Category Archives: Technology

Sexual chemistry

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I need to find the actual report or at least other news stories on it but this is a nice teaser on the subject:

WASHINGTON: A new study has revealed the mystery behind lovers getting more sexual satisfaction after intercourse than masturbation.

Following an orgasm, the hormone prolactin is released into the bloodstream in both men and women. The hormone makes one feel satiated by countering the effect of dopamine, which is released during sexual arousal.

Stuart Brody of the University of Paisley, UK, and Tillmann Kriger of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, measured blood prolactin levels in male and female volunteers who watched erotic films before engaging in masturbation or sexual intercourse to orgasm in the laboratory.

Surprisingly, after orgasm from sexual intercourse, the increase in blood prolactin levels is 400 per cent higher in both sexes compared with after orgasm from masturbation.

This explains why orgasm from intercourse is more satisfying than masturbation, says Brody. Since elevated levels of prolactin have been linked to erectile dysfunction, this may also explain why most men need a recovery period after sex.

I wonder how long it will be before there is a recreational drug on the market that mimics this?  I think there is a business opportunity here.  I’ve never used a drug, legal or illegal, recreationally.  But there certainly are a lot of people that do.

From my time at Microsoft

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Another post from someone I used to work with at Microsoft.  Craig was my lead when I first started at Microsoft.  Here he gives the early history of DirectX.  I started in May of ’95 and was responsible for the Cirrus chips for DirectX 1.  I took the summer off to be with my wife and kids for the summer of ’96 and just barely had contact with DirectX 3.  But I was involved with 2 and 5. 

The “military coat” Craig talks about is a black M-65 field jacket.  I still have my DirectX jacket in my closet with the patches.  Ry and I now wear black M-65 jackets with Boomershoot embroidered on them.

Some of the patches for the various versions of DirectX had the project names on them.  Some of the project names were Manhattan (DirectX 1 was to “compete” with the Japanese game machines), Orion (reference to nuclear explosion powered space travel), and Orange (as in Agent Orange used in Vietnam to defoliate the jungle).  I think it was DirectX 6 that had the project name of “Diesel”.  This was a veiled reference to ammonium nitrate/diesel mixture which was believed (nitromethane was the actual fuel) to be used in the then recent bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City.  Another time I will tell you of the mementos I made of ammonium nitrate for people on the project and shipped to Raymond to distribute.

See also Renegades of the Empire for DirectX history and lots of stories about Alex, Craig, and Eric.

Update: Fixed the broken link to Craigs post on DirectX history.

The F-14 retires

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I’m not sure why, but this makes me a little sad:

AN era of aviation history has drawn to a close with the US-made F-14 Tomcat fighter plane – the one flown into the danger zone by Tom Cruise in the film Top Gun – being withdrawn from active service.

The Tomcat is going into mothballs because advances in military technology have made its greatest attribute – the ability to manoeuvre at high speeds and in close combat situations – redundant.

Fighter planes no longer need such abilities because they don’t dogfight any more. Instead, pilots shoot at each other with target-seeking rockets, sometimes from 20km away.

The Tomcats were officially retired from service last week, replaced by FA-18 Super Hornets that are cheaper to maintain, easier to operate from aircraft carriers and able to carry more bombs.

The F-14 requires nearly 50 maintenance hours for every flight hour compared to five to 10 hours maintenance for the FA-18.

The F-14 entered operational service in 1974 when two squadrons were assigned to the USS Enterprise, replacing F-4 Phantom fighters that were eventually phased out in 1986.

…

The Tomcat was designed in the Cold War era to be the world’s best fighter-interceptor. Its primary task was to defend aircraft carriers against cruise missile-armed Soviet aircraft.

I thought they were deployed to deliver a particularly heavy missile.  But I forget the exact details and don’t really keep up on this sort of thing.  I just marvel at the capabilities and the engineering.

A short history of interesting email

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I get the most interesting email.

There have been the room temperature I.Q. cases wanting help building a bomb which I talk about frequently.  There are also cases where I don’t talk much, if any, but are just as interesting. 

There was a case where a public defender wanted help defending against federal bomb making charge.  I thought Ry and I were going to be doing some testing for them.  But the case was dropped after the public defender told the court they had an expert who didn’t think it would explode but wanted to test a duplicate of the device to make sure. My guess is the the prosecutor knew it wouldn’t/couldn’t/shouldn’t explode but figured putting a 15 year old girl in the slammer was just another way to get a few laughs and get more points toward their next promotion.  Don’t ever forget we have a legal system, not a justice system.

