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False Positives, Few Matches Plague 'No-Fly' List
lindner writes "According to a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the United States No-Fly List uses a soundex algorithm to match names. Designed 'to quickly summon passenger names or to catch deal-hunting passengers making duplicate bookings.' The system has only managed to rack up a slew of false-positives, including everyone matching soundex ("J. Adams") at one point in time. The problem has gotten so bad that there is now a "Fly List" for chronically misidentified passengers."
That algorithm is so fundamentally broken as to be practically useless for anything but as an aid in simple searches. Why anyone would use soundex in a mission critical application designed to positively identify individuals is beyond me. What, was the 'No Fly' database written by 1st year comp sci major or something? Sheesh.
My journal has hot
This system seems like quite a hack. How long until there's a No-Fly list that supercedes the Fly list, "just in case"?
And whatever happened to testing these algorithms ahead of time?
This also happened when Cowboy Neal was mistakenly identified as Kh'alid bin Naoul.
I understand that the airline industry is a little tight right now, but that's just insane.
Unfortunately, the officials implementing a system such as this are going to get crucified either way. If they let a known terrorist onto a plane and a terrorist act happens, their heads are going to roll. Every journalist will be screaming that, "this terrorist has been on the FBI watch list for 2 years, a simple misspelling of his name allowed him to foil the multi-million dolar no fly system".
On the other hand, false positives are going to make the system useless as the boy who cried wolf one too many times found out. There doesn't seem to be an easy solution to this problem.
The more you know, the less you understand.
So what's wrong with passengers hunting for the best deal? I thought that's what the free-market and capitalism were all about.
Ah. Yeah. No, neither of those are supposed to benefit mere mortals. Only the rich elite.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Do they stop using the technology? Do they update it? Do they decide to keep using it, what the heck? Do the innocents rebel?
Tune in next time to "Lets listen in!"
"The most looniest, zaniest, spontaneous, sporadic Impulsive thinker, compulsive drinker, addict"
It should be obvious to anyone that any mechanism designed to target a small group out of a large group will would have to have an extremely small false positive rate to be of any use.
And the false negative rate had better be small, too.
Something 99% accurate is far from good enough; if only 0.01% of possible individuals are actual targets, you'll be getting 100 times as many false positives as correct positives.
So when did the RIAA start running the airlines?
Will I use my alias name which is Alain Williams, or will I use my real name which is Osama Bin Laden the next time that I book a flight to the USA ?
The trouble with this sort of thing is that it inconveniences Joe Public while doing little to deter a real terrorist.
The same yahoos who came up with the no-fly program will be in charge of future lists, such as those for traffic stops, and lists that flag people for enhanced surveillence under tia-like programs.
I wonder if there is a higher incidence of wiretapping done on homes that have residents named "J. Adams."
The coolest voice ever.
Here's a good run down on soundex and ten problems with it.
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
"I'm sorry, Mister Adams, but airport security rules prohibit carrying all these pins onboard. Now if you'll just cooperate with these officers..."
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
The metaphone algorithm addresses many of the shortcomings of soundex... why are they not using it?
Soundex gives each name a key using its first letter and dropping the vowels and giving number codes to similar-sounding vowels (like "S" and "C"). The system gives the same code, L350, for "Laden" and all similar-sounding names: Lydon, Lawton, and Leedham.
Boy, I'd hate to be a guy with a name like "Sam Lawton" or something. I wonder how many similarly-named middle-aged salesmen are getting red-flagged on flights... because you just never know, what if Osama Bin Laden disguised as a portly white guy from Milwaukee, and he never bothered to pick a false name that sounded sufficiently different from the original.
This is unbelievable. Why reinvent the wheel, while there are at least 3 countries that have implemented similar restrictions and tracking systems succesfully for more than 10 years now (England, Israel, and Germany - that I know of).
This sounds like the work of some consultants with no idea of what they are faced with and fresh out of collage where they have analyzed a couple of algorithms... sorry - I have had way too much of these running around the office lately
If for once someone would just poke his head out and instead of trying to find a solution to an age old problem, look and see how others are handling it, we (taxpayers) would all be much more content (and safe...).
Just my 2c.
The situation is really bad if you are named David Nelson. Here is a sad but true story about no fly lists and the very common name, David Nelson. There was also a followup story to this one but I am unable to find a link.
But, you feel safe. Don't you?
...Hugginkiss is catching all kinds of grief.
Like "use metaphone instead of soundex?"
Granted, that probably wouldn't take us too much closer to success.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I guess all US people would screem for such a "threat to your privacy" ;)
But at least in here in sweden basically anytime you book a flight you give your ID number (similar to a social security #)
Two benefits:
1. Name is just a courtesy, so doesnt really matter for security if somebody get my name wrong.
2. On checkin, it must be _you_ not somebody with a similar name
Of course IDs can be stolen or forged, but that is a problem regardles of how you ID your self.
