Tag: Security

I’m Never Flying Again

The TSA is the ultimate in security theatre. Every time somebody attempts an attack they implement a new security measure in an attempt to thwart that specific attack. Well it looks like we’re all going to get cavity searches performed on our posterior ends. Via Bruce Schneier’s blog I found a story that you probably aren’t going to read every day.

A wanted militant (for involvement with al Qaeda no less) named Abdullah Hassan Taleh al-Asiri tried to assassinate Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. Mr. Mohammed is a Saudi prince in charge of Saudi Arabia’s counter terrorism efforts so it makes sense an al Qaeda militant would want him dead. It’s the method of assassination this is most interesting though. Mr. al-Asiri smuggled a bomb in that was stuffed up his ass. I’ll forgo all the pain in the ass type pun jokes as they are simple too easy. Anyways it didn’t go down as expected:

After al-Asiri entered a small room to speak with Prince Mohammed, he activated a small improvised explosive device (IED) he had been carrying inside his anal cavity. The resulting explosion ripped al-Asiri to shreds but only lightly injured the shocked prince — the target of al-Asiri’s unsuccessful assassination attempt.

But the fact of the matter is if TSA hears about this we’re all getting anal probed before every flight. Once that happens I’m never flying again.

AES Encryption Explained with Stick Figures

As most of you guys have figured out by now I like security. Being I like security I find the AES encryption scheme to be very useful as it’s a scheme that, as of yet, doesn’t have a practical attack against it. This is rather funny considering how simple the implementation of AES is (the algorithm itself, implementing it in code correcting isn’t quite so easy do to unforeseen attack vectors being introduced by poor implementation).

So how simple is it? Simple enough where the entire algorithm can be explained with a stick figured comic strip. A hat tip goes to Bruce Schneier’s blog for this one.

The Only Ones Hard at Work

Another story showing how the police force are the only citizens responsible enough to be the bastions of society. During a drug raid several police officers decided that they would play on a Wii while their comrade did the actual work of arresting, searching, and collecting evidence.

Why do I bring this up? Is it because of have a beef with police officers? No not at all. I respect police officers and the job they perform. But when somebody fucks up they should be called out on it. Police, like everybody else, are citizens and are no more enabled than the rest of society. Yet some people feel that we should give police the sole responsibility to protect the lives of the citizenry of the United States. They justify their feeling by saying police go through rigorous training and therefore are more responsible and less prone to fucking up than the rest of us. Videos like this prove otherwise.

The New York Times Proves Once Again They Hate Gun Owners

We all know and hate the New York Times. What other paper can you find that constantly berates gun owners as some kind of social sum that should be eliminated? But here is a shocker presented by Snowflakes in Hell, the New York Times is actually being more anti-gun than the Brady Campaign itself. Seriously wow.

See the senate just vote in favor of a bill that will allow those of us traveling with guns to travel on Amtrak. Of course we have to follow the same policies as we do when traveling on airplanes with firearms. But according to the New York Times that’s crazy and is showing preferential treatment to gun owners:

Proponents said the change was needed to put Amtrak back to its pre-9/11 gun policy and equate it with airline security measures that allow unloaded, locked handguns in checked baggage. This is lunatic reasoning for a nation supposedly sensitized by the 9/11 attacks. Why should gun owners be treated as privileged travelers?

Yeah I’ll refer you back to Snowflakes in Hell on this quote. But I never really though that having to check a gun on an airplane was a privilege. In fact I’ve always seen it as a nuisance. Oh and for shits and giggles:

If the Senate wants to pass a bill on Amtrak, it should provide the money to hire more security guards and create a real passenger rail system. Generally, it should just stop its demeaning homage to the gun lobby.

Considering the federal government already does pay to keep Amtrak afloat I think Amtrak should be required to allow us to exercise our second amendment rights while riding aboard. After all we shouldn’t have our federal government funding infractions against this country’s own constitution. Just a thought.

Security Doesn’t Have to Cost Liberty

In memory of 9/11 Bruce Schneier reposted a previous post of his. In it he explains that so called security measures that came at the cost of individual liberty not only miss the point but also are unneeded. Things like the PATROIT Act and warrantless wiretapping won’t actually help prevent the next attack, instead they take away civil liberty and gain us nothing. Furthermore there are ways to implement security without taking civil liberty:

It’s easy to refute the notion that all security comes at the expense of liberty. Arming pilots, reinforcing cockpit doors, and teaching flight attendants karate are all examples of security measures that have no effect on individual privacy or liberties. So are better authentication of airport maintenance workers, or dead-man switches that force planes to automatically land at the closest airport, or armed air marshals traveling on flights.

Liberty-depriving security measures are most often found when system designers failed to take security into account from the beginning. They’re Band-aids, and evidence of bad security planning. When security is designed into a system, it can work without forcing people to give up their freedoms.

