Law and Magic: Revealing the Links
I had the very good fortune to speak at the Law and Magic: Revealing the Links conference, co-hosted by the Law and Humanities Institute and the Thomas Jefferson School of Law last Friday in beautiful San Diego. The conference was organized by Professors Christine Corcos of the LSU Law Center and Julie Cromer Young of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law. Licensed attendees could earn up to 6.5 hours of CLE credit.
As the conference’s name implies, the day’s presentations were about how the art and practice of the law intersects and interacts with the art and practice of magic and what Professor Corcos called the “crafty sciences.” I had the good fortune to perform a 30-minute show over lunch. Later in the afternoon, my presentation Rhetorical Mathematics examined how performers and lawyers can use and abuse math to further their arguments. Practitioners of both arts have a wide range of confusion-inducing techniques from which to choose: misstating probabilities, relying on unspoken assumptions, pulling numbers out of thin air, and many others.
I think my paper went over pretty well. I covered probability calculations that went beyond simple liability calculations such as the Hand Rule articulated in United States vs. Carroll Towing, so there was some head scratching at times. The most fun for me was when I presented the Monty Hall Paradox, which describes the math behind the game played at the end of Monty’s show Let’s Make a Deal. The idea of the game is that Monty displays three doors, two of which hide a losing choice, such as a goat, and the third a prize such as a new car. You start the game by choosing one of the doors. Once you do, Monty (who knows where the car is) opens a losing door. You can then either stay with your original choice or switch.
The question for you: does it matter whether you switch or stay? If so, what are your chances of winning for either strategy?
Review of Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies
Title: Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies
Author: Kristie Macrakis
Publisher: Yale University Press
Copyright: 2014
ISBN13: 978-0-300-17925-5
Length: 392
Price: $27.50
Rating: 91%
I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies, a book by Christie Macrakis, provides an interesting look into the history of invisible ink and other forms of secret writing. Much has been written about cryptography, including such classics as David Kahn’s The Codebreakers and Bruce Schneier’s Applied Cryptography, but relatively little had been published about invisible writing.
Prof. Macrakis is a professor of history, technology, and society at Georgia Tech. She’s written a number of other books on espionage-related topics, so it makes sense that she would turn her attention to invisible writing.
More Complicated than You’d Think
The problem with this sort of book is that everyone thinks invisible ink is a simple topic. Everyone who has ever owned a beginning magic book or a chemistry set knows that you can use lemon juice and a toothpick to inscribe a message on a piece of paper that only appears when the paper is heated over a flame or a lightbulb. For many years, the science of invisible writing was in fact limited to a number of easily obtained substances and the use of heat or simple developing fluids that reacted with the ink.
The study of natural magic, instituted in the Middle Ages and a precursor to the Scientific Revolution, led to number of discoveries that were of use to the prisoners, lovers, and spies named in the book’s title. During the late 16th century, the partisans fighting on behalf of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, and even Queen Mary herself, used invisible ink in their attempts to communicate secretly with their supporters.
Skipping forward a few centuries, invisible ink played a huge role in every war from the American Revolution to World War II and beyond into the Cold War. The scope and breadth of mail censorship and interception, all with the goal of discovering both indiscreet and discreet communications, was staggering. Even with the tens of thousands of letters going through the British Imperial Censorship office in Bermuda and the American stations in Miami and Puerto Rico, a total of 339 letters with secret writing were intercepted.
After the end of World War II, the Germans instituted a new means of secret communication: the microdot. These tiny circles, which could be hidden in a book as the dot on an “i” or a period, could contain a substantial amount of information for the time. As World War II ground to a close and the Cold War started, microdots played a significant role in covert communication. That’s not to say that invisible ink and secret writing went away. In fact, the author leads off the book with the story of how she came to acquire a carefully hidden East German Stasi formula for invisible ink through an archive request at the German Cold War library collection. It was a story worth waiting for.