Your point is very valid if there is a reasonable and rational discussion of the tradeoff's - You know kind of Type I and Type II errors. But the Bushies don't believe in that. Goebellian Ashcroft said that they are willing to use every legal tool available to them to achieve their goals - even if it means ignoring the spirit of the law, and reinterpreting the letters of the law to do whatever they want.
The willingness, in fact eagerness, to overlook collatoral damage is the Hallmark of the Bush Administration. They have rammed policies that wouldn't pass muster support anywhere. It is almost as if they are willing to kill 9 innocent people to prevent the 10th guilty one from escaping.
This mentality shows up in the No Fly list. It shows up in how the Arab immigrants were rounded up, and are now being deported by the thousands. It shows up in how to get to the Saddam "WMD's" they were willing to slaughter Iraqi's. Two or 3 Sept 11 bombers entered with Student visa's so everyone on that visa now gets grandly screwed.
So, logic applies only when the hysteria subsides. If you want you can never let the hysteria subside. And Donald Rumsfeld is a genius - almost lunatic - in that. Like he said in almost poetic form, on Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing, (which means that he could use the concept described in his "poem" below prove anything that he wants - it is almost like dividing by Zero.)
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
quote from the article: Scheduled for deployment in Spring 2004, CAPPS II will require airline ticket buyers to give more identifying information -- full name, birth date, home phone number and address. This information will be run against private credit-rating and government watch list databases to "verify you are who you say you are," Rosenker said
.] Now they're going to be checking that every time I fly?
What in the hell? I was under the impression that having a credit check actually hurts your credit history [as in, you shouldn't have too many credit checks in
I always hated flying, now I'm starting to hate air lines...
--- d'oh
You US folks could really do with a constitution to stop this sort of crap happening. Oh wait, you do have one. Oh well, back to the drawing board. Land of the free indeed.
Here we can see the legitimate security risk that the US invasion of Iraq has thwarted. We can finally stop the Iraqis from using those squiggly things they use to spell their names and get them using English like everyone else.
I think the idea behind this scheme is not to catch terrorists, or even deter them. But to keep the public under a false sense of security, thinking "hell, if they are searching a lot of people, they must be getting the real ones too!" Although it never works out that way.
I think I will be flying private planes if they start looking into your credit. A credit check could be like "Well, you evaded child support and paying the bank $5,000, we can't let you board, if you have the money for a flight, you can pay them!"
They know they they won't be able to get this to work right, they are just pocketing money and putting out a crap system, but I think that it may have better use for private organizations, such as "Well, he evaded taxes and bills, but we see him having a one way ticket to (place), search for him there."
"False Positives, Few Matches Plague 'No-Fly' List"
And, in related news, idiots everywhere announce that the system is working as planned...
...as long as they're barred from entering the cockpit. The success of the 9/11 attacks can mainly be credited to 1970s-era hijacking guidelines directing pilots to comply with the terrorists' demands, on the assumption that they were going to fly the plane to Cuba or something similar, rather than use it as a weapon. Those guidelines made sense in their time, but clearly, they're no longer applicable.
Here's an idea -- instead of inconveniencing millions of innocent passengers, how about securing the cockpits instead? So long as the pilots remain in control of the plane, it's a flying prison for anyone who commits any criminal act back in the passenger compartment. Let the cockpit crew notify the ground of a failed terrorist attack and land the plane at the nearest airport, with the police and FBI waiting. End of story.
The system was never intended to catch terrorists.
FRA: STFU GTFO
NO. I've had it. No more colors. First we had the stupid Homeland Security threat level color coding, I still don't get that. Now we have this stupid red yellow and green coding for ourselves as passengers! Stop trying to make me a different color! I am the color that I am!
If you want to make sure your hijacking works fly around innocently as "Sam bin Laden" for a few months, get your name on all the "Fly lists," and then hijack a plane.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
From the article:
Hate to break it to these guys but neither "S" nor "C" are vowels. Heck, they don't even make vowel sounds.Geeze, no wonder the system is broken.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Do you guys need
www.ryanair.com
I pray/hope getting in with a fake ID at an major consumer airport would be much more difficult than, say, getting in at your local bar with a fake id.
We heard for a while about how over 50% of planted weapons to test the system made it through. Now we aren't hearing anything. But I just had a friend come back from a trip cross-country last week -- she had a pair of sharp scissors in her overnight bag and that made it through. She didn't even realize it until she got home. I'm sure the woman running the X-Ray machine, looking at thousands of bags for $8/hour didn't realize it at all.
