Austrian Physicist Demonstrates Explosives Smuggling

Seen in Metro this morning - not on their site though - but mentioned here and also in the original German (with video): "Full body scanners fail TV bomb demo". Says it all, really.

The German name - Nacktscanner (naked scanner) - is rather more appropriate name than "full body scanner". As if the metal detectors only scan your kneecap or something! "Full body" neglects to mention the fact that it's an imaging scanner, and is designed to penetrate clothes but not flesh.

As Ben Wallace MP has pointed out, and that video ably shows, these new technological (anti-)terrors are completely useless. Sure, they are claimed to have maybe a 60% chance of detecting explosives - though, is that a near-certain chance of detecting 60% of explosives, and no chance at all of detecting the rest? That would fit the physics better as objects aren't probabalistically visible, they're either visible or not. And if that were the case it'd be a real shame if the Bad Guys™ thought to use one of the undetectable types, wouldn't it? We'd have pissed away millions on completely worthless invasions of privacy... again...

- KoW

Stop! Searchy time!

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Section 44 Stop-and-Search is unlawful, which is good news for photographers everywhere.

Or, at least it would be, if it were likely to change anything - remember that they have also ruled the DNA Database is unlawful, and that's still going strong, ditto the (alleged) illegal wiretapping by Phorm.

One interesting revelation in that story is that the whole of Greater London has been secretly designated for stop-and-search for almost a decade - and that this has been rubber-stamped every 28 days by the Home Secretary. Didn't know that...

Of course, all of this ties in with the ridiculous Threat Level - currently Substantial, ironic given the utter lack of substance to threats. This means that "an attack is a strong possibility", compared with the level below (Moderate) where "an attack is possible, but not likely". Who decides the difference between a "strong possibility" and "possible, but not likely" or even "highly likely"? And how do they justify that there is a "strong possibility", given that there haven't been any successful attacks in the last 1650 days and only three unsuccesful attempts - one ("liquid bombs") which was caught long before? The system is meaningless and arbitrary, and seems to exist only to intimidate the populace.

I'd like to ask Alan Johnson - who, as Home Secretary for more than 28 days, has renewed London's blanket anti-terrorist coverage - what evidence there is of an attack in the next four weeks.

I'm sorry, but "London is a capital city and is therefore a target" just doesn't cut it - every major city of every state has been a potential target since time immemorial, and yet on the vast majority of days nothing happens. Come back when you have specific, credible information. Large cities are targets for the same reason they grow: because there are significant network effects from having lots of people near to each other. Business thrives when there are people to do business with.

To use that to justify anti-terrorism legislation implies that anyone who lives or works in a city is a potential terrorist, and the bigger the city the greater that likelihood.

- KoW

The Pants Bomber

Catching up on a few things after the holidays. Well, this was the big story on Boxing Day, wasn't it?

To recap the facts as currently understood:

• A Nigerian man flew from Yemen to Amsterdam and then on to Detroit
• He had 80g of chemicals sewn into his underpants, possibly including PETN
• During the flight he tried to inject a liquid into the chemicals which, instead of exploding, caused a fire
• The fire was extinguished, the man was subdued and turned over to the authorities

Sounds like everything worked out OK, right? In fact, it bears out what people were saying about the liquid explosives plot: that you can't synthesise TATP on a plane because of the amount of cooling (e.g. ice) required. As soon as the reaction starts, it heats up and blows the reagents out of the container, ending the reaction. Oh, and the fact that aircraft designers try to ensure that their jets don't fall out of the skies when damaged - see the Aloha Airways jet that lost half of its fuselage, or the Qantas one holed by its oxygen tanks.

So, naturally, the TSA knee-jerked into banning passengers from using the on-board toilets - and then tried to crack down on whichever one of the thousands of people involved in implementing this policy leaked its details. Clearly it's vital for security reasons that passengers must be sat down and restrained, and not using a book or laptop, whilst pissing in their seats because they're not allowed to use the toilets.

Spotting a bandwagon and never shy of removing civil liberties from the proles, Gordon Brown has authorised the use of Naked Scanners at all UK airports. Never mind that they're completely ineffective against this threat, require the production (legally-speaking) of indecent images when used on minors, and will take even longer to use than the current useless measures... we're going to have them anyway. Fan-fucking-tastic, there's nothing I like more than getting up at 4am, so I can get to the airport 3 hours before my 10am flight due to the time it will take for the rent-a-plod to make an image of my cock.

