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Welcome to Thor's Blah, Blah, Blog. Here you will find rants,
projects, and whatever general bitching I may be up to at the time.
Don't be so scared, it's only
terrorism.
08/21/11
An
event recent to this writing has garnered the attention
of several of my colleagues in the InfoSec community; a Long Beach Post
journalist was detained by police for taking pictures of a refinery.
Sander Wolff, correspondent for the Post, was held under the premise of
photographing subjects with “no apparent esthetic value.” Apparently, photographing a refinery
is behavior indicative of a terrorist in the throes reconnaissance gathering,
and it is an action that demands investigation. According
to Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell, this is a proper and justified police
action.
As Americans, it’s easy to be angered at incidents such as this. It smacks of abusive discretion and
censorship, and it goes against the grain of free expression and metaphorical
speech. It also puts the burden of
discernible esthetics in the hands of people who are not necessarily qualified
to make that distinction. However,
the question shouldn’t be an officer’s ability to qualify photographic visual
appeal; we should question the legal conditioning that a photograph must have
some level of esthetic value in the first place in order to be taken.
There is already a growing propensity of authorities to take actions
against those photographing or videotaping police incidents, and we need to be
conscious of this. Law
enforcement should also ensure that their actions do not create precedence for
future “reasonable” defenses of deadly force or Alter Ego legislation. If is it “reasonable” for an officer
to detain individuals for taking pictures, then it could become “reasonable” for
one to take self-defense actions against the same.
But there are far more important issues
here.
This event demands we greatly expand the scope of our concerns: this speaks to the ability of
America’s authorities to successfully engage the threat of terrorism at an
essential level. If one does not
understand the psychological fundamentals of terrorism, it cannot be defended
against.
Even if a terrorist were to openly photograph and research targets in public,
harassing them for taking pictures isn’t going to prevent a terrorist act. If anything, detaining someone for
legal activities is likely to just fuel the fires of their ideology. For a terrorist organization to be
successful, all they need do is create a behavioral shift that causes a
government to react to irrational fears. Once
this shift occurs, the job of the terrorist is complete and the delegation of
terror has begun. When a
government reacts to everyday occurrences as potential terrorist activity, the
citizens do not view it as defensive due diligence; they view it as an
indication that there is actually something to fear. As such, the message of terror is
carried by the very defenders of it, and the perpetual cycle of dispensing fear
to the citizenry is initiated on the terrorist’s behalf.
Officer McDonnell’s own statements substantiate fear: “If an officer sees
someone taking pictures of something like a refinery, it is incumbent upon the
officer to make contact with the individual.”
This sends two messages: One,
it tells us that in the eyes of the authorities, anything you do that they
believe is suspect, even at the level of measuring artistic taste, qualifies for
the existence of probable cause. This also sends tactical information
to terrorists who now know they can trivially seize the attention of law
enforcement without doing anything illegal.
This is the essence of effective social engineering. Many (mistakenly, in my mind) view
social engineering as the ability to convince someone to perform a particular
act. True social engineering is
planning for and predicting the inevitable actions of others. There is no reason to attempt
the engineering of any given action if you can put yourself in control of the
circumstances surrounding people’s inexorable reactions. The latter is geometrically more
effective.
The war on terror can be easily won if we simply choose to stop being terrified. That’s the first and most important
step. But the more our authorities
condition us to respond with fear, the easier it is for our enemies to plan for
our fearful responses. If you are in
a position to protect and serve, please try to understand that to preserve
freedom, you must let it be exercised.
If you create an environment when we learn to fear our own freedoms, you
will indeed win the war on terror, but for the other side. |
Hacking Pink Floyd
10/14/10
Well, it's about time I got this thing rolling. I
figured that I would do something a little off the beaten track, so I'll start
with my Hacking Pink Floyd episode of Hacking with Thor.
Any hacker worth his bits knows that Pink Floyd's "The Wall" album has some sort
of secret message contained within, but do you know what it is? Has the
hint of mumbling at the begging and end of the ablum haunted you for years?
Well, it's time for you to know the secret. The following video shows and
tells all. It's hardly professional, and questions exactly how much free
time I have and what I choose to do with it, but that's really none of your
goram business, is it? So without further ado, I bring you:
Video: Hacking Pink Floyd
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