Due my Modern Ballistics program I have received lots of requests for ballistics help.  In one case (IIRC, it’s been several years now) someone was investigating the possibility of a wrongful death case against a police officer.  It wasn’t a problem my program was designed for and I couldn’t help.  One request was the defense in a murder case.  Using all the data I had at my disposal I still had a couple unknown variables that could push the answer either way.  And even if those numbers were tied down the answer depended on the skill and knowledge of the shooter as much as the physics involved.

This week I received my first request for help in defending against a first degree murder charge (three shots to the center of mass from a large caliber semi-auto pistol) where the defendant had a concealed weapons permit.  I’ll blog the details tomorrow.  The guy goes on trial Monday.

A call from Xenia’s chemistry teacher

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I received a call from Xenia‘s chemistry teacher this morning.  Uh oh…  This has never happened before.  Xenia has almost always been a pleasure for her teachers as well as her parents.

Rather than inform me Xenia had lost control of some explosives in her locker (like I did once when I was in high school) she just wanted to tell me that Xenia is doing great in class.  She said she doesn’t get to make many of those types of calls and she wanted to let us know.

I’d like to think it had something to do with the chemistry experiments I do and have had Xenia help with.  But while Xenia thinks it’s “way cool” she hasn’t had the slightest bit of interest in the actual chemistry (and here).

Quote of the day–Clayton Cramer

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If I could have one wish fulfilled right now, it would be for someone to get fusion electricity production operational. Cheap electricity would, in a decade or two, make oil irrelevant. The Arab nations would go back to being Bedouins–and we could turn that part of the world into a giant nature preserve, as a reminder of what happens when you get stuck in the twelfth century, and refuse to move forward.

Clayton Cramer
Middle Eastern Oil Dependence
February 01, 2006
[Not entirely true but probably close enough for Mideast politics.  Oil is used for lots of things besides energy.  Lubricants, solvents, and plastics are just the start of a very long list.–Joe]

Socialist weenies take on Microsoft

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I haven’t been following the story very closely but my intial inclination, were I at Microsoft in charge of dealing with the socialists in Europe, would be to tell them “We are suspending sales of products to your country.  All future versions, including updates to existing products, will refuse to operate if the IP address of the computer is within your country.  Language support for the dominate languages in your country will be disabled if it doesn’t affect other countries who are friendly to us.  We can chose whether to do business in your country or not.  We chose NOT.”

Of course, short term, this would be harmful to the stockholders of Microsoft but it would get my (a very, very minor stockholder) approval.  Here’s the story that pushed me over the edge:

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s antitrust chief says Microsoft (MSFT) cannot charge licensing fees for software blueprints that it is offering to share with competitors unless it can prove the computer code is innovative.

Neelie Kroes also told European lawmakers on Tuesday that she has not yet received all information on Microsoft’s offer to share software code and comply with a 2004 EU antitrust ruling.

Microsoft has until Feb. 15 to meet European Commission demands from December that it provide complete and accurate information on code that would allow competitors’ products to communicate smoothly with servers running Microsoft operating systesms.

EU antitrust regulators have threatened Microsoft with daily fines of 2 million euros ($2.36 million), retroactive to mid-December, if it fails to comply by the deadline.

In December, Microsoft provided EU officials with thousands of documents but an independent monitor said they were “fundamentally flawed” and required a drastic overhaul to make them workable.

Last week, Microsoft offered to let competitors examine some server source code, calling it the “ultimate documentation” which might address regulators’ concerns. Kroes said the first she heard of that offer was via a Microsoft press release.

The EU has never asked Microsoft to supply source code. Backers of open source alternatives to Microsoft’s proprietary operating systems called last week’s offer a “poisoned apple,” as the terms of access to the code were unclear.

EU officials and an independent monitor held talks Monday at Microsoft’s U.S. headquarters to discuss improvements to the technical documentation that the software company has so far supplied.

Google in China

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Interesting… using google.cn I get very similar results to google.com for the searches “Boomershoot”, “Joe Huffman”, “Freedom”, and “want some help building a bomb”.

I suppose the “Great Firewall of China” probably will block access for some of that but still it highlights the difficulty government types have in restricting information.

