Category Archives: Security

Security

Toyota Self-Driving Bus Suspended After Crash Into Paralympic Contestant

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There are so many weird twists to this story, I don’t know where to begin but of course I had to write something.

First, maybe start with the fact that the victim is a vision-impaired Paralympic judo athlete.

Vision-impaired world-class self-defense expert is no match for a car also vision impaired that was given just one simple job — drive in a circle and don’t run into anyone.

Second, the victim is Japanese, the self-driving car is Japanese-made and operated by Japanese… and on top of all that the athletes’ village is a completely planned “safe” zone in Tokyo, Japan.

This was the opposite of complex operating environment. Toyota was operating in a tightly controlled and simplified transit model.

It even had designated crosswalks so athletes could be charged with jaywalking.

Third, early versions of the “operator” safeguard story made no sense at all. Here are two sentences from the same story just one paragraph apart:

  1. When asked why they hadn’t intervened, the operators stated they thought the athlete would stop walking and therefore took no action.
  2. …the operators had assumed he would stop walking and pressed the start button to resume operation of the vehicle.

The operators took no action leaving the car to hit the victim, by taking a direct action that forced the car to hit the victim.

What?

Let’s hope this gets clarified at some point soon. Did the car actually try to avoid a person and the humans looking at that same person push the car to hit the victim instead?

That seems totally weird and improbable as an explanation… like someone is being paid to take the blame for a robot weird.

Fourth, there’s some detail around the car seeing a security guard close to the intersection but not seeing the athlete. That contradicts the story of the operators forcing the car to hit the athlete.

But in any case, what is the point of a security guard if not to protect against killer robots attacking the athletes?

It might sound farcical, yet we have to ask what if these robots were used strategically to alter the outcome of sporting events, or make a political/terror message on a world stage?

He fell, suffering bruising to his head and leg, which will apparently require two weeks of recovery time. He was meant to compete in the judo 81-kilogram division tomorrow and it’s currently unclear if he still will.

There’s a lot of money in trying to affect the outcome of matches at the highest levels. Not saying it’s likely, just that it pokes a big hole in the narrative of observing a security guard and stopping but then running over the guarded athlete anyway.

Their official statement then tried to clarify all the noise.

The vehicle’s sensor detected the pedestrian crossing and activated the automatic brake, and the operator also activated the emergency brake. The vehicle and pedestrians, however, came into contact before it came to a complete halt.

Both the vehicle and the operator tried to stop the car after it detected the victim. That’s almost believable, as it suggests the vehicle was going far too fast (e.g. a hand-off system from car to human isn’t going to work).

Perhaps more interesting is how Toyota is talking about restarting the service by putting all kinds of human controls around the robot.

Operators will now be given control over how fast the vehicles travel with two safety staff members, rather than one, on board to look out for pedestrians, a Toyota spokesperson said. Warning sounds on e-Palettes will also be turned up and pedestrian guides at busy crossings in the athletes village will also be increased to 20 from six.

The vehicles just lost their cruise control autonomy.

And twenty-two guides at each crossing to protect humans from robots? That’s a LOT, including two inside the robot to look for people and override its decisions.

In the same vein as GM and Uber, Toyota said after this tragic accident their operation was shutdown for complete review and you can see the attention to safety.

Stark contrast in tone compared with the rather obvious immorality of Tesla, which has killed more and more people and appears to have no intention of slowing down for anyone or anything (except police cars, since it crashes into them). Seriously, there are 9 confirmed Tesla Autopilot deaths as of July 2021 and many more still being confirmed.


Source: tesladeaths.com

You might be wondering about the number of Tesla versus other electric vehicles on the road. Here are the latest ranked sales numbers for perspective in 2021:

  • Tesla Model S – 5,155 (Deaths = 40)
  • Porsche Taycan – 5,367
  • Tesla Model X – 6,206 (Deaths = 14)
  • Volkswagen ID – 6,230
  • Audi e-tron – 6,884
  • Nissan Leaf – 7,729 (Deaths = 2)
  • Ford Mustang Mach-e – 12,975
  • Chevrolet Bolt – 20,288 (Deaths = 1)
  • Tesla Model 3 – 51,510 (Deaths = 87)
  • Tesla Model Y – 76,429 (Deaths = 3)

This is a partial list based on top sales. Even so, we can see total of Tesla sold so far in 2021 was 133,094, despite the brand posting a record of 205 deaths since 2013.

