Monthly Archives: July 2004

We Are So Cosmopolitan

Posted on July 16, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

The BBC reports that the UN says Miami has the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world.

Some 59% of people in the city were not born in the US, the UN Development Programme report said.

…Toronto had the second-highest proportion of foreign-born citizens (44%), while Los Angeles was a close third with 41%.

Another two North American cities – Canada's Vancouver (37%) and New York (36%) – made it into the top five, the report said.

Outside North America, the town-state of Singapore scored highest (33%), followed by Australia's Sydney (31%), Abidjan (30%) in Ivory Coast, London (28%) and Paris (23%).

Plus we've got Shaq. But he was born in Newark.

Posted in Miami | 4 Comments

When ‘Security Theater’ Makes (Perverse) Sense

Posted on July 15, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Bruce Schneier's latest Cryptogram has a thought-provoking story:

The other week I visited the corporate headquarters of a large financial institution on Wall Street; let's call them FinCorp. FinCorp had pretty elaborate building security. Everyone — employees and visitors — had to have their bags X-rayed.

Seemed silly to me, but I played along. There was a single guard watching the X-ray machine's monitor, and a line of people putting their bags onto the machine. The people themselves weren't searched at all. Even worse, no guard was watching the people. So when I walked with everyone else in line and just didn't put my bag onto the machine, no one noticed.

It was all good fun, and I very much enjoyed describing this to FinCorp's VP of Corporate Security. He explained to me that he got a $5 million rate reduction from his insurance company by installing that X-ray machine and having some dogs sniff around the building a couple of times a week.

I thought the building's security was a waste of money. It was actually a source of corporate profit.

The point of this story is one that I've made in “Beyond Fear” and many other places: security decisions are often made for non-security reasons. When you encounter a security risk that people worry about inordinately, a security countermeasure that doesn't counter the threat, or any security decision that makes no sense, you need to understand more of the context behind the decision. What is the agenda of the person who made the decision? What are the non-security considerations around the decision? Security decisions make sense, as long as you understand them properly.

There's loads more good stuff in Bruce's latest newsletter by the way.

Posted in National Security | 2 Comments

CAPPS II Dead or UnDead?

Posted on July 15, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

MSNBC says that the TSA is hinting hard that CAPPS II is dead. Except when it isn't:

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said officials had all but scrapped plans for the controversial Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, known as CAPPS II, which has come under criticism from privacy advocates and some members of Congress.

…

Asked whether the program could be considered dead, Ridge jokingly gestured as if he were driving a stake through its head and said: “Yes,” USA Today reported.

Sounds good, right? Except this is just like when they killed the Poindexter TIA program: (but really didn't1):

Ridge said a new program with a different name might be developed to replace CAPPS II. It could be replaced by a new “registered traveler” program if enough people volunteer to provide personal information, the report said.

So Registered Traveller + secret program to be (not) announced = CAPPS III. Oh joy.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see if the government argues that Frontier Travel v. TSA is now moot.

1 When the program went 'black' they just stopped worrying about privacy:

“But when the Information Awareness Office was disbanded and the work on many parts of TIA—which is ongoing—became classified, the privacy work stopped, Poindexter said.

“The privacy work was part of what was cancelled,” he said. “But I think it should continue. And I think that eventually it will be continued. I'm an optimist.”

Posted in Law: Right to Travel | 1 Comment

It. Just. Gets. Worse.

Posted on July 15, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Seymour Hersh says the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

“The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking,” the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was “a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher.”

See Ed Cone for pointers to more grisly stuff.

Of course, none of this in any way should be laid at the feet of our leaders, who consistently deplore torture in all forms. Indeed, the very concept of command responsibility, and especially 'buck stops here' theories of the Presidency, are anachronistic thinking ill-suited to the realities of modern governance in large organizations.

Where once we aspired to leadership of virtue, now we must learn to enjoy Virtual Leadership.

Posted in Iraq Atrocities | 4 Comments

Heidi Bond on ‘Why IRAC Sucks’

Posted on July 15, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

The title is not a misprint. This is not a post about Iraq. It's about IRAC — a technique for answering American law school exams.

UM has a lot of services designed to help students who are having trouble in law school. Most of these push IRAC, a very mechanical and ultimately unhelpful approach to answering questions. Since this is the lifeline we throw the flailing I feel somewhat estopped from undermining it. But I have never liked IRAC. IRAC will sometimes take a “C” or “C-” student up to a C+, which is something (it can keep you off academic probation), but not enough. Until now I've never had a good short explanation of why it's unlikely to take you much farther.

In the future, however, I will point students to Heidi Bond's latest essay, Exam Tips 1: Why IRAC sucks.

And, as always, I will tell them that their goal should be to get to Maybe.

Posted in Law School | 9 Comments

Slacktivist Brainstorm

Posted on July 15, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Fred Clark, the Slacktivist, has had a brilliant idea:

Eventually, someone from the Cartoon Network will realize that Fafnir and Giblets really ought to be made part of the lineup on Adult Swim.

This would entail getting a team of animators to create the Fafnir and Giblets animated characters, as well as, of course, animated versions of the Medium Lobster and Christopher Robin. At the very least, they could become regular guests on, say, Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Two quibbles. First, given that the Medium Lobster is a Higher Being, I'm not sure that he lends himself well to animation. Second, I worry this next bit might be taking it just a bit far…

If the show became a hit, I could see them branching out to create animated versions of other blogs. Maybe a show called “Why oh why are we ruled by these idiots?” featuring a squiggle-vision version of Brad DeLong.

Posted in Blogs | 3 Comments