Also of interest is that by setting up a proxy on the outside of the firewall and encrypting the traffic between the browser on the inside of the firewall and the proxy on the outside it is trival to bypass the firewall and get access to all the internet.  The firewall would have to block all proxies or all forms of encryption and stegonography (very tough problem) to be effective.

As with illegal recreation drugs in the U.S., illegal handguns in the U.K., and all other goods if there is a market it will be supplied by someone making a profit.  Information in China will be the same.

Remote searching of your body

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There is a new tool for remotely searching your body even while you are moving.  Haven’t these people heard of the 4th Amendment?

Wednesday, January 25, 2006  E-Mail this article to a friend Printer Friendly Version

New US security device spots weapons under clothes

By Christian Wiessner

At its first public demonstration on Monday in New York, the device was able to detect a mock gun and a bomb replica, which the company said, was similar to that used by Al Qaeda

A new surveillance device using radio waves to look under peoples’ clothing for concealed guns, bombs or other weapons may be coming soon to a security checkpoint near you.

But the modest need not worry about screeners sneaking a voyeuristic peek because the system only identifies non-human material tucked inside clothing and does not convey images of the naked form underneath, the maker of the device – Brijot Imaging Systems Inc. of Orlando, Florida – said on Monday.

The BIS-WIDS Prime is the first and only surveillance camera that immediately detects and identifies the exact location of objects hidden beneath a person’s clothing while the person is in motion, the company said.

At its first public demonstration on Monday in New York, the device was able to detect a mock gun and a bomb replica the company said was similar to that used by Al Qaeda.

“The software in the machine itself actually looks at the person, looks at the objects, and actually tells you what it is and, most importantly, where it is on the body,” said Brijot Chief Executive Brian Andrew. “It doesn’t just go ‘bing’ like a metal detector. We can identify weapons’ shapes.”

The device uses computer panels that display images of the body to the security screener, with dark patches marking the location of hidden objects.

The invention was described by company officials as basically a small radio telescope that “sees” radio waves transmitted by the body. If a portion of the body is covered by something underneath clothing, no waves will transmit from that part of the body, raising a red flag to screeners.

“Our bodies radiate radio waves just like a cell phone does, and our camera sees that,” Andrew said.

Since when has the 4th Amendment been about voyeurs?  It’s about preventing a police state.  The use of this by the government or under the direction of government on the general public (in a prison situation, sure, that would be appropriate) fails my Jews In The Attic Test in a big way.

I helped design and build a device using similar technology that was intended to guiding a missle on it’s terminal descent to take out a tank when I worked at Boeing.  I made a simple change in the test unit such that it with the flip of a switch it would track humans instead of a tank.  It was rather creepy to have the seeker point at you as you walked across the room.

One way to defeat it is to create lots of false positives.  A sheet of aluminum foil will block these emissions from your body just as a firearm or other object will.  Sew them into your coat.  Cut them into shapes and make it appear as if you are carrying dozens of guns, drop them into the coat pockets of others, and put them into books and magazines in airport stores.

Hunting whitetail alternatives

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Every once in a while people laugh at my method of getting a deer this year (something along the lines of “The Geek Goes Hunting”).  Well, here is someone else for you to laugh about:

THE WHITETAIL DEER HUNT WITH A MOUNTAIN HOWITZER

For those of you unfamiliar with cannon artillery talk, a 12 pound Mountain Howitzer cannon was a small cannon used during the Civil War. The early mt howitzer cannons were originally designed to be disassembled and packed into the mountains on horseback, hence the name, Mountain Howitzer. The later model Mountain Howitzers, like this one, were built on a carriage designed to be “pulled” by horses. The “pound” designation ( 12 pdr ) in the name ” 12 pound Mountain Howitzer ” refers to the weight of the projectile that the mt howitzer cannon shoots. Therefore, a 12 pound Mountain Howitzer ( 12 pdr ) shoots a 12 pound cannonball. All artillery cannons with smooth bore barrels were described in the “pound” weight of their projectiles and were called “Cannons.” ( like the 12 pound Mountain Howitzer Cannon ) Artillery cannons with rifled barrels were described in the “inch” of their bore diameters and called “Guns.” ( like a 3 inch Gun ) First, let me start by saying that I’m pretty sure that it may not be entirely legal to use a Mountain Howitzer Cannon for deer hunting, at least not here in Wisconsin. ( I didn’t actually ask the DNR about using a Mountain Howitzer, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t like it ) Be sure to check with your own State Hunting regulations, …… ( see the “Hunting with Artillery section )

He goes on in great detail on how to build the Mountain Howitzer cannon, the ammo to use, how to use it safely in a hunting environment, and finally a picture of a whitetail buck harvested with a Mountain Howitzer cannon.

