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Critical infrastructure could just use a more sensitive and precise antenna.

It's difficult to create an antenna that has good gain straight up and to the horizons (where you find GPS satellites), and no gain at all to terrestrial sources (which could be in a nearby tree or hill that's above the horizon line). At ground level, a GPS signal has a strength of 1 x 10^–16 watts - a 100W (or 10W or even 1W) transmitter a short distance away can easily mask that signal.

I'm not sure what in the grid would require synchronizing based on GPS. It's not like the stations and control centers ever move.

GPS isn't used just for positioning, but also as a "reliable", highly accurate time source.

No, it wasn't bullshit. Landline calls would *occasionally* go through.

NOT in or out of Manhattan. Do you know where that is? Ask someone on 4chan or IRC (#4chan or #clueless) for directions.

The point stands: Internet wins. And I heard stuff on IRC before it was on CNN. Oh, and in case you didn't figure it out, Twitter is Internet too.

This was never about the Internet, it was specifically about Twitter, so don't try to weasel your way out of an argument you lost. The Internet is not Twitter, but you are still a nitwit. Go read this. Be warned: there's lots of information there, so your feed-me-one-line-at-a-time brain may get overloaded.

Since you seem to have the ability to "hear stuff" on IRC, you must have also "heard your parents" when you placed that call to them on 9/11 because they sure as hell didn't answer if they were in Manhattan at the time.

The article is concerned mostly with military GPS, which is only slightly less susceptible to jamming than civilian GPS. The main weakness of GPS wrt jamming is that it's a very low power signal, usually clocking in at -160dBw. There's a good survey of the state of GPS antijam circa 2002 here.

However, it is a law and not something that is contained in the constitution. Which means that it can be 'suspended' any time they damn well feel like it.

See The Myth of Posse Comitatus

  I want you to get up now, I want you to get up, go over to the window, open it, and yell "IM MAD AS HELL AND IM NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

http://www.homelandsecurity.org/snapshots/newslett er/2007-07.htm#sick

for the Reich is to have PATRIOT III include language to require logging and storage of unencrypted copies of all data that has an endpoint on said ISP's server. All your POPS belong to us..... For the guy a few posts earlier who asked the obvious question about when we're going to get riots in the street, watering Jefferson's "tree of liberty": the two obvious answers are that 1) thanks to the efforts of those who really run the country, consumers (formerly known as "the people" or, in even more archaic terms, "voters") have been relieved of the burdens of "critical thinking" and "political dynamism" since about 1974, and 2) just in case, the Best Congress Money Can Buy has been funding military semi-lethal weapons and domestic deployments (Posse Comitatus? The Decider says it's "just a scrap of paper") since shortly after the events in Item 1. Short version: The United States of America was a Constitutional republic from 4 March 1789 to sometime around November 1974; a hybrid state from 1974 to 12 December 2000, and a fascist kleptocracy since that time. This is just another warhead tossed onto the pile to see how high the rubble of freedom can be bounced.

>appropriating the military for civilian law enforcement

The magic words to Google for are "Posse Comitatus". An 1878 law barred the Army from domestic law enforcement. Since then, there's been some drift. One military lawyer has written Through a gradual erosion of the act's prohibitions over the past 20 years, posse comitatus today is more of a procedural formality than an actual impediment to the use of U.S. military forces in homeland defense.

by thrill12 (711899) * Alter Relationship on Wednesday October 05, @03:28PM (#13725653) ... (no pun intended). What in earth can make scientists behave so irresponsible. They eliminated smallpox [who.int] from almost all laboratories a few years ago to make sure it could never be used again.
----
Some think that smallpox is not gone...
Although WHO subsequently allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to retain samples of variola,2 the etiological agent of smallpox, the disease began fading from the memories of most Americans.

Nearly a quarter century later, the disease has entered U.S. consciousness once again as intelligence suggests that other countries besides the two depositary nations have retained or obtained variola.
http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/Articles/g ursky_smallpox.html

I answered my own question.

As pointed out in other posts, not only with this decrease security, apparently "behavior that may seem "too normal" might be flagged".

GPS Spoofing Countermeasures, Jon S. Warner, Roger G. Johnston -- Los Alamos National Labs

I'd love for this train to become reality, but can it be made safe against terrorists?

This article in the The Journal of Homeland Security talks all about mass transit being used as a tool for mass terrorism, including the 1995 derailment of the Sunset Limited in the Arizona desert. That incident killed 1 and injured 65 and it was not traveling at 500kph.

Right now, the idea of maglev trains and all that exposed track scares me.

I agree that inhaled anthrax is a serious concern, and is very lethal. Check out BW History and note in particular on the The Sverdlovsk Incident: April 2, 1979 "...The discovery was also made that the incubation period for inhalation anthrax was two to forty-five days. This finding was in vast contrast to the animal studies that indicated that the incubation period was between two to six days. These findings imply that antibiotics might be administered." Mortality in that incident was 80%, and could have been lower if treated properly. Another useful link is Homeland Security with tons of great information on all forms of threats to the US. If you want something else to worry about, check out the info here on TOPOFF, where a civil defense preparedness simulation in May 2000 failed to contain an attack using plague in Denver. It is good to worry about, and I hope we get our civil defense preparedness in better order. Russ