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Terrorism.

For the Secret Service - call the Dept. of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General Hotline (800) 323-8603.

For the FBI - call the Dept. of Justice Office of Inspector General Hotline (800) 869-4499.

When you call, remind both of them that active stolen credit cards can be used by terrorists to purchase things like AIRPLANE TICKETS, and that you do not find it acceptable that these agencies responses were not prompt and definitive.

These Hotlines must come to some final resolution for every reported allegation. That should provide you some assurance that even if they decide to not pursue the matter it is being documented that decision was made by law enforcement.

you cant live you life under feer that terrorists are going to do something.

From CAPPS II: Myths and Facts:

The facts are scarier than the myths, in my opinion. (If nothing else the trend is scary.)

"CAPPS II modernizes an existing program that was created in 1997 as an additional measure to help prevent a terrorist attack on passenger aircraft."

Notice the term "modernize." (CAPPS was rolled out in 1997, and look at it now in 2004. What will it look like in 2010?)

"CAPPS II will not use data mining techniques to profile and track citizens. Except for the slightly expanded Passenger Name Record (PNR) data that air carriers and reservation systems will collect, CAPPS II will not collect additional personal information about the traveler."

Notice the term "expanded". What other information will be included when the PNR is "expanded" or "modernized" again in a few years?

"(2) CAPPS II also performs a risk assessment, including a check against lists of terrorists and known or suspected threats, to detect individuals who may pose a terrorist-related threat or who have outstanding Federal or state warrants for crimes of violence."

Notice the term "suspected." Suspicion: "The act or an instance of suspecting something wrong without proof or on slight evidence."

"Once the system has computed a traveler's risk score, it will send an encoded message to be printed on the boarding pass indicating the appropriate level of screening. Eventually, this information is planned to be transmitted directly to screeners at security checkpoints."

Be on the lookout for "Earchsay isthay erroristtay umscay agbay" on your boarding pass!

I can't wait until they modernize and expand the Patriot Act. Scary stuff. Also I'm looking forward to an expanded, modernized CAPPS III. (Coming soon to automobiles, buses, subways, and sidewalks near you!) Nothing to hide, nothing to Fear, right? Well, nothing to hide today, but maybe much to fear in the future.

"Ms. O'Connor Kelly practiced law with the firms of Sidley & Austin, Hudson Cook and Venable, Baetjer, Howard & Civiletti"
Sounds like she's half irish and half indian. Interesting choice.

Read on past this rant if you can.

# begin rant # Seems to me like this guy likes to take the sensationalist approach more than the straight facts approach, and shock us out of our right minds. But that's to be expected from a human author. # end rant #

Did anyone else read this and get the impression that he wanted us to think that these horrible, awful scourge-of-mankind diseases ORIGINATED from this facility? I'll post about the origins of two big names he drops here.

Lyme Disease is actually named after a town in Connecticut where it was first documented in the 1970s. That town's name? Old Lyme. I go there every year for a vacation, so I know about it very well. It spreads to humans by ticks - exactly the kind of thing you'd expect Plum to have inside. However, it is easily treated, has a decent grace period before complications occur, and is not debilitating until it gets really bad. You can read more about it here. If this easily curable disease was indeed the result of an experiment at Plum Island, then it was probably the crappiest and least effective bioweapon ever invented.

Now, about West Nile Virus. According to this document: Unless new information comes to light, the first case of West Nile virus to be subjected to scientific study was brought to medical attention in December 1937 at Omogo, West Nile district, Northern Province of Uganda. That case (and the subsequent viral characterization process) was documented by members of the Yellow Fever Research Institute, Entebbe, Uganda in 1940. I seriously doubt they created West Nile in a laboratory that long ago.

The Plum Island laboratory (Link 1 Link 2 got any more links?) has been around plenty longer than Lyme Disease has been known according to this document, but it is newer than West Nile. Directly copied from that site: In 1946, a disease laboratory was built at Fort Terry by the government. Fort Terry was closed in 1948 because we were no longer at war, and it was no longer needed. Fort Terry was reopened to research new ways to go to war, and for the development of chemicals to kill animals.

Draw your own conclusion, here's your sketch pencil.

Why is everyone assuming they will be numbers? They called Pentium Pentium instead of 586 because they couldn't trademark a number. They'll probably have a trademarkable speed reference. ... Oh, I found the new rating system. It's here.

