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Software to Randomize Police Operations at LAX
owlgorithm writes "A USC research group has created software, named ARMOR (Assistant for Randomized Monitoring over Routes), that will be used at LAX Airport to make security and police operations there truly unpredictable. The software records the locations of routine, random vehicle checkpoints and canine searches at the airport, and police provide data on possible terrorist targets, based in part on recent security breaches or suspicious activity. The software then makes random decisions (which are thankfully based on calculated probabilities of terrorist attacks) and tells the police where to dispatch and when. The most notable detail is that terrorists who had access to ARMOR still wouldn't be able to predict the searches."
I have a rock that keeps tigers away.
BULLSHIT: Believe underacheiving, long-lasting secretive hacks intimidate totally.
"The software then makes random decisions (which are thankfully based on calculated probabilities of terrorist attacks)"
So it's not really random... A pattern must come out after a while.
"Security Through Ineptitude"
I don't fly anywhere anymore.
Unless, of course, the terrorists are in the USC research group and they left a fatal flaw or backdoor inside!
It sounds like this randomness is weighted to still pay more attention to hot zones. Couldn't people with access to the same data still find the least likely places for security to be dispatched? Moreover, if they already have access they can just wait for it to calculate a plan and then go around it.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I have a paper that covers rock.
God spoke to me.
Because we all know that terrorist try to actively avoid canine search and airport security roaming all over the airport, as opposed to, say, passing successfully through the choke point where you have to go through x-ray and removing your belt, pants, shoe and underwear (soon to come). And naturally such said terrorist will go into the database and search for route of police to actively avoid them. /Security Theater. It looks to me it is more designed for drug and other smuggling criminal activity than terrorist. But hey, the commie are there to get you ! Sorry , I meant witches. Hrm. terrorist.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Quote:
"What the airport was doing before was not truly statistically random; it was simply mixing things up," said computer science professor Milind Tambe. "What they have now is systematized, true randomization."
AFAIK, There is no such thing as true randomization in computing. Anyone care to chime in on this?
Sounds about as effective as randomly testing software.
H. A. C. K. E. R.
Hack into the ARMOR system, alter the code, have it generate the routes for you and you won't have to "guess" it's random predictions.
The COPS won't know the difference when they are dispatched to places at the airport. If fact it could dispatch them so that they are FAR away from the real action taking place. If fact you could dispatch them with instructions that a terrorist action was taking place on the other side of the airport with descriptions of innocents as the terrorists causing the police to be terrorists upon those innocents. Well, that's not that unusual since the police are usually domestic terrorists anyhow for most people that they interact with.
lax software to randomize police operations.
or
software to randomize lax police operations.
I assume they are also entering the locations of all donut shops, food kiosks and bars.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
do {
goAfterTheBeardedGuy();
}while(beardedguy == brown);
...to roll percentile dice?
The software then makes random decisions (which are thankfully based on calculated probabilities of terrorist attacks)
They appear to be using a different definition of "random" than the rest of the world.
It's about time airports started using their luggage routing software for security purposes.
If people simply know it's random, all terrorists have to do is send enough people at the same time and the chances are, one will get through. If they think they can sneak one set of people onto a plane with something bad by predicting the search pattern, at least they stand a chance of getting caught anyway. Now if they only searched non-natively english speaking people, then we've got something. Or better yet, just the arabs. Then again people try and smuggle drugs in, not just terroristy stuff so in the words someone on TV who I forgot "they'll just have to search everyone browner than Tiger Woods, Tiger not included" hehehe. Btw I'm not serious, then I'd be racist :P
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
A better name would have been "drunken traveling salesman."
There is a simple solution to this problem, don't use software to do the randomizing. A D20 and a book of rules are fairly resistant to hackers. In others words, if you roll a 4 or a 5 search person otherwise don't.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/30/138233
My first Slashdot dupe report. I'm so excited! What do I win?
"The most notable detail is that terrorists who had access to ARMOR still wouldn't be able to predict the searches."
Uh-huh, right. Like I'm supposed to believe they actually gave terrorists access to ARMOR in order to prove their assertion. If it ain't field tested under real world conditions, then any claims like this is just hot air.
