Jasper’s car dashboard

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Jasper is a longtime friend of Theo’s who offers his home as a safe house for a time. Jasper’s civilian vehicle features a device on its dashboard that merits some attention. It is something like a small laptop computer, with a flat-screen in a roughly pill-shaped black plastic frame mounted in the center of the dashboard. The top half of this screen shows a view from a backward-facing camera mounted on the vehicle.

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The lower half shows a number of different mode- and context-aware displays. The first we see is an overhead schematic of the vehicle, showing pulses moving back and forth from the front to the rear of the car, similar to Prius dash displays that display the transfer of power between the brakes and the battery.

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As the vehicle nears Jasper’’s house, the overhead schematic view draws up and is replaced with a column of text, which is in turn replaced by a circular object with animated rays projecting from it. Neither Jasper nor Theo gives the screen any notice during the scene.

Several dings

It’s dangerous to ask drivers to parse columns of text while operating a vehicle. Information must be glanceable.

The monochrome display seems to unnecessarily constrain the color palette. It’s good to give color-blind users modes that optimize the display for monochrome, and if we’re being generous, we can presume Jasper’s done just that.

But on the other hand, the monochrome minimizes the distractions that the mode switching causes. Note that the rapid changes that happen when Jasper is not on open road, but nearing a building. His attention should be on navigating the space ahead of him rather than on the screen. Maybe the monochrome helps ameliorate this.

Lastly note that the dashboard also features a full keyboard beneath the screen, positioned for the driver’s use. Since we never see it in use, let’s hope it’s not actually meant to be used while driving. Better would be a more suitable input mechanism like voice that doesn’t occupy the driver’s hands and eyes to use.

But wait

But those dings make more sense when we consider the interface narratively. The big clue is why would it persistently show a backward-facing camera when he’s driving forward? Can’t he just use the rear-view mirror? It seems to be something a normal driver wouldn’t concern themselves with. But it is something that a member of an underground resistance might be interested in, to use computer vision algorithms to help him know if he or she was being tailed or there was some threat behind him. That clue (along with the contrast to Syd’s car display) hints that this is not an off-the-shelf system, but something that Jasper has hacked together for himself. Maybe the software is shared amongst resistance members.

In any case, a homemade system can’t be expected to have the same level of usability as a professionally designed one. So narratively, this interface earns a pass.

Brain Scanning

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The second half of the film is all about retrieving the data from Johnny’s implant without the full set of access codes. Johnny needs to get the data downloaded soon or he will die from the “synaptic seepage” caused by squeezing 320G of data into a system with 160G capacity. The bad guys would prefer to remove his head and cryogenically freeze it, allowing them to take their time over retrieval.

1 of 3: Spider’s Scanners

The implant cable interface won’t allow access to the data without the codes. To bypass this protection requires three increasingly complicated brain scanners, two of them medical systems and the final a LoTek hacking device. Although the implant stores data, not human memories, all of these brain scanners work in the same way as the Non-invasive, “Reading from the brain” interfaces described in Chapter 7 of Make It So.

The first system is owned by Spider, a Newark body modification
specialist. Johnny sits in a chair, with an open metal framework
surrounding his head. There’s a bright strobing light, switching on
and off several times a second.

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Nearby a monitor shows a large rotating image of his head and skull, and three smaller images on the left labelled as Scans 1 to 3.

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The largest image resembles a current-day MRI or CT display. It is being drawn on a regular flat 2D display rather than as a 3D holographic type projection, so does not qualify as a volumetric projection even though a current day computer graphics programmer might call it such. The topmost Scan 1 is the head viewed from above in the same rendering style. Scan 2 in the middle shows a bright spot around the implant, and Scan 3 shows a circuit board, presumably the implant itself. The background is is blue, which so far has been common but not as predominant as it is in other science fiction interfaces. Chris suggests  this is because blue LEDs were not common in 1995, so the physical lights we see are red and green and likewise the onscreen graphics use many bright colors.

