tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-154539372018-10-11T13:38:48.654-07:00The Lippard BlogJim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.comBlogger2056125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-72264304632079545332018-01-01T08:24:00.000-07:002018-01-01T08:29:48.474-07:00Books read in 2017<div style="margin: 0px;">Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2017. Items with hyperlinks are linked directly to the item online (usually PDF, some of these are reports rather than books, though I've made no attempt to collect all papers, blog posts, and reports I read here), with no paywall or fee.<br /><ul><li>Lilian Ablon, Andy Bogart, <i><a href="http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1751.html">Zero Days, Thousands of Nights: The Life and Times of Zero-Day Vulnerabilities and Their Exploits</a></i></li><li>Ben Buchanan, <i>The Cybersecurity Dilemma: Hacking, Trust and Fear Between Nations</i></li><li>J.D. Chandler, <i>Hidden History of Portland, Oregon</i></li><li>Ted Conover, <i>Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing</i></li><li>Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy, <i>Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes</i></li><li>Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby, <i>Only Humans Need Apply: Winners &amp; Losers in the Age of Smart Machines</i></li><li>Mike Edison, <i>Dirty, Dirty, Dirty: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers--An American Tale of Sex and Wonder</i></li><li>FINRA, <i><a href="https://www.finra.org/sites/default/files/FINRA_Blockchain_Report.pdf">Distributed Ledger Technology: Implications of Blockchain for the Securities Industry</a></i></li><li>Al Franken, <i>Al Franken, Giant of the Senate</i></li><li>David Gerard, <i>Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum &amp; Smart Contracts</i></li><li>Joscelyn Godwin, <i>Upstate Cauldron: Eccentric Spiritual Movements in Early New York State</i></li><li>Jonathan Goldsmith, <i>Stay Interesting: I Don't Always Tell Stories About My Life, But When I Do They're True and Amazing</i></li><li>Heidi Grant Halvorson, <i>No One Understands You: And What To Do About It</i></li><li>Jon Lindsay, Tai Ming Cheung, and Derek S. Reveron, editors, <i>China and Cybersecurity: Espionage, Strategy, and Politics in the Digital Domain</i></li><li>William MacAskill, <i>Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and How You Can Make a Difference</i></li><li>Jane Mayer, <i>Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right</i></li><li>Nick Middleton, <i>An Atlas of Countries That Don't Exist: A Compendium of Fifty Unrecognized and Largely Unnoticed States</i></li><li>Kevin Mitnick, <i>The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data</i></li><li>Andrew Monaghan, <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/public/Research/Russia%20and%20Eurasia/0413pp_monaghan.pdf">"The New Russian Foreign Policy Concept: Evolving Continuity,"</a> Chatham House, 2013 (PDF)</li><li>Milton Mueller, <i>Will the Internet Fragment? Sovereignty, Globalization and Cyberspace</i></li><li>Tom Nichols, <i>The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters</i></li><li>David Ronfeldt, <i><a href="https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2005/MR461.pdf">Beware the Hubris-Nemesis Complex: A Concept for Leadership Analysis</a></i></li><li>Thomas Rid,&nbsp;<i>Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History</i></li><li>Gabriel Sherman, <i>The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country</i></li><li>Doug Stanhope, <i>Digging Up Mother: A Love Story</i></li><li>Doug Stanhope, <i>This Is Not Fame: A "From What I Re-Memoir"</i></li><li>Charles Stross, <i>Halting State</i></li><li>Charles Stross, <i>Rule 34</i></li><li>Sarah Vowell, <i>Unfamiliar Fishes</i></li><li>Timothy Walton, <i>Challenges in Intelligence Analysis: Lessons from 1300 BCE to the Present</i></li><li>Kristan J. Wheaton and Melonie K. Richey, <i>Strawman</i></li><li>Ilya Zaslavskiy, <i><a href="https://www.hudson.org/research/13875-how-non-state-actors-export-kleptocratic-norms-to-the-west">How Non-State Actors Export Kleptocratic Norms to the West</a></i> (PDF)</li></ul></div><div style="margin: 0px;">I may or may not have made progress on a few other books (first four from 2017, next two from 2016, one from 2015, &nbsp;next three from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with e-books, especially very long nonfiction e-books):<br /><ul><li>Helen Nissenbaum, <i>Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life</i></li><li>Dana Richards, editor, <i>Dear Martin/Dear Marcello: Gardner and Truzzi on Skepticism</i></li><li>Richards J. Heuer, Jr., <i>Structured Analytics Techniques for Intelligence Analysis</i></li><li>Louis M. Kaiser, <i>Analytic Writing Guide</i></li><li>Andreas Antonopoulos,&nbsp;<i>Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies</i>&nbsp;(now 2nd ed)</li><li>Robert M. Gates,&nbsp;<i>Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War</i></li><li>John Searle,&nbsp;<i>Making the Social World</i></li><li>Andrew Jaquith,&nbsp;<i>Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt</i></li><li>Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry,&nbsp;<i>Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem</i></li><li>Steven Pinker,&nbsp;<i>The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century</i></li><li>Richard Bejtlich,&nbsp;<i>The Practice of Network Security Monitoring</i></li><li>James Grimmelmann,&nbsp;<i>Internet Law: Cases &amp; Problems</i>&nbsp;(v2; v3 is out now)</li><li>Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,&nbsp;<i>Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking</i></li><li>Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh,&nbsp;<i>The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities</i></li><li>Michal Zalewski,&nbsp;<i>The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications</i></li></ul>Top for 2017: &nbsp;Rid, Buchanan, Sherman, Mayer, Clarke and Eddy, Conover, Middleton.<br /><br />I completed three Coursera courses in 2017, two of which I recommend:<br /><br /><ul><li>University of Michigan, <a href="https://www.coursera.org/learn/mindware/home/welcome">Mindware: Critical Thinking for the Information Age</a> (psychology, statistics, and philosophy; a companion to Richard E. Nisbett's book, <i>Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking</i> which I read last year; the course is taught by Nisbett)</li><li>Universiteit Leiden, <a href="https://www.coursera.org/learn/changing-global-order/home/welcome">The Changing Global Order</a> (international relations theory and history)</li></ul><br />(Previously: <a href="https://lippard.blogspot.com/2017/01/books-read-in-2016.html">2016</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.html">2015</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html">2014</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html">2013</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html">2012</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html">2011</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html">2010</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html">2009</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html">2008</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html">2007</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html">2006</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html">2005</a>.)</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/Y2IUd-f7qUY" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com0http://lippard.blogspot.com/2018/01/books-read-in-2017.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-14128327404380964202017-03-12T15:58:00.002-07:002018-02-02T12:20:04.706-07:00Rep. Tom Graves' Active Cyber Defense Certainty ActRep. Tom Graves (R-GA14) has circulated <a href="https://tomgraves.house.gov/uploadedfiles/discussion_draft_ac-dc_act.pdf">a draft bill, the "Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act"</a> (or ACDC Act), which amends the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 USC 1030) to legalize certain forms of "hacking back" for the purposes of collecting information about an attacker in order to facilitate criminal prosecution or other countermeasures.<br /><br />The bill as it currently stands is not a good bill, for the following reasons:<br /><br />1. It ignores the recommendations in a recent report, <a href="https://cchs.gwu.edu/gray-zone-active-defense-private-sector-against-cyber-threats">"Into the Gray Zone: Active Defense by the Private Sector Against Cyber Threats,"</a> from the Center for Cyber &amp; Homeland Security at the George Washington University.&nbsp;This report distinguishes between low-risk active defense activities within the boundaries of the defender's own network, such as the use of deceptive technology (honeypots, honeynets, tarpitting), the use of beaconing technology to provide notifications in case of intrusions, and research in deep and dark web underground sites, on the one hand, and higher-risk active defense activities such as botnet takedowns, sanctions and indictments, white-hat ransomware, and rescue missions to recover stolen assets, on the other. One of the report's key questions for an active defense measure is "is the active defense measure authorized, whether by an oversight body, law enforcement, or the owner of the affected network?" &nbsp;This bill creates no mechanism for providing particular authorizations (also see points 2 and 3, below).<br /><br />The "Into the Gray Zone" report also suggests that if a decision is made to authorize the accessing of a remote system (an attacker's system is almost always the system of another victim) for information collection purposes, it should be limited to cases in which a defender can "assert a positive identification of the hostile actor with near certainty, relying on multiple credible attribution methods." This, however, seems too strict a condition to impose.<br /><br />Finally, however, this report advises that, even without a change in the law, DOJ "should exercise greater discretion in choosing when to enforce the CFAA and other relevant laws, and should provide clarity about how it intends to exercise such discretion. Companies engaging in activities that may push the limits of the law, but are intended to defend corporate data or end a malicious attack against a private server should not be prioritized for investigation or prosecution." (p. 28) The report cites active defense activity by Google in response to hacking from China as an example where there was no prosecution or sanction for accessing remote systems being used by attackers. This proposal seems to me a wiser course of action than adopting this bill. (Also see point 5, below.)<br /><br />2. It disregards the recommendations from the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.csis.org/programs/technology-policy-program/cybersecurity/csis-cyber-policy-task-force">Center for Strategic and International Studies Cyber Policy Task Force</a>&nbsp;on the subject of active defense. The CSIS Cyber Policy Task Force report contains a short three-paragraph section on active defense (p. 14) which throws cold water on the idea, calling active defense "at best a stopgap measure, intended to address companies’ frustration over the seeming impunity of transborder criminals" and affirming that only governments should be authorized to engage in activities on the high-risk side, and that it is their responsibility to coordinate and engage in such activity. It does offer up a possibility for a proposal that allows accessing remote systems by private parties in its last sentence: "Additionally, the administration could consider measures, carried out with the prior approval of federal law enforcement agencies (most likely requiring a warrant to enter a third-party network) to recover or delete stolen data stored on servers or networks under U.S. jurisdiction." This bill does not require approval from federal law enforcement agencies or a warrant for accessing remote systems or networks, and jurisdiction is only implicit.<br /><br />3. While the proposal in the bill resembles a proposal made in <a href="https://www.mercatus.org/publication/active-defense-overview-debate-and-way-forward-guardians-of-peace-hackers-cybersecurity">a Mercatus Center at George Mason University proposal by Anthony Glosson</a>, it adopts the carrot element of the proposal while neglecting the stick. Glosson's proposal is that, like this bill, private parties should be permitted to access remote attacking systems in order to collect information ("observation and access"), but not to engage in "disruption and destruction." However, Glosson suggests three requirements be present to make such access and information collection permissible, and if those requirements are not present, that there be "stiff statutory damages" imposed. The bill omits any statutory damages, and imposes only one of Glosson's three requirements (though a previous version of the bill included the second). Glosson's three requirements are (1) that the defender's actions are limited to observation and access, (2) that the attacker was routing traffic through the defender's network at the time of the active defense action, and (3) that obtaining the owner of the attacking system's cooperation at the time of the attack was impractical. &nbsp;This third criterion is a critical one, and a good way to observe the undesirability of this bill is to imagine that you are the owner of the intermediary system used by the attacker to go after a third party--what would you want that third party to be able to do with your system without your permission or consent?<br /><br />4. The bill appears to have been somewhat hastily written and sloppily updated, failing to update a persistent typographical error ("the victim' [sic] own network") through its revisions, and the current version seems to be somewhat incoherent. In its current form it is unlikely to meet its short title objective of encouraging certainty.<br /><br />The current version of the bill makes it legal for a victim of a "persistent unauthorized intrusion" to access "without authorization the computer of the attacker to the victim' [sic] own network to gather information in order to establish attribution of criminal activity to share with law enforcement or to disrupt continued unauthorized activity against the victim's own network," so long as this does not destroy information on the system, cause physical injury, or create a threat to public health or safety.<br /><br />The phrase "without authorization the computer of the attacker to the victim's own network" doesn't make sense [it should say "attacker of" or "attacker against"], and appears to be the result of poor editing from the prior version of the bill, which made permissible accessing "without authorization a computer connected to the victim' [sic] own network", with the rest of the text remaining the same. This prior wording apparently attempted to thread the needle of the GWU "Into the Gray Zone" report by defining the accessing of a remote system as being within the boundaries of the defender's own network, and thus on the low-risk side of the equation. However, the wording "connected to the victim's own network" is ambiguous and unclear--does it mean directly connected (e.g., to a WiFi access point or LAN port on a switch), in which case this is much less useful, or does it mean any active session flow of packets over the Internet into the victim's network (similar to Glosson's second requirement)? The latter is the more reasonable and charitable interpretation, but it should be made more explicit and could perhaps be too strict--what happens if the attacker disconnects just moments before the active defense activity begins?<br /><br />Left unsaid in the bill is what can be done with information collected from the attacking system, which might include information belonging to other victims, the exposure of which could cause harm. Presumably other remedies from other statutes would exist if a defender engaged in such exposure, but it seems to me that this bill would be improved by making the parameters of permissible action more explicit and restrictive. Perhaps the current wording limits actions to information sharing with law enforcement and reconfiguration of one's own defensive systems based on the collected information, but "to disrupt continued unauthorized activity against the victim's own network" is a purpose that could be achieved by a much broader set of actions, which could cause harm to other victims.<br /><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />5. It's not clear that the bill is necessary, given that security researchers are today (as they have been for years) taking steps to access infrastructure used by malicious cyber threat actors in order to monitor their activity and collect intelligence information. They are already making legal and regulatory risk decisions which incorporate the existing CFAA, and deciding to proceed anyway.<br /><br />If this bill is to move forward, it needs some additional work.<br /><br />(News story on the bill: Michael Mimoso, <a href="https://threatpost.com/active-defense-bill-raises-concerns-of-potential-consequences/124112/">"Active Defense Bill Raises Concerns of Potential Consequences</a>," ThreatPost.<br />Further reading: Paul Rosenzweig, <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/typology-evaluating-active-cyber-defenses">"A Typology for Evaluating Active Cyber Defenses,"</a> <i>Lawfare</i> blog)<br /><br />UPDATE (March 14, 2017): Robert Chesney wrote a good critique of the bill at the <i>Lawfare</i> blog, <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/legislative-hackback-notes-active-cyber-defense-certainty-act-discussion-draft">"Legislative Hackback: Notes on the Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act discussion draft,"</a>&nbsp;in which he points out that the word "persistent" is undefined and vague, notes that "intrusion" excludes distributed denial of service attacks from permissible cases of response under this bill, and wisely notes that there may be multiple computers in an attack chain used by the attacker, while the bill is written as though there is only one. &nbsp;(It is also noteworthy that an attacking IP could be a firewall in front of an attacking machine, and a response attempting to connect to that IP could be redirected to a completely different system.)