A friend recently told me he had bought a new 3Ghz Athlon XP, he was ready to take it back to the shop after I explained what the 3000 meant!

Did you also explain to him the exchange rate betwen $USD and x86 performance? I'd stick with the Athlon for home use. (Not knocking them; I just haven't compared lately enough to be sure for work use.)

What the heck? Does the severity of a bug depend upon how much people are affected?

To a certain degree, yeah -- it's a cruel world.

<tongue in="cheek">And why doesn't the Department of Homeland Security just leave the threat level at "severe" everyday because on any given day someone, somewhere, might be attacked?</tongue>

Sure, severity is heavily based on the impact the bug has if you hit it, but it also takes into account any significant factors that mitigate damages to lower the risk.

Issues with awful consequences that affect someone using the software with the default settings are typically riskier than those that only affect, say, those of us using some obscure feature with a few uncommon configuration changes.

Bottom line is that the severity isn't a moral statement; its goal here is to make the security bulletins more useful by giving people a way to filter them, if they know how the system works. If everything is posted "critical", there's no point in using that field anymore. Not everyone thinks about this, but when you change your configuration or software usage scenario even the slightest bit away from the beaten path, you may also need to change your system for supporting the software. If you don't use the default settings for a piece of software, it might be a good idea to treat those "important" bulletins as "critical".

If you don't understand the system, or just want to spite it, ignore that field and just treat everything as critical, and if you don't agree with the system, post on Slashdot.

• Coordinating with the Homeland Security Department to improve information sharing between business and government on cyber threats

Are you badmouthing our president?

I have reported you.

Here you can see a photo of Seth Schoen receiving a letter from the MPAA lawyers after revealing he's the author of the DeCSS haiku:

Clicky-clicky

(Also, my advice to him, now that he's publicly admitted to be an 3v1l hax0r, is to shave his beard as soon as possible. Unfortunate mistakes can happen so quickly these days ...)

The Department of Homeland Security put out a PDF leaflet about the program, which contained their normal, almost incomprehensible pictograms like those on ready.gov

I thought they needed some better, and funnier, subtitles.

What?! You mean that Apple and digital camera manufacturers, under pressure from the MPAA, RIAA, DHS (I'm mean, we're ORANGE people, ORANGE!) and SCO, hasn't started DRMing my own photographs? I'm stunned.

No, really, I am.

As a director of Homeland SS I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that although no terrorist attacks took place in Christmas, our great nation is still under a terrorist threat.

So keep your eyes open and report your neighbours [citizencorps.gov] for any suspicious activity.

Be pure, be vigilant, behave!

PS. And if you want our children to be safe in the future as well, remember to vote for our commander-in-chief in 2004! Now you do want our children to be safe, don't you?

Tom Ridge
Director of Homeland SS

As a director of Homeland SS I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that although no terrorist attacks took place in Christmas, our great nation is still under a terrorist threat.

So keep your eyes open and report your neighbours [citizencorps.gov] for any suspicious activity.

Be pure, be vigilant, behave!

PS. And if you want our children to be safe in the future as well, remember to vote for our commander-in-chief in 2004! Now you do want our children to be safe, don't you?

Tom Ridge
Director of Homeland SS

I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that although no terrorist attacks took place in Christmas, our great nation is still under a terrorist threat.

So keep your eyes open and report your neighbours for any suspicious activity.

Be pure, be vigilant, behave!

PS. And if you want our children to be safe in the future as well, remember to vote for our commander-in-chief in 2004! Now you do want our children to be safe, don't you?

Tom Ridge
Director of Homeland SS

Remarks by Secretary Tom Ridge at the National Cyber Security Summit

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
December 3, 2003
** Remarks as Prepared **

Like any organization, they've outlined a strategic plan to assess the situation and assigned a mission-critical task force to consolidate committees and subcommittees on bleeding-edge decision making processes. They've empowered the new paradigm, they're looking down the road, and keeping their feet out of the mud.

Yeah, they're right on top of it.

President Bush made a national address today regarding the freedom hating countries who are in alliance against the US and hate us because of our freedoms and democracy.

excerpt:

"Freedom loving citizens of the United States, I would like to thank you for your sacrifices since September 11th. Today I bring you news of an even greater peril to our safety and our freedom. We have become aware that terrorist evil doers have infiltrated the Governments of countries such as China, Germany and now even Brazil. Our intelligence has found deep ties to Al Qaeda, Iraq and the Axis of Evil in these countries who have turned against us.