Since bouncers make more money and have to screen less people/shift, you can guess what I come down on your question.
That being said, handguns killed 11,000+ people in the U.S. last year. Automobile accidents killed upwards of 40,000 people in the US alone. Don't even get me started about cigarette smoking or obesity related deaths. Just to give some random numbers for perspective.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Flamebait? The person has a good point. Now we're all guilty until proved innocent. Not to mention the fact that people can be detained indefinitely without being charged with a crime..
One knee-jerk reaction people have, particularly leftists, is that the watch list is useless and easily evaded, and that it merely exists to make people feel secure.
The reason I single out liberals is that it's a problem they have with evaluating many other issues. In and of itself, a watch list doesn't do much. And this is a standard failure of analysis: it's easy to pooh-pooh any technique on its own, especially in matters of security or warfare, but that fails to see how it fits into the big picture. Terrorists have limited resources, and this forces them to divert those limited resources into getting false papers. It forces them to have to deal with more people, leaving a longer trail of evidence. When you're doing security, you're playing defense because you can never anticipate precisely what they'll do. What you want to do is force your opponent to take as many chances as possible, and ensure that at any point a mistake will foil them.
Any single measure, whether baggage screening, watch lists, can *not* be rationally analyzed independent of a whole system of checks and doublechecks.
Most egregious is the ACLU's highly irresponsible claim that this is a violation of civil liberties. False positives are *not* a violation of civil liberties. You do not have a right to convenience. You do not have an absolute right to fly because you're sharing that plane with 300 other people. This is just grandstanding by the ACLU. If they want to trash the administration, fine, but drop the sanctimony of civil liberties.
What about admitting that the Afghanistan war was only to allow a pipeline to be built?
What about admitting that the Iraq war was necessary in no way, that there have been to weapons of mass destruction remaining?
What about admitting finally that the no-fly list is nothing more than a list of people to be harrassed by security agents? A list of people about who somebody thought they were apostate?
phooie. Excuse me,respectfully, but phooie. OK, just a generic rant now, addressed to no one in particular, begin random message about the airlines, government, and "terrorism".
.exes) other folks,it happens when they are young(er),, which is good,they learn to judge "real" from "no freekin way" easier. It's a big variable. But I can tell ya, I passed that point on this government "tarist" nonsense a long time ago, it's a crock, there is SO much evidence out there they are lying through their teeth it ain't funny, and I *know* that a slew of links been dropped all over slashdot that point to that stuff.. These juntaistas are milking that boogie man tarist tar-baby for all it's worth. That baby gonna look like a prune all they squeezing out of it.
Joe terrorist wouldn't stand a chance if the passengers weren't all dumbed down and scared down into waiting for some over paid government authority figure to "save them" from "boogiemen". And maybe we should re visit this letting any fool into this nation for any reason stuff they have been pushing for years now. It's gone way past stupid into criminal. Visiting and travelling inside our nation is a privelege that we the legit citizens grant to other people, maybe we shouldn't be so open about it, or so lax. It most certainly isn't their "right" to come here, for any reason.
At least a few places now people have learned it's "OK" to fight, too, at least lately I've read some about it. On a plane, joe terrorist tries to hijack it? You got a laptop? Got a PDA? That's two or three good shots you have when he glances some place else for a second, wait your chance, use the battery first, then the PDA, or a cell phone, or a BIG heavy book you are carrying, a hard cover, anything, the laptop itself. We're 'muricans! Anyone ever play baseball? BEAN that sucker, and then follow through, fast! If you follow up on it, take him down, hard, put the boot in to him, all the way, unconsciousness, smash his throat, kick his face in, whatever. There's a slew of other ways, despite the government fools and liars disarming honest americans. boo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo, "Lookout! abdul j nasty gonna get ya, steal your freedoms, cuz he's jealous! That's it, he's jealous! Because we got seekrit real intelligent info sources say he said that,yes he did! And we spent one quadzillion dollars to find that out! And he's got a jealous-bomb WMD hidden in his sandals, lookout, here he comes! Guess "we the honest government" will steal your freedoms first, and call it "De war on tarism and it's durn patriotic to de homelands, too!" first, so abdul can't get 'em!". What a pile of manure, but man is it getting sucked down by the rubes.