And, you know what? The next time this happens, and there will be a "next time" because the world is full of bad people, the attacker will just have shoved the explosives up his arse and pulled them out in the toilets after going through the security theatre. Oops. The Naked Scanners and pat-downs don't detect that, you need a body cavity search. And if you start doing that, they'll find some other way - by the time a plot gets to the airport, it's too late to stop it.

But let's go back to the TSA for a moment. The agency charged with protecting US transport security cannot even take care of its memos. They have a track record of incompetence, and trying to invoke "national security" concerns to cover up that incompetence, and have a police state mentality which will - if unchecked - put the every US airline into Chapter 11 within a year.

Why don't they take lessons from real security agencies and accept the fact that since background checks and the most in-depth vetting procedures can't detect spies, devoting one-minute-per-passenger is about as effective as asking "Are you a terrorist?" at check-in. Probably less effective, in fact, as a good poker player would have a field day asking that question.

- KoW

Zero Tolerance = Zero Intelligence

Apparently handing a gun in to the police is a crime - with a minimum penalty of five years and no possible legal defence. Zero Tolerance policing at work, folks! Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime, tough on people trying to be good citizens! Fiat justitia ruat caelum!

(Hat tip to Old Holborn)

Government IT Failure

Yet another government database project ends in disaster. £161m spent on the project cannot be accounted for. A spokesman claims that "Steps have been taken to ensure that the mistakes made are not repeated.", but isn't that the same line trotted out every single time one of these projects goes tits-up?

What "steps" have been taken? What "lessons" have been learned? And why, if those aren't blatant lies, do things keep going wrong year in, year out? Why is a government so obsessed with databases so inept at their implementation?

The Technology in Business programme and the Government IT Profession were set up several years ago to address these issues, yet what have they achieved? The policy statements for the GITs include this gem:

Enabling organisations and individuals to develop the capability required to deliver excellence through advice and guidance on embedding professionalism and using the skills frameworks, and by creating and signposting learning and development opportunities.

That is gibberish. Complete and utter tosh. Semantically empty. They've produced at least four versions of the skills framework, all talking in generalities and buzzwords. Sound and fury. No doubt the authors of that claptrap would claim I'm "not thinking abstractly" and that classification, categorisation and meta-analysis are vitally important parts of the work. Bullshit.

Databases, despite the impression all this might give, are not all that difficult to engineer. There are around 85k prisoners in the UK. I have a database with more than 170k rows across a dozen tables, used for the back-end to some web services which I wrote in a weekend. That's running, acceptably fast, on a shared server costing me a few quid a month. I'm under no illusions and know that a proper setup - redundant infrastructure, dedicated and distributed hardware, security accreditation, crypto, development and testing of the applications - would cost considerably more, but a million times more? Several thousand pounds for each prisoner in the database?

I know I'm not cut out for the civil service: I actually value results - rather than process and paying lip-service to results. IT projects aren't made by consultants and reports and policies and skills frameworks; they're made by analysts and programmers and admins and engineers. Yes, these people need some direction, but direction in and of itself cannot produce the desired system - you cannot make a database by executive fiat!

- KoW

The honourable member for Morley and Rothwell is a pillock

Colin Challen MP tabled this Early Day Motion about a week ago, full of the usual eco-nonsense. Amongst other things, he discusses:

• "the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration for a stable planet"
• "the need to reduce this level to 350 particles per million or below"
• "the majority of money spent on reviving the economy should be on green measures and that at least two hours of prime time television per week should be used to explain the gravity of the crisis to the public"
• "domestic flights should be phased out by the end of 2010"
• "that a speed limit of 55 miles per hour should be introduced"

Well, it's probably better than Eastenders, but I think the even the State Broadcaster would object to that level of indoctrination. Though, as one wag put it, "Two hours per week? So he's proposing a reduction. Excellent!".

I'll leave off the logical error or needing to reduce the "safe level", since it's obvious what was meant. Isn't it great, though, that we can be Saved if we get the level down to 350ppm? Not 351ppm, or 349ppm, of course... those are poisonous. As Harry Hill might say, "what are the chances, eh?".

That number is a political one, with little or no science behind it. Science doesn't produce neat figures, because the universe isn't neat, so where did it come from? The simple fact is that there is no critical tipping point or runaway positive feedback - if there were, at one of the many points in Earth's history when CO₂ concentration was higher, they'd have been triggered and we wouldn't be here to argue about it. That's how positive feedback works: it doesn't suddenly decide to stop and go back, it goes on accelerating forever. If the change slows or reverses, the system exhibits negative feedback, end of.

