Clive Robinson • January 24, 2020 5:34 PM

@ All,

I’ve mentioned a couple of times in the past that due to an error by a hotel receptionist I traveled back to the UK on somebody else’s passport.

Will I’m not the only on to do it apparently a woman from New Cross in South East London (just) travaled by mistake on her childs passport,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-51226148

Clive Robinson • January 27, 2020 10:16 AM

@ SpacrLifeForm,

Shut down all international flight.We do not need a Pandemic. Won’t happen, will it? It may be too late.

If you shut down international flight it cripples the world economy and causes some strange weather effects. Is what we found out after 9/11 and simillar with the Volcanoe in northern europe a decade later. Then there was by comparison the minor problem of the grounding of Boeing 737’s causing major problemd air transport wise causing economic knock on effects.

Thus politicians who are aware of these problems especially as the world economy is fragile currently, do not want to do this, a world recession is not what the “sane politicians” want.

As for a pandemic, we are going to get one at some point it’s not an “if” but a “when” the reasons are both many and complicated but as has been put once before “If humans keep poking sticks in hornets nests we are going to get stung”. We are damaging way to many “natural ecosystems” way to quickly and their are some real nasties in those places that are still undisturbed. If you stir them up they have no place to go other than into the human domain where the nasties can jump spieces quickly and easily in the 2nd/3rd world environments where people are poor and medical fascilities at best rudimentary…

So yes it’s probably to late to stop pandemics, that realy are only a century old, so mankind realy has no inbuilt defences. Almost certainly when it happens it will be human transmisable, airborne, that will be infectious by ingestion or more likely inhilation, it’s why the flu and cold family of viruses make the likes of the CDC twitchy. Especialy as a common mutation or intermediary host is pigs that after fowl are one of the most common meat sources in the world both of which essentially “cohabitate” with large numbers of humans in Asia and other parts of the world.

But is the “China breakout” going to turn into a pandemic? Well the odds are actually low, and even if it does those in the West and other First world nations are considerably less likely to be infected.

The problem with a new human disease is it largely goes undetected unless it realy hurts people this can be seen from the number of pig to human flu viruses that never get serious news even though they sometimes do effectively become epidemics. That is we realy don’t see the mild flu and cold viruses as anything more than a seasonal anoyance of “the sniffles” or “man flu”.

The first signs are people getting refered by community doctors to hospitals and self admissions to hospitals with respiritory or similar distress. Thus the initial mortality rate is high as they have received no treatment and only the critically effected are turning up at hospital, so the size of the real infected popultaion is unknown. For the current China “cold family virus” the mortality rate was at one point up near 20% but has since dropped. One of the reasons for a rapid quarantine is actually not to stop the geographical spread of the disease as much as it is to slow the spread down to alow time for the medical community to catch up and find effective treatments for the “at risk groups”[1]. That is you stay indoors and interaction is limited to family and essential activities.

As the medical proffession get on top of the disease the nature of the disease and who it effects and how baddly gets quantified and treatments develop as vaccines are unlikely to be available or effective in the first three to six months. Although modern computer techniques are shortening this period, production still remains an issue.

Which is why most first world nations have large stocks of antibacterial and in more modern times anti-virals. However anti-virals are quite problematic, they only have a short opportunity window and gauging when that is going to be of best effect difficult. Which is why alternative drug therapies are almost always sort out as quickly as possible.

The other thing that is sort out as rapidly as possible is “first symptoms” usually by the time you feel unwell enough to go to a doctor it’s to late the disease has a significant hold on you[2].

Thus the “time gap problem” if you don’t know what to look for, then even unrelated infections can be mistaken for the unknown disease. Which is actually doubly dangerous, because you can miss people in the early stages or treat them inappropriately for the disease they do have.

For the purposes of stoping infected travlers you realy do have to know what the first signs are, otherwise those that have been infected without having been to an infection area can get through the cordons. Thus in thr first few hours or days, there is little or nothing that can be done other than a hard quarantine enforced by sufficiently punative measures. Which nobody want’s to do unless realy necassary because amongst other things it creates panic which gives rise to desperation and the exact opposite of what you want to achieve.

Look at it this way, do you realy want soldiers and others in NBC or level 4 cloathing pointing guns at you? Nope me neither it only takes one nervous individual to make it ruin everyones day.

