Alleged member of the assassination team checks in at her hotel and waves toward the security camera. She's linked to the team by association. She wears various disguises during her stay.
For the last week, articles on the killing of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, have been a veritable smorgasbord of intriguing intelligence reports. Anyone working intelligence or security analysis has intensely followed the different, and often contradictory, summarizations of which organizations were behind the killing.
Experts and retired intelligence officers in both Israel and Europe have concluded with 99% certainty that it must be the Mossad. The most interesting conclusion was written yesterday as an opinion piece in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal, dated February 20-21, headlined Israel and the Dubai murder mystery, by Ronen Bergman (senior military and intelligence analyst for Yedioth Ahronoth, a daily Israeli newspaper).
Other observations and background bits that are far deeper and have more detail from the perspective of the intelligence community are posted as comments under Bruce Schneier’s blog post on the Al-Mabhouh Assassination.Â
To quickly understand why Dubai officials and their own intelligence office were able to piece together so quickly what really happened, look at the 28-minute video Alleged Assassins Caught on Dubai Surveillance Tape on Wired.com
Two other alleged members in the hallway outside the victim's hotel room, making a turn to the right while looking to the left, where the victim's room is located.
Ronen Bergman (and many others) wonders how the Dubai police could connect team members and their activities so quickly. In his next-to-last paragraph, he states that casino and hotel surveillance security have long used techniques to track and apprehend suspects, cheaters and thieves.
There are already companies in Las Vegas that specialize in software and database analytics of known cheaters, and cutting-edge algorithms that analyze suspect behavior. This is not yet foolproof, but is already in place in large chains where thefts by employees or employee associates are high.
In analyzing behavior, irregular movement, body language, and interaction with others, it is extremely difficult to define what is regular behavior versus irregular. But looking at the Dubai tape, there are many moments when the suspects appear to be loitering or turning or tilting their heads unnaturally. I am sure in years to come this video will be used as a case study in how not to behave to avoid surveillance analytics.
We know from our conversations with thieves around the world that the smart ones are very aware of camera surveillance and what they are capable of. The thieves simply avoid these locations and work elsewhere. A surveillance system is only as good as the monitor team. It takes a critical eye to quickly judge and determine what is suspect or irregular in order to stop crime before it happens.
A fourth alleged member of the team in the same hallway, standing with unnatural feet position, turned inwards.
Much more common is analyzing video after the fact. Once a crime has taken place, security personnel simply go back on the video timeline to establish exactly what happened and when. It then becomes essential to determine all the secondary …˜players’ around the incident, both before and after the event (attack, theft, or attempt), and to follow each individual backwards and forwards on the timeline to see who else is connected with these suspects. Examples include running the license plates of any car involved.
Facial recognition software is a good step forward if the individual already exists in a database. But this form of surveillance depends on camera angles, lights, and the suspects’ use of disguises. The Dubai suspects used many disguises, including wigs and different dress modes. The technology is in its early stages, especially the algorithms required to make irregular pattern recognition useful.
The Dubai debacle is particularly timely and interesting as a starting point for the security conference in Las Vegas today and tomorrow at the World Game Protection Conference and trade show. The keynote speaker will be Kevin Mitnick, the world-famous hacker who showed the security industry that terminals which are supposed to be fail-safe can be infiltrated. Several cases in the last few years involved clever gangs who succeeded in tampering with slots and poker machines, making huge illegal payoffs. Pattern recognition software was not able to block these modifications; only silly mistakes by the gang members tipped them off to casino management.
Kevin Mitnick is a social engineering sleuth of world-class reputation. In a few days, we’ll report on his work and keynote address. The rumor mill has been churning these past few weeks about the content of his presentation. We expect some intriguing revelations previously hidden by the gaming industry, or at least made to appear insignificant.
The manner by which the Dubai suspects moved about in hotel lobbies and around elevators, reminds us of how sophisticated pickpockets and other deception thieves operate when tracking a high target, be it a Japanese high-roller or a diamond jeweler attending a jewelry trade show. The bottom line is that it is difficult to appear natural or to blend-in as a regular traveler or tourist when your mind is running in a different direction.
More about the gaming security trade-show in a few days.
Psychology is an integral part of a good cannon’s skill-set. He must be able to read the mark. More than one good pickpocket has told us that the rush is better than a drug high (which many have the experience to compare), when he sinks his hand into a mark’s pocket and touches a wallet, even if there’s no actual extraction. Just being there—inside a complete stranger’s pocket—is a rush. Pickpockets often come up with nothing, for many reasons. The poke was lying sideways in the pocket. It was too thick. In a woman’s handbag, the zipper opening was not large enough to let the wallet slide out, The mark made a move sideways, or suddenly changed face expression (to anger or strain). Grift sense informs the pickpocket’s next move in the game.