So where did that number come from? The IPCC's made-up political target is 450ppm. That's a pretty big difference for anything other than sticking a wet finger in the air and guessing.

Why ban flights? Why 55mph? Some cars at 55mph produce more CO₂ than others do at 70mph, so this isn't purely about the environment. If it were, you could simply ban (or punitively tax) higher emissions rates no matter how they were produced. That might actually result in innovation and job creation as people find ways to do the same stuff but better/faster/cheaper. So why create a fatuous link between speed and carbon dioxide? To buy the political support of the anti-car lobby? To push a personal agenda?

Look at the measures proposed: arbitrary and irrelevant limitations on behaviour, two hours of propaganda per week. Doesn't that sound rather like Soviet Russia? We're spied on through ubiquitous CCTV cameras and RIPA powers, can be searched without probable cause ("section 44"), can be imprisoned without charge for a month (and let's not forget that it was nearly 42 days!)... does that sound like Great Britain to you?

Or is this one of those Early Day Motions which nobody cares about and which serve only to waste taxpayers' money?

(Hat tip to Dizzy)

- KoW

Alcohol and ID checks

This morning's Metro letters page has Carole from Gloucester telling us that it's a "Fact" that it's an offence to purchase alcohol for someone under 18, or to sell it to someone under 18, and that's why a 44-year-old man wasn't allowed to buy alcohol because his wife looked under 25 and she didn't have ID.

This statement about the law is, of course, true. It's also, to some extent, completely irrelevant. It's a law, and laws change. Specifically, that one was changed in the Licensing Act 2003 to make the penalties much harsher and much broader. The penalties on the Standard Scale are up to level 3 (£1000) for the child and up to level 5 (£5000) for the adult.

It's an offence for the supermarket manager, the supermarket cashier, the person buying the alcohol, and the person receiving it - so, potentially, £16k in fines for a single bottle of adult fizzy pop. Doesn't that seem a little... steep? Those are eye-watering penalties for a cashier or bartender, and the fact that a prosecution will almost certainly mean being fired (not to mention the record being retained forever thanks to yesterday's decision), are ample to ruin lives. Is that really justified for letting a kid have a bit of booze?

It's almost as if the government implemented exponentially higher penalties because the "problem" wasn't being addressed sufficiently. Remind anyone of the Stanford Prison Experiment?

Simple fact: teens want to be adults and so will try to smoke and drink. If you let them, there's not really much harm - arguably it's better than letting them turn 18 and go out on a bender; if you try to stop them, you destroy lives for an ideology.

- KoW

The Autumn of Wrath

The Summer of Rage is fashionably late, it seems, but it has started. The Autumn of Wrath is here.

Tory Bear hit the nail on the head. People are outraged about bank bonuses, MPs' expenses, postal strikes, the recession, lavish wasting of public funds, the police state, flagrant law-breaking by politicians, feral chavs... it's not being addressed, and it's spilling out in all directions - the Trafigura/Carter-Ruck gagging order, the TFL bully, Jan Moir...

Twitter is playing a large part simply because the news travels so quickly - assuming six degrees of separation and one minute to re-tweet, awareness of a story can cross the world in five minutes. The stories themselves are generally in the mainstream media, but there are no more "good days to bury bad news". The dead-tree press are, to their credit, reading the mood well and increasingly using online sources. The morning's Metro still feels like it contains two-day-old news - the same stories as the Lite and Evening Standard the night before, which were on the wire by breakfast - but it's still fresh to the majority of the population.

Predictions for the next few months? Nights are drawing in, and the recession is going to see cut-down xmas parties: people are going to be cold, wet and miserable, and will probably spend more time following the news. They'll have lots of time. Redundancies and strikes will dampen moods still further - I'm betting the RMT is out in London before xmas (possibly over the ponytailed git's "unfair" sacking), and RMT and/or ASLEF disrupting national rail wouldn't surprise me; the postal service is pretty much gone now as we've missed the union's "last posting day" for cards and presents. Other public services might strike as well - there are already signs, and they seem to feel they deserve job security and pay rises, which aren't on the cards.

It probably won't kick in until the quarterly bills arrive in January/February/March, but the price of energy is going to cause another blow-up when people realise just how much staying warm cost them in the winter - are you sure about those green energy subsidies, Mr Miliband?

