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We love YiTing Cheng's Secret Stash, an update on hiding valuables inside everyday objects. Watch above as she hides credit cards in stacks of paper, money rolls in lampshades, keys in orange juice, and, most impressively, passwords in mirrors.A drawer disguised as plywood laminate opens with the use of...

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Masterminds & The Art of Misbehaving My book is finally done!! You can buy a copy here on blurb: http://www.blurb.com/b/7201824-masterminds-the-art-of-misbehaving-ii

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keyhole gigantico final video

Final Keyhole Gigantico

Keyhole Gigantico process shots

Definitions

This is a post that defines words I am using when speaking about my thesis. I have pieced together definitions from Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary Definitions because I like them better than how I would have explained it all.

The word crime legally refers to an action that breaks the law. However when referring to the word crime I am referencing the more informal definition: an action or activity that, although not illegal, is considered to be evil, shameful, or wrong. Example:“they condemned apartheid as a crime against humanity”

synonyms: sin, evil, immoral act, wrong, atrocity, abomination, disgrace, outrage

That being said, a criminal is someone who thinks in subversive ways, usually intending to break the law. I see them as experts in how to get around rules and having the bravery to break rules. The more informal definition of the word criminal is to be someone completing an action or situation that is deplorable and shocking. Example: “he may never fulfill his potential, and that would be a criminal waste”

synonyms: lawbreaker, offender, villain, delinquent, felon, malefactor,wrongdoer, culprit, miscreant, thief, burglar, robber, gangster, crook, conman

A mastermind is a person with an outstanding intellect, and has the ability, creativity and patience to plan and direct an ingenious and complex scheme or enterprise. “the mastermind behind the project”

synonyms: genius, mind, intellect, author, architect, organizer, originator, prime mover, initiator, inventor; brain, brains, ideas man plan, control, direct, be in charge of, run, conduct, organize, arrange,preside over, orchestrate, stage-manage, engineer, manage,coordinate; conceive, devise, originate, initiate, think up, frame, hatch

Design is do or plan (something) with a specific purpose or intention in mind. Design is also used to mean the the art or action of conceiving of and producing the purpose, planning, or intention that exists or is thought to exist behind an action, fact, or material object. This a designer’s job, which is similarily relates to the definition of mastermind.

synonyms: intention, aim, purpose, plan, intent, objective, object, goal, end, target;hope, desire, wish, dream, aspiration, ambition

Multiple Identities

Wiping away your identity

Gild Service slides so far.

I held a pop up shop to reward misbehavior

Designing Crimes: Prototyping

“A pinch is the equivalent of a cardiac arrest for any broad-band electrical circuitry. Or better yet: A pinch is a bomb... but without the bomb. Every time a nuclear weapon detonates, it unleashes an electromagnetic pulse which shuts down any power source within its vicinity. That tends not to matter in most cases because the nuclear weapon destroys everything you might need power for anyway. Now a pinch creates a similar electromagnetic pulse, but without the headache of mass destruction and death. So instead of Hiroshima, you get the Seventeenth Century.” Basher, Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

The creation of a plan requires heavy prototyping and testing that is the same in the profession of an industrial designer. We prototype our product ideas with craftsmanship quality, we hack existing objects to make them function better or differently and we go through much testing in materials and form to provide the best utility. In school we are taught to develop hundreds of iterations on forms, ideas and functions to best explore all possibilities. I believe that many great criminals have an extensive knowledge of tinkering, making and hacking because once you know how something is made, you also know how to take it apart to build it back up in a new way.

From speaking with a professional safecracker and locksmith in New York City, Philip Mortillaro, I observed that his small key store is basically a mini makerspace for himself. His small locksmith shop, called Greenwich Locksmiths, is about 10ft wide and 5ft deep, sitting on the edge of 7th avenue in the west village. The walls are covered to the ceiling in varieties of blank keys and locks. Every tabletop surface of his hole in the wall shop contains a type of machine to mill metal in specific ways. One machine copies keys, another buffs keys, and others allow him to create custom locks. Mortillaro’s experience in welding and tinkering paired with his extensive knowledge of the history and typology of physical methods of security suggests a locksmith’s role as an important inventor of new forms of physical security. Currently, Mortillaro and his son’s passion for locks and safes has led him to dabble in arduino to start designing electronic locks and to expand into personal surveillance equipment.

