A Capella Concerts This Weekend and Next

My chorus Voices in Harmony will be performing tomorrow night 8pm at the Gallo Center in Modesto (get tickets). Joining us will be the River Lights Chorus, with their salute to Elvis.

We're also performing with the Santa Clara Chorale next Saturday night 7:30pm at Mission Santa Clara on the Santa Clara university campus (get tickets).

The Fallacy of the Fallacy of Identity Theft

Okay, sometimes bad ideas just slink away on their own, but a reckless, poorly researched Wall Street Journal column has attracted enough tweetness to keep the bad meme recirculating. As much as I fear the wrath of Wall Street Journalists, I simply can't let this go uncorrected.

Earlier this week Julia Angwin posted a story titled The Fallacy of Identity Theft, in which she accused big corporate bad guys of conspiring against the poor folk to whip up a panic regarding the non-existent crime of identity theft. (After all, who can resist a corporate conspiracy story?)

As far as I know, no one can steal my identity. Even if my bank account number, my credit card number and all my passwords are stolen, I am fairly confident that I will still be me and the thief will be a different person.

Yes, the criminal will be masquerading as me. But anyone who knows me – my husband, my children, my colleagues, my doorman, my employer – will not be fooled. If "I" was actually stolen, I believe that would be called a kidnapping.

The entities that would be fooled by a masquerader are ones that don't really know me: my bank, my credit card company, places where I do online or offline shopping. Maybe they should have done a better job figuring out who I was before parting with my money or their goods....

Meanwhile, you wouldn't know it from the headlines, but identity fraud began to decline...independent researchers at Javelin Strategy & Research show fraud declining to $48 billion in 2008 from $58 billion in 2003...

It turns out that "identity theft" is one of the most brilliant linguistic constructs ever, with its terrifying specter of losing not just your money – but your soul. Maybe it's time that we renamed it what it is: a fear campaign designed to get us to buy expensive services that we don't need.

Oy. So much ignorance in this story -- where do I begin?

First and foremost, identity theft is a real crime, with real victims. The damage cannot be quantified by simply measuring the consumer's reported losses. It's true that at the end of the day, victims of ID theft do not lose their homes or cash -- when they finally document the fraud, the banks generally do return the asset. But it usually takes years (35 years, in this case) to find out what happened, convince the bank or merchant that you didn't really borrow their money, convince the credit bureaus to clear the reported deficiencies from your credit report, and then convince them again as the negative report circulates among the credit bureaus. And unless you're unusually lucky that law enforcement agencies are willing and able to catch the thieves, the thieves still have your data and continue to wreak havoc. And throughout this anxious, painful ordeal, don't even think about getting a credit card, mortgage, car loan or cell phone. Even checking into a hospital or getting a new job can be difficult. You might even end up in jail.

Oh, but you still have your soul, so what's the big deal? Well apparently it is a big deal to the victims, who have inundated Julia with a shit storm of comments and actual data regarding identity theft. I wonder why she didn't interview any victims prior to writing her cutesy rant? For example, she could have asked Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, a rather sophisticated consumer who was still vicitmized. According to Bernanke, "Identity theft is a serious crime that affects millions of Americans each year."

Julia twists a lot of facts. She blames the banks for poor security but so what? Yes, it's their job to secure our assets, and that's why they eventually give the money back, but how does that cure the other, more painful consequences? Yes, some ID theft does hurt only banks, but not all of it. Yes, ID theft is often perpetrated by relatives, but so what? How does that mitigate the pain? Yes, direct financial losses are declining, but why doesn't she even mention the years of hassle, paperwork and bad credit that victims endure?

Most importantly, it is misleading to conclude from last year's reported decline in financial losses that ID theft is going away. Any vicitm's real pain is measured in years not in dollars, and so the much more relevant datum is that in 2008 alone the number of victims increased 22%, to 9.9 million in the US.