Early this month, Germany’s RTL Television Network sent for Bambi and me for its program, Extra. Over the past six or seven years I’ve had several segments on RTL’s Extra, all with high ratings; which may explain why the network flew two people all the way from Las Vegas to do only a ten-minute spot in a one-hour news-program.
RTL Extra producer Burkhard Kress with pickpocket Bob Arno
This time the assignment was different and demanding. The producer, Burkhard Kress, wanted me to steal from the public at Munich’s enormous Oktoberfest, where more than eight million people congregate over a two week period. The goal was to illustrate why pickpockets love crowds, and that Oktoberfest is a strong magnet to international cannons.
During the festival, hundreds of international pickpockets descend on Munich and practice their trade, not just on the fairgrounds, but also on public transportation, in hotel lobbies, and everywhere tipsy revelers rally—pickpocket heaven for sneak thieves. Cannons who usually operate in St. Petersburg, Bucharest, Rome, Naples, Athens, Paris, Marseilles, Barcelona, Lima, and Santiago, to mention just a few cities with a high level of whiz mob activity, come to Munich for the festival with hope of making a big kill.
Bob Arno dips into a woman's purse.
My challenge was especially tough because I couldn’t operate in the same environments or locales as my criminal colleagues, and had to work with serious limitations and restrictions. First of all, there was a time issue. We had only two days for the project. That meant starting work immediately upon arrival in Munich (from Las Vegas), without being able to first scout the venues, the crowds, the hidden cameras, where the undercover cops were patrolling, and where the best spots were to extract the pokes without being caught by law enforcement.
And RTL wanted “money-shots”—all television programs seek these emotional moments. They’re what drive viewers and ratings. They make for tense television and, most important, they stop viewers from switching to other stations. It’s why programs like America’s Got Talent are actually scripted, dripping with confrontational emotion when participants are ejected from the show.
Bob Arno in lederhosen.
The television money-shot in pickpocketing is when the reporter asks the victim about safety, and how he or she perceives the threat of theft and cons. The questions are usually: “So how do you feel about pickpockets? Could one steal from you?” The answer, hopefully, will be a confident: “No way, I’m too aware, my stuff couldn’t be stolen.”
Packed into this two-day visit, we had scheduled camera shoots (me stealing from the crowd), interviews of me, my analysis of security at Oktoberfest, and lessons in theft-avoidance. We also needed time to transfer some of my crime footage that illustrates new pickpocket techniques relevant to Germany and its visitors and viewers. A project like this really needs five days.
We arrived at the hotel and changed into the working uniform, this time traditional lederhosen. We rigged cameras and wireless microphones, experimental wrist-rigs, and the usual button-cams. We also had to take into account the local laws, like what can be filmed with audio (privacy laws).
A pickpocket (in striped shirt) uses a coat to hide his work as he steals a wallet from a man boarding a bus.
Next step was a briefing with the film crew to make sure everyone understood the logistics of filming thievery. Cannons will always shield the hand going into a pocket or purse with a jacket, a bag hanging sideways over the chest, or something. This allows the thief to hide his entry into the victim’s pocket, purse, or fanny-pack and the world around won’t see the extraction. My challenge was to keep my theft hidden from the vic and his friends while enabling the camera crew to film it.
We review the day's footage while waiting for duck dinners in a beer-hall. Nearby men climb on a table and strip.
I work fast, and my hands often fly lightly all over my mark. Usually, Bambi is the only one who can anticipate the item I’m after and where to point the camera. She was thrown a camera and became one of the crew.
Most of the drinking and much of the partying at Oktoberfest takes place in the many enormous beer-halls on the grounds, huge tented restaurants which are each sponsored by a different company. RTL did not receive permission for me steal inside the tents, where the crowds were dense, but the police knew that I was working with the film team at the festival. Therefore, we had to be aware of surveillance cameras and how they were monitored. Were they actively watched by humans, or was it a system that simply records everything so that officers can go back and view footage in case of an incident?
I also wanted to avoid the inebriated. Partiers were putting away six or seven one-liter mugs of prime Oktoberfest beer. Stealing from a drunk does not make for great television in my opinion—among criminal street pickpockets this is ranked at the lowest level. It’s entry level thievery and gets no respect from the whiz mobs. They call this kind of lowlife a lush worker.
