Category Archives: Security

Energy, Security

BioDiesel versus Hydrogen

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I was reading a report from 2004 on converting algae to biodiesel when I came across this passage that highlights some of the giant problems (pun intended) with hydrogen:

Hydrogen as a fuel has received widespread attention in the media of late, particularly ever since the Bush administration proclaimed that developing a hydrogen economy would clean our air, and free us of oil dependence. There are many problems with using hydrogen as a fuel. The first, and most obvious, is that hydrogen gas is extremely explosive. To store hydrogen at high pressures for as a transportation fuel, it is essential to have tanks that are constructed of rust-proof materials, so that as they age they won’t rust and spring leaks. Hydrogen has to be stored at very high pressures to try to make up for its low energy density. Diesel fuel has an energy density of 1,058 kBtu/cu.ft. Biodiesel has an energy density of 950 kBtu/cu.ft, and hydrogen stored at 3,626 psi (250 times atmospheric pressure) only has an energy density of 68 kBtu/cu.ft.4 So, highly pressurized to 250 atmospheres, hydrogen’s volumetric energy density is only 7.2% of that of biodiesel. The result being that with similar efficiencies of converting that stored chemical energy into motion (as diesel engines and fuel cells have), a hydrogen vehicle would need a fuel tank roughly 14 times as large to yield the same driving range as a biodiesel powered vehicle. To get a 1,000 mile range, a tractor trailer running on diesel needs to store 168 gallons of diesel fuel. When biodiesel’s slightly lower energy density and the greater efficiency of the engine running on biodiesel are taken into account, it would need roughly 175 gallons of biodiesel for the same range. But, to run on hydrogen stored at 250 atmospheres, to get the same range would require 2,360 gallons of hydrogen. Dedicating that much space to fuel storage would drastically reduce how much cargo trucks could carry. Additionally, the cost of the high pressure, corrosion resistant storage tanks to carry that much fuel is astronomical.

Whew. And he is just talking about the risk of stored hydrogen. When you consider the risk of transporting hydrogen, another set of challenges quickly appears:

The process of transitioning to hydrogen delivery via the existing network is complicated by the diversity of materials used in natural gas piping systems and of operating strategies adopted by utility operators.

[…]

Hydrogen embrittlement can include surface cracking, slow crack growth, loss of ductility, and
decreases in fracture stress. This deterioration can lead to premature failure, possibly with little
warning. Safety is paramount to all aspects of natural gas operations so before hydrogen gas can be
introduced into the pipeline, operators must be assured that embrittlement risks have been minimized.

This seems to me almost identical to the process of evaluating data risks, as you have to consider stored as well as transit controls that prevent leakage. In that sense, biodiesel is like publically available information that requires little/no protection while hydrogen is like your most top secret data that you must protect at significant cost. Pop quiz: can something that needs to be handled as top-secret ever reach wide-spread adoption? Ok, besides a social security number or credit card number. :)

Speaking of evaluating risk, some friends who served in the special forces have been trying to convince me that the reason troops use diesel is because it was mandated by the Navy as a less dangerous fuel. They tell me that not only are diesel ships safer, since diesel is far less combustible, but they also require their cargo to be diesel-powered for the same reason. I tried to make the case that jet-fuel is carried on ships, but I was assured that it too was non-explosive — requires a proper fuel/air mixture to ignite. No wonder then why the military was so keen to convert to diesel motorcycles. Although an explosive fuel on a motorcycle is not a huge risk (compared to a HumVee or Ship) the logistics of having a ready supply of a stable/safe fuel source probably were reason enough to convert everything to diesel.

So, the military gets it, the farmers get it, the transportation industry gets it…security comes from stable fuel sources like biodiesel. Easy to store, easy to transport. Could this be the very reason the American auto industry prefers hydrogen? Such a dangerous substance requires a huge capital investment and central planning that makes it difficult if not impossible for individuals and small-companies to compete, thus ensuring dominance by the big guys. On the other hand, given the recent surge of gasoline-guzzling retro muscle cars to the American market, maybe the US companies just don’t get it in the way that the captain of the Titanic thought his rudder was big enough and his ship could never sink.

Maybe that is too dramatic a comparison, so here is another one to ponder: In the early 1990s a seasoned executive from the computer industry was trying to figure out how to get information into people’s homes through game consoles and interactive TV. As he found cable companies mired in regulations and fighting over who would set the standards (e.g. control), he also stumbled upon some enterprising students in Illinois quietly building something called a web browser. And thus Mosaic was born, forerunner to Netscape. To those of us who were on that bandwagon, it seemed obvious that the future was in cheap, easy and localized creation of content rather than giant traditional media. So the real question in today’s energy market seems similar. Who from the big automobile or giant petroleum companies will be the one to finally defect and light a fire under the alternative fuel market? Vinod Khosla is close, but gets no cigar for his presentation on Ethanol-only…

Security

Peeing on the digital fence

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Will Rogers once said:

There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by reading. The few who
learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

Interesting to note that he suggests learning only comes from input. I suspect output also can teach. We certainly learn from doing…

His last category fits Ranum’s notion about security and user education, although Ranum might have sounded more like “users have to pee on the digital fence…”, which of course would be electrified.

