Slashback: Passports, Microscopes, IQ Points

Slashback tonight with updates and clarifications on recent Slashdot stories (and story arcs), including a downright Operatic end to Jon S. von Tetzchner's cross-oceanic attempt (or was that just in fun?), the status of post-death email privacy, minimizing the dangers of RFID passports, and more - read on for the details.

Actually, it's taking tests that reduces IQ. The guys at Mind Hacks have dissected the widely reported story that 'email destroys the mind faster than marijuana' [Posted on Slashdot a few days ago -- T.] and found that it is more spin than science. The results show simply that people do worse at IQ tests when distracted, although Hewlett-Packard are not releasing details of the experiment, so others cannot even evaluate if the research is sound. The use of psychobabble for marketing marches on.

One day this will all be commemorated as ... an opera. GreyPoopon writes "It looks like Jon's attempt at swimming the Atlantic has ended in early failure. Taking the blame once again is is PR Manager, Eskil Sivertsen. The raft he was using was somehow punctured this morning, and Jon had to abondon his trek to perform a heroic rescue. Perhaps someone should take on the task of sending our downtrodden adventurer a cup of Mom's hot chocolate."

PCP theorem simplified, still way over my head. Stridar writes "Sanjeev Arora's proof of the PCP theorem was a great acheivement. This theorem, a reduction of NP to PCP, allowed for many striking results on the difficulty of finding approximate solutions to NP-Hard problems. However, his original proof is long and technical, focusing on the arithmetization of booelan formulas. It has long been an open problem to simplify this result. Now Irit Dinur , a mathematician at the Hebrew University, has given a purely combinatorial proof of the PCP theorem, in her exciting paper "The PCP Theorem by Gap Amplification" ."

I think several other things end at death, too. microbee writes "The Register reports that Yahoo has complied with a court order to give a dead soldier's email account to his parents. It's not clear to me from the news whether they got direct access to the actual mail box, or just hard copy of those emails. If the former, it's a bit funny to read "the family complain they have only got emails received by Justin, not those he wrote." People have to wonder whether their privacy ends at death."

Haven't they ever seen The Killing Fields? valdean writes "Following up on past Slashdot stories, Wired News reports that the State Department is now considering adding a password to the new RFID passports, in response to 'criticism from computer security professionals and civil libertarians.' According to the article, 'The data... would be locked and unavailable to any reader that doesn't know a secret key or password to unlock the data. To obtain the key, a passport officer would need to physically scan the machine-readable text that's printed on the passport page beneath the photo... The reader would then hash the data to create a unique key that could be used to authenticate the reader and unlock the data on the RFID chip.'"

Anything with LEDs in it makes me happy. HunterD writes "Apparently a company called DigitalBlue purchased the rights to the Intel Play series, which included the Intel QX3 microscope. Well, DigitalBlue has released an upgrade called the QX5 that features an Ultrabright LED, a better camera, and a number of other upgrades."

Comments

PCP Theorem

[BandwidthHog]

If, after checking your email while doing bonghits you can still count to one, proving theorems on PCP oughta do the trick.

MJ?

[Ugodown]

I don't think that anyone says that marijuana destroys the brain besides the US governmnet, and these guys.

Re:MJ?

[Ugodown]

It's a consensus that no brain cells are killed from the ingestion of marijuana, it will impare learning, but what do you expect when you're stoned? After a period of time of not using it, IQ levels and intelligence goes right back to normal levels. The only emperical evidence of brain damage comes from an experiment with monkeys where they were administered with 200x the normal amount. Check this out: http://www.marijuana.com/Exposing_08_1095.html it has sources

Re:MJ?

[stanleypane]

You have got to be joking, right? Lets start from the top:

- Prisons: Overcrowded as it is. Our local city lock-up in Baltimore doesn't even have the capacity to process possible *murder* suspects within the required 24 hours. Public defenders are getting people out of lockup EVERYDAY -- without charge -- because of this problem.

- Police: The last time a cop caught me with a joint, he told me to throw it out. The cops around here don't have the time to keep arresting kids for smoking pot. They have more serious problems to worry about.

- Judges: Don't know about your town, but in mine it may takes up to 6 months after being arrested before you even see a judge for a formal hearing. I don't think it is because of all the pot smokers.

- Marijuana dealers: I don't even know where to start with this one. I'll leave it alone.

That being said; I don't know if I think marijuana will be legalized in my lifetime, but I wouldn't be surprised if cops started treating it more and more like underaged drinking. Similar to, "OK, start dumpin 'em out, kid."

Re:MJ?

[flink]

You left out the biggest one: seized assets of drug dealers. When someone gets convicted, federal laws allow all their drug-related assets (cars, bank accounts, houses, bling, etc.) to go to the state. This is a huge revenue stream for local law enforcement agencies and is probably the single largest unspoken reason why you won't see legalization anytime soon.

Yes a novel solution...

[t_allardyce]

Or how about just NOT using RFID in passports and instead using tried and tested chips or strips? And no, not having to replace worn out passports is does not take priority over privacy and security, most people don't use their passports more than a dozen times a year anyway, I use my debit card every day and the chip is fine, theres no excuse to use RFID.