While ever this lame-duck government remains in power, people are going to keep finding abuses of taxpayers' money, civil liberties, the law (particularly ironic when officials break any of the myriad new laws they've introduced in the last decade) and natural justice... and nothing is going to be done about them, which will only fuel the rage. A slap on the wrist here, a fine there, an apology, an inquiry - nothing.

The people of this country are metaphorically baying for blood... if these abuses continue long enough, that adverb will become "literally".

And I don't mean "OMG, I, like, literally died of shame!"... I mean literally.

- KoW

Nanny knows best!

Today's Metro (p30) and the BBC (Wednesday night) have a story about Nottingham City Council's expansion of fixed penalty notices.

"Offences such as leaving a car engine running [...] attract fines from £50 to £300."

WTF? It's an offence to leave a car engine running? It's expensive, certainly, at £1.29/litre, but how the hell is it a crime needing punishment?

I suppose they're going to ban turbo timers (devices which keep the engine idling to allow a turbocharger to cool down gradually) as well? Given that engines are hopelessly inefficient just after starting, forcing people to stop and restart their engines when their passenger pops into a shop for a one-minute errand, will pollute more, waste fuel, waste battery power, wear out starter motors and generally make life worse. So that'll be another stealth tax - in the same vein as speed bumps - from government deliberately inflicting damage on motor vehicles...

Apparently these fines will be meted out - unaccountably, no doubt - by "Community Protection Officers". That raises the question of whether they exist to protect the community, or to protect something from the community, because I don't think fining people for keeping their engines ticking over or leaving their bins out is particularly public-spirited.

A thought for such authoritarian governments: you are accountable to us, not we to you.

- KoW

Old Professions

Last week, Harriet Harman insisted that a foreign government take action against a website that's legal both in its jurisdiction and ours.

As far as I'm aware, prostitution is still legal in the UK. Having an opinion about a service most definitely is! And yet here we have one of the most powerful politicians in the country creating an international incident over something she personally dislikes, on the flimsiest of excuses (very few prostitutes are trafficked...).

Tom Miller, Labour PPC for Woking, has suggested that since the site isn't doing anything wrong and is in a foreign jurisdiction, Ms Harman should take matters into her own hands with an illegal (in both jurisdictions) Denial of Service attack. WTF? Is that not Hate Speech?

I wonder how long before the Internet Watch Foundation is either replaced, or leant-on, to block access to Politically Undesirable sites such as PunterNet. As most ISPs in the UK - covering something like 98% of users - accept the IWF blacklist, that would be a rather trivial step... and yet another towards 1984.

Here's a radical notion: websites don't create demand for prostitutes.

A review site simply makes the existing market more efficient by providing a basis for price information, and might even reduce consumption by adjusting the supply curve. Not that I expect our business-illiterate government to understand that argument...

(Hat tip to Dizzy, for Tom Miller's imbecilic contribution to the debate)

- KoW

Epistemic Paradox

Metro (p7) this morning has a quote from the charity Kidscape: "As criminal record bureau checks bring to light only convictions, cautions and reprimands, a sex offender who is active - but has not been found out - passes through the safety net". For this reason, they say vetting should be tightened.

Aside from the fact that an Enhanced CRB already also shows "soft evidence" (undeniable unsubstantiated rumours that weren't sufficient to attempt a prosecution, and spent convictions), this argument holds about as much water as a particularly leaky colander. It fails on fairly basic philosophical grounds - person X may be a kiddy-fiddler (ontology, "what is") but if nobody knows that (epistemology, "what is known"), they can't cause a vetting failure. That bears repeating.

If a paedophile has not been found out, no amount of vetting will block them from working with kids.

In fact, in a classic piece of security failure, the more trust is placed in vetting schemes, the more likely people are to slip through the cracks. If nobody is vetted, parents and co-workers have to rely on their judgement - judgement honed by years of experience and æons of evolution - as to who to trust and to what degree; if someone is vetted, "obviously" they're safe, so there's no need to be alert. One can easily envisage a child porn ring using something like the Carnival Booth Algorithm to defeat any sort of vetting: all they need is one person who can slip through the net and they all get the resulting abuse pictures.

The new Vetting and Barring scheme is particularly stupid, as it is a one-time check with no expiry or revocation. Such things are like gold to a determined attacker: "cast iron" proof of safety based on out-of-date evidence. The more the government tightens its grip, the more people slip through its fingers.

To paraphrase something a rather wise site security officer once told me: "everyone who's ever been arrested for spying held a security clearance, it's not proof of anything".

- KoW