Category: Security

Security is immunity from the will of others.

One little bone and the power of science

A story I read recently about a new species of hominid discovered in Siberia left me feeling struck with the power of science. Inside a cave in the Altai Mountains, a single bone was discovered – the tip of an animal’s little finger. From this, scientists extracted 30 milligrams of mitochondrial DNA. From that, they were able to determine that the creature is an evolutionary relative of modern humans and that, furthermore, it represents a fourth independent instance in which human ancestors radiated out from Africa:

The common ancestor is, however, too recent for the new species to be a remnant of the first human excursion from Africa, the one that led to Java man and Peking man, now known as Homo erectus. It is, in other words, a fourth example of anthropological tourism from Africa to the rest of the world, on what is now looking like a well-worn route. Yet it is the lone example. That shows how fragmentary and ill-understood human history is.

The finger bone was found in strata dated to between 48,000 and 30,000 years ago (the bone itself has not yet been dated). That means the creature was contemporary with both Neanderthals and modern humans in the area.

It seems to me that there has been no other area of human endeavour which could have revealed so much using so little. Certainly, it demonstrates how much information is contained in ancient genetic material, and how powerful its analysis can be for understanding the history of life on Earth.

Irony in The Wire

Without revealing anything about the major plot developments in this excellent series, I can comment on one thing I realized about The Wire overall, as I was watching the final season. Within the show, it can be broadly said that there are two sorts of police officers – those that are happy to function within the system as it exists and those who aspire to do things differently. The former recognize the political necessity of ‘cracking down on crime,’ no matter how pointless that may be in its ultimate consequences. As such, when some politician needs improved crime statistics, they will happily go round people up for minor offenses and otherwise fudge the numbers until they seem to reflect the promised improvement.

The other set of police officers want to build up comprehensive cases against the leaders of the drug gangs, securing prosecutions against them using surveillance and human intelligence. They see the efforts made to fudge statistics as deeply wasteful. The irony is that their ‘real police work’ actually causes far graver consequences. Every time they remove someone from the top of the pyramid, it generates a bloody contest for dominance among the other high-level agents. The police therefore keep themselves well occupied with murders. Similarly, when people who are imprisoned are eventually released, they are liable to create conflicts. It’s not for nothing that the drug dealers in the show refer to their interactions with the police and with one another as ‘The Game.’

In the end, then, neither form of policing really accomplishes anything overly meaningful. The shoddy policework maintains a churn of people being brought up on minor charges, keeps police officers busy, and helps politicians convince voters they are doing a decent job. The professional policework, meanwhile, helps perpetuate the large-scale violence between and within drug organizations.

Given the degree of realism in the show, it does not seem inconceivable that dynamics of this sort operate in the real world, at least in those places that continue to see prohibition as the proper response to the problem of illicit drugs. As I have expressed here before, that seems a wrongheaded approach to me. It would be far better to undercut the violence of the drug trade by making it legal and controlled, akin to alcohol and tobacco, while simultaneously treating drug addiction as an illness requiring treatment and not a crime requiring deterrence and punishment.

1973 NSA cryptography lectures

For those with an interest in cryptography, and secure communication generally, a series of recently declassified lectures from the American National Security Agency are well worth reading. The moderately-to-heavily redacted documents from 1973 cover a number of engaging subjects. The first volume covers the importance and practicalities of secure communications, codes, one time pads, encryption systems for voice communication, various bits of specific American communication equipment, TEMPEST attacks (described as “the most serious technical security problem [the NSA] currently face[s] in the COMSEC world”), and more. The second volume includes lecture on operational security, issues around the number of sending and receiving stations, public (commercial) cryptography, the destruction of cryptographic equipment in emergency situations, and more. There are also some interesting tidbits on tropospheric and ionospheric scatter transmission systems, which bounce signals off of the upper atmosphere which are theoretically highly directional.

Originally classified Secret and ‘No Foreign,’ the lectures are well written, engaging, and illuminating. Some of it is overly technical and specific, but there is also some broadly applicable general information about cryptographic theory and practice, as well as the role of communications security organizations within governments and militaries.

Unfortunately, the PDF consists of non-searchable, and sometimes badly copied text. Still, the difficulties of reading it are minor. There are also some long gaps where entire sections have been redacted.

Cleaning house

Not to direct this at any particular organization, but it seems to me that if you want to start repairing your credibility after giving shelter to child rapists for decades, it is pretty clear how you should start. First, admit that you have entirely failed to prevent criminal abuse through your internal processes. Second, openly encourage civil authorities around the world to prosecute your members and affiliates just as they would any other criminals. Third, make all your internal records available to assist them in securing arrests and convictions. Fourth, encourage the prosecutions of those involved in covering up known crimes, as well as those who actually committed them.

Anything less than that and you can be rightly accused of just perpetuating the aiding and abetting of vile crimes, and continuing to utterly fail to act as an ethical or responsible organization.