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Occasionally a purple bar slides across the main image. It perhaps represents some kind of processing update, but since the image is already rotating, that seems superfluous. At one point the color of the main image changes to red, with a matching red sliding bar, but we don’t know why. All the smaller images rotate or flash regularly, with faint ticking sounds as they do.

From this system, Spider is able to tell Johnny that there is a problem with his implant and it must be painful. (Understandably, Johnny is not impressed with this less than helpful diagnosis.) Unlike either the scanner at Newark Airport or the LoTek binoculars, there are no obvious messages or indicators providing this information. But this is a specialised piece of medical technology rather than a public access system, so presumably Spider has sufficient expertise to interpret the displays without needing large popup text.

2 of 3: Hospital Scanner

Spider takes Johnny to a hospital for a more thorough scan. Here the first step is attaching a black flexible strip with various cables around his head. His implant cable is also connected.

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There isn’t a clear shot of the entire system, but behind Johnny is a CRT monitor and to his left, our right, is a bank of displays that look like electronic oscilloscopes. Since embedded body electronics are common in the world of Johnny Mnemonic, that is probably exactly what they are intended to be. Spider adjusts some controls on these.

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The oscilloscopes show no text, just green lines and shapes. The CRT behind Johnny is now showing the same head image that we saw at the end of the previous scan.

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In front of the oscilloscopes is a PC keyboard from the 1990s. In 2021 this will look even older, but this entire hospital is portrayed as a shoestring operation relying on donations and salvage. Spider types on the keyboard, and the CRT changes to show a lot of scrolling text.

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This is enough for Spider to announce that the “data” is the cure for NAS, the world wide epidemic disease that Jane is showing symptoms of. Again it’s not clear how he can determine this, as the data is still protected by the access codes. Perhaps the scrolling text is unencrypted metadata in the implant that is more easily retrieved. Given the apparent hazardous life of a mnemonic courier, it would make sense to attach the equivalent of a sticky label to the implant, briefly describing the contents and who they should be delivered to.

(This is also the point where one has to ask why this valuable data is encrypted and protected to begin with. Using a mnemonic courier for distribution makes sense, to avoid content filters on the Internet. But now the data is here in Newark, with the intended recipients, so why is it so hard to get at? The best answer I can think of is that the scientists wanted to ensure that the mnemonic courier couldn’t keep the data for themselves and sell it to the highest bidder.)

The third of the three brain interfaces warrants its own post, coming up next. 

Green Laser Scan

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In a very brief scene, Theo walks through a security arch on his way into the Ministry of Energy. After waiting in queue, he walks towards a rectangular archway. At his approach, two horizontal green laser lines scan him from head to toe. Theo passes through the arch with no trouble.

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Though the archway is quite similar to metal detection technology used in airports today, the addition of the lasers hints at additional data being gathered, such as surface mapping for a face-matching algorithm.

We know that security mostly cares about what’s hidden under clothes or within bodies and bags, rather than confirming the surface that security guards can see, so it’s not likely to be an actual technological requirement of the scan. Rather it is a visual reminder to participants and onlookers that the scan is in progress, and moreover that this the Ministry is a secured space.

Though we could argue that the signal could be made more visible, laser light is very eye catching and human eyes are most sensitive at 555nm, and this bright green is the closest to the 808 diode laser at 532nm. So for being an economic, but eye catching signal, this green laser is a perfect choice.

High Tech Binoculars

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In Johnny Mnemonic we see two different types of binoculars with augmented reality overlays and other enhancements: Yakuz-oculars, and LoTek-oculars.

Yakuz-oculars

The Yakuza are the last to be seen but also the simpler of the two. They look just like a pair of current day binoculars, but this is the view when the leader surveys the LoTek bridge.

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I assume that the characters here are Japanese? Anyone?

In the centre is a fixed-size green reticule. At the bottom right is what looks like the magnification factor. At the top left and bottom left are numbers, using Western digits, that change as the binoculars move. Without knowing what the labels are I can only guess that they could be azimuth and elevation angles, or distance and height to the centre of the reticule. (The latter implies some sort of rangefinder.)

