Covert operations under total surveillance

Osama bin Laden used nothing higher-tech than pencil, paper and couriers. Charles Stross suggested that when the NSA is on your case you're back to mediaeval tradecraft, Bruce Schneier frequently points out that against your kid sister almost any security will work, while against a first-world state adversary .. well, you're in trouble.

The main bottleneck facing the modern security state - despite ubiquitous CCTV, backdoor-enhanced routers and traitorous apps - is the shortage of smart oversight. Covert data enters as a firehose but actionable intelligence is vanishingly rare. The more extensive the surveillance, the worse it gets.

You read stuff like:

"You know there are bugs in here, and cameras?"

"Don't worry, they don't have enough staff. They've got AIs doing video review and keyword-tagging .. but if we keep it normal and general, most likely we're OK."

It's an arms race, but it's not linear. Each technology hits a ceiling and while the ongoing deployment of surveillance has a way to go, analysis at scale is much closer to topping out.

A covert agency knows that the best way to thwart security is to operate an innocuous cover-activity with maximal congruence to the mission. How many reporters were spies? How many bird watchers were terrain-mapping?

When activities look legitimate and only intentions might arouse suspicion, the analysing AIs flounder. But what you might call 'action steganography' has a short shelf-life. It gets burned. All reporters are soon viewed with suspicion; bird watchers near sensitive installations find themselves hauled in. Continuing success favours those with imagination and/or the use of activities which are widely popular.

I wonder sometimes at this new fashion for zooming around the countryside on high-tech human-powered machines, festooned with complex multi-function electronic devices.

I really don't recall cycling being that much fun.

Froome is of a certain age

There was that notorious incident in 2012 on stage 8 of the Tour de France:

"When he accelerated on La Toussuire with four kilometres to go, Chris Froome left behind Bradley Wiggins, the rest of the group and, it appeared, team orders.

Twenty seconds later, he spoke into the race radio, slowed and the fragments drifted back together.

“They asked me to slow down,” Froome said after the finish, referring to Team Sky directeur sportif Sean Yates."

Back in 2012, Froome was aged 27 and Wiggins was 32. Wiggins cracked on that final slope - this chart might explain why:

Elite cyclists are at their strongest aged 27-29: by 32 they're down by a third

Cut to stage 12 of the Tour this year:

"Chris Froome's brief attack on teammate and race leader Bradley Wiggins that day in 2012 is now the stuff of legend and, though clearly not on the same level, there were question marks over Mikel Landa's role as Froome struggled on the brutally steep gradients.

The Spaniard, Froome's last teammate and himself in the top 10 overall, didn't look around as the maillot jaune lost ground, instead forging on to finish fourth on the stage."

Fabio Aru then took the maillot jaune, Landa forging ahead as Froome cracked. Froome is now aged 32, while both Landa and Aru are 27.

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There were other reasons touted. Richie Porte - ever loyal - said from his hospital bed that Froome had hit the wall due to messing up his feeding. Others noted that Aru (66 kg) and Landa (60 kg) are lightweight pure climbers while Froome (71 kg and a generalist climber/time-trialist) is quite a bit heavier.

But the age-related roll-off of performance is hard to argue against. Team Sky will be looking hard for their next GC candidate. A shame that Landa appears to be off for Astana or Movistar.

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Update (Saturday).

Froome emphatically back in yellow today. Not so much a new-found strength as clever tactics completely bamboozling Aru and his team Astana. Team Sky are head-and-shoulders smarter than most other teams.

Wapping Wharf - how cool is that?

Saturday at Wapping Wharf.

"Wapping Wharf is rapidly becoming a new independent food and drink quarter for Bristol.

"From sourdough pizzas to organic fruit and vegetables, and from freshly baked bread to specialist coffees, Wapping Wharf is home to a plethora of independent restaurants, cafes and shops.

"Gaol Ferry Steps, the tree-lined, pedestrianised route running through Wapping Wharf, has retailers located along either side, while CARGO, a new retail yard made of converted shipping containers, brings together a range of independent traders."

Street entertainers, artisan restaurants, plenty of wood ... Bristol Harbourside is buzzing!

Here we're taking lunch at the Mud Dock cafe, perched two floors above their cycle shop. It's a 'repurposed red-brick harbourside warehouse converted in 1994'.

Above is a view, through the serving hatch, of the kitchen.

The buzz was amplified by the Tour of Britain (stage 7 circulating nearby). Crowds of tall, thin, bearded young men with their pleasantly middle-class families were earnestly expounding the finer points of bike-racing as their heroes time-trialled past every minute.

Bradley Wiggin on the morning's time trial

Mark Cavendish on the morning's time trial

We were so excited that we at once resolved to dispose of our comfortable, spacious house in Wells and lease a trendy apartment in Wapping Wharf where we could be close to the real action.

Who needs a car when you can walk to the Watershed for artistic films and organic green tea? The Arnolfini gallery is just a few hundred yards away - we could explore the subversive power of punk. And all around the delights of central Bristol: galleries, museums, parks, shopping, political activism.

We wait by the river Avon for the next arrival of the Peloton

Mark Cavendish leading the Sky team

Andrei Greipel on the right

We even saw the former Mayor, George Ferguson, in his distinctive red trousers cycling past us from his flat near the Tobacco Factory theatre.

