Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

The Kansas City shuffle was described by Mr. GoodKat (Bruce Willis) in Lucky Number Slevin, “is is when everybody looks right, you go left.”

The security forces in Paris were victims of a self-inflicted Kansas City shuffle.

Stacy Meichtry and Joshua Robinson detail in: Paris Attacks Plot Was Hatched in Plain Sight how the Paris attackers:

While the Paris attackers were in plain sight, “left,” the Paris security and intelligence services were laboring over electronic debris from innocent civilians, worrying about encrypted messages and other futile and meaningless activities, “right.”

No doubt while preparations for the Paris attack were ongoing, intelligence agencies around the world were laboring to decrypt encrypted messages, mining every growing databases composed primarily of electronic debris from innocent civilians, and engaging is other utterly futile and meaningless activities.

Moreover, none, repeat none of the current data mining activities would have identified the Paris terrorists before the attack or have disclosed their plans.

Intelligence agencies have no profile for a terrorist, short of participating in a terrorist attack, and even then, apprehending a known terrorist taxes their capabilities.

Without a useful terrorist profile, all the data mining in the world won’t help intelligence agencies stop terrorist attacks.

If anything, looking “right,” and wasting government funding on more looking “right,” while terrorists go “left,” is as classic a Kansas City shuffle as I can imagine.

Is your police or intelligence agency victimizing itself and you with the Kansas City shuffle?

Holiday concerns in the United States should be focused on unstable televisions, furniture and appliances (TFA) rather than terrorists.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reports:

…injuries and fatalities associated with television, furniture, and appliance product instability or tip-over.

Of the estimated annual average of 38,000 emergency department-treated injuries (2011–2013) and the 430 reported fatalities occurring between 2000 and 2013 associated with tip-overs, staff noted the following:

Breakdown by victim (image to replicate the formatting):

While all levels of government spend $billions on hunting terrorists in the United States and coming up dry, You Are Safer Than You Think, we know that televisions, furniture and appliances are injuring and killing far more U.S. citizens than terrorists.

Spend a few extra dollars this holiday season and insure the stability of televisions, furniture and appliances, new or old in your home. That expenditure will increase your safety measurably more than the $billion billions being spent by the government on terrorists they can’t seem to find.

Until after the fact of a terrorist attack that is.

Chart and data from: Product Instability or Tip-Over Injuries and Fatalities Associated with Televisions, Furniture, and Appliances: 2014 Report.

Manufacturing Terror: An FBI Informant Seduced Eric McDavid Into a Bomb Plot. Then the Government Lied About It by Trevor Aaronson and Katie Galloway.

From the post:

…
Anna would go on to lead McDavid and two other activists in their 20s in a loose plot to bomb targets in Northern California. Maybe in the name of the Earth Liberation Front. Or maybe not. Fitting for the muddied plot, their motivation was as unclear as their targets. Anna, at the direction of the FBI, made the entire plot possible — providing the transportation, money, and a cabin in the woods that the FBI had wired up with hidden cameras. Anna even provided the recipe for homemade explosives, drawn up by FBI bomb experts. Members of the group suggested, in conversations with her, that they regarded her as their leader.
At trial, McDavid’s lawyer, Mark Reichel, argued that the FBI had used Anna to lure McDavid into a terrorism conspiracy through the promise of a sexual relationship once the mission was complete. “That’s inducement,” Reichel told the federal jury. “That’s entrapment.” The jurors weren’t persuaded, however. In 2007, McDavid was convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage corporate and government property, and he was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison, one of the longest sentences given to an alleged eco-terrorist in the United States. At the time of his conviction, the FBI had built a network of more than 15,000 informants like Anna and the government had classified eco-terrorism as the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat — even though so-called eco-terrorism crimes in the United States were rare and never fatal.

Seven years after his conviction, the government’s deceit was finally revealed. Last November, federal prosecutors admitted they had potentially violated rules of evidence by withholding approximately 2,500 pages of documents from McDavid. Among the belatedly disclosed documents were love letters between Anna and McDavid and evidence that Anna’s handler, Special Agent Ricardo Torres, had quashed the FBI’s request to put Anna through a polygraph test, commonly used by the FBI to ensure informants aren’t lying to agents as they collect evidence. The new documents also revealed which of the letters and emails the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit had reviewed before offering instructions on how to manipulate McDavid and guide him toward a terrorist conspiracy.