So far, this is a simple uncluttered display. But why is there a brightly glowing Pharmakom logo at the top right? It blocks part of the view, and probably doesn’t help anyone trying to keep their eyes adapted for night vision.

LoTek-oculars

The LoTeks, despite their name, have more impressive binoculars. They’re first used when Johnny gets out of his airport taxi.

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There’s a third tube above the optics, a rectangular inlet, and an antenna.

In these binoculars, the augmented reality overlay is much more dynamic. Instead of a fixed circle, green lines converge in a bounding box around the image of Johnny. Text slides onto the display from left to right, the last line turning yellow.

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Zoomrect

The animated transition of the bounding box resembles what Classic MacOS programmers of the 1990s called “zoomrects” used for showing windows opening or closing. It’s a very effective technique to draw attention to a particular area of an image.

Animated text

Text appearing character by character is ubiquitous in film interfaces. In the 1960s and 1970s mainframe and minicomputer terminals really did display incrementally, as the characters arrived one by one over slow serial port links. On any more recent computer it actually takes extra programming to achieve this effect, as the normal display of text is so fast that we would perceive it as instantaneous. But people like to see incremental text, or have been conditioned by film to expect it, so why not?

Bioscanning

The binoculars detect Johnny’s implant. It might just be possible to detect this passively from infrared or electronic signals, but more likely the binoculars include a high resolution microwave radar as well. If there had been more than one person in view, the bounding box would indicate which one the text refers to. And note that the last line of text is a different color. What that means is unclear here, but it becomes clear (and I’ll discuss it) later.

The second time we see the LoTek binoculars is when a lookout spots Street Preacher, a very bad guy and another who wants to remove Johnny’s head. Once again the binoculars have performed more than just a visual scan.

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The binocular view and overlay are being relayed to another character, the LoTek leader J-Bone who can watch on a monitor. Here the film anticipates the WiFi webcam.

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The overlay text now changes.

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Narrow AI?

This is interesting, because the binoculars can not only detect implants and other cyborg modifications, but are apparently able to evaluate and offer advice. It appears that the green text is used for the factual (more or less) information about what has been detected, while yellow text is uncertain or or speculative.

Does this imply a general artificial intelligence? Not necessarily. This warning could be based solely on the detected signature, in the same way that current day military passive sonars and radar warning receivers can identify threats based on identifying characteristics of a received signal. In the world of Johnny Mnemonic it would make sense to assume that anyone with full custom biomechanics is extremely dangerous. Or, since Street Preacher is a resident rather than a stranger and already feared by others, his appearance and the warning could have been entered into a LoTek facial recognition database that the binocular system uses as a reference.

These textual overlays are an excellent interface, not interfering with normal vision and providing a fast and easy-to-understand analysis. But, the user must have faith that the computer analysis is accurate. There’s no reason given as to why any of the text is displayed. If Johnny was carrying an implant in his pocket instead of his brain, would the computer know the difference?

An alternative approach would be some kind of sensor fusion or false spectrum display, with the raw infrared or radar image overlaid over the visuals and the viewer responsible for interpreting the data. The problem with such systems is that our visual system didn’t evolve to interpret such imagery, so a lot of training and practice is required to be both fast and accurate. And the overlay itself interferes with our normal visual recognition and processing. If the computer can do a better job of deciphering the meaning of non-visual data, it should do so and summarise for the human viewer.

Further advantages of this interface are that even a novice sentry will benefit from the built-in scanning and threat analysis, and the wireless transmission ensures that the information is shared rather than being limited to the person on watch. 

Report Card: The Story of the Faithful Wookiee

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Read all The Faithful Wookiee reviews in chronological order.

Of course we understand that The Faithful Wookiee was an animation for children and teens, the script of which was thrown together in a short time. We understand that it is meant to be entertainment and not a prediction, building on the somewhat-unexpected success of a sci-fi movie released the year before. We get that the plot is, well, unlikely. We understand that 1978 was not a time when much thought was given to consistent and deeply thought-through worldbuilding with technology. We understand it is hand-drawn animation and all the limitations that come with this.