&nbsp; Chesney also questions whether destroying information is the right limit on responsive activity, as opposed to altering information (such as system configurations). He also notes that the restrictions for destruction, physical injury, and threats to public health and safety are probably insufficient, noting as I did above that there could be other forms of harm from disseminating confidential information discovered on the attacking system.<br /><br />I think a more interesting bill that would create incentives for companies to invest in security and to appropriately share information about attacks (rather than trying to hide it) would be a bill that created a safe harbor or liability limits for a company whose systems are used to attack third parties, if they have taken certain precautionary measures (such as having patched all known vulnerabilities more than 30 days old, and having a continuous monitoring program) and if they also share in a timely manner information about their breach.<br /><br />UPDATE (May 25, 2017): Rep. Graves has released <a href="http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-cybersecurity/2017/05/25/scoop-hack-back-bill-gets-version-20-220506">a version 2.0 of his bill which is vastly improved</a>, addressing almost all of my concerns above. The new Sec. 2 of the bill puts the use beaconing technology on a sound legal footing, which is consistent with the recommendations of the CSIS "Into the Gray Zone" report. The new Sec. 4 of the bill requires notification of the FBI, which, while it isn't the notification of/deferral to organizations which have their own cyber defense teams to protect and investigate their own compromised infrastructure, it might effectively serve the same purpose, and it also provides a deterrent to irresponsible active defense. &nbsp;The core of the former bill, Sec. 3, has been revised to limit what can be done, so that now taking or exposing content on the attacker machine belonging to other parties would not be permissible. And there is also a new Sec. 5 of the bill, which sunsets it after two years. I cautiously support the new bill as a potentially useful experiment.<br /><br />UPDATE (October 14, 2017): A <a href="https://tomgraves.house.gov/uploadedfiles/acdc.pdf">new version of the bill was released this week</a> which has further improvements. Instead of just creating an exemption to the CFAA, it creates a defense to a criminal charge, and makes clear that it is not a defense for civil liability. This means if you are within the bounds of the new rules accessing the systems of a third party which is another victim of the attacker, you won't go to jail for it, but you could still be successfully sued for damages by that third party. The new version of the bill also lists a few more things which you are NOT permitted to do in order to use the defense, and it requires that the FBI create a program for receiving advance notices from individuals and organizations that intend to use these measures, as well as a requirement for an annual assessment of this legislation's effectiveness.<br /><br />UPDATE (February 2, 2018): There are still a few issues with the current version of the Graves bill. (1) It doesn't require defenders to document and disclose actions taken against systems not owned by the attacker to the owners of those systems. (2) It places no limits on what vulnerabilities may be exploited on intermediary or attacker systems. (3) It allows destructive actions against information which belongs to the defender, as well as against any information or system which belongs to the attacker. (4) It does not limit the targets to systems within U.S. jurisdiction, or does it require any judicial approval. Attacks on systems outside U.S. jurisdiction could result in state-sponsored blowback. (5) The exception to permitted activity for any action which "intentionally results in intrusive or remote access into an intermediary's computer" seems at odds with the overall proposal, since 90%+ of the time the systems used by attackers will belong to an intermediary. (6) Sec. 5's requirement that the FBI be notified and presented with various pieces of information prior to the active defense seems both too strict and too loose. Too strict in that it doesn't allow pre-certification and must occur in the course of an attack, too loose in that it requires that the FBI acknowledge receipt before proceeding but no actual approval or certification, and that there's a loophole on one of the required pieces of information to be given to the FBI, which is any other information requested by the FBI for the purposes of oversight. Since all the active defender requires is acknowledgment of receipt, if the FBI doesn't request any such further information as part of that acknowledgement, the defender is good to go immediately at that point before any further information is provided. Sec. 5 is kind of a fake certification process--there is no actual certification or validation process that must occur.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/LxTGBFQjWbc" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com0http://lippard.blogspot.com/2017/03/rep-tom-graves-active-cyber-defense.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-34236493300058097252017-02-16T08:24:00.002-07:002017-02-16T08:29:54.079-07:00Confusing the two Trump cybersecurity executive ordersIn Andy Greenberg's <i>Wired</i> article on February 9, 2017, <a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/02/tom-bossert-trump-cybersecurity/">"Trump Cybersecurity Chief Could Be a 'Voice of Reason,"</a> he writes:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;exchange ssm 4r&quot; , , &quot;georgia&quot; , serif; font-size: 18px;">But when Trump’s draft executive order on cybersecurity&nbsp;</span><a href="https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/read-the-trump-administrations-draft-of-the-executive-order-on-cybersecurity/2306/" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(180, 231, 248); border-bottom-style: solid; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 3px; box-shadow: rgb(180, 231, 248) 0px -4px 0px inset; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: &quot;Exchange SSm 4r&quot;, ExchangeWeb-Roman, Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: background 0.15s cubic-bezier(0.33, 0.66, 0.66, 1); vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">emerged</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;exchange ssm 4r&quot; , , &quot;georgia&quot; , serif; font-size: 18px;">&nbsp;last week, it surprised the cybersecurity world by hewing closely to the recommendations of bipartisan experts—including one commission&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/01/trump-hacking-defense-plan-obama/" style="background-color: white; border-bottom-color: rgb(180, 231, 248); border-bottom-style: solid; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-width: 0px 0px 3px; box-shadow: rgb(180, 231, 248) 0px -4px 0px inset; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: &quot;Exchange SSm 4r&quot;, ExchangeWeb-Roman, Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: background 0.15s cubic-bezier(0.33, 0.66, 0.66, 1); vertical-align: baseline; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">assembled by the Obama administration</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: &quot;exchange ssm 4r&quot; , , &quot;georgia&quot; , serif; font-size: 18px;">.</span></blockquote>The described timing and the link both refer to <a href="https://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/world/read-the-trump-administrations-draft-of-the-executive-order-on-cybersecurity/2306/">the original draft cybersecurity executive order</a>, which does not at all resemble the recommendations of Obama's <a href="https://www.nist.gov/cybercommission">Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity</a> or the recommendations of the <a href="https://www.csis.org/programs/technology-policy-program/cybersecurity/csis-cyber-policy-task-force">Center for Strategic and International Studies Cyber Policy Task Force</a>, which both included input from large numbers of security experts. Contrary to what Greenberg says, the executive order he refers to was widely criticized on a number of grounds, including that it is incredibly vague and high level, specifies an extremely short time frame for its reviews, and that it seemed to think it was a good idea to collect information about major U.S. vulnerabilities and defenses into one place and put it into the hands of then-National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn. That original version of the executive order resembled <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170127080437/https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies/cyber-security/">the Trump campaign's website policy proposal on cybersecurity</a>.<br /><br />The positive remarks, instead, were for a revised version of the cybersecurity executive order which was verbally described to reporters on the morning of January 31, the day that the signing of the order was expected to happen at 3 p.m., after Trump met for a listening session with security experts. The signing was cancelled, and the order has not yet been issued, but a draft subsequently got some circulation later in the week and <a href="https://lawfareblog.com/revised-draft-trump-eo-cybersecurity">was made public at the Lawfare blog</a> on February 9.<br /><br />This executive order contains recommendations consistent with both the Cybersecurity Commission report and the CSIS Cyber Policy Task Force report, mandating the use of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework by federal agencies, putting the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in charge of enterprise risk assessment across agencies, promoting IT modernization and the promotion of cloud and shared services infrastructure, and directing DHS and other agency heads to work with private sector critical infrastructure owners on defenses.<br /><br />One key thing it does not do, which was recommended by both reports, is elevate the White House cybersecurity coordinator role (a role which the Trump administration has not yet filled, which was held by Michael Daniel in the Obama administration) to an Assistant to the President, reflecting the importance of cybersecurity. Greenberg's piece seems to assume that Thomas Bossert is in the lead cybersecurity coordinator role, but his role is Homeland Security Advisor (the role previously held by Lisa Monaco in the Obama administration), with broad responsibility for homeland security and counterterrorism, not cybersecurity-specific.<br /><br />Despite Greenberg's error confusing the two executive orders being pointed out to him on Twitter on February 9, the article hasn't been corrected as of February 16.<br /><br /><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/LPHiDzkuDio" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com2http://lippard.blogspot.com/2017/02/confusing-two-trump-cybersecurity.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-22445157846374989762017-01-01T09:14:00.000-07:002017-01-01T09:14:48.018-07:00Books read in 2016<div style="margin: 0px;">Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2016. Items with hyperlinks are linked directly to the item online (usually PDF, some of these are reports rather than books), with no paywall or fee.<br /><ul><li>Andreas Antonopoulos, <i>The Internet of Money</i></li><li>Herbert Asbury, <i>The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld</i></li><li>Rob Brotherton, <i>Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories</i></li><li>Center for Cyber &amp; Homeland Security, <i><a href="https://cchs.gwu.edu/sites/cchs.gwu.edu/files/downloads/CCHS-ActiveDefenseReportFINAL.pdf">Into the Gray Zone: The Private Sector and Active Defense Against Cyber Threats</a></i></li><li>Michael D'Antonio, <i>Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success</i></li><li>Henning Diedrich, <i>Ethereum: Blockchains, Digital Assets, Smart Contracts, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations</i></li><li>Martin Ford, <i>Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future</i></li><li>Emma A. Jane and Chris Fleming, <i>Modern Conspiracy: The Importance of Being Paranoid</i></li><li>Roger Z. George and James B. Bruce, editors,&nbsp;<i>Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations</i></li><li>Peter Gutmann,&nbsp;<i><a href="https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/book.pdf">Engineering Security</a></i></li><li>House Homeland Security Committee, <i><a href="https://homeland.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Staff-Report-Going-Dark-Going-Forward.pdf">Going Dark, Going Forward: A Primer on the Encryption Debate</a></i></li><li>Dr. Rob Johnston, <i><a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/analytic-culture-in-the-u-s-intelligence-community/analytic_culture_report.pdf">Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community: An Ethnographic Study</a></i></li><li>R.V. Jones, <i>Most Secret War</i></li><li>Fred Kaplan, <i>Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War</i></li><li>Maria Konnikova,&nbsp;<i>The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It...Every Time</i></li><li>Adam Lee, <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/series/atlas-shrugged/">hilarious blog commentary on <i>Atlas Shrugged</i></a></li><li>Deborah Lipstadt, <i>Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory</i></li><li>Dan Lyons, <i>Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble</i></li><li>Geoff Manaugh, <i>A Burglar's Guide to the City</i></li><li>Felix Martin, <i>Money: The Unauthorized Biography--From Coinage to Cryptocurrencies</i></li><li>Nathaniel Popper, <i>Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money</i></li><li>John Allen Paulos, <i>A Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours</i></li><li>Mary Roach, <i>Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War</i></li><li>Jon Ronson, <i>The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the "Alt-Right"</i></li><li>Oliver Sacks, <i>On the Move: A Life</i></li><li>Luc Sante, <i>Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York</i></li><li>Adam Segal, <i>The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age</i></li><li>Steve Silberman, <i>NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity</i></li><li>Richard Stiennon, <i>There Will Be Cyberwar: How the Move to Network-Centric War Fighting Has Set the Stage for Cyberwar</i></li><li>Russell G. Swenson, editor, <i><a href="http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/dia/bring_intel_about.pdf">Bringing Intelligence About: Practitioners Reflect on Best Practices</a></i></li><li>U.S. Army Special Operations Command, <a href="http://www.jhuapl.edu/ourwork/nsa/papers/ARIS_LittleGreenMen.pdf"><i>"Little Green Men": A Primer on Modern Russian Unconventional Warfare, Ukraine, 2013-2014</i></a></li><li>Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, <i>American Conspiracy Theories</i></li><li>Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey, <i>The Age of Crypto Currency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain Are Challenging the Global Economic Order</i></li></ul></div><div style="margin: 0px;">I made progress on a few other books (first four from 2016, one from 2015, &nbsp;next three from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with e-books, especially very long nonfiction e-books):<br /><ul><li>Andreas Antonopoulos, <i>Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies</i></li><li>Robert M. Gates, <i>Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War</i></li><li>Jocelyn Godwin, <i>Upstate Cauldron: Eccentric Spiritual Movements in Early New York State</i></li><li>Thomas Rid, <i>Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History</i></li><li>John Searle,&nbsp;<i>Making the Social World</i></li><li>Andrew Jaquith,&nbsp;<i>Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt</i></li><li>Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry,&nbsp;<i>Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem</i></li><li>Steven Pinker,&nbsp;<i>The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century</i></li><li>Richard Bejtlich,&nbsp;<i>The Practice of Network Security Monitoring</i></li><li>James Grimmelmann,&nbsp;<i>Internet Law: Cases &amp; Problems</i>&nbsp;(v2; v3 is out now)</li><li>Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,&nbsp;<i>Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking</i></li><li>Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh,&nbsp;<i>The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities</i></li><li>Michal Zalewski,&nbsp;<i>The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications</i></li></ul>Top ten for 2016: &nbsp;Sacks, Silberman, Jane &amp; Fleming, Konnikova, Manaugh, Lyons, Popper, Uscinski &amp; Parent, Jones, Lipstadt.<br /><br />(Previously:&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.html">2015</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html">2014</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html">2013</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html">2012</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html">2011</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html">2010</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html">2009</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html">2008</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html">2007</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html">2006</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html">2005</a>.)