Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems
ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator
Volume 3: Issue 6
Thursday 12 June 1986
Contents
Risks from inappropriate scale of energy technologies- Michael J. Natkin
- Shuttle Software
- David C. Smith
- An additional SDI problem: sensor technology
- Eugene Miya
- Privacy in the electronic age
- Dave Platt
- Sgt York software
- Larry Campbell
Mark Vilain - Info on RISKS (comp.risks)
Risks from inappropriate scale of energy technologies
"Michael J. Natkin" <mjn%brown.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
10 Jun 86 (Tue) 23:46:50 EDT
One of the most important categories of long term risks to the public
from technology seems to have been overlooked in Risks so far. The
assumption that more technology is automatically good is so ingrained
in our thinking that it is hardly questioned. We measure our welfare
in terms of Gross National Product, not by how many people have enough
to eat, or by distribution of income.
In particular a vast amount of our technical, capital and human
resources are expended developing monolithic energy technologies
without regard to end use needs. The public has long been duped into
the idea that centralized energy management has it's best interest in
mind as we develop ever increasing electrical capacity. But centralized
reactors and other "hard" technologies are extremely susceptible to
terrorist attack and other failures, as has been mentioned before.
The public has been told that it doesn't have the expertise to make
decisions about such high risk high technologies as SDI and nuclear
power, and in some sense this is true. But the technocrats have
preempted the public's right to make the moral and political policy
which guides the choices.
I think that we should be pursuing a policy course which develops
technology that can be put safely in the hands of non-technical people.
This might take the form of small burners which use the methanol from
organic wastes, windmills, or non-electrical solar collectors, to name a few
possibilities. Localized, distributed technologies have many advantages,
including ease of repair, localization of risk from outage, and major
reductions in distribution losses and cost of distribution equipment and
labor. I strongly recommend Amory Lovins' "Soft-Energy Paths" to others
interested in issues of appropriate scale in technology.
Michael Natkin
CSnet: mjn@brown
ARPA: mjn%brown@csnet-relay
UUCP: ...!{allegra,decvax,ihnp4}!brunix!mjn
Shuttle Software
David C. Smith <DCSmith@SRI-AI.ARPA>
Wed 11 Jun 86 08:55:30-PDT
The cover story of the September, 1984, CACM is "A Case Study: The Space Shuttle Software System". As with other CACM case studies, this one is a discussion, or interview, with several people involved with the subject matter, in this case 6 individuals from the IBM Federal Systems Division. An Outline of the Interview included in the article contains: Project Overview The Shuttle Computers Project Organization Testing Facilities Detailed System Operation--No Redundancy Redundant Set Operation System Problems The Interprocess Variable Problem Concluding Remarks The issue also contains several other articles in a Special Section on Computing in Space, including "Design, Development, Integration: Space Shuttle Primary Flight Software System", written by 2 senior technicians from the IBM FSD. It seems like a good place for a novice to the shuttle and its systems (like myself) to get some basic information about the shuttle computers and the complexity of the systems. Dave Smith
An additional SDI problem: sensor technology
Eugene Miya <eugene@ames-aurora.arpa>
11 Jun 1986 1124-PDT (Wednesday)
The view expressed within are the view of the author and not of my agency
nor of the Federal government. ------------------------------ A lot of
interest has been expressed regarding the focus of the problems of SDI: the
software, in particular battle management. Note the Science article of May
9 1986. However, I wonder about the other components of the system. Where
there are various groups watchdogging computing, but the more hardware
oriented, EE areas such as radar have fewer opposition elements. Recent
postings on cruise missiles and the integration of DIVAD move me to post this.
Sensor technology is one area which worries me. SDI battle management
makes certain assumptions about the ability to detect and identify targets.
I think that most computer people don't understand the nature of radar
to worry about the problems of `target' detection and ranging. That is
all that radar is: detection (boolean) and ranging (distance=rate times
time). A first starting references is Skolnick's text on Radar. (Dated)
Inherent problems with a ranging system include: Range and azimuth
ambiguities, difficulties with empirically determined signatures. Most
people don't seem to understand that knowing the geometry of systems are
important. Satellite images [some radar maps to be used in offensive
missiles] are not photographs (you must call them images) because their
geometry is from a linear and not a point perspective, so distance
determination for things like cruise missiles cannot be done using a
straight edge. Radar (simple) is like looking at the world using a
monochromatic spot light from the point where you are looking: you don't get
shadows (an important distance cue). Note: I have not talked about clutter,
or noise (ever wonder how high speed jets detect jets from ground objects,
or how AWACS which points down get insignificant ground objects cleared?).
While there exist solutions, all of them involve tradeoffs in complexity,
cost, and new emergent problems. Solutions in Doppler systems,
phased arrays, stereo transmit/receive systems, but just the inherent
simplicity of the concept and the over-generalization of use worries me.
This is a case where "high-level language" solutions may not be
high-enough.
