The Pebble and the Avalanche

Health Care and Unintended Consequences

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:27:00 -0500

TechCruch writes about the unintended consequences of industrial policy — how they've introduced financial instability in the past decade or more.

Given that Obamacare will aggregate one-sixth of the US economy under his control, I have to wonder what the boom/bust cycles to anticipate. My guess will be that in addition to some mild financial cycles (the trend will be relentlessly downward for the private sector taxes will spiral), we'll see industrial cycles: in hospital patient capacity, number of health care workers, drug availability, and even in healthcare studies enrollment.

Proper Answers to Census Questions

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:56:00 -0500

Yesterday I received a letter from the Census Bureau that informed me of next week's arrival of the census form. I always fill it out the same way: I give the government all the information to which the government is entitled, namely a count of the individuals living in my home. The rest of the information, including their names and ages, is none of the government's business.

This year the census form includes questions about race, as it always does — there's quite a few this time around, and I'm always bemused by the arcane process that selects the ethnicity to measure. But I do wonder: how does government-mandated disaggregation into racial groups affect governance and society? While it's very easy indeed to come up with negative consequences, I draw a complete blank when I try to think of an instance when officially-mandated racial disaggregation resulted a positive innovation.

But If It Really Is Happening, Is It Yelp?

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:29:00 -0500

The Wall Street Journal blogs that somone filed a lawsuit against Yelp alleging extortion. The lawsuit alleges that Yelp will take down negative reviews in return for money; others allege that Yelp will take down positive reviews if you do not purchase an advertising package.

Let's say that someone is collecting money for removing negative reviews from Yelp. Is it really Yelp?

I expect it's easy enough for a criminal ring to target business owners. They crooks put up several negative reviews; instead of waiting for the business to complain to Yelp, the crooks contact the business directly and offer their "package." The business owner, convinced that he's doing business with Yelp, pays up; the negative reviews disappear; maybe the crooks are smart even smart enough to pay some of the ill-gotten gains for promised advertising.

When I want to prove I own a web page, the person I'm doing business with will ask me to put a comment into the web page's source code, a token that only the web page editor can insert. That's a level of sophisticated identity authentication that I expect most business owners do not have.

Now I admit I'm curious... even if this lawsuit does not involve crooks, does a ring such as the one I describe exist on Yelp or elsewhere?

P.S. The most damage to Yelp would not be to their reputation, or even the proceeds from the lawsuit. I will guess that the most damage would be to their loss of Section 230 safe harbor protection — a smart lawyer could easily (and very profitably) argue that Yelp loses that protection if they manipulate positive and negative reviews to force businesses to subscribe to their services.

Assassination In Dubai

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:18:00 -0500

My friend Bruce Schneier asked me to chime in on the question of the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas terrorist, in Dubai. I started writing this on that day; put it aside for long while; and while the information is just as relevant, I think that I'll just give up and post what I've written so far.

One of the most important things to do when you read a police report or press release is to keep an open mind, and this adage applies double in the politically-charged atmosphere of the Middle East. I have a long list of basic questions about the assassination; I'll post a few here as samples.

Was there an assassination?

The Dubai police claim that Mahmoud al-Mabhouh died of asphyxiation, and the coroner noted that this determination was the "hardest of his career" and took ten days to discover. Asphyxiation generally leaves quite noticeable forensic evidence, which make me wonder not only why it took so long to discover that this was an assassination and not natural causes, but also whether or not it was an assassination at all.

Some people may recall that when Yassir Arafat finally died, of a disease that seems to have been HIV/AIDS, a good portion of the Arab press claimed that the Israelis had poisoned him. The Dubai press doesn't seem to suffer from this sort of problem, but it's a question worth keep in mind.

I'll proceed through the rest of this post on the assumption that Mahmoud al-Mabhouh actually did die of asphyxiation by person or persons unknown. Furthermore, since Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was a terrorist, I will use the words "assassination" or "execution" to describe this presumed extra-legal death.

Did a Team Do This?

A quick glance at the video released by the Dubai police shows a group of travelers; I haven't made the time to look at the entire thing. Without the narrative the Dubai Media Office supplied ("teams," "sophisticated communication devices"),for the most part we have nothing but boring video of ordinary travelers, to the point that I don't have the patience to sit through all the video that's been released.

For the remainder of this essay I'll assume, arguendo, that the Dubai police have constructed but not released to the public more convincing evidence.

How Much Did This Cost?

The Dubai police orginally claimed that 17 persons participated in this operation and they keep adding more people to the roster of suspects every day. Round-trip airfares are about $600 per person between Austria and Dubai; figure that each person took another 2 round-trip tickets to cover their costs. The hotel costs are about $150 per night, per diem costs to maintain a cover as a tourist are perhaps up to $200 per day.

The "retail" cost of a blank, stolen British passport is about $3,500 (American passports are worth less, Canadian passports more).

Total out of pocket costs for the "observable" part of the operation are therefore in the range of $300,000. Of course the actual costs (especially if it was a government operation) were many times that amount, but the scope of the operation is well within the reach of anyone with a lot of money and a grudge.