Which is why in the first stages you are more likely to see the “Swan effect” in action. On the surface every thing will look serene, whilst underneath the authorities are milling around like the swans feet. Then when they have something to act on they can put measures in place and activate them. Till then polite smiles and pleasantries are the order of the day, just a more rigourus noting of where you are staying details but otherwise less hassle to keep people appart is about all you will see on arivals and the like.

[1] Normally the at risk groups are not in the economically productive age range unless they have existing chromic disease or habbits. So if you smoke you are almost always going to be in an at risk group for respiritory or circulatory diseases be they viral or bacterial. Likewise other habbits like the excessive consumption of alcohol and coffee, what is not clear is if it’s the substances or the stress that makes people take them to excess that causes the risk. Likewise the use of antideptessents and long term use of NSAIDs and CNS painkillers, the simple fact is stress is a known often chronic condition that weakens your immune system that on it’s own will kill you at some point earlier than you should die. But stress also causes other high risk chronic dieases diabetes, high blood preasure, cloging of the arteries etc etc. In fact virtually every “affluence disease” has stress as the root cause. Most often stress is a function of the way we live in the modern world, and why increasingly health care is being devoted to it at vast expense. For instance it’s becoming recognised that the likes of chronic back pain are not actually physical, but the manifestation of mental stress causing physical tension, in some cases the “grinding your teeth / jaw clenching” of human interaction, that awakens the fight or flight mechanisum in the workplace and home. That is the cure is gentle physical excercise to ease the physical tension and burn the stress hormones along with where possible changes in life style.

[2] Having suffered from sepsis (blood poisoning) which has a high mortality (25%) it shocked me as to how fast I went from mild cold/flu like symptoms to uncontroled loss of bodily functions through to back breaking spasams as my brain started to get soft boiled, then into severe sepsis (30%) and the first signs of septic shock which has a mortality rate over 50% or 10% increase per hour prior to effective antibiotic treatment, and is apparently rising in the first world. Luckily the hospital got on top of it and it did not progress to “Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation” (DIC) which I’m told is more commonly called unoficially “Death is Comming” by nurses and other medical staff. In essence DIC is where the cloting pathways of your blood become activated and blood clots form throughout the body thus oxygen flow stops and you die. Anyway eight days of quite painfull and eye wateringly expensive IV abtibiotics later, I got released on “good behaviour” with stern warnings about not ignoring what I thought were minor symptoms…

Clive Robinson • January 27, 2020 4:03 PM

@ myliit,

The BBC has had several news items today over this,

https://twitter.com/SecPompeo/status/1221485901525803008?s=20

So it would apear “The Commander in Chief’s right hand moan” is out of touch with what is going on.

The reality is that Huawei can do as much or as little damage as any other backbone provider.

But in Europe and most other places the US included service providers nolonger have any expertise in the infrastructure, they outsourced all of that more than a decade ago, to save the costs of labour. It’s why the likes of the NSA&CIA have been able to steal national networks for years and sometimes getting caught (Greek Olympics fiasco).

The solution as GCHQ knows and has in no uncertain terms told the US is to segregate certain core functionality as a “National Infrastructure of National Security importance” then the rest matters not a tinkers cuss who provides it.

In fact the best option for the non core is a single provider, because you don’t get network edge effects where vulnerabilities due to slight incompatabilities end up with cludges that are as good as being vulnerabilities.

The fact the US Executive are ignoring this tells you without doubt that it is a political decision made without real reason…

Unless that is you subscribe to the theory which some do that the US want’s Europe to only implement systems they know they can walk through to their hearts content, which most people don’t realise is not true of Huawei equipment.

As I’ve pointed out before Huawei actually design and manufacture to a higher standard than their rivals. Simoly because they agreed to let the UK Spooks attached to GCHQ examin both hardware and software under an agreed protocol.

It turns out the ones breaking the protocol were not Huawei but GCHQ who abused the process to do “training” of staff a number of whom were not of UK origin, but other Five-Eye partners.

Turns out Huawei “called” them on this so the IC decided to play rough, so hear we are today with those who have actually looked into the issue realising the reality of the situation and not the political stupidity comming out of certain “kiss-A” entities…

Oh and as others have pointed out Trump and Co demand the impossible and push it. When they get told “Stupido” they back off and claim great success in public to the US population.