David was released earlier this year as part of an unusual settlement: He agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of general conspiracy in exchange for his immediate release. Yet when his lawyers demanded to know why the government had withheld evidence that had been specifically requested before trial, the government made a veiled threat to throw McDavid back into prison for violating the terms of his plea agreement.
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The full story is much longer and makes a great read, holiday discussion issue.

This is another example of why I advocate a leak upon possession policy.

Whatever protest a government official may make, they may even be telling the truth as known to them, but it doesn’t mean the government isn’t lying to them and via them to the public.

The only way to combat systemic and widespread deception by government is for citizens to obtain concealed information and to leak it for use by other citizens.

TSA airport screeners’ ability to detect weapons declared “pitiful” by David Kravets.

From the post:

US lawmakers and federal watchdogs on Tuesday derided the Transportation Security Administration’s ability, or lack thereof, to adequately detect weapons and other contraband during the passenger screening process at the nation’s airports.

“In looking at the number of times people got through with guns or bombs in these covert testing exercises it really was pathetic. When I say that I mean pitiful,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), speaking Tuesday during a House Oversight hearing concerning classified reports from federal watchdogs. “Just thinking about the breaches there, it’s horrific,” he added.

Auditors from the Inspector General’s Office, posing as travelers, discovered enormous loopholes in the TSA’s screening process. A leaked classified report this summer found that as much as 95 percent of contraband, like weapons and explosives, got through during clandestine testings. Lynch’s comments were in response to the classified report’s findings.
…

David cites the testimony of Inspector General John Roth and testimony from Jennifer Grover of the General Accounting Office, both of which detail the appalling depth of TSA incompetence.

A new TSA administrator is quoted as saying the agency is undertaking a “full system review.”

With a 95% failure rate after being in operation for fourteen (14) years (as of November 19, 2015) the time for a “full system review” has long past.

At a 95% failure rate, abolishing the TSA won’t increase risks to passengers and will in fact save $billions in lost time due to airport security delays.

However, airport security is a well-heeled business and is firmly entrenched.

The best option is to start a #WontFlyList in the social media of your choice and ask frequent and infrequent flyers to volunteer what trips they won’t be taking until ineffectual airport security is removed.

Don’t limit the list to removing the TSA because it will just change its name. No, airport security must be in the hands of the airlines and as minimal as possible.

Threatened with financial ruin, the airlines will activate their lobbyists and circles of friends in Congress. Much more likely to eliminate the TSA root and branch.

My attention was first drawn to David’s article by a tweet from Cory Doctorow.

Pentagon Farmed Out Its Coding to Russia by Patrick Malone.

From the post:

The Pentagon was tipped off in 2011 by a longtime Army contractor that Russian computer programmers were helping to write computer software for sensitive U.S. military communications systems, setting in motion a four-year federal investigation that ended this week with a multimillion-dollar fine against two firms involved in the work.

The contractor, John C. Kingsley, said in court documents filed in the case that he discovered the Russians’ role after he was appointed to run one of the firms in 2010. He said the software they wrote had made it possible for the Pentagon’s communications systems to be infected with viruses.

…

The DISA official confirmed that the practice of outsourcing the work to employees in Russia violated both the company’s contract and federal regulations that mandate only U.S. citizens with approved security clearances work on classified systems, Kingsley’s complaint said.

On Monday, NetCracker and the much larger Virginia-based Computer Sciences Corporation—which had subcontracted the work—agreed to pay a combined $12.75 million in civil penalties to close a four-year-long Justice Department investigation into the security breach. They each denied Kingsley’s accusations in settlement documents filed with the court.
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The sad news is there is no mention of either NetCracker or Computer Sciences Corporation being banned from government contracts in general or defense contracts in particular.

If you were a CIO and discovered that a contractor had violated primary security requirements for a contract, or failed to discovered that a sub-contractor had violated such requirements, how eager would you be to sign up with either one again?

One of the fundamental problems with government IT security is the lack of any meaningful penalty for failing to provide IT security.

Unless and until the government holds its own staff, contractors and sub-contractors liable for accountable in some meaningful way, such as severance (w/o benefits), forfeiture of current contracts plus civil/criminal liability, government IT security will continue to be a sieve.