I don't know what happens,or what happened, near as I can see sometime you just been BSed to enough that you get real cynical about it,ya know what I mean? Some people I guess it never happens too, no matter how old they get,they'll keep getting conned,(someone buys that spam crap afterall, or clicks on
At least El Al got something right some years back, you wall off the cabin with a piece of steel,you make doors that work and aren't"feux doors", you charge each passenger 25 cents or a buck more a flight to pay for it and the increased fuel costs, you do the obvious thing of arming your crew, and any potential "terr" knows he ain't getting in,that he IS gonna get ventilated, so they don't even try any more. They don't even try. Now I ain't saying nothing about israel this or mideast that or whatever,none of that nonsense, neither, just the hard facts of how you keep YOUR planes under YOUR control. It's called at least semi-common sense. K.I.S.S. Done,and it ain't rocket science.
None of this like we got now in this regime of "well, we don't trust the pilots,oh, no,no,no,well, except when we need to call them off to go fight someplace, then we automagically trust them again and they turn back into "officers" with skeery skeery gunz, or you, or your neighbor, or anyone else really, but we might slap 80- to 120 gr
Do they really think that they'll stop terrorists by asking them their names and refusing service if they appear on a list?
Like a terrorist is going to walk up to the counter and say, "Hello, my name is Ibrahim Salih Mohammed Al-Yacoub and I'd like to buy a one way ticket from New York to Los Angeles, preferably on whichever flight has the fewest american infidels. Oops, did I say infidels? I meant passengers, good american passengers."
Terrorists just have to use fake names, or steal someone's identity.
As for soundex, it's a very useful tool for matching words based on how they sound. If someone asks you to search for "alan", you might type in alen, allen, ellen, etc. and still find what they're looking for. This is just a case of it being used in a foolish manner.
This is only the tip of the iceberg, I fear. There are times when you need to ask yourself, what if? I did not live during the McCarthy era, but I feel this is one of those times. I may seem paranoid, but here is my "what if?" for the Bush administation's plan:
1) Use the term "terrorist" to refer to a small number of individuals that are a threat to peace and security in order to justify sweeping changes to policy and laws but more importantly as justification to begin developing a system to track every individual, everywhere (the system will, unfortunately, improve over time).
2) Once the necessary tracking infrastructure is in place (perhaps not perfected yet), change the term from "terrorist" to "criminal" . The justification will be that criminals are bad too, and they threaten peace and security just like terrorists, right?
3) Once the system has improved to the point that false positives are indeed negligable, gradually redefine the term "criminal" to discreetly include groups and individuals of the government's choosing.
Does this sound like an unlikely scenario? If you have an opinion, what social forces do you believe would act to reinforce or inhibit this scenario?
One might also discuss the similarities of the TIA (Total Information Awareness) and TCPA (Trusted Computing Platform Alliance). Both seek to create an environment that a person or an application, respectively, must be pre-authorized to enter. Without proper authorization, you or your application are not allowed to be a part of the system or interact with other authorized entities.
Eventually, I expect the "fly-list" to become the dominate list, and the "no-fly-list" to become increasingly obscure. You will then no longer be able to fly without identifying yourself to the system.
My greatest fear is that one will no longer be able to "buy or sell without the mark [of approval]", in the Biblical sense. What we see today certainly allows for that, especially if you take into consideration the infusement of funds by the government into bioinformatics R&D. The "mark in the forehead or right hand" easily translates into a retinal scan or fingerprint. When positive identification becomes cheap, efficient, and accurate, it will become ubiquitous, and we will all be rows in a (probably Oracle) database.
Thoughts?
Here's a list of the most common ways that people died in the US, 2000:
Total: 2,403,351
"Terrorist attacks", if listed using 2001's figures (~3000?), would be clumped into the "other" category, being 10 times less dangerous than suicide, and 5 times less likely than regular old homicide. "Terrorism" is a whopping 240 times less likely to kill you than heart failure, and would account for a mere 0.12% of all fatalities.
Think about it another way - every 2 days, more people die through heart failure than were killed in the WTC disaster. Worrying about "terror" is only likely to increase your odds of dying of heart failure or hypertension.
Insightful?? Fucking bollocks more like. Terrorists ALREADY HAVE FUCKING FAKE ID, and guess what THE GOVENMENT DOESN'T EVEN KNOW THEIR REAL NAMES, any list based on names is not worth the paper it's printed on, it is NOT part of a defense system, becase it generates so many false positives people will waste huge amounts of time trying to verify the 'John Smith' is not a terrorist. There is only so much time and money that can be spent stopping terrorists, it should be spent on systems that work.
Like manualy locating records whey you aren't sure how a name is spelled. Like suppose you want to look for my nickname, Sycraft. However you've never seen it, just heard it said (pronounced sigh-craft). Well, how do you spell it? It could be Sycraft or Sykraft or Sighcraft and so on. Well all these reduce to S216 under soundex. So you punch in how you think it is spelled, lets say Sikraft. The computer then spits out a bunch of results. Obviously all but one of these are false positives but the important thing is that, hopefully, the one you want is in there. You then flip through the records looking for other info to figure out which on is actually the Sycraft you want.
