Traffic Analysis

I once worked for NSA. At that time it was unlawful for me to say what NSA did, except to say that we made codes to prevent other countries from reading our communications. The rest of what NSA did was an pretty-easily-guessed secret. My job title was cryptologic mathematician.

During WW2, if Hitler turned on a radio, and sent a message to Rommel, it might be that the predecessor of the UK's GCHQ had an antenna and a receiver that picked up the transmission. The Brits had a lot of people employed at places like Bletchley Park. And a lot of other places to do science on that sort of thing.

Imagine you have an enemy who uses the radio and you have smart guys who want to wring as much information out of the enemy's communications as possible. The really juicy stuff is encrypted, so you don't know what exactly they're saying. But you do know that Hitler talks to Rommel, and Rommel talks to Fritz and Fritz talks to Brunhilde. Studying these patterns is called traffic analysis. It's the best you can do if you can't get hold of the internals of messages.

By doing traffic analysis, we may not know what is said, but we know who is talking and when. For instance, suppose you want the Nazis to think George Patton is going to cross the English Channel at Calais. You might put up a bunch of inflatable tanks and planes on the coast, but the Nazis won't fall for it unless you've actually got "ole blood 'n' guts" talking on the radio and lots of radio replies between those rubber tanks and planes. This was one of the reasons why Hitler could not believe that D-Day was going to be at Normandy. His technical boffins told him where Patton was and how much Army he had around him.

The US is smarter than that. We get eye-witness accounts of one of the 9-11 terrorists being in Prague and the 9-11 Commission denies them because we know his cell phone (that won't work in Europe) is in the US. Nobody would ever think to lend his cell phone to a friend while he's travelling.

I figure all of the Al Qaeda operatives are dead who haven't already figured out how traffic analysis works. There's a sort of Darwinian selection process that winnows out those terrorists who don't luck into effective NSA-evading strategies.

Here's another application of traffic analysis that you might be a little familiar with. Your wife asks you some difficult, pointed questions about an unfamiliar number that keeps showing up on your cell phone bills. 

Maybe you escape those difficult questions because the phone number doesn't show the name "Bubbles Mattressthrasher." Your adulterous communications are a little bit easier to hide because your wife can only see one piece of the puzzle. She can't see Bubbles' cell phone bill, and infer from her communications with furriers and jewelers that certain charges on your credit card can be explained thereby.

If you have the morality of a politician, you're grateful spouses can't do the deeper kind of traffic analysis data I just outlined.

One of the reasons why the US came into WW2 and threw so much effort into the European Theater (as opposed to the Pacific Theater where we'd been attacked), was the collapse of Isolationist opposition. And one of the reasons for that was the active intelligence operation conducted against US politicians by the Brits who actively set up Isolationist politicians with honey traps to blackmail them into voting favorably to the UK. Arthur Vandenberg was a Michigan Senator from my home town of Grand Rapids who mysteriously voted FOR the lend-lease bill despite his Isolationist politics.

But that's OK because they were fighting Hitler. And they were foreigners, no US bureaucrat would do anything like that.

Of course, J. Edgar Hoover managed to stay in charge of the FBI for all of his adult life despite serving Presidents all over the political spectrum who hated him. And despite concerted efforts to depose him, or retire him, he always managed to hang on. It was almost like he had some magic that he could use against his enemies.

Since 9/11 a lot of blood and treasure has gone into creating a comprehensive surveillance regime of digital communications passing through the US. It seems that our wise and benevolent leaders have access to AT THE VERY LEAST all the cell phone bills in this country. 

Despite all of this a couple foreigners managed to plot and perpetrate a bombing attack on the Boston Marathon. So, why did we spend all that money?

If it doesn't catch terrorists, what does it catch?

Put on your tin foil hat before I ask the next question: 

Have you ever noticed how politicians change after they go to Washington? I'm sure there are lots of reasons: getting the money from lobbyists for reelection campaigns comes to mind. Or playing to a National stage.

But if I were a politician with any damaging secrets that could be penetrated by traffic analysis, I'd assume they're known to persons within the NSA. 

And we can trust them like we trust the IRS with our financial data.

The Aristotelian

This is an excerpt from The Aristotelian, on sale for the low, low price of $0.99.

Circumstances of the Inquiry


I was well into my studies in Trinity College when I was called home by my father. It was just a month after Mother’s funeral. Her passing was ghastly business. I cannot bring myself to express more than the fact that my brother was the one to find her body.

I found my father in his drawing room. Comfortably ensconced in a wing-backed chair, he faced the fireplace with a blanket over his legs. He was reading the small volume of Plato he kept in his coat pocket.

“I came as quickly as I could, Father,” I said, announcing my presence.

He looked up and slowly drew himself back from whatever realm it is where ideal forms reside. “Mycroft. Good. Have a seat. Let me look at you.”

I sat down in my usual place.

“No, sit in your mother’s chair. She has no further use of it.”

Mother’s chair was the twin of Father’s and it framed the other side of the fireplace from his. The fire grew warm on my legs as I waited for him to explain the letter he’d sent.

“I want you to reason with your brother, because I have found my own arguments ineffectual. I’m afraid that Sherlock has become an Aristotelian.”

I narrowed my gaze at this. Surely Father would not call me away on something so trivial. He understood my look.