Looking back at the Ocean’s Eleven crew, we find many expert skills needed within the crew. Basher is the team’s explosive and demolition expert. His knowledge of electrical systems, chemistry and engineering makes him an expert engineer defecting into the role of a criminal. For example, to break open the vault door, the crew would need to first understand its construction. Then Basher would be able to build the bombs accordingly to blow up the door. By understanding the way the electric grid works in powering the city and knowing the physics behind complex technology and nuclear physics, Basher is able to cause a thirty-second electrical blackout in Las Vegas providing enough time for Danny and Linus to evade the laser alarms down the elevator shaft.

Prototyping also means testing and failing over and over in order to perfect timing, equipment and planning. With a risky plot like a heist and only one chance at execution, criminals must keep experimenting and logging their failures time and time again in order to get that one perfect successful run. Cinematically, many crime films have the ultimate crime training session. In F. Gary Gray’s The Italian Job (2003), the crew practices and test drives a customized Mini Cooper to see if the car and withstand the weight of gold in its trunk and the proposed driving track through the sidewalks and underground tunnels of the city. Justin Lin’s Fast Five (2011) Brazilian heist also hosted warehouse training ground to get the timing of the driving correct. In this scene, the drivers tested different cars around a built track, measured to provide the same obstacles as the surveilled garage they would need to drive through. They needed to find a way to drive fast enough around the garage corners so that the cameras can not catch the driver’s picture or license plate number.

The use of a warehouse to build replicas of vaults and obstacles is an idea inspired from the actual practice of criminal mastermind George Leonides Leslie. Leslie was an architect turned burglar during the 1870s-1880s who acted as a consultant for bank robberies. Researchers believe that Leslie was responsible for 80% of all bank robberies committed during the decade. When preparing for a heist, he would purchase duplicates of the vault safes to practice opening it. And even more intricately, he would rent out rooms and warehouses to build models of the insides of banks in order to bodystorm with his team and to develop the plans for the robbery. Much like an artistic rehearsal, Leslie would have the team play through the robbery in the space and then critique the members’ performances. This back-end work practice would eventually lead to the final one-shot execution of the staged heist.

Designing Crimes: Strategy

Everyone employs different mental models and has the ability to interpret information in different ways because we’re all experts in different fields. A designer’s perspective is one that strives to improve the efficiency of a system, to bring clarity to complex ideas, or to find ways to help mitigate a problem. Design strategy is a new label for the design process where the birth of an idea or concept comes in to address a problem. Ever since the concept of design thinking burst into the business world promising to bring about innovation, clients have become more welcoming to designers, allowing them to assess current conditions to design new effective changes within their organizational structure, brand or products. And we’re qualified to do so because we use a lens of “innovation” “novelty” or “creativity.”

The words creativity and innovation are empty phrases. If you think about it, what does it really mean to be creative? In hopes of pin pointing a way to measure creativity, I contacted child psychologist Theo Miron who explained to me that the term “creative thinking” does not mean much in the psychological world. Instead we should be using the phrase “fluid reasoning.” Fluid reasoning is a term that refers to our cognitive ability to think flexibly and problem solve. It is what we consider to be our general intelligence, and is a better way of describing bringing credibility to what designers are bred and trained to do. We are trained in critical thinking and reasoning to raise our levels of fluid reasoning.

So if design strategy is where the “creativity and innovation” happens, then how do designers actually do it? After researching and understanding context, designers use their perspectives, their knowledge, open-mindedness, flexibility and good intentions to reframe the problems at hand. The IDEO process of design strategy employs the development of insights and “how might we” questions that help guide the problem solving process. Strategists analyze the research and interviews to troubleshoot points in the system that can be redesigned. There are many methods to bring about inventiveness. For example, designer Ayse Birsel uses a deconstruction-reconstruction method and the association of metaphors to help reimagine systems in different ways. Other designers use the colored hat method where they must look at a problem using empathy, different lenses and perspectives.

