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RISKS-LIST: RISKS-FORUM Digest Wednesday 13 April 1988 Volume 6 : Issue 60

FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator

Contents: Quebec's Centralized Filing System (Glen Matthews) State taxes on a new computer system (Steven McBride) Feynman & the Challenger disaster (Wm. Randolph Franklin and Willie Smith) Risks of computerized editing? (Haynes) New risk to computer users identified -- VCRs (Gary Chapman) Pilotless Combat Planes (Rodney Hoffman) April Fool once more (Piet Beertema) Re: Macintosh off switch (Mike Linnig) Diving (Rich Sands) Re: Discrimination and careless arguments (Les Earnest) Discrimination -- unmuddling the muddlies (David Thomasson) What was the question? (John (J.G.) Mainwaring)

The RISKS Forum is moderated. Contributions should be relevant, sound, in good taste, objective, coherent, concise, nonrepetitious. Diversity is welcome. Contributions to RISKS@CSL.SRI.COM, Requests to RISKS-Request@CSL.SRI.COM. For Vol i issue j, FTP SRI.COM, CD STRIPE:<RISKS>, GET RISKS-i.j. Volume summaries in (i, max j) = (1,46),(2,57),(3,92),(4,97),(5,85).

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Date: Wed, 13 Apr 88 10:34:39 EST From: Glen Matthews <GLEN%MCGILL3.BITNET@CORNELLC.CCS.CORNELL.EDU> Subject: Quebec's Centralized Filing System

The following article appeared in the Montreal Gazette on Tueday, April 13 1988. In light of previous scandals about information being obtained about individuals from government files for commercial purposes, I'd be leery of this one. (Interesting that the law in 1984 giving citizens the right to know what information is being held on them, also makes it easier to abuse the system.)

YOU'RE ON FILE: DIRECTORY TELLS WHERE TO CHECK by Nancy Wood

Quebecers should know that government departments and agencies have millions of files (read: entries! gm) holding information about them, the Access to Information Commission said yesterday. The commission was launching a 635-page directory of 489 government databanks containing more than 20 million files. The databanks, half of which are computerized, are held by 26 departments and 98 agencies. Another 25 agencies told the commission they had no files to reveal (??? gm). The department of the solicitor-general refused to make public provincial police files. The Tourism and Income Security departments also refused to answer all the commission's questions.

Interim chairman Therese Giroux said these departments may face legal action if they don't co-operate. "We think the time has come to be maybe a little more radical", she said. There are still pockets of resistance to the law which, in 1984 (appropriately! gm), gave citizens the right to know what files are being held on them.

The standard file on a Quebecer will contain: name, date of birth, sex, ethnic origin, marital status, social insurance number, medicare number, hair colour, eye colour, height and physical handicaps, certificates and diplomas received, medical background, traffic violations, religious affiliation. In addition, the government knows what kind of car you drive, how many Quebec Savings Bonds you own, whether you have been treated for a tumor, whether you have had a fire, and your standing as a Hydro-Quebec customer. There are 3.5 million files on Quebecers who attended school in the province.

The point of the directory is to allow Quebecers easy access to a list of the kinds of files kept so that they can ask to see their own files and correct any inaccuracies. Giroux said it is every citizen's duty to know what kind of information is held by the government, and those who feel concerned should check their files. Communications Minister Richard French told reporters only a small number of Quebecers will want to do so, but they should be free to do so.

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Date: Wed, 13 Apr 88 09:14:45 pdt From: Steven McBride <shamus@BOEING.COM> Subject: State taxes on a new computer system

Paraphrasing from a 15 March article by Charles Trentelman in the Ogden Standard-Examiner.

Ira Menacker turned in his state income tax form expecting to receive a $268 refund. Instead, he received a notice saying he and his wife owed Utah $23,254,712.74 -- taxes of $20,769,223.02, plus interest of $2,485,479.72, less credit of $268.

Lee Shaw, spokesman for the State Tax Commission said the state was using a new computer system to process taxes and "a lot of things we are doing on our income-tax system are being done for the first time." The problem with the Menacker return was caused by a "data entry error, an editing error compounded by the fact that the system itself didn't kick that (the return) out on an error code." Mr Shaw also said "a computer does not make a small error, a computer will really make a glorious mistake."

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Date: 13 Apr 88 10:14:28 EDT (Wed) From: wrf%juliet@CSV.RPI.EDU <Wm. Randolph Franklin> Subject: Feynman & the Challenger disaster

There is an excellent article on the investigation into the Challenger disaster by Richard Feynman in the Feb Physics Today. Given the picture of parts of NASA he paints, it's a wonder anything flew. However, he did praise the subcontractors doing the computers - unlike at Morton Thiokol, the engineers and the managers communicated.