As for the term "identity theft" it was not coined by the industry, and it would have been easy for Julia to figure that out instead of lobbing speculation. (Hey Julia, wasn't "Heart Disease" invented by the medical industry to sell you more drugs?) The first known use of "Identity Theft" was in a newspaper article in 1966, and the term was applied to financial fraud as early as 1991 by the Social Security Administration, more than 12 years before "the industry" existed (ooh, the feds must be in on the conspiracy).

Julia's philosophical challenge to the literal meaning of "Identity Theft" is worthy of a midnight dorm room conversation. Dude, why call it a firewall--is there really a fire raging around it? Totally! And why call it a computer virus -- does your PC get a fever? And the clincher: "If I was actually stolen, I believe that would be called a kidnapping." (Oh damn, there goes our evil plot to trick people into confusing the two crimes.)

I could pick apart much more of her story, but Who Has Time For This? Obviously Julia is generating page views by whipping up corporate conspiracies and, in the process, recklessly advising people not to protect themselves from a very real and damaging crime. Then again, maybe I'm wrong about her and she'll retract her column in light of more information. I hope so.

Praying with Richard Dawkins to the Great Ramen

This week Dr. Richard Dawkins, the pre-eminent evolutionary scientist of our age, visited Menlo Park for the third time. He addressed a mandatory assembly of the Menlo School (!) and then Daniel Mendez and I co-hosted a fundraiser for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason, featuring the blasphemous a capella music of Hereby Chants. Thank you Christopher Hitchens, Steve Jurvetson, Jeff Hawkins, Aaron Patzer and everyone else who attended and generously contributed. (Even @God was there!)

The next evening Richard addressed a crowd of over 600 fans at Kepler's Bookstore about his new bestseller The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, after which he tirelessly signed books for hours! I had the honor of introducing Richard at both events, which I opened by invoking a prayer to the Flying Spaghetti Monster:

From your Heavenly head to your Farfelly feet, you’re cloaked in fresh ziti—both dashing and sweet!

You don’t like to boast

But you’re smarter than most

with Noodly Knowledge from Sky Monster College.

Your blond AngelHair , with buttery flair

Is streaked with linguine.

Your Son the Rotini,

Who did twist and coil, was born of virgin olive oil.

Vanquish the sinners who eat milk with pig,

who worship the physics, the bio the trig!

Show them whose meatballs are big!

Now, join me in common

To praise The Great Ramen.

Together say: Amen.

But a funny thing had happened on the way to Kepler's. While I was trying to leave the house, the kids were fussing, so Nathalie asked me to take one with me. I worried that they might be confused and bored by the event, so I turned to Eliot and asked him if hew knew what evolution is. My 7-year-old looked at me blankly, but curiously. I gave him the quick explanation, and asked him if he'd like to go with me to meet the world's expert on evolution. Eliot beamed, and said, "I'll get my tie!"

A few minutes later I found myself praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster with Richard Dawkins, Eliot, and 600+ Kepler's customers. As I publicly reflected on Richard's compilation of exactly 150 years of supporting evidence for Darwin's theory (published in 1859), it occured to me that natural selection is one of those ideas that, once it's stated, is so obvious that everyone says, "Now why didn't I think of that?" To demonstrate what an elegantly simple concept it is, I invited Eliot up to the podium and briefly interviewed him (without any rehearsal). Here's the transcript of what was said (since, unfortunately, the video was taken down from YouTube for some reason):

DAVID: What is your name?

ELIOT: Eliot Cowan.

DAVID: How old are you?

ELIOT: Seven years old.

DAVID: And can you tell us, what is evolution?

ELIOT: It's when a baby animal is born with some kind of advantage that other animals don't have. The baby has other babies with the same advantage, and they have more babies with that advantage. Eventually the animals with the advantage pretty much take over.

DAVID: Can you give us an example?