Planning a heist requires strategy as well, and criminal masterminds definitely have high levels of fluid reasoning. Criminal perspective acts differently from a that of a designer. A criminal perspective has bad intentions. Criminals and burglars look intently at systems to figure out how to break, infiltrate and manipulate them. They interested in figuring out ways to outsmart and subvert security systems built and designed to keep intruders out. After mastering the research of the targeted security system, the architectural layout, and the details of employees working in the organization, burglars can the find the weak spots and loop-holes. Back to referencing Ocean’s Eleven, the team’s research led to ideation on how to get around the surveillance system of the Bellagio. The team devises a highly complex plan that involves: building a replica of the Bellagio vault in an offshore warehouse for practice and filming, figuring out how to shut off the city’s power for thirty seconds, designing ways to get through multiple levels of passcodes, fingerprint scans and voice command to reach the vault and more. Pushing further, the design of a heist requires contingency plans, back ups, and escape routes because of the risks involved. Criminal masterminds require the open-mindedness and systems thinking of information architects and can be just as clever as (if not more than) inventors and designers.

Designing Crimes: Research

“First task: reconnaissance. I want to know everything that's going on in all three casinos. From the rotation of the dealers to the path of every cash cart...I wanna know everything about every guard, every watcher, anyone with a security pass. I wanna know where they're from, what their nicknames are, how they take their coffee…Most of all, I want you guys to know these casinos. They were built as labyrinths, to keep people in. I want you guys to know the quick routes out.” Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

All great design projects start with in depth research. In graphic design, research into the topic at hand can lead to visual inspiration to best communicate the messages designers need to convey. As the design field expands into developing businesses, social structures and systems for clients, the need for research expands. We are required to understand the context and audiences of where our designs will live. Design education today teaches the conducting of interviews, and the psychological art of structuring conversations to avoid bias while extracting key information. Research also includes observational techniques, photography and data collection to reveal missed correlations. When interviewing users, we tend to try and understand every little detail of their lives to fully paint the picture of how our products can exist within their lifestyles. We use observational techniques to understand the big picture of a problem in order to find the weak points to fix or innovate in. Lastly, a designer’s most important role is the ability to clearly visualize and explain the research and findings to clients so everyone can get on the same page.

Criminal masterminds use the same (if not more) research strategies in their own work. Because the work leads to such high stakes and life-threatening consequences, research becomes the most important part in any plotting and scheming. In the first leg of planning a bank heist, robbers have to “case the joint.” They examine architectural plans, find out details about the security systems, observe the behavior of the customers and employees, and really dig into research about all operations of the bank from hours to cleaning crew and what not. Masterminds wanting to subvert the existing system must become experts of it first. From the book, Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History, the authors Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell note the specificity in the surveillance operation taken by the diamond burglars. The burglars would pretend to be shopping in stores with women at their sides while taking note of the make and models of security cameras, motion detectors, the number of cameras installed and even the angles at which they are positioned. They would also record who was in charge of the keys to open the display cases and where the keys are stored. Most importantly, they would need to analyze the diamond quality to make sure the taking is worth the risk. Acknowledging these meticulous details would ultimately lead them to steal millions worth of diamonds from Antwerp’s diamond district.

Research methods of criminal masterminds can involve all sorts of small crimes including pickpocketing, impersonation, theft and more. In the beginning minutes of Ocean’s Eleven (2005), masterminds Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan present a digital presentation of their proposed heist to a select team of criminals ranging in a variety of expertise. The presentation includes 3D models, architectural floorplans and renderings of the vault belonging to 5 Las Vegas casinos, residing under the Bellagio. After getting onboard with the plan, the team starts proposing different strategies to obtain specific information on security systems and vulnerabilities about the Bellagio and their target. Their methods include crimes like the pickpocketing of an ID badge to allow for Livingston, the crew’s hacker, to infiltrate the security room and tap casino surveillance feeds. Researching every minute of Terry Benedict’s (the victim and casino owner) daily activities allows the team to pinpoint key opportunities for misdirection and subversion of the existing system.