Security

Preparing for another presentation on Nigerian Scams

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As I prepare for my upcoming presentation “False Harmony: Racial, Ethnic, and Religious Stereotypes on the Internet”, together with Dr. Harriet Ottenheimer, I am looking forward to discussing some remarkable new methods used by the Nigerian Scam artists since we started this project over four years ago.

We have noticed important changes since we began recording and dissecting the language of scam/fraud email messages. Actually, it is hard to believe so many years of research have already gone by and that we have already presented two papers on this topic (at ethno and anthropology conferences). I guess, time flies when you’re fighting fraud. Well, more detail will be given at this upcoming presentation. In particular, I hope to highlight change and discuss how offensive/defensive measures are able to feed off one another — adaptive tactics, if you will.

In related news, someone posted a BBC video report of a Nigerian EFCC (Economic and Financial Crime Commission) and armed police takedown of a 419 club. Good to see others working on documenting and providing analysis of the issue. By the way, I couldn’t help but note minute 1:24 when one of the EFCC appears to violently hit a suspect in the back.

As I think about it I am tempted to categorize this post as “history” since the Nigerian fee fraud scam is now probably so well known that people and the media are becoming quite attuned to these particular risks. Nonetheless, the problem persists.

Come see us present our latest findings at the international ethnic studies conference in Turkey this November, if you’re interested.

Food, Security

Elementary school switches to biometrics

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All in good fun, of course, under the noble cause of saving time at the lunch line, according to the Associated Press.

Two things are going on here, it seems to me. First, either the school administration is overly concerned with the efficiency of lunch lines or they are obscuring more significant justifications such as trying to cut down on lunch “fraud”. Second, kids are apparently consenting to exchange some form of biometric data without being informed of the true trade-off and future consequences and without parental consent:

Rome City Schools is switching to a scanning system that lets students use their fingerprints to access their accounts. In the past, students had to punch in their pin numbers.

“The finger’s better because all you’ve got to do is put your finger in, and you don’t have to do the number and get mixed up,” said Adrianna Harris, a second grader at Anna K. Davie Elementary School.

The system “lets” them use their fingers. Hard not to jump to conclusions about an administration trying to entice kids with a particular view of privacy and “good-for-you” security at a vulnerable age. “Do you want to eat? Just give me your finger…” At least one parent is notably concerned:

“It may be perfectly secure, but my daughter is a minor and I understand that supposedly the kids have the option to not have their prints scanned, but that’s not being articulated to my daughter,” said Hal Storey, who’s daughter is a 10th grader at Rome High.

Minors are allowed to decide so very few things for themselves when it comes to privacy and identity and yet this system relies on them to decide whether they want to give away some form of their biometric information. Even if you make the argument that drivers licenses capture the same information later in life you have to admit that it differs in at least two ways: 1) adult consent 2) exchange for transportation/mobility

When you are seven years old less time in the lunch line might seem worth it. But what will you think when you become a teenager (adulthood in some cultures) or later on, long after your teenage years? Will you look back and say “I sure am glad my fingerprint was stored by the school” or will you say “I wish I had known more about information security before I agreed to give my fingerprint data to the school and they were breached”. To be fair, the company paid to install the system points out that it does not intend to store a full fingerprint but instead record a digest made from a few spots expected to be unique:

The computer converts the fingerprint into an algorithm and scans six to eight unique points of the print, said Shawn Tucker, the technical support manager of Comalex, which is the company supplying Rome’s new system.

The data stored in the system is not an image of the child’s fingerprint like something you would find in an FBI database, he said. It is a list of points that together distinguish the child’s finger from that of other students.

No, not something you would find in an FBI database…yet. Of course, if the system is truly recording a unique identity for all the students it really doesn’t matter how it goes about it since the FBI (or anyone else for that matter) would just need a copy of the database and then they have access to unique biometric data as good as fingerprints, right? This is one of those “it’s highly accurate when used for good but it’s not really accurate when used for bad” arguments you have to watch out for from biometric companies.

I’m not saying I am opposed to the plan, but based on this story it does not sound like the privacy rights of the children or their parents are being well valued or properly discussed by those who will be most impacted. Perhaps the idea was conceived by a fan of the TSA plan for speedier/preferential treatment of certain passengers. While that system is flawed for a number of other reasons, in comparison to this plan the idea of loss of privacy in exchange for mobility is a far cry from loss of privacy in exchange for a little more time at lunch, no? I’d like to see the school publish the trade-offs they considered, especially since they said this system was to benefit the students…

Another parent said, in the Rome News-Tribune, his biggest issue was the lack of transparency and communication prior to the decision to take his child’s biometric data:

If he had been notified and informed about the technology before it was put in place, Storey said, he might have been fine with the new system.

“At this moment my plan is to instruct them because they don’t have parental permission, to remove my daughter’s scan and have alternative means,� he said.

This gives “there’s no free lunch” a whole new meaning.