nerdgirl

Apparently I’m failing to communicate. The part that we can’t seem to get past in this conversation (or in the other thread) is that if one is at the point of having to intervene using profiling (behavioral or otherwise) that means there’s some level of failure w/r/t counterterrorism: an adversary has made a decision to pursue harm and is acting on it. If one or a nation relies on a strategy emphasizing (or almost entirely relying on) decreasing vulnerability through increased security at airports – whether it be through racial profiling, behavioral profiling, particulate & VOC monitors, terahertz body scans, full-body cavity searches, or security theater – the threat will never be reduced to zero unless one isolates oneself or the nation entirely from the outer world/eliminates all commercial air travel. The latter is one option, but it is not a likely one and a very poor one in a globalized economy from a capitalist perspective. (It may fit into a severe protectionist agenda, however.) Decreasing vulnerability is what all of those approaches are about. To be explicit: decreasing vulnerability where it is actually effective is important; it’s not a panacea and it may create liabilities (without even going to issues of privacy, civil liberties, or anything normative), however …. unless one proposes to shut down all commercial air travel, domestic chemical industry, etc. And this is where the connection to AQY & AQIM is relevant, imo. If resources and attention are focused on one area (either on decreasing vulnerability or on a geographical area) because of policy decisions, then one misses what’s going on in what is perhaps an area of greater threat to US interests. /Marg ps The overwhelming majority of my edits are typos or subject-verb agreement corrections - like the one I fixed above. I make 'em all the time. Don't bother me in other folks posts. Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Does anyone know if this assertion is true? This story seems to be the source of that assertion, as far as I can tell. Anyone? I find it highly dubious. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

You do realize that this was not my comment, yes? That it was [Gawain]'s that I quoted? I wrote about effectiveness. I've shown that in real life terrorists have used profiling to their advantage and that it would have/did miss a number of cases. Again, as I've wrote in the post from which you excerpted ... setting aside the normative issues for the moment. That tend to be the source of antagonism, imo ... or if the profile targets you or your group. Whether profiling creates vulnerabilities is a policy issue, imo. Perhaps, more importantly, it’s also a short-term (feel-good? cuz we can identify a 'them'?) solution at the ‘pointy end.’ Terrorists innovate. A terrorist who’s on his or her way to board a plane indicates a long chain of activities that were not interrupted. Of course, stopping at the last chance is preferable to not stopping at all. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Best – lots from which to choose.