A summary of the other top brands all combined comes in at 59,473 with a total of just 3 deaths.

You might also be wondering about other non-electric models and their numbers. Here’s how IIHS lists driver deaths (PDF) per million registered vehicle years:

Source: IIHS Status Report
History, Security

This Day in History 1975: Emperor Haile Selassie Murdered

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Haile Selassie I, born Tafari Makonnen, ruled as Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He was known for modernizing the country through political and social reforms, such as the written constitution and the abolition of slavery.

His power was interrupted by the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, which forced him into exile during Italian occupation. The Allied campaign in East Africa, using pioneering methods of irregular warfare, liberated the country in 1941 and restored Selassie.

He also presided over and became the first chair of the 1963 Organization of African Unity (today known as African Union). A 1974 military coup by the “Derg” removed him from power and he was murdered by them August 27, 1975.

It’s an important history lesson in context of a new Hill article that says the United States unfortunately modeled counter-insurgency in Afghanistan on colonial instead of post-colonial doctrines.

Galula’s objective was perpetuating colonial rule. He, as a French officer, was fighting in France’s name to shore up France’s legitimacy. In contrast, we fight in someone else’s name to shore up someone else’s legitimacy.

At its most concrete, the difference between colonial and post-colonial settings boils down to what one can offer the population, which, per FM 3-24, is the true “center of gravity” in an insurgency. Galula emphasizes in his writing that a key part of the colonial regime’s pitch to the population is that the colonial power is not going anywhere. Therefore, siding with the colonial power and supporting it tacitly or actively is a reasonable choice. One can trust that which will always be there.

This argument undoubtedly helped France recruit large numbers of locals to fight under French colors. In contrast, the post-colonial foreign power that broadcasts its intention to leave from the moment it first arrives faces a far more difficult time rallying and sustaining support.

No one really has figured out how a third-party military intervention shores up the legitimacy of a client state in a post-colonial context.

The Allied liberation of states held by the Axis was all about intervention to shore up legitimacy of a client state, so there’s plenty of evidence to reference. Ethiopia makes for a particularly good case example, bridging into a post-colonial context, because it was never colonized.

History, Security

1950 Operation Sea Spray: Bioweapons Test on San Francisco

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1951 Photo of San Francisco taken via periscope from a US Navy submarine (USS Catfish). Source: Petapixel

Just three years after a code of ethics was drafted in Nuremberg (condemning Nazis for experimenting on humans without consent and with no benefit to test subjects) the US started a massive bioweapons test… violating the code:

Over a period of six days in September 1950, members of the US Navy sprayed clouds of Serratia from giant hoses aboard a Navy minesweeper drifting two miles along the San Francisco coastline, a bacterial fog quickly enveloped and disguised by the region’s own mist. By monitoring the air at 43 scattered sites throughout the region, the Navy found Serratia bacteria blown throughout San Francisco and extending to the adjacent communities of Albany, Berkeley, Daly City, Colma, Oakland, San Leandro, and Sausalito

Eleven fell sick from the experiment, one died.

A week after the spraying, eleven patients were admitted to the now defunct Stanford University Hospital in San Francisco with severe urinary tract infections, resistant to the limited antibiotics available in that era. One gentlemen, recovering from prostate surgery, developed complications of heart infection as Serratia colonized his heart valves. His would be the only death during the aftermath of the experiment.

Such practices are said to have continued all the way to November 25, 1969.

From 1950 to 1966, the military performed open-air testing of potential terrorist weapons at least 239 times in at least eight American cities, including New York City, Key West, and Panama City, FL, exposing still unknown numbers of Americans to Serratia and other microbial organisms.

It all supposedly came to an abrupt end on that single day in 1969 because President Nixon made an offical “Statement on Chemical and Biological Defense Policies and Programs”.

The United States shall renounce the use of lethal biological agents and weapons, and all other methods of biological warfare. The United States will confine its biological research to defensive measures such as immunization and safety measures

Instead, Ronald Reagan with Donald Rumsfeld just fourteen years later did the opposite and shipped bioweapons into Iraq for offensive measures including use against their own population.