In another case of employing observational research for crime, Janice Kerbel is an architectural designer who spent two years studying a bank and plotted a way to rob it. Her project Bank Job (1999) involved a master plan to rob Coutts & Co bank in London. By acting as an architecture student studying the bank’s interior design, Kerbel was able to gather floor plans with every detail of the building’s construction. After developing the plans, instructions and detailed solution to robbing Coutts & Co, Kerbel published a book with all the information under the title 15 Lombard St in 2000. From writer Sarah Elton’s interview with Janice Kerbel, she describes the contents of 15 Lombard St consisting of “100 pages of carefully outlined instructions and notes, street routes, time lines, and directions for three getaway vehicles to head for safety in Garrucha, Spain. To rob 15 Lombard St. you'll need a dedicated team of ten and six weeks for preparations. The heist itself, from start to finish, during which phone lines are cut, vans blow up, and the money is stolen, clocks in at 40 minutes.” Kerbel’s instructions also includes, “provides a check list of what you'll need to carry out a heist. The list includes a multi-band radio and directional antennae, remote-control operated explosives, various passports and changes of clothes, and road maps of England, France, Spain. There are dozens of other James Bond items listed, plus a handful of vehicles, like a black cab and white unmarked vans.”

Post Snowden

When talking about crime and talking markets, it’s essential to note that the current era of the internet is in a post-Snowden state. Edward Joseph Snowden was a junior infrastructure analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States of America. During his role as a Dell contractor working with the National Security Agency’s regional cryptological center (the Central Security Service) Snowden’s liberal politics and strong view of civil liberties were being challenged by the revelation of the NSA’s surveillance activities. Being part of a spy division for monitoring the Chinese, he realized that the NSA, “are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them.” As a fast-learning IT technician, Snowden rose the ranks to accept a job with a private contracting company which gave him clearance to see classified files of the National Security Agency. His authorization as a system admin acted as “a ghost user,” allowing him to open files without leaving an electronic trace. With that power, he downloaded top secret NSA files to expose the surveillance operations of the United States government. After months of encrypted correspondence with civil liberties journalists, Laura Poitras, Gleen Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, Snowden top secret NSA documents that proved that, “the agency was tapping fibre optic cables, intercepting telephone landing points and bugging on a global scale.” The documents also revealed the PRISM program which is a clandestine surveillance partnership allowing the NSA to collect internet communication from at least 9 major internet corporations. Thousands of pages on collected metadata and surveillance powers illustrated the overstep of technological power by the NSA. For example, Snowden states that with its current spy technologies, the NSA is capable of turning a mobile phone into a microphone and tracking device.1

Snowden created the largest intelligence leak in history and brought about a new distrust in the internet. His own forms of physical security and privacy became obsessive and extreme, almost to the point of delusion. From an extract from The Snowden Files: The Inside Story Of The World's Most Wanted Man, by Luke Harding, “ [Edward] Snowden's own precautions were remarkable. He piled pillows up against the door to stop anyone eavesdropping from outside in the corridor. When putting passwords into computers, he placed a big red hood over his head and laptop, so the passwords couldn't be picked up by hidden cameras. On the three occasions he left his room, Snowden put a glass of water behind the door next to a bit of tissue paper. The paper had a soy sauce mark with a distinctive pattern. If anyone entered the room, the water would fall on the paper and it would change the pattern.” 1

Of course not all internet users post-Snowden’s leak go through extreme meticulous measures of distrust for the world around them like Snowden; however, Snowden’s leak brought about a wave of concern and new mindsets of internet usage. Catherine Tucker, a professor of MIT’s Management Science, and privacy advocate Alex Marthews conducted research on how the overall shock and public perception of government surveillance has affected behavioral patterns on the internet. They analyzed 282 phrases on Google Trends and compared the frequency of the searched phrase pre and post Snowden’s leak. They found that the frequency of search terms like “surveillance” , “nsa” , and “revolution” declined, suggesting that users don’t want to risk "searching terms that they [believe] might get them in trouble with the U.S. government." 3 Furthermore, users were also less likely to search topics like “suicide” , “coming out”, or “herpes” for fear of tracking by Google Ads and other companies. The study has reveals that the internet post-Snowden has heightened levels of self-censorship whether the NSA is really watching us or not.

