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Schneier On the War On the Unexpected
jamie found this essay by Bruce Schneier, The War on the Unexpected. (It originally appeared in Wired but this version has all the links.) "We've opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested — even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats... After someone reports a 'terrorist threat,' the whole system is biased towards escalation and CYA instead of a more realistic threat assessment... If you ask amateurs to act as front-line security personnel, you shouldn't be surprised when you get amateur security."
Our whole lives are spent dealing with people and their reactions to what is 'acceptable' and taking the risk that what you try and accomplish is 'unexpected'. Wear long hair in the executive world? Get fired. Dye your hair green in high school? Get teased. Run down a street naked? Get arrested.
Humans are exceptional at detecting differences, its part of our nature, intellectually - we integrate similar concepts and differentiate between different ones. Our brains pick out differences. Thats why profiling at airports actually works.
Its nice to see someone publish something about this, but its hardly insightful.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
...if their goal was to create fear in the U. S. population.
The fear is real. I hate to admit it, but it affect me.
Everyone knows that there will be further terrorist attacks on the U. S. On the one hand, we're not serious about beefing up homeland security, which is a disappointment to me--I was expecting at least a competent, good-faith effort. But we're doing all the "security theatre" stuff and none of the expensive, difficult, serious stuff. On the other hand, the Iraq war has inflamed passions in the Muslim world and created enemies where we didn't have them before. So the threat is getting worse and our defenses are not getting much better and all the "security theatre" just keeps reminding us of the issue.
On my last plane trip, the gate was near security, and my wife and I were watching as some woman got some kind of very, very extended attention from the TSA people. She was dressed in some kind of dark robe that covered her body, her head, and most of her face; it looked to me like a burkha, but I don't really know anything about such things. She also had a somewhat disfigured face, with a golf-ball-sized lump of some kind on one side of her forehead.
From our vantage point it was all pantomime. I don't know why they were searching her. But they would ask her questions, then wave those handheld metal-detector frisking things, have her sit down for a while, go away and come back with other officials who would ask her more questions and so forth. After about a half an hour she was still sitting there in the security area waiting. They announced that our flight was boarding and we got on and don't know anything more.
What I hated myself for was that I personally was creeped out by this person and her appearance. And what I particularly hated myself for was that the things creeped me out were a) her style of dress, and b) her disfigured face.
Part of me was indignant at what looked from a distance to be discriminatory treatment. And part of it was great relief that she was not on my flight.
You didn't call anyones attention to it, did you? You just confirmed to me that a way to plant a bomb where you work is to just make it look compex enough.
1984 is nice, but I prefer "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street"
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record: prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own, for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that such things cannot be confined... to The Twilight Zone."
My twitter
It's weird to me that no-one seems to have realised yet that you could mass-murder much more people, and in a much easier fashion, just coordinating directly in an airport, in the checkin queues. No one has checked your bag at all yet, and you can blow yourself to smithereens just for the price of not looking too suspicious. At least in cheap European flights like Easyjet or Ryanair, the queues sometimes amount to two or three planes full of passengers. Do it simultaneously, in a few airports, and we wouldn't be able to fly anymore due to fear.
Basically, the problem of getting the bomb to the useful place has just changed the place: it used to be the plane. Now it can be the airport check in queues. Next would be the airport entrances. There will always be a mass of people checking in somewhere, at least until the damn flying cars are finally here.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
I was a Canadian tourist in Boston in April. I walked through Boston Commons Park at 10am on a beautiful Sunday morning, seven steps from my hotel. I said good morning to a few people in the park. Ten minutes later, two police approached and interrogated me. Apparently, some crazy women to whom I said "good morning" promptly left the park and reported me as a sex offender / pedaphile.
The police were firm but polite in their in-park ten-minute interrogation. They said things like "maybe you shouldn't walk around in public parks." and "don't you think it's a bad idea to say 'good morning' to a complete stranger?". They believed me when I said I was Canadian -- after seeing my passport and driver's licence. (yeah, passport wasn't enough for them. I have no clue how they were able to authenticate an Ontario driver's licence, Massacheusets has something that looks like it's off a 1985 inkjet.)
It was really just one crazy woman -- I greeted many people during the week, and others, notably injured Kelly, and also fishing Steve, were exceptionally nice.
All the same, I was glad when they let me leave the country five days later.