We have appointed Steve Balmer as "Special Ambassador of Freedom" to meet with and talk to the leaders of the Brazilian Government and their IT infrastructure. However, they have shown little interest in making a return to freedom and may leave us with no choice but to call upon a coalition of the willing to help restore freedom to those noble people of Brazil so that they may once again enjoy Freedom and Democracy. The evil doers must be shown that we will not tolerate those who would stand against us and stand against freedom... Compulsatory Registration with the Department of Homeland Security Required"

Look up the budget of NSA and tell me what it does. It spends all its time spying on its own citizens, rather than enemies....CIA spends a chunk of its resources spying on its own citizens too. It's hard to prove this so you either believe me or not. Examples include tracking civil rights activists during the civil rights era in the 60's, attempting to brainwash citizens using LSD (look up the origin of LSD), trafficking drugs to support its activities (drugs hurt citizens), etc.... more recently, Department of Homeland Security has been trying to get some programs going but haven't had much success (eg. getting utility workers to spy on citizens, establishing toll-free snitch line, Total Information Awareness, etc). I expect that they already spend a few million on such programs, which haven't been publicized. In about 10 years, expect their budget on these clandestine activities to zoom towards $1billion, just like how the CIA and DEA have. Right now (for 2004), the Department of Homeland security has a budget of around $36.2 billion. I suspect around 0.1% is spent spying on innocient citizens (36.5million) and you can expect this to increase as the department increases it size (due to bureacratization, as DEA and CIA have).

Of course, you probably don't believe any of this. Just like how you probably have no idea that the DEA spends $1.8billion on the "war" on drugs.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Now, even if you are just flying through the USA airport system, you will need a visa.

Man, if the rest of the world did this, my passport would be full of visas and stamps.

"We recently suspended the Transit Without Visa program, for example, when we received information that indicated terrorists might exploit that system to cause Americans harm. The important point is that when we got intelligence that we could act upon, we acted upon it..." - Tom Ridge

...gripping the levers of power without ever having had to personally defend those powers with their lives in combat.

President Bush: Texas ANG F-102 pilot (arguable)
Sec of State Powell: Chairman, JCoS
Vice Pres Chaney: Sec of Defense
Tom Ridge, Sec. Homeland Security: Army infantry, Vietnam
Norman Mineta, Sec. Transportation: Army Intelligence
Senate: 35 members with military experience.
House: 122 members with military experience.

Shall I go on?

May we inquire as to your military experience?

I know there'll be dozens of "they shouldda been using un*x" posts, but in defense of Windows, there has been a patch for this on Windows Update since July 16. Even I had enough time to test the patch on a non-production system between then and now. Every platform gets its 'sploits throughout its lifetime, it's just a matter of learning about them and applying the proper patches in a resonable amount of time... especially on mission-critical machines. (DMV computers, etc...)

Yeah, but it's not like the Department of Homeland Security put out a notice telling people they should install the patch. Oh wait, yes they did. Maybe that's why a group of us worked late on Friday 8/1 making sure the patch was installed on all of our servers and workstations.

On the DHS alert color code, blue means "guarded", just one notch lower than the alert level the USA have been living in for the last few months (with occasional orange flares). Should this color be reconsidered in sight of the well known Blue Screen of Death?

Uh, not to steal the punch, but there IS a 'blue' threat level: Guarded. 2. Guarded Condition (Blue). This condition is declared when there is a general risk of terrorist attacks.

If you file a FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) request you can get the winning bid (even if you can't find it on a website). Just call the DHS Contracting office and ask them for it. If they refuse ask them to give you the number of the person who handles FOIA requests in their department. I looked at the DHS website and there are several contact #'s so I don't know which one should be contacted...

also anyone see this?

Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft has landed a $470-plus million contract to issue software to the U.S. Army. Bloomberg reported it was the "biggest order ever for the company's programs. The deal covers 494,000 desktop computers, Microsoft spokesman Keith Hodson said. The Army will buy the software from a Microsoft reseller, Softmart, based in Downingtown, Pa. Hodson declined to say how the companies will divide the revenue," the wire service said.

from july 25, 2003

Assuming there are such, as it's currently being hit with a DoS. I think it's the first time a website has deserved a /.'ing. I can think of some others

heh If you liked that resignation, just imagine who they have planned to replace him.