</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/Ft4I7xqA9Mc" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com3http://lippard.blogspot.com/2017/01/books-read-in-2016.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-53357217206215227452016-01-01T10:40:00.000-07:002016-01-03T13:39:32.747-07:00Books read in 2015<div style="margin: 0px;">Not much blogging going on here lately, but here's my annual list of books read for 2015:<br /><ul><li>George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, <i>Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation &amp; Deception</i></li><li>Jeffrey S Bardin, <i>The Illusion of Due Diligence: Notes from the CISO Underground</i></li><li>Bill Browder, <i>Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice</i></li><li>Ron Chernow, <i>Alexander Hamilton</i></li><li>Gabriella Coleman,&nbsp;<i>Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous</i></li><li>Laura DeNardis, <i>The Global War for Internet Governance</i></li><li>Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola, <i>Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind</i></li><li>Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, <i>Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers</i></li><li>William J. Drake and Monroe Price, editors, <i>Internet Governance: The NETmundial Roadmap</i></li><li>Jon Friedman and Mark Bouchard, <i><a href="http://info.isightpartners.com/definitive-guide">Definitive Guide to Cyber Threat Intelligence</a></i></li><li>Marc Goodman, <i>Future Crimes: Everything is Connected, Everyone is Vulnerable, and What We Can Do About It</i></li><li>Marc Hallet, <i><a href="https://archive.org/details/ACriticalAppraisalOfGeorgeAdamskiTheManWhoSpokeToTheSpaceBrothers">A Critical Appraisal of George Adamski: The Man Who Spoke to the Space Brothers</a></i></li><li>Shane Harris,&nbsp;<i>@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex</i></li><li>Peter T. Leeson, <i>The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates</i></li><li>Reed Massengill, <i>Becoming American Express: 150 Years of Reinvention and Customer Service</i></li><li>James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, <i>Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers, and Guests</i> (two new chapters)</li><li>David T. Moore, <i><a href="http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/dia/ndic_moore_crit_analysis_hires.pdf">Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis</a></i></li><li>Richard E. Nisbett, <i>Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking</i></li><li>Tony Ortega, <i>The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology Tried to Destroy Paulette Cooper</i></li><li>Whitney Phillips, <i>This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture</i></li><li>Joseph M. Reagle, Jr., <i>Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web</i></li><li>Jon Ronson, <i>Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries</i></li><li>Jon Ronson, <i>So You've Been Publicly Shamed</i></li><li>Bruce Schneier, <i>Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World</i></li><li>P.W. Singer and Allan Friedman, <i>Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know</i></li><li>David Skarbek, <i>The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System</i></li><li>Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, <i>The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries</i></li><li>Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, <i>Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction</i></li><li>Richard H. Thaler, <i>Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics</i></li></ul></div><div style="margin: 0px;">I made progress on a few other books (first two last year, &nbsp;next four from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with very long nonfiction e-books):<br /><ul><li>Roger Z. George and James B. Bruce, editors, <i>Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations</i></li><li>John Searle, <i>Making the Social World</i></li><li>Peter Gutmann,&nbsp;<i>Engineering Security</i></li><li>Andrew Jaquith,&nbsp;<i>Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt</i></li><li>Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry,&nbsp;<i>Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem</i></li><li>Steven Pinker,&nbsp;<i>The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century</i></li><li>Richard Bejtlich,&nbsp;<i>The Practice of Network Security Monitoring</i></li><li>James Grimmelmann,&nbsp;<i>Internet Law: Cases &amp; Problems</i>&nbsp;(v2; v3 is out now)</li><li>Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,&nbsp;<i>Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking</i></li><li>Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh,&nbsp;<i>The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities</i></li><li>Michal Zalewski,&nbsp;<i>The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications</i></li></ul>Top ten for 2015: &nbsp;Browder, Chernow, Coleman, Ronson (<i>Shamed</i>), Schneier, Phillips, Nisbett, Ortega, Miller and Shales, Thaler. I bought and read Bardin's book <i>because</i> Richard Bejtlich identified it as a "train wreck," and it was.<br /><br />(Previously: <a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.html">2014</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html">2013</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html">2012</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html">2011</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html">2010</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html">2009</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html">2008</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html">2007</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html">2006</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html">2005</a>.)</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/QT4HDEuF2PI" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com6http://lippard.blogspot.com/2016/01/books-read-in-2015.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-29060744242623821662015-11-23T08:37:00.000-07:002015-11-23T09:05:15.885-07:00A few thoughts on OpenBSD 5.8I've been using OpenBSD since way back at release 2.3 in 1998, so I've gone through upgrades that took a fair amount of work due to incompatible changes, like the switch from ipf to pf for host firewalling or the change to ELF binaries. The upgrade from 5.7 to 5.8 was a pretty smooth and easy one, for the most part. The two most painful changes for me were the replacement of sudo with doas and the dropping of support in the rc.conf for the pf_rules variable. &nbsp;While sudo is still available as a package, I like the idea of reducing attack surface with a simpler program, so I made the switch. The two things I miss most about sudo are the ability to authenticate for a period of time and the ability to have a single config file across a whole set of servers. The former I'm just living with, the latter I've adjusted to by having a single config file that has lines commented out depending on which server it's on. I did have one moment of concern about the quality of doas when it incorrectly reported the line number on which I had a syntax error in the config file--fortunately, this was just a failure to increment the line count on continuation lines (ending with a "\") which is <a href="http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.bin/doas/parse.y?rev=1.12&amp;content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup">fixed in the -current release</a>.<br /><br />The removal of the pf_rules variable support from rc.conf was a bigger issue--I used to just put the default pf.conf rules file in place with each release and upgrade, and keep my changes in a pf.conf.local file that was specified in the pf_rules variable. The effect was that from the period after the upgrade until I noticed the change, my systems were using the default rules and thus more exposed than they were supposed to be. This wasn't the first time an incompatible change decreased my level of security--the removal of tcpwrappers support from SSH was another. I used to use a combination of pf rules and hosts.allow as additional layers of protection on my SSH access, and had a set of tools that allowed me to easily add IP addresses to or remove them from my hosts.allow files. This would have been a layer of defense still in place with the loss of my pf rules, had it still been in existence. Fortunately, I also have SSH on a non-standard port and only allow SSH key logins, not user/password logins, and most of my systems can't be reached on any port without first making a VPN connection, which requires two-factor authentication.<br /><br />A minor annoying change that was made in 5.8 was putting the file /var/unbound/db/root.key into /etc/changelist, so that the file gets checked daily by the security script. The issue with this is that if you are actually using unbound with DNSSEC, this file changes daily, though only in the comments. My "reportnew" log monitoring tool has a feature that allows you to be notified if files that are expected to change on some periodic schedule do not change, and that would be more appropriate than getting daily notifications that yes, the autotrust anchor file has been updated yet again. But what would really be ideal here would be a check that the non-comment components have not changed. (Others <a href="http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/226167">have also complained about this</a>.)<br /><br />A final issue I've run into with OpenBSD 5.8 is not a new issue, but it's one that still hasn't been fixed with pf. That is that pf logs certain traffic (IGMP in particular) when it matches a rule that does not call for logging. This appears to be the same issue that was <a href="https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/4383">fixed earlier this year in pfsense</a>, which is derived from an older fork of pf.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/7GkoliYcfyc" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com0http://lippard.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-few-thoughts-on-openbsd-58.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-55414787198552225852015-07-20T15:14:00.001-07:002015-12-21T09:34:59.185-07:00Al Seckel exposed<div class="tr_bq">"<span style="background-color: white; color: #464646; font-family: verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I believe that we are rapidly transitioning from an Age of Information to an Age of Misinformation, and in many cases, outright disinformation." -- <a href="http://archive.today/9WuwJ#selection-583.157-583.299">Al Seckel</a>, in an interview published on Jeffrey Epstein's website, "Jeffrey Epstein Talks Perception with Al Seckel"</span><br /><br />Mark Oppenheimer's long-awaited exposé on Al Seckel, <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/191806/the-illusionist-al-seckel">"The Illusionist,"</a> has now been published and I urge all skeptics to read it. Seckel, the former head of the Southern California Skeptics and a CSICOP Scientific and Technical Consultant who was listed as a "physicist" in every issue of the <i>Skeptical Inquirer</i> from vol. 11, no. 2 (Winter 1987-88) to vol. 15, no. 2 (Winter 1991) despite having no degree in physics, has long been known among skeptical insiders as a person who was misrepresenting himself and taking advantage of others. Most have remained silent over fear of litigation, which Seckel has engaged in successfully in the past.<br /><br />An example of a legal threat from Seckel is this email he sent to me on May 27, 2014:</div><blockquote>Dear Jim,</blockquote><blockquote>News has once again reached me that you are acting as Tom McIver's proxy in<br />spreading misinformation and disinformation about me. Please be aware that<br />I sued McIver in a Court of Law for Defamation and Slander, and after a<br />very lengthy discovery process, which involved showing that he fabricated<br />letters from my old professors (who provided notarized statements that they<br />did not ever state nor write the letters that McIver circulated, and the<br />various treasures who were in control of the financial books of the<br />skeptics, also came forth and testified that no money was taken, and McIver<br />was unable to prove any of his allegations. The presiding Judge stated that<br />this was the "worst case of slander and defamation" that he had ever seen.</blockquote><blockquote>Nevertheless, even with such a Court Order he is persisting, and using (and<br />I mean the term "using") you to further propagate erroneous misinformation.<br />Lately, he has been making his defamatory comments again various people,<br />and posting links to a news release article by the Courthouse News (a press<br />release service) that reports the allegations set forth in complaints. Just<br />because something is "alleged" does not mean it is True. It has to be<br />proven in a Court of Law. In this case, after a lengthy discovery process<br />(and I keep excellent records) the opposite of what was alleged was<br />discovered, and the opposing counsel "amicably" dismissed their charges<br />against me. The case was officially dismissed. In fact, the opposing<br />counsel has been active in trying to get the Courthouse News to actively<br />remove the entire article, and not just add a footnote at the end.</blockquote><blockquote>I note that you have been trying to add this link to my wikipedia page. I<br />have never met you, and am not interested in fighting with you. I am<br />attaching the official Court document that this case was filed for<br />dismissal by the opposing counsel. You can verify yourself that this is an<br />accurate document with the Court. So, once again, McIver has used you.<br />My attorneys are now preparing a Criminal Complaint against McIver for so<br />openly violating the Court Order (it is now a criminal offense), and will<br />once again open the floodgates of a slander and defamation lawsuit against<br />him and his family, and anyone else, who aids him willing in this process.<br />This time he will not have his insurance company cover his defense. This<br />time that axe will come down hard on him.</blockquote><blockquote>For now, I will just think you are victim, but please remove any and all<br />references to me on any of your websites, and that will be the end of it.<br />You don't want to be caught in the crossfire.</blockquote><blockquote>Yours sincerely,<br />Al Seckel<br />--<br />Al Seckel<br />Cognitive neuroscientist, author, speaker</blockquote>Contrary to what Seckel writes, we have, in fact, met--I believe it was during the CSICOP conference, April 3-4, 1987, in Pasadena, California. &nbsp;I am not an agent of Tom McIver, the anthropologist, librarian, and author of the wonderful reference book cataloging anti-evolution materials, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Evolution-Readers-Writings-Before-Darwin/dp/0801845203/?tag=thelipblo-20">Anti-Evolution</a></i>, who <a href="http://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/cacdce/2:2007cv03134/388721">Seckel sued for defamation in 2007</a>, in a case that was settled out of court (see Oppenheimer's article). I have never met Tom McIver, though I hope I will be able to do so someday--he seems to me to be a man of good character, integrity, and honesty.<br /><br />The news release Seckel mentions is regarding a lawsuit filed by Ensign Consulting Ltd. in 2011 against Seckel charging him with fraud, which is <a href="http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/03/10/34803.htm">summarized online on the Courthouse News Service website</a>. I wrote a brief account of the case based on that news article on Seckel's Wikipedia page i<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Al_Seckel&amp;diff=prev&amp;oldid=418697134">n an edit on March 13, 2011</a>, but it was deleted by another editor in less than an hour. &nbsp;Seckel is correct that just because something is alleged does not mean that it is true; my summary was clear that these were accusations made in a legal filing.<br /><br />Seckel and his wife, Isabel Maxwell (daughter of the deceased British-Czech media mogul, Robert Maxwell), rather than fighting the suit or showing up for depositions, filed for bankruptcy. &nbsp;Ensign filed a motion in their bankruptcy case on December 2, 2011, <a href="http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/Ensign-v-Seckel-complaint.pdf">repeating the fraud allegations</a>. &nbsp;But as Seckel notes, Ensign did dismiss their case in 2014 prior to his sending me the above email.<br /><br />So why should anyone care? &nbsp;Who is Al Seckel, and what was he worried that I might be saying about him? This is mostly answered by the Oppenheimer article, but there is quite a bit more that could be said, and more than what I will say here to complement "The Illusionist."<br /><br />Al Seckel was the founder and executive director of the Southern California Skeptics, a Los Angeles area skeptics group that met at Caltech. &nbsp;This was one of the earliest local skeptical groups, with a large membership and prominent scientists on its advisory board. &nbsp;Seckel has published numerous works including editing two collections of Bertrand Russell's writings for Prometheus Books (both reviewed negatively in the <i>Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies</i>, see <a href="http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/vol9/iss1/11/">here</a> and <a href="http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/vol10/iss2/9/">here</a>). &nbsp;He has given a TED talk on optical illusions and authored a book with the interesting title, <i>Masters of Deception,&nbsp;</i>which has a forward by Douglas R. Hofstadter. &nbsp;Seckel was an undergraduate at Cornell University, and developed an association with a couple of cognitive psychology labs at Caltech--<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/16/technology/screen-grab-see-the-spiral-spin-see-your-skin-crawl.html">in 1998 the <i>New York Times</i> referred to him</a> as a "research associate at the Shimojo Psychophysics Laboratory." His author bios have described him <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=t5IgWas4rJwC&amp;pg=PA320&amp;lpg=PA320&amp;dq=Al+Seckel+Neuroquest&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=_fjp4LDSa8&amp;sig=z29aM5pfnZwVlpoIA9LjMxI4QhE&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0CEQQ6AEwBWoVChMIpOv_nd3qxgIVxDqICh1FDg1w#v=onepage&amp;q=Al%20Seckel%20Neuroquest&amp;f=false">as author of the monthly Neuroquest column at <i>Discover</i> magazine</a>&nbsp;("About the Author" on <i>Masters of Deception</i>; Seckel has never written that column), as "a physicist and molecular biologist" (<a href="http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/1988-Seckel-Basil-NNtNA.pdf">first page of Seckel's contribution</a>, "A New Age of Obfuscation and Manipulation" in Robert Basil, editor, <i>Not Necessarily the New Age</i>, 1988, Prometheus Books, pp. 386-395; Seckel is neither a physicist nor a molecular biologist), and, in <a href="https://www.ted.com/speakers/al_seckel">his TED talk bio</a>, as having left Caltech to continue his work "in spatial imagery with psychology researchers as Harvard" (see Oppenheimer's exchanges with Kosslyn, who has never met or spoken with him and Ganis, who says he has exchanged email with him but not worked with him).