Bob Arno tells RTL reporter why pickpockets hang around ATMs. Man in green shirt is Bob's next victim.
I hung around a row of ATMs for a while to watch for a taschendieb or two on the lookout for good marks. A team of four caught my eye. I was itching to go up and introduce myself—talk shop. It usually takes me thirty seconds to determine in a conversation if they’re thieves or not. But there was a fly in the soup here. Oktoberfest management had hired undercover cops from Romania to look for Romanian pickpockets and these guys could have been them. My suspects spoke only Italian and one of them just a tad of English. Yes, we had fun talking, but I didn’t get the confirmation I hoped for.
One by one, a few good potential marks walked away from the ATM after cash withdrawals. I telegraphed to the film crew that I was ready to go into action and got an approving nod: “go for it.” I lifted a few wallets and we got superb money-shot reactions when we returned them. It was “in the can,” and everyone was happy.
'No way you could take my wallet,' the victim said before Bob dangled his wallet before him.
What made this spot so successful? First and foremost, I saw where the marks placed their leathers (slang for wallets) and how thick they were. I could immediately determine the print of the poke. Translation: the four corners of the wallet and where the top of it was in relation to the top of the pocket—how deep down it was. That’s significant information because it allows the me to pick a technique of extraction: what fingers to use and where to grip. Yes, there are different methods to extract a wallet.
In an ideal scenario you want to nip the top edge with your nails and stay still while the mark moves away, he simply walks away from his property. The vic’s own motion hides the sensation of the poke sliding out. An alternative, for a good cannon, is to create a small diversion when the leather is lifted. A light brush against the legs is enough, or perhaps a more demonstrative push by a female whiz mob partner (or a stall). Each extraction need a slightly different approach and technique. Is he in motion or standing still?, how tight is the crowd around him?, and so on. Each factor counts and on top of it all, the equation changes constantly depending on my read of the mark’s face. Pickpockets call this skill—reading their marks—grift sense.
A crowd gathered as Bob lifted one item after another from this man.
In the two days, I made several misses—as any cannon does. Yes, I had my hand in the purse or bag, but there was nothing significant to pull out. In one case, when I was about take an entire handbag from a woman sitting on a bench, I saw that she suddenly got uncomfortable with my presence. Another time a man’s wallet was too thick for me to remove smoothly. These are typical complications which all pickpockets experience.
A good cannon will seldom lift more than three or four pokes in a day due to the sheer tension involved. Some will target their marks carefully, knowing from the appearance of the mark that he or she is likely to have a generous interpretation of “pocket money,” and a high credit card limit. One wallet, when targeted like this, should translate to quite a few thousand dollars by maxing out credit cards. Identity theft is the next natural progression for a good pick. If the whiz mob is technically inclined, they garnered the PIN while the vic made a transaction at the ATM. Europe’s chip & pin cards make this harder to accomplish, but that’s another story.
We had a lot of fun in Munich and I was again able to test my slippery skills in real life scenarios. As a stage pickpocket, I find the level of tension much higher when stealing without the protection of the theater setting. Street thieves call it having heart; and that doesn’t mean having compassion for your vics. It’s the exact opposite: the ability to put your hand in a total stranger’s pocket and be emotionally unaffected by it—feeling cool under pressure. Having heart also means one must have lived at least for some time in the criminal world, and knows the consequences of being arrested and spending time in the box. Though I’ve never been arrested, I think I can still consider myself as having heart. Except, for me, it does mean having compassion for the victim.
David Avadon, a friend and associate of mine, died of a heart attack in a gym in Los Angeles. David was recently billed as The King of Pickpockets. Although he wasn’t a close friend, we had many long and interesting chats over the years. Our intense passion for the research of stage pickpocketing was equal both in seriousness and determination to find hidden truth and facts. But we were competitors and, as such, we were cautious of sharing information.
I first met David in 1990 when he used to visit the Bally/MGM showroom in Las Vegas where I was the featured attraction for three years in the Jubilee! show. He would always come with Ricki Dunn, another pickpocket entertainer (and good friend of mine). Ricki and David were close friends for over twenty years, and Ricki was later profiled extensively in David’s book Cutting Up Touches, probably the best book ever written about stage pickpocketing and the artists practicing the art.
For his book, David managed to track down obscure facts about the jealously and infighting among stage performers. The anecdotes come fast and furious; the guarded secrecy surrounding techniques were a dominant factor in all relationships among vaudeville pickpocket entertainers then, and pickpockets now.
