Vastly Important Notes

Quick Book Review: How to Become CEO

Some of the people involved in the production of this book clearly understand that they are engaged with a work of high satire.  Emphatically not among those people is Jeffrey Fox, the author.  Tragicomedic dissonance ensues.

Quick Book Review: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Sucks.

Charlie Wilson’s Movie

Thanks again to Lee Wright for pointing out that someone in Hollywood apparently has the good sense to make a movie out of George Crile’s Charlie Wilson’s War.  To continue the arbitrary comparison started in my previous review of the book, I’m certain that the movie will feature more cocaine, true-life espionage and attack helicopters than, say, The Chosen. 

Tom Hanks will be playing the eponymous congressman.  No other casting information is available, but I hereby decree that the role of CIA-meshuganah Gust Avrakotos must be played by Harvey Keitel.

I await my check from central casting.

Quick Book Review: The Secret Life of Lobsters

I decided that my sanity would be better served by occasionally reading books than obsessively working on my laptop during frequent air travel.  This means Vastly Important Notes will now have a section for very brief book reviews.  First up, Trevor Corson’s The Secret Life of Lobsters:

This book illuminates the lives of lobsters (really fascinating), lobstermen (somewhat less so) and lobster scientists (not in the slightest).  Promptly after finishing the book, I ordered a 2lb lobster at Jasper White’s Summer Shack and was immediately able to identify all the obscure lobstery bits that I never knew about before.  Mmmm, mmmm, that’s good reading.

Getting the definition right

[Yesterday, ZDNet published a short commentary I wrote called “Getting the definition right”.  I’m very grateful to ZDNet for giving me a forum with a few orders of magnitude more readers than this fine blog.  In order to make the article suitable for the mainstream, the ZD editors stripped out most of the jokes from the original piece and altered the ending a bit.  They were probably right to do so – security is no laughing subject.  Still, for the “benefit” of my original reader(s), I’ve decided to post the “controversial”, err, “uncut”, um, “eXtreme” version here.]

Getting the Definition Right (the director's cut)

“Security”, like other vaguely defined segments stalked by industry analysts, is subjected to cyclical patterns of fashion and scorn.  Are we in a security-fueled investment bubble, or are organizations still sitting on their IT wallets?  Much of the answer depends on your assumptions and definitions.

In his now (in)famous January 2000 essay, “Terror Versus Security”, Salman Rushdie offers a working definition:

Security is, after all, the art of making sure certain things don’t happen: a thankless task, because when they don’t happen, there will always be someone to say the security was excessive and unnecessary.

This and others pieces are republished in Rushdie’s newish book, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002.  Mr. Rushdie is something of an unwitting expert on security matters, at least at the receiving end.  Compelling snapshots throughout the book recall a decade of fighting (and dodging) the Iranian fatwa placed on his head after publication of The Satanic Verses.  While his insights are keen, this definition is part of the problem.

If you think of security in purely negative and restrictive terms – preventing attacks, denying access – it’s hard to be optimistic about the industry.  After all, restrictive security places a burden on the many legitimate transactions in an attempt to prevent the few unauthorized ones.  This is practically a Sisyphean undertaking (heh, “Sysyphean Undertakings for Dummies” – I’m gonna write that book).  Too much restrictive security and the economy grinds to a halt while people proclaim that “the terrorists have already won”.  Too little and you’re accused of being negligent.  Rushdie’s punch line is that any security you decide on is by definition the wrong amount.  What fun.

However, there’s a different way to look at the industry.  Instead of thinking about security as just negative and restrictive, think of it as active and enabling.  Active security is not just about stopping the bad guys; it’s about making the normal lives of the good guys better.  Instead of just intercepting a few illegal transactions, active security aims to make the vast majority of legal transaction faster and more efficient.  There are new security technologies that allow people to do more and to do it quicker.  Think of ATM machines, trusted traveler documents and digitally signed mortgage forms.  All of these applications make life easier for legal users and, by extension, make it easy to catch the illegal ones.  Also, since active security deployments focus on speeding legitimate transactions, they can have a net positive effect on the economy.  The more active security you have, the more it pays for itself.  This is the exact opposite of the negative feedback cycle of restrictive security economics.

A great example of a large active security program is the Common Access Card (CAC – bad name, different topic) of the U.S. Department of Defense.  The CAC is a smart card issued to every member of the DoD and is intended to be used for many applications including logical and physical access, secure email, document signing and payments.  These are applications that people want and that were largely unavailable before the CAC program.  Of course the system is built on cryptographically strong technology, so even though people will use their cards for convenience, they’ll be getting security.

I wrote a chapter on “Active Security” in Inside the Minds: Security Matters.  If you like this blog, but not the pesky attempts at humor, the chapter may be more your speed.  From what I’ve seen in the past two years, spending on active security technology is growing in both government and commercial sectors.

Towards the end of his essay, Salman Rushdie adds a cautionary note:

In the past, security didn’t save President Reagan, or the pope.  Luck did that.  So we need to understand that even maximum security guarantees nobody’s safety.

Certainly this conclusion is correct.  Security isn’t about guaranteeing absolute safety.  It’s about letting people undertake both important and pedestrian actions with a reasonable expectation of a speedy, safe and correct outcome.  Still, I can’t quite agree with the first two sentences.  If you watch the video of either assassination attempt, you’ll see that, even though security couldn’t prevent the initial shots, each attacker was frustrated in his attempt to finish the job by a massive bodyguard pile-on, while the injured principal was quickly and efficiently whisked away from danger and towards medical care.  So maybe it’s more accurate to say that President Reagan and the pope were saved by security and luck.  And by “luck” I mean eight hours of surgery.

It’s easy to make a case for security if you get the definition right.

Charlie Wilson’s Book

The Afghanistan war against the Soviets was, by far, the largest operation ever carried out by the CIA.  The whole thing was basically made from scratch by a boozing, womanizing public official and, um, another boozing, womanizing public official.  Why wasn't I informed about this earlier?

George Crile’s Charlie Wilson’s War is a solid narrative of how U.S. support for Afghan mujahideen in the 1980’s brought about the fall of one great, existential enemy and the rise of another.  The book is filled with convincing details about the backroom operations of Congress and the CIA, as well as assorted tidbits on weapons systems, Pakistani palace intrigue, Texas socialites and contrasting cultural expectations regarding the proper uses of Tennessee mules.  The book jacket has a blurb that says, “Tom Clancy’s fiction pales in comparison…”  I can’t judge that claim personally, but the writing is certainly punchier than, say, Chaim Potok's.

Charlie Wilson’s War is well written, by turns funny and serious and, qualifying it to be mentioned on this site, important.  It’s still reasonably popular so you might find a copy in an airport bookstore.  It’s the perfect book for a twelve hour flight, and the person sitting next to you won’t be able to immediately guess your political leanings.  That’s pretty unique for non-fiction these days.

[Thanks to my friend Lee Wright for the recommendation.]