As for those looking into the matter from outside, it is time to stop allowing organizations to hide behind pathetic euphemisms and false contrition.

[Update: 12 Apr 2010] Things are heating up, rhetorically at least: Richard Dawkins calls for Pope to be put on trial.

Conference on a world more than four degrees warmer

Given our increasingly slim chances of avoiding more than 2˚C of global warming, it makes sense to start thinking about what a world hotter than that could be like.

The University of Oxford recently hosted a conference on the subject: 4degrees International Climate Change Conference: Implications of a Global Climate Change of 4 plus Degrees for People, Ecosystems, and Earth Systems.

32 of the short lectures are available free, via iTunes.

As an aside, posts might be thin here for the next while. Work is busy, and I am concentrating efforts on BuryCoal. If you haven’t had a look at that site yet, please do. Some good discussions on the posts people have already written would be just the thing.

After the Ice

Having already read a great deal about climate change and the Arctic, I expected Alun Anderson’s After the Ice: Life, Death, and Geopolitics in the New Arctic to provide only a moderate quantity of new information. I was quite surprised by just how much novel, relevant, and important content he was able to fit into the 263 pages. The book discusses the historical and current relations between governments and Arctic indigenous peoples; ice flow dynamics and exploration; the changing nature of Arctic ecosystems and species, along with information on what climate change may do to them; international law and the geopolitical implications of a melting Arctic; oil, gas, and other natural resources, and how their availability is likely and unlikely to change in coming decades; the rising tide of Arctic shipping, and the special safety and environmental considerations that accompany it; and the feedback effects that exist between a changing Arctic and a changing climate.

Ecosystems

Some of the best information on the book is about biology and Arctic ecosystems. It describes them from the level of microscopic photosynthetic organisms up to the level of the megafauna that gets so much attention. Anderson argues that most of the large marine mammals (seals, walruses, whales, etc) are threatened to some extent or another by the loss of sea ice. This is for several reasons. First, it could disrupt the lowest levels of the food web they rely upon. Second, it could permit the influx of invasive species that could out-compete, starve, or attack existing Arctic species. Third, the lifecycles of Arctic animals are slow and deliberate, and thus liable to disruption from faster-breeding competitors. Disappearing sea ice off Svalbard has already completely wiped out what was once “one of the best areas for ringed seal reproduction.” Arctic species, argues Anderson, will need to “move, adapt, or die.” Generalists like beluga whales have promise, while the narwhal and polar bear may be the most vulnerable large creature in the ecosystem.

One consequence of the loss of multi-year sea ice that I had not anticipated is the potential for a massive migration of species between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, with invasive species potentially seriously altering the composition of ecosystems on both sides. Melting ice could therefore produce major changes in much of the world’s ocean. Even before that, expanded range for orcas could have a significant effect on life in northern waters. Where ice used to provide safety, by obstructing their pectoral fins, these powerful predators increasingly have free reign.

Resources, shipping, and tourism

Anderson makes an effective argument that most of the oil, gas, and resources in the Arctic will be effectively locked away for some time yet. There will always be ice in the winters, glacial ice calving off Greenland and other Arctic islands poses a significant risk due to its extreme hardness, and very high commodity prices are necessary to justify the risk and capital investment required to operate in the region. (See this post on the the Shtokman gas field.) He expects that, even if there is a boom, it will be short-lived and of limited benefit to those living in the region. In particular, he cautions people living in the north not to abandon traditional ways of life sustained by things other than oil and gas. Living for a couple of rich decades and then being left with nothing would be a tragic outcome.

The book also downplays fears about a scramble for resources and sovereign control. Anderson argues that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) already provides a clear legal framework and that negotiated outcomes are probable. That should provide some comfort to those concerned about diplomatic or even armed conflicts in the changing north. One danger Anderson does highlight is how the risk of collision with ice, increasing shipping and tourist traffic, and the absence of emergency response capabilities could combine. He describes plausible scenarios where major oil spills or massive loss of life could result, due to a problem with a tanker or a cruise ship (disproportionately full of elderly people susceptible to cold, as they are).

While Anderson does an excellent job of explaining some of the risks to species and human beings from a changing Arctic, he doesn’t take seriously the possibility of truly radical or catastrophic change, of the kind highlighted as possible by James Hansen. Anderson also completely fails to describe how the incremental emissions from burning oil and gas in the Arctic would inevitably increase the degree of climate change experienced by humans and natural systems. It is cumulative emissions that matter most, and extracting hydrocarbons from the far north can only increase those.

For anyone with an interest in what is happening to the Arctic and what the medium- and long-term implications of that might be, this book is enthusiastically recommended.

Best books of 2009

Back in 2007, I put up a post listing my five favourite books of the year. Somehow, I missed 2008. Despite that, I am still happy to assert that the 2007 list includes some of the best books I have ever read.

