General Ripper in the movie “Dr. Strangelove” said he was afraid “precious bodily fluids” could be contaminated by the Communists, so he drank only distilled water or rainwater. He might have sounded a bit nutty at the time, but the latest data on US tap water might make the movie seem less comical. The Environmental Working Group released a report recently that had some disturbing findings:

In an analysis of more than 22 million tap water quality tests, most of which were required under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, EWG found that water suppliers across the U.S. detected 260 contaminants in water served to the public. One hundred forty-one (141) of these detected chemicals — more than half — are unregulated; public health officials have not set safety standards for these chemicals, even though millions drink them every day.
[…]
Our investigation reveals major gaps in our system of public health protections when it comes to tap water safety. Federal programs that allocate grants and low-cost loans to prevent water pollution and protect the rivers, streams, and groundwater that we drink are sorely underfunded.

When you consider how important clean water is to the national infrastructure, the data suggests serious shortcomings that threaten to undermine US security.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, as quoted by Salon, called clean drinking water “a key ingredient to keeping people healthy and our economy strong.”

And that certainly puts the Ann Arbor, Michigan water quality concerns in perspective, as well as the risks to critical infrastructure.

The BBC has posted an interesting perspective on the ethanol industry in Brazil. Here’s the key to the article:

More than 80% of new cars now sold in Brazil are equipped to use ethanol as well as gasoline. Both fuels are available almost everywhere, and since ethanol can cost about a third less than petrol per litre at the moment (though the mileage is not quite as good), the home grown fuel is more popular than the foreign import.

Mileage not quite as good, eh? Here’s an idea, mix that ethanol with waste vegetable oil and put it into a diesel engine and watch your average mileage double. I think people get too hung up on a purist vision of the next energy source. Even the biodiesel folks I often meet are “100% veg” this and “pure-bio” that. Let’s face it, the infrastructure doesn’t exist yet (to support biomass energy creation and distribution) and the engines aren’t sophisticated enough yet (to run on multiple forms of energy), so let’s find a best-fit blend that can significantly reduce dependance on insecure sources of energy without wasting any more time. It’s a game to find a new set of trade-offs to replace the old ones, which are no longer sustainable, without falling into another trap of over-consolidation or unsustainability.

Why diesel? Because it was designed from the start to adapt to any form of oil: vegetable, animal, or even mineral. If you marry that together with an electric, hydrogen, or other engine you get a wide variety of options and a far more competitive market.

More bad news for the petroleum industry:

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta [MEND] has given oil companies and their employees until midnight on Friday night to leave the region.

It recently blew up two oil pipelines, held four foreign oil workers hostage and sabotaged two major oilfields.

The group wants greater control of the oil wealth produced on their land.

The warning came as militants and the army exchanged fire after a government helicopter gunship attacked barges allegedly used by smugglers to transport stolen crude oil.

This seems to be the nature of artifically high concentratons and control of “natural” resources, which I wrote about here. The rebels are apparently smuggling oil out in exchange for weapons in Eastern Europe. The economic considerations are obvious and bring to mind the massive impact biofuel could have on both weapon exports and the related fight for control of petroleum.

I attended a panel discussion yesterday on identity management and privacy. One of the pundits made the observation, in a rather ostentatious manner, that he had been asked for his address when he tried to buy windshield washer fluid at a store. “Kragen shall remain nameless…they had no business reason for this information” he thundered.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of uninformed position that is all too common in information security. People get their shorts up in a bunch about privacy, which is all fine and good, but then they seem to think that everything must be an invasion of their personal rights even though they do not take even the most basic step to confirm/review the risks in their entirety.

Call it the uninformed consumer, if you will, but this guy had all the hallmarks of an American cultural tradition of shoot first, ask questions later. Not the sort of thing I would have expected from a panel at RSA. In fact, the presenter said he was forced to exit the store without his washer fluid — the business was plain wrong and they lost his business. Good for him, but did he try to find out why a business might be forced by the authorities to treat windshield washer fluid as a controlled substance (as opposed to just a random opportunity for marketing data)?

Anyone familiar with engine tuning or meth lab investigations knows the market dynamics of windshield washer fluid (about 30% methanol), not to mention the market for the bottles themselves. Moreover, anyone familiar with the properties of methanol knows the environmental and health impact of its widespread use for illegal purposes.

This begs the question of how effective the control might be (e.g. compared to removing the methanol from the fluid, since even in normal/legal use it’s a toxic substance that is being sprayed into the air and all over the roads that people live on), but in this instance I just wanted to point out that a store is unlikely to let the employees know why they have to ask for the address/information, but at the same time the consumers might be happy to know that the police are trying to cut down on highly-toxic uses of meth in their neighborhood.

This reminds me of Cory Doctorow’s explosive reaction to an American Airlines screener (for now I’ll skip the more well-known example of the hunt for WMD). Profiling is a critical component of our every day lives and people need to learn to seek and sufficiently understand an “other” perspective before they rush into action and demand reform/justice. There are few things more counterproductive in security than reacting to the symptoms and causing widespread outages. In fact, if more people just did a little bit of “root cause” analysis, we might find a more informed and democratic path of resolution for real and present dangers to their livelihood. This would actually help law enforcement by taking the burden of ad hoc policy creation away so they can get back to their proper focus on enforcement.