This is probably the best case I can think of for using it, when you aren't sure how something is spelled and you'd rather have false positives, that you then have to eliminate through other means, then not get your record.
Unicode + greatest common subsequence fuzzy match == catch T's. Soundex == stupid.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
The kind you are thinking of, which lowers your FICO score, not hurts your credit, is a request for credit. Each time you ask for credit (ie apply for a credit card, apply for a bank loan, etc) that shows up on your record and the number of times it happens helps to determine FICO score. The reason is because if you are asking for lots of credit, you are probably a higher risk of not repaying it.
Now, this information is available to anyone that checks your credit report. However, there are other kinds of credit checks that are available only to you. For example if a compny wants to send you a promo, they'll do a credit check, mostly to get your address, but also to see if you meet their minimum. Also some banks peridiocly do credit checks on people who have credit cards with them, mostly to ensure the credit bearu has accurate information. Both of these types of checks will NOT show up on a report to anyone other than yourself.
The airline checks would be the same. You would be able ot get your report, and see that they had been checking up on you, but noone else would. So no, it won't hurt your credit at all. Still can argue that it is stupid and unnecessary, but you don't need to worry about your credit or FICO score.
When traveling to China a few months after 9/11 (in fact, just days after that dork tried to light his shoes on fire,) I went with a bag that contained nothing but a 4-ft long part for an industrial smelter that looked like a flamethrower. I had ten different kinds of documentation in my backpack to explain what in the unholy name of fuck it was, but I was never searched and the bag never got opened. I saw plenty of people getting their bags turned inside out (a few people on my flight got searched repeatedly in the same airport!) but I, someone who could reasonably expect a few questions about the possible flamethrower in my suitcase, experienced nothing. Well, I did have to take my boots off and put them on the x-ray... and boy, it sure was fun to hold the line up while I undid my 10-hole Doc Martens. Ho ho.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
From here
BTW, I disagree with you - I think the airlines were pushing for just the right amount of annoyance, to make people think "Boy! They really are looking for those terrorists!", so that the idiots would start flying again. I read once that on most flights, only the last few passengers are profit - the rest pay for fuel, salaries, cost of the plane, etc. So, if only a few passengers per flight decide to risk driving instead, the airline become unprofitable.When people get used to the current level of security, and stop worrying as much about terrorists, they'll back off security little by little to save money. I hope.
You know, when travelling was a hard earned privilege in the old Soviet Union, US conservatives found that an awful denial of civil liberties. Or when the communist government was tapping every phone call and other communication of their citizens.
It seems the problem wasn't so much that the government could decide who got to travel inside and outside the country etc, but that it wasn't a conservative government making those decisions.
...for bringing this up in a rather serious discussion, but I can't be the only one who read "kill 9 innocent people" and immedatly thought: "Wait... wouldn't 'kill -QUIT' be much cleaner?"
John gilmore is suing for the right to travel anonymously(sp).
From the website:
He does so "because he believes persons have a right to travel by air without the government requiring that they relinquish their anonymity. No security threat is as important as the threat to American society caused by erosion of the right to travel, the right to be free from unreasonable searches, and the right to exercise First Amendment rights anonymously."
Check out the FAQ's, which are well written and explain the other reasons - including being subject to secret laws - he is opposing this.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Soundex for MS SQL came from FoxPro (nee FoxBase), and probably hasn't been improved since Gates bought it in 1992 from that dude in Oooooo Hi Ooooooooo (little Neil Young ditty there).
I'll bet your job sucks. And now we know why hospitals amputate the legs off of the wrong patients.
There's a simple, easy, inexpensive and effective solution. Unfortunately that's not what the government wants; they prefer expensive, complicated solutions that let them hire more people and expand the bureacracy, even if it happens that those solutions are ineffective. Anyhow, the simple, easy, inexpensive solution is:
a C3 suppository, encased in glass
DARPA hasn't been the most likely place to find the most important work funded, for almost ten years, at least. They used to be a leader in automatic speech recognition, but they haven't been doing much more than dictation and command-and-control for a while now.
The flight volume for all these countries is tiny. Israel has only a few thousand flights per year to only 10 airports. Their procedures work for their number of flights.
There are 30,000 flights each day in the US. We need something that scales.
The existence of the lists came to light in spite of the TSA's attempts to conceal them. Their failure does not excuse the attempt.
>Quickly, people will start to treat the alerts >as a sick joke
You mean like they do now when the government rings one of those alerts and then wastes federal agents to roust dying people who happen to use pot to alleviate their symptoms?
You know that if too many people start thinking like you, there is going have to be another convenient 'incident' eventually.