Likewise cries for more surveillance also miss the point. Have more data doesn’t always mean you have more usable information, in fact quite the opposite is true. If you gather too much data you’ll have to sift through tons of garbage to find a few good items:

Demands for even more surveillance miss the point. The problem is not obtaining data, it’s deciding which data is worth analyzing and then interpreting it. Everyone already leaves a wide audit trail as we go through life, and law enforcement can already access those records with search warrants. The FBI quickly pieced together the terrorists’ identities and the last few months of their lives, once they knew where to look. If they had thrown up their hands and said that they couldn’t figure out who did it or how, they might have a case for needing more surveillance data. But they didn’t, and they don’t.

More data can even be counterproductive. The NSA and the CIA have been criticized for relying too much on signals intelligence, and not enough on human intelligence. The East German police collected data on four million East Germans, roughly a quarter of their population. Yet they did not foresee the peaceful overthrow of the Communist government because they invested heavily in data collection instead of data interpretation. We need more intelligence agents squatting on the ground in the Middle East arguing the Koran, not sitting in Washington arguing about wiretapping laws.

And this my friends is the difference between the government’s so called security experts and somebody who intimately understands security. Just having more data isn’t a good thing, it’s a liability. Likewise adding bandages to previously exploited security flaws doesn’t accomplish anything either. Security is only effective if it’s placed in the design from the start.

I wish our law makers would realize these things instead of using their “we must do SOMETHING” mentality that we’ve conditioned them to do.

London’s Cameras not Working so Well

A the United Kingdom land of the oppressed and observed. There isn’t really anywhere you can go without being on some CCTV camera, especially in London. Their government is always spouting how critical all these camera are to the security of it’s citizens. So how critical are they? The metric I believe would be the number of crimes solved using these camera. In thatt case they are a miserable failure. From Bruce Schneier’s blog comes a story about how effective those cameras are. Well the rate isn’t so hot.

The cameras in London are responsible for helping solve one crime for every 1,000 cameras. Of course that means the cost to solve each crime is astronomical, in fact it’s about £20,000 per crime.

At that price you can almost hire one new constable for each camera. With the added benefit of each constable being a mobile unit that can respond to a crime, as opposed to a camera which can only passively watch, you also increase the number of jobs which will help unemployment numbers.

London really needs to look at their cost to benefit ratio on these cameras and come up with a better solution than spying on it’s citizens 24 hours a day every day.

Real Gun vs. Nail Gun

A funny story from Says Uncle. A moron in Jacksonville, Florida entered a bar waiving around a nail gun. The bar tender took this act as a robbery attempt and responded in kind. The nail gun wielding individual received rounds from a real gun and died on the spot.

Remember when it’s a battle between a nail gun and a real gun the real gun will always win unless there is some fluke.

You Can’t Rely on Police Protection

You simply can’t rely on the police for you personal protection as this article via Says Uncle shows. Two police officers in San Pablo stood by and watched as a gun name on a bridge killed two people. They made no effort to stop the gun name, apprehend him, or even get the license plate number of the criminal’s vehicle. They did radio for backup and block traffic from entering the bridge though, I guess that earns them a point out of 100 possible points.

Another thing to note is the amount of time it took to kill the two men:

The attack lasted less than half a minute.

So even if the police will protect you if they aren’t within 30 seconds travel distance you can be totally boned.

Remember people you are responsible for your own personal protection. Nobody is going to do it for you.

Anybody Could be a Threat

Many people get in the habit of assuming anybody who comes to their home in a uniform is supposed to be there. Aubrey Isakson is not one of those suckers. When Robert Benjamin, a Verizon technician, said he needed access to Mr. Isakson’s apartment, Mr. Isakson did the smart thing and demanded to see the technician’s ID first. Smart move, everybody should verify the identify of anybody whom they do not know that asks to enter their apartment. Well Mr. Benjamin responded by pounding the shit out of Mr. Isakson. From the story:

“You want to know my name? Here’s my name,” Benjamin snarled, slapping his ID card into Isakson’s face, according to Isakson’s account of the December 2008 confrontation.

“The guy essentially snapped. He cold-cocked me, hit me two or three solid shots to the head while my hands were down,” said Isakson, a limo driver.

He said the pounding bloodied his face and broke his glasses.

But things got uglier, Isakson said, when Benjamin squeezed him around the neck and pressed him up against the wall.

“He’s prepared to kill me,” Isakson said. “That’s all I could think of.”

Anytime there is a potential threat you need to be alert. I’ll be honest I carry all the time, even when at home. I do this because it’s safer for me and it’s honestly quite comfortable since I have a good holster. If I were in a similar situation I believe my Ruger LCP would have been out of the pocket and in the technicians gut. Of course bullets would only be needed had he continues but most people get the message when a gun is presented.

The lesson here is also be at least in condition yellow when presented with an unknown person at your household.