The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

I’ve only had a chance to briefly skim it, but the paper, titled Carnival Booth: An Algorithm for Defeating the Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening System, outlines a hole in the security system currently used in airports to prevent another September 11th from happening. CAPS tries to predict whether you’re a likely to be a terrorist based on data pertaining to your history of ticket purchases. If you fit the terrorist profile, you’re singled out for extra security checks. When you’re singled out, ti’s quite obvious, and therein lies the weakness of the system.

(I once probably set off every CAPS alarm; I wrote about it here.)

Here’s what the writers of the paper have to say:

This transparency is the Achilles’ Heel of CAPS; the fact that individuals know their CAPS status enables the system to be reverse engineered. You, like Simonyi, know if you’re carryons have been manually inspected. You know if you’ve been questioned. You know if you’re asked to stand in a special line. You know if you’ve been frisked. All of this open scrutiny makes it possible to learn an anti-profile to defeat CAPS, even if the profile itself is always kept secret. We call this the “Carnival Booth Effect” since, like a carnie, it entices terrorists to “Step Right Up! See if you’re a winner!” In this case, the terrorist can step right up and see if he’s been flagged.

The recipe for defeating CAPS is quite simple:

1. Probe the system. Send one of your agents to simply take a flight. On this run, the agent’s not supposed to do anything other than report whether or not CAPS flaged him or her.

2. If your agent was flagged in step 1, take that agent off your martyrdom candidates list. Reassign the agent to something else (perhaps recruiting and handing out propaganda at the local University campus). Repeat step 1 with another agent.

3. Repeat this process until you’ve got one or more agents who consistently eludes CAPS flags. These lucky dogs get the 72 virgins. Get them to give you the frequent flyer points they accrued; they won’t be needing them anyway.

4. Now send this squad on a mission with intent to harm, complete with weapons, explosives and cliched prepared statement. Since CAPS didn’t flag them last time, it’s likely they won’t be flagged this time. Await congratulatory greeting card from Osama.

The authors of the paper state that even although it seems counterintuitive, randomly selecting passengers for extra scrutiny is more likely to catch terrorists than CAPS.

It’s an interesting read, and although there’s a little math to wade through (although it’s not terribly complex; anyone who’s read The Cartoon Guide to Statistics should get it), most people should find it reasonably easy to follow.

Enetation — the people who make the comments system that this Weblog and its sister (The Happiest Geek on Earth) use and about whom I ranted earlier — get a second chance.

According to the support forums on their site, they’ve re-written the code for their system. It certainly seems that way; their system no longer slows down the loading time of my blogs. They also say that they’ve moved their system to a newer, better, faster computer with more uptime, and once again, for the past couple of days, they’ve been working more often than not. I’ll hang onto enetation for the next couple of weeks and see how it goes.

(The original story is here.)

MuchMusic’s live video request show, MuchOnDemand, alternates between videos and segments shot live in the open-concept, open-to-the-street MuchMusic studios. There’s a bit of a lull in the studio when they show the video, and here’s a little bit of what went on in the audience scrum during that lull.

Teenage Girl 1: Oh my God, Rick is so hot.

Tennage Girl 2: Yeah. He’s hot.

Teenage Girl 3: He’s so hot I could just die!

Teenage Girl 4 (who is wearing a black leather studded collar with four chains that run from the collar to a black leather belt): Feh.

Teenage Boy 1: (Silence. He’s staring at Jenn the VJ).

Teenage Boy 2: (Silence. He’s staring at teenage girls 1, 2, 3 and especially 4.)

Teenage Girl 4 (to me): I wanted you to play Nine Inch Nails.

Teenage Boy 2 (to me): I heard you can play System.

Teenage Girl 2 (spotting Rick the VJ, who’s wandering by): Rick!

Rick the VJ: Yeah?

Teenage Girl 2: Uh…can I have…a hug?

Rick the VJ: Not now, I have to get ready for the next segment, but after the show, there’s hugs for everyone.

Teenage Girls 1, 2 and 3: YAAAAAY!

And yes, after the show, Rick did give out hugs to those who asked.

Teenage Boy 1: (Silence. He’s staring at Jenn the VJ).

Teenage Boy 2: (Silence. He’s staring at teenage girls 1, 2, 3 and especially 4.)

Teenage Girl 4: Feh.

The video ends and the live segment begins. Rick is on camera, talking.

Teenage Girl 1 (to Teenage Girls 2 and 3): Okay, on the count of three.

Teenage Girl 3: We really gonna do this?

Teenage Girl 1: You said!

Teenage Girl 2: Go!

Teenage Girl 1 (breathlessly, almost hyperventilating): One…two…three!

Teenage Girls 1, 2 and 3 (in unison): RICK! YOU’RE HOT!

Rick the VJ (turning away from the camera for just a moment): I’m hot? Thanks!

Teenage Boy 1 (muttering to self): Girls.

Teenage Boy 2 (whispering to Teenage Boy 1, pointing at Teenage Girl 4): She’s hot.

For the more technically-inclined, The Happiest Geek on Earth is back on track. In addition to the usual stuff that appears in it, it’ll also be functioning as a place for drafts for additions to my soon-to-be-revived cross-language programming guide, The Rosetta Stone. Geeky goodness abounds!

It reads like a story from The Onion, but it actually happened: guy gets “wedgied” by his friend at a Phish concert, holds a grudge for months, and then tries to kill that friend.

Attempted murder for a wedgie. Who knows what he would’ve done had he been given the Dreaded Rear Admiral.

For the benefit of people looking for a review of the enetation comments system using Google or some other search engine, I am now making the following statement:

enetation is complete crap. A pox on enetation’s house and for seven generations thereafter.

I’m currently looking for a new comments system, so in the meantime if you want to comment on anything I’ve written, please e-mail me. I’ll gather up all the comments and post them.