Terrorists though don't actually have that many people to waste on an operation - and if a bunch of suspicious guys get caught all over the airport at once, they would simply lock everything down and really give people there the once-over.
It might work as a gag but wouldn't do anything actually harmful.
They way they do things already with behavior observation is probably the best possible approach because that way they do not target any particular nationality or race, and even false positives mean you get a chance to calm someone down upset about something that might be abusive to the airline crew.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The cheaper solution would be to hire very poor management. Their useless attempts at putting in some sort of order may well seem utterly random to the outside world.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
This topic was discussed several months back: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/30/138233.
Are they going to have truly random responses?
Thursday, Red panties are prohibited from carry on Luggage.
Friday, the X-ray conveyor machine will distribute Salisbury steak.
Periodically travelers will be pulled from the security line,
some will be sent directly to their planes, some will be beaten with sticks.
Saturday, the first 100 customers get a hand grenade!
Sunday, 100 random travelers will be conscripted to run security for the rest of the day.
They way they do things already with behavior observation is probably the best possible approach because that way they do not target any particular nationality or race, and even false positives mean you get a chance to calm someone down upset about something that might be abusive to the airline crew.
Which behavior is more suspicious:
1) A 25 yr old Muslim dressed in traditional clothing praying to Allah as they board the plane.
2) A 25 yr old Catholic praying the Rosary praying as they board the plane.
In terms of behavior, they are pretty much the equivalent. However, I strongly doubt they have an equal probabilty of suspicion.
Even with the current system, my bet is that #1 gets "detained" while #2 gets a reassuring smile.
Races & Nationalities still get targeted because many are biased...
Assistant for Randomized Monitoring over Routes to Donut Shop
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Can I get a saving throw? And more importantly, will they recognise my +5 tin foil hat?
The proper idiom is "In fact, ..." not "If fact...."
I'm usually not a grammar nazi, but it bugged me that you used it twice. In a row.
Rock tears though paper!
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
"Joe, aren't we supposed to be in sector 5?"
"No, i thought it was sector 6."
"Attention, alien presence detected in sector 6. Evacuate immediately."
"Oh crap"
Isn't a decision based on something that's culculated inheritedly also calculated?
The only way it's random is if it's not based on anything. And anything calculated can be figured out.
Picking on terrorists
In the story, the President of Earth is elected by a lottery (hence the title). Any citizen has a chance of becoming president.
When a president is elected, he can legally be assassinated by legally-nominated assassins.
The president is protected by telepathic police; in one case, in order to be harder to track, an assassin acts at random by picking pages randomly and/or by shooting dice.
Shouldn't the Cylon guards already do random searches like this? The guards were too predictable the few times they've been on foot.
"which are thankfully based on calculated probabilities of terrorist attacks"
Which translates to:
Which are unfortunately based on probability that the suspect is of middle eastern descent...
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
It was Philip, not Robert A. Great book, anyways.
All well and good, as long as you don't have long hair and aren't from an Arab family...
Does it go on forever?
They forgot to seed the randomizer!
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/30/138233
The memory and the search button are both usefull. Use the second if the first is bad.
the name says it all.
(but seriously though... yes, i know there is already too much security theater. I am not advocating tighter security - its just a joke)
What if it begins dividing by zero, then? Does that mean free donuts for everyone, or, insta-copkiller -galore?
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
A gag - now that's a good idea! All travelers are stripped naked, hogtied and (to preserve the modesty of the other travellers) blindfolded. They spend the entire time from checkin to checkout like that. That should make it very difficult to hijack a plane. In order to further improve airport security, the stripping happens as soon as you enter the airport for any reason (security personnel exempt). If anyone talks up they are fitted with an inflatable gag.
That's amazingly secure! People are going to love it!
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Lets be honest here, this pattern will likely be so random that every Arab "just happens" to be chosen for cavity searches.
2 the ranting gryphon sums it up pretty well.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I know this article deals specifically with airport police where you want their actions to be truly unpredictable. What about regular beat cops though? Do we want them to be in random places daily?
