Schneier on Security

Conspiracist • March 3, 2016 6:23 PM

Horrible study. Terrible science.

Cassandra wrote:

Bruce, that Grimes paper is not well founded.

There’s a fairly accurate take-down here:

http://littleatoms.com/david-grimes-conspiracy-theory-maths

Thank you. I only had to read a few posts down to find someone had already well stated what I immediately realized:

• ludicrously low data set

Three, four data samples to try and make conclusions? That is as “scientific” as believing that the moon landing was faked.

Conspiracies are all over the place. Intelligence and organized crime run by conspiracies. For one. Mom and dad and the truth about sex is a conspiracy kept from children. Or santa claus.

Anywhere people get together in secret and work, that could be said to be a “conspiracy”. What are other factors? If they do so, working against others? Happens in every family, in every business. In competitive athletics and science. People do conspiracies for sex, religion, and social kicks, as well.

Four point five million Americans have clearance, keep secrets. Plenty of secret projects never get out. How many more have state level secrets across the world?

Twenty million Americans were affected with the OPM hack. Perhaps because it did not just have those currently cleared, but those cleared over the past fifteen years. How many living in America alone have had clearance, then? The population is only 300 million. Again, how many then, globally, live today with state level secrets, alone?

There are secrets too big to believe. There are secrets too small to care about.

There are a lot of qualities about conspiracies that would have to be taken into account to even begin such work.

Many conspiracies are guessed at or rumored about before they make the front pages and concrete proof is provided. Many conspiracies are learned about by foreign intelligence services long before they make the front pages. Many conspiracies would never make the front pages because they are either too difficult to believe, or too small.

Many “true to life” movies, in fact, have had facts altered simply because the true story was too coincidental or otherwise strange to be found plausible.

People are terribly irrational and biased. They believe what they want to believe based on their preferences. So, there is no truth.

People are terrible at figuring out secrets. Absolutely terrible.

The conspiracy theorists help the conspiracists. The anti-conspiracy theorists help the conspiracists too.

The cops and spies and scientists hunting for conspiracies help the conspiracists.

And the ones on their own team skeptical of their work help the conspiracists.

I will say it again.

People are terrible at figuring out secrets. Absolutely terrible.

Conspiracist • March 3, 2016 10:04 PM

@David Days

Looks like I’m swimming against the tide here, but my question is this: Suppose it is a bad model, with flaws (and it may be). Do you have a better one?

I think some of the critiques are legitimate, but wholesale dismissal of the attempt is a little heavy-handed. For example, instead of “conspiracy”, what about applying the concepts (and maybe the math) to “security”? The likelihood of a severe security breach depends on how many people you have working for you, how likely an group or subgroup member is going to breach the security of the system (bank, password, HIPAA data, etc), and what depth of harm can come from that breach.

It may not be the perfect model, but I see it as a good baseline to start from.

Statistical modelling is essential to security. I do not see anyone dismissing this wholesale. Frankly, I consider this a “conspiracy theory” forum, my own self. Even if some posters obviously are either engaged in conspiracies, or “fmr”.

The problem is his definition of “conspiracy”, which is abysmal. And his data samples used for modelling. What else is there.

It makes a mockery of himself and the site, which some scientists are against. (The site where he posted it is trying to create a sort of open disclosure standard for scientific studies, not unlike what we in computer security have done with full disclosure. You know, having real peer reviews, instead of having everything be vetted and controlled by corporations and governments and not easily repeated or challenged.)

None of the people here have to have a phd with a distinguished college to make these observations. The observations stand.

Some of them have even touted ludicrous conspiracy theories as truth, yet their arguments stand. So transparent and piecemeal was the author’s work.

It was a blatant disregard for the very art of conspiracy.

Which, no doubt, offends, both conspiracy theorist and conspiracy activist alike on such boards as these. 🙂 🙂

People who are involved in conspiracies especially see such dubious attempts as dim witted. There are pretensions to intelligence. It is bad grifting, is what it is. So, some kid had his way paid for him through college. That anybody buys this just says how bad of suckers people really are.