But, still, to ensure a critique is valuable to us, we must bypass these archaeological excuses and focus instead on the thing as produced. And for that, the short does not fare well.

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Sci: F (0 of 4) How believable are the interfaces?

Comms have interfaces with inexplicably moving buttons. Headsets require pilots to take their hands off the controls. Spaceships with EZ-open external doors, the interfaces just don’t make sense. The one bright spot might be the video phone on which Fett calls Vader, but with no apparent camera and unlabeled buttons, it’s a pretty dim bright spot.

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Fi: A (4 of 4) How well do the interfaces inform the narrative of the story?

Comms efficiently lets us know Chewie is incoming, mysteriously not responding to hails. Headsets let us know when Luke is talking to base. We find out about Boba’s deception to suddenly reveal the danger our heroes are in as well as the stakes. The escape hatch ends the story quickly without violence. These interfaces are almost exclusively narrative in purpose, which is why they fail in other ways.

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Interfaces: F (0 of 4)
How well do the interfaces equip the characters to achieve their goals?

The comms make its user remember and interpret important data. The headsets require pilots to take their hands off the controls. The evillest organization in the galaxy bypassing basic security. A door that seems to ignore the basics of safety and security. There is little to recommend these interfaces as models for designs in the real world.

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Final Grade C (8 of 12), Matinée.

Despite the failings of the interfaces, I’ll argue that The Faithful Wookiee may be the best thing about the Star Wars Holiday Special. And, we’re back to that mess, next.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15311622/

Children of Men: Overview

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When it was released, Children of Men seemed a fanciful dystopia. Today with its depictions of environmental blight, terrorist bombs, refugee-phobia, and a militarized police state, it seems uncomfortably prescient. The film is sci-fi, but it doesn’t lean heavily on the use of interfaces for its storytelling. So while it will be only a handful of reviews, let’s celebrate the 10th anniversary of this dark film with some nerdy analysis.

Release Date: 05 January 2007 (USA)

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Plot

In the year 2010, humanity suddenly suffers from global infertility. Most of the world is thrown into chaos, but Britian soliders on under military rule. Refugees in this society are considered a threat to the nation, and they are routinely rounded up and deported or killed.

In 2027, one member of this society, named Theo Faron, is dutifully trudging on with his life when he is kidnapped and taken to meet his estranged wife Julian, now the leader of a secretive and militaristic refugee-rights organization. She convinces him to use his relationship to his powerful cousin Nigel to arrange transportation papers for a young woman. When Theo delivers the papers, he learns that the young woman, named Kee, is pregnant. Shocked at this symbol of hope, he protects her from a society that hates her, a government that will kill her, and the refugee-rights organization who wants to use the child for their own ends, escorting her at great personal cost to a fabled boat that can protect and nurture her and her child and thereby the future of humanity.

Intermission

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At this point there is still an hour of film and a dozen interfaces to go. Fortunately, by abandoning a strict chronological approach these can be grouped into four types of interfaces.

  1. The LoTeks and Yakuza both use a kind of high tech binoculars.
  2. Johnny enters cyberspace to try and find the download access codes for the data, an attempt that fails.
  3. Retrieving the data without the codes needs two brain reading medical scanners and a final LoTek brain hacking device.
  4. In between action scenes Johnny and others make video phone calls using a variety of different gadgets.
    The last of these phone calls itself demonstrates two interesting interfaces, a puppet avatar and a cringing computer.

In this remaining hour Johnny is always accompanied by Jane, the other lead character. She won’t appear in any of these discussions though, because she never uses any interfaces. Jane is a bodyguard, who relies on simple but reliable blades and throwing spikes for weapons. She has an augmented nervous system, with sockets in her arms that we briefly see connected to some electronic medical equipment, but alas we never learn the full extent of her capabilities. I suggest reading Neuromancer if you’re interested in cyberpunk body modifications, as Jane is just a renaming of Molly who appeared in the original Johnny Mnemonic short story and Neuromancer.