The trouble is we have even more stupid and timmerous politicians in the UK who say realy stupid things in public whilst stuffing their noses in the crack of other idiots to climb the greasy pole rather than think for five seconds about genuine “National Interest” and genuine “National Security” tempered by a commercial reality they realy have absolutly no control over only can make at best advisories to…

This is in part of the stuoisity of starting in on the “Free Market” mantra of the 80’s and three decades of effective downward spiral. Instead of opening up market competition it’s closed the market down to a tiny number of now “to big to fail” service and backbone providers who very much like the banks are now “too big to fail” because of the effect that will have to the economy…

As GCHQ identified and advised there are certain core functions that in the National Security interest have to be controled, the rest you have no chance controlling unless you compleatly re-nationalise the Telco industry and spend the next three degades slowly getting rid of foreign companies if and only if you can build up sufficient competence and manufacturing base. That is not going to happen unless you put it on “a War Time Footing”. The result of course is R&D will not happen and the rest of the world will move one a technology generation or two every three years and the National Interest will lose out in less than one technology generation and fall rapidly behind from that point onwards.

Thus the game the US Executive is playing is a “lose-lose” one based on hubris and impossible promises. And it appears the US DoD is happy to make this clear to their commander in chief, if no one else is.

Clive Robinson • January 29, 2020 2:31 AM

@ SpaceLifeForm,

Why did this guy not ask to talk ‘in camera’ ?

Well for a second charge of possession and ten days for contempt, he’s sent a message out to the world… not just that but his name is as well.

As they say in marketing “Money just can’t by you that sort of coverage”.

But the man has a point the science is against the politicians and their “money hungry war on drugs”. I’d take them more seriously if they made these three illegal,

1, Tobacco.
2, Alcohol.
3, Caffeine.

For which there is more than sufficient evidence that they are “gateway drugs” and their cost to society is immense, something like 50% of “affluence disease” is directly attributable to them or they are co-contributors. Likewise mental health disorders, premature death, increased violence, increased crime, increacex accidents, lost productivity etc etc. Oh and of course the “s word” disfunction where hopes may be up but not much else is…

But to be honest, it’s not the drugs themselves that are the problem, it’s the people who use them…

So it does not matter what you make an illegal substance people are just going to find new ones to abuse themselves with. If nothing else it will be food something a chunk of industry actively encorages by trying to make food addictive…

And it’s not very difficult. A little experiment for you. We know that chocolate and high sugar both cause emotional changes due to hormone changes in the body that have been measured. Our brains are wired to consume calories and be emorionaly comfortable. It’s why we call it “commfort eating” when you consume more than your daily need for carbs in the half hour it takes to eat a packet of choclate biscuits[1]. We also know that adding salt to caramel and similar sugar mixes makes them much more appertising… But so do mint –easy breathing– and ginger –warm feeling– especially when mixed with sugar as “Kendal mint cake” or similar and “preserved ginger in syrup or crystallized”. Plain biscuit mix is actually not that nice to eat it’s alnost the reverse of bread mix, in that adding back more of the germ and fiber from the likes of oats makes biscuit mix more desirable.

So back to the experiment. Using a rough crumbly oat digestive biscuit mix[2] and add in preserved ginger, it’s syrup and a little ginger powder to give heat. When cooked and cooled add a thin layer of white soft strong mint icing/fondant to the top of the cooked biscuit, then when touch dry add a coating of dark bitter chocolate.

Make a couple or three dozen and place in an office kitchen, time how quickly they get eaten.

Experiments have found that once the test subjects are aclimatized to the tast you can increase not just the ginger content but add sweet chilli for more heat. They get eaten even though eyes may water and toungs burn. In fact over a few days the test subjects will need more “heat” to get the same buzz.

I’ve run the experiment on three different offices, and when the biscuits stop appearing a definate chilling of the environment occurs and people grumble etc, especially on those who got a five-a-day or more habit…

I’ve been tempted to seek out a grant for further testing, but I’ve been told that it would be unethical (no testing without test subject consent which kind of warns them thus changes the real behaviours).