What Kind of People Did This?

According to Dubai police, a team of ~~seventeen~~ thirty-odd people carried out the assassination. That's a lot of people, which tells us something about who they are: they are either government employees, a terrorist organization, or members of a religious group.

They are not mercenaries. Perhaps I'm naive, but I don't believe you can hire such large gangs of well-trained operatives; there simply isn't enough call for such work to keep a gang this size in business. (Of course you can hire gangs this size for small-scale warfare, but not for assassination.) Of course you can hire freelance mercenaries and assemble them into your own team, but that runs into issues of trust.

In an operation this size, any participant faces several security risks from the police. He may be caught, of course; one of his colleagues may be caught and induced to talk; the people running the operation may captured, sloppy, or otherwise compromised and again induced to talk. In turn, this implies that the operatives must have a high degree of trust in each other, which argues against a team this size as a group of mercenaries hired at random. Worse, random mercenaries or even members of a mercenary group will likely find themselves, one day after capture on a different operation, confronting a police officer and in a position to bargain for their freedom by discussing an old operation...

The size of this team argues that the team consisted of government agents, who have patriotic cohesion and the substantial resources of a government to help them; or they are terrorists, who share an ideology and have resources to enforce discipline and perhaps free captured operatives; or they are coreligionists who share a devotion to a cause and some sort of structure to intercede to support captured operatives.

Who Ordered This Operation?

At first the Dubai government refrained from speculating who commited this assassination, which made me respect their professionalism, but apparently that's gone by the wayside. Be that as it may, who would commit this assassination?

As a Middle East terrorist, al-Mabhouh had many enemies:

Israel. al-Mabhouh not only committed terrorist attacks in the past; he actively supported the Hamas terrorist organization's infrastructure in Gaza. I have to admit that his public profile does not seem to support a high-cost Israeli attack against al-Mabhouh now — why would the Israelis assassinate someone like al-Mabhouh now? If he is just a middleman for Iranian missle supplies to Gaza, that means he's just another middle manager who can be replaced.

Aruging against the Israelis is that six of the forged passports used the names of Israeli citizens. There's no reason for Israel to do this, and implicating your own citizens (however briefly) smacks of desparation. Was the operation really so slapdash? Was the selection of Israeli citizens a message? See the next paragraph for further discussion.

Some of the alleged assassins exited Dubai via Iran, but that does not indicate these were not Israelis. It just indicates that, if these were Israelis, they were confident of their ability to transit Iran on their passports.
Fatah. In case you've forgotten, Hamas and Fatah fought a pitched battle for control of Gaza, and Fatah lost. Fatah controls the West Bank, Hamaz controls Gaza, and the only thing preventing a full-scale civil war between the two is the physical separation proivded by Israel and Israeli interdiction of heavy weaponry. I also suspect that Fatah's long-term civic corruption has reached the level that interferes with their abiilty to mount attacks.

Again, it isn't clear why Fatah would move at this time against al-Mabhouh.

The use of Israeli identies in the forged passports argues in favor of a Fatah operation. Fatah and criminal gangs operate in Israel, carrying off anything isn't nailed down, including cars. I find it easy enough to believe that Fatah could "steal" identities of Israeli citizens.
Anti-Iranian Regimes and Groups. Hamas is Iran's proxy in Gaza, and Iran continues to pressure the Arab world to accept Iran's hegemony. Lebanon is of course the most extreme case, with Iranian troops supporting the Hezbollah terrorist organization. Any Middle East regime, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, has a vested interest in the destruction of Iran's proxies.
France has a continuing interest in Lebanon, and may have found a reason to assassinate a Hamas operative with ties to Iran, given Iran's malignant presence in Lebanon.
If al-Mabhouh was actively involved in some more high-profile but not publically known activity, related to (for example) smuggling weapons of mass destruction to use against European targets, any European country would be a possible sponsor. This might be far-fetched, given the wretched diplomacy of most European countries regarding Iran and Hamas, but I would not be surprised to see a competent French inteligence unit deciding that al-Mabhouh posed a threat to French interests.

The best bet is still the Israelis, who will be more than happy to quietly take credit for this operation.

And so on and so forth. The main point I'm trying to get across is simple: we don't know who did this. We don't know why. The Dubai police have a narrative, and the Israelis certainly have the motive, means, opportunity, and above all the resolution to see this sort of operation through. But so do others.

I Lose the Gold

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:13:00 -0500

I seem to have lost the Gold — my Gold frequent-flyer privileges, that is. My airline kindly sent me a letter offering to extend my privileges for only $300 or $500 per month, I forget which. I suspect that they're not going to get many takers, and in fact I think they're foolish to revoke my privileges when I have a long history of extensive travel.

Be that as it may, according to today's Wall Street Journal, I'm in good company. Many corporate travelers now fly coach instead of business class; many others (including myself) use videoconferences instead of travel whenever possible. One of my current projects has participants literally all over the world; we never meet in person and spend most of our time on Skype.

