Lying with statistics — Still as popular as ever

Our experts are smarter than your experts:

The U.S. side of the southwest border is home to “some of the safest communities in America,” Gene Garza, the director of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the Laredo, Texas field office, told lawmakers on Tuesday.

… DHS Secretary Napolitano echoed Garza’s claims that the border communities are among the safest in the country, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 25: “Violent crime in U.S. border communities has also remained flat or fallen over the past decade, and statistics have shown that some of the safest communities in America are along the border.”

— Edwin Mora, “CBP Director: ‘Some of The Safest Communities in America’ Are on U.S.-Mexico Border”, CNS News, May 2, 2012

Both Garza and Napolitano base their assertions on Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics, but someone a lot closer to the situation points to the flaws in the FBI data:

… in May 2011, Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, when testifying before lawmakers, questioned the ability of the FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to fully assess the crime situation in border areas.

McCraw said the FBI crime statistics highlighted by the CBP about safe border communities fail to provide a full assessment of the situation on the ground.

As McCraw testified, “To accurately assess the overall criminal impact of an unsecure border on Texas requires the syntheses of several different variables within and outside the border region. For example, if we were to use only Index Crimes as reported through the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system, it would not include essential variables such as extortions, kidnappings, smuggling incidents, corruption, smuggling-related trespassing and vandalism, arrests of aliens from countries with strong terrorist networks, seizures of Cartel drugs, weapons and bulk cash on the 10 major smuggling corridors throughout Texas, Cartel command and control networks operating in Texas, increases in Cartel-related gang activity, death squad members living in Texas, Cartel-related killings of U.S. citizens in Mexico, Cartel-related violence along the border directed at U.S. law enforcement and the recruitment of Texas children in our border region to support Cartel operations on both sides of the border.”

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports include data on “violent crime” and “property crime,” but not all the criminal actions and activities cited by McGraw. The FBI’s violent crime index covers murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. The FBI’s property crime list includes data on burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft and arson.

Nonetheless, CBP’s Garza used the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports data in claiming that border communities are among the safest in America. — Ibid.

Is the end of the credit card near?

One unexpected result from the smartphone revolution is the “mobile wallet”:

Previously, mobile phones have helped us satisfy our need to communicate. Now, however, they are beginning to satisfy the need to engage in commerce by providing a convenient means of exchange. Smartphones are becoming a tool to accomplish what has previously required the use of cash, checks or credit cards.

Unlike a piece of plastic with a magnetic stripe, a payment system based on an intelligent, networked device has the advantage of providing real-time feedback on account and payment information. Combine these advantages with the fact that most of us are carrying a mobile device anyway, and a virtual wallet could eventually make credit cards as uncommon for retail transactions as personal checks are today.

Despite the obvious advantages, mobile wallets have seen slow adoption in the United States compared with elsewhere. Other places that lack the banking system the US enjoys, but have cell phone coverage, have led the way in using mobile payment technology. In locations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, money is often stored in a mobile account and transferred to another one during a purchase by bringing the buyer’s and seller’s cell phones into close proximity. This is done by means of a short-range wireless connection called near field communications (NFC). Just as elsewhere, NFC will lead the mobile-transaction revolution in the US.

NFC is a set of radio communication standards that allow devices to communicate with each other over short distances [4 centimeters or less]. It is also very fast at establishing a network connection, taking only a fraction of a second. If you’ve ever used a contactless payment system before, such as the kind that you can attach to your key ring and use at a gas station, you’ve used an early form of NFC. These objects use radio frequency identification (RFID) chips that transmit a unique, secure identification code that performs the same function as the magnetic stripe on a credit card. Unlike NFC on a mobile device, however, these systems allow only one-way communication. As such, these aren’t much more than easier-to-use credit cards.

— Ray Blanco, “Credit Cards, An Endangered Species”, The Daily Reckoning, May 3, 2012

But there are some security concerns:

Although the communication range of NFC is limited to a few centimeters, NFC alone does not ensure secure communications. … Ensuring security for NFC data will require the cooperation of multiple parties: device providers, who will need to safeguard NFC-enabled phones with strong cryptography and authentication protocols; customers, who will need to protect their personal devices and data with passwords, keypad locks, and anti-virus software; and application providers and transaction parties, who will need to use anti-virus and other security solutions to prevent spyware and malware from infecting systems.

— “Near Field Communication”, Wikipedia

Several different NFC attacks are possible, among them:

“Eavesdropping”: “The RF signal for the wireless data transfer can be picked up with antennas. The distance from which an attacker is able to eavesdrop the RF signal depends on numerous parameters, but is typically a small number of metres.” — Ibid.
“Data modification”: “It is relatively easy to destroy data by using an RFID jammer. There is no way currently to prevent such an attack. However, if NFC devices check the RF field while they are sending, it is possible to detect attacks.” — Ibid.
“Relay attack”: “For this attack the adversary has to forward the request of the reader to the victim and relay back its answer to the reader in real time, in order to carry out a task pretending to be the owner of the victim’s smart card.” — Ibid.

Yet one more round in the never-ending techno-wars.

“Justice for Trayvon”

Violent assaults associated with the shooting of a black teenager in Florida are on the rise:

The assaults on a pair of Virginian-Pilot reporters in Norfolk, Va., two weeks ago at the hands of 30 black youths … are the latest in a series of attacks driven by a warped sense of racial vigilantism hiding behind calls of “Justice for Trayvon.” At least 15 whites have been beaten not just with fists, but with potentially deadly weapons including hammers and lengths of chain. Many of the victims have been hospitalized, some may never fully recover, and one lingers on the verge of death.

— Bob Owens, ” ‘Justice for Trayvon’: 15 Whites Beaten by Gangs of Black Thugs … So Far”, PJ Media, May 2, 2012

The case hasn’t come to trial, but for some special interest groups, the verdict is already in:

… Race-baiting community activists, misleading news reports, and grandstanding politicians ignited deep-seated racial animosities which have now inspired violence. The fact that the shooter, George Zimmerman, self-identifies as Hispanic and is 1/8th black seems utterly irrelevant. He’s merely the excuse for a long list of violent crimes perpetrated against whites in recent weeks by a criminal under-class suddenly roused to violence. — Ibid.

After all, media lynchings are cheaper and require much less exertion:

… The media that doctored evidence to give the incident a racist spin, the politicians that echoed it when they saw a political advantage in parroting disinformation, and the racial grievance industry that fanned the flames of racial discord have downplayed the incidents of violence they nurtured. — Ibid.