Marks...why are you a racist and hater of children? j/k You're right on. What happens when one starts to emphasize (or worse, restrict, which is not the same as profiling) the notional terrorist profile? Palestinian terrorists responded to Israel’s profiling by recruiting young women. Domestically, profiling would also likely have missed (or did miss) Bryant Neal Vincent (white, from NY, convert from Catholicism, who trained w/AQ in Pakistan to be a suicide bomber), David Headley (Chicago businessman, linked to LeT Mumbai bombing, altho’ the Indian press thinks he’s CIA agent gone ‘rogue’), Carlos Leon Bledsoe (black, convert from Protestantism, attacked Army recruiting station in Little Rock), Kevin Lamar James (black, convert from Protestantism, plotted to attack military recruiting station and synagogue in LA), and Daniel Boyd (white, convert from Christianity, plotted to attack Quantico Marine Base). Even Nidal Hassan is 39, at the far end of “young.” Setting aside the normative issues for the moment. That tend to be the source of antagonism, imo ... or if the profile targets you or your group. Whether profiling creates vulnerabilities is a policy issue, imo. Perhaps, more importantly, it’s also a short-term (feel-good? cuz we can identify a 'them'?) solution at the ‘pointy end.’ Terrorists innovate. A terrorist who’s on his or her way to board a plane indicates a long chain of activities that were not interrupted. Of course, stopping at the last chance is preferable to not stopping at all. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Concur strongly w/your suggestions that suggest training and competency of screeners (who perhaps should be thought of as investigators?) is crucial. The last international flight I took back to the US (November), was from Schiphol (Amsterdam). Each passenger was questioned individually before proceeding to the gate area (along with X-ray screening). Honestly I don’t particularly recall the questions asked other than the standard “did you pack your own bags.” Nothing stood out as unusual. Regardless, those were Delta gate/ticket agents asking. Doesn’t antagonize me. To a great extent, we already do that, whether folks like it or not or want to acknowledge it or not. What happens when one starts to emphasize (or worse, restrict, which is not the same as profiling) to that profile? Palestinian terrorists responded to Israel’s profiling by recruiting young women as suicide bombers. Domestically, profiling would also likely have missed (or did miss) Bryant Neal Vincent (white, from NY, convert from Catholicism, who trained w/AQ in Pakistan to be a suicide bomber), David Headley (Chicago businessman, linked to LeT Mumbai bombing, altho’ the Indian press thinks he’s CIA agent gone ‘rogue’), Carlos Leon Bledsoe (black, convert from Protestantism, attacked Army recruiting station in Little Rock), Kevin Lamar James (black, convert from Protestantism, plotted to attack military recruiting station and synagogue in LA), and Daniel Boyd (white, convert from Christianity, plotted to attack Quantico Marine Base). Even Nidal Hassan is 39, at the far end of “young.” Setting aside the normative issues for the moment. That tend to be the source of antagonism, imo ... or if the profile targets you or your group. Whether profiling creates vulnerabilities is a policy issue, imo. Perhaps, more importantly, it’s also a short-term (feel-good? cuz we can identify a 'them'?) solution at the ‘pointy end.’ Terrorists innovate. A terrorist who’s on his or her way to board a plane indicates a long chain of activities that were not interrupted. Of course, stopping at the last chance is preferable to not stopping at all. Along with finding the choice of explosive (PETN) curious, the reported al Qa’eda in Yemen connection as opposed to al Qa’eda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), is interesting to me. [Background: wrote a lil’ about AQY here in Sept 2008 and noted AQIM here in May 2008, to further your mention of hindsight recognition of threat origins in your earlier post.] Nigeria is not part of the historical Maghreb and usually considered to be outside/bordering the AQIM territory, which follows old Tuareg (nomadic Berbers) trans-Saharan and -Sahel trade routes that don’t extend into Nigeria. [I.e., it’s not some artificially imposed barrier/line in the sand, altho sand may literally be the substance in this case.] There are connections reported between Nigerian insurgents and AQIM (training, recruiting (from 2005 in that case), outreach, etc), however. Is this another sign of the westward shift of al Qa’eda as a decentralized, cellular organization lacking a centralized hierarchy? Folks in certain circles, wonkish or otherwise, have recognized Yemen as a candidate for Islamist terrorist safe haven … doesn’t mean there’s domestic political traction to think about Yemen or the Maghreb. We can’t go back and change past foreign & military policy choices. What should the lessons be for current and future foreign & military policy choices on the terrorism prevention side and intervention before someone is or has boarded a plane? /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

So what do you take from Friday’s incident as a lesson to be learned w/r/t where we should be looking? I have a couple of my own thoughts but am curious to hear yours. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Thanks for the clarifying information. Appreciated. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Do what I did - buy your own plane. Can you put together a talk (PowerPoint brief) and fly the plane at the same time? I don’t think I’m that talented. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

PETN is a solid (or ‘plastic’) explosive. It's often used as a primer or booster. It's a (relatively) shock-insensitive explosive. Speculate the liquid was part of the initiator. The choice of reported explosive, PETN, rather than TATP, is interesting to me. TATP is the peroxide-based explosive used in London’s 7/7 bombings and a Islamist discovered plot to synthesize TATP in flight led to the current carry-on liquid restrictions. TATP has been a signature of al Qaeda affiliates trained in northwest Pakistan. PETN has traditionally been more of an ETA (the Basque separatist group) material. Although PETN is believed to have been the material associated with the Saudi ‘butt bomb.’ /Marg [Edit to add: concur w/what [Remster] wrote as well.] Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

If you saw it at Atlantic Station in 3D it was RealD 3D. I also saw it in Imax 3D upper at Mall of Georgia. (So bigger screen than some of the pseudo-IMAX's). Concur with Paul, I thought the experience on the smaller RealD 3D screen was better -- more impacting -- than IMAX 3D. YMMV. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

I understood what you meant by the comment. Didn't know that ... neat. Thanks! /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Quoting Divot? Someone's rep is gonna change... Hey, if the material/data/ideas/concepts are good, I'm not going to discriminate against the source, which I think fits with my reputation. It's less about who wrote them than the quality of the words.

By tenets and practices. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Most of the agnostics who I've known in real life have resembled what you describe above. Most have described themselves as 'searching' or 'searchers'. Some of the most inquisitive and probing conversations on spirituality and religion that I've had have been withs self-described agnostics or doubters; it's non-scientific sampling so ymmv. Maybe I'm just more approachable/perceived as more likely to be interested in the conversation, so more of the caring agnostics are willing to talk to me? /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Yes. And John – I think the evidence may speak for itself. You’re successfully married to one of the most beautiful – inside and out – women around here. Quoting from the Tao of Divot: “Respect is the ‘Air’ in a relationship.” And that’s what it’s about. In both directions. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