[1] By “biscuit” I mean it in the British sense of what is sometimes called “cookies” in other parts of the world, and not the mix used to make what in the US are called “biscuits” eaten with gravy or other sauce as part of a meal. In England it’s called “scone mix” which can be either sweet or savoury as in fruit scones or cheese scones etc.

[2] The sort sold under the brand name “Hob Nobs” in the UK.

Clive Robinson • January 29, 2020 7:51 AM

@ Thoth,

While we are trying very hard to fight the Wuhan virus in Singapore, our dear government have been happily issuing censorship directives to shutdown spread of what they deem as fake news

Whilst there is some I could say on the first, it being “bat 5h1t crazy eating habits or US germwarfare being the two alledged sources. The second there is little I can say, but much I can assume. That is much of what I’ve had cause to listen to from the Singapore Gov has for as long as I can remember sounded as though it was “brittle plastic” that was desperatly and repeatedly wiped down to prevent staining. Renaming it does not change or stop that almost OCD like behaviour by them.

As for the attempts to impose their will extrajudicialy on another nation “How American of them”… It is a disease of the mind that appears as though it is spreading. Just remember the UK under RIPA from last century claims the right to do what it wants to your computers simply because they are in some way connected to a network connected in some way to the UK… A kind of “If the can reach it, they can breach it” dictate. As for one of your nearer Five-Eyes nations Aus, even they don’t know what they think they can do in the name of “National Security” or political whim, which ever is the more farcical.

All nations appear to think these days they have an absolute right to spy on others and their LEO’s on their citizens with no let or hindrance or because the poor luvies don’t understand it any technical impediment of any form. Yet scream “blue bl@@dy murder” if another country spys on them or their “important” citizens be they legal or natural. It’s just another form of madness much like taking the King down to the sea at low water and expecting him to stop the tide come in. The only way the king or any other mortal being can stop the tide is with strong technical measures not silly mind games and faux affront.

With regards,

Maybe an improved censorship resistant and strongly psuedo-nonymous network for file and data replication could be highly useful.

It would, and any one who did a rational analysis would realise that even for deeply paranoid tyrants the benifits of such systems outweigh by a very large margin the corner case arguments used against it.

As I pointed out the other week about the “think of the children” mantra the problem of child explotation is not technical but social. If you don’t solve the issue by social means you are stuck with the exploitation. Because the exploiters care not a jot about the technology they use as long as it confers on them some advantage. Thus if you outlaw a technology they will either continue to use it in secret or move to a different technology. That is not a war that can be won by legislating against technology.

All legislating against technology does is harm everyone else including the nations economy. History tells us very clearly that by and large most people care not a jot who runs the country or how, what interests them is being comfortable. Thus the successful tyrants, despots and dictators all had one thing in common they made their citizens feel comfortable. The only way that can be done for more than a few years is with a thriving economy, thus it’s in a tyrant, despot or dictators best interests to use all the technical measures they can to protect the economy and thus ensure people are comfortable. But there is a secondary effect for those in charge, it’s difficult to forment a revoloution in the general population if the shops have things people want to buy and they have the money in their pockets to buy it. A society may be oppressed in many ways due to the loss of many freedoms and rights, but if the general population does not feel oppressed it cares not.

It’s a point a few western and other first world “democracies” should realy pick up on.

Which brings us onto,

<

blockquote>[T]he use of the Inter-Planetary Filesystem (IPFS) as the base for data replication and redundancy and on top of it build a Fleet Broadcast communication protocol with file exchange protocols for pseudo-nonymous exchange of files and file replication

I’ve been somewhat remiss in my reading recently for various reasons beyond my concious control. IPFS is one of those things I need to get solidly in my “head space”. But I also need to finish work on the anonymous rendezvous protocol that makes P2P communications systems effectively anonymous. I also need to do a literature review on the current state of mix nets, likewise traffic analysis techniques 🙁

Instead of “relaxing” as the Dr keeps ordering I appear to be instead watching a tidal wave of work build up =(

Clive Robinson • January 29, 2020 11:40 AM

@ Zaphod, All,

Over to you Clive (and best wishes).

I certainly need those wishes 😉

As for 5G, Huawei and Britain apparently ignoring US Executive wishes. It’s not ignoring threats from either the US or China as the press appear to be stiring it up as Brexit enters it’s final days.