National ID–I told you so

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Real ID Act (National ID cards with a different name) are a
waste of time and money as well as being a source of high risk to
liberty.  A year ago I wrote about the flaws that would show up.  Now the AP has an ‘exclusive’ on the story of the problems the states are having:

AP Exclusive: National ID, State Nightmare

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN AP Technology Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press

An anti-terrorism law creating a national standard for all driver’s
licenses by 2008 isn’t just upsetting civil libertarians and
immigration rights activists.

State motor vehicle officials nationwide who will have to carry out the
Real ID Act say its authors grossly underestimated its logistical,
technological and financial demands.

In a comprehensive survey obtained by The Associated Press and in
follow-up interviews, officials cast doubt on the states’ ability to
comply with the law on time and fretted that it will be a budget buster.

“It
is just flat out impossible and unrealistic to meet the prescriptive
provisions of this law by 2008,” Betty Serian, a deputy secretary of
the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, said in an interview.

…

In a comprehensive survey obtained by The Associated Press and in
follow-up interviews, officials cast doubt on the states’ ability to
comply with the law on time and fretted that it will be a budget buster.

“It is just flat out impossible and unrealistic to meet the
prescriptive provisions of this law by 2008,” Betty Serian, a deputy
secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, said in an
interview.

…

“If you take any one of these things individually, you see a
significant problem,” Steinhardt said. “There are literally hundreds of
these problems embedded in Real ID, and the statute doesn’t give you a
way out. It’s black and white. No exceptions, no reality check.

“In many respects it’s a statute that ignores reality.”

Like I said in my post from last year.  It’s as
if the congress critters had tried to legislate that PI equals
3.0.  They are out of touch with reality.

Puffers in airplane security

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The latest technology to be employed in the unconstitutional search of people attempting to board an aircraft while exercising their right to travel is puffers:

‘Puffers’ add to airport security
1/12/2006 1:29 PM
By: Lisa Reyes, News 14 Carolina

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Travelers at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport
will soon see new security measures. High-tech machines to detect
explosives will be located at three checkpoints.

The Transportation Security Administration says the imminent danger to
aviation these days is explosives. TSA officials demonstrated devices
called “explosive-detection trace portals” or “puffers” at the airport
on Thursday.

The machines puff air on travelers to dislodge particles from their skin or clothing.

“It loosens particles that are attached to a person or his clothing,
and those particles are analyzed by the machine for the presence of
explosives,” said John Gartland of TSA.

The devices take about 20-25 seconds to check each passenger.

The TSA purchased the three machines through federal funding. They cost
a little over $100,000, and about a 100 of them will be implemented in
airports nationwide.

I agree that explosives is the biggest threat to safe airplane travel.  Other weapons such as guns and knives are of little use if someone wanted to bring the airplane down.  And if the user of such a weapon were intent on attacking people in the cabin they wouldn’t make all that much progress before they were stopped by someone else in the cabin.  But a pound of explosives, about the size and weight of a pint of milk, in a tightly closed area like the cabin of an aircraft can do a lot of damage.  There is a Myth Busters episode on this very topic if you have any doubts.

In any case keeping explosives off of passenger airplanes is a good idea.  They aren’t useful for self-defense in an air cabin environment, as the knives and handguns are, and they represent a significant hazard to the entire aircraft and people on the ground.  The problem is–How do you do it?  As I have explained before with the explosive sniffing wasps the problem is one of false positives if you try to detect improvised and/or “homemade” explosives.  And if you don’t address those type of explosives you have a loophole any terrorist can waltz right through.  And the current explosives detection technology fails even on people that inadvertently contaminate their luggage.  If a skilled adversary were to be intent on bringing explosives on board a plane nothing short of a full search of everyone will be effective. So what’s the solution?  Use our limited resources on other things such as better intelligence as to who is a threat and interviews of passengers.  That will guard against both the known threats using existing weapons and the type of threats we haven’t thought of yet.

RFID blocking wallet

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Radio Frequency ID–the chips they put in pets for identifcation (and some people want to put them in people) are everywhere.  They used for inventory control, shoplifting detection, and ID cards.  Here is how to make your own wallet that will block the remote reading of the devices in your pocket.