There is also Anna, the former CEO of Pharmakom who is now a “neural net persona” within the Pharmakom mainframe after being “imprinted” shortly before her death. She appears every so often on computer screens to both Johnny and Takahashi. I don’t consider her to be an interface, as the interaction between her and other characters is simple conversation and she is treated no differently to an intrusive video phone caller. Chris may wish to jump in and provide his own analysis though. 🙂

Escape door

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e

There is one last interface in The Faithful Wookiee we see in use. It’s one of those small interfaces, barely seen, but that invites lots of consideration. In the story, Boba and Chewie have returned to the Falcon and administered to Luke and Han the cure to the talisman virus. Relieved, Luke (who assigns loyalty like a puppy at a preschool) says,

“Boba, you’re a hero and a faithful friend. [He isn’t. —Editor] You must come back with us. [He won’t.] What’s the matter with R2?”

C3PO says,“I’m afraid sir, it’s because you said Boba is a faithful friend and faithful ally. [He didn’t.] That simply does not feed properly into R2’s information banks.”

Luke asks, “What are you talking about?”

“We intercepted a message between Boba and Darth Vader, sir. Boba Fett is Darth Vader’s right-hand man. I’m afraid this whole adventure has been an Imperial plot.”

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Luke did not see this coming.

Luke gapes towards Boba, who has his blaster drawn and is backing up into an alcove with an escape hatch. Boba glances at a box on the wall, slides some control sideways, and a hatch opens in the ceiling. He says, deadpan, “We’ll meet again…friend,” before touching some control on his belt that sends him flying into the clear green sky, leaving behind a trail of smoke.

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A failure of door

Let’s all keep in mind that the Falcon isn’t a boat or a car. It is a spaceship. On the other side of the hatch could be breathable air at the same pressure as what’s inside the ship, or it could also be…

  • The bone-cracking 2.7° Kelvin emptiness of space
  • The physics-defying vortex of hyperspace
  • Some poisonous atmosphere like Venus’, complete with sulfuric acid clouds
  • A hungry flock of neebrays.

There should be no easy way to open any of its external doors.

Think of an airplane hatch. On the other side of that thing is an atmosphere known to support human life, and it sure as hell doesn’t open like a gen-1 iPhone. For safety, it should take some doing.

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If we’re being generous, maybe there’s some mode by which each door can be marked as “safe” and thereby made this easy to open. But that raises issues of security and authorizations and workflow that probably aren’t worth going into without a full redesign and inserting some new technological concepts into the diegesis.

Let’s also not forget that to secure that most precious of human biological needs, i.e. air, there should be an airlock, where the outer door and inner door can’t be opened at the same time without extensive override. But that’s not a hindrance. It could have made for an awesome moment.

  • LUKE gapes at Boba. Cut to HAN.
  • HAN
  • You won’t get any information out of us, alive or dead. Even the droids are programmed to self-destruct. But there’s a way out for you.
  • HAN lowers his hand to a panel, and presses a few buttons. An escape hatch opens behind Boba Fett.
  • BOBA FETT
  • We’ll meet again…friend.

That quick change might have helped explain why Boba didn’t just kill everyone and steal the Falcon and the droids (along with their information banks) then and there.

Security is often sacrificed to keep narrative flowing, so I get why makers are tempted to bypass these issues. But it’s also worth mentioning two other failures that this 58-second scene illustrates.

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A failure to droid

Why the hell did C3PO and R2D2 wait to tell Luke and Han of this betrayal until Luke happened to say something that didn’t fit into “information banks?” C3PO could have made up some bullshit excuse to pull Luke aside and whisper the news. But no, he waits, maybe letting Luke and Han spill vital information about the Rebellion, and only when something doesn’t compute, blurt out that the only guy in the room with the blaster happens to be in bed with Space Voldemort.

I can’t apologize for this. It’s a failure of writing and an unimaginative mental model. If you are a writer wondering how droids would behave, think of them less as stoic gurus and more as active academies.