Security wise it’s about rationaly managing risk in a global environment. A message that every one should realy get their heads around instead of pandering to the journalistic imagining of two mops of US born blond quiff hair fighting it out like a couple of rutting stags.

As I keep pointing out the US position is what somebody has christened iFUD, or “there be big scary monsters under the bed” rhetoric. With one heck of a thick layer of unreasoned political invective on the top.

As far as security risk is concerned it matters not who you get your 5G equipment from they are all more or less the same security risk at the end of the day. An important point that gets lost in the testosterone imaginings of journalists.

Part of the real reason for this is the very limited supply of chips. It’s almost exactly the same as the PC world, where certain chips like the CPU, audio and RF chips are very limited in choices. To be blunt the cost of setting up a new Fab in the latest technology is more than many nations GDP thus the number of Fabs is realy quite small. The only profit and it’s a slim one is in volume production with nearly all the value added income being set aside to build the next generation of Fab. Even a very small change in volume production will kill a Fab’s profit and ability to build the next Fab which makes chip production eye wateringly high risk, high capital low profit ventures. So there are darn few Fabs capable of making 5G chip sets.

Thus the base of a low level attack is going to be almost the same regardless of who your 5G equipment supplyer is because deep down it’s the same silicon they are using. Pretending otherwise is a pure nonsense, understanding this tells you why the US Executive posturing about Huawei is a nonsense. Huawei are not realy in any way worse than all the US 5G suppliers, EU 5G suppliers etc etc. Everything the US executive is saying is “blowing smoke”, the only real reason is why. The kindest of the simple explanations is technology wise the US has under invested in R&D and has “dropped the ball” thus are trying to kill 5G in the hopes of capturing more control in 6G…

However the US Executive has for what ever reason killed one Chinese technology provider ZTE and they think they can do the same to Huawei, this in not realy in doubt. So look at it the other way. If China killed off say Jupiter then started going after CISCO what do you think the US Government would say and do? Then ask yourself why you would expect the Chinese Government to be more restrained?

Because of US under investment and outsourcing the US has “killed their R&D golden goose” through the nonsense of “Free market” ultra short term thinking. Other nations that have encoraged more long term thinking over short term shareholder gaib now have more and better IP. IP that is now biting hard at the traditional US large technology Corp defensive mechanisum of half baked IP portfolios to bludgen small start ups with and keep them out of the market place. Thus the formally closed encumbrant telco market has been hit rather hard and opened up, this has upset quite a few cosy arrangements between the encumbrants and US Exeutive and their entities.

Thus the question arises as to what part of the arrangements were between US Gov entities and the market encumbrants to maintain their effective cartel. The ability to assist the NSA we know something about, it would thus be safe to assume it was more extensive than that. We further know that the NSA backdoor US telecoms equipment supplied to other countries including some European ones. The Chinese government caught them at it and banned the equipment, not entirely but from key areas.

Yes remember that, US telcos can bid to supply equipment in the Chinese markets, only certain parts of critical infrastructure of National Security interest are with held from them. There are other rules, but it’s not anything other US Corps don’t do already anyway.

But think back to how the NSA were able to get into the US to China supply chain and poison it. How do the NSA TAO and other parts know how to target specific areas and how? Could it be that cosy arrangment being used? In all honesty probably they have either insiders or insider liason puting in the hooks etc in the designs.

Do US or EU corps alow the UK to have oversite of the design and manufacture processes? No but Huawei do… That alone should tell you a very great deal.

In effect Huawei are alowing themselves to be inspected almost under a microscope, whilst US and other corps do not. Why might be a good question, perhaps because of it Huawei have to adhere to higher quality standards than the rest of the industry. Most industry insiders who have been around the block one or two times know that the standards level in most Telco equipment manufacturers is fairly abysmal even laughable and a compleate mess.

Thus the chances of there not being usable vulnerabilities in those Telcos equipment and software is not at all high. In fact the likely hood is there are lots of not just vulnerabilities but exploitable ones in all the 5G supplyer kit, just less in Huawei kit because it’s been through a more extensive set of validation tests.