Real conspiracies do go on, all the time. Who can study them? Intelligence and military organizations might have some grasp on their own successful projects. If they could organize them all. Or be privy to the most important ones.

And even then, they would have broken sample sets. Just from their own organization. Other organizations may try different spins on the matter, with entirely better and worse results.

The conspiracy not a few are involved in goes on for decades. And from that, they have many smaller conspiracies. How many of these do you think that Dr Grimes has run across, unawares? How many run in his academic circles, maybe just at the fringes? How many have shook his hand? How many have sipped tea across from him, or taught and sat in the classroom down the hall? He would not know.

The unsuccessful conspiracies, that is, are the ones which are caught. How do you prove the unknown? Even if you wish to work from FOIA documents, memoirs, court cases… usually, what you are operating from is half truths, partial truths, if truths at all. Why do those cases surface in the first place? Because there was some manner of error about them, or some reason they were able to be released in the first place which means they lacked value.

Those points said, you are correct, there are a lot of facets of conspiracies which could be cobbled together for a successful, strong theory.

Pointing out that “the more people involved”, however, and reducing that to a mathematical formula is not new. While I am not sure who invented it, it was an important plot point in Death Note, a Japanese manga. I believe I read of it in a book decades ago, but am not sure. We also know there is a well known concept that ‘the more complicated a system, the more likely it is to failure’.

Yet, there are conspiracies with many, and very complicated systems that do run, quite well, without failure.

Because conspiracies have many junctures of fault tolerance.

How do you breed in fault tolerance? What are the many ways?

One can start to easily enough list a few… one of the more tried and true method is 24/7 surveillance of “anyone who knows”, and “let them know they are being surveilled in casual ways that are impossible to confront”.

Fear is another partial point of fault tolerance.

Surveillance can be used to control others and make that control known to any possible leaky wheels. For instance, show somebody you know what journalist they are thinking of talking to, and show how they are under surveillance and control. Or show that with police, judges, magistrates.

Subtle threats against family is something else.

The Cosa Nostra has had a system where even your best friend will kill you, if you turn. Most conspiracies are insular, and deeply so.

Getting one’s hands dirty as part of joining is an aspect of fault tolerance.

What else?

Being able to detect very well possible ‘falling away’ is certainly a major one.

Doubt is not as easy to manage in more open systems. Doubt is easy to manage if everyone lives in the same roof. But when you have a cellular system, who manages doubt in each cell?

There are many, many questions such as these. Many studies made. It is important to make these sorts of studies. Because conspiracies and secrets are common. Not odd. Not far flung.

And it is certainly good to look at many of these organizations and how they failed. How did the New York crime families go down? How did the last wave of caught Russian directorate s agents get caught? On and on and on. How did operation X last year go off without a hitch? How did operation Y ten years ago teeter on the brink, but come back? And is the information given, real? Did the New York crime families go down because of the ease of using RICO and the power of secret surveillance in an upstairs room over their social club really do it? Did a NY Russian KGB Officer really defect to the US and turn over all US directorate S agents he managed? And so on.

I would definitely appreciate anyone’s thoughts and opinions on these matters.

I will state, however, I believe Dr Grimes study is bunk. And I believe people, in general – myself included – are absolutely horrible at detecting conspiracies.

Conspiracist • March 4, 2016 10:38 AM

@Fan of Conspiracy Conspiracies

I am certainly glad to provide some chuckles. 🙂

And, I was going to hit at that. What I would say is the author’s clear disingenuous and bias, pandering to political angles. Telling people what they want to hear. I went through some of the other articles, and it was the same old thing.

I am glad I make him annoyed. His “science” is crap. I “believe” in science. The principles are not entirely unsound, though they do not take in mind principles of ‘expectations affecting the result’, and so subjectivity. Not as rigorously as they need to. What do they expect. Flash forward, think ahead of the curve, ‘where we are today’ is always grotesquely behind. And right where the most esteemed have the most confidence.

But they buy into these theories knowing they are biased.

So, they are guilty and deserve to be deceived.

If they would bother to try and listen to all sides of matters, to really know their “enemy”, maybe they would find wisdom.

If they would value humility, they would find wisdom.