A failure of plot

Worse, given that C3PO says this is all an Imperial plot, we’re meant to understand that in an attempt to discover the Rebel base, the Empire…

  • Successfully routed rumors of a mystical talisman, which the Empire was just about to find, to the Rebels in a way they would trust it
  • Actually created a talisman
  • Were right on their long shot bet that the Rebels would bite at the lure
  • Bioengineered a virus that
    • Caused a sleeping sickness that only affects humans
    • Survived on the talisman indefinitely
  • Somehow protected Boba Fett from the virus even though he is human
  • Planted a cure for the virus on a planet near to where Han and Chewie would find the talisman
  • Successfully routed the location of the cure to Chewbacca so he would know where to go
  • Got Boba Fett—riding an ichthyodont—within minutes, to the exact site on the planet where Chewie would crash-land the Falcon.

Because without any of these points, the plan would not have worked. Yet despite the massive logistics, technological, and scientific effort, this same Empire had to be stupid enough to…

  • Bother to interrupt the mission in progress to say that the mission was on track
  • Use insecure, unencrypted, public channels to for this report

Also note that despite all this effort (and buffoonery) they never, ever used this insanely effective bioweapon against the Rebels, again.

I know, you’re probably thinking this is just some kid’s cartoon in the Star Wars diegesis, but that only raises more problems, which I’ll address in the final post on this crazy movie within a crazy movie.

Door Bomb and Safety Catches

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Johnny leaves the airport by taxi, ending up in a disreputable part of town. During his ride we see another video phone call with a different interface, and the first brief appearance of some high tech binoculars. I’ll return to these later, for the moment skipping ahead to the last of the relatively simple and single-use physical gadgets.

Johnny finds the people he is supposed to meet in a deserted building but, as events are not proceeding as planned, he attaches another black box with glowing red status light to the outside of the door as he enters. Although it looks like the motion detector we saw earlier, this is a bomb.

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This is indeed a very bad neighbourhood of Newark. Inside are the same Yakuza from Beijing, who plan to remove Johnny’s head. There is a brief fight, which ends when Johnny uses his watch to detonate the bomb. It isn’t clear whether he pushes or rotates some control, but it is a single quick action.

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This demonstrates an interesting difference between interface design for the physical world and for software systems. Inside a computer, actions are just flipping bits in storage and thus easy to undo. Even supposedly destructive actions such as erasing files can often be reversed. In the real world, the effects of, for example, explosions tend to be much more permanent.

We generally don’t want destructive actions to be too easy to perform, from guns and other things that go boom to formatting computer disks.

A widely used solution in the real world is the safety catch, as with guns, or arming switch, seen in countless thriller films with nuclear weapons. Another example are the two-hand safety switches used in high voltage electrical distribution panels. Activation of these requires two individual actions, separated in time and at least a short distance in space. Some systems, both real and in film, go even further and have covers on the arming switches, so even just preparing for activation requires two separate physical actions.

While the bomb is on his belt, Johnny doesn’t have to worry about accidentally pressing the “explode” button on his watch because the bomb is not active. Only after he has armed it and placed on the door can the watch activate the bomb, so he can take his time and verify whether or not it is necessary before doing so. And when it is active, he can do so very quickly even though he is in the middle of a fight.

But safety catches and arming switches introduce modes to an interaction, which have a bad reputation in interface design. Had the watch-bomb designers followed most conventional GUI design guidelines, there would be no arming switch on the bomb. Instead the watch would have popped up a “Do you really want to explode the bomb (Y/N)?” dialog, possibly with a short delay to ensure Johnny thought about his decision before answering. He would have been decapitated.

Compare to LoTek

Later on in the film we see an example of a poorly designed system without a safety catch. The LoTeks in their bridge home have a defensive “bug dropper”, so called because it drops ancient Volkswagens from a great height.

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The bug dropper can be activated by pushing just a single handle. Because there is no safety switch, a guard accidentally drops a flaming VW Beetle onto the lead characters, nearly killing them.