Further Considerations
Macrakis covers specific historical periods in each chapter. She states in the introduction that she wrote the book so that anyone could dip into it and read about the time they were interested in. That choice, which is eminently reasonable, means that there is some noticeable repetition when you read the book in one go, but it’s not too distracting.
What I find particularly interesting, in addition to the art and science of the writing itself, are descriptions of the organizations put in place to detect, develop, and exploit information from secret writing. The scope of the mail interception effort during World War II is impressive. Although the author doesn’t make this comparison explicit, I can’t help but wonder what the level of effort would be in relation to current National Security Agency efforts to intercept secret communication.
The last chapter of the main part of the book gives a brief overview of steganography, which is the process of hiding a message within another file. For example, one could use the least significant bits of an image file to encode a message without changing the image’s appearance to the casual observer. Of course there are tools to detect steganographic writing, but experts in the field are extremely reluctant to talk about what they do. That means the chapter on steganography is a bit disappointing, but it’s hard to blame the author for her sources’ lack of forthrightness.
The appendix contains a number of formulas that can be used to create and reveal invisible ink. Some of the substances can be harmful to humans, so creating any of the inks or developing agents would be done strictly at your own risk. I’m glad the publisher didn’t shy away from providing these recipes, though—they’re an important part of the subject’s history and the book would be incomplete without them.
Recommendations and Conclusions
Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies is a worthwhile book for anyone with an interest in espionage tradecraft or who just thinks that secret writing is a fun and interesting subject. I fall into both camps, so I enjoyed Prof. Macrakis’ work. Recommended.
Curtis Frye is the editor of Technology and Society Book Reviews. He is the author of more than 30 books, including Improspectives, his look at applying the principles of improv comedy to business and life. His list includes more than 20 books for Microsoft Press and O’Reilly Media; he has also created more than 20 online training courses for lynda.com. In addition to his writing, Curt is a keynote speaker and entertainer. You can find more information about him at http://www.curtisfrye.com and follow him as @curtisfrye on Twitter.
NASCAR, Scrutiny, and Success
There aren’t a lot of NASCAR fans in Portland, OR. I grew up in Rockingham County, Virginia, which is about four hours from Martinsville Speedway and within an hour’s drive of at least a dozen regional and local tracks. I enjoy the competition and, even though some races look like a bunch of guys going fast and turning left for three hours, there’s a lot of strategy and tactics to get right if you want to be successful.
I also enjoy Formula 1 racing, which sets designers and drivers an entirely different set of problems. In open wheel racing, touching another car often means irreparable damage to you, the car you touched, or both. In NASCAR, you can rub, bump, bang, and beat on each other a lot more without necessarily compromising your chances. Formula 1 and NASCAR cars (and drivers, for that matter) also have different weights, aerodynamics, and handling characteristics. Some drivers can race successfully in both types of cars, but most competitors specialize.
Car racing is also a male-dominated sport. There have been some successful female drivers, such as Janet Guthrie who raced competitively at the Indianapolis 500 (an open wheel race), but until recently there hasn’t been a marquee name moving from open wheel to NASCAR racing. All that changed when Danica Patrick, who raced successfully through the junior open wheel series in Europe and in Indy cars in the U.S., made the jump to NASCAR.
Patrick is a skilled racer who has paid her dues, but she’s had a rough transition to the Nationwide series (the second-tier NASCAR circuit) and the Sprint Cup. She’s also a marketer’s dream, with amazing good looks, a winning personality, and the discipline to balance racing and promotional duties effectively. Some commentators claim Patrick was hired for her appearance and not her abilities, but I don’t think that’s a valid criticism. NASCAR, like all major sports, is driven by media coverage. People (and I am a people) like looking at attractive individuals and studies show we remember their messages longer. With media coaches and mandatory sponsor mentions during interviews (“I thought the #666 Dogecoin Chevy SS team put me in a good position to win today…”), criticizing a driver for capitalizing on their appearance is nonsense.