Your boy crying wolf analogy is not in the best interest of the 'patriot act' pushers....a culture of fear has to be nurtured to be effective.
There are quite a few death pool type of bets going on which give odds on the next incident.
It's bad enough when a single isolated program fails completely, as this one has. But if, as you suggest, this program is a part of a larger anti-terrorist system then the failure on the governments part is that much greater! As the saying goes "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.". The failure of the "No-Fly" list to accurately idenify terrorists creates a critical weakness in our national security infrastructure. For you see, this system was designed to deny terrorists mobility and access to a weapon that they have used successfully in the recent past. In this the "No-Fly" list has failed completely.
This list reminds me of the blunder the French made in constructing the Maginot line. They covered most of their eastern border with a line of fortifications that are tough by even modern standards. But they left the Arden forest uncovered because they thought that no mechanized army could pass through the thickly wooded area. But when war broke out that's just what the Germans did, and the rest of the line was rendered irrelevant. In other words when a line or net or wall is breached then all the remaining sections are worthless.
"The moment "pride" is lost, "freedom" is also lost." - Ramza.
In the US, more people are killed in car accidents _every month_ than were killed in the attacks on the WTC. Even a tiny 2% decrease in the number of car-accident deaths would save more lives every decade than were lost in all terrorist attacks the US has ever suffered.
Over the last 10 years, an American's odds of dying in a terrorist attack are about 1 in 100,000. That's less than your odds of drowning in your own bathtub, less than your odds of drinking yourself to death, and less than your odds of accidentally suffocating in your own bed! (http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm)
Frankly, the current atmosphere of fear of terrorism is little more than hysteria. Why on earth aren't we showing the world we have some balls and are strong enough to not let a few terrorists make us live in fear? If you live in fear or give up freedoms, you've let the terrorists win!
Terrorists have limited resources, and this forces them to divert those limited resources into getting false papers.
Because both OK City and the WTC were committed by people using their proper ID's to obtain resources? Research again. Both times false identification was used.
You do not have a right to convenience. You do not have an absolute right to fly because you're sharing that plane with 300 other people.
But I do have an absolute right to not be discriminated against.
All good propaganda uses a bit of the truth and a bit of the lie all mixed together. The totality of it is a lie, but there's always enough truth in there that most people will believe it,they cling to what they believe, so accept what they don't, especially if it's from a father figure, which in our society is "government". So the propaganda works, the target becomes brainwashed, conned, or if it's commercial advertising,which is just another form of propaganda, they've closed a sale or at least embedded the branding somehow.
http://www.kimel.net/goebbels.html
Friend of mine turned me on to this page,it is about a master propagandist. Read some of the things he wrote. Also his background. Now, do a normal substitution, change some proper nouns around, see if it fits the current situation any. To me, there are remarkable parallels. Sorta scary parallels, but, it's reality.
As to the mark? Heck ya. Implantable chips, RFIDs, coming this way. They've been running the grade C models on dotmil bases for a few years now, the base veternarians use them on the various pets there, it's required. Certain of the "elite" forces have them already. There are plans to quite soon now use them on domestic prisoners. They will scare parents to voluntarily have their children chipped. Then will come the big one, I am thinking a major bio terrorist attack (scammed most likely, reichstagg-style event). Shots for "the cure" they come up with will be mandatory, with the chip implanted/injected at the same time as the only way to "prove" you are safe to be around other "approved" citizens who've gone through the procedure previously. No chip, that means you aren't legal, no work, no business, no buying or selling. And etc. You'll be a social and economic pariah, probably be classed as a criminal.
Read some of the fine print in the model states health emergency powers act, you'll see some more that will make it all make more sense. It's written into the law already, and government never passes any laws that aren't in their favor, nor laws that big that they don't use. Never.
That's my take on it anyway.
X-raying shoes doesn't make for effective security, but it's intrusive enough to give the impression that at least something is being done.
Articles and editorials that call attention to the violations that come with the bogus no-fly list are essential components of the system -- they make everybody else experience it, vicariously. Everybody who is a little bit stupid (i.e. most people) feels a little safer for it. Sure it inconveniences some people, but not enough to make much political difference.
Even better than the impression of intrusive security, it leads to demands for what amounts to a system of internal passports, where you can't travel by air without registering, and getting -- and maintaining --- official permission. "What, no internal passport? Sorry, sir, I can't let you board." At first felons will have their passports pulled, then "suspected terrorists", then political undesirables of all sorts.
Does this mean now that the kind of hijacker who simply wants to go to Cuba or collect a ransom or something is S.O.L. for all time? Have any "conventional" hijackings been attempted since?
You need the social security number system fast ! Imagine handling a database without any unique identifier...