<br /><br />At Cornell, Seckel associated with L. Pearce Williams, a professor of history of science, who <a href="http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/1993-08-11-Seckel-Williams-Cornell.pdf">had interesting things to say when McIver asked him about their relationship</a>. While in at least one conference bio, <a href="http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/Seckel-Sagans-TA.pdf">Seckel is listed as having been Carl Sagan's teaching assistant</a>, I do not believe that was the case. The Cornell registrar reported in 1991 in response to a query from Pat Linse <a href="http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/1991-07-07-Seckel-Cornell-Registrar.pdf">that Seckel only attended for two semesters and a summer session</a>, though a few places on the web list him as a Cornell alumnus.<br /><br />Seckel used to hang out at Caltech with Richard Feynman. As the late <a href="http://obits.dignitymemorial.com/dignity-memorial/obituary.aspx?n=Helen-Tuck&amp;lc=2241&amp;pid=142733513&amp;mid=4252046">Helen Tuck</a>, Feyman's administrative assistant, wrote in 1991, Seckel "latched on to Feynman like a leach [sic]." Tuck wrote that she became suspicious of Seckel, and contacted Cornell to find that he did not have a degree from that institution. You can see her full letter, written in response to a query from Tom McIver, <a href="http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/1991-06-19-Seckel-Tuck-Caltech.pdf">here</a>.<br /><br />As the head of the Southern California Skeptics, Seckel managed to get a column in the <i>Los Angeles Times</i>, titled "Skeptical Eye." Most of his columns were at least partially plagiarized from the work of others, including <a href="http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/seckel-sheaffer-comparison.html">his column on Sunny the counting dalmation</a> (plagiarized from Robert Sheaffer), <a href="http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/seckel-sheaffer-comparison2.html">his column on tabloid psychics' predictions for 1987</a> (also plagiarized from Sheaffer), and <a href="http://www.discord.org/~lippard/seckel-docs/seckel-reiser-comparison.html">his column about Martin Reiser's tests of psychic detectives</a> (plagiarized directly from Reiser's work).&nbsp;When Seckel plagiarized Sheaffer, it was brought to the attention of Kent Harker, editor of the <i>Bay Area Skeptics Information Sheet</i> (BASIS), who contacted Seckel about it. Seckel apparently told Harker that Sheaffer had given his permission to allow publication of his work under Seckel's name, which Sheaffer denied when Harker asked. This led to Harker writing to Seckel in 1988 to tell him about Sheaffer's denial, and and inform him that he, Seckel, was no longer welcome to reprint any material from <i>BASIS</i> in <i>LASER</i>, the Southern California Skeptics' newsletter. While most skeptical groups gave each other blanket permission to reprint each others' material with attribution, Harker explicitly retracted this permission for Seckel.<br /><br />This is, I think, a good case study in how the problem of "affiliate fraud"--being taken in by deception by a member of a group you self-identify with--can be possible for skeptics, scientists, and other educated people, just as it is for the more commonly publicized cases of affiliate fraud within religious organizations.<br /><br />This just scratches the surface of the Seckel story. I hope that those who have been fearful of litigation from Seckel will realize that, given the Oppenheimer story, now is an opportune time for multiple people to come forward and offer each other mutual support that was unhappily unavailable for Tom McIver eight years ago.<br /><br />(BTW, one apparent error in the Oppenheimer piece--I am unaware of Richard Feynman lending his name for use by a skeptical group. He was never, for example, a CSICOP Fellow, though I'm sure they asked him just as they asked Murray Gell-Mann, who has been listed as a CSICOP Fellow since <i>Skeptical Inquirer </i>vol. 9, no. 3, Spring 1985.)<br /><br />"<span style="background-color: white; color: #464646; font-family: verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Oh, like everyone else, I used to parrot, and on occasion, still do." -- <a href="http://archive.today/9WuwJ#selection-747.1-747.68">Al Seckel</a>&nbsp;(interview with Jeffrey Epstein)</span><br /><br />Corrected 22 July 2015--original mistakenly said Maxwell was Australian.<br /><br />Update 22 September 2015--<a href="http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sgvtribune/obituary.aspx?n=al-p-seckel&amp;pid=175897677">an obituary has been published for Al Seckel</a>, stating that he died in France on an unspecified date earlier this year, but there are as yet <a href="http://www.avis-de-deces.net/avis/par-departement/dordogne-24-aquitaine">no online French death records</a> nor French news stories reporting his death. The obituary largely mirrors <a href="http://www.alseckel.net/">content put up on alseckel.net</a>, a domain that was registered on September 18 by a user using Perfect Privacy LLC (domaindiscreet.com) to hide their information. (That in itself is not suspicious, it is generally a good practice for individuals who own domain names to protect their privacy with such mechanisms and I do it myself.)<br /><br />Update 24 September 2015: French police, via the U.S. consulate, confirmed the death of Al Seckel on July 1, 2015. His body was found at the bottom of a cliff in the village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.<br /><br />Update 21 December 2015: A timeline of Al Seckel's activities may be found <a href="http://undeceive.weebly.com/">here</a>.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/8tZamc7osBk" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com4http://lippard.blogspot.com/2015/07/al-seckel-exposed.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-67201273828066837252015-01-01T07:00:00.000-07:002015-01-10T18:38:54.795-07:00Books read in 2014<div style="margin: 0px;">Not much blogging going on here lately, but here's my annual list of books read for 2014:<br /><ul><li>James Altucher, <i>The Choose Yourself Stories</i></li><li>Nate Anderson, <i>The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed</i></li><li>David V. Barrett, <i>A Brief History of Secret Societies: An Unbiased History of Our Desire for Secret Knowledge</i></li><li>Peter Burke, <i>A Social History of Knowledge, vol. 2, From the Encyclopedie to Wikipedia</i></li><li>Danielle Keats Citron, <i>Hate Crimes in Cyberspace</i></li><li>Harry Collins, <i>Are We All Scientific Experts Now?</i></li><li>Christopher Hitchens, <i>Hitch 22</i></li><li>Christopher Hitchens, <i>Mortality</i></li><li>Bruce E. Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer, <i>Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers</i></li><li>Walter Isaacson, <i>Steve Jobs</i></li><li>Brian Krebs, <i>Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime--From Global Epidemic to Your Front Door</i></li><li>Kembrew McLeod, <i>Pranksters: Making Mischief in the Modern World</i></li><li>China Miéville, <i>The City and the City</i></li><li>Roger Pielke, Jr., <i>The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming</i></li><li>Michael Sacasas, <i>The Tourist and the Pilgrim: Essays on Life and Technology in the Digital Age</i></li><li>Oliver Sacks, <i>Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood</i></li><li>James C. Scott,&nbsp;<i>Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed</i></li><li>Karen Stollznow, <i>God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States</i></li><li>Daniel Suarez, <i>Daemon</i></li><li>Daniel Suarez, <i>Freedom</i></li><li>Nassim Nicholas Taleb, <i>Antifragile</i></li><li>Sabrina Verney, <i>XTUL: An Experience of The Process</i></li><li>Timothy Wyllie, <i>Love Sex Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment</i></li><li>Kim Zetter, <i>Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon</i></li></ul></div><div style="margin: 0px;">I made progress on a few other books (first five this year, next four from last year, last two still not finished from two years ago):<br /><ul><li>Gabriella Coleman, <i>Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous</i></li><li>Peter Gutmann, <i>Engineering Security</i></li><li>Andrew Jaquith, <i>Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt</i></li><li>Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, <i>Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem</i></li><li>Steven Pinker, <i>The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century</i></li><li>Richard Bejtlich,&nbsp;<i>The Practice of Network Security Monitoring</i></li><li>Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky,&nbsp;<i>Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers</i></li><li>James Grimmelmann,&nbsp;<i>Internet Law: Cases &amp; Problems</i>&nbsp;(v2; v3 is out now)</li><li>Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander,&nbsp;<i>Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking</i></li><li>Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh,&nbsp;<i>The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities</i></li><li>Michal Zalewski,&nbsp;<i>The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications</i></li></ul>Top ten for 2014: &nbsp;Sacks, Miéville, Isaacson, Hitchens (both), Wyllie, Zetter, Collins, Pielke Jr., Pigliucci and Boudry.<br /><br />(Previously:&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.html">2013</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html">2012</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html">2011</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html">2010</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html">2009</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html">2008</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html">2007</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html">2006</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html">2005</a>.)</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/-nLOX46w1-I" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com1http://lippard.blogspot.com/2015/01/books-read-in-2014.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-3409877138631527642014-10-14T19:15:00.000-07:002014-10-14T19:21:43.242-07:00Summary of 1994 CSICOP conferenceI just stumbled across an old Usenet post of mine which summarizes a small part of the CSICOP conference held in Seattle June 23-26, 1994 (<a href="http://www.discord.org/~lippard/CSICOP/1994-Program.pdf">PDF of conference program</a>; <a href="http://www.discord.org/~lippard/CSICOP/1994-Announcement.pdf">PDF of conference announcement mailing</a>) with Robert Sheaffer's reply. I don't recall if I wrote the further followups, and didn't find any in a brief search. My 1992 Dallas CSICOP conference summary and a number of others may be found at the <a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/07/index-of-conference-summaries.html">Index of Conference Summaries </a>on this blog.<br /><br /><pre style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!hookup!yeshua.marcam.com!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!nic-nac.CSU.net!news.Cerritos.edu!news.Arizona.EDU!skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu!lippard<br />From: lip...@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)<br />Newsgroups: sci.skeptic<br />Subject: Re: News of the CSICOP conference?<br />Date: 11 Jul 1994 15:59 MST<br />Organization: University of Arizona<br />Lines: 110<br />Distribution: world<br />Message-ID: &lt;11JUL199415590395@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu&gt;<br />References: &lt;forb0004.229.0036889A@gold.tc.umn.edu&gt;<br />NNTP-Posting-Host: skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu<br />News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41 <br /><br />In article &lt;forb0004.2...@gold.tc.umn.edu&gt;, forb...@gold.tc.umn.edu (Eric J. Forbis) writes...<br />&gt;I'm surprised that so little has been written about the recent conference on <br />&gt;this group. Please, any who attended, tell all!<br /><br />I had intended to write up a summary of the Seattle conference similar<br />to the one I did for the 1992 Dallas conference (which may be found<br />in /pub/anson/Arizona_Skeptic on netcom.com, in vol. 6 somewhere, over<br />two issues). Events conspired against me, however. My flight did<br />not arrive until the conference had already begun on Thursday night,<br />and I was quite disappointed to miss Robert Baker's presentation in the<br />session on alien abductions. I also brought only an old school notebook,<br />which I found contained only two blank sheets of paper in it. Then I<br />planned to view Becky Long's videotapes of the sessions afterward, but<br />her camera's battery recharger broke. So the following is all from memory.<br /><br />I arrived at the conference on Thursday evening and was surprised to<br />find that the main conference room was completely full and an overflow<br />crowd was watching via closed-circuit television. This was the largest<br />CSICOP conference to date. I believe that for the alien abduction and<br />False Memory Syndrome-related sessions there were over 700 attendees.<br />(I seem to remember somebody telling me that, but we know how unreliable<br />human memory is.)<br /> I showed up in the middle of a presentation by Thomas Bullard, who was<br />very impressed by what he claimed were amazing consistencies between<br />the accounts of abductees. He argued against the claim (made by Baker?)<br />that the motifs in abduction stories can be traced to "Close Encounters<br />of the Third Kind" by pointing out the same motifs in earlier abduction<br />claims. (Yeah, but what about earlier appearances of "Grey"-like aliens in<br />other science fiction?)<br /> Next, John Mack spoke about why he was speaking at a CSICOP conference<br />and discussed the "intense polarization in ufology" between skeptics and<br />believers. He said that he was a skeptic about UFO abductions and that<br />he considers it to be an unsolved mystery. At times he sounded like<br />John Keel or Jacques Vallee--suggesting that aliens are interdimensional<br />creatures that can't be reduced to any known categories of human thought.<br />Like Bullard, he appealed to the consistency between testimonies.<br />I wrote down a series of questions he had for CSICOP and skeptics:<br /><br /> 1. Why so much vehemence in these attacks? [on him, on abduction claims]<br /> 2. Why so much certainty?<br /> 3. Why do we attack the experiencers themselves?<br /> 4. Why do you attack writers of your own commissioned reports who<br /> don't come up with the conclusions you want?<br /><br />I have no idea what the last question is supposed to be referring to,<br />since CSICOP does not commission research. It sounds like a question<br />more appropriately addressed to MUFON regarding its treatment of<br />investigators of the Gulf Breeze UFO sightings.<br /><br /> Since Nicholas Spanos died tragically in an airplane crash just a<br />week or so before the conference, at the last minute clinical psychologist<br />William Cone from Newport Beach, Calif. was brought in. (He was already<br />a conference attendee.) He began by saying that he didn't bring any<br />slides, but if the whole audience would just look at the screen, research<br />shows that about 2% of us would see things on it anyway. Cone said that<br />he has worked with a few dozen abductees, including some in locked wards<br />of mental institutions. He argued that abduction research that he has seen<br />is very badly done, with the researchers imposing their views on their<br />subjects. He offered a number of possible answers to the question "Why<br />would anyone make up stories like this?": (1) for the money (he gave<br />a specific example from his own experience), (2) for notoriety and<br />attention (he said that he's had abductees tell him they had never told anyone<br />about their experience before, and then show up on a tabloid TV show a<br />week later), (3) for identity with a group of people.<br /> He seemed to rebut most of the claims made by Bullard and Mack about<br />abductees.<br /><br /> Also added to the program was abductee and hypnotherapist Sharon<br />Phillip (?), who was brought in by Mack. She described her own<br />UFO sighting/abduction and promoted the usefulness of hypnotherapy.<br /><br /> Also present was Donna Bassett, who passed herself off as an abductee<br />in Mack's group and then went public in the _Time_ magazine article<br />about Mack. She stated that, just as women have been doing for<br />centuries, she faked it. She had very strong words of criticism for<br />Mack's methodology and claimed that his clients are telling Mack what<br />he wants to hear, but say other things behind his back. She accused him<br />of not getting informed consent from his clients about what they are<br />getting into.