As for racing results, Patrick has struggled. She led the Daytona 500 and finished well in a few races, but her average finish is in the low 20s (out of 40 or so drivers) and she has only a handful of top-10 finishes. Kyle Petty, a moderately successful NASCAR driver, son of driving legend Richard Petty, and media commentator, had an interesting take on Patrick. He was quoted in the USA Today as saying:
“She can go fast, but she can’t race. I think she’s come a long way, but she’s still not a race car driver. And I don’t think she’s ever going to be a race car driver.”
Asked by interviewer Matt Clark why Patrick wouldn’t ever be a race car driver in Petty’s eyes, the eight-time race winner said it was “too late to learn.”
Petty admitted that, even though he won eight top-tier NASCAR races, he never figured out what it took to be a great driver. Even so, he has a point. Drivers such as Tony Stewart and A. J. Foyt grew up running everything they could get their hands on, so they learned general racing skills as well as tactics for each type of car and track. Patrick spent her formative years concentrating on open wheel racing on road courses, so her development was more specific.
Even so, I’ve noticed her car control and race sense have improved. Rather than running consistently at the back of the pack and getting caught in (or causing) avoidable incidents, she’s obviously working hard, listening to feedback, and improving. Will she ever win? Hard to say. There are a lot of really good drivers out there. Will she challenge, especially at Sonoma and Watkins Glen? Probably. As long as she keeps improving and maintaining a positive image for her and her sponsors, she’s likely to have a ride. In the context of NASCAR and its surrounding media environment, that counts as success.
I can tell she wants to win, not just race. She won at every level moving up and, even if she doesn’t have the NASCAR-specific skills required to win consistently at the top level, she’ll keep giving it all she can.
Kyle Petty also characterized Patrick as a “marketing machine” rather than a racer. Her commercial success has certainly outpaced her results on the track, but there’s no public-facing industry where looks and talent don’t operate in tandem. We’re all working so we don’t have to work any more, so I offer Patrick the same advice Darrell Waltrip gives to drivers right before a late-race restart: “Go out there and getcha some.”
Review of Transborder Data Flows and Data Privacy Law
Title: Transborder Data Flows and Data Privacy Law
Author: Christopher Kuner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Copyright: 2013
ISBN13: 978-0-19-967461-9
Length: 285
Price: $145.00
Rating: 100%
I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
Privacy law is a difficult subject to approach, let alone master. The United States has a patchwork of data protection laws at the state and federal level, often restricting government access to data that private enterprises may acquire and combine freely. Extending that analysis internationally is exponentially more difficult, due to both different legal approaches to personal data protection and the details of the laws themselves.
A Well-Qualified Author
In Transborder Data Flows and Data Privacy Law, author Christopher Kuner summarizes international privacy law, details the differing approaches taken by various countries, reports on developments in domestic privacy law and international agreements, and offers a framework for making the laws of the various States more interoperable.
Dr. Kuner is very well qualified to take on this analysis. The brief author bio on the inside of the dust jacket notes that, in addition to his position as Senior Of Counsel with the Brussels office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, he is Vice-Chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce’s Task Force on Privacy and Personal Data Protection, participates in the work of international organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), wrote European Data Protection Law: Corporate Compliance and Regulation, and is editor-in-chief of the journal International Data Privacy Law. Any one of those CV entries would be sufficient to convince me of his expertise—taken as a group they are indeed impressive.
Summary and Background
Kuner begins, as is customary in such works, with a historical synopsis of data privacy laws from the 1970s to the present. Other books, such as the Agre and Rotenberg’s edited volume Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape (1999) and my own Privacy-Enhanced Business (2001), go into significant detail on the development of data privacy laws in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and elsewhere. Kuner, by virtue of his experience in the field, is able to focus his coverage on the aspects of the laws that will most benefit policy makers and legal practitioners.
Transborder Data Flows and Data Privacy Law focuses on European data protection laws, many of which were drafted or modified in response to the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46. European Union laws tend to be the most restrictive, with idiosyncratic laws such as the U.S. Video Privacy Protection Act (passed in response to private investigators accessing Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s video rental records) as notable exceptions, so it makes sense to use that regime as the baseline for analysis.
