Security – Page 4 – a sibilant intake of breath

Con artist terminology

The confidence game starts with basic human psychology. From the artist’s perspective, it’s a question of identifying the victim (the put-up): who he is, what does he want, and how can I play on that desire to achieve what I want? It requires the creation of empathy and rapport (the play): an emotional foundation must be laid before any scheme is proposed, any game set in motion. Only then does it move to logic and persuasion (the rope): the scheme (the tale), the evidence and the way it will work to your benefit (the convincer), the show of actual profits. And like a fly caught in a spider’s web, the more we struggle, the less able to extricate ourselves we become (the breakdown). By the time things begin to look dicey, we tend to be so invested, emotionally and often physically, that we do most of the persuasion ourselves. We may even choose to up our involvement ourselves, even as things turn south (the send), so that by the time we’re completely fleeced (the touch), we don’t quite know what hit us. The con artist may not even need to convince us to stay quiet (the blow-off and fix); we are more likely than not to do so ourselves. We are, after all, the best deceivers of our own minds. At each step of the game, con artists draw from a seemingly endless toolbox of ways to manipulate our belief. And as we become more committed, with each step we give them more psychological material to work with.

Konnikova, Maria. The Confidence Game. Why We Fall for It… Every Time. Penguin Books, 2016. p. 11-2

Our psychological vulnerability to the con

In the 1950s, the linguist David Maurer began to delve more deeply into the world of confidence men than any had before him. He called them, simply, “aristocrats of crime.” Hard crime—outright theft or burglary, violence, threats—is not what the confidence artist is about. The confidence game—the con—is an exercise in soft skills. Trust, sympathy, persuasion. The true con artist doesn’t force us to do anything; he makes us complicit in our own undoing. He doesn’t steal. We give. He doesn’t have to threaten us. We supply the story ourselves. We believe because we want to, not because anyone made us. And so we offer up whatever they want—money, reputation, trust, fame, legitimacy, support—and we don’t realize what is happening until it is too late. Our need to believe, to embrace things that explain our world, is as pervasive as it is strong. Given the right cues, we’re willing to go along with just about anything and put our confidence in just about anyone. Conspiracy theories, supernatural phenomena, psychics: we have a seemingly bottomless capacity for credulity. Or, as one psychologist put it, “Gullibility may be deeply ingrained in the human behavioral repertoire.” For our minds are built for stories. We crave them, and, when there aren’t ready ones available, we create them. Stories about our origins. Our purpose. The reasons the world is the way it is. Human beings don’t like to exist in a state of uncertainty or ambiguity. When something doesn’t make sense, we want to supply the missing link. When we don’t understand what or why or how something happened, we want to find an explanation. A confidence artist is only to happy to comply—and the well-crafted narrative is his absolute forte.

Konnikova, Maria. The Confidence Game. Why We Fall for It… Every Time. Penguin Books, 2016. p. 5-6

Canada and military procurement

Writing for Maclean’s, Scott Gilmore suggests that Canada should “ban the buying of made-in-Canada warships” because politicians have a bad record of fiddling with the process for their own purposes, and shipyards have a poor record of delivering. He presents it as a job protection scheme rather than national security, and a shockingly expensive one:

“But what about the jobs?!” I can hear the lobbyists cry. Yes, let’s talk about the jobs. According to the government of Canada’s own figures, only 11,100 people are employed in Canada’s shipbuilding industry (we have more massage therapists). If we were to add on those indirectly employed, that number creeps up to 15,200. Now, let’s pretend the Canadian frigate contract is the only shipbuilding job out there, and buying from France would mean every one of those 15,200 people would be out of work. If we were to give each of them $1 million in compensation, Canada would still save over $50 billion (in addition to getting the ships faster).

Similar political patterns seem evident in Canada’s long-running imbroglio about replacing fighter jets, though that may have more to do with the nuances of maintaining the Canada-US security relationship than with subsidizing Canadian firms and workers.