I never saw David perform in a live show so I cannot comment on his skill, but I know that he was a warm and outgoing performer with a tremendous knowledge about this very narrow and secretive performance art. I’m quite certain that his library on the art is far more extensive than any other private collection anywhere today. David was not a criminologist, but a collector of performance memorabilia on pickpocketing. It will be interesting to see where this library eventually goes—hopefully to an institution where aspiring performers can have access.
The art of pickpocketing is a tightly protected art form and it’s darn impossible to get the real facts or true techniques revealed. Basically because stage pickpocketing (versus stealing in the streets) depends on the individual persona of the performer and how he adapts his mannerism and personality to the extraction techniques. It is a marriage of the two that fosters a dynamic pickpocket show. Other related artists, like magicians and jugglers, might succeed without projecting a personality, on sheer finger technique and practiced skill. Pickpocketing incorporates psychology, reading the body language of a victim, creating good diversion techniques, and of course timing during extraction. It also requires a strong sense of comedy, and to some extent quick verbal skills and improvisation. Without those combined ingredients the show will fall flat.
This is why there are few pickpocket entertainers today (or ever). It’s extremely hard to learn and turn into effective entertainment. David’s book mentions many of the deceased pickpocket entertainers of the past three or four decades. Few had much impact outside the country or city where they worked. The successful ones could be counted on one hand: Borra, Dominique, Vic Perry, and Giovanni.
Today, major production houses and television talent shows like Cirque du Soleil and America’s Got Talent attempt to incorporate the art of pickpocketing—without much success. Manufacturing this talent, from a producer’s point of view, is not easy. Cirque du Soleil tried by gathering all the known video tapes of successful performers and invited aspiring pickpocket talent to come to their workshop in Montreal to screen the routines of the masters with the intent of creating a pickpocket segment in their show. And when was the last time you saw a good pickpocket segment on a talent show, like America’s Got Talent? And yet, every season they send out requests to agents and managers for pickpocket entertainers. The art form has few practitioners.
David Avadon helped keep the spirit of this murky art form alive. His book and his research will live on. Cutting Up Touches was small in size but large in content. Goodbye, David. Let’s hope you meet your old pickpocket pals and mentors in the next waystation.
Other fine pickpocket performers:
Borra, Â April 26, 1921—October 11, 1998
Ricki Dunn, April 2, 1929—January 29, 1999
Chappy Brazil, Nov. 26, 1964—June 27, 1998
I (@bobarno) recently wrote about my reluctance to use Twitter and the pros and cons of sharing information with everyone who might be a follower. Not about the benefits of twittering, which I fully appreciate and understand, but about my own reservations and the extent of my own involvement. My concerns were competitive intelligence repercussions, and maybe my own desire to be as spunky (in a tweet) as I try to be on stage.
Well, this is obviously a timely subject matter, faced by many busy executives. In the last couple of weeks conversations with like-minded entertainers, speakers and bookers have all raised similar concerns. On May 27, Molly Murray-Threipland (who often writes about twittering in The New York Times), made the observation that it isn’t teenagers who are the largest tweeting group, but the 45 to 54’s.
In Managing Corporate Reputations, Gina Poole, vice-president of social software programs and enablement at IBM—that’s right, her life centers solely on how to train and harness IBM’s employees’ twitter posts—said, “You’re building your social reputation, so you don’t want to be a frivolous or an uninteresting person,” and the article summarizes “while many see Twitter as a place to indulge one’s inner self, IBM wants employees to “add value” in all their online postings.” Of course that’s seen from the perspective of the corporation and its concern of corporate image and identity.
On being perceived as mundane versus a source of brilliant repartee with deep content, take look at Kevin Mitnick’s tweets. Kevin (@kevinmitnick), one of the world’s most famous or infamous hackers, depending on your point of view of anyone who has served time in “the box” (prison-slang for a full-board vacation, courtesy of the U.S. government), twitters occasionally and has many followers. Kevin is an astute …˜social engineer’ (maybe one of the all-time best), a great observer of human behavior, and equally funny (privately at least); but Kevin does not share his latest skill sets or pen-testing exploits in his tweets. A follower (of Kevin’s) recently complained: “You never tweet anything interesting! Just your travel schedule. Tell us what you’re working on. something! Unfollow.” Kevin replied “Sorry I don’t meet your expectations of tweeting interesting stuff meniscuss—maybe i should tweet your passwords—hehe.”