EU laws treat data protection as a fundamental right, on par with constitutional rights in the US. Casting privacy in that light means EU policies must be evaluated against those rights, rather than against the rather more vague protections afforded privacy in the US as a penumbral right implied by certain amendments to the Constitution.
Further Considerations
After his overview of privacy policies, Kuner discusses the types of regulatory systems available, the differences among them, and the role of technology in privacy regulation. He points out, quite correctly, that legislation naming specific technologies will become obsolete almost immediately. On the other hand, individuals and institutions can protect personally identifiable information using privacy-enhancing technologies. For example, in addition to encryption technologies, data collectors could use geolocation sensors to pinpoint their location to identify which laws apply. As he notes, however:
[U]sing geolocation to control access to data can also undermine data protection, since determining the location of users can make them more identifiable. Thus geolocation can be useful in specific cases, but also raises data protection concerns.
Data that has been anonymized, or stripped of links to the individuals whom the data represents, is another tactic to render personally identifiable information safe. The author cites the proposed General Data Protection Regulation of the European Commission, which provides that “the principles of data protection should not apply to data rendered anonymous in such a way that the data subject is no longer identifiable”. Unfortunately, at least from the data protection standpoint, there has been significant progress in data de-anonymization. The mostly true folk wisdom that knowing an individual’s birthdate and postal code allows US data aggregators to correctly identify 70% of individuals is just the tip of a mammoth analytical iceberg. Reprocessing of medical test data, for example, has allowed researchers to link database records to specific individuals with very high accuracy.
Kuner also examines the role of extraterritoriality in data protection law. Certain policies and conventions, including one proposed by the International Chamber of Commerce, require each Party to the agreement to ensure that data transferred to processors outside the Party’s territory in accordance with the originating party’s laws. He notes elsewhere in the book that subsequent transfers to other processors don’t necessarily create a chain of responsibility back to the originating entity, but where responsibility ends, or even attenuates, is an open question.
Data rarely moves between States without crossing intervening jurisdictions. Kuner cites commentary indicating data transiting across the territory of a State doesn’t constitute a transfer, but even there the mechanics of data transmission come into play. Data is often stored on servers for some time as a normal part of transfers, either in a “store and forward” network or in an e-mail system. The US federal government has argued that e-mail stored on a server is no longer “in transit” and is therefore subject to different rules than are applied to “freely flowing” data. How that policy conflict will be resolved, if it is in fact recognized, is uncertain.
Recommendations and Conclusions
Because of the divergent nature of policies and laws among the various States and the difficulty in negotiating treaties, Kuner recommends a pluralistic approach to harmonizing international data protection regimes. Pluralistic harmonization is a slow and uncertain process, but it is the most realistic option at present. The difficulties of negotiating EU data protection agreements, even when granting specific exceptions such as the UK’s extended transition from paper to electronic records, argue strongly in favor of a more organic approach.
Transborder Data Flows and Data Privacy Law focuses on commercial and routine governmental activity and, as such, doesn’t cover national security law and practice, which the US uses to justify programs such as ECHELON and other National Security Agency programs revealed in the recent past. I was somewhat surprised not to see a discussion of the proposed “right to be forgotten” that has caused so much consternation in the US, but that omission doesn’t affect my evaluation of the book.
Kuner provides a comprehensive and useful overview of data protection laws, both in the EU and elsewhere. The author’s experience in the field, thorough analysis of existing policies, and policy suggestions are of the highest caliber. I recommend Transborder Data Flows and Data Privacy Law without reservation.
Curtis Frye is the editor of Technology and Society Book Reviews. He is the author of more than 30 books, including Improspectives, his look at applying the principles of improv comedy to business and life. His list includes more than 20 books for Microsoft Press and O’Reilly Media; he has also created more than 20 online training courses for lynda.com. In addition to his writing, Curt is a keynote speaker and entertainer. You can find more information about him at www.curtisfrye.com and follow him as @curtisfrye on Twitter.