Conclusion

From the description above it would seem that safety catches are the obvious solution. But of course it’s more complicated than that. Consider what would have happened if Johnny had met friends instead of enemies and settled down for a conversation. Thirty minutes later they’ve agreed on another meeting, and Johnny taps his watch to bring up the reminders app. Oops!

Should the bomb have disarmed itself after a given time period? If it did, how would Johnny be notified of this?

Most of us do not design interfaces for lethal hardware and life or death situations. There are however an increasing number of drones and other physical devices which are now remotely controlled from phone or tablet apps rather than dedicated hardware controllers as in the past. The “Internet of Things” will bring even more real world actions under computer interface control. In the future, we will most likely see more of these safety catches and arming switches in computer interfaces, and we need to figure out how to use them properly.

Video call

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After ditching Chewie, Boba Fett heads to a public video phone to make a quick report to his boss who turns out to be…Darth Vader (this was a time long before the Expanded Universe/Legends, so there was really only one villain to choose from).

To make the call, he approaches an alcove off an alley. The alcove has a screen with an orange bezel, and a small panel below it with a 12-key number panel to the left, a speaker, and a vertical slot. Below that is a set of three phone books. For our young readers, phone books are an ancient technology in which telephone numbers were printed in massive books, and copies kept at every public phone for reference by a caller.

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To make the call, Fett removes a card from his belt and inserts it. We see a close up of his face for about a second after this, during which time we cannot see if he is taking any further action, but he appears to be waiting and not moving. We hear a few random noises and see some random patterns until Darth Vader comes into view. Fett reports, “I have made contact with the Rebels, and all is proceeding according as you wish, Darth Vader.” We don’t see the interaction from Vader’s side.

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Doorknob-simple workflow

A nice feature is that the workflow could barely be simpler. Once Fett inserts the card, the phone is activated, recipient specified, and payment taken care of. Fett has only to wait for Vader to pick up. To make this work, we have to presume that this is a special card, good only for calling Vader at no charge. It’s a nice interaction. Presuming the call is not, you know, top secret. Which, if it needs saying, it is.

The Force is not with this security

As this blog must routinely point out, the system seems to be missing multifactor authentication. The card counts as one factor, that is, something Fett possesses. There should be at least one more. A card can be stolen, so let’s instead focus on something he is and something he knows. Using just the equipment in the scene, the Empire could monitor all the video phones where it knows Fett to be. With face recognition or, more appropriately given his helmet, voice print, it could recognize him for one factor, and then ask him for a password. Two factors. No card. Even more simple and more secure.

But the security problems go beyond the authentication problems that might have some unfortunate pickpocket face to face with the galaxy’s most impulsive Force-choker. During Fett’s call, back on the Falcon, R2D2 is casually trying to find Chewbacca and Fett on the viewscreen and he happens—literally happens—across the transmission between Fett and Vader, with Vader saying, “Good work, but I want them alive. Now that you’ve got their trust, they may take you to their new base.” Fett replies, “This time we’ll get them all.” Vader ends the call saying, “I see why they call you the best bounty hunter in the galaxy.”

Note that the call is public. R2 doesn’t suspect Imperial malfeasance at this point. He’s just checking public video feeds to see if he can find out where Chewie is.

Note also that there isn’t a lick of encryption.

Note finally that the feed we see isn’t even a just a transmission signal. If it was, we’d see the call from one side or the other, in which we’d see either Fett or Vader. But in the clip we see the video switch between them to focus on the active speaker, so either R2 is doing some sweet just-in-time editing, or the signal is actually formatted especially for some third party to eavesdrop on.

An animated scene featuring R2-D2 and C-3PO in front of a control panel with a glowing screen, displaying a colorful, abstract image.
A classic animated scene featuring two robots, one with a blue and white design and the other in yellow, interacting with a control panel that displays a blurred image of a menacing figure on a screen.

So 👏 why👏 the👏 eff 👏  are top secret Imperial transmissions being made on insecure party lines? Heads up, Star Wars fans. We didn’t really need Rogue One. The Rebellion could have come across the plans to the Death Star just channel-flipping from the comfort some nearby couch.