Of course what they really want is some insight in “hacking” so that they can do what Kevin does, for fun or profit. High-profile pen-testing is a murky world and probably very profitable for those with the ultimate knowledge base. The hackers at the top of the food-chain have strong relationships, globally, with the …˜bad guys.’ Is it conceivable that Kevin, or someone like Kevin would tweet: “in St Petersburg today hanging with Dmitri Androsov & the Hell Knights Crew, & we’re working on some cute BackTrack exploits.” Not a chance! Acknowledging sources, or anything that would let your readers deduce your ‘deep’ friends would have to be restricted.
That’s like me asking a pickpocket in Barcelona Continue reading
I love to look at Bambi’s Twitter communication. Short snappy funny bitchy snarky bright messages 140 characters long. I envy her exchanges. I wish I had a circle of friends who shared every thought the way Twitter was meant to be. Not as an extension of of our marketing work, but just simple fun exchanges of what we are doing at the moment with no intent to move a subliminal advertising message. Is that possible today among busy people?
But then the reservations sneak up on me. First and foremost suspicion. Our work is sometimes secretive and competitive, both in the speaker arena, and in law enforcement circles. Who said what to whom, who are your sources, where am I performing, for whom, who was the event producer, what’s my next project, how far along is it, what television show or film project am I involved in, who are the bad guys who speak to me, what political party dislikes my agenda, who or which corporation will be hurt by some of my projects? These are my first thoughts and it is just the beginning of a much longer list of questions I must ask myself before I reveal or write about daily activities. Chatting about our daily agenda when it works well, or when we have hurdles nearly always reveals information, inside information which can be taken advantage of, or even be indirectly used against us.
It’s called competitive intelligence; all major corporations are involved in it. On the murky side it’s actually industrial espionage, and on the opposite side of the pendulum’s swing it’s databasing/gathering of all the available information, gleaning golden nuggets from public records, pouring over news media, reading blogs, attending trade events, and talking to key personnel. Process the information and you have a pretty good idea of where your competition is, and even what they are soon capable of. Raw data is everywhere and when analyzed well you have a nearly perfect picture of what your competition is up to.
Bob Arno working at an undisclosed place, for an undisclosed company.
So writing Twitter snippets pretty much reveals where you are on your business plan. Cynical conclusion? You bet. Is there an alternative or a compromise to my dilemma? I’m as busy as ever, or maybe even more so today than in years past, partly because as we build on our expertise, we get more strange proposals and global inquiries, all requiring our serious attention. You can say that I’m still in the midst of it all. A million projects which can go either way—success or failure. But I do wish I could take another tack and be more open, reflective, or philosophical, and closer to my friends who I really enjoy hanging with. To constantly be secretive and cautious is something that goes against my nature and yet in the last ten years it has become the norm.
During the coming summer months I hope to share some of my thoughts and observations in my two industries: the event world and keynote speaking in an ever more hostile attitude to events and pseudo-motivational speakers.
We’ve just finished presenting at California’s annual Tourism Safety and Security Conference in Anaheim (as keynote speaker), and at a corporate event at Mandalay Bay for the Gartner conference. In the next couple of weeks we’ll be doing a developers forum for Microsoft in Slovenia, a chartered cruise in Alaska, and a preliminary film project in Rome. Throw in a Singapore film project, an HBO project, and a theater show in Dubai, and you get the picture; where to find time to write blog posts, Twitters, and still smell the roses and enjoy some wine.
I invite other entertainers, speakers, event producers or security professionals who read this to share their views. Let me know if I am alone in my paranoid world of obsessive suspicion.
I watched the first two episodes of Fox Network’s new television program Lie to Me, whose main character is loosely based on Paul Ekman, the world’s foremost expert on facial micro-expressions and how to spot when someone is lying. This is an intriguing, new subject to the majority of us. Call it a sexy science. Who wouldn’t like to immediately realize when his mate or partner is fibbing or deceiving him? And wouldn’t we like to ask our financial advisors: “have you ever swindled or cheated any of your previous customers?”
The bad guys, too, want to know how to manipulate their expressions when asked “where were you on the night of April 18?” Will this program suddenly shed light on surveillance and interrogation techniques that have previously been shrouded in mystery? It’s said that Paul Ekman is or has been working for the NSA. It’s confirmed that he’s involved in the structure of a limited program for TSA, in which screeners are supposed to detect irrational behavior in passengers that could indicate terrorist activity, signaling the need for additional and deeper screening of their luggage.
Dr. Ekman has spent a lifetime studying micro-expressions. What’s the chance Continue reading
Stung by a Wasp: Scooter-Riding Bandits
Buzz Bob and Bambi
I didn’t think it could happen to me.