ELIOT: Okay. A baby giraffe is born with an extra long neck, so it can reach leaves higher up in the trees. It has babies with an extra long neck, and they have babies with an extra long neck and so on. The giraffes with the extra long necks are more likely to survive, so they pretty much take over.

DAVID: When did you first learn about evolution?

ELIOT: An hour ago.

When Richard took the podium (as you can see below on YouTube), here's how he began:

RICHARD: Well after hearing Eliot give the outline of the theory, I might as well go home!

The Richard Dawkins Foundation web site features 11 excellent educational shorts about science (check them out here). And if you agree that science should supplant mythology and superstition as the basis for which we make decisions about our lives, families, nation, and planet, please consider emailing me your pledge to contribute to the foundation. I promise that Richard will personally show you his appreciation upon his next visit!

Why USA.NET Feels So Lonely

From Radicati's newly published report on hosted email services:

Nice work, guys!

Physical Encryption: The Ultimate ID Theft Defense

When my father recently retired his old laptop, he realized that many years of financial records and other private data have proliferated all the dark nooks and crannies of his hard drive. So this weekend he charged my son with the task of physically encrypting his drive using the Sledgehammer Algorithm, an asymmetrical encryption protocol.

Multi-core Processors are Key to Security

MIT Professor and Turing Award Winner Ron Rivest knows a thing or two about security. He invented the RC2, RC4, and RC5 symmetric key encryption algorithms (RC=Rivest Cipher), as well as the MD2, MD4 and MD5 hashing algorithms. He's also the R in RSA, so I got to know him when Jim Bidzos and I were getting VeriSign off the ground (not to mention a few friendly poker games we shared).

Anyway, the community of security researchers continuously strengthen their algorithms to withstand the steady onslaught of attack from cryptographers with increasingly powerful computers. So Rivest has been developing his newest MD6 algorithm on Tilera multi-core processors. Tilera is a Bessemer company that has integrated 64 processors with independent memory, caches and network ports on a single chip known as Tile64.

According to this article from a recent MIT campus paper, NIST won't adopt MD6 as a standard because it's just too slow to run without the Tile64. The inescapable conclusion is that as long as we continue to buy computers built on stale platforms, our security algorithms will be vulnerable to hackers with newer toys.

A Field Trip to 1906

About an hour ago Captain Watts discharged my son Avery and me from our duties aboard the Balclutha, a sailing ship docked in the Bay. Together with Avery’s class (the regular crewmen), his teacher (Guest of the Captain), four other parents (the Tall Sailors), and the staff of the Age of Sail program (the Officers), we set sail to Portland in the year 1906 to fetch much needed timber for rebuilding San Francisco. Avery worked in Galley Crew, and I in the Rigger Crew. The simulated voyage—a 20 hour adventure –was arduous but ultimately successful.

The Balclutha—a glorious three-masted steel hull square rigged sailing ship built in Scotland and now docked in the San Francisco Maritime Museum—has sailed many times around the world since its commission in January 1887, and did actually sail up the West Coast through Frisco In 1906. Today, as our nation’s only floating national park, she’s open to visitors by day but open only to the Age of Sail program off hours.

Dockmaster Clyde allowed us to board with but one duffel bag for our pillow, blanket and toothbrush. He relieved me and the other Tall Sailors of any anachronistic distractions like cameras and phones, so for 20 hours we were completely off-grid. First Mate Phoenix was not pleased when Second Mate Bonk presented the new crew. “I dispatched you to recruit 10 older experienced sailors, not 10-year-old sailors, you ninny!” But Captain Watts -- determined to be the first to market with Oregon lumber -- resolved to train the greenhands.

