Tag: You’re Doing it Wrong

Colossal Disasters

I don’t know people appreciate the sheer size of the failure that is the Affordable Care Act (ACA) online marketplace. The website cost somewhere between $170 million and $292 million and the only thing the government has to show for it is proof that simply throwing money at a development team doesn’t result in a quality product. On the website’s first day there were only six people able to sign up for an ACA insurance plan:

Just six people were able to successfully enroll in health insurance through Healthcare.gov, the government’s online marketplace, during the first 24 hours it was live. Just 242 people were able to enroll on the second day.

That’s according to new documents released by the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating the website’s bumpy launch. Slow loading times, bugs, and errors prevented an unknown number of Americans from shopping for health insurance. The website had 4.7 million visits in the first 24 hours, the administration says.

Only six people out of 4.7 million visitors were able to sign up. That’s an approximate success rate of 0.0001 percent. From a purely technical standpoint this kind of failure is hard to quantify as far as scale. Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a website should get you sometime like Google or Amazon, both of which provide almost 24/7 up time while servicing more customer in a day than Healthcare.gov is likely to see in its lifetime.

Were Healthcare.gov a private sector website this failure would have likely resulted in a flurry of firings and lawsuits. But since it’s a government website the only thing we’re going to see is even more money dumped into it.

Skirting Responsibility

I really don’t know what I can say about this story that would add to the hilarity:

A bridegroom has been jailed for 12 months after staging a bomb hoax on his wedding day to try to prevent his bride discovering he had failed to complete the paperwork required for them to marry.

He’s fortunate to be in that cage. I’m fairly certain if he didn’t have layers of concrete and armed guards between him and his (most likely former) fiancé she would kill him.

Reversing the Continuum of Force

The continuum of force generally dictates that one should start with the least amount of force necessary and move up the scale from there. I guess nobody told this police officer:

According to police documents, now-former Officer Jody Putnam was inside a Dollar General Store when employees noticed the squirrel. Putnam apparently shot his firearm at the squirrel inside the store. When that didn’t work, he used another weapon; pepper spray.

I would think pepper spray would have come before a firearm. Then again, if I was trying to run a squirrel out of a building I probably wouldn’t use either. Open the door and chase the little bastard with a broom. Eventually it will make a quick exit.

Economic Hitman Tactics on an Individual Level

The New York Federal Reserve released some interesting numbers recently. Of the numbers the one I found most interesting was the amount of outstanding student debt in this country:

Over the last eight years, aggregate educational debt outstanding has almost tripled, rising to nearly $1 trillion and becoming the largest consumer liability after mortgages. Was this dramatic increase attributable to more borrowers, or more debt per borrower? Both, as it turns out, in almost equal measure: The number of student loan borrowers and the amount each borrower owes have both risen 70 percent since 2004.

$1 trillion of student debt? Oi. This got me thinking about a book I read several years ago title Confessions of an Economic Hitman. The premise of the book is that the United States sends economic hitmen to developing nations. Loans are promises to the governments of those countries for major infrastructure projects. The catch is the loans are written to look reasonable but designed in such a way that the country is never able to pay it back. When a country accepts one of these loans they are forever indebted to the United States, which will come back later and demand raw materials or land in exchange for outstanding debt.

Students loans have some similarities to economic hitman loans. While student loans appear to be reasonable on the surface they are often so high that many college students can’t afford to pay them back. Instead they’re stuck paying the interest for the remainder of their lives. The state could effectively tax an entire population of students twice: once in the forms of income, sales, use, etc. taxes and once in the form of interest on outstanding debt. I’m beginning to wonder if the whole purpose behind student loans is to create an entire generation of debt slaves. There’s no way the United States government set up a system that hands out $1 trillion to students out of the goodness of its heart (since it has neither goodness or a heart).