I often see cops hiding in random places trying to catch speeders, and I wonder if that is the best use of their time. On one street near me there is a speed trap weekly. I suspect this is because the speed limit is 30 mph going down a moderately steep hill so it is easy to catch speeders. As a citizen I would rather these cops be doing nearly ANYTHING else (to include volunteering at a school or working out). I am not at all concerned about someone going 36 in a 30 - I am concerned that my tax dollars are paying to enforce a rule that helps nothing (in my opinion).
Now, the standard answer is "well if they stop speed trapping then everyone will speed". I totally agree: the rules are good in general. How about a nation wide database that records all accidents, crimes, and public complaints. That way the police could focus all of their attention in the spots where there is trouble or complaints. If the local teen punk is speeding through your neighborhood post a complaint - then cops can respond in the best way they can. As it is there is very little police interaction with the public - they have no resort but to randomly hide in bushes and try to surprise us. A database that tells them trouble spots to focus on would make their jobs more justified. And in a town/area that goes without crime, accident, or complaint for a certain period could allow the cops to volunteer at a high school or coach youth soccer or pick up trash or something that the citizens actually appreciate.
Unpredictable cops are fine in the airport - but if I am acting reasonably responsible in a trouble free area I'd like to keep my interactions with the police to a minimum.
Wheres the beef^H^H^H source?!
Will someone please look up target selection in the North Vietnam bombing campaigns? McNamara et al. decided that a computer generated random selection of bombing targets was just as likely to hit NVA targets as human gathered intelligence.
Worked real well, didn't it?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
We all know computers can't do tru random operations, but also, the fact that something is telling the cop to walk left instead of right, and keep a log of it means that they can still make it possible to follow. Depending on how far each personel is from point of entry, you wait until they are at x distance (giving you enough time to do y criminal activity)....if you need 50 seconds and you waited awhile until you noticed 2 cops both left to patrol in either direction and have been walking for more then 35 seconds in those directions, it is safe to say that you now have enough time. .... and then you have the villain factor....if you know someone like that guy from die hard 4 who could hack into that system, he could be the one telling the cops where to go, making it look random...
If they really want something random, they should invest in some funky lighting for their server room...
The airlines would love this. I'm sure you can squeeze a few more naked, hogtied people into a plane than you can currently carry by making passengers "comfortable". And no need for food or anything.
First class passengers would get foam pads and blankets.
when will they learn.
a pseudo-random patrol route is the dumbest fucking idea ever. they should be hiring enough people to patrol everywhere at all times.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I once wrote a program to randomly assign judges to court cases. It was on an old bouroughs mainframe that lacked any random number generator, so I had to create my own. The other issue was that the range of numbers I could use was severely limited, something like (2^16)-1 positive integers only.
Eventually, I was able to generate pseudo-random numbers and then pick from my array of available judges. Since the program was just as likely to assign consecutive cases to judge 240; or two really hard cases to judge 250 and three really easy cases to judge 260; they realized they didn't want random assignment.
To expand on that thought and to differentiate the situation in LA from departments in other large cities, the LAPD is not what it is by chance or accident. And by 'what it is' I mean a racist organization that puts amateurs like that KKK and Aryan Nation folks to shame.
After WWII the growing African-American middle class started moving into the nicer neighborhoods around LA such as South Central, Watts, Culver City, that had previously been exclusively white. Around that time the LAPD started a program of recruiting police officers from departments in Mississippi, Alabama, etc. with preference for military backgrounds. The goal was a build a army against black people.
So I don't see this system working too well, unless it accounts for 'random' occurrences such as the police shooting an unarmed man and planting a gun by the body.
Not absolutely trivial, but damned near. Given X route segments, design a patrol route that will be relatively random. (E.g., roll a dice at each intersection.)
Doh.
Instructions 5:04 PM, instructions to officers in group 3:
Officer 1, begin stapling your left hand.
Officer 2, eat your tie.
Officer 3, Go to Amsterdam and steal a bicycle.
Officer 4, learn to speak dolphin.
Officer 5, You will imitate a bear skin rug.
Officer 6, You will explain the the 1983 super bowl through interpretive dance.
