From Newsweek:

In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.”

The real goal is to limit the influence of the Dalai Lama, but it’s silly none-the-less.

As the alarmism and hype about terrorism continues to be blown out of proportion, it’s nice to see scholars of political science laying out the facts. One such person is Ohio State University professor John Mueller; an expert in national security issues. I find this except from a review of his latest book “Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them (2006)” to be very enlightening:

Mueller’s book is filled with statistics meant to put terrorism in context. For example, international terrorism annually causes the same number of deaths as drowning in bathtubs or bee stings. It would take a repeat of Sept. 11 every month of the year to make flying as dangerous as driving. Over a lifetime, the chance of being killed by a terrorist is about the same as being struck by a meteor. Mueller’s conclusions: An American’s risk of dying at the hands of a terrorist is microscopic. The likelihood of another Sept. 11-style attack is nearly nil because it would lack the element of surprise. America can easily absorb the damage from most conceivable attacks. And the suggestion that al Qaeda poses an existential threat to the United States is ridiculous. Mueller’s statistics and conclusions are jarring only because they so starkly contradict the widely disseminated and broadly accepted image of terrorism as an urgent and all-encompassing threat.

And here’s an appropriate comic to follow:

This is a reprint from Bruce Schneier’s blog on security.

This is an interesting paper on the efficacy of terrorism:

This study analyzes the political plights of twenty-eight terrorist groups — the complete list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) as designated by the U.S. Department of State since 2001. The data yield two unexpected findings. First, the groups accomplished their forty-two policy objectives only 7 percent of the time. Second, although the groups achieved certain types of policy objectives more than others, the key variable for terrorist success was a tactical one: target selection. Groups whose attacks on civilian targets outnumbered attacks on military targets systematically failed to achieve their policy objectives, regardless of their nature.

The author believes that correspondent inference theory explains this. Basically, the theory says that people infer the motives of an actor based on the consequences of the action. So people assume that the motives of a terrorist are wanton death and destruction, and not the stated aims of the terrorist group:

The theory posited here is that terrorist groups that target civilians are unable to coerce policy change because terrorism has an extremely high correspondence. Countries believe that their civilian populations are attacked not because the terrorist group is protesting unfavorable external conditions such as territorial occupation or poverty. Rather, target countries infer from the short-term consequences of terrorism — the deaths of innocent citizens, mass fear, loss of confidence in the government to offer protection, economic contraction, and the inevitable erosion of civil liberties — the objectives of the terrorist group. In short, target countries view the negative consequences of terrorist attacks on their societies and political systems as evidence that the terrorists want them destroyed. Target countries are understandably skeptical that making concessions will placate terrorist groups believed to be motivated by these maximalist objectives.

This certainly explains a great deal about the U.S.’s reaction to the 9/11 attacks. Many people — along with our politicians and press — believe that al Qaeda terrorism is different, and they’re just out to kill us all. (In fact, I’m sure I’ll get blog comments along those lines.) The paper examines this belief: where it came from, how it manifested itself, and why it is wrong.

Professor Daniel Solove, from George Washington University Law School, has written a wonderful paper on privacy and the “Nothing to Hide” argument (click here to read). It is important for people to understand that privacy is about the balance of power, and NOT about hiding unlawful or bad behavior. When a person quips: “I don’t mind the government surrveilling me… I have nothing to hide”, they are basing the value of privacy on this “bad behavior” fallacy. If privacy were based on this notion, then why don’t we share our credit card statement, paystubs, and medical records with our neighbors? Why do we put curtains on our windows and doors on our bedrooms? To take it to the extreme, why to we even wear clothes? The fact that we keep these things private doesn’t mean there is anything unlawful or wrong going on. It simply means we want to maintain a certain level of control on our lives, and revealing any one of these things could affect that power balance between us and others (whether businesses or people).

This balance of power is important to understand when it comes to government surveillance. Mass surveillance is usually framed by supporters as enhancing security, which in many cases it’s true. However, we must strike a balance between privacy and “surveillance based” security, as the two are diametrically opposed (note that there are many other ways to increase security without relying on surveillance). When striking this balance, we all too often underestimate the value of privacy because we don’t frame it in terms of power and self-determination. Framing privacy this way is important, as evidenced by the fact that the United States Constitution is designed to limit the powers of government, not grant them. It defines a set of “inaliable rights” to help maintain the power balance. The 1st Amendment allows us to express our opinions, the 2nd Amendment allows us to defend ourselves from a tyrannical government, and 4th Amendment protects us from unreasonable searches (surrveilance) and seizures. It also defines a system of checks-and-balances between the 3 branches to help ensure no one branch gains too much power. When we as a nation forget this, we open ourselves up to losing more and more control over the direction of our lives.

Here’s the abstract from the paper:

In this short essay, written for a symposium in the San Diego Law Review, Professor Daniel Solove examines the nothing to hide argument. When asked about government surveillance and data mining, many people respond by declaring: I’ve got nothing to hide. According to the nothing to hide argument, there is no threat to privacy unless the government uncovers unlawful activity, in which case a person has no legitimate justification to claim that it remain private. The nothing to hide argument and its variants are quite prevalent, and thus are worth addressing. In this essay, Solove critiques the nothing to hide argument and exposes its faulty underpinnings.

Daniel Solove’s blog “Concurring Opinions” can be found here.

The Washington Post recently did an interesting 4 part series about the influence Dick Cheney has within the White House. Note: “Angler” is Cheney’s Secret-Service codename.

Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency

Security guru Bruce Schneier recently wrote an essay for Information Security contrasting George Orwell’s “Big Brother” to current trends in technology:

Big Brother isn’t what he used to be. George Orwell extrapolated his totalitarian state from the 1940s. Today’s information society looks nothing like Orwell’s world, and watching and intimidating a population today isn’t anything like what Winston Smith experienced.

1984’s police state was centralized; today’s is decentralized. Your phone company knows who you talk to, your credit card company knows where you shop and NetFlix knows what you watch. Your ISP can read your email, your cell phone can track your movements and your supermarket can monitor your purchasing patterns. There’s no single government entity bringing this together, but there doesn’t have to be. As Neal Stephenson said, the threat is no longer Big Brother, but instead thousands of Little Brothers.

The fear isn’t an Orwellian government deliberately creating the ultimate totalitarian state… It’s that we’re doing it ourselves, as a natural byproduct of the information society.

You can read the full essay here.

Here’s an interesting report on how the Department of Energy (responsible for the nations nuclear weapons arsenal) uses the polygraph (lie-detector) for counter-intelligence operations. The report observes that a polygraph test can’t reliably tell if someone is answering the questions truthfully (there are too many ways to fool the machine, and the physiological reactions it’s looking for aren’t proven to indicate truthfulness). However, I found it interesting to note that the polygraph is still useful as a deterrent, even though its results cannot be relied upon.

Click here to read the report (80K - PDF)

Randomly enough, I happened to read George Washington’s farewell address to the nation at the end of his presidency. I was surprised to discover many aspects of it still relevant today. Below I’ve highlighted several passages that left an impression of me. Any emphasis placed on the text is mine and doesn’t appear in the original manuscript. You can click the link at the bottom of this post to read the whole address. Enjoy!

Read the rest…