To be discriminated from the criminals is a basic right and a true identifier for individuals is A Good Thing.
And I'm not representing the authorities or the secret police.
The US could look at the history books. Gen Sherman found a way to stop southern terrorist that was very effective even though it was a major setback for Atlanta. Many older Islamic men would be much more likly to turn in their sons if they knew their son's actions would result in the total annihilation of Mecca. That kind of reaction would upset most of the rest of the world but when has the US cared about them anyway?
Some of the recent flus have killed more in NYC than the WTC. In fact if you look at the average deaths by accident and murder and other crimes for the months following the WTC, you will find that 9/11 isn't even a blip on the death statistics for the area.
If your pants don't have a fly, they don't let you on? That explains why the terminal is filled with pacing people wearing Levi's 501 button-fly jeans.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't know how many there are in the USA though...
The UNKNOWN-UNKNOWN problem was first explained to me about ten years ago by a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant who'd been around the block a few dozen times, and learned what he called UNKNOWN-UNKNOWN the hard way. I.e., the UNKNOWN-UNKNOWN left him in a hospital for seven months having his spine and pelvis reassembled.
Let's put it into terms that you'd understand. Let's say you're a CompSci student at a university and you have an exam coming up.
There are things which you know, and you know that you know them. You know C++, which the prof is using in the course. You know the language, and you are aware of the fact that you know. If you KNOW-KNOW something, and you're correct in your assessment, you're sitting in the catbird seat.
Just slightly worse are the things you don't know, but of which you're aware that you're lacking. You know that the lambda calculus exists; you know you don't know beans about it. No problem! If you see a lambda question on the exam, you'll be able to just skip it and come back to it at the end, to maybe see if you can make heads or tails of it. A KNOWN-UNKNOWN is nothing to be afraid of. Minimized, sure... but you can deal with known unknowns. You can even plan for them.
Where people screw themselves over are the places where they don't know beans, and they aren't aware that they're ignorant. Let's say that you're ignorant about generic programming. You've never heard of it before. Don't know beans about it. So when the prof tells you that your exam will cover the entire C++ language, you don't mind--you know C++, right?
Except... you don't. And up until you see the funky template notation on the test, you're completely in the dark as to just how ignorant you are. You'll probably charge headlong at the problem because... well, sure, it looks kind of strange, but you know C++, right? And since you don't know generics, and you're unaware of just how ignorant you are, you'll waste half an hour getting absolutely nowhere on a generics question. You can't plan for UNKNOWN-UNKNOWNs. You can't plan for them because you don't know they're going to happen, because they come totally out of left field (usually as the result of totally botching your KNOWN-KNOWNs). If you had any forewarning, then you could've been prepared, right?
What you want to mock as illogical and sophomoric is actually a fairly deep rumination on what it means to know something. Try Kant's Critique of Pure Reason if you want to see this general idea presented in great detail and in mind-boggling length.
Or, if you'd rather have the Cliff's Notes version, try Mark Twain's reduction of Kant: "What gets people in trouble ain't so much the things they don't know as it is the things they do know that just ain't so."
Unless it is seen that a a "War on Bathtub Accidents" would whip up the public paranioa enough to hand over just about any freedom you care to name to the government and it's agencies, or that some kind of "National Campaign to Stop Drivers Being Jackasses" would enable tax payers' money to subsidise unnecessary and expensive IT projects, I don't see that happening in the near future...
The military is just a government excuse to fleece the tax payers and take bribes!!!!
What the airlines called "Yield Management" is now dead, although they insist on using it.
I'm posting as AC, because my buddies who work in various consultancies will get into trouble if the truth comes out, but the major airlines realized about 5-7 years ago this pricing doesn't work.
Or I should say, there was no way to prove the yield actually is better using these systems, which is to say these systems are fundamentally flawed in their implementation.
There are very simple ways to implement these kinds of functions that would be better, but given the state of software patents, I'm (seriously) going to patent this method first and then talk about it, and then I'll sue the big airlines, and then you can all call me a prick.
Seriously.
"people don't get pissed off at you cause you were just minding your own business"
Yes they do.
You'll find out if you ever win the lottery or start doing a lot better (financially) than your neighbors. You'll find out your neighbors are always pissed off at you.
This is exactly the situation the US finds itself in.
Terrorism isn't dangerous because it kills people. Oh hell, of course its dangerous because of that, but really, its major effect is two-fold:
1) It, like it says, terrorizes the population and disrupts normal patterns of behavior, including wide-reaching economic repercussions.
2) Econmically, striking the world trade center dwarfs the death impacts. This is really bad.
3) Most importantly, it gives our enemies a sense that we are weak. The buggers in the middle east only understand a bullet, so you've got to speak to them in their language.