On our way home, we did the logistics. We probably do still need the car. We would want a large bedroom plus an additional large room for guests and as my weight room cum study. The new apartment needs to be affordable. Oh, and there are no more apartments to rent in Wapping Wharf; Phase 1 is sold out.

I think this one is going to have to be deferred.

It's cold up north

In an act of travel insanity, our week's holiday in Yorkshire coincided with rain, hail, snow, arctic winds and more rain.

We were close to Pickering, just south of the North Yorkshire moor. We took in York (charming), Whitby (proletarian and popular, with a plethora of chips and gulls), Scarborough (poor and unloved) and Nunnington Hall (NT and as nice as you would expect).

The highlight of the week for us was the final day of the Tour de Yorkshire; we intercepted the race twice:

- on TV,  you get to appreciate team strategies;

- roadside, the lycra blur communicates supreme athleticism .. and stoicism.

Here are some pictures.

Yes, we were on TV (ITV4). On the left Clare, Alex and Adrian spectating
& green-anoraked myself above with camera. We're just up from Hutton-le-Hole.

Alex at Nunnington Hall (NT)

Clare and Adrian at the TdY finish in Scarborough

On the strength of two generous evening meals, Chinese and Indian respectively, Clare and myself returned home three pounds heavier than at our own grand départ a week ago. A diet of fruit, salad and porridge is already in effect - and I was (underpowered) at the gym this morning ...

The quantum theory of road racing

There are still some anti-quantum zealots who believe that it's an objective fact as to whether a road-racing cyclist is 'clean' or is using drugs. Thankfully those anti-science crackpots are in a small minority: the modern view is that no cyclist can be determined to be using drugs until some measurement determines that fact.

Most theorists agree that the professional cyclist exists in a superposition of drug states. The cyclist (or team, or peloton) is represented as an abstract vector in Armstrong space (named after a notable leader in the field who pioneered the modern view, noting that he had never tested positive for drugs).

Lance Armstrong - quantum pioneer

The basis vectors for Armstrong space are normally chosen to represent the cocktail of possible drugs in use thus:

|epo>, |testosterone>, |methylhexaneamine>, |blood-doping> and so on.

The observables for each vector are discrete: 0 = 'clean' or 1 = 'doping'.

Example: the state vector for a Sky rider (and indeed for the team) is claimed to be the eigenstate ψ = |0000000 ...>  whereas Lance Armstrong, amongst many others, turned out to be in a superposition of states like |nnnnnn ...> where quite a few of the 'n's were 1. This was only ascertained by enhanced observable operators late in his career.

Students sometimes ask whether cyclists are bosons or fermions. Some mistakenly believe that the bunching seen in the peloton indicates that cyclists are bosons. Indeed they are, but not for that reason - we are not operating in the position basis here. In the doping basis, the bosonic character of cyclists is largely due to the known performance advantages, the institutional influence of team doping policy and those shady doctors.

Can we move cycling into a stationary state, a 'clean' eigenstate? Sadly not, the 'clean' eigenstate is metastable and rapidly decays to the reality we see today. This is called  'spanish tunnelling'.

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Note: it is generally held to be a hallmark of quantum theories that the observables don't commute. Pro cycling is certainly a quantum theory on this criterion. This may cast doubt on Sky's claims, but I refer you to the example of angular momentum in the s-orbital, where the components do in fact commute.

A struggle to launch

Quick trip down to Clarks Village, Street this morning to get Clare some summer cycling pants.

The puma is go ...

A category 4, but almost a 'failure to launch' ...

I went to the gym instead; no-one ever face-planted, took a case of 'road rash' or broke their collar bone on an exercise bike.

Tour of Britain Stage 6

We've spent most of today rushing around the byways of the Mendips, intersecting the course of the Tour of Britain. Midday found us sat on an old stone wall at the top of the Cheddar Gorge. About ten minutes before the race proper arrived, fourteen menacing police bikes flashed by with just a few seconds separating them. They were low and fast, with their blue lights flashing and the intent seemed to be to clear any obstacles. Afterwards there was a hush and no more traffic on the road.

Next came an announcement car, its loudspeaker telling us that there was a small leading group about a minute ahead of the main Peloton. Three silent, determined cyclists soon came into view, bookended by more motorbikes and team cars: how we clapped like mad!

After what seemed less than a minute, the main contingent arrived and we clapped some more. None of them took time to wave to us - I guess they had other things on their minds. After the stragglers quiet returned for a moment, but we walked back to our car, about a mile up the hill, the road was suddenly filled with thousands of amateur cyclists tracing the route of the Tour elite (but not quite so fast).

We immediately drove through Priddy to the top of the Old Bristol Road for our next Tour rendezvous (we could get no farther as the motorcycle cops were there, clearing the road). Soon enough an identical procession but this time I was snapping (below) not clapping.

I tried to get a shot of the TV relay helicopter but it was too far away.

After much reversing in the narrow road and having to avoid millions of cyclist we drove home the Ebbor Gorge/Wookey Hole way and strolled into Wells to see the finish. Sadly we were late by maybe five minutes - we could see the helicopter over the southern bypass as we were entering town.

We consoled ourselves with paninis and tea in Coffee 1.
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UPDATE

We're on TV! The two of us captured from our TV screen at the top of the Old Bristol Road (ITV4 programme). This is the kind of thing they do in the Bourne films :-).

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Here's a better picture of Clare, from August after her treatment was finished, but while she was still feeling pretty weak.