Officer 7, you are now a rodeo rider and the shift supervisor it your loyal horse "Buttercup".
Yep, completely random instructions will definitely mess with the bad guys, just ask the guy who is speaking dolphin.
So based on your logic, I guess you'd be in favor of detaining any introverted computer geeks for interrogation every day upon entering the high school because they are statistically more likely to shoot up their school, right?
/Already modded in this thread but gave it up to post this.
It's what they deserve for looking like the bad guys!
Please look up Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nigeria, and others. Not all Muslims are terrorists, and if you take out the Iraq outlier, I doubt that even most Muslims are terrorists.
"9/11 apparently used up all of the top talent, because we haven't gotten hit by anything since then and it certainly isn't thanks to the crack commandos of the TSA. If terrorists had any real brains, we'd have been hit a hundred times by now."
Have you considered that maybe, they don't want to hit us right now? Al-Qaeda has strategic goals, and terror attacks are one way of fulfilling those goals.
9/11 made the US invade Iraq and Afghanistan(Something Al-Qaeda hoped and planned for, according to documents found in Afghanistan). The Madrid attacks pushed Spain out of Iraq, setting a ground-breaking precedent. The 7/7 bombings led to a backlash that radicalized moderate Muslims.
Security in European countries is quite a bit better than in the US, and yet Al-Qaeda managed to launch several attacks in the area since 9/11.
Combine this with our weak security(And the known fact that Al-Qaeda managed to set up active cells in the US post 9/11), and it becomes clear that there have been no terror attacks in the US, mainly because they havn't been trying.
So if you have 3 terrorists, and their boss packs their bags, and randomly decides which one to put the bomb in, can you convict them for KNOWINGLY carrying a bomb? Actually, if the terrorists were smart, they would manufacture and sell luggage to the public...every nth bag has a "prize" inside the lining. What's in YOUR wallet?
If I were a terrorist, I will send some people to observe where the checkpoints are on the day of attack. I will also trigger false alarms of the system by sending decoys to lead polices to certain locations, while the true attack starts from another location. Hence, terrorists can observe or even control the locations of checkpoints. Randomization helps, but it is not a guarantee that checkpoints are totally unpredictable.
http://content5.clipmarks.com/view_clip.aspx?guid=4905F106-063A-401C-8631-392E2E49652A
-S
Random security is better than predictable security. However, terrorists also watch for security, and move when the security has moved on. As Richard Marcinko and his Red Cell SEAL Team proved, terrorists don't operate by checklists. They hit targets of opportunity. So this isn't going to be all that much better.
Also, as others have pointed out, you just change your targeting to a softer but equally valuable target.
As Wulfgar said in "Nighthawks", "Remember - there is no security!"
There are only two ways to defeat terrorists:
1) Kill them all - this is only feasible when the group is small, localized and does not have the support of the local population. Che Guevara in Boliva is the classic example. Al Qaeda - not even Al Qaeda in Iraq - is not (although the fact that AQI does not have much local support is why they are having difficulties now - however they are not gone and probably never will be.)
2) Change your policies so that you are no longer a terrorist target.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
...I'm glad I have my own damn airplane.
I, for now, see security in that airport is now really LAX. :)
In terms of behavior, they are pretty much the equivalent. However, I strongly doubt they have an equal probabilty of suspicion.
You can doubt all you want, but I've seen plenty of people when traveling praying and they are not hassled - even someone in "Muslim traditional clothing". Both of them would get looks of course, but neither is going to be detained because of those actions alone.
You have no idea what kinds of things behavior the trained officers are looking for. They aren't after guys in funny clothes, they are after people giving off a lot of subconscious indicators that something is amiss.
After all, the four muslim men that got into trouble on a plane were not searched especially, and they only were detained after a passenger that spoke Arabic overheard them say some particularly wierd things and start taking weird actions.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If they are so detained it's not by the behaviorists, that are looking not for funny beards or hats but subtle physiological clues.
Not every officer is a behaviorist you know, but if there were more of them there'd be less profiling of the kind you state. And that's exactly why it's the best possible approach, because it avoids bullshit searches way more than traditional means.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This should really improve LAX Security, right? ;-)