I couldn't pass it up: type in your last name, and see if any other Soundex-equivalent names (from the 1990 US Census) show up in a Google News search.
The US Constitution may have its problems, but it's a hell of a lot better thatn what we have now.
I think you mean when we live in fear AND give up our freedoms, those willing to take advantage of the situation win.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Precisely. Now let me show you how I applied UNKNOWN-UNKNOWN to Rumsfeld.
From my earlier post:
You have explained very well why I chose to call Rumsfeld a genius - it is because he has understood this subtle concept very very well.
Now why did I call him a lunatic. It is because Rumsfeld has developed a way of answering all questions posed to him in such a way, that he traps the questioner in a logical labyrinth, and dodges answering the question. Precisely, what he does is the following.
And that is why I call him a lunatic.
He is genius because he is very smart. He is a lunatic because he is too smart.
My earlier post was rambling, and I appreciate the opportunity to focus the thought. Let me know if my framework jives with your experience.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
before anyone says Omaha and Oklahoma are not the same, I'll say it myself
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Alright let me preface this by saying I'm in a lazy mood, not looking up but remembering
Didn't the 9/11 attacks on the trade center use planes departing from NYC headed to San Fransisco? Or
Health is simply dying at the slowest rate possible.
"Hey, lets put anybody who's name sounds like the name of a known terrorist on a black-list and fsck with them until they eventually just go home in disgust. That will keep our country safe from those nasty terrorists."
In the interest of not spreading any more F, U and D, here's how it SHOULD work:
- You build a database with a list of known terrorists and terrorist suspects using a search algorithm that is NOT as outdated as the poodle skirt
- Instead of grounding every person that matches that list, make a system of cumulative flags
- So, if a person's name matches the list, they get a flag
- If their face also closely matches the image associated with that profile, they get another flag or two
- Add more info to this database, and give the passenger more flags for all of the other matches that they get with the files
- If a person gets more than one or two flags, alert on-flight security and tell them to keep an eye on that person
- If the passenger gets an extreme number of flags, alert on-flight security, take extra precautions on the flight, and alert the police in all of the cities that the flight makes stops in
It's really not that difficult, people.Of course, neither would be putting locks on the doors to the cockpit...
"Sometimes you have fun, and sometimes the fun has you"
i was trying to get on a specific flight.
i called up the airline, thinking that the
agent could help me find a lower fare.
when the agent found out i wanted to go on
a specific flight, i was informed that those
prices were already not available ! and that
the price was suddenly $70 higher !
and i could still get the ticket at the ORIGINAL
price on THEIR website !
i think they get a bonus when they could make
you buy at a higher price !
Hmm, if US passport holders weren't allowed on aircraft Afghanistan and Iraq wouldn't have had the crap bombed out of them. Banning them from cars would stop drive by shootings, and an American in a library is a rare enough event not to legislate against it.
Tattoos: a great idea, but to avoid excessive pain for law abiding members of the community, tattoos should only be applied to people who aren't allowed to do something.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
first off, I'm part europaen, and part cherokee, one of the "stay behinds" was my great grandmother. Now, how does that work again, kimosabe? Second, NO, HELL NO, it's not anyone's "right" to come here, we are no longer a "frontier" nation there ISN'T ANY "free land" to go homestead on. We ALLOW a controlled number of LEGAL REPEAT LEGAL immigrants and tourists and students to come here, UNDER CONTROLLED ACCESS,with rules, regulations, and responsibilities, and anyone who hasn't followed the procedure is an ILLEGAL INVADER, A CRIMINAL.
I have no problems with a limited number of immigrants and visitors, none, I am not a racist nor a bigot,but I have a BIG BIG BIG problem with illegal criminals by the millions just saying it's their "right" to come here, and the vast majority, as their first official act on our soil, commit a criminal act. It's no more "cool" for them to do that than for me to go over wherever they are from and do similar.
Play by the rules or get out, and I hope you get arrested if you are an illegal and be put to building fences in the hot sun on the border. Enough's enough, this is 2003, not 1703. Those folks can stay home and make something of their own nation, and if that means over throwing their own bogus dictators, and stringing them up and creating their own constituional republics, I'll support them, I'll loan them some rope and a box of bullets. Just for a glaring example, as far as I am concerned invading iraq is and was a waste of time, we should have counter-invaded mexico and liberated those poor people down there and free them from generations of abuse at the hands of their castillian racist billionaire rulers. Mexico has invaded the US, not iraq.
If you are an illegal,from anyplace, and are any color you are, or any religion, I don't care,that means less than zero, could care less, the dividing line is legal OR illegal, so if it's illegal, GET OUT.