The National Coin Flip Lottery
On January 23, 2014, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a paper citing income inequality as a threat to economic security in developed and developing countries. In part, they found that:
- Income inequality has increased in both advanced and developing economies in recent decades.
- There is growing evidence that high income inequality can be detrimental to achieving macroeconomic stability and growth.
- Fiscal policy is the primary tool for governments to affect income distribution.
Unfortunately, the IMF declined to offer a solution, stating that “[t]his paper does not advocate any particular redistributive goal or policy instrument for fiscal redistribution.”
That’s where I come in.
Gettin’ Rich Ain’t Easy
Warren Buffett once remarked that if a person won $1 million flipping coins, he could sell a book entitled How to Make One Million Dollars Flipping Coins. His point is that some investors, regardless of how unskilled they are, will get lucky every now and then. We should not attribute everyone’s gains to great skill.
That said, there is a general pattern we can follow. People get rich by combining two abilities: making money and keeping money. The problem is that when you keep money it doesn’t flow through the system. Trickle-down economics in an age of hyper efficiency doesn’t work as well as it might. What we need is a low-impact system for wealth redistribution.
In the interest of creating up to 334 new millionaires every day, I propose a National Coin Flip Lottery. All 350 million Americans, regardless of age or income, must contribute one dollar per day to the lottery. We all need car insurance if we want to drive and we all need health insurance if we want to live, so this slight imposition is little more than an annoyance. If you have a Social Security number, you have to pony up.
Every morning at 5 AM Eastern time, a computer divides the database of American citizens into two groups: Heads and Tails. A representative flips a coin, probably a virtual coin because quarters come up heads slightly more often than tails, and eliminates the losers. The computer then randomly re-divides the population into halves and continues until we have 334 winners. That’s correct: after just 20 flips we will have 334 lucky millionaires.
The system collects $350 million every day, but the excess can fund lottery operations, reduce the national debt, and support a special lottery held every February 29. Let’s say we hold back $1 million of the $16 million excess from each drawing. There are 1,460 days between leap days, so we could give away enough money to create 1,460 new millionaires on that day alone.
Supporting the Public Interest
Just think about the positive social impact that creating 334 new millionaires every day could have on society. Yes, the less socially responsible winners would just blow their newfound riches and hope to win again, but quite a few of the lucky individuals will redistribute the wealth among their family and community. That level of liquidity would free up small-scale investments, provide competitive pressure for traditional lending institutions, and relieve poverty for a small percentage of the population every day.
It would be cruel for citizens to win 19 straight coin tosses and lose when they are on the cusp of being a millionaire. Therefore, I propose that individuals may enter a preference to split their prize at the $32,768 level or higher. If two individuals who are willing to split meet at a given level, they both automatically get the prize.
Given the raging expansion of gambling across the United States, with the quaint exceptions of Hawaii and Utah, this modest proposal fits comfortably into the American zeitgeist. Next February 29, join me in celebrating our new national holiday: Millionaires Day!
Use a Premortem to Anticipate Problems
Any time you advocate change, you should expect to encounter resistance. There are, after all, vested interests in maintaining the status quo. That’s as true for improv groups as it is for any other type of organization. One way you can reduce the disruption caused by these objections is to anticipate them and prepare responses.
To anticipate these problems, you can do a premortem where you probe a plan for every possible point of weakness. This is where you can release your negativity: Think of every possible way someone could object to your plan, how things could go wrong, whether your assumptions could be called into question, and whether the projected benefits are realistic.
There are two benefits to this exercise. The first, as I mentioned, is that you anticipate potential problems and can develop responses. If you can’t develop a good answer to an objection, perhaps you should put off your presentation. The second benefit is that it helps detach team members from the proposal on an emotional level. Once you think of all the ways something could go wrong, you are much less likely to see it as a perfect plan. Doing so lets you receive criticism objectively, and answer without your emotions taking hold.
Remember that decision-makers prefer to operate on an analytical level, even when they are selling products or political candidates to their target demographic on pure emotion. If you present your analysis and let your persuasive techniques season what you say, you’ll be that much closer to making your plan a reality.
Improspectives 
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