Among the books I read in 2009, these are the five I most emphatically recommend:

It was a tough choice.

Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood would be a natural successor to Oryx and Crake back in 2008. Unfortunately, the better book of the two remains the original.

If I had read Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed soon after it had come out, it might have been one of my choices. That said, it is a compelling and important book.

Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution certainly deserves a nod. For anyone who wants a comprehensible account of why we know as much about evolution as we do, this is the book to read.

You can read all my book reviews here.

I may eventually cook up a retroactive 2008 list.

Obama’s nuclear loan guarantees

President Obama has announced that the federal government will provide $8 billion in loan guarantees for two new reactors: the first to be built in the United States since 1979. The guarantees mean that, in the event that plant owners cannot ultimately pay their bills, the government will step in with the promised funds.

There are many reasons to be wary of nuclear power as a climate change solution, with cost and deployment times perhaps the most important (climate change is more threatening than waste, accidents, and proliferation). That said, we need to nearly phase out fossil fuel emissions by the middle of the century. Despite the thirty-year gap in construction, nuclear is still the most important zero-carbon source of electricity in the United States.

It remains impossible to know the true cost of nuclear power, once all the explicit and implicit subsidies are taken into account, as well as connections between military and civilian programs. That said, it looks like we need every low-carbon energy option available.

Hacking Chip-and-PIN

Apparently, the authentication system on Chip-and-PIN bank cards is fundamentally flawed. You can manipulate the system to accept any PIN, by taking advantage of the negotiation system used between the merchant and the bank’s authorisation system. This post and this technical paper provide more details on the vulnerability. These cards are common in Europe, and being increasingly rolled out in North America for security reasons. Perhaps the banks doing so should rethink that.

This seems like another example of how serious breaches in electronic security systems are rarely caused by attacks against encryption algorithms directly. Much more often, it is some other component of the system that is weak.

The Invention of Lying

The film Ricky Gervais film The Invention of Lying is based around a fascinating central conceit, but ultimately fails to explore it in an interesting way. The film imagines a world in which people are simply incapable of telling falsehoods, and in which they automatically accept any statement from another person as true. While bits of the film are very funny, it is disappointing that the protagonist who learns how to lie uses it for such uninspired things as cheating at casinos and manipulating the affections of the pretty but dull female lead. Indeed, beyond her appearance there is never any indication of why she is an especially desirable partner. You would think someone with truly awesome powers to manipulate all of humanity might dream up some grander projects than getting rich and rearing children with the woman he happened to meet just before his discovery.

One awkward issue is that people frequently provide bad information for reasons other than deceit. They provide old information, misunderstand things, get bad readings from equipment, and so on. In any functional world, people would need to be able to realize that these sorts of errors occur. Furthermore, this kind of basic scrutiny seems absolutely necessary for the development of science and technology. It is hard to see how people could be capable of parsing out bad information that others provide by accident, while simultaneously being unable to imagine that someone might intentionally tell them something incorrect. As such, Gervais’ world would either be seriously lacking in scientific or technological sophistication or simply be very improbable.

I also think a world without lying would be dramatically different from ours in ways that go beyond dialogue, the procedures at banks, and the kind of films that are made. I doubt that the basic political and social structures in such a world would so closely resemble ours, given the extent to which falsehood and misinformation are fundamental to our political and economic systems, and even our day-to-day interactions. The film never shows much of the world beyond the first world town in which it is set. You have to wonder what the world at large would resemble. For instance, it seems unlikely that dictators could emerge or endure in a world where they needed to be entirely truthful. It is also interesting to imagine what the world of international relations and diplomacy would look like.

The actual invention of lying is what security researchers would call a ‘class break’ – a discovery that renders an entire system vulnerable by creating new sorts of attacks. For instance, while learning the combination to one lock could permit a security breach, realizing that all padlocks of a certain type can be opened with a shim is a class break. Being able to lie to people who would automatically accept anything you claimed as true would be an overwhelming instance of this effect. Indeed, it seems impossible that in a world governed by natural selection, the ability to be deceitful would not spread rapidly, completely eliminating the trusting world that existed before, and which was in an unstable state as soon as lying became possible. You would eventually expect a new equilibrium to arise with key features present in our own world: from mental scrutiny to background checks to legal systems designed to minimize the damage caused by malicious individuals.

In any event, the film prompts some interesting thinking, even if it sticks to a rather conventional romantic comedy structure (complete with the nasty bad guy competing for the trophy woman in question). I suppose the film’s value lies more in the comedy than in really exploring the central concept. Some of the explicitly truthful dialogue is certainly quite amusing, particularly when it occurs in places where we expect white lies, rather than malicious falsehoods, to be told. For instance, the first date between the male and female lead, set in a somewhat fancy restaurant, is perhaps the best part of the film. It is when the most trivial lies are avoided that the most amusement results.