Bomb-sniffing wasps

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Via Bruce Schneier comes this article in USA Today:

Scientists at a Georgia laboratory have developed what could be a
low-tech, low-cost weapon in the war on terrorism: trained wasps.

The tiny, non-stinging wasps can check for hidden explosives at airports and monitor for toxins in subway tunnels.

“You can rear them by the thousands, and you can
train them within a matter of minutes,” says Joe Lewis, a U.S.
Agriculture Department entomologist. “This is just the very tip of the
iceberg of a very new resource.”

…

The wasps are trained with sugar water by using
the classical conditioning techniques made famous by Pavlov’s dogs.
Rains says the wasps are sensitive to a host of chemical odors,
including 2,4-DNT, a volatile compound used in dynamite.

To do their work, five wasps — each a half-inch
long — are placed in a plastic cylinder that is 15 inches tall. This
“Wasp Hound,” which costs roughly $100 per unit, has a vent in one end
and a camera that connects to a laptop computer.

When the wasps pick up an odor they’ve been
trained to detect they gather by the vent — a response that can be
measured by the computer or actually seen by observers.

Lewis says the wasps, when exposed to some
chemicals, “can detect as low as four parts per billion, which is an
incredibly small amount.”

I admire the innovation in the research laboratory but I am
skeptical of success in the real world. The wasps apparently have to be
trained for each specific volatile chemical. The 2,4-DNT mentioned in
the article as being present in dynamite doesn’t exist in other
explosives such as ammonium-nitrate/fuel-oil mixtures. Ammonium nitrate
by itself doesn’t really have any volatile byproducts other than, in
some cases, ammonia which would result in the obvious problem with
false positives. Fuel oil sensing would also have similar problems with
false positives as well as being easily replaced with almost any
hydrocarbon including such things as diesel, alcohol, and powdered sugar.

The ATF as well as foreign regulatory agencies require plastic
explosives to be manufactured with a small percentage of volatile
chemicals such as Ethylene glycol dinitrate,
2,3-Dimethyl-2,3-dinitrobutane, para-mononitrotoluene, or
ortho-mononitrotoluene. This is to make it feasible to easily detect
the presence of the explosives.

It would be overly optimistic to assume terrorists would conform to
these requirement in the manufacture of their own explosives.

Quote of the day–Ry Jones

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He’s clearly nuts.

Ry Jones
December 27, 2005
[Referring to this guy thinking government regulation could prevent abuse of a mandatory Universal Biometric ID and such a system was inevitable.  See also some of the on-line clashes I have had with him.  He is also my number one suspect as to the person that gave PNNL the ‘tip’ to look at my blog and websites and if true is probably a conspirator in this felony.  See about half way down on this page for more details.–Joe]

Beagle wreckage and rifle shooting on the moon

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It was given up for lost almost two years ago but it was a mystery what happened to it.  Now they believe they have found the wreckage:

SCIENTISTS believe they have finally found the wreckage of the stricken Beagle 2 Mars probe, almost two years after it crashed on landing.

A sophisticated analysis of grainy images from a Nasa spacecraft has convinced the Beagle 2 team that the lander met its end in a small crater, into which it touched down in the early hours of Christmas Day 2003 with little chance of survival.

The pictures from Mars Global Surveyor, which have been pored over by an expert who once interpreted spy satellite images for the RAF, show an impact point in the crater and several objects that appear to be Beagle 2’s protective gas bags and, perhaps, the lander itself.

They suggest that the probe was lost because of cruel luck as it touched down in one of the worst possible places for a soft and successful landing. Rather than dropping to the surface on a flat plain, it appears to have first struck the downslope of a small crater about 18.5m (60ft) in diameter, before crashing into its opposite wall, bouncing several times around the rim and eventually coming to rest at the bottom. Even if the gas bags that were meant to cushion its impact were fully inflated, and there is some evidence that they were not, their design would not have allowed them to protect the probe properly under these unlikely circumstances.

Bummer.

I’m a big proponent of space exploration.  Long term getting off this planet is one of the necessary conditions for the survival of our species.  And in the medium term it represents one of the higher likelihood events to restore our freedoms.  Mars represents a good target for colonization and every time we go there it helps us to understand the problems of the journey and the habitation a little bit better. 

