Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • October 9, 2012 9:28 PM

@ onearmedspartan,

It's confusing to understand why he raised all that hooplah over shoddy intelligence. You should know when you perform that kind of work mistakes will be made. You just learn from them and move on.

It's not confusing at all, I would take a guess that his personality type is such that he is a high functioning person on the Autistic Spectrum.

Such people are idealy suited to tasks such as safe breaking and other espionage activities as relating to what were once called "Black Bag Jobs". They have a meticulous eye for detail and thus planning which is why they frequently make almost impossible jobs for Neuro Typical peersons look routien or easy.

One problem with autistic types is they realy realy do not being lied to or what they regard as being lied to and will realy dig their heals in when they come across it (as evidenced by not just the ticketing of fire engines but fighting to get the job back and then quiting).

To many autisitc types a person failing to follow the rules is the same as being lied to by that person. A person who is lazy or not particularly diligent is not following their employment / assignment rules so has lied by deed and inaction to not just the autistic type but their employer.

Autistic types also have a very hightened sense of right and wrong and thus of justice and injustice, so they will not turn a blind eye or alow a significant failing to be hidden away. Endangering a persons life in such a way is about the worst form of breaking the rules that there is and for managment to try and disregard it or cover it up means that they likewise are breaking not only the rules but breaking faith and trust with they autistic type and the team that relies upon their skill set for all their safety.

The fact that it went wrong due to somebody at managment level trying to save a few dollars expenses of having him and possibly one or two other members of his team there for an extra day or so would only make the sense of agrievance considerably worse.

Thus you have to ask what happens when any person who has been good at their job gets treated that way?

Well we know that it ranges in extream from some people going "postal" to others commiting suicide.

We also know from other aspects of peoples lives that when strong trust relationships break down (think marriage, living together etc) people lash out against the person who has broken the trust and this frequently results in all sorts of crimes against the percieved trust breaker or their property.

Thus compared to many his behaviour was very far from extream.

Also from what has been said I don't believe his employers would have settled for any kind of agreement they were after bureaucratic vengence where people are punished to keep others in line, thus they were going to try every trick to punish him for speaking out. Even the supposed offer of 3/4 of his basic salery was conditional on his taking the polygraph which would then have been used to go back on the agreement and have him jailed.

We know this from other CIA and NSA whistle blowers who have exhausted all the internal proceadures to get clear and often criminal managment failings sorted out and have finally been forced to use other avenues of appeal outside the community but still within the auspices of government.

As to the way he was treated he made a fundemental tactical mistake in not having a MAD process in place and making sure that they knew that moving against him in any way would result in major and compleatly unavoidable damage.

The thing about what you might regard as "blackmail" or "extortion" is that you have to make what you are asking for appear to be very very reasonable comparied to the alternative that will happen unless you take active steps to stop it happening. That is if you die, disapear, or in other ways are interfeared with then the very worst will be absolutly guaranteed to happen no ifs no buts no maybes it can not be stopped. The person you are negotiating with has to believe it entirely and absolutly, further they have to believe to the same level that there can be no leverage through threataning others like your friends and family. Why? Because they have to go and convince the purse string holders of both these facts otherwise payment will not be made. Further you have to have things in place such that they will not come back at you or anyone else in the future...

He failed to do this and thus payed the price.

Clive Robinson • October 10, 2012 8:59 PM

@ onearmedspartan,

If he was "austistic" he wouldn't have been Army Special Forces and he wouldn't have been a CIA officer. So that's out of the question. The man was skillfull at what he did, but let's not make him into a savant

First of the savant ability is not a requirement for being on the Autistic spectrum, communications disorders are. Usually the person will show traits of "social communication disorder" as well as any other communications disorders. Savantism is sometimes a sympton of the more far end case examples of people on the Autistic Spectrum, those who in the past would have been called autistic.

Social communications disorders are many and varied and it's wrongly belived by many that those on the Autistic Spectrum do not have the empathic ability. Often what they do lack is the ability to interpret social communications directed at them. Some of those on the Autistic spectrum can quite easily recognise social communications between others. It's why you get such odd behaviours around meeting tables the person on the autistic spectrum can see there is tension around the table and can recognise it between a colleague and the boss, but cannot tell that it is also mainly directed at them. They try to help their colleague and in the process make their own position considerably worse as others see it as them trying to avoid responsability.

