{"id":25815,"date":"2016-07-12T01:31:08","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T08:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=25815"},"modified":"2016-07-12T01:31:08","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T08:31:08","slug":"on-not-being-the-weakest-link","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/12\/on-not-being-the-weakest-link\/","title":{"rendered":"On not being the weakest link"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elicitation<\/a>. Kit Perez wrote an article about it last week. Every one of us should read it. If you haven’t, I’ll wait while you do.<\/p>\n

….<\/p>\n

I hadn’t heard the term, but anybody who’s been around the Outlaw<\/a> scene knows the tactic. It’s a way of getting us to snitch on friends<\/a>, give away secrets, or incriminate ourselves without us fully realizing what we’re doing.<\/p>\n

And it works off our ordinary personality traits — anything from a desire to be polite and helpful to a desire to show how smart and “with it” we are. Which is what makes it so insidious.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Kit (one of the serious up-and-comers in the freedomista world) gives an example of how somebody might foolishly give info to a “collector,” then gives examples and tips on how to detect and deflect elicitation. But she’s right to conclude that no one article can teach us … well, to keep our yaps shut.<\/p>\n

The example she gives of foolish info-spouting does really show a fool. A braggart, perhaps. Or just somebody with no regard for other people’s security. It’s easy to look at that example and say, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that!”<\/p>\n

Question is: Would you (or I) do something different but equally dangerous? Under slightly different circumstances? Yielding to a slightly different approach? And would we do it unconsciously or reflexively just because of our personalities?<\/p>\n

Like any skilled con artist, a skilled elicitator is good at reading us and customizing his or her approach to who we are. Look again at Kit’s article and the 10 personality traits the FBI seeks to exploit. Every one of us can spot areas on that list where we aren’t<\/i> vulnerable, but you can’t tell me that at least two or three don’t apply to you.<\/p>\n

I can say, for example, that anybody trying to get information from me by appealing to my desire to show off is likely to be out of luck. And much though I like the idea of converting others to my opinion, I can’t imagine giving away my secrets or anybody else’s in that cause. On the other hand, I can easily see my desire to be polite and helpful or my desire to give honest answers to seemingly honest questions really screwing me up, especially in a circumstance where I don’t have much time to think (e.g. cops unexpectedly showing up at the door).<\/p>\n

Which is why it’s a good idea to have rules in place, and to hammer those rules into our own heads, to forestall reflexive folly (“I’m sorry; I don’t talk to police” or “I’d like to help you, but I can’t”).<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Related to elicitation is solicitation. Not the kind for which cops bust scantily-clad women on the streets. But solicitation to commit real crimes.<\/p>\n

Again, anybody who’s been around the Outlaw block a time or two knows all about this in theory. And they’ve known for generations. Clear back in the 1960s underground, the warning passed from person to person and cell to cell was: “You can always tell the FBI agent; he’s the one who’s forever trying to get you to blow something up.”<\/p>\n

Yet the tactic goes on working — as we’ve seen from so many hapless jihadist wannabes getting busted by the very “friends” who helped talk them into various evil plots in the first place.<\/p>\n

Elicitation helps make solicitation possible. Get to know you. Learn your vulnerabilities. Move from info gathering to targeting you and your friends for some faux plot or another.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Both elicitation and solicitation are used all the time by Authoritah. But it doesn’t take a fed, a narc, or a professional snitch to get us in trouble.<\/p>\n

For instance, the guy who elicits information from you might just be some n00b eager to get involved. But such a n00b, however innocent, may be dangerous, and you could encourage his folly by oversharing. Then somebody more sinister comes along and elicits your info from him.<\/p>\n

And the weird thing is that even the smartest, most experienced, most sincere people can stumble into trouble just by … you might as well call it a glitch. A brain fart. A goof. But again, usually a goof that plays on their natural tendencies, perhaps even on their best virtues (e.g. that desire to be helpful).<\/p>\n

A couple of years ago someone I’d known and trusted for years used open email to solicit me to commit a federal crime. Now I know that when this sort of thing happens, the first thing you have to wonder is: Is he in trouble and trying to save his backside by giving them me, instead?<\/em> But in this case, I don’t think so. On the contrary, he was just trying to facilitate what he perceived to be a beneficial arrangement between friends. He was simply being helpful — which I have always known him to be. A desire to be helpful, plus a momentary brain fart, resulted in a really, really dumb move by an otherwise smart person. (For the record, I said no thanks to the crime in question.)<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

The other day I was reading one of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels, The Black Box<\/i><\/a> and I came across these words:<\/p>\n

It was an investigative standard. The best and fastest way to break a conspiracy was to identify the weakest link in the chain and find a way to exploit it. When one link was broken, the chain would come loose.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A truism. Of course<\/i> that’s how it works. It’s not news. <\/p>\n

And even if we’re not engaged in anything that we ourselves would consider a “conspiracy,” we know we live in a world where even the most innocent actions and viewpoints are considered “extreme”<\/a> or “terroristic.”<\/a> We know we live in a surveillance state, where our communications are monitored by people who consider each and every one of us (especially We the Political) to be potential threats. We know our neighbors are encouraged not only to “see something, say something” but to imagine “somethings” where nothing really exists. <\/p>\n

So it is also<\/i> not news that “they” really are out to get us. And that even in our innocent actions, “they” might be looking for weak links to exploit.<\/p>\n

Yet in being blandly confident that we ourselves are too smart to be that weak link, we overlook the fact that we carry our own weakest link within our own character. The link that could break — and potentially break us and our friends. <\/p>\n

Our “weakest link” could be something we otherwise count as one of our best virtues (e.g. honesty or a conviction that others are honest and good). Our weakest link could be our naivete, our unpreparedness in a given situation, our momentary tiredness, our unwariness around those we trust, our desire to impress or teach or correct someone else’s errors.<\/p>\n

So what do we do about it? Are we doomed to become sour, paranoid old curmudgeons, trusting no one, communicating only in cryptic, muttered monosyllables?<\/p>\n

No. Not hardly. <\/p>\n

We just need to know our own weaknesses a little better than most of us generally do, particularly our weaknesses where communication and trust are involved. Then set up some behavioral rules for ourselves — rules that will stand us in good stead when our natural inclinations might trip us up. Never talk to cops. Never discuss subject X unless it’s a clear “need to know” situation. Encrypt, but never fully trust encryption (because encryption’s weakest link is the humans using it). Never go along with the guy who’s most eager to turn violent, no matter how friendly, appealing, or persuasive he is.<\/i> And so on.<\/p>\n

We all slip up. Lord knows I have. But knowing ourselves and imposing a few well-defined rules to compensate for our personal weak links can go a long way to keep human fallibility from becoming outright disaster.<\/p>\n

Three keys:<\/p>\n