<br /><br /> Mack replied by saying that he could not discuss her case because<br />of confidentiality, but that he was not convinced that she *wasn't*<br />really an abductee. (He implied that he had reasons for thinking<br />this that he was not at liberty to discuss.) He flat out denied<br />parts of her story, such as the part about his breaking her bed<br />while sitting on it from his enthusiastic reaction to her story about<br />being on a UFO with JFK and Kruschev. He also suggested that Phil<br />Klass had put her up to her hoax, since her husband had worked with<br />Klass at _Aviation Week_. This prompted the biggest outburst of<br />anger that I witnessed at the conference, from Klass, who stated that<br />he had not seen the Bassetts for many years and heard about the hoax<br />in the media like everybody else. He subsequently contacted them,<br />and was responsible for Donna Bassett's being invited to the CSICOP<br />conference.<br /><br /> There followed a series of audience questions and answers, including<br />several which expressed concern about Bassett being brought into the<br />conference without Mack's knowledge. Some of these concerned audience<br />members changed their minds when told that Mack was already well aware<br />of the specifics of Donna Bassett's charges as a result of the _Time_<br />story.<br /><br />Well, that was Thursday, June 23. I'll comment further later about<br />the two Friday sessions and Carl Sagan's keynote address,<br />the three Saturday sessions and the luncheon talk about CSICOP and<br />the Law, and the Sunday session--or perhaps others can jump in.<br /><br />Jim Lippard _Skeptic_ magazine:<br />lip...@ccit.arizona.edu ftp://ftp.rtd.com/pub/zines/skeptic/<br />Tucson, Arizona http://www.rtd.com/~lippard/skeptics-society.html</pre><pre style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></pre><pre style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><pre style="border: 0px; font-size: 13px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Newsgroups: sci.skeptic<br />Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!hookup!yeshua.marcam.com!MathWorks.Com!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!usc!nic-nac.CSU.net!charnel.ecst.csuchico.edu!csusac!csus.edu!netcom.com!sheaffer<br />From: shea...@netcom.com (Robert Sheaffer)<br />Subject: Re: News of the CSICOP conference?<br />Message-ID: &lt;sheafferCsy5EI.n1t@netcom.com&gt;<br />Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)<br />References: &lt;forb0004.229.0036889A@gold.tc.umn.edu&gt; &lt;11JUL199415590395@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu&gt; &lt;Jul13.044226.32392@acs.ucalgary.ca&gt;<br />Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 20:11:05 GMT<br />Lines: 31<br /><br />&gt;In article &lt;11JUL199...@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu&gt;,<br />&gt;James J. Lippard &lt;lip...@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu&gt; wrote:<br />&gt;&gt; I showed up in the middle of a presentation by Thomas Bullard, who was<br />&gt;&gt;very impressed by what he claimed were amazing consistencies between<br />&gt;&gt;the accounts of abductees. He argued against the claim (made by Baker?)<br />&gt;&gt;that the motifs in abduction stories can be traced to "Close Encounters<br />&gt;&gt;of the Third Kind" by pointing out the same motifs in earlier abduction<br />&gt;&gt;claims. (Yeah, but what about earlier appearances of "Grey"-like aliens in<br />&gt;&gt;other science fiction?)<br /><br />I was going to comment about this at the conference, were it not such a<br />mob scene that getting to a microphone became nearly impossible:<br /><br />Bullard was right to object to Baker's statement that 'all these grey<br />aliens come from the 1977 movie CEIIIK'. (Bullard went on to cite some<br />pre-1977 examples).<br /><br />However, Marty Kottmeyer makes a pretty good case tracing the origin of the<br />_genre_ to Barney Hill who in March 1964 (date from memory: beware FMS)<br />sketched an alien that had supposedly abducted him. This drawing was<br />subsequently widely published. Marty found out, however, that an episode<br />of _The Twilight Zone_ had aired with a nearly-identical alien, just<br />A FEW DAYS before Barney made his sketch. (The individual sessions with<br />Dr. Benjamin Simon were all carefully dated and transcribed, and fan<br />books tell when each _Twilight Zone_ episode first aired.)<br /><br />-- <br /> <br /> Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - shea...@netcom.com<br /> <br /> Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!<br /><br /><br /> "As women and as lawyers, we must never again shy from raising our<br /> voices against sexual harrassment. All women who care about<br /> equality of opportunity - about integrity and morality in the<br /> workplace - are in Professor Anita Hill's debt."<br /><br /> -- Hillary Rodham Clinton, 8/9/92, at an American Bar <br /> Association luncheon honoring Anita Hill<br /><br /> "I want to make it very clear that this middle class tax cut, in <br /> my view, is central to any attempt we are going to make to have <br /> a short term economic strategy and a long term fairness <br /> strategy, which is part of getting this country going again." <br /><br /> -- candidate Bill Clinton, ABC News Primary Debate,<br /> Manchester, New Hampshire, 1/19/92 </pre></pre><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/Qg2lISIwWh4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com0http://lippard.blogspot.com/2014/10/summary-of-1994-csicop-conference.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-37374901587020560882014-04-25T13:37:00.001-07:002014-04-25T13:37:59.458-07:00Spam email from Christine Jones for governor campaignI received the following spam email today (a link on the email claims, falsely, that I opted in for it in October 2013) from the Christine Jones for governor campaign. &nbsp;Jones is a former GoDaddy executive who looks like a <a href="http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2013/10/18/so-christine-jones-is-a-terrible-candidate-for-governor">terrible</a> <a href="http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2013/10/christine_jones_gop_candidate.php">candidate</a>&nbsp;for governor of Arizona.<br /><br /><div class="p1">Dear James,</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; As a Republican candidate for Governor, I am frequently</div><div class="p1">asked where I stand on the issues important to our state-issues</div><div class="p1">ranging from immigration and education to economic development</div><div class="p1">and healthcare.</div><div class="p2"><br /></div><div class="p1">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; At a recent forum I was asked one of the single-most</div><div class="p1">important questions that a candidate for political office can</div><div class="p1">face. The question was, "Where does your moral compass come</div><div class="p1">from?"</div><div class="p1">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; At three years old, I climbed onto the Sunday School bus</div><div class="p1">that drove the neighborhood kids to the local evangelical church.</div><br /><div class="p1">It was there that I learned about God and His Son, Jesus. Since</div><div class="p1">then, I have let my personal relationship with Him be my moral</div><div class="p1">compass.</div><div class="p1">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; One of my life phrases is, "Do the right thing because</div><div class="p1">it's the right thing to do." I am not interested in making</div><div class="p1">excuses or politicizing important issues. I am interested in</div><div class="p1">doing things based on conviction and personal belief. As</div><div class="p1">Governor, I can promise you that I will adhere to my moral</div><div class="p1">compass.</div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; </span>If you would like to hear more about my story and why I</div><div class="p1">am running for Governor, I invite you to join me Tuesday, April</div><div class="p1">29th, from 6:30-8:00pm at New Life Community Church of the</div><div class="p1">Nazarene in Show Low. I hope you can make it!</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1"></div><div class="p1">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="s1">Best,</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"><br /></span></div><div class="p1">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Jones for Governor, Inc · Primary</div><div class="p1">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; PO Box 13087</div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; </span>Phoenix, AZ 85002-3087, United States</div><div class="p1"><span class="s1"> </span></div><div class="p1">&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;Paid for by Jones for Governor, Inc.</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/od3G7XKUJa0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com1http://lippard.blogspot.com/2014/04/spam-email-from-christine-jones-for.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-72286694562582234292014-01-01T10:06:00.000-07:002014-01-01T10:06:16.407-07:00Books read in 2013<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Not much blogging going on here lately, but here's my annual list of books read for 2013:<br /><ul><li>Ross Anderson,&nbsp;<i>Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems</i>&nbsp;(2nd ed)</li><li>Deborah Blum, <i>Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death </i></li><li>Peter Burke, <i>A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot</i></li><li>J.C. Carleson, <i>Work Like a Spy: Business Tips from a Former CIA Officer</i></li><li>Ronald J. Deibert, <i>Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace</i></li><li>Daniel Dennett, <i>Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking</i></li><li>Cory Doctorow, <i><a href="http://craphound.com/homeland/Cory_Doctorow_-_Homeland.html">Homeland</a></i></li><li>Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, <i>The Complete Sherlock Holmes</i> (re-read, thanks to free Kindle edition)</li><li>Roger Ebert, <i>Life Itself: A Memoir</i></li><li>John Forester, <i>Novelist &amp; Storyteller: The Life of C.S. Forester, vol. 1 &amp; vol. 2</i></li><li>Martin Gardner, <i>Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner</i></li><li>Adam Gorightly, <i>The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture</i></li><li>Jason Healey, editor, <i>A Fierce Domain: Conflict in Cyberspace, 1986 to 2012</i></li><li>Jenna Miscavige Hill: <i>Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape</i></li><li>Daniel Kahneman, <i>Thinking, Fast and Slow</i></li><li>Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford, <i>The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win </i></li><li>Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin, <i>The Unincorporated Man</i></li><li>Jon Krakauer, <i>Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way</i></li><li>Phil Lapsley, <i>Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell</i></li><li>Daniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero, <i>Abominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids</i></li><li>David W. Maurer, <i>The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Men</i></li><li>Philip Metcalfe, <i>Whispering Wires: The Tragic Tale of an American Bootlegger</i></li><li>Torin Monahan, editor, <i>Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life</i></li><li>Dale K. Myers, <i>With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit</i></li><li>Adam Penenberg, <i>Virtually True</i></li><li>Lewis Pinault, <i>Consulting Demons: Inside the Unscrupulous World of Corporate Consulting</i></li><li><i><span style="font-style: normal;">Stephen Pinker,&nbsp;</span><i>The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined</i></i></li><li>Ann Rowe Seaman,&nbsp;<i>America's Most Hated Woman: The Life and Gruesome Death of Madalyn Murray O'Hair</i></li><li>Karl Sabbagh, <i>Shooting Star: The Brief and Brilliant Life of Frank Ramsey</i></li><li>Oliver Sacks, <i>Hallucinations</i></li><li>Jim Schnabel, <i>Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies</i></li><li>Tom Standage, <i>Writing on the Wall: Social Media, The First 2,000 Years</i></li><li>Will Storr, <i>Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science</i></li><li>John Sweeney, <i>The Church of Fear: Inside the Weird World of Scientology </i></li><li>Jesse Walker, <i>The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory</i></li><li>Lawrence Wright, <i>Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, &amp; the Prison of Belief</i></li></ul></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I made progress on a few other books (first three still not finished from last year):<br /><ul><li>Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh, <i>The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities</i></li><li>James C. Scott, <i>Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed</i></li><li>Michal Zalewski, <i>The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications</i></li><li>Richard Bejtlich, <i>The Practice of Network Security Monitoring</i></li><li>Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, <i>Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers</i></li><li>James Grimmelmann, <i>Internet Law: Cases &amp; Problems</i> (v2; v3 is out now)</li><li>Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, <i>Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking</i></li></ul>Top ten for 2013: &nbsp;Ebert, Kahneman, Wright, Anderson, Pinker, Seaman, Walker, Sacks, Deibert, Dennett. &nbsp;Runners Up: Blum, Kim, Miscavige Hill.<br /><br />(Previously: <a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.html">2012</a>, <a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html">2011</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html">2010</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html">2009</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html">2008</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html">2007</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html">2006</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html">2005</a>.)</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/fa0Zd-Xw6YY" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com1http://lippard.blogspot.com/2014/01/books-read-in-2013.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-85139016031142248482013-10-30T17:44:00.000-07:002017-02-16T09:28:24.723-07:00How to use Google Authenticator with OpenBSD, OpenSSH, and OpenVPN--and why you might not want toI thought that Google Authenticator might be a quick and easy two-factor authentication solution for VPN access to my personal network, so I did some Google searches to see if that were so. &nbsp;I found quite a few sources describing how to set it up with systems that use Linux Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM), but very little about using it with BSD Authentication on OpenBSD.<br /><br />The most promising link I came across was to <a href="https://gitorious.org/google-authentication-for-openbsd">an implementation of Google Authentication for OpenBSD</a> that was last updated in early 2013, based on Google's PAM code, but I couldn't get it to work. &nbsp;It compiled and installed, and the googleauth code for generating a secret (and a very insecure way of generating a QR code to use to import it into the Google Authenticator application) worked fine, but I couldn't successfully use it for console login, OpenSSH login, or OpenVPN login.<br /><br />I also found the standard OpenBSD port for openvpn_bsdauth, which compiled, installed, and worked successfully for password authentication by adding these lines to my OpenVPN configuration:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">script-security 2<br />tmp-dir &lt;path to dir writable only by _openvpn user&gt;<br />auth-user-pass-verify /usr/local/libexec/openvpn_bsdauth via-file</blockquote><br /><div class="p1">This also requires that the authenticating user be put into the _openvpnusers group.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">I was unable to get the via-env method to work, however.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">I next tried the standard OpenBSD port of login_oath, which implements <a href="http://www.nongnu.org/oath-toolkit/">the OATH toolkit</a>, which uses the same time-based TOTP protocol that Google Authenticator uses. &nbsp;This turned out to do the trick. &nbsp;Once installed, you create a secret key that the server authentication will check against and store it in your home directory (one thing I liked about googleauth is that it stores the shared secret in a system directory to which the user doesn't have access; <a href="http://blog.mricon.com/2012/12/limitations-of-google-authenticator-pam.html">better still is the suggestion of keeping the secrets on an auth server as totp-cgi does</a>). &nbsp;The documentation recommends creating the secret (which the user doesn't need to know except for the initial configuration of the Google Authenticator client application) by doing:</div><div class="p1"></div><blockquote class="tr_bq">openssl rand -hex 20 &gt; ~/.totp-key</blockquote><div class="p1">I then needed to convert this from hex to base32, which is simple enough to do with the method the documentation recommends, which is using the perl module Convert::Base32 (OpenBSD port p5-Convert-Base32) and a short script like:</div><blockquote class="tr_bq">#!/usr/bin/perl<br />use Convert::Base32;<br />open (FILE, "/home/vpnuser/.totp-key");<br />$secret = &lt;FILE&gt;;<br />close (FILE);<br />$code = pack ('H*', $secret);<br />print encode_base32($code)."\n";</blockquote><div class="p1">The resulting code can be manually entered into Google Authenticator.