decades that has routinely fucked up, in fact software programmers claim it as the norm and seriously, what do you expect perfect software. Well, yeah, when going 100km an hour down a road I expect perfect software, you can't deliver, well then, no thanks.
Yeah, pretty much. That '67 GTO is looking better and better. Hack that, bitches!
In other news of the connected auto world, it seems that major computer security vendors see automotive computing as a sucking chest wound of security fail - in other words, a market opportunity:
Just shy of a year after the infamous Jeep Cherokee hack by a pair of researchers, the automobile industry is quietly testing cybersecurity features from IoT startups and traditional security companies for its networked vehicles.
Symantec today added what is now its fourth car security product -- an anomaly detection system for automotive vehicles that is based on its existing technology as well as its Internet of Things line, timed with the TU-Automotive connected car conference in Detroit this week. The security vendor also sells Symantec Embedded Security, which includes Critical System Protection, Code Signing, and Managed Public Key Infrastructure for the auto sector.
So the security of the automotive sector is so stinkin' bad that the computer security companies see it as a way to shore up their bottom lines. I'm not sure whether I'm reassured that someone will at least try to mind the store, or horrified that ineffective Symantec bloatware will be riding shotgun ...