Re:Yes a novel solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

If they can reduce the passport-stamping time from 1 minute per person to 15-30 seconds, that's a huge win, as it halves the amount of time you spend in line.

That will not happen. If they can reduce the passport-stamping time, they will also reduce the number of lines you can get your passport stamped in. It will still take just as long to get through the line.

Re:Yes a novel solution...

[swillden]

Or how about just NOT using RFID in passports and instead using tried and tested chips or strips?

Several reasons:

• Increased security. The main reason for going to a chip of some sort is to both make the passports harder to forge and to add biometrics in order to better authenticate the holder. Biometric templates are often large, and they also need to be cryptographically signed by the issuer. That means that tens of kilobytes of data storage are required. Note that some magnetic and optical stripes could partially fulfill this requirement, but aren't as secure as a chip.
• Reliability/Durability. A contact-type chip is problematic for a passport because of the booklet form factor. Where do you put the contact plate? At the very least you'd have to make part of the booklet out of rigid plastic so that the contact plate would slot into the right place. Non-standard readers would have to be designed and built, also. Existing smart card readers expect a card form factor, obviously.
• Convenience. Contactless is quicker and easier to use. Not much, but enough to matter when you're trying to move large numbers of people through quickly. The immigration agent does not have to spend time putting the correct corner of the passport into the correct location in the correct way.
• Speed. Strange as it may seem, it's a fact that off-the-shelf RF technology achieves *much* higher data rates than contact smart card technology. Contact chips communicate at between 9.9bps and 115kbps, contactless chips talk at either 400kbps or 800kbps. In practice, contact chips rarely run at over 9.9kbps, which means that data moves at less then 1KBps. It's expected that many of these passports will store 20-40KB of data, so the high data rate will be important.

The first plan by the state dept. was terrible; they took absolutely no precautions to protect the passport holder's privacy. I wrote to them to complain. The latest announcement, however, shows that they have listened and fixed all of the problems.

They've made three changes to the plans:

1. The chip will not divulge any data without an appropriate cryptographic authentication. The key used to perform the authentication is derived from data printed inside the passport.
2. All communications with the chip will be encrypted using a session key so that no one can eavesdrop when the passport is being read.
3. The passport cover will incorporate RF shielding, so that when the passport is closed the chip cannot be activated. This is to prevent an attacker from being able to identify who is carrying a passport by scanning them, as well as a few more difficult attacks.

With these changes, there are no additional security risk as long as passport holders are careful to keep their passports closed when not being checked.

The other concern that will no doubt be raised by some slashdotters is whether or not someone who gets hold of your passport can get your biometric data. They can, but it doesn't do any good. The data stored is in the form of a pre-processed template, not an image. It's not possible to reconstruct the original fingerprint/iris/whatever image because the template construction process discards data. It is possible to construct a *different* image which will match when compared to the template, but the constructed image will not really look like the person's biometric.

That said, I think there are legitimate privacy arguments against the use of biometrics. The contactless smart card chip, however, poses no security risks to the passport holder, and offers improves security and convenience -- not for the holder, but for the government who issued the passport.

Mac Drivers!!!!eleven!!!1!!

[BandwidthHog]

This page linked from the blog entry has Mac OS X downloads ($12 shareware) for both the original Intel scope and the new QX5. I have neither, so can't test it, but it's suddenly an appealing way to blow a hundred bucks!

They list the capabilities thusly:

miXscope QX5 is a Mac OS X application written specifically for the USB QX5 Computer Microscope. The software allows you to capture images, create time-lapse movies, add a text comment, add a time stamp, add an image overlay, make a measurement, apply realtime frame averaging, or add a special effect.

Of course, I just spotted the fact that Digital Blue are also the fine folks who brought us the American Idol Digital Camcorder, so that does temper my enthusiasm for handing them cash just a wee bit. But still...

The PCP Theorem

[cpeikert]

The PCP theorem is a beautiful piece of computer science and mathematics. What's it good for? Well, for starters:

• One can use it to show that not only are some problems very hard to get exact answers to, they are very hard to even get approximate answers to! In the most extreme case, it's hard to tell whether a graph has an enormous clique (taking up almost all the vertices), or just a very small one.
• PCPs can be used to build very low-communication zero-knowledge proofs. So you can prove a mathematical statement to someone, using much less communication than it takes to even write down that statement, and giving her no idea why the statement is true, even though she will be absolutely convinced that it really is true!
• PCPs can also be used to write down a (long) proof of a mathematical theorem, so that to check the theorem only requires you to look in a few random places. If the theorem is false, you'll detect it, otherwise you'll be convinced that it's true. It's as if there was a huge book of mathematics, and you opened to a random page, read a few characters, and said, "yep, it's definitely all true."

In short: amazing!

Re:The PCP Theorem

[Nitish]

Well, you don't need to feel bad about not understanding the PCP theorem. It's a difficult concept to grasp. For example, you could be an extremely intelligent and motivated high school student who can't "get it" even if you try, because you just haven't studied all the pre-requisite material you need. Though perhaps you can't go to the PCP theorem from where you are now, you might be able to understand it once you have all the background knowledge.