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">To use Google Authenticator as a login method, I updated the login class for the user I wanted to use in /etc/login.conf so that its last two lines were:</div><blockquote class="tr_bq">:auth=-totp,passwd:\<br />:tc=default:</blockquote><div class="p1">This allows either Google Authenticator or password authentication at the console, but only Google Authenticator via OpenSSH or OpenVPN as I configured them. &nbsp;Instead of using "-totp" you can also use "-totp-and-pwd" which requires the entry of both your Google Authenticator code and your password (in that order, with a slash in between them) in order to authenticate.</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">For OpenSSH, I added the following lines to my sshd_config:</div><blockquote class="tr_bq">Match User &lt;vpnuser&gt;<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;PasswordAuthentication yes<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;AuthenticationMethods publickey,password:bsdauth</blockquote><div class="p1">I don't allow password authentication at all for other users; for this user, an SSH public key must first be used, then Google Authenticator must also be used before a successful login. [Updated 1 Nov 2013 to add: &nbsp;After a reboot, this ssh config failed with a log message of "fatal: auth2_update_methods_lists: method not in AuthenticationMethods". &nbsp;Removing the ":bsdauth" made it work again (it works since the "password" authentication method will use BSD Authentication by default), but this looks like an SSH bug.]</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">So why might you not want to do this? &nbsp;While Google Authenticator ensures that what is used over the network as a password is better than a typical user-selected password, it effectively stores a shared secret in plaintext at both ends of the connection, which is far less secure than SSH public key authentication. &nbsp;If the device where Google Authenticator is present gets compromised, that secret is compromised. &nbsp;And as the above link about totp-cgi points out, if you use Google Authenticator with the same secret across multiple machines, that secret is only as secure as the least secure host it's stored on, and using different secrets for different machines doesn't scale very well with the application. &nbsp;A password safe with randomly generated passwords, stored in encrypted form, is probably a better solution in most cases. [Updated 2 November 2013: Authy uses the same TOTP mechanism as Google Authenticator, but encrypts the secret key on the client side. &nbsp;That encryption is really more obfuscation than encryption since the key is based on phone attributes and can potentially be reverse engineered.]</div><div class="p1"><br /></div><div class="p1">As I've set it up, I'm still relying on SSH public key authentication for SSH logins, and on certificate authentication for VPN logins, in addition to Google Authenticator. &nbsp;For the case of logging into my VPN from my laptop and having Google Authenticator on a separate mobile device, it does seem to be a security improvement (though I welcome anyone to show me that the gains are illusory).</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/OBA8Y-dhLOw" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com1http://lippard.blogspot.com/2013/10/how-to-use-google-authenticator-with.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-65596911898597455692013-04-05T17:08:00.000-07:002013-04-05T17:38:00.810-07:00Matt Dillahunty and disbelief by defaultIn <a href="http://skepchick.org/2013/04/american-atheist-con-2013-matt-dillahunty-on-skepticism-and-atheism/">his recent talk at the American Atheist convention on skepticism and atheism</a>, Matt Dillahunty states (at about five minutes in) that skepticism does tell us what to believe in the case of untestable claims--that the default position is disbelief.<br /><br />But no, the default position has to be nonbelief, not disbelief. &nbsp;To disbelieve in a proposition is to believe in the negation of the proposition, to believe that the original proposition is false. &nbsp;And Dillahunty already said that (a) we should proportion our belief to the evidence and that (b) the proposition in question is untestable, meaning there is no evidence for or against it.<br /><br />The position he describes is logically inconsistent.<br /><br />We know that there are untestable propositions that are true. &nbsp;We shouldn't believe that they are false simply because they are untestable. We should only believe they are false if we have good reasons to believe they are false; in the absence of that we should be agnostic.<br /><br />(Added 5:36 p.m.: What are the implications for the above argument if it is the case that untestability does not entail lack of evidence or reasons? &nbsp;What about if we distinguish evidential from non-evidential reasons? &nbsp;And if we take the latter course, what does that say about proposition (a), above? Left as an exercise for commenters.)<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/huHM0jk8fIE" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com18http://lippard.blogspot.com/2013/04/matt-dillahunty-and-disbelief-by-default.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-76974447405375231692013-03-09T10:31:00.004-07:002013-03-09T10:31:57.545-07:00Isaac Funk and the Widow's Mite<div class="tr_bq">One of the more interesting and better documented cases of surprisingly accurate information from a spirit medium that is described in Deborah Blum's fascinating book, <i>Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death</i> (2006, Penguin Books), is the case of Isaac Funk and the Widow's Mite (pp. 260-262).</div><br />Funk, of Funk &amp; Wagnall's Dictionary, had been visiting a medium in Brooklyn, New York in February 1903. &nbsp;About his third visit, he subsequently described the following (in <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=DpoFAQAAIAAJ&amp;pg=PA159#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false">Isaac K. Funk, <i>The Widow's Mite and Other Psychic Phenomena</i> (1904, Funk &amp; Wagnalls), pp. 159-160</a>, now in the public domain due to copyright expiration):<br /><blockquote>About eleven o'clock the control named "George," in his usual strong masculine voice, abruptly asked: "Has anyone here got anything that belonged to Mr. Beecher?" There was no reply. On his emphatic repetition of the question, I replied, being the only one present, as I felt sure, who had ever had any immediate acquaintance with Mr. Beecher: "I have in my pocket a letter from Rev. Dr. Hillis, Mr. Beecher's successor. &nbsp;Is that what you mean?"&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>The answer was: "No; I am told by a spirit present, John Rakestraw, that Mr. Beecher, who is not present, is concerned about an ancient coin, 'The Widow's Mite.' This coin is out of its place, and should be returned. It has long been away, and Mr. Beecher wishes it returned, and he looks to <i>you</i>, doctor, to return it."&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>I was considerably surprised, and asked: "What do you mean by saying that he looks to me to return it? I have no coin of Mr. Beecher's!"&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>"I don't know anything about it except that I am told that this coin is out of place, and has been for a number of years, and that Mr. Beecher says&nbsp;<i>you</i> can find it and return it."<br />I remembered then that when we were making "The Standard Dictionary," some nine years before, I had borrowed from a gentleman in Brooklyn--a close friend of Mr. Beecher's, who died several years ago--a valuable ancient coin known as "The Widow's Mite." &nbsp;He told me that this coin was worth hundreds of dollars, and, under promise that I would see that it was returned to the collection where it belonged, he would loan it to me. ...&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>I said to the control, "The only 'Widow's Mite' that has ever been in my charge was one that I borrowed some years ago from a gentleman in Brooklyn; this I promptly returned"; to which the control replied:&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>"This one has <i>not</i> been returned." And then, after a moment's silence, he said: "Do you know whether there is a large iron safe in Plymouth Church?"&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>I answered: "I do not."&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>He said: "I am impressed that this coin is in a large iron safe, that it has been lost sight of; it is in a drawer in this safe under a lot of papers, and that you can find it, and Mr. Beecher wishes you to find it."&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>I said: "Do you mean that this safe is in Plymouth Church?"&nbsp;</blockquote><blockquote>He said: "I don't know where it is. I am simply impressed that it is in a large iron safe in a drawer under a lot of papers, and has been lost sight of for years, and that you can find it, and Mr. Beecher wishes you to find it. That is all that I can tell you."</blockquote>Funk goes on to inquire of his business manager, who insists that it was returned, and of Mr. Wagnalls and Wheeler, who knew nothing of the coin, but Wheeler, a skeptic, suggests that it's a good test. &nbsp;Funk asks a cashier, who remembers the coin, but also says that it had been returned, to investigate. &nbsp;After twenty minutes, the cashier returns with an envelope containing two "Widow's Mites," which was located in one of two safes (the large iron one), in a drawer under papers.<br /><br />The two coins are a smaller light-colored one and a larger black one, and Funk recalls that the smaller one was used for the illustration in the dictionary and that it was the genuine article, while the other was a fake. &nbsp;He returns to the medium, and asks which coin is the right one. &nbsp;Contrary to his belief, the medium (as "George") says that it is the black one, and that the friend of Mr. Beecher's to whom it belongs is a man associated with a large ladies' school in Brooklyn Heights. &nbsp;Funk recalls that it was borrowed from Prof. Charles E. West, head of a ladies' school in Brooklyn Heights.<br /><br />Funk sends both coins to the Philadelphia Mint for examination, and they determine that the medium is correct, the black one is the correct one, and the wrong one was used for the illustration in the dictionary.<br /><br />Funk notes that the preface of the dictionary notes, regarding the illustrations, contains the description "The Widow's Mite (which was engraved from an excellent original coin in the possession of Prof. Charles E. West of Brooklyn, N.Y.)."<br /><br />Funk's book provides a number of affidavits supporting the recounting of events, including that only two people present with the medium knew of Funk's connection to the coin (Funk and Irving Roney, the latter of whom provided an affidavit), that no one knew that the coin had not been returned, and that the cashier staff had no knowledge of the coin which was in the safe in their office.<br /><br />The coin was returned to West's son, who also provides an affidavit stating that he was unaware that the coin had not been returned and assumed that it had been. &nbsp;Funk says he dined repeatedly with the elder West prior to his death, and the coin was never brought up.<br /><br />Funk proceeds to list a series of facts about the case and some possible explanations (pp. 168ff), and finds difficulties with fraud, coincidence, telepathy and clairvoyance, and spirit communications as explanations, though he appears to favor the last of these.<br /><br />Funk presented the case to a number of eminent scientists of the day, including William James, Alfred Russell Wallace, and William Crookes, of which those listed were all associated with the SPR or ASPR and each suggested spirits as a possible explanation. &nbsp;Many of the other scientists and philosophers, however, suggested fraud or deception (see table in Funk's book, pp. 177-178).<br /><br />As presented in Blum's book, this case seems more impressive than it does with all of the details in Funk's account. &nbsp;What I find suspicious are that the medium is located in the same city as the person from whom the coin was borrowed, that the connection between the owner of the coin and the illustration was published in Funk's dictionary (omitted by Blum), and that although the son had forgotten about the coin being loaned out, he thought "it altogether likely that his father told at the time other members of his family, and possibly some persons outside the family" (Funk, p. 174). &nbsp;All that it would take for the fraud hypothesis would be that the medium had heard, second-hand, about the never-returned coin, and speculated that it had been forgotten and was kept in a safe (and perhaps offered a guess about which coin was genuine; that information has no clear source from the details recounted). &nbsp;Funk infers that because West never brought up the coin that he had forgotten about it, but that is an assumption on his part--perhaps West made periodic complaints about it not having been returned, but didn't mention it to his son. &nbsp;Funk suggests, based on class distinctions, that no one in the medium circle other than himself would have known that West even existed, which seems a highly questionable assumption.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/2Mzo54DxGXk" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com0http://lippard.blogspot.com/2013/03/isaac-funk-and-widows-mite.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-71927292784005077312013-03-06T20:22:00.000-07:002013-12-30T08:09:47.656-07:00The Decline (and Probable Fall) of the Scientology EmpireMy talk from January 19, 2013 to the National Capitol Area Skeptics is now online!<br /><br />Thanks very much to the NCAS for professionally recording and editing this video.<br /><br />I've included some notes and comments below. <br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/alLZWxkDf30" width="560"></iframe> <br /><ul><li>0:50 &amp; 42:29 "Advanced Teachings" available at all Advanced Orgs are up to OT V. Advanced Orgs can deliver through OT V; OT VI &amp; VII can only be obtained at the Flag Service Organization (FSO) in Clearwater, FL, and OT VIII can only be obtained on Scientology's cruise ship, the Freewinds. See: <a href="http://www.xenu.net/archive/ot/">http://www.xenu.net/archive/ot/</a></li><li>8:01 German U-boat -- I should have said Japanese submarine </li><li>9:14 Photo is often claimed to be from 1968 but is really from 1959-60, so Cleve Backster probably wasn't the source of Hubbard's claim, as I originally said in the talk (also see <a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2011/09/origins-of-screaming-trees.html">my previous blog post on this topic</a>). </li><li>10:53 Aleister Crowley is pronounced "crow-lee," not "craugh-lee" (I have apparently have not broken a bad habit of following Ozzy Osbourne's pronunciation). </li><li>13:59 the Fraser Mansion, though referred to by Scientology as the "founding church" from the 1970s to 2010, wasn't the original building. The original building, at 1812 19th St. NW, is now a museum called the L. Ron Hubbard House (though his house was across the street), which the church acquired in 2004. The Fraser Mansion is now Scientology's National Affairs Office. </li><li>14:11 The first use of the name "Church of Scientology" was by the Church of Scientology founded in Camden, N.J. in Dec. 1953; the first Church of Scientology corporation was in Los Angeles (Feb. 1954, which became the Church of Scientology of California in 1956), the Church of Scientology of Arizona was incorporated that same year. Hubbard's organization while he lived in Phoenix was the Hubbard Association of Scientologists, International (HASI), founded in Sep. 1952. All HASI assets were folded into the Church of Scientology of California in 1966. </li><li>31:07 "Division 20" should have been "Department 20."</li><li>32:43 "bad status" -- Scientology "conditions" are a scale, like the tone scale, that your "ethics" are in, which are positive or negative. For each condition there is a "conditions formula" you are supposed to apply to get to the next better condition. Those assigned to the RPF are put in a condition of "liability" (the rag on arm mentioned is a sign of the condition of liability). See: <a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us-11.html">http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/wakefield/us-11.html</a></li><li>41:07 PIs following the Broekers--mainly Pat Broeker; after one apparent attempt to leave (described in Lawrence Wright's book, <i>Going Clear</i>), Annie Broeker remained in Scientology until her death. Tony Ortega describes the testimony of the two PIs, who spoke out for one day before their lawsuit with Scientology was settled: <a href="http://tonyortega.org/2012/11/29/scientologys-master-spies/"> http://tonyortega.org/2012/11/29/scientologys-master-spies/</a></li><li>43:22 Lawrence Wright's book says that "Int Base" and "Gold Base" are two different bases at the same location; "Int" being the international headquarters and "Gold" named after Golden Era Studios. </li><li>1:05:35 "dog was drowned" -- Judge Swearinger's dog, Duke, a miniature collie, drowned, it's not certain that it "was drowned." </li><li>1:07:10 "unable to attend uncle's funeral" -- Hubbard died on January 24, 1986; the Challenger explosion was January 28, 1986.</li><li>1:17:43 St. Louis Ideal Org. &nbsp;The pictured Masonic Temple is not the St. Louis Ideal Org, which is still under construction. (Thanks to ThetanBait on YouTube for this correction.)</li><li>Narconon's drug purification program involves vitamin (esp. niacin) megadoses, but "injections" is not correct.</li></ul><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/xyck3KKz4ks" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com2http://lippard.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-decline-and-probable-fall-of.