Thus the UK government has a stark choice use less validated hardware and software, that almost certainly has vulnerabilities that are already known and exploited by a foreign nations SigInt agency. Or use Huawei kit that atlest you know has been more extensivily validated by your own security services…

Thus the best solution is “mitigate all of it” which means treating all equipment and services supplied as dubious at best. Thus put in place communications equipment mitigations proceadures, which at the moment the UK gov appears to have done.

But apparently that’s not good enough for “Mad” Mike Pompeo of the US state deptment, who not only consorts with but takes money off of known criminal’s. Apparently he is going to come over and bash his bible or what ever else come to hand in his quest to do his masters biding…

Clive Robinson • January 29, 2020 8:45 PM

@ MarkH, SpaceLifeForm,

Traval bans do not work for a number of reasons,

1, There is always a route out of a locked down area, ALWAYS.

2, There is always a route into a protected disease free area ALWAYS.

3, There are always intermediary routes between any given two places on earth ALWAYS.

The “ALWAYS” is because of human greed, no mater what the danger or it’s risk there is always someone who will have enough value be it money, or other items, and there is always someone with an open hand to supply the required service.

We know from documentation with the Black Death that this was true. But also rumours could be capitalized on, one such was that syphilis would stop you catching the plague[1]. Almost over night the price of a “consort of the hour” went up many times.

But there are other issues.

Most have heard of “Typhoid Mary” who carried the disease without sucumbing to it, thus became a disease vector. Well not everyone sucumbs to any given disease, some have a natural immunity or have only negligable symptoms.

We know this with out being medically or scientifically trained because of both flu and colds which come around every year. Some years you either don’t catch it or have it very mildly, others you are genuinely laid low for three to five days with feavers etc, then two weaks or six months recovering (more than six months and you are in “Yuppie flu” territory). It is this difference in how people react differently to a disease that gave rise to the notion of “Man flu”.

There is also the question of incubation time. That is thevtime between you becoming infected and showing noticable symptoms. A very rough rule of thumb is a day or two for bacterial infections and two to five days for viral infections. But for various reasons the times can be longer, even though you’ve become a disease vector before you notice the symptoms.

Thus with “screening quarantine” which is what was tried with both SARS abd Ebola it’s possible for the disease to walk right by any tests or questionairs with a smile on it’s face only for the person to become symptomatic a day or two later. By which time they have almost certainly infected others.

It’s why as I noted when replying to @vas pup that quarantine is actually not to stop the spread of the disease but to slow the spread down. Thus buying time to find effective treatments and hopefully reduce the load on generally scarce medical resources.

But just to get the point about greed of people trafficking home. Desperate people do desperate things, you only have to look at “boat people” to realise this, or what those in Sangatte camps in France[2] did vertually every night. They could have settled in France or Germany, but they had set their minds on Britain and would in some cases kill themselves trying to get there. They only way you can stop such people once they have crossed a tipping point is by the use of armed force which can quickly become deadly.

Whilst economic deprevation and war are oftem the cause of illegal migrants and refuges, disease is just as bad. It’s why some people have sugested quite seriously (see neo-con thinking in the late 1990’s) that biowarfare used not against your chosen target country but another country that will cause refuges to flood the chosen country is more cost effective than war. Because nobody worries to much when you kill invading soldiers that’s “self defence” but shooting desperate women with children that are refugees is a horrific crime against humanity…

It’s been pointed out frequently in Continental Europe, that US behaviours in the Middle East are deliberately designed to flood Europe with refugees, thus destabilize the European Economy. Others are now pointing the finger at the US over African Swine Feaver[3] that is decimating food production in the Far East[4].

[1] Whilst the rumour was false a lot of money did change hands… This was not the only time syphilis and another disease have been suspected of mutual exclusion. Untill penicillin syphilis was considered 100% fatal in a very protracted and nasty way due to neuropathy (nerve death in the case of syphilis this included the central nervous system). Whilst some heavy metal poisons such as mercury showed some positive signs against syphilis, later observations suggested another dangerous disease malaria (marsh ague) and syphilis were mutually exclusive. The important difference being malaria could be controled effectively with quinine… So yes those with tertiary syphilis in insane institutions were deliberately given malaria,

http://whitecoatunderground.scientopia.org/2010/09/14/syphilis-malaria-and-other-oddities/

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/may/23/immigration.immigrationandpublicservices1

[3] https://www.fxstreet.com/analysis/the-mystery-of-the-african-swine-fever-in-china-and-asia-201908260134

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/african-swine-fever-the-deadly-virus-at-australias-doorstep

Clive Robinson • January 30, 2020 7:35 AM

@ MarkH,

The only reason I’ve written so much here about a matter that’s nominally off-topic, is that the parallels to certain security problems are compelling.