There was no forewarning. One moment Bambi and I were walking down a narrow, cobblestone alley in Naples’ Centro Storico, having just looked back at an empty street. The next moment I was grabbed from behind, like a Heimlich maneuver—except I wasn’t choking on chicken. I was being mugged and there were three of them.
There was nothing slick about it; they were just fast and singularly focused on my 30-year-old Rolex. Without finesse, it was merely a crude attempt to break the metal strap. What these amateurs didn’t know was that they had selected a mark who had himself lifted hundreds of thousands of watches in his career as an honest crook.
Until now, I had never been on the receiving end of my game, even though I’d strolled often through ultimate pocket-picking grounds in Cartegena, the souks in Cairo, and La Rambla in Barcelona. I’d been pushed and shoved using public transportation like the Star Ferry in Hong Kong and rush-hour subways in Tokyo, London, and New York; yet I’d never been a victim.
A typical street in Naples' Quartieri Spagnoli.
Finally my luck turned—I’m not sure for the good or bad—during a visit to Naples, Italy. Though I hadn’t been there in some fifteen years, I knew full well about its slick pickpockets, and particularly about the infamous scippatori. This latter is a unique style of rip-off which involves speeding scooters and short Italians with long arms. Little did I know that I would finally become a statistic in what must be one of the world’s highest concentrations of muggings and pickpocketings in an area of less than a square mile: Quartieri Spagnoli, a district even the police avoid.
Scippatori are marauding teams of pirates on motor scooters. The scooter of choice is the Vespa, a nimble machine with a plaintive buzz which, when carrying a pair of highway bandits, delivers a surprising sting. Scippatori ply their vicious bag snatching chicanery on unsuspecting tourists in Italy, and in Naples particularly. Handbags and gold chains are plucked as easily as ripe oranges by backseat riders in daring dash-and-grab capers.
It was therefore with extreme caution that Bambi and I walked these streets, popular with tourists primarily as a gateway city. It’s the starting point for ferry trips to Capri, bus tours to Pompeii, and drives along the spectacular Amalfi-Sorrento Coast. Let me emphasize starting point. Even Naples’ car rental companies urge tourists to drive directly out of town.
Though it hardly matches the beauty or historical magnitude of Rome, Venice, or Florence, Bambi wanted to photograph the colorful Quartieri Spagnoli. Its old section, the Centro Storico, has a seedy, rustic, old-world fascination, with its dismal balconied apartments stacked on minuscule dreary shops. As we walked, I reminded my wife that this was the birthplace of pickpocketing, and I scrutinized every scooter that buzzed by, making sure we were out of reach.
Shot from the back of a moving Vespa.
It was mid-afternoon, siesta time, as Bambi and I strolled the deserted lanes. Little light filtered down through the seven or eight stories of laundry hanging above the narrow alleys. Almost all the shops were shut, their steel shutters rolled down and padlocked, and it was quiet except for the snarl of traffic on Via Toledo, the perimeter street. A lone shellfish monger remained, amid shallow dishes of live cockles, clams, snails, and cigalo glittering in water. Though we were practically alone in the area, we frequently glanced behind us.
Still, they caught us completely off-guard. With silence their foil, they rolled down a hill: three young thugs on a Vespa scooter, its engine off. One guy remained on the scooter, ready to bolt; another held me with my arms pinned to my sides, and the third tried to tear the watch off my wrist. It was sudden, quick, and silent. No shouts or vulgar threats.
It‘s a joke, I thought that first crucial instant, expecting a friend or fan to say “Gottcha!” I’m quite often grabbed by people who’ve seen me perform; they like to make me faux-victim as a sort of role-reversing prank. Although this vice-grip felt deadly serious, my thought process, instant and automatic, cost me several seconds. I didn’t fight back with a sharp elbow or kick. And because my reflexes never got into gear, I didn’t have a chance to coil my muscles into a protective stance.
Decorative street marking in Quartieri Spagnoli.
Fortunately, pickpockets are generally petty criminals who can easily be scared off. They prefer stealth, diversion, and speed to violence as their modus operandi. Bambi reacted a moment before I did, bravely smashing my captor on the head with her umbrella. Other than breaking the umbrella, this had no effect at all.
As soon as my adrenaline kicked in, I yelled at the top of my voice “Polizia, polizia.” Years of stage speaking enabled me to project my voice throughout the neighborhood. Instant reaction! They scrambled away as fast as they had appeared.
We walked away, lucky but shaken. My steel watchband didn’t give despite considerable force applied in attempting to snap its pin. All I had lost was my own track record. I could no longer claim that pickpockets had never tried to steal from me.