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-22366123322872928512013-01-01T08:20:00.000-07:002013-01-01T09:37:19.854-07:00Books read in 2012<br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Books read in 2012:</div><ul><li>Scott Atran, <i>In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion</i></li><li>Andrew Blum, <i>Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet</i></li><li>Henry A. Crumpton, <i>The Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA's Clandestine Service</i></li><li>Robin Dreeke, <i>It's Not All About "Me": The Top Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport with Anyone</i></li><li>David Edmonds and John Eidinow, <i>Rousseau's Dog: Two Great Thinkers at War in the Age of Enlightenment</i></li><li>Bart D. Ehrman, <i>Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth</i></li><li>Misha Glenny, <i>DarkMarket: How Hackers Became the New Mafia</i></li><li>Grant Foster, <i>Noise: Lies, Damned Lies, and Denial of Global Warming</i></li><li>Torkel Franzén, <i>Gödel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse</i></li><li>Andy Greenberg, <i>This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information</i></li><li>James Hannam, <i>God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science</i></li><li>Sam Harris, <i>Lying</i></li><li>Joseph Heath, <i>Economics Without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism</i></li><li>Edward Humes: <i>Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul</i></li><li>Ronald Kessler, <i>The Secrets of the FBI</i></li><li>Susan Landau, <i>Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies</i></li><li>Declan McHugh, <i>Bloody London: A Shocking Guide to London's Gruesome Past and Present</i></li><li>Robert A. Melikian, <i>Vanishing Phoenix</i></li><li>Mike McRae, <i>Tribal Science: Brains, Beliefs, and Bad Ideas</i></li><li>P.T. Mistlberger, <i>The Three Dangerous Magi: Osho, Gurdjieff, Crowley</i></li><li>Evgeny Morozov, <i>The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom</i></li><li>Eduardo Obregón Pagán, <i>Historic Photos of Phoenix</i></li><li>Parmy Olson, <i>We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency</i></li><li>Bruce Schneier, <i>Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive </i></li><li>Ali H. Soufan, with Daniel Freedman, <i>The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda</i></li><li><i><span style="font-style: normal;">Neal Stephenson,&nbsp;</span><i>REAMDE</i></i></li><li>Cole Stryker, <i>Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan's Army Conquered the Web</i></li><li>Tim Weiner: <i>Enemies: A History of the FBI </i></li><li>Jon Winokur (compiler &amp; editor), <i>The Big Curmudgeon</i></li><li>Tim Wu, <i>The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires </i></li></ul><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I made substantial progress on a few large books:<br /><ul><li>Ross Anderson, <i>Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems</i> (2nd ed)</li><li>Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh, <i>The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities</i></li><li>Stephen Pinker, <i>The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined</i></li><li>James C. Scott, <i>Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed</i></li><li>Michal Zalewski, <i>The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications</i></li></ul><br />(Previously: <a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.html">2011</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html">2010</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html">2009</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html">2008</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html">2007</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html">2006</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html">2005</a>.)</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/c3Flmm6YKx8" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com3http://lippard.blogspot.com/2013/01/books-read-in-2012.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-67441908002041764172012-09-22T17:42:00.000-07:002012-09-22T17:42:52.299-07:00Capitalist vs. socialist bombsWhile reading Ross Anderson's massive tome, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Security-Engineering-Building-Dependable-Distributed/dp/0470068523/thelipblo-20">Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Systems</a></i> (second edition), I came across this paragraph in section 19.7 on "Directed Energy Weapons" (p. 584):<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Western concern about EMP grew after the Soviet Union started a research program on non-nuclear EMP weapons in the mid-80s. &nbsp;At the time, the United States was deploying 'neutron bombs' in Europe--enhanced radiation weapons that could kill people without demolishing buildings. &nbsp;The Soviets portrayed this as a 'capitalist bomb' which would destroy people while leaving property intact, and responded by threatening a 'socialist bomb' to destroy property (in the form of electronics) while leaving the surrounding people intact.</blockquote>This reminded me of a science fiction story I read in <i>Omni</i> magazine at about the time in question, which Google <a href="http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/nuclear/w.htm">reveals</a> was "Returning Home" by Ian Watson in the December 1982 issue. &nbsp;In the story, the Americans and the Soviets attacked each other, the Americans using neutron bombs which killed all of the Soviets, and the Soviets using some kind of bomb which destroyed essentially everything except the people. &nbsp;The ending twist was that the surviving Americans ended up migrating to the Soviet Union and adopting the Soviet culture.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/IiEoj_4AUxM" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com1http://lippard.blogspot.com/2012/09/capitalist-vs-socialist-bombs.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-24129368275107453832012-08-10T19:26:00.003-07:002012-08-11T06:41:14.220-07:00The myth of fingerprintsI've been reading Ross Anderson's epic tome, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Security-Engineering-Building-Dependable-Distributed/dp/0470068523/thelipblo-20">Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems</a></i> (2nd edition, 2008, Wiley), and have just gotten into the chapter on biometrics (ch. 15). &nbsp;Section 15.5.2, on Crime Scene Forensics, points out three major criminal cases where fingerprint matches have been in error, including <a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2007/06/fingerprint-matching-pseudoscience.html">the Brandon Mayfield case which I wrote about at this blog back in 2007</a>. &nbsp;Anderson points out that law enforcement agencies have claimed to juries "that forensic results are error-free when FBI proficiency exams have long had an error rate of about one percent, and misleading contextual information can push this up to ten percent or more" (pp. 470-471). &nbsp;It's probability at work:<br /><div><blockquote class="tr_bq">Even if the probability of a false match on sixteen points [the UK standard, the U.S. has no minimum] were one in ten billion (10<sup>-10</sup>) as claimed by police optimists, once many prints are compared against each other, probability theory starts to bite. A system that worked fine in the old days as a crime scene print would be compared manually with the records of a hundred and fifty-seven known local burglars, breaks down once thousands of prints are compared every year with an online database of millions. (p. 471)</blockquote>One of the other two cases Anderson discusses is that of Scottish policewoman Shirley McKie, who was prosecuted on the basis of a 16-point fingerprint match found at a murder scene and could not find any fingerprint examiner in Britain to defend her. &nbsp;She found two Americans who testified on her behalf that it was not a match (Anderson shows the crime scene print and her inked print on p. 469; the crime scene print is heavily smudged). &nbsp;McKie's own fellow officers tried to convince her to give false testimony about her presence at the crime scene, which she refused to do. &nbsp;She was acquitted, but lost her job and was unable to get reinstated.<br /><br />The third case Anderson mentions is Stephan Cowans, who was convicted of shooting a police officer after a robbery in 1997. &nbsp;He was convicted, but argued it was not his fingerprint. &nbsp;After Cowans was able to get crime scene evidence tested for DNA which was found not to match, a re-examination of the fingerprint also found that there was no match. &nbsp;So six years after his conviction, he was acquitted on appeal.<br /><br />Further evidence of the errors which can arise from fingerprint examination comes from two studies by psychologist Itiel Dror which Anderson describes. &nbsp;In one study, five fingerprint examiners were each shown a pair of prints, allegedly the falsely matched prints from the Mayfield case, and asked to point out the errors. &nbsp;Three examiners gave explanations for the non-matches, one said that they did, in fact, match, and one was uncertain. &nbsp;In fact, the pairs of prints were each purported matches by the corresponding examiner from a recent criminal case, so only one of the five was still certain that a match testified to in court was in fact a match upon re-examination with a skeptical mindset. &nbsp;In a second study, Dror gave each of six experts eight prints that they had matched in previous cases, and four of the six gave inconsistent results.<br /><br />Anderson points out that belief in the infallibility of fingerprint evidence has the effect of promoting carelessness by examiners, not giving proper critical scrutiny to the method or its assumptions in changing conditions (e.g., the increase in the number of fingerprints to match against in the age of the computer), and increasing the negative consequences of cases of failure. &nbsp;In the McKie case, Anderson points out, "there appears to have arisen a hierarchical risk-averse culture in which no one wanted to rock the boat, so examiners were predisposed to confirm identifications made by colleagues (especially senior colleagues). &nbsp;This risk aversion backfired when four of them were tried for perjury." (p. 472)<br /><br />Itiel Dror's two papers (references from Anderson, p. 923):<br /><br />IE Dror, D Charlton, AE Péron, "Contextual information renders experts vulnerable to making erroneous identifications," in <i>Forensic Science International </i>156 (2006) 74-78<br /><br />IE Dror, D Charlton, "Why Experts Make Errors," in <i>Journal of Forensic Identification</i> v 56 no 4 (2006) pp 600-616; at <a href="http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/id/biometrics.html">http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/id/biometrics.html</a><br /><br />(<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2007/06/fingerprint-matching-pseudoscience.html">Previously</a>, which includes reference to Simon Cole's book on fingerprint evidence which shares the title of this post.)</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/Kgcz2BCt39w" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com0http://lippard.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-myth-of-fingerprints.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-23342996545875566612012-05-27T15:12:00.000-07:002012-05-27T15:12:29.012-07:00"In God We Teach" documentaryNow on YouTube, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP6B4gpgyRI">"In God We Teach,"</a> a documentary about Matt LaClair's exposure of his U.S. History teacher's proselytization in the public school classroom.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/NeY1c2Wm7M8" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com2http://lippard.blogspot.com/2012/05/in-god-we-teach-documentary.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-61936962320022168622012-02-14T19:45:00.000-07:002012-02-21T20:09:12.693-07:00Document leak from the Heartland Institute<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute-exposed-internal-documents-unmask-heart-climate-denial-machine">Documents leaked from the Heartland Institute reveal its funding sources</a> (including Charles G. Koch and an unnamed single donor providing about 20% of their total revenue) and recipients of funding (including $5,000/mo to Fred Singer and a plan to raise $90,000 for blogger Anthony Watts in 2012).<br /><br />The Heartland Institute is essentially the Tobacco Institute for climate change denial. &nbsp;See previous posts as this blog with the <a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/Heartland%20Institute">Heartland Institute</a> tag.<br /><br />UPDATE (February 18, 2012): It appears that <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/">one of the documents, the one with the most embarrassing statements, was a forgery</a>--but the statements I've made above all appear to be confirmed.<br /><br />UPDATE (February 21, 2012): Climate scientist Peter Gleick <a href="http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/20/peter-gleick-admits-to-deception-in-obtaining-heartland-climate-files/">has confessed to being the leaker of the documents</a>, but claims the apparently forged document was mailed to him anonymously and he scanned it in before distributing it with the others which he obtained by subterfuge after receiving the anonymous mailing.&nbsp; The oddities and errors in the forged document, however, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/peter-gleick-confesses-to-obtaining-heartland-documents-under-false-pretenses/253395/">strongly suggest Gleick himself forged the document after receiving the others</a>.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/xQhUSpDUrbc" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com2http://lippard.blogspot.com/2012/02/document-leak-from-heartland-institute.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-78466892041865443312012-02-11T16:00:00.000-07:002012-02-11T16:00:20.642-07:00Work-at-home scamsI was asked earlier today if I could give my opinion on whether the work-from-home opportunity advertised <a href="http://onlineprofitmasterssystem.com/offer97/congratulations.aspx" rel="nofollow">at&nbsp;the domain onlineprofitmasterssystem.com</a>&nbsp;is a scam. &nbsp;A quick bit of research produced some interesting results, my conclusion is that it is almost definitely a scam, by people with a history of promoting scams.<br /><br />First, the domain registration:<br /><br /><br />Registrant:<br />&nbsp; &nbsp;Phillip Gannuscia<br />&nbsp; &nbsp;1780 W. 9000 South<br />&nbsp; &nbsp;#315<br />&nbsp; &nbsp;West Jordan, Utah 84088<br />&nbsp; &nbsp;United States<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp;Registered through: Go Daddy<br />&nbsp; &nbsp;Domain Name: ONLINEPROFITMASTERSSYSTEM.COM<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Created on: 04-Nov-11<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Expires on: 04-Nov-12<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Last Updated on: 29-Nov-11<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp;Administrative Contact:<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Gannuscia, Phillip &nbsp;nate@essentmedia.com<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 1780 W. 9000 South<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; #315<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; West Jordan, Utah 84088<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; United States<br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; (801) 803-5769 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Fax --<br /><br />The very domain and URL and web content of the page are already screaming red flags, and there are more to be found in the above data. &nbsp;It's a recently registered domain, and the contact physical address appears to be a private mail drop service. &nbsp;Both the address and telephone number listed are associated with multiple other companies (e.g., <a href="http://www.bbb.org/utah/business-reviews/training-program-companies/eventure-international-in-west-jordan-ut-22246814">BBB F-rated eVenture International</a>, run by <a href="http://www.bbb.org/utah/business-reviews/internet-marketers/epromo-solutions-in-provo-ut-22021195">Richard Scott Nemrow, who was cited multiple times by the Utah Division of Consumer Protection in 2009</a>) and domain names (e.g., makerichesfromhome.com, educationtrainingsonline.com, executivelearningonline.com, learningresourceontheweb.com, and lightlifemaster.com) which also look like scams,. &nbsp;This particular company, <a href="http://www.bbb.org/utah/business-reviews/work-at-home-companies/online-profit-masters-in-west-jordan-ut-22311483">Online Profit Masters, has an F rating from the BBB</a>. &nbsp;The named contact, Phillip Gannuscia, has an email address with someone else's name, nate@essentmedia.com, apparently <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/natekoz">Essent VP Nathan L. Kozlowski</a>, a <a href="http://www.heraldextra.com/lifestyles/article_1d8818fb-5d43-51be-9ef7-626a22293a1b.html">former Mormon missionary</a>. &nbsp;Does Gannuscia even exist, or is the name just an alias for Kozlowski? &nbsp;The company whose domain is used here for the contact email address, Essent Media LLC, another Richard Scott Nemrow company, has <a href="https://secure.utah.gov/bes/action/details?entity=7671830-0111">a corporate registration which expired in 2010</a>.<br /><br />I'd steer clear of any business with these guys. &nbsp;And if you come across this blog post because you've already been ripped off by them (like <a href="http://www.ripoffreport.com/business-consultants/ds-development/ds-development-guy-gritton-dbe8a.htm">this guy reports</a>), I suggest you file a complaint with the <a href="http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx">Internet Crime Complaint Center</a>&nbsp;as well as contacting your local law enforcement agency.<br /><br /><div><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/CsXBA94p-60" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com0http://lippard.blogspot.com/2012/02/work-from-home-scams.