In rather more ways than many readers hea suspect, most security problems happen due to people not noticing or disregarding information in the form of observations (the first step of the scientific process).

To see why the first thing to note is that currently we all die of something, and often what it is, is not recorded acurately (Death by old age is not exactly a valid diagnosis to put on a death certificate, but it also alows all sorts of corner cases such as the UK’s Dr Harold Shipman to remain hidden, or Nurse Beverly Allit[2]).

Thus the “expected event” and “failed audit” alow many things in security to happen and one of the reasons APT happens.

As you note, with the coal death figures, attributing a death to a specific, is difficult and the civil legal system makes it even harder.

Which is another issue with security and why you find few attempts by people who have suffered identity theft to gain compensation from those who have collected and then by negligence lost the persons data giving rise to the persons details being used by criminals.

But whilst those are valid security concern because it invalidates or weakens auditing and breaks various other security mechanisms, it’s other security concerns we are talking about.

You ask two very valid questions the first of which is,

The premise is that liberty MUST be damaged, in order to ensure safety. But is that true?

No, history tells us it’s never realy true.

The short answer is because of adaptability and loss of freadom to respond to changing attack techniques.

In more depth it’s a problem created by our hind brain.

We have automatic responses to some threat triggers built in via the hind brain, a sudden noise causes us to turn our heads and eyes in that direction, as does movment. Unless you train it out or are expecting the trigger you respond and these days it’s far mote likely to be to your disadvantage than advantage.

We have it because back when we lived on the ground effectively as prey to apex preditors shortening response time increased your chance of survival to become a parent and raise the next generation. Firstly by running up trees but later as we developed weapons by turning into the attack and killing the preditor. The result was man displaced the apex preditor which was not as adaptable thus it’s only defence was to keep clear of humans. And only when they could not fight desperatly (hence the “cornered animal” sayings).

But running up a tree or hiding in a cave pins you down and limits your degrees of freedom, because you are in effect running into a trap. Which whilst it might protect from a very limited number of attacks where the attacker then loses interest and wanders off. It won’t protect you from the likes of fire or an adaptable attacker, who can then use smoke or fire at their leisure to drive you to them or just kill you.

But because you have this run to a tree or cave built into your subconcious it can also be made to work against you. Humans are very adaptable killers and will use any weakness to their advantage once they find the weakness. So as an individual your movments when not hunting are predictable in that either you are carrying out an identifiable task or you are moving and thus stay close to trees and caves or other places of safety. That is a weakness that alows an attacker to predict what you will do thus they can pick a place that is better for them and will in effect lead you to them and the tree or cave they can use to your disadvantage. Hence the notion of ambush which is the supprise and your hind brain making you run into a trap which is often called a “killing ground”.

This hind brain problem is such that even criminals and entertainers use it all the time. Stage magicians call it misdirection pick pockets and con men give it other names but the principle is the same. Muggers and street criminals and serial attackers/killers likewise use it. Oh and the various legal proffessions use their own variations.

Remember an attacker will almost always select your weaknesses to their advantage and “pinning you down” is a very standard millitary tactic to gain significant advantage over much greater numbers. It’s why people get told “keep to the high ground, but off the ridges” as a standard tactic for small tactical groups. Likewise “use the ground for cover, not fixed small objects”. The Viet cong used to put booby traps or what we now call IED’s in places where you might stupidly run to for cover. The IRA used a little bomb to cause people to go to a meeting “safe point” where they had placed a much larger car bomb. These are warning signs about how dangerous “hind brain response” is

But the same is true of “hard points” or earthworks and castles, you might be able to keep a much superior force out, but they can bottle you up and wait you out at their leisure as they starve you into submission.

Hard point limitations have been refined and flipped into prisons which are a long term form of trap used as a method of controling large numbers of prisoners with small numbers of guards.