What’s happening in Washington is terrifying

“Statement by President George W. Bush on Insurrection at the Capital

Laura and I are watching the scenes of mayhem unfolding in our Nation’s government in disbelief and dismay. It is a sickening and heartbreaking sight. This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic — not our democratic republic. I am appalled by the reckless behavior of some political leaders since the election and by the lack of respect shown today for our institutions, our traditions, and our law enforcement. The violent assault on the Capital — and disruption of a Constitutionally-mandated meeting of Congress — was undertaken by people whose passions have been inflamed by falsehoods and false hopes. Insurrection could do grave damage to our Nation and reputation. In the United States of America, it is the fundamental responsibility of every patriotic citizen to support the rule of law. To those who are disappointed in the results of the election: Our country is more important than the politics of the moment. Let the officials elected by the people fulfill their duties and represent our voices in peace and safety. May God continue to bless the United States of America.”

Ali Soufan’s view of 2020 security threats

The International Spy Museum hosted a great discussion with former FBI special agent Ali Soufan, author of two books about Al Qaeda:

It covers the post-2001 debate around torture for interrogation, questions of accountability in the use and disclosure of classified intelligence, and includes some interesting remarks about cooperation with international intelligence agencies, as well as relations and views between the CIA and the FBI.

The success of bin Laden’s strategy

Although al-Qaeda was unvanquished it was also unable to repeat its startling triumph. America was sinking ever more deeply into unpromising, fantastically expensive wars in the Muslim world—following the script that had been written by bin Laden. Repeatedly, he had outlined his goal of drawing America into such conflicts with the goal of bleeding the U.S. economically and turning the War on Terror into a genuine clash of civilizations. His attacks, from the twin U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998, to the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, and ultimately to 9/11, were designed to goad the United States into Afghanistan, where he expected that America would experience the same catastrophe that befell the Soviet Union in 1989, when it withdrew in defeat and then simply fell apart. Bin Laden’s plan was that the sole remaining superpower would dissolve, the United States would become disunited states, and the way would be open for Islam to regain its natural place as the dominant force in the world.

Ten years after 9/11, al-Qaeda is not defeated. It has shown itself to be an adaptable, flexible, evolutionary organization, one that has outlasted most terrorist enterprises in history. One day, al-Qaeda will disappear, as all terrorist movements eventually do. But the template of asymmetrical warfare and mass murder that bin Laden and his confederates have created will inspire future terrorists flying other banners. The legacy of bin Laden is a future of suspicion, grief, and the loss of certain liberties that are already disappearing from memory.

Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Vintage Books, 2007, 2011. p. 428–9

The Iraq war and al-Qaeda’s second incarnation

The fateful decision of the Bush administration to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003 revivified the radical Islamist agenda. Simultaneous wars in two Muslim countries lent substance to bin Laden’s narrative that the West was at war with Islam… Although bin Laden and his cohort were essentially reduced to virtual presences on the Internet and smuggled tape recordings, the apocalyptic al-Qaeda took root, not only in Muslim countries but also among Muslim communities in the cities of Europe and eventually even the United States.

As early as 1998, following the bombing of the American embassies in East Africa, al-Qaeda strategists began envisioning a less hierarchical organization than the one that bin Laden, the businessman, had designed. His al-Qaeda was a top-down terrorist bureaucracy, but it offered its members health care and paid vacations—it was a good job for a lot of rootless young men. The new al-Qaeda was entrepreneurial, spontaneous, and opportunistic, with the flattened structure of street gangs—what one al-Qaeda strategist, Abu Musab al-Suri, termed “leaderless resistance.” Such were the men who killed 191 commuters in Madrid, on March 11, 2004, and the bombers in London on July 7, 2005, who killed fifty-two people, not counting the four bombers, and injured about seven hundred. The relationships of these emulators to the core group of al-Qaeda was tangential at best, but they had been inspired by its example and acted in its name. They were tied together by the Internet, which offered them a safe place to conspire. Al-Qaeda’s leaders began supplying this new, online generation with a legacy of plans, targets, ideology, and methods.

Meantime, the War on Terror was transforming Western societies into security states with massive intelligence budgets and intrusive new laws. The American intelligence community became even more deeply entrenched with the worst despots of the Arab world and grimly mirrored some of their most appalling practices—indiscriminate and often illegal arrests, indefinite detentions, and ruthless interrogation techniques. That reinforced al-Qaeda’s allegations that such tyrants only existed at the whim of the West and that Muslims were under seige everywhere because of their religion.

Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Vintage Books, 2007, 2011. p. 425–6

bin Laden’s unique contribution

One can ask, at this point, whether 9/11 or some similar tragedy might have happened without bin Laden to steer it. The answer is certainly not. Indeed, the tectonic plates of history were shifting, promoting a period of conflict between the West and the Arab Muslim world; however, the charisma and vision of a few individuals shaped the nature of this contest. The international Salafist uprising might have occurred without the writings of Sayyid Qutb or Abdullah Azzam’s call to jihad, but al-Qaeda would not have existed. Al-Qaeda depended on a unique conjunction of personalities, in particular the Egyptians—Zawahiri, Abu Ubaydah, Saif al-Adl, and Abu Hafs—each of whom manifested the thoughts of Qutb, their intellectual father. But without bin Laden, the Egyptians were only al-Jihad. Their goals were parochial. At a time when there were many Islamist movements, all of them concentrated on nationalist goals, it was bin Laden’s vision to create an international jihad corps. It was his leadership that held together an organization that had been bankrupted and thrown into exile. It was bin Laden’s tenacity that made him deaf to the moral quarrels that attended the murder of so many and indifferent to the repeated failures that would have destroyed most men’s dreams. All of these were qualities that one can ascribe to a cult leader or a madman. But there was also artistry involved, not only to achieve the spectacular effect but also to enlist the imagination of the men whose lives bin Laden required.

Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Vintage Books, 2007, 2011. p. 375

The origin of al-Qaeda

Although the notes don’t reflect it, a vote was taken [in August 1988] to form a new organization aimed at keeping jihad alive after the Soviets were gone. It is difficult to imagine these men agreeing on anything, but only Abu Hajer voted against the new group. Abu Rida summarized the meeting by saying that a plan must be established within a suitable time frame and qualified people must be found to put the plan into effect. “Initial estimate, within 6 months of al-Qaeda, 314 brothers will be trained and ready.” For most of the men in the meeting, this was the first time that the name al-Qaeda had arisen. The members of the new group would be drawn from the most promising recruits among the Arab Afghans, but it was unclear what the organization would do or where it would go after the jihad. Perhaps bin Laden himself didn’t know.

Few people in the room realized that al-Qaeda had already been secretly created some months before by a small group of bin Laden insiders…

On Saturday morning, August 20, the same men met again to establish what they called al-Qaeda al-Askariya (the military base). “The mentioned al-Qaeda is basically an organized Islamic faction, its goal to lift the word of God, to make His religion victorious” the secretary recorded in the minutes of the meeting. The founders divided the military work, as they termed it, into two parts: “limited duration,” in which the Arabs would be trained and placed with Afghan mujahideen for the remainder of the war; and “open duration” in which “they enter a testing camp and the best brothers of them are chosen.” The graduates of this second camp would become members of the new entity, al-Qaeda.

…

“The meeting ended on the evening of Saturday, 8/20/1988,” the secretary noted. “Work of al-Qaeda commented on 9/10/1988, with a group of fifteen brothers.” At the bottom of the page the secretary added, “Until the date 9/20, Commandant Abu Ubaydah arrived to inform me of the existence of thirty brothers in al-Qaeda, meeting the requirements, and thank God.”

Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Vintage Books, 2007, 2011. p. 152–3

Cyber defences create their own risks

In addition to aforementioned rules about internet and computer security (1, 2, 3, 4) it’s worth mentioning that security measures can create their own vulnerabilities.

That’s true in terms of human systems. For instance, granting high-level powers to system administrators creates risks that they will exploit them deliberately or have their credentials stolen, or simply used after being left unguarded.

It’s can also be true for technical means. For instance, people often misunderstand TOR and believe that it makes everything about their web browsing anonymous. Really, it just routes the traffic several times within an encrypted network to disguise the origin before using an exit node to communicate with the target server, potentially with no encryption. Since people may be more likely to use TOR for sensitive or illicit purposes, those exit nodes are likely a target for both freelancers and governments.

Some recent stories have alleged that the virtual private networks (VPNs) which people use to protect themselves from an untrusted local network can create risks as well:

Earlier, people alleged that Facebook was using its Onavo VPN to snoop on users.