“It is not as you are thinking. Sherlock has taken an unhealthy interest in ‘particulars.’ He’s been collecting all manner of botanical items, pollens, leaves, bits of soil. He’s even taken to collecting the ashes from guests’ cigars. I think he had acquired an unhealthy obsession.”

“I must admit that sounds a bit eccentric, but harmless in itself. Has he quit eating or abandoned his studies?”

“No. In fact, he’s become quite the violinist in your absence.”

“Finally,” I muttered, remembering the painful sounds he had made when last I’d been home. Returning to the problem at hand, I asked, “What then is the harm?”

“There are other things. He has started running with an unsavory crowd, equal parts criminals and policemen. I can’t say that I approve of his associations. I fear for Sherlock’s character.”

I’ve never had much cause to pay much attention to policemen. I thought them a rough lot and given the nature of their profession and their clientele, I had not sought out the friendship of any. I regard the police a necessary evil of civilization and I believe Father’s opinions were even less charitable.

There is a sort of unearthliness about my family. Mother kept the home and it’s a good thing, too. Otherwise, we’d have all starved to death of forgotten meals, or frozen to death having forgotten to light a fire. In her absence, Father had engaged a woman named Hudson to keep body and soul together.

This unearthliness tends to undervalue the necessary aspects of civilization. We take for granted the rough men in police uniforms at home who chase criminals and our rough men in army uniforms abroad who bear the unpleasant aspects of the white man’s burden. I rather think that the Empire would fall apart if a Holmes were put in charge of it.

Nevertheless, Sherlock’s associations with criminals and policemen were equally abhorrent in Father’s estimation.

“Aside from this Aristotelian obsession with particulars, and his somewhat base associations, has Sherlock taken up any vices you think injurious? Gambling, women, drink?”

Father sighed and shook his head. “Nothing of any consequence. He has recommended cocaine to dispel ennui, but the way it makes my heart race reminds me of my corporality. A Platonic dialogue is a much more fitting stimulation.”

“What would you like me to do, Father?”

“Talk to Sherlock. Try to convince him of the folly of his obsessive cataloging of phenomena, turn his interests from those aspects of human nature which are low and wicked. At the very least, try to pique his interest in astronomy or even physics. He has expressed an interest in enrolling in Sidney Sussex this fall as things stand now.”
I sniffed at this, grateful at least that he hadn’t expressed an interest in one of those colleges at Oxford. “If Sherlock will listen to sweet reason, I’ll dissuade him of his ‘Aristotelianism.’”

***

It is a simple matter of ordinate affections. One bears an ethical obligation to love the good and hate the evil. These just sentiments belong in the heart of one’s character. The cultivation of virtue is something good citizens of the Empire have pursued as long as there has been a British Empire--and before that the Romans and before them the Greeks understood this. I had to find a way to bring this to Sherlock’s recollection. For all learning is but recollection.

I found him in the stables, devilling about with several small glass jars collecting vile samples from the floor.

“Sherlock,” I strode toward him, hand extended in greeting. “How are you?”

He looked up, his eyes darting back and forth, to me, to his sample jar, to the pile of muck he’d been poking through. Automatically, he extended his hand to shake. When I noticed the state of Sherlock’s soiled hand, I quickly withdrew my own.

“What ho, Mycroft! You are a pip. You won’t want to shake my hand until I’ve washed it. Give me a moment.” He looked down again, and finding something of interest to him in the pile of dung before him, he shoved it into the jar and sealed it. “You are back from Cambridge, but not before visiting a locksmith and I see you arrived on the morning train and had eggs for breakfast.”

I brushed the incriminating brass filings from my sleeve and looked down to see the bit of dried egg yolk that I’d incompletely cleaned from my vest. Not wanting to disclose Professor Babbage’s project, I let his error about the locksmith pass uncorrected. “You’ll have to pick through my scat to ascertain which jam was on my toast.”

“Then it was Blackberry.”

“That was obvious from my remark. Now wash your hands and explain why my little brother has taken to picking through horse manure.” I tendered a half-hearted smile.
He chuckled as we made our way to the house and the pump. I worked the handle. The leathers had been replaced, because now it held its prime quite nicely. Sherlock rubbed his hands beneath the running water and worked extra lather from the soap up his wrists. Then he cleaned each of the jars, which he had taken pains to seal before we’d left the stable.

While he did this, I put thought to my brother’s actions. “Why are you interested in knowing what the horses in our stables have been eating?”

He dried his hands on a towel we kept beside the wash pan. “Not so much what they’ve been eating as when.” With his hands dry, we shook properly.

“You wish to know how long the hay was in the alimentary, my dear Sherlock?” I asked. Most of my vices can be attributed to Mother’s influence, but I charge my fondness for puns fully to Father’s account.

“No, how long the dung has left the alimentary, my dear Mycroft. I want the elapsed time since elimination.”

“And therefore infer when a horse passed a particular point?” I asked.

“Exactly.” The edges of his mouth twitched indicating he’d caught the double entendre.

“I presume your interest in bits of random flora in the area is similarly motivated.”

“I have taken an inventory of the wild flowers and weeds extending in a five mile radius from this point,” Sherlock said.

“That’s a lot of work. I doubt your interest is academic. Would you explain to me why you’ve undertaken this study?” I should not have bothered asking. I had a very good idea what his answer would be, but I didn’t want to deny him whatever catharsis saying it aloud could provide.

“To learn who killed Mother,” he said.