[Those of you who wish to and can FTP 34,000 characters, FTP KL, LOGIN anonymous, PASSWORD nonnull, CD STRIPE:<RISKS>, GET RISKS-6.FEYNMAN ..., contributed earlier by Willie Smith. I was hoping to do a summary of it, but at this rate may never get to it... PGN]

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Date: Wed, 13 Apr 88 15:23:06 PDT From: haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (99700000) Subject: Risks of computerized editing?

I guess either Associated Press or the Santa Cruz Sentinel is using a computer to eliminate sexist language from their news stories. A story this morning about a railroad accident said the train was being driven by the firefighter. Took me a moment there to translate firefighter back to fireman, which doesn't translate correctly to firefighter if you're talking about a locomotive.

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Date: Wed, 13 Apr 88 09:15:28 PDT From: chapman@csli.stanford.edu (Gary Chapman) Subject: New risk to computer users identified -- VCRs

Letitia Baldridge, manners maven, quoted in the April 13 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle:

VCRs! Manners are so bad because people look at computer screens all day and VCRs all night. . . .You go to their homes as a guest, and you end up asking: Where are the hangers? Where are the tissues? Where are the guest towels? And where, where are those pretty little soaps?

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Date: 13 Apr 88 12:38:47 PDT (Wednesday) From: Rodney Hoffman <Hoffman.es@Xerox.COM> Subject: Pilotless Combat Planes

Edited and excerpted from the 'Los Angeles Times', Sunday, April 10, 1988, Part I, page 1:

IDEA OF PILOTLESS COMBAT PLANES IS TAKING OFF By Melissa Healy

DAYTON, Ohio - Capt. Gary G. Presuhn, an Air Force navigator who helps fly some of the nation's hottest new jets off the desert runways of Edwards Air Force Base, is sitting inside a simulated aircraft cockpit in a medical research laboratory here, wearing a bizarre, bug-eyed helmet that makes him look like Darth Vader and feel like Luke Skywalker [pictured]. Wires trail away from the helmet to an electronic device that monitors his eye movements. Presuhn, 33, is peering into the future of aerial warfare. And curiously, he's not in it.

If scientists, engineers and dreamers here at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base can harness technology to their vision of the future, computers one day will do all or most of what Presuhn does now, flying in the second seat of supersonic military planes and providing crucial assistance to the pilot. Eventually, scientists hope, the same computers might even take over the duties of Presuhn's partner, [the pilot].

Presuhn's high-tech helmet, a sort of wrap-around instrument panel that tells its wearer everything from his plane's altitude to the approach of enemy missiles, is concrete evidence that -- after years of resistance by tradition -minded brass -- the American military is beginning to accept the idea of replacing scarce and vulnerable men with thinking machines....

Smart machines hold enormous promise, experts say. They will be able to do many of the things humans now do, thereby helping the military cope with expected shortages of trained personnel. They will be able to do some things no human could do, increasing the capability and punch of American forces. And they will permit U.S. commanders to order up valuable but -- for human pilots -- suicidal battlefield assignments without concern for casualties....

The nation's military leaders and defense technologists have stepped up efforts to move men out of the cockpits -- and out of danger -- and leave the driving to machines.... [F]liers like Presuhn, who at age 33 belongs to the first generation of the video era, are more philosophical [than, for example, the Mercury astronauts] about their eventual replacement, this time by computer software. "My seat's disappearing anyway," Presuhn said. "In my life, it's not going away. But eventually, I can see it's going to be gone."

.... Today, ... the forces that drive projects such as "Super Cockpit" -- including a budget-minded and casualty-sensitive Congress -- are beginning to overwhelm many, if not all, of the traditional objections [to reducing the role of men in military systems]. As a result, the Pentagon is forging ahead with several unmanned aircraft projects and with research efforts that threaten to make navigators and pilots dispensable....

"I see unmanned vehicles for many roles as a definite trend," Donald Fredericksen, the Defense Department's tactical warfare chief, has told Congress. "The technology is there. It's clear that we can use them for a lot of missions that are too dangerous for men or too expensive to do with manned aircraft." The Defense Department is expected to pour some $6.5 billion into designing and building pilotless aircraft by 1995, according to one industry estimate.

[Discussion of the SCI "pilot's associate" project...] Program officials speak of designing a "phantom crew" to aid tomorrow's pilots. One day, [researchers] at Wright-Patterson envision a world of air combat in which a single pilot aloft in his command plane will direct the attacks of an army of "robotic wingmen," who know no fear and leave no widows.