Compounding Mistakes

It’s no secret that healthcare.gov, the primary website for the Affordable Care Act, has been less than satisfactory. People are having a difficult time signing up for their mandatory insurance policies, which will eventually put them at risk of being fined. What is the planned remedy for this problem? Hiring Verizon to unfuck the website:

An informed source in the telecommunications industry said Verizon’s Enterprise Solutions division has been asked by the Department of Health and Human Services to improve the performance of the HealthCare.gov site, which is a key component of the Affordable Care Act. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not been made official.

I’m sure this will go over swimmingly:

A rudimentary URL hack may have exposed texting data for tens of millions of Verizon customers, according to a new report from security researcher Prvsec. The vulnerability was reportedly fixed in September, a month after Prvsec privately disclosed it to the carrier, but before it was addressed it allowed attackers to see who Verizon users texted and when, provided they had a subscriber-level login to the carrier’s website.

Verizon is obviously the best choice to develop a secure website that people will be entering their personal information into.

Bad Science Leads to Bad Results

I’m sure you’ve seen the stories floating around that say scientists of proven that Oreo cookies are just as addictive as cocaine. At first this story gave me hope. I’ve eaten Oreo cookies but have never become addicted to them. If the research was correct that would indicate I could do cocaine without getting addicted. I admit, there are times when caffeine isn’t enough to keep me awake and it would be nice to know a nonaddictive, strong alternative exists for those times when I absolutely must stay awake. Sadly my hopes have been dashed. As it turns out, the research was bupkis:

Fox News reported that a “College study finds Oreo cookies are as addictive as drugs,” Forbes explained “Why Your Brain Treats Oreos Like a Drug,” and a ton of other sites ran with the story as well.

Here’s how the experiment, which has not been peer reviewed and has not been presented yet, went down. Mice were placed in a maze, with one end holding an Oreo and the other end holding a rice cake. The mice, without fail, decided to eat the Oreo over the rice cake, proving once and for all that mice like cookies better than tasteless discs with a styrofoamy texture.

“Just like humans, rats don’t seem to get much pleasure out of eating them,” one of the researchers said in a press release, the same press release that says “Connecticut College students and a professor of neuroscience have found ‘America’s favorite cookie’ is just as addictive as cocaine.”

Bad science leads to bad results. Granted, this story set off my bullshit detector right away. Because of my suspicious nature I assumed that the research was performed by an anti-obesity group looking to demonize popular junk foods or by a competitor to Oreo cookies (probably from a company that offers healthier alternatives). As gun control groups have taught us, the results you want can be obtained so long as you right the criteria properly. But it turns out that this research wasn’t the result of some anti-obesity group or an Oreo competitor (that we know of), it was the result of a bad experiment. All the experiment demonstrated was that mice don’t care for rice cakes. I don’t blame them, I find them to be flavorless and unfilling as well.

Unfortunately, I’ll almost certainly see claims that Oreo cookies are as addictive as cocaine on Facebook for weeks to come. Incorrect information seems to disseminate faster than correct information. That’s probably because correct information is seldom makes for as good of a story as incorrect information.

Being Offline Won’t Stop the State from Tracking You

After Edward Snowden leaked the National Security Agency (NSA) documents that unveiled how vast its surveillance has become there were a lot of reactions. Some people decided they didn’t have anything to hide so the state’s spying wasn’t an issue, otherwise decided to pursue technologies that would allow them to keep private communications private, and others decided to go offline. Of the three reactions the last one was, by far, the most irrational. You don’t have to be online for the state to track you. As this article points out, there are other ways for the state to surveil you:

The people who have actually attempted to live without being tracked–most often due to a safety threat–will tell you that security cameras are just about everywhere, RFID tags seem to be in everything, and almost any movement results in becoming part of a database. “It’s basically impossible for you and I to decide, as of tomorrow, I’m going to remain off the radar and to survive for a month or 12 months,” says Gunter Ollmann, the CTO of security firm IOActive, who in his former work with law enforcement had several coworkers who dedicated themselves to remaining anonymous for the safety of their families. “The amount of prep work you have to do in order to stay off the radar involves years of investment leading up to that.”

People who believe themselves to be very clever will often brag about the fact that they use a burner phone (a pre-paid cellular phone you can buy in most convenience stores) that they bought with cash. In their mind this means that the phone isn’t tied to them in any way and that they are untrackable while using it. Most convenience stores have security cameras looking at every square inch of the store. Those cameras can have some fantastic optics that give crystal clear images (the days of grainy black and white video footage from security cameras is ending). Facial recognition software is frighteningly accurate (just post a picture of a friend’s face on Facebook sometime). The state can requisition surveillance video whenever it wants (assuming it doesn’t just collect all surveillance footage like it does with phone calls and e-mails). In addition to that, the NSA collects phone records. It doesn’t take much to look at the numbers you called and develop a social map that has a good chance of identifying you. Using a burner phone won’t keep you safe from Big Brother’s gaze.

Another major source of leaks when it comes to your personal information are your friends:

Friends can be an impediment to a life off the radar. For one, they probably think they’re doing you a favor when they invite you to a party using Evite, add you to LinkedIn or Facebook, or keep your information in a contact book that they sync with their computer.

But from your perspective, as someone trying to remain as untraceable as possible, they are selling you out. “Basically what they’ve done is uploaded all of my contact information and connected it to them,” Sell says.

This is the biggest one in my opinion. My family has given out my phone number and personal e-mail address to people even though I’ve told them numerous times that I didn’t want them to do that. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean your friends and family are. Unless you’re willing to sever all ties with other people you’re trackable. You may not have a Facebook account but that won’t stop your friends from posting pictures of you and writing your name in the description.

Going offline won’t save you. It won’t even make tracking your more difficult. The only thing going offline does is prevent you from utilizing very powerful technology to your advantage.

Immunity from Consequences has Consequences

What happens when you grant a monopoly on violence to an organization and then grant that organization a monopoly on determining whether or not it used too much violence? Incidents involving over 100 round fired into a car occupied by unarmed individuals with no consequences for the shooters:

CLEVELAND, OH (WOIO) – Cleveland Police Chief McGrath announced results of disciplinary hearings for patrol officers involved in the deadly November police pursuit on Tuesday morning.

[…]

According to Chief McGrath, 64 patrol officers were found guilty of breaking policy. No one will be fired, and the longest suspension will be 10 days. 19 Action News has learned some officers were cleared.

[…]

On November 29, 2012, police chased a car with two people from Cleveland to East Cleveland. Officers first saw the car speeding and heard what appeared to be a gunshot coming from it. The driver refused to stop, and officers reported seeing a weapon in the car, but no gun was ever found. The 28-minute chase ended with officers firing 137 shots into the car, killing the driver, Timothy Russell and the passenger, Malissa Williams.

Firing 137 rounds into a vehicle in a city is pretty irresponsible by itself. But unloading that wall of lead because you heard something that sounded like gunfire is totally irresponsible. To make matters worse, the officers involved in the incident received nothing more than a paid vacation. In other words, the officers who demonstrated total irresponsibility suffered no negative consequences, which will almost certainly encourage such behavior in the future.

As a side note, advocates of gun control often ask why us advocates of gun rights are opposed to allowing the police to decide who can and cannot own firearms (advocates of gun control generally hide this demand under the label of “background checks”). The answer is simple: police officers in this country frequently demonstrate a complete lack of responsibility when it comes to firearm usage. I, for one, cannot see the logic in putting people who are irresponsible with firearms in charge of deciding who gets to own a firearm.

Pure Sensationalism

One of my friends posted this story from Natural News, a site known for sensationalist stories. This story fell within my area of expertise so I found it more annoying than most sensational articles posted on that site. According to the article:

(NaturalNews) We have already established that Healthcare.gov is not a functioning database application that allows people to shop for competing health plans. It is actually a government-run Trojan Horse that suckers people into creating accounts where they hand over:

• Name and address
• Email address and password
• Social security number
• Private bank account details
• Employer details and other information

During the enrollment process, your computer also hands over your IP address which is then tied to your social security number.

This time the emphasis isn’t mine. With the exception of your Social Security number and employment history all of these things are handed over to any site you buy products from. With that information your Social Security number can be found for $0.25 through services like Tracers Information (I was Kevin Mitnik bring up a volunteer’s Social Security number using this site in the Social Engineering Village at Defcon 21). And, more to the point, this is all information that the federal government already has. In fact the federal government is the organization that gave you the damn Social Security number in the first place.

The article then goes on to claim that all of that information is transmitted to the National Security Agency (NSA). Why would the NSA have to get Healthcare.gov to send it that information? Thanks to Edward Snowden we know that the NSA is spying on people directly through direct access to Internet Service Providers (ISP) and companies that offer online services (Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.). As a federal agency the NSA also has access to your driver license records (name and address), Social Security information, and bank information (financial institution regulations are glorious, aren’t they). A simple peek at your bank account will almost certainly reveal who you’re working for (and who you have worked for). The NSA doesn’t need a healthcare website to get all of this information, it has setup a pervasive surveillance apparatus to get all of this information already.

The reason these types of articles piss me off is because they drum up unnecessary fear of technology. In order to overcome tyranny fear must first be alleviated. Or, to put it another way, the only way to fight gods is to first prove that they’re not gods. So stop with the fear mongering and sensationalism. It’s annoying because I then have to explain all of this shit to my less technically minded friends.

Risk Assessment

I’m beginning to think that the downfall of our society won’t be caused by economic hardship but by our society’s ever growing unwillingness to accept any risk. Consider this story:

That’s what parents are asking after hearing about a Long Island middle school’s decision to ban most balls during recess and also require supervision of tag, even cartwheels, due to safety concerns.

No longer allowed at the Weber Middle School in Port Washington, New York: footballs, baseballs, soccer balls, lacrosse balls and any other hardballs that could injure a child. Also off limits: rough games of tag and cartwheels unless an adult supervisor is on hand.

“We want to make sure our children have fun but are also protected,” Dr. Kathleen Maloney, superintendent of Port Washington Schools, said in a local television interview, noting how playground injuries can “unintentionally” become very serious.

Even at a very young age children are being taught that risk is unacceptable. While playground injuries are never favorable they are also notably rare when you consider how many students play on playgrounds versus how many students are injured on playgrounds. Combine that ratio with the fact that a vast majority of playground injuries are likely minor scrapes and cuts. How often has a kid been killed playing football. I’m sure somebody can point out one or two stories but such an occurrence is statistically rare.

But banning games involving balls and unsupervised tag reinforced a zero tolerance policy of risk. When you think about it, much of the ills our society faces may be attributed to an unwillingness to accept risk. Economic polices are an example of this. The Federal Reserve, and with it ills such as fractional reserve banking and continuous inflation, was put in place to supposedly mitigate the risk of booms and busts (it failed obviously). Whenever a single company manages to commit an act of fraud the state moves in with sweeping legislation that causes hardship for every other company. These laws are usually met with widespread support form the general public who believes our society must do something to ensure the risk of fraud is wiped from the face of the Earth. Outside of economics, the Affordable Car Act (ACA) is another example of our society being unwilling to accept risk. In the hopes of eliminating the risk of uninsured people there was a law supported by some very loud individuals for a law that mandates everybody buy insurance.

Risk can never be abolished. It is ever present in everything we do. Since it cannot be eliminated we must learn how to live with it. Risk assessment is an important skill, one that cannot be learned in a sterile world where we’re taught only to consider risk unacceptable. The harder we work to eliminate all risk the more risky our society it likely to become.