Bambi still tenses at the buzz of a motorcycle behind her—not a bad legacy, perhaps. And both of us now strip down to skin and cloth when visiting this most colorful district. The proof of my own stupidity, namely, wearing a Rolex in Naples, was a scratched up wrist. I should have known better.
Scippatori in training?
First rule for avoiding pickpockets: don’t attract them. Don’t signal you’re worth their while. Second rule: acknowledge that it can happen to anyone. Whether you’re strong, confident, aware, or careful, you are not immune. Even a veteran pickpocket can become a victim.
How did I learn to become a pickpocket? That’s the most common question I get after my presentations and during television interviews. They want to know if I started out as a street pickpocket and if I had a thief mentor à la Fagin.
No. I had a comedy mentor.
As a teenager, I had a strong sense of sarcastic observation humor, which later became my stage persona and trademark. But as a young Swedish entertainer, I had a difficult time grasping the finer points of comedy writing. One man helped me tremendously. This post is in memory of a great comedic mind, a supportive buddy, and a long-time close friend.
His name was Holger Enge, and no other creative mind had a stronger impact on my career. Holger will be sorely missed, not just by me but by the hundreds of friends, business associates, and all the comedy acquaintances who came in contact with him at trade shows, business dealings, and in private.
Holger died too young. Only 61, he became a victim of a rather rare illness called Cushing’s Syndrome.
He and I were friends for more than thirty years. In the early seventies most of my engagements were in production shows at various casinos around the world. By that time, I had established myself as a respected …˜specialty act.’ There was no shortage of offers and I was lucky in that engagements usually lasted for a year in each venue. It gave me a tremendous opportunity to experiment with new material.
It was at this time that I met Holger Enge. He quickly became my main writer. While other specialty acts were concerned with buying comedy props, I was dreaming heckler lines twenty-four hours a day. Holger lived in Toronto and I was working in Freeport, Grand Bahamas, when I saw a small ad in Variety newspaper. Holger was offering a comedy newsletter with generic comedy lines for disc jockeys. I bought a few issues and was impressed.
In 1973 I asked Holger if he would write specifically for my show and especially for my watch routines. In those years he charged around $25 for each line I approved. A lot of this was on spec. I would receive a fresh lot of pages every two weeks or so. There was a lot of correspondence back and forth defining material, declining and/or approving structure and re-writes. He nailed it. He really understood my style, but it soon became obvious that he had to come and see my show to take this collaborative effort to a higher plateau.
This went on for many years. It was a rush to open up the pages, try out some of the lines, and see what hit home and what only got lukewarm response. Eventually my own style changed, and I was finally able to create my own comedy, often at the spur of the moment. The need for an outside writer was no longer as important. But it was Holger who gave me the confidence and the direction I needed to realize my dream of success as comedy performer. I was no longer remembered only for my pickpocketing stunts, but for my comedy attitude, too.
Holger was very much instrumental in this achievement. I wonder how many successful entertainers, or other artists, can attribute their success to one particular individual? Or how many would like to acknowledge the influence of one source?
In the last four months, since the onset of his illness, he wrote some of his best observation humor—about his own health and his many experiences with hospitals, tests, and experts. On meeting his surgeon “with the gravest face you have ever seen,” he said his “palpitations sped up to match the heartbeat of a hummingbird on crack!”
With the swelling in my face, I look a bit like a pink gold fish. Better yet, if you can find some bright yellow hypo-allergenic face paint, you can do up my face like a giant SMILE button, slap a string on my ass, and take me out on Halloween! You’ll get a lot of candy!
As we travel the world every year, we interact with organized crime figures, street criminals, and security personnel along the way, observing and absorbing the latest trends in criminal behavior and the latest techniques. Over the past twenty years, I have maintained dialogs and communications with some rather interesting criminal minds on four continents. But talking about security issues and criminal behavior, on the internet or to media in general, is always a dilemma. Yes, it’s useful to reveal the latest scoop about the rogue fringe of society, but by bringing revelations into the open we might tip our hand to the bad guys.
Striking up conversations with criminals usually means we first have to detect them, identify them, and somehow confirm that they really are thieves—unless we have direct cooperation from law enforcement agencies. We’ve developed unique skills in detecting criminal behavior and patterns that we recognize before the crimes take place. Modern crime prevention is often based on similar methods and techniques, and written into algorithms for computer analysis. Yes, they are obviously very different depending on the country where the criminals are active, the type of crimes anticipated, and other cultural factors. In security circles, a common word for this analytical activity is “redflagging.”