So hopefully at this point you can see that the loss of freedom or liberty to what ever degree is in effect a prison used to control you in some way.

Thus the real answer to your question is the “safety” argument is a false one no fixed measure will protect you from an adaptable attacker, in fact it will harm you by putting you either at risk or under someone elses control. Thus you should now see that it is being deliberatly used to curtail peoples freedoms and liberty for the purposes of control.

In short it is thus just another “think of the children tactic” used by those in power to gain more power at your expense.

Which brings us to your second question,

To the extent that liberty and safety are in actual (rather than imagined) tension, what is the best balance?

They are in no way in tension, the more liberty you have the greater your degrees of freedom, thus the range of actions you can take.

The real tension is between individual liberty and society.

There are advantages in groups as a rough rule they are a form of “force multiplier” when they move in a “common direction”. I could go on at length about why but it’s not realy relevant, even the lowest of what we call animal species do it so even nature recognises it’s advantages.

The important thing to note is “common direction” this realy only happens when there is some kind of control mechanism. This can be external such as an attacker or internal such as a leader.

Implicit in any group is that there are winners and loosers, but usually even those who lose some freedom of choice gain advantages that outweigh the losses. Even loosing big such as your life, might be an easy trade if it ensures your children or the rest of the group survive.

But that trade is non equitable in a “bounded” or “closed” group. That is it’s at best a zero sum game, your advantage is gained by one or more other individuals loss. But what about “entropy” well it means that all groups eventually become bounded, and move through the zero sum point to one where there are more loosers than winners and resources become insufficient to meet the groups needs. In effect the group has no choice but to shrink to stay within the diminishing resource bounds.

The results of this are never nice and they involve exceptionaly wastefull power struggles that hasten the end, whilst becoming increasingly unpleasant.

In society we use terms like “triage” where one or more individuals decide the fate of others by their set of criteria. The fundemental observation is that those deciding usually find reasons to exclude themselves from the potential pool of loosers.

It is a situation that has been building up since the end of WWII on a global scale. We are now a “resource limited” world where a very few have grabed control of the resources and now have to waste them in vast amounts to ensure they remain in control.

That is the real tension the individual liberties of a very very few versus the collective liberties of the vast majority.

History teaches us two things,

1, It’s unstable.
2, When it topples it is usually extreamly wastefull in all ways.

Which brings me to your observation of,

Some of us in this commentariat (and Bruce himself), who pay a lot of attention to security risks, also worry about government actions which might or might not improve safety, but with certainty are corrosive to liberty.

From what I’ve noted above you will see that it’s not realy possible to “improve safety” against an adaptable enemy. That should be obvious from the fact society still has crime not just traditional crime that is legislated against, but new crime that has yet to have legislation written for it.

As we are now more clearly seeing that “time window” can be abused in many ways and is realy the new battle ground of the few against the many and as I noted yesterday the price to gain that control now exceeds what is spent on what is seen as national defence…

That alone via simple economics should tell you just how highly prized control over the masses by the very very few is desired.

Thus it’s safe to say that nearly all legislation passed these days is highly corrosive, no matter what politicians may promise. In power they almost always find ways to vote for the few over the many thus increasing tension.

How to change this is a legitimate security question, but on this blog, that can only be in the abstact with some normalized specifics, otherwise as has been seen the tensions surface almost uncontrollably here.

I’ve mentioned a couple in the past, but as has been noted the way to stop board children becoming problematic is to give them something to do. This notion gave rise to the ideas that gave us the protestant work ethic as a method of societal control. Whst we need is the same for legislators…

It’s why I’ve suggested in the past that all laws have a “Sunset clause” and I do mean all laws including those of murder etc. If the period was say between five and six years not only would it keep legislators busy, it would alow legislation to die because it’s nolonger relevant, seen as unjust or a whole manner of other ills. Whilst it won’t stop the few trying to remain in control of the many, it will steadily pull any unjust gains out from under them. Which currently does not happen thus their stratagie is to win on the “salami slicing” principle they keep putting their controling policies forwards as there is no penalty to doing so and any gain no matter how small is “money in the bank” for them. Thus time is on the side of the controling minority not the majority.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman

[2] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/survivor-killer-nurse-beverley-allitt-7724979