1 story of edward snowden

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/01/edward-snowden-intelligence-leak-nsa-contractor-extract

2 on encryption

http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/10/nsa-views-encryption-as-evidence-of-suspicion-and-will-target-those-who-use-it-security-journalist-says/

3 Government Surveillance and its affect on internet search behavior

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2412564

The Crimes of Designers

In a way, designers are criminals already. It is constantly said that a designer must wear many hats. Sometimes we act as psychologists or anthropologists to develop strategies for effective communication. Other times we are engineers who bring imagined inventions to life. Artist and designer Ilona Gaynor looks at “design as the role of a plotter, master planner, schemer rather than the craftsman.” Her work revolves around the design of ruses and fantasy plots, to create disruption in order to attack something from a different perspective. Her most notable work is called Under Black Carpets, a project where she seeks to design the perfect crime. After months of research with forensic scientists, FBI, LAPD, and escape artists, Gaynor designed a heist that would rob 5 major banks in Los Angeles. She presented the project through the lense of evidence. Inspired from the field of forensic architecture, Gaynor seeks to use objects to form an argument that narrates in the absence of actuary evidence.

The idea that designers are master schemers begins to reveal the impact of design in shaping our values, opinions and culture. We believe buildings are the way they are because architects have designed them to be that way. The news we read and the information we learn has been carefully curated, wrapped in bias and opinion. As a society, we’ve been reduced down into highly visual consumers. Gaynor also notes that today’s culture is one that wants to record and transmit news cinematically. In this case, designers would be the top visual content makers orchestrating and pulling the strings behind what we see, experience, and understand about the world around us.

There are plenty of subversive tricks designers use in their everyday work. Michael Bierut’s Core 77 interview on “How to Make Your Client’s Logo Bigger Without Actually Making Their Logo Bigger” is a perfect example of a designer’s need to manipulate. Bierut comically manipulates a client into agreeing on a desired logo, by printing out decoy logos that are too small. This is just a small scale. On a larger scale, designers hold all the control over our visual environment. Ilona Gaynor introduced this idea of design as a plot or trapping to me in a recent interview. We discussed one of the earliest designed plots of mankind as an animal trap. In order to catch food, indigenous humans made plans and objects to lure prey in order to survive. In extending Gaynor’s metaphor, I believe we can think of every ad, every constructed doorway, or every wayfinding sign as a trap. But not in a negative sense of the word trap. The definition of the word trap is, “ a device or enclosure designed to catch” and what designers and architects are trained to do is to catch attention. We know how to manipulate color, form and text to persuade feelings of want and need. With this strategy, we can start to question what is right and wrong.

Designers should think like criminals.

Designers believe their projects will bring good to the world. Yet the success of design solutions today seem to be measured in profit made, consumers reached, and units sold. In order to be a true expert in critical and strategic design for bettering society, designers can not just employ traditional design thinking strategies. They must employ a criminal mindset. Criminal masterminds are designers that are better at being creative. They are con artists who hold tricks to persuade victims into giving up money and valuables. They are craftsmen and tinkerers who understand the mechanics and details of systems and how to break them. They are hackers who write inventive code to go around highly secured firewalls, and cartel kingpins who can run a business as effective as CEOs of major corporations. Criminal masterminds are superior in creativity because they engage in risk-taking and rule-breaking, but with intentions for harm. If designers today truly want to do good, they must first learn how to be bad.

I made a thesis statement! It’s not perfect, but it’ll work. Thank you Abby for helping me edit!

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