Bambi Vincent, Kevin Mitnick, and Bob Arno.
The kick-in-the-pants for this post came from an incident we became privy to in Atlanta last week, while there to address the ASIS annual conference—the world’s largest security convention. Kevin Mitnick, the famous (or infamous) former hacker—is there such a thing as former hacker?—was also there, as a presenter and panel host on Internet abuses. Kevin, always full of new anecdotes and intriguing …˜backend’ stories, is an old friend of ours. It was his exhaustive airport encounter earlier that day (with ICE, US customs, and the FBI) that got me thinking about redflagging, which is what entangled Kevin.
In the past few weeks, two books have been published which both indirectly focus on redflagging, how to isolate a certain behavior from the norm, and then to draw conclusions. This is not exactly science, but reasonable speculation. Behavior is an extension of human emotion; it’s difficult to completely suppress our emotions, and therefore our behavior.
The new books are The War Within: Secret White House, by Bob Woodward, and The Numerati, by Stephen Becker. Both books allude to new and secret formulas used by the U.S. government as well as the private sector, to fight terrorism and crime in general. Woodward’s book speculates about isolating terrorist leaders and taking them out with precise weapons. In his blog, Schneier on Security, Bruce Schneier wagers that Woodward is talking about “tagging.” The speculation centers around new technologies, but we can be quite certain that some algorithms on behavior are reasons for the new successes in the war on terrorism.
Lips
The other book, The Numerati, is not about politics or security developments. It’s about the latest trends in analyzing emerging patterns by drilling through data banks. A good review, “Drilling Through Data,” can be read in The Wall Street Journal, and there’s an interview with the author on NPR. The book discusses security software analytics. The last part of the book covers irregular pattern recognition and Jeff Jonas’ work in the casino industry. A good introduction to the world of Jeff Jonas and his contribution to the security industry is posted in O’Reilly’s Etech Conference pages from March 2008. Jeff Jonas works for IBM (and we assume for divisions of our National Security Agency, in some capacity or another). To get the gist of his talk on casino scams and how to detect crime in casinos using surveillance technology coupled with databases of known criminals, you have to drill further. This is very good reading for those with an interest in irregular pattern recognition.
Neither book sheds any precise information on what we want to know most: what are the security agencies concentrating on when they assemble their “trip wires” for redflagging? And that’s good; why should we let the other side know how they’re spotted?
Forehead
In its most simplistic application, analytics are used in surveillance software in the retail and hospitality industries, and in public places. For example, the scanning of individuals hovering or loitering around an entrance or in a hotel lobby; the number of seconds a cash register’s drawer stays open in a store; how the hands of the employee at that cash register move; the angle of the hand holding the credit card (think portable skimmers).
All of which is just foreplay to the real issue: the behavior of terrorists. What speed or pace and how do they walk when approaching a target? How does a female terrorist behave differently from a male? How do they behave when stopped or challenged? And most important, what about their face reactions? Can a telephoto video scanner pick up micro-expressions and can the latest research by people like Dr. Paul Ekman and Mark Frank map these movements with accuracy?
Fake smile.
For some interesting current examples of micro-expressions, watch again the recent Sarah Palin interview on ABC Evening News with Charles Gibson.  The moments for interpretation come at three minutes and 59 seconds, when Charles Gibson asks her if she has ever met with foreign heads of states. More of the same expressions when Gibson asks whether Russia was provoked to go into Georgia, five minutes and 13 seconds into the interview. And finally, at eight minutes and 34 seconds, at the question about the Bush Doctrine. Whether the clenching, lip protrusion, closing of eyes, and swaying can be interpreted as precise proof of one thing or another is up to the students of Paul Ekman.
Redflagging as a form of profiling is controversial. My points above illustrate how complex and far-reaching the conclusions may be to our society. I have not even touched on the privacy angle, the national security aspects, and what the bad guys can do to counteract the revelations made by media on the latest security innovations. Ultimately it comes down to the old argument: what do we keep secret (for national security) and what do we allow the public to know in order to protect privacy and maintain open political dialogs?
My objective today is to draw attention to the constant need to fine-tune information analytics. It is the lack of qualified experts drawing useful conclusions, which has triggered all kinds of recent mishaps, near financial ruin, and security lapses. This article is not meant to start new political discussions on security secrecy or privacy protection. Others who specialize in advancing and protecting both viewpoints are far more qualified.
[The facial features above belong to confirmed criminals, photographed during interrogation.]