[Discussion of the soon-to-be-deployed "Tacit Rainbow," a kamikaze drone, and of Boeing's "Seek Spinner" and of the long history of Air Force resistance to removing men from the cockpit....]

In some cases, the state of technology has made the move toward pilotless aircraft not only possible but almost necessary. Engineers are finding that the greatest constraint to making tomorrow's fighter jets faster and more agile is neither physics nor technology. It is the ability of the man in the cockpit to withstand the physical punishment of higher-performance flight.... In the long run, some scientists believe pilots may become unjustified obstacles to the progress of maneuverability.

For now, however, few believe that even Wright-Patterson's magic can replace the judgment of a seasoned pilot when it comes to executing a last-minute change of plan or escaping a cleverly-designed trap. "The pilot bring to the system an adaptability, a skill and a cunning that we cannot reproduce with machines," [Thomas A.] Furness [one of the lead engineers in the "Super Cockpit" project in which Presuhn is a subject] said. "I'm not saying the pilot has to be in the airplane, but he has to be in the loop."

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Date: Wed, 13 Apr 88 11:39:09 +0100 From: Piet Beertema <mcvax!cwi.nl!piet@uunet.UU.NET> Subject: April Fool once more

Oops, I was wrong, it wasn't "kremvax" that was in the Path: of "Gene"'s April Fool warning message, but (a misspelling of) the other site I invented. Here's the Path: as I got it here:

Path: mcvax!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!moscvax!perdue!spaf ^ ^ Piet [Piet's trick from 1984 was rigging the mailer tables so that when you ANSWERed the Chernenko message, HE got the reply. This one was less subtle. PGN]

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Date: Wed, 13 Apr 88 18:10 CDT From: Mike Linnig <LINNIG%eg.ti.com@RELAY.CS.NET> Subject: RE: Macintosh off switch

> From: EAE114%URIMVS.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU > Subject: Virus Distribution > I've heard rumors that the Macintosh OFF switch only pretends to power down, > so maybe this won't work. Is this true? If so, why does apple do that? > Peter G. Rose

The Macintosh off switch certainly cuts power. I've heard that the older LISA computers had an auto-restart feature that allowed a program to set a hardware widget to turn the LISA back on a a predetermined time. I'd bet though that memory was truely erased by the powerdown (but not the hard disk!). Mike Linnig, Texas Instruments

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Date: 13 Apr 88 14:01:52 GMT From: rms@gubba.SPDCC.COM (Rich Sands) Subject: Diving Organization: Richard Sands, Brookline, MA.

Both the Orca EDGE and Skinny Dipper dive computers go through an extensive self-test when turned on, including activating every possible message display and indicator. The instruction manuals tell you what the self-test should look like, so you can verify that the displays are properly going through their paces. They also recalibrate themselves to the surface air pressure every time they are powered on, and warn you if you are diving at too high an altitude for their nitrogen absorption model to be accurate. The liability issues in selling such a device are obvious, and Orca has really done their homework, as far as I can see. If at any time you exceed the computer's operating ranges, it really starts flashing warnings at you.

There are other computers on the market, but I have no direct experience with them. The problems that RISKS readers are identifying may exist in other products, I don't know.

rms Compuserve: 71360,1067 BIX: richsands UUCP: {ihnp4,harvard,husc6,linus,ima,bbn,m2c}!spdcc!gubba!rms

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Date: 13 Apr 88 1756 PDT From: Les Earnest <LES@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> Subject: Re: Discrimination and careless arguments

At the risk of going further afield from the purpose of Comp.risks, I wish to prolong the discussion of "race." In Vol. 6, #58, David Thomasson seems to argue that I made careless arguments in the "mongrel" stories, then he puts forth the following argument. > . . . Explaining why he refused to reveal his race on a license > application, Earnest argued as follows (I paraphrase): (1) Race has > nothing to do with driving a car. Therefore, (2) asking for an applicant's > race isn't justifiable. My point was not about ideal motor vehicle > bureaus; it was about logic: (2) doesn't follow from (1). The suppressed > premise is: (1A) If X has nothing to do with driving a car, then X cannot > justifiably be put on a license application. *If* once accepts that > premise, then most of the information on drivers licenses is unjustified: > name, address, color of eyes, color of hair, etc. And this, of course, is > patent silliness.

Yes, that _is_ patent silliness. The things that Mr. Thomasson lists at the end are useful identification properties. "Race" is not, unless you are a racist.

Further on, Thomasson says: > Asking for race on a driver's license is, I suggest, justified because it > is useful in identifying the licensee.