But arrogance posed as intelligence for the payment of praise, is the bribery they so desire over wisdom.

Thank God for Netflix. It all reminds me of the virtues of the movie “Unforgiven” they have out.

Conspiracist • March 4, 2016 11:23 AM

@Visiting

Thank you, professor, for dropping in. 🙂

Take the example of break-offs from mainstream religions, like the Protestant Reformation. People had hunches something was amiss, pursued those hunches, found evidence, bounced thoughts off others, and created an alternative. Others perceived safety, veracity, and value, so they stayed and defended their stance. Dissidents were treated as wrong, but moved on in their new safe zones.

That is a very good example, and a vast one. Along these lines are exactly what I meant by some conspiracies lasting thousands of years. But, much of this is kept hardened by the very fact that it is more of an ‘unconscious conspiracy’, then a conscious one.

There are many aspects of that, too. And it would be wrong not to try and juxtapose the very same principles there, elsewhere. On similar religious and political systems.

One aspect, of course, which should come to mind to all, here, is the conspiracy to keep the earth as the center of the universe. Which, metaphorically, was a considered attribute of power for the ruling state faction. They, not God nor Heaven, were the center of the universe. That was their preference. That is what they wanted to believe.

They fought hard against such considerations. You see this always in power struggles. Where was the reasoning? The reasoning was unsaid, because it was shameful. The true reason was because ‘if people started to make such proclamations, ultimately their authority and power based on making proclamations would be ruined’.

One of the most fascinating aspects about that conspiracy, I found, was deep in the fifth century “City of God” book, by Augustine. Augustine breathlessly related how things were changing. How the church was coming to power. He indicated some reserve about the laypeople no longer being called “priests”, but “pastors” becoming “priests”. But, he chalked it off. Because he was empowered in this change. He was cheerleading it.

He was complicit.

He was, and would remain, a primary apologist.

Pure evil? Little things he became complicit in. Wanting to believe.

And yet, think about it, that little move, taking the term “priest” from the laypeople, was central. It was one of not so many moves to remove power from the people and put it in the hands of the state. Incremental.

“The devil did it”? No. Human beings did it.

“Good” human beings. Like Augustine.

Conspiracist • March 7, 2016 5:31 PM

@Visiting

I hope I didn’t offend by bringing religion into this, but the history of religion stirs up similar dynamics. And often involves conspiracy theories!

I would argue, without religion, there is religion anyway. Grimes is an excellent example of this. Anti-religious, he is as religious as he can be.

Good examples: just the past few days, finished up on series on the American mafia, and read an article on the tyrant of Turkmenistan. The later who is worthy of a show greater then Borat, as it would be lovely to really see how a compromised media operates. Fawning over their leader. Only, we see the same thing in today’s American media, just it is more divided down the middle. People fawn over the political party belief systems and are divided.

Equal bias.

Not that any of those things, however, are like a true conspiracy. Which, I think has become defined from the JFK assassination, and probably helped from other 20th century misdeeds.

After all, governments, and their people, are often stupid and stupid because they are so biased. If it is so open, is it really a conspiracy? In such cases, only the minority dissenters are left, and they are not a ruling conspiracy, but a minority. Who get killed off as soon as they lift their heads high enough to get them cut off.

It is well worth timing social transition, as people tend to think they are immovable in their convictions. But the results need to be shown to the people who will be swayed, not to those with the resources to sway.

I believe the only bedrock of security on such matters is for policing systems which police themselves. Government must have systematic policing and self-regulation. As it stands, only really local police have self-policing and even that is heavily biased.

Put another way, for most agencies, there literally is no policing whatsoever. Except for the media, if they ever find out anything. Or congressional oversight committees. Which are a farce and politically biased circuses.

But, people get so mired into the details of this or that possible conspiracy, using them for political purposes, the very fact that even if there were a serious conspiracy, there would be no one who could do anything about it is never brought up.

No investigative bodies.

The next question: Who is funding related research, and what do they have to gain?

Grimes appears not to be funded at all, and as another poster pointed out, his arguments are usually revolving around his own religious fetishes, they probably genuinely are not funded by anyone.