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-60007064598749001362012-02-11T11:17:00.003-07:002012-02-11T11:17:50.205-07:00Miscellanea<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/print-edition/20120204_STP002_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/print-edition/20120204_STP002_0.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I recently had a few opportunities on a plane to catch up on some reading and podcasts. &nbsp;A few of the more interesting things I came across:<br /><br />A bunch of interesting articles in <i>The Economist</i> for the past few weeks:<br /><br />January 28-February 3, 2012:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21543488">"Saving Lives: Scattered Saviors"</a> -- harnessing social media and mobile devices to deploy first aid faster than an ambulance can arrive (United Hatzalah in Israel believes it will be able to have first responders on the scene within 90 seconds).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21543590">"China's new tribes: Ant tribes and mortgage slaves"</a> -- a new vocabulary in Mandarin describing emerging social groups in China. &nbsp;(Reminds me of Cory Doctorow's <i><a href="http://craphound.com/est/">Eastern Standard Tribe</a></i>.)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21543526">"Affinity fraud: Fleecing the flock"</a> -- the rise in affinity fraud, especially religious affinity fraud, during the economic downturn, and why it works so effectively. &nbsp;(Also see my<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2008/05/phony-financial-planner-defrauds.html">&nbsp;blog post from 2008</a>&nbsp;and <a href="http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2006/08/religious-fraud-increasing.html">another on the same topic from the Secular Outpost in 2006</a>.) &nbsp;Briefly mentioned is the Baptist Foundation of Arizona affinity fraud, which victimized my step-grandfather by stealing most of his retirement savings.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21543470">"Visible-light communication: Tripping the light fantastic"</a> -- an update on where we stand with Li-Fi (using LED lighting as a mechanism for data transmission).<br /><br />February 4-10, 2012:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21545975">"Synaesthesia: Smells like Beethoven"</a> -- A new study finds correlations between odors and sounds, even among people who are not synaesthetes.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21545974">"Scientific publishing: The price of information"</a> -- On the boycott of Elsevier by scientists tired of excessive charges for journals, and the competition from arXiv and PLoS.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21545971">"Biomimetics: Not a scratch"</a> -- lessons from the microstructure of scorpion armor for reducing wear rates on aircraft engines and helicopter rotors.<br /><br />Podcasts:<br /><br /><a href="http://philosophybites.com/2012/01/alain-de-botton-on-atheism-20-1.html"><i>Philosophy Bites</i> interview with Alain de Botton on Atheism 2.0</a>: de Botton, author of <i>Religion for Atheists</i>, argues that there are good and useful components of religion which can be secularized, and that it is as legitimate to borrow things we like from religion while discarding what we don't as it is to prefer different kinds of art and music. &nbsp;(Also see&nbsp;<a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/tokenskeptic/2012/01/31/token-skeptic-interview-with-alain-de-botton-on-religion-for-atheists/">the <i>Token Skeptic</i> interview with de Botton</a> and watch <a href="http://blog.ted.com/2012/01/17/atheism-2-0-alain-de-botton-on-ted-com/">his TED talk</a>.) &nbsp;I think his picture of religion, like that of Scott Atran (<i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Trust-Evolutionary-Landscape-Evolution/dp/0195178033/">In Gods We Trust</a></i>) and Pascal Boyer (<i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Explained-Pascal-Boyer/dp/0465006965/">Religion Explained</a></i>) makes more sense than the way some atheists talk about it as though fundamentalist religion is the essence of religion, and should be discarded completely (which doesn't seem likely to happen as long as we live in social communities).<br /><br /><a href="http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-rationally-speaking-podcast-joseph.html"><i>Rationally Speaking</i> interview with Joseph Heath</a>: Heath, author of <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Without-Illusions-Debunking-Capitalism/dp/0307590577/">Economics without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism</a></i> (Canadian title: <i>Filthy Lucre: Economics for People who Hate Capitalism</i>, which the publishers decided wouldn't sell in the U.S.), talks about misunderstandings of economics on both the right and the left. &nbsp;(Also see <a href="http://willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/05/01/bloggingheads-tv-with-joseph-heath-on-filthy-lucre/">this BloggingHeads TV interview of Heath by Will Wilkinson</a>, who writes: "The section on right-wing fallacies is largely on the money and a great challenge for rote libertarians and conservatives. The section of left-wing fallacies is terrific, and it would be terrific if more folks on the left were anywhere near as economically literate as Heath.") &nbsp;Heath's "Rationally Speaking pick" also sounds fascinating, Janos Kornai's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Socialist-System-Political-Economy-Communism/dp/0691003939/">The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism</a></i>, which explains the creative but ultimately futile ways that human beings tried to replace markets with planning and design.)<br /><br /><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/KQ5TFyBIDLI" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com0http://lippard.blogspot.com/2012/02/miscellanea.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-45142546885544857812012-01-19T20:15:00.000-07:002012-10-18T19:26:27.889-07:00The Decline and (Probable) Fall of the Scientology Empire!<a href="http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/images/magv17n01_cover.jpg"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/images/magv17n01_cover.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 200px; width: 163px;" width="242" /></a>The title of this post is the title of <a href="http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/the-decline-and-probable-fall-of-the-scientology-empire/">my multi-book review article in the current issue of <i>Skeptic</i> magazine</a>, which is primarily about last year's <i>Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion</i> by Janet Reitman and <i>The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion</i> by Hugh Urban.&nbsp; It's a very long article for a book review in the magazine, running from pp. 18-27 with a couple of sidebars and a couple pages of footnotes. What I had in mind when I started writing it wasn't what I ended up with--my envisioned article would probably be more like a book that tells the story of Scientology's two wars with the Internet, which Reitman only devoted a few paragraphs to.&nbsp; (If that never happens, the best place to find the information in question is <a href="http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/scientology/">in the writings of <i>Village Voice</i> editor Tony Ortega</a>, who has done more than anyone to cover those topics.)&nbsp; I also would have liked to have done a bit more analysis of Urban's book, which I think is a bit wishy-washy in places in the name of academic objectivity, and makes a few promises at the beginning that it fails to deliver on as though it were rushed to completion.&nbsp; But I think it came out OK, and I recommend Reitman's book as the best and most up-to-date single overview of Scientology and its history, and Urban's for its coverage of Scientology's battles with the IRS for religious tax exemption and its contribution to explaining what Hubbard was up to when he created Scientology.&nbsp; I think Hubbard died believing his own nonsense, because some Scientology doctrines literally became true for him--he was the one person in Scientology who really could dream things up and make them happen around him, through the efforts of his devotees.<br /><br />I also hoped to devote a bit more space to what I allude to in my first footnote, referencing John Searle's <i>The Construction of Social Reality</i>, pp. 90-93 and 117-119, about how institutions can quickly collapse when collective agreement about social facts is undermined, as <a href="http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/01/scientology_in_3.php">seems to be happening at an accelerating pace within the Church of Scientology</a>.<br /><br />(All posts on Scientology at this blog--65 so far since 2005--can be found <a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/search/label/Scientology">here</a>. An overview of my involvement in Scientology's battles with the Internet is in my 2006 <a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/03/scientology-sampler.html">"Scientology Sampler"</a> post, which was updated with a 2009 post, <a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/01/scientology-vs-internet-history-lesson.html">"Scientology v. the Internet history lesson."</a>)<br /><br />UPDATE (26 January 2012): Tony Ortega, editor-in-chief at the <i>Village Voice</i> and prolific investigative journalist on the subject of Scientology, says <a href="http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/01/scientology_decline_fall_skeptic.php">very nice things about my article and Michael Shermer's associated article in <i>Skeptic</i> at his "Runnin' Scared" blog</a>, where there are lots of comments.<br /><br />This issue of <i>Skeptic</i> should be available in all Barnes &amp; Noble stores beginning around the first of February.<br /><br /><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/5PL5UBGciUQ" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com0http://lippard.blogspot.com/2012/01/decline-and-probable-fall-of-church-of.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-18956756260127413832011-12-31T20:00:00.038-07:002012-01-01T07:57:36.383-07:00Books Read in 2011<div style="margin: 0px;">I picked up the pace a bit in 2011, with a little help from acquiring a Kindle in July...</div><div style="margin: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin: 0px;">Books read in 2011:</div><ul><li>David Allen, <i>Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity</i></li><li>Dan Ariely, <i>The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic </i></li><li>Kevin Behr, Gene Kim, and George Spafford, <i>The Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps</i></li><li>John W. Creswell, <i>Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches</i>, Third Edition </li><li>Gordon R. Dickson, <i>The Alien Way&nbsp;</i></li><li>Daniel Domscheit-Berg, <i>Inside Wikileaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website</i></li><li>John Duignan with Nicola Tallant, <i>The Complex: An Insider Exposes the Covert World of the Church of Scientology </i></li><li>Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, <i>What Darwin Got Wrong</i>, Updated Edition&nbsp;</li><li>&nbsp;Floyd J. Fowler, Jr., <i>Survey Research Methods</i>, 4th Edition</li><li>Benjamin Franklin, <i>The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin</i>&nbsp;</li><li>Jefferson Hawkins, <i>Counterfeit Dreams: One Man's Journey into and out of the World of Scientology </i></li><li>Alan Haworth, <i>Anti-Libertarianism: Markets, Philosophy and Myth</i></li><li>Marc Headley, <i>Blown for Good: Behind Scientology's Iron Curtain </i></li><li>Gene Kim, Paul Love, and George Spafford, <i>Visible Ops Security: Achieving Common Security and IT Operations in 4 Practical Steps</i> </li><li>Jon Krakauer, <i>Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith</i></li><li>Peter D. Kramer, <i>Should You Leave? </i></li><li>Lawrence M. Krauss, <i>Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science</i></li><li>Patrick Lencioni, <i>The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (and their employees)&nbsp;</i></li><li>Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, <i>Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions </i></li><li>Nancy Many, <i>My Billion Year Contract: Memoir of a Former Scientologist&nbsp;</i></li><li>Robert McLuhan, <i>Randi's Prize: What Sceptics Say About the Paranormal, Why They Are Wrong and Why It Matters </i></li><li>Ben Mezrich, <i>The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal</i></li><li>Delbert C. Miller and Neil J. Salkind, <i>Handbook of Research Design &amp; Social Measurement</i>, 6th Edition </li><li>Kevin Mitnick with William L. Simon, <i>Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker&nbsp;</i></li><li>Harry Markopolos, <i>No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller </i></li><li>Milton L. Mueller, <i>Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance </i></li><li>Ronald L. Numbers, <i>Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion</i></li><li>Judith Pintar and Steven Jay Lynn, <i>Hypnosis: A Brief History </i></li><li>Kevin Poulsen, <i>Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground&nbsp;</i></li><li>Janet Reitman, <i>Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion </i></li><li>Mary Roach, <i>Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void </i></li><li>Jon Ronson, <i>The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry&nbsp;</i></li><li>Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory Doctorow, <i>True Names </i></li><li>Carl Sagan, <i>The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark </i></li><li>David Schmidtz and Robert E. Goodin, <i>Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility: For and Against&nbsp;</i></li><li>Amy Scobee, <i>Scientology: Abuse at the Top</i> </li><li>Robert Sellers, <i>Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, and Oliver Reed </i></li><li>Tom Standage, <i>The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers </i></li><li>John Steinbeck, <i>Travels with Charley in Search of America&nbsp;</i></li><li>Jim Steinmeyer, <i>The Last Greatest Magician in the World: Howard Thurston versus Houdini &amp; the Battles of the American Wizards </i></li><li>Donald Sturrock, <i>Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl</i></li><li>Nassim Nicolas Taleb, <i>The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable</i> (Second Edition) </li><li>Mark Twain, <i>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</i>&nbsp;</li><li>Hugh B. Urban, <i>The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion</i> </li></ul><div style="margin: 0px;">(Previously:&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2010/12/books-read-in-2010.html">2010</a>, <a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/12/books-read-in-2009.html">2009</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2008/12/books-read-in-2008.html">2008</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2007/12/books-read-in-2007.html">2007</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/12/books-read-in-2006.html">2006</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://lippard.blogspot.com/2006/01/books-read-in-2005.html">2005</a>.)</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/2P0MDcJGGkM" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com8http://lippard.blogspot.com/2011/12/books-read-in-2011.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15453937.post-84851264545344694742011-11-26T09:49:00.001-07:002012-01-01T07:58:21.900-07:00Time and Newsweek magazine covers, U.S. vs. rest of worldThis recent comparison has been making the rounds:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6236/6402664097_78db7c467a_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="130" src="http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6236/6402664097_78db7c467a_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />As have <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/25/1039957/-Comparing-US-World-Covers-for-TIME-Magazine?via=recent">a few other recent examples</a>:<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6231/6402664189_9b677771e2_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6231/6402664189_9b677771e2_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7027/6402664363_468370d59e_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7027/6402664363_468370d59e_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7159/6402664315_a877a06e31_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7159/6402664315_a877a06e31_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7141/6402664409_e51d14746b_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7141/6402664409_e51d14746b_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />But this has gone on for many years.&nbsp; A <a href="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/07/26/american-vs-international-news-time-and-newsweek/">few others from a few years back</a>:<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/newsweek1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/newsweek1.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/frogs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/frogs.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/Capture2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="168" src="http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2009/07/Capture2.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />I suspect the weekly news magazines are simply basing their cover decisions on what sells in the U.S.&nbsp; Sad.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/ezaiZ/~4/CV9q1gdi2q8" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Jim Lippardhttps://plus.google.com/117399630461557245031noreply@blogger.com3http://lippard.blogspot.com/2011/11/time-and-newsweek-magazine-covers-us-vs.html
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publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for October 2018
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-69-198-189.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/