The Galley, Boat, Boson, Rigger and Deck Crews were each manned by four regular crewmen plus one Tall Sailor (grownup). But the Tall Sailors were NOT in charge. In fact, the contract we signed specifically prohibited us from doing or saying anything (except in the case of emergency, which never came up), since this experience was for the kids’ benefit, not ours. After years of

helicopter parenting, we had to somehow be there without ever saying a single word to any of the children, including our own. As they fumbled to put their coats on upside down, or provoked the captain by forgetting to remove their hats on deck, or over-salted the stew, or didn’t think to use the Head Call when they had the chance, or spoke too softly to be heard, or wondered where to stow a dirty tissue, or groped for the right word, or bickered, or encountered any of the little struggles that we normally help them overcome, the Tall Sailors had to suck it up and let it be. We simply followed our crews around and watched (though at night the Tall Sailors slept in a separate bunk galley so regular crewmen were on their own to make bunk).

In fact a regular seaman from each crew had already been designated to lead that crew as their mate, and to give the orders that the rest of us had to follow to the word. When it came to ship discipline, there was no impunity for Tall Sailors—I had to haul firewood for the Galley stove more than once just for putting hands in my pockets as the frigid Bay winds whipped around us.

It took some harsh training, but the crews learned how to appropriately respond to their captain, first mate, other officers and crew mate. (Say ‘Aye, Sir’ to anyone other than the captain and you’ll haul water buckets during Galley call.) The crew mates themselves were mostly uncomfortable at first when it came to issuing commands (our Rigger Mate was a sweet, shy 10 year old girl), but with the First Mate and Captain breathing down their necks they quickly learned to bark out orders clearly and properly.

For the past week the regular crewmen had been preparing by learning all kinds of stuff (that I still don’t know) such as how to identify parts of the ship, tie all kinds of strange knots, and sing authentic sailor shanties. So they were ready right away for the officers to teach them more complex team skills, such as working in unison to lower and raise the lifeboats, coil the hawser (a thick 120 foot mooring line), raise their school's flag up the main mast, and swab the decks. Rather than teach the crews directly, officers trained the mates to teach the crews.

The deck crew kept the bells ringing on time, and the galley crew kept all the hands fed. Through the cold night each crew kept a silent 90 minute watch, punctually and quietly relieving their deckmates. Turns out we had no pirate attacks (or sleepwalkers) and so it was a time for the deckhands to reflect on what they accomplished yesterday, and to enjoy the sounds and smells of the Bay, barely illuminated through the mist by the Ghirardelli factory sign. One boy, weepy and homesick, made it through the night with the help of his mate, but in the morning he had the biggest smile of all.

At 0430 this morning the Galley Crew began preparing breakfast and by 0600 all the crews were dressed, everyone had a Head Call, and the seaman returned the hawser to port. After galley call, it was time for some sailor fun—the Rigger Crew had hoisted a block and tackle and new lines up the aft mast to hold an expertly knotted boson’s chair, and now their mate was coordinating their Heaves and the Hos as the Riggers hauled their chair up the mast with their own crew members in it. At the captain’s suggestion, they recruited other crews to man the stern line, helping them hoist the Guest of the Captain (their teacher), whom they brought back to deck only after negotiating a week’s relief from homework.

At the final assembly of all deckhands, Captain Watts led us in a shantey.

The work wuz hard an' the voyage wuz long,
Leave her, Johnny, Leave her!
The sea was high an' the gales wuz strong.
An it's time for us to leave her!

It was as if these were different kids than yesterday morning. What they learned on the Balclutha went beyond a nautical lesson. They were confident, in charge, and even respectful of the officers who had been so firm with them. They learned that they can accomplish way more than they thought, that with elbow grease, teamwork and their own wits they can solve their own problems.

And that’s when it occurred to me that maybe in fact the Tall Sailors had as much to benefit from the experience as the kids. The 20 hours of just watching taught me that letting Avery solve his own problems is not only possible, but far more rewarding.

The captain dismissed the crew and for the first time in 20 hours parents and children could speak to each other. The kids of the Tall Sailors gave us each a “Hi” or a even a hug, and then went back to gathering their duffel bags--everything back to normal, but with a bit more spry in their steps, and a newfound respect for them in our eyes.