Another motivation for getting into space is I would like to be the first person to shoot 1000 yard groups on the moon.  With no wind and 1/5 gravity the group sizes will be awesome!  And you wondered why I had shooting conditions for the moon built into Modern Ballistics.  And no, despite a certain science fiction story you can’t put bullets into orbit from the surface of the moon.  Shooting tangential to the surface I estimate you need to be about 550 970 miles above the surface to achieve a circular orbit with a .220 Swift. 

I sent in my application to NASA to be an astronaut 15 days before Challenger blew up which stymied that career path but I figure if my friend gets his immortality project working I still have a chance.  In addition to immortality he wants to carve his initials in the moon big enough to be seen from earth with the naked eye.  Since explosives are one of the best ways of carving rock he asked if I would do it for him.  If he figures out how to get us safely to the moon and back I’ll figure out a way to carve the 70 mile wide LINES of his initials.  With all the other gear going up I figure there would be room for my rifle and a thousand rounds of ammo (especially if he uses the Orion concept).

Update: I rethought my back of the envelope (literally) calculations this morning and realize I had made an error.  I did some more number crunching and came up with some different numbers.  And since orbital mechanics is not my specialty I’m not guaranteeing any of these numbers.  Useful web pages to figure it out for yourself are here and here.  I’m assuming a muzzle velocity of 4000 fps out of the .220 Swift which has one of the highest muzzle velocities in a commerical load.

Blog advertising

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In case you hadn’t noticed the identical ads on so many different blogs, including the second one from the top here on the right.  Here is the story:

The MSNBC cable network plans to flood the Internet this week with its largest concentrated online pitch, running advertising on hundreds of Web sites and blogs. The cost of the campaign, to promote three prime-time programs, is estimated at just under $1 million.

There’s more to the story but basically they are trying to see if they can drive traffic from the internet to their cable channel.  They are advertising on 800 different blogs.  I wish I was getting 1/800 of $1,000,000 but I’m not.  I’m far, far cheaper than that.  So far they have had 24 clicks from 313 page views.  That, 7.67%, is a rather outstanding click through rate.  My boomershoot ad only gets 1.73% and the t-shirt ad currently on top gets 2.94%.

Best bullet for hunting

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This guy is even more obsesive and geeky than I am.  He shot about 2350 rounds to get this data.

Sex profits

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Innovation as well as expanding their market share of existing products brought greater profits to Durex recently:

The launch of sex toys and new types of condoms has lifted sales growth at Durex to a record 10 per cent. And SSL, which owns the Durex brand, promised further growth yesterday as it launched a new range of sex aids for men that will be available in Tesco and Boots.

A range of vibrators and lubricants sold under the Durex Play brand accounted for half of the sales growth reported yesterday. Durex revenues were £77.1m in the six months to 30 September.

The decision by Boots to stock a new £5.99 vibrating ring for men represents a significant U-turn for the high street chain. At the start of this year it backed out of talks to launch the Durex Play range of vibrators, for fear of a conservative backlash. The range was eventually launched by Superdrug.

…

Tesco insisted yesterday the disposable rings – which last 20 minutes and have a small vibrating pad to enhance the pleasure of women during sex – were not sex toys but part of the health and family planning range.

SSL claimed that Durex’s global market share had risen to 30 per cent after strong growth in the US and Eastern Europe, and thanks to the launch of innovative condoms, such as Pleasuremax, which is ribbed, and Tingle, which is coated with a lubricant that gives a tingling sensation.

SSL, which owns the Scholl footwear and footcare brands, reported interim profits of £17.3m, up from £10.5m in the half-year to 30 September 2004.

ID cards in UK take some heat

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Bruce Schneier brought this to my attention.

Ex-MI5 chief says ID cards in the UK would be “useless” for fighting terrorism and “a waste of money”.  Which is what I have been saying for years.  She, of course, has a much more influential position than most.  And she does a good job of hammering the half-baked idea for fighting terrorists:

ID cards have possibly some purpose. 

But I don’t think that anybody in the intelligence services, particularly in my former service, would be pressing for ID cards.

My angle on ID cards is that they may be of some use but only if they can be made unforgeable – and all our other documentation is quite easy to forge.

If we have ID cards at vast expense and people can go into a back room and forge them they are going to be absolutely useless.

ID cards may be helpful in all kinds of things but I don’t think they are necessarily going to make us any safer.

And if it doesn’t help when fighting terrorists then it’s not going to be any good for fighting criminals.