Thomasson apparently believes that everyone belongs to some race and that that race is determinable. He probably also believes that all dogs belong to some breed. I would like to accompany him to a city pound somewhere and listen to him identify all the mutts there.

In the 1960s, the Commonwealth of Virginia included in the category of "Colored" everyone who they called Negro, Indian (both American and most people from India), other dark-skinned groups, and anyone who was detectably a mixture of any of these with some other "race." Was this a useful identification property? I think not.

Color of skin and color of hair _are_ useful for identification and may reasonably be included on a drivers license. I know a lady with very dark skin and bright orange hair. What race would you say she belongs to? I saw a number of comely ladies in Amsterdam awhile back with pale skin and bright green hair. How should we classify them?

For that matter, if I claim that I am a Martian, can you prove I am wrong? You probably don't even know what a Martian looks like. Les Earnest

[There is considerable redundancy among this and the following two messages, but I would rather not do burn any abridgements. PGN]

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Date: Wed, 13 Apr 88 16:49:09 EDT From: David Thomasson <ST401405%BROWNVM.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU> Subject: Discrimination -- unmuddling the muddlies

A brief attempt to clear up more muddled argument: Regarding my distinction between *gathering* information (such as race on a driver's license) and *misusing* such information, John Lavagnino writes:

>Can we believe in this separation after reading the accounts of actual >practice that appear in RISKS?

I don't know whether you *can* believe in it, but you *should*, since they are manifestly separate actions. One who gathers information about race (or about anything else under the sun) ought not to be presumed guilty of misusing it, since the misuse comes later if at all.

>And can we believe in Thomasson's (unstated) assumption that the >various bureaus of our government have no connection with each other?

I didn't state this assumption because I never made it. If a motor vehicles bureau gave its information to another bureau, this would not be an obvious misuse of that information by either agency. In fact there are practical reasons for government agencies to share certain information (*if* both are justified in gathering it in the first place). The alternative is for each agency to operate independently, needlessly repeating the same information-gathering process -- the sort of wastrel bureaucratic busywork that we so often complain about. Government bureaus do and should have some connections. Evidently, Lavagnino sees something heinous in this (as I do not) because he is unable to see that gathering information is not the same thing as misusing it.

>Thomasson's conclusion is further based on his (unstated) opinion that >no objection to governmental activities may be made without irrefutable >evidence of misbehavior -- which is a reasonable opinion, but it's an >opinion all the same, and there are others on the matter, such as >Earnest's. This method amounts to throwing out all the evidence and >assuming that you haven't thereby distorted the problem you set out to study.

Three points: (1) Again, I didn't state such an opinion, because I don't hold it. (2) Note that Lavagnino's critical method leans heavily on attributing positions to me that I neither stated nor implied, and then attacking those -- a classic Straw Man approach. (3) The view wrongly attributed to me is that we should proceed by "throwing out all the evidence," etc. Lavagnino says that this is "reasonable." I initially set out to show that arguments in RISKS sometimes are terribly muddled. I rest my case.

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Date: 13 Apr 88 16:59:00 EDT From: John (J.G.) Mainwaring <CRM312A%BNR.BITNET@CORNELLC.CCS.CORNELL.EDU> Subject: What was the question?

It seems to me that most of the replies to Les Earnest on the race question on forms miss the point entirely. Of course he objects to the question as irrelevant, but claims that an even bigger problem is being able to answer the question at all, and cites the unverifiable possibility of middle eastern ancestry in his own case. This clearly casts doubt on the usefulness of the race question for any purpose, not just its relevance to driving. It is an uncertain identifying attribute, even though it often works. Most people can name a colour for their eyes which most other people will accept. Hair colour tends to be more vague, and not everyone chooses to keep the colour the same at all times. Race can be a highly unsatisfactory descriptive attribute. At the time of the story, in the 60's, most people assumed that anyone with any negro ancestry should give their race as 'negro'. This meant that by no means everyone described as negro was immediately visually identifiable as such. There have been people who claimed to be able to immediately recognize members of the Jewish 'race' on sight, but at least that does not seem to have been attempted with driving licences anywhere in the US. As a side light, it is interesting to note a sexist bias in racial prejudice. If you believe an attribute has negative connotations, you will believe it is inherited from either the mother or the father. If it is neutral or positive, it is assumed to be inherited from the father alone (eg nationality on census forms). The risk inherent in this is the assumption that because a question can be formulated, the answers will be of any value, especially when they come from a broad spectrum of respondants. It is closely related to the 'NO PLATE/NOPLATE' item in recent issues of the RISKS forum, and is probably the root cause of my own irrational reaction to forms created by bodies such as the IRS.

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End of RISKS-FORUM Digest ************************