After Rumsfeld’s visit to Baghdad in 1983, U.S. intelligence began supplying the Iraqi dictator with satellite photos showing Iranian deployments. Official documents suggest that America may also have secretly arranged for tanks and other military hardware to be shipped to Iraq in a swap deal–American tanks to Egypt, Egyptian tanks to Iraq. Over the protest of some Pentagon skeptics, the Reagan administration began allowing the Iraqis to buy a wide variety of “dual use” equipment and materials from American suppliers. According to confidential Commerce Department export-control documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the shopping list included a computerized database for Saddam’s Interior Ministry (presumably to help keep track of political opponents); helicopters to transport Iraqi officials; television cameras for “video surveillance applications”; chemical-analysis equipment for the Iraq Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), and, most unsettling, numerous shipments of “bacteria/fungi/protozoa” to the IAEC. According to former officials, the bacteria cultures could be used to make biological weapons, including anthrax. The State Department also approved the shipment of 1.5 million atropine injectors, for use against the effects of chemical weapons, but the Pentagon blocked the sale. The helicopters, some American officials later surmised, were used to spray poison gas on the Kurds.

The United States almost certainly knew from its own satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons against Iranian troops. When Saddam bombed Kurdish rebels and civilians with a lethal cocktail of mustard gas, sarin, tabun and VX in 1988, the Reagan administration first blamed Iran, before acknowledging, under pressure from congressional Democrats, that the culprits were Saddam’s own forces. There was only token official protest at the time. Saddam’s men were unfazed. An Iraqi audiotape, later captured by the Kurds, records Saddam’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as Ali Chemical) talking to his fellow officers about gassing the Kurds. “Who is going to say anything?” he asks. “The international community? F– them!”

Read that again: President Reagan almost certainly knew from satellite imagery that Saddam was using chemical weapons on his own population… and offered only token official protest at the time.

Who is going to say anything, indeed.

This perhaps gives insight into the false claims by extreme right-wing groups about vaccination (e.g. claiming it is unsafe or that it does harm). They probably celebrated Reagan’s use of power for thoughtless violations of ethical and moral codes, and now are projecting — find it hard to believe anyone given power would do what’s right.

Security

Snowden’s Beef With Apple is a Tasteless Word Salad

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Security experts like myself have been explaining carefully why Apple is doing the right thing. We kind of have to when Snowden takes it upon himself to generate baseless controversy that offers little logical value.

Beware privacy extremists who incoherently draw a line at children’s rights; somehow they rationalize adults must have absolute “freedom” to deny privacy to others if their victims are children.

Also Snowden calling someone a “Ken doll” and saying “every security expert in the world is screaming themselves hoarse now, imploring Apple to stop” are just over-the-top obvious fallacies.

Either I’m not a security expert or Snowden is an unrepentant liar. I’ll leave it to you gentle reader to decide.

Seriously, what kind of average white man goes around calling another average white man he looks like… a Ken doll? Is that a jealously thing?

Ken Doll in Russian Apartment. Is this supposed to remind you of someone? Source: Russian photographer Lara Vychuzhanina.

Maybe this new Atlantic piece explains why Snowden tends to organize Puritain-like reputational attacks:

Once it becomes clear that attention and praise can be garnered from organizing an attack on someone’s reputation, plenty of people discover that they have an interest in doing so.

Update September 14: research also suggests that Snowden is using a method of playing into crowd ignorance to generate engagement using false pretense.

… popularity bias is more likely to lower the overall quality of content…engagement generates a noisy signal, and the algorithm is likely to amplify this initial noise. Once the popularity of a low-quality item is large enough, it will keep getting amplified…Evidence shows that information is transmitted via “complex contagion,” meaning the more times someone is exposed to an idea online, the more likely they are to adopt and reshare it. When social media tells people an item is going viral, their cognitive biases kick in and translate into the irresistible urge to pay attention to it and share it…We found that players are more likely to like or share and less likely to flag articles from low-credibility sources when players can see that many other users have engaged with those articles. Exposure to the engagement metrics thus creates a vulnerability… The wisdom of the crowds fails because it is built on the false assumption that the crowd is… [rational and intelligent]

Apple showed responsibility and diligence in addressing its own cloud space with distributed technology. It is BETTER than the alternatives and academic THEORY of control tampering doesn’t hold a candle to the REALITY of children abused.

Snowden reveals mostly how his opinions are a bunch of heated emotional rhetoric with little to no ethical or technical substance.

Read his crazy ranting if you must, but if you’re an expert in anything involving analysis and logic beware the awful taste it might leave you with.