The original poster described the PCP theorem well, but it might not make a lot of sense to people who haven't studied algorithms or complexity theory. This might help:
A lot of problems people want to solve in practice are "optimization" problems. That is, given a problem, we want to find the optimum (minimum or maximum, as the case may be) solution. For example, if you have to travel to several cities, you might want to know the cost of the cheapest tour that visits all of them. Or you might want to know what the most efficient way of scheduling jobs on a machine is. These (and several other) problems, are what we call NP-Hard. That has a technical meaning, but in short, it takes a *really* long time (far more than is practical) to compute the best solutions for these problems. And so if you wanted a solution, instead of spending forever to find the best tour, you might settle for a tour that cost only 1% more, if you could find it quickly. Algorithms which do this are called approximation algorithms; they don't always find the best solution, but they approximate it - the solution they find is nearly as good... perhaps just a little more expensive or less inefficient.

Approximation algorithms are useful because people are often satisfied with solutions that are "good enough", even if not perfect. So for a hard problem, it's worth spending time trying to find a good approximate solution.

Enter the PCP theorem! You can use it to show that some problems can't even be approximately solved in a reasonable amount of time, and that's what the original poster was talking about.

Besides this, the theorem is important and loved because not only is it useful, it's non-obvious and beautiful

Re:The Passport Password

[BandwidthHog]

Time to buy a farraday cage for your passport...

Gives new meaning to the old expression "Keep it under your [tinfoil] hat."

I like the idea of Emails being made public

[Ciderx]

...after my death.

If you knew you were going to die soon, I'd have a sent mail list which would be great and populated with loads of fake emails that said things like:

"Look, Adriana. I don't care how many other Victoria's Secrets models you're going to bring, I'm NOT going to sleep with you. And, BTW, what you suggested is (a) a waste of whipped cream and (b) isn't that a rather large vegetable for something like that?"

and, of course

"Oh, I figured out how to cure cancer and the key to world peace. I'll email you in a few days with the details..."

Re:I like the idea of Emails being made public

[antifoidulus]

What about the people you exchanged email with? Email is not like a journal, there are at least 2 parties involved and the privacy of those people is equally as important of the privacy of the soldier. My solution would be that if the people with whom the deceased communicated with should decide whether or not they want to forward the email on to the parents.

Truly Operatic end?

[serutan]

Pretty obvious that this is a joke. I'm surprised nobody has commented on it yet. Check out the guy in the dinky raft, supposedly the support vessel. Classic.

"A local farmer spotted the drama from his kitchen window and took surprisingly sharp photos with a remarkably powerful telescopic lens."

And all the while he was milking a goat! Remarkable indeed!

The Mind Hacks analysis

[wka]

Sine it does not seem to be posted above, here is a link to the Mind Hacks analysis of the IQ study.

My Resume #2

[eander315]

Dear Opera,

I recently applied for the soon-to-be opened positions of CEO and PR Manager at your company. My sole qualification of actually being alive has been nullified, apparently, due to the failure of Mr Sivertsen's raft within swimming distance of the Norwegian coast. In light of that event, I would like to revise my previous job request to include "raft support technician" or "sr. wetsuit admin", as these positions are now apparently available.

Thank you again for your time, I hope to hear from you soon.

Re:Limited value in IQ tests.

[fafalone]

And just what kind of learning are you referring to? Sophiscated symbolic learning, inferential learning, and overall conceptual learning are very different from dry fact learning, and there is a *vast* difference between below average (95) and gifted (130) in their ability to do higher learning. This is generally at the very highest levels of skill; IQ is more a measure of potential mental capability. There's some overlap with harder work on something leading to more skills than high IQ and slacking, but when pushed to the limits the 130 IQ can go much farther than the 95 IQ. Also consider that a person with a 130 IQ is 2 full standard deviations above the mean, with their mental ability in the top 97th percentile of the population, if you're claiming someone in the 37th percentile has the same ability to learn... I'd be highly suspect of your coursework in psychology.
35 points is a HUGE difference. Now, a few points all within one standard deviation is a small difference. But a few points between scores both more than 3 standard deviations is also a huge difference. I really get tired of people thinking IQ tests are jokes, there's extensive research into it, tons and tons of science going into making each professional test. IQ is a very scientifically sound concept, if you doubt this you need to study psychology some more (as in, college courses, not mainstream therapy-only junk).

Linux QX3 drivers

[jonsmirl]

The CPiA webcam driver supports the QX3 on Linux.
CPiA webcam driver for Linux
Just turn on CONFIG_VIDEO_CPIA=m when you build your kernel. You can even use /proc to turn the microscope lights on and off.

CPiA is not made any more. Maybe the QX5 uses a similar webcam chip.

Old slashdot story about the QX3

Physically Scan

[jeffkjo1]

To obtain the key, a passport officer would need to physically scan the machine-readable text that's printed on the passport page beneath the photo

Ok, at this point, they're already scanning the passport, why not just put all the information on the magnetic strip, rather than waste money on an additional RFID chip?