I think airlines don't quite realize that their higher prices — and especially their deliberate nickel-and-diming passengers by charging them for checked bags on the ground and cookies in the air — will result in permanent changes in traveling habits. If I can teach a course in San Francisco and New York without travel costs for me or my students, I have not only saved a chunk of money but I've also save irreplaceable time.

As technology improves, the idea of a "meeting" will continue to separate from the idea of "in person." I think business travel, as measured in meetings or miles per person, will never recover to previous levels.

Europe: United When It Should Not Be

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:13:00 -0500

The captain of a US Navy ship enjoys tremendous freedom to innovate — but is absolutely accountable for not only his actions, but the actions of the people whom he appoints to positions of authority. If a young officer makes a mistake in the middle of the night when the captain is asleep, the captain is accountable.

I have many reasons to be leery of the European Union, not the least because the EU comprises yet another layer of legislative, judicial, and regulatory government on top of the current national governments. But from where I sit, the EU enjoys wide power but with little or any accountability, which inevitably leads to both abuse and failure.

The current situation in Greece would be a disaster for that country, but because Greece shares a common currency with other members of the EU, the Greek problems can easily spread. EU member countries routinely ignore the budget and debt rules — the basic rules that are supposed to support the Euro currency. Unlike the military, where accountability is a matter of law, in the EU adherence to the rules is governed by politics, which means that popularity and congeniality trumps accountability.

The EU has made the choice to handle Greece's problems by a political process, namely a bailout package. We here in the US are familiar with this theory; two of the three largest US-owned automobile manufacturers have been kept on government life support for years, with no hope in sight for recovery. If the EU is unwilling to disaggregate their monetary system, then they must either allow Greece to fail or use a unified process to make certain that Greece's budget conforms to EU rules. While there may be a clever idea out there, just about any other option I can think of leads directly to failure.

Apple's Prison Farm

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:44:00 -0500

I'm not fan of the term "walled garden," which is the term almost everyone uses to describe the closed system created by telecommunications companies on their networks. The idea of a "walled garden" is that only the nice, pretty applications are allowed in and the bad, disruptive ones are kept out.

I prefer to use the term "prison farm" because the term is more accurate: guards prevent the prisoners (the customers) locked inside the system, unable to experiment or experience other ideas, views, and methods.

Tech Crunch's article on Apple's "walled garden" discusses how Apple intends to keep its customers locked into an ecosystem that will create revenue for Apple. He notes, as I have often done vis-a-vis Microsoft, that once applications become locked to a particular vendor innovation suffers. In the terms we use in this blog, Apple is attempting to run the wheels backwards to prevent disaggregation of applications on the iPhone and iPad — this will inevitably result in less innovation. And ultimate failure.

"Speech in the User Interface" Published

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:20:00 -0500

Bill Meisel informs me that Speech in the User Iterface: Lessons from Experience has been published and will appear on Amazon shortly. The book consists of a compilation of essays from industry experts on, well, speech in the user interface.

I have an essay in this book, and I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's.

Of Quail Eggs and Twitter

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:46:00 -0500

Does everyone in the world need to know that I had quail eggs for lunch on Monday? I think so, so I'll broadcast that on Twitter in a few minutes. But sometimes the most surprising people read Twitter.

Early Tuesday morning I mentioned on Twitter that I was not going to vote in the Illinois primary election. Although I almost always vote in the primaries (and I never miss a general election), this year I was too thoroughly disgusted with the choices on tap and decided to protest by staying at home.

And then I got a telephone call from a reporter at The Chicago Tribune, who interviewed me about the reasons for my refusal to vote. The reporter had noticed my comment on Twitter and was curious enough to ask me.

I do admit that I'm curious about what tool he uses to scan Twitter so effectively, but that's not the point. The point is that the most innocuous short remark can provide information to someone, perhaps not very efficiently but in real time. Twitter has accomplished something profound and I think we don't quite understand the implications just yet.

The Next Blog Iteration: Can I Have My Data, Please?

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:59:00 -0500

Comments are turned off on this blog because I had trouble with the software that runs this blog; the base software is rather old and quirky. I hope to have time this week to repair it.

I am giving due consideration to new software, but there's a spot of bother. A modern blog is really a database: the web page you see is constructed from a lot of data in a database. In fact many web sites are buil that way &mdsah; they're really databases and the web pages you see are constructed from that database. (Trust me: Amazon doesn't create a new web page from scratch for each of the millions of books it has on file, it creates web pages automatically from a database of all its books.) That's actually quite nice in lots of ways, but not so nice in another, namely that if you don't understand how to extract your files from the database you're at the mercy of the web site software. Migrating to a new database system is no easy task.

My current web site is fairly straightforward and stores all its input in ordinary files, and the blog software simply does formatting for me. I don't feel at the mercy of the software and my inforamtion is always available. But I'm afraid it's time to overcome my fears and place all the data into a real database — and make certain I can pull the data out one day by using an open-source version of the software.