That’s a neat observation. I think I concur. Last March I was speaking with a Senate staffer from the Armed Services Committee about long-term funding for defense-related projects in a non-energy area. His comment was essentially that we could not afford to invest in basic research because we were fighting two wars. Otoh, there are some examples, e.g., which I wrote about in Jun 2008, in which the market is not providing/will not pursue that there is drive for. In many cases it’s largely driven by the need for lighter energy/power supply technologies because the combat loads being carried by the average soldier and Marine keep going up (70-100lbs or more). (Longer study, with primary data, from OEF) And it’s damaging bodies. Power is heavy. Since the market won’t drive it, one finds programs to develop products including but not limited to fuel cells, (another example), piezoelectrics (generating a field by mechanical compression), nano-structured materials, polymeric-based rechargeable batteries, and mixed photovoltaics. A few of those are basic research programs or incorporating basic research funded 5 or 10 years ago. A number of them are trying to leverage “low hanging fruit” using commercial-off-the-shelf(COTS) items. As I was thinking about your comments, if found an intersection with the thread on vulnerabilities in the Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver (ROVER) system due to unencrypted video. It will be interesting to see if some of that earlier drive can be resurrected in ARPA-E – the Dept of Energy’s mimic to DARPA, which was initially funded in the FY2007 budget, iirc. Whole lot to think about. Thanks for the reply – spurred a bunch of thoughts.

I'm not that old tho' ... and more of a 21st Century COIN-ista/5GW-gurl to boot. (And, they're high-heeled pink combat boots.) /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Concur. That’s one factor that makes it interesting to me. Easy issues w/easy explanations just aren’t as interesting to me. I’d be happy to put you in touch with the some folks at Applied Materials if you’d like? It seems to me like we need to find a way to make people care more. A carbon tax would do it, but it would have some undesirable consequences. It would raise the price per KW/HR for all customers but then we could create a credit for residents/ business to install smart meters and smart black boxes and throw some more rebates in to motivate efficiency improvements. Along the way, some of our best scientist can work on improving the technology (think super efficient solar film built into your roof's shingles that can power your whole house, and look identical to regular roofs). Then about 10-15 years later we have a totally retooled energy economy, a ton more jobs, and a few less greenhouse gases floating around in our atmosphere. I like the latter part of your scenario – incorporate nanotechnology in the scenario & it’ll hit my buttons. W/r/t your first statement … how do we do that? And does that ultimately matter? I.e., does “caring” drive markets and economics? A lot of folks will argue it should … that’s a normative argument, and what consumers should care about is often variable across different people, eh? In the history of new innovations, how many have been driven by the consumer cares (not wants and not fears)? And not ultimate, if unexpected, success … but the underlying business level motivation? Ben-n-Jerry’s and organic foods aren’t really new innovations; it’s old stuff done differently. And some might argue that there’s just as much ‘fear’ as ‘care’ on the part of the consumers who make those purchases. As you point out, taxes can be used as incentives/disincentives to change behavior of consumers and influence operational choices. I’m more of a proponent of inducements, like tax breaks for R&D. The ultimate solar energy conundrum really isn’t cost of cells or efficiency, imo; if there was market, prices would come down. Prices may come down as China increases manufacturing capacity. Imo, the problem with solar energy is the fact that it’s really hard to make money selling sunlight. Selling something that’s free. It's hard to build a business plan selling something that's free. With water, we made it a public utility and sell the service to clean it and deliver it. Imo, once someone figures out a way to make money off of selling sunlight, it will be a gold mine. It’s not a knock on capitalism; it’s tragedy of commons. Concur. And me neither. If I did I would be writing up the business plan. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

It’s an old joke that has re-appeared on multiple occasions … even escaping (leaking? evolving? devolving? ) into Bonfire at least once.. I strongly doubt that the initiator of joke took it seriously; I don’t. To show the assertion is wrong, apparently all I have to do is be put in front of an international audience and try to make some comments on Czechoslovakia … eh … the Czech Republic. Still do it. … /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

You're very correct that bandwidth insufficiency continues to be one of the biggest challenges in military across many fields not just UAVs. I'm not sure that's the critical hurdle (or even a specific hurdle) here. If I'm reading the secondary reports correctly, the causative variable is less technological and more a function of acquisitions process and bad assumptions w/r/t adversaries capabilities or inclination to adapt. This story includes specific links to CIA reports and DoD transcript suggesting that potential vulnerabilities with unencrypted data transmission date back to the 1990s. I'm not sure I agree (or disagree, for that matter) with the conclusions in that story. The linked primary documents do suggest that the potential for a problem was not recognized and acted on ... or perhaps it was recognized but the capabilities that the ROVER system enabled were determined to be greater. Sometimes one has to make hard decisions. Or sometimes bad decisions get made without good reasons. I don't have enough information to speculate in the situation with any confidence. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Oh come on. Some beliefs/practices just deserve ridicule. If ya share agreement on which ones those are, it's all good fun. I like hummus, but I'm not Muslim[/url]. Should I be experiencing an existential crisis? /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