In the UK we are actually finding that there are significant numbers (ie three to four times what you would expect from the normal population) of people on the Autistic spectrum in positions of command in the armed forces, all the way from team leaders such as corprals through to senior staff officers. The reason is the armed forces are a comfortable place for a high functioning autistic to be. They often excell at command tasks getting the soloution to a supposadly impossible task just by apparently looking. After just one or two demonstrations of this ability the amount of respect they get is significant and the team and usually the "regiment" look after them because they are trusted to not only do the right thing in tough situations they also manage to pull rabbits out of hats when they are most needed.

Certainly in the UK the army are reapraising their view of such people simply because they give core strengths in abundance. Also they tend to be inordinatly self reliant and often end up in "special" units because of this and their ability to do two three or even four trades as well as being able to command reliably.

If you actualy think about it you realise that "special unit members" are the armed forces Geeks.

Also those with Aspergers can have odd physical sensory attributes which sometimes can be very usefull. For instance they can "be colour blind" without actually being colour blind, this makes it easier for them to spot camouflaged areas. They can also have exceptional hearing and can pick things out reliably that we still cannot do with all our technology.

For those old enough to remember M.A.S.H. the charecter Corpral "Radar" O'Reily actually exhibited many of the pointers you would expect of someone on the autism spectrum.

One of the reason people on the autism spectrum feel comfortable in the armed forces is that unlike other branches of Government Office Politics don't play as a significant role and they implicitly get the team support that they would not get in other organisations simply because the team know when the cruch comes it's this person that will do the best for them.

The crunch never happens in other organisations where even junior managment only fly desks and dream of being something else if only they had the guts to "go out and get" instead they work their way up by using the knives they have stuck in other peoples backs as the rungs of their career ladder.

Clive Robinson • October 10, 2012 9:52 PM

@ MrP,

Even if his tale of the prison cell is correct, its hardly a violation of cival rights

I suggest you go back and read it again they subjected him to sensory depravation which is more commonly regarded as a form of tourture, at the very least it was cruel and unusual punishment. Which you might not have noticed is something judges tend not to like especialy where it might be a capital case as it brings the judicial process into "disrepute".

I suspect that they also breached many other judicial rules and laws with what they did and a smarter lawyer might well have used those to the defendents advantage. As the article was written it does not sound like he was treated impartialy in certain respects nor had good representation.

Further may I commend to you the words of Carl Schurz (1872) he is frequently incorrectly attributed as saying "My country right or wrong".

What he actualy said was,

“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."

Brings a whole different meaning and tone to the otherwise jingoistic short phrase that may socunderals hide behind and claim as patriotism.

Clive Robinson • October 11, 2012 3:29 AM

@ Jason,

. They were surely unpleasant but would not pass muster as torture unless they were used for days on end. Beyond that, a windowless cell is also unpleasant, but not torture by most judges' criteria

Firstly various tests on sensory deprevation have shown that the effects start within minutes. One test found that 100% of the test subjects had auditory or visual halucination within 15minitues.

Nearly all people who use SD for "recreation" feel effects such as tingling within 40mins and usually have significantly altered brain wave patterns well within the one hour "tank time" a small number of individuals find the proceadure so unpleasent they leave the tank within 20minutes.

SD has been used as part of drug/alcohol treatment and a two hour session was found to have very significant drops in substance abuse that lasted for well over three months. Repeating the treatment three times was found to have caused behavioural changes that lasted for as long as the study continued.

Sugestability tests and stockholm effect tests have been found within a few days of intermitant SD.

Various other experiments have found that peoples ability to perform tasks involving mental perception dropped markedly after a period of short SD (I can't find the figuers at the moment).

Further many long distance travelers have found that just the use of bright lights above their eyeline worn under the rim of what looks like a tennis sun shade has significant effects on their jet lag.

You need to remember that all of these people were volunteers and could stop their participation in the experiment when ever they wished to.

This is not true of prisoners who are deliberatly subjected to such things against their will and as such would be already suffering anxiety and hieghtened awarness probably making them more susceptable to SD (as far as I'm aware there have been no published results of tests on prisoners and unwilling test subjects). However interviews with people who have been blindfolded or had their eyes taped closed during crimes have all reported that it caused significant mental distress including anxiety fear of imenent harm and halucinations. And other disturbances in their lives for considerable periods there after.

So we know from volunteers SD starts having effects within 15mins and sesions below one hour causes distress in some subjects and alterations in perception and mental ability. And what appears to be very lasting behavioural effects after two hours. And that those who have had just their sight blocked by blindfold for short times during crimes have had very longterm side effects.

Thus arguably the effects start within minutes and have effects that can be lasting.

The fact that some people use SD for pleasure does not mean it is not torture, we know that there are all sorts of (that were once described as devient) behaviours some people use for pleasure that many others would regard as being tourture especialy if inflicted on them without their consent.