--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@ames-aurora.ARPA
{hplabs,hao,dual,ihnp4,decwrl,allegra,tektronix,menlo70}!ames!aurora!eugene
Privacy in the electronic age
Dave Platt <Dave-Platt%LADC@HI-MULTICS.ARPA>
Wed, 11 Jun 86 10:47 PDT
A news clipping from this morning's "Los Angeles Times" (page 2, The News
in Brief):
The House Judiciary Committee voted 34 to 0 for a bill seeking to
bring constitutional guarantees of the right to privacy into the
electronic age. The legislation would extend laws that now protect
the privacy of the mails and land-line telephone conversations to also
cover electronic mail and some telephones that use radio waves.
The bill was cleared at the request of Rep. Robert W. Kastenmeier
(D-Wis.), chairman of Judiciary's subcommittee on courts, civil
liberties and administration of justice.
Anyone know the details? Just what privacy coverage would be afforded
by this bill in its present form? How would the bill's provisions
affect the sysops of private electronic bulletin-board systems, for
example? Would this bill clarify the legal standing of electronic
transactions and messages re their use as evidence in court?
[Very strange. RISKS-3.1 noted that the House sent a bill to the
Senate on 3 June that covered "federal interest" computers. Is this
an additional bill, or a modification of one already sent over?
Maybe someone in the House is reading RISKS and noted the apparent
flaws in the bill that I mentioned in RISKS-3.1? PGN]
Sgt York software
<decvax!bellcore!genrad!panda!wjh12!maynard!campbell@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
Wed, 11 Jun 86 01:52:39 edt
In RISKS 3.4, Mike McLaughlin (mikemcl@nrl-csr) and Ken Laws (laws@sri-ai) dispute the Sargent York latrine fan story. [...] I quote from a story by Gregg Easterbrook in the November 1984 issue of _The Washington Monthly_: During a test one DIVAD locked on to a latrine fan. Michael Duffy, a report for the industry publication _Defense Week_, who broke this aspect of the story, received a conference call in which Ford officials asked him to describe the target as a "building fan" or "exhaust fan" instead. _The Washington Monthly_ and _Defense Week_ are both reputable publications. Does anyone have a citation for a retraction in _Defense Week_, or should we assume that the TV networks swallowed Ford's story whole? Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc. ARPA: campbell%maynard.uucp@harvard.ARPA 120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109 UUCP: {alliant,wjh12}!maynard!campbell (617) 367-6846
Sgt. York software
Marc Vilain <MVILAIN@G.BBN.COM>
Wed 11 Jun 86 12:48:29-EDT
Here is some information on the DIVAD software that hasn't appeared yet in this forum. [It] is abstracted from a longer note compiled by Reid Simmons from material he received from Gregg Easterbrook (both his article in the Atlantic, and personal communications). According to Easterbrook, the DIVAD did target a latrine exhaust fan in one series of tests. The target was displayed to the gunners that man the DIVAD. But the Sgt. York did not shoot at the latrine, or even swivel its turret in the latrine's direction, having prioritized the target as less important than other targets in its range. In another series of tests (Feb. 4 1984), U.S. and British officials were to review the DIVAD as it took upon a rather cooperative target: a stationary drone helicopter. On the first test run, the DIVAD swiveled its turret towards the reviewing stand as "brass flashed" and the officials ducked for cover. It was stopped only because an interlock was put in place the night before to prevent the turret from being able to point at the reviewing grandstand. Afterwards, the DIVAD shot in the general direction of the helicopter but the shells traveled only 300 yards. The official explanation is that the DIVAD had been washed the night before, screwing up its electronics. Easterbrook wonders what would happen if it rained in Europe when the DIVAD was being used. Easterbrook goes on to claim that the snafus the DIVAD experienced were very much due to software. The main problem was that the pulse-Doppler tracking radar and target acquisition computer were a very poor match. Easterbrook claims that the hard problem for the software (tracking fast, maneuvering planes) was easiest for the pulse-Doppler radar which needs a moving target. On the other hand, the hard part for the radar (detecting stationary helicopters) was the easiest to aim at. The DIVAD mixed two opposing missions. Easterbrook goes on to say that human gunners are often more successful than their automated counterparts. They can pick up on visual cues, such as flap position on approaching aircraft, to determine what evasive maneuvers the enemy might make. These kinds of cues are not visible to things like pulse-Doppler radars. Further, evasive courses of action are hard for human gunners to counter, but even harder for target tracking algorithms (again the lack of visual cues comes as a disadvantage). For example, the DIVAD expected its targets to fly in a straight line (which my military friends tell me is not too likely in a real combat). There is lots more to the Sgt. York story, not all of which is relevant here. If there is a moral to be drawn specifically for RISKS, it's that as advanced as our technology may be, it may not always be the match of the problems to which it is applied. This was certainly the case with the unfortunate DIVAD. marc vilain
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