It could. Not if it was any specific religion of which I can think. But if someone’s religious beliefs and practices were diametrically opposed to my core beliefs, e.g., extreme fundamentalist of almost any religion, Taliban, or FLDS, then yes, it would be a problem for me. Or someone who ridiculed any sort of religious belief/practice. I am willing to go a long way w/r/t embracing and engaging the beliefs of someone I am seeing seriously, very much including efforts w/r/t (placating, as it may be in cases) his family if that's something important to him & who he is. Those are my feelings tho’, ymmv. I was the product of a mixed marriage -- Catholic and Methodist (back in the day when that *was* considered mixed). The Catholic side of the family was less than pleased. It's an interesting question.

More on the story, the technology, and analysis from Wired's Danger Room: Excerpts: "The military initially developed the Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver, or ROVER, in 2002. The idea was let troops on the ground download footage from Predator drones and AC-130 gunships as it was being taken. Since then, nearly every airplane in the American fleet — from F-16 and F/A-18 fighters to A-10 attack planes to Harrier jump jets to B-1B bombers has been outfitted with equipment that lets them transmit to ROVERs. Thousands of ROVER terminals have been distributed to troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. "But those early units were 'fielded so fast that it was done with an unencrypted signal. It could be both intercepted (e.g. hacked into) and jammed,' e-mails an Air Force officer with knowledge of the program. In a presentation last month before a conference of the Army Aviation Association of America, a military official noted that the current ROVER terminal 'receives only unencrypted L, C, S, Ku [satellite] bands.' "So the same security breach that allowed insurgent to use satellite dishes and $26 software to intercept drone feeds can be used the tap into the video transmissions of any plane. "The military is working to plug the hole — introducing new ROVER models that communicate without spilling its secrets. 'Recognizing the potential for future exploitation the Air Force has been working aggressively to encrypt these ROVER downlink signals. It is my understanding that we have already developed the technical encryption solutions and are fielding them,' the Air Force officer notes. "But it won’t be easy. An unnamed Pentagon official tells reporters that 'this is an old issue that’s been addressed.' Air Force officers contacted by Danger Room disagree, strongly. "'This is not a trivial solution,' one officer observes. 'Almost every fighter/bomber/ISR [intelligence surveillance reconnaissance] platform we have in theater has a ROVER downlink. All of our Tactical Air Control Parties and most ground TOCs [tactical operations centers] have ROVER receivers. We need to essentially fix all of the capabilities before a full transition can occur and in the transition most capabilities need to be dual-capable (encrypted and unencrypted).' "Which presents all sorts of problems. Let’s say a drone or an A-10 is sent to cover soldiers under fire. If the aircraft has an encrypted transmitter and the troops have an unencrypted ROVER receiver, that surveillance footage can’t be passed down to the soldiers who need it most. "'Can these feeds be encrypted with 99.5 percent chance of no compromise? Absolutely! Can you guarantee that all the encryption keys make it down to the lowest levels in the Army or USMC [United States Marine Corps][acronym expanded in original story - nerdgirl]? No way,' adds a second Air Force officer, familiar with the ROVER issue. 'Do they trust their soldiers/Marines with these encryption keys? Don’t know that.' "And U.S. troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan have come to depend on the feeds. 'For sure,' Lt. Col. Greg Harbin told the Los Angeles Times, 'I would be dead without this technology.' "Still, systems like the ROVER (and the Predator, for that matter) were 'built to be cheap. They used commercial off-the-shelf hardware. We wanted to get stuff out there. So it’s not gonna be perfect,' the officer adds. 'So yeah, if we’re broadcasting in the electromagnetic spectrum and you’re underneath the footprint, you can receive it. Duh-uhhhh.'" If one accepts that report and analysis as factual, it looks like the prime driver was getting technology out to the warfighter as fast as possible. Altho' not mentioned in the piece, I also strongly suspect that another major contributing factor was the predominance of Network Centric Warfare (NCW) ideas during the time the technology was put into the acquisition process (2002). Before COIN, RMA & Transformation (RIP Adm Cebrowski) were the novel, dominant paradigms. It was all about networked technology and information sharing. As far as the behavior of the insurgents, I think it's just further validation of the concepts of 4GW. Still is all about networks just have a different frame of reference and different strategy. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying

Wired's review calls it "Dances With Wolves" re-tooled. Over-all very positive review. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying