Fundamentals of Security
In mathematics there exists an ancient branch of study devoted to investigating the behavior of numbers in the world around us. This field of science is called number theory and its primary focus is the study of prime numbers. These are a set of numbers that are by nature indivisible, and whose sums and products can be combined and scaled up to calculate every other number, but other primes, to infinity. As numbers get larger, so do the distances between “new” primes, but the nature of primes never change.
The predictable “prime” nature of these numbers is so elemental to our applied understanding of mathematics that mathematicians gave it a name, they called it the “Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic“.
In the last few millennium the application of prime numbers has accounted for startling innovations in human engineering and industry, but we have only in the last few decades begun to realize the crucial security element residing within. Prime numbers are unalienable, they cannot be broken down into smaller numbers. This means that if you take two large primes and multiply them together to make an even larger number, that number only has a single combination of factors that divides it evenly, e.g. unlocks it.
This is the basis for modern computational safety, and the secure encoding of information to be passed between branches of the government, the military, and even civilians.
The lock device itself is that no other combination of numbers can be used to fake the right calculation for the larger number, only the correct answer will provide the necessary key. Nothing else can get in. Any other input, any deviation even by a single microscopic base unit, is detected. And rejected. Nonnegotiable.
In the field of adversarial learning, “bad agents” attempt to fool security models through malicious input. The adversary attempts to trick the entrance protocol by supplying similar input designed to fake the key and fool the system into accepting the message as valid. Once the entrance protocols are bypassed, a bad agent can get inside, change the message and work to modify the program, even change it completely. Social engineering, hacking, spying, are all tools of adversarial learning. But when it comes to prime number security encryption, it’s unbreakable. Any input off even by an iota is detected. And if the key is off it doesn’t matter how close everything else matches up, something’s been tampered with. If so, return rejected. Don’t let it get inside, don’t let it corrupt the system.
This is a defining principle for biological life on earth as well. Every layer of complexity is designed to maintain this same level of security. Our own cells and bodily systems rely on a set of prime directives that define rigid boundaries that let not a single other thing in other than the intended messenger and input. Sodium potassium pumps in the cell membrane, neuroregulators and protein catalysts in the brain, cell mechanisms and antibodies designed to withstand viral attack, all use secure biological protocols to keep foreign biological invaders out of sensitive systems and from interfering with or hijacking normal bodily processes. Everything from the food we eat to the germs we come in contact with, to the vastly different systems of bodily fluids and chemical reactions happening spontaneously in our bodies, all rely on security.
And when something foreign does get in, and wreaks havoc on the body, we call it a virus.
United States Security
The United States is itself founded on a set of prime rules that rigidly define and protect the nation’s citizens. It is the best defense system ever devised. Never in the history of human civilization has there been such a strong, robust nation. Penned and engineered by its founding fathers, it has proven over and over again to be the most industrial, inventive, abundant country on earth; the land of the brave and the free.
The U.S. does this through the Constitution which provides a set of prime rules, laws that protect the rights of the people against any intrusions, foreign or domestic. These laws together are called the Bill Of Rights.
Any coercive action or threats of coercive action on the part of the government, public officials, or public institutions has to be weighed and calculated against these rigid guidelines. And any encroachments, any abuses, any changes to the input code, even if off by a single iota, are identified and the body of “evidence” is rejected and thrown out. The Constitution remains inviolable.
But adversarial learning of the U.S. legal system has resulted in efforts recently to sneak past the Constitution, to infiltrate the justice system and repurpose it to other ends. These “bad agents” seek to create and set new precedent to shift and corrupt the nature of the legal system to instead prey on those it’s sworn to protect.
This is primitive, even biological in its purpose. This is the nature of a virus.
But the laws protecting the individual from government encroachment are indivisible. There is no legal grey area, no loopholes, no cover and concealment that allows disguised government encroachment to remain hidden. Intrusions of the state or its institutions or agents always come to light.
College “Admissions” Scandal
Take for instance the “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal of 2019 featuring multiple celebrity parents and figures. “Scenarios” are being offered to the American justice system, “situations” claiming to fit the bill for federal crimes.
52 defendants have been charged, 24 have already pleaded guilty in a “special” deal with prosecutors. The people that pleaded guilty, plead guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud.
Most defendants, to include fifteen sets of parents, describe being tricked and taken in by William “Rick” Singer’s manipulations. It seems when a defendant did display a sort of “moral” decision to cheat the system, e.g. an actual recorded conversation where the defendant expressed a guilty sort of acknowledgement of the nature of the scenario, the FBI were involved from the beginning and the conversations were recorded. In other words it was set up beforehand. Otherwise Rick Singer is quoted as regularly describing his little college entrance operation in the simplest most innocuous terms possible, as a “side door” entrance to college, easily relatable in layman’s terms to the semi-typical “back door” entrance of donating to educational institutions, a practice kept by wealthy families for generations.
“As wealthy parents of students were donating millions to ensure college admissions through the back door, he said his “side door” process was no worse and much cheaper. Everyone’s doing it, he told parents and coaches as he recruited them into his schemes.”
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2019/06/19/college-admission-bribery-scandal-rick-singer-exploited-broken-system-loughlin-huffman/1133729001/
Apparently asking well-to-do parents for donations isn’t adequate enough to suit the needs of public educational institutions anymore.
Mayhaps there should be an investigation, or certainly at least an inquiry, into the new product being offered and sold to gullible parents on the back end of the already turbulent and confusing time of children growing up and leaving the home. Parents want the best for their children, and college entrance exams, graduating high school, picking a college, financial planning, etc., are all very difficult. But now it seems they have high crimes and misdemeanours to contend with.
Here’s more details from USA Today:
Each of the parents to go before Talwani pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud in a deal with prosecutors. They admitted to taking part in one of two schemes with Singer – either paying to have someone cheat on the SAT or ACT for their children or to tag them as athletic recruits to slide them into a university. Singer called the latter scenario entry through the “side door.”
Talwani has given harsher sentences to parents who took part in the admissions plot, noting that it took a college seat away from a deserving student.
“As I consider the culpability of those two different schemes – they’re both broad, they’re both illegal, they both violate the same statute – but there is something that is an order of magnitude different about buying an actual spot at a university,” Talwani said during Semprevivo’s hearing.
(https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/08/college-admissions-scandal-judge-takes-privilege-her-sentences/3897432002/)
It remains to be said that “mail fraud” is not a victim, does not suffer damages or injury, does not even have a face, yet Judge Talwani is assigning prison sentences based on whichever of the two “conspiracies” the defendants happened to get sold on.
Apparently the more willing parents were to spend money on getting their children into good institutions the more it was used against them. This “conspiracy” to commit mail fraud seems a perfect cookie-cutter, tailor-made match to its “clientele”, wealthy parents ignorant and scared of the college entrance process and worried about their children’s future.
Or maybe it’s just another predation on modern parenthood.
There are however, a few very pertinent details that fail to escape detection. Something’s slightly amiss. Some things don’t quite “fit the bill”. The First and Fourth Amendments provide strict guidelines for defining what constitutes a crime, and guards against coercion from the state. The FBI and the justice department want everyone to think they’ve got a middle man, William “Rick” Singer, to cover for any First and Fourth Amendment violations. But Judge Talwani doesn’t think so. Here she is sentencing Sloane, a man who only plead guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud:
“Just because you are a fantastic person doesn’t mean you don’t commit a crime when you do those things,” Talwani said. “I return to the action you chose in bribing a school official. Bribing a school officer is a serious offense. You are not a repeat participant, but that which you did involve your son or daughter.”
https://scoopzone24.com/la-businessman-sentenced-to-4-weeks-in-prison-for-paying-250k-to-find-son-into-usc-as-water-polo-recruit/
Yet without the participation of Rick Singer these parents could not in any way have committed the crimes they’re being accused of. In essence these are all “thought crimes” Judge Talwani is doling out arbitrary fines and imprisonments for. Which is exactly what the First Amendment protects against.
And what about the Fourth Amendment which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and government intrusions?
Clearly it was William “Rick” Singer acting as the agent of these public school institutions, who had the resources and the means and the financial ties to make it all happen. These parents couldn’t have committed a single of these infractions on their own. So apparently the FBI has recordings of the agent of a public institution involved in a scheme entrapping celebrity parents. It would be curious to learn how and when exactly the FBI became involved in this little scheme.
And on top of all that the prosecuting attorney is strutting around on public television discussing details of the case against the parents and defendants, and has added charges based on their refusal to plead guilty. This attorney is publicly coercing them into giving up their Fifth Amendment rights. Forced confessions, in public.
This is not due process this is a circus. These “crimes” are not capable of surviving basic constitutional scrutiny, and the actions and behavior of the public officials involved are not befitting the U.S. Department of Justice. But of even greater threat is the future damage that would incur if this managed to sneak past without constitutional oversight. It would work to redefine the law to allow the state to prosecute and tax and imprison based on a set of “moral” social laws that were vague and arbitrary, subverting and weakening the rights of citizens and making them even more susceptible to legal predation.
It is time that the United States realize as a nation that:
Capitalism + Legalism => Cannibalism