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Tanker Truck Shut Down Via Satellite
unassimilatible writes "Satellite Security Systems, in cooperation with the California Highway Patrol and InterState Oil Company, demonstrated the first wireless remote shutdown of a fully loaded, moving gas tanker truck. Described as "a viable solution to the challenge of controlling rogue hazardous waste vehicles that could pose a threat to homeland security," satellite communications were used to disable the truck in seconds, 530 miles from the demonstration site. But that's not all. California Assembly Bill (AB) 575 (PDF link) would require truck disabling devices, global positioning or other 'location reporting systems' on all hazardous material haulers. With all of the police pursuits in California, can mandatory GPS and disabling devices in all vehicles be far away?"
Imagine the US gets attacked by an organised force. Suddenly, the enemy has the full ability to completely disable the transport infrastructure. Not only that, with a minimum of their own vehicles they can have a replacement that they fully control within days.
This sounds to me the beginning of the end
"Tanker truck remotely shutdown on railtracks, thousands die in ensuing fireball." How can they be sure that shutting a truck down isn't going to cause a disaster/pileup?
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
What are they going to use for "The world's stupidest car chases" now?
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
I just hope the software is not made by microsoft. Or the shutdown will easily become " the first case of a truck being crashed by satellite"
Maybe I've watched one too many movies, but am I the only one concerned about what happens when the bag guys get ahold of this and are able to shut down any hazardous truck they want?
Road transport is already highly controlled, specially for hazardous materials. Things as (the terms might be off since I'm a Spaniard and I'm not sure how it is exactly in English) the driver's log book, tachometer register and tracking, and so on. Neither of these have made their way into "normal" vehicles (your car or mine, that is).
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Bertrand Russell said that scientific fascism is basically impossible to break out of, once installed somewhere. With things like this, its not hard to see why. Another reason I'm never going to set foot in america.
What about remotly driving cars? That would be a much more useful tecnology than remotly shutting them down. Probably much more difficult to implement though
Making GPS and disabling devices mandatory in all vehicles is nice idea on paper, but I don't like all the ways the system could be abused. And screw Homeland Security while I'm at it.
- - - - - - -
"All hail the glory of the Hypnotoad."
While not manditory, the foundations for this are already being setup by the continued expansion of the OnStar (and maybe others?) systems. Given that, I think that the paranoid "slippery slope" underpinnings of the article poster to be a bit melodramatic. I know that they've also been working on various EMP systems to try to shut cars down remotely.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What happens if the system is hacked? Disabled trucks/ships/planes crashing into cities?
I don't need a signature.
What will happen if terrorists hack that system and shut down moving trucks in inner citys, causing major accidents?
Requiring them to have onboard GPS with remote deactivation makes sense here, and I don't think that just because hazmat tucks have it that it will be forced upon everyone. Commercial traffic, especially hazmat, has far less 4th amendment protections than your average joe.
will there be hacked vehicles with these devices removed available for illegal activity, completely taking the unsupecting police by surprise, at least for the first few weeks? Surely.
Land of the free and home of the brave ?
...
...
One would have to be pretty naive to beleave that
America is one of the least free places in the western world!
And yet, they feel they have to help the rest of the world be free...
Americans shout words they dont know the meaning of
When will they come off their ego trip, and realise they are just an enslaved population, following their governments every whim ?
Well maybe if the post would've been about a satellite being shut down by a tanker truck, I might've sat up and taken notice.
I just hope I'm not in front of a vehicle that has just been shut down. Without the engine running, there's no "power" in power steering. Yeah, you can still steer, much it's a lot harder.
Through the end of the year you can use a personal locating system for free at uLocate.com They have feature like the ability to set a virtual fence around an area and get a text message or email if a phone goes in or out of the fence. You can see the location of all the phones in your account from any Java enabled phone
Free cell phone tracking
If you are really paranoid, you can always go back to a low-tech solution: Walk.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
What happens if the bad guys get hold of the technology and shutdown all trucks for the Chaos. Or purhaps use it to disable trucks carring high value items so they can be robbed.
Whats to stop the "Criminal" them just ripping out the black box before driving the truck way? "Criminals" don't obey laws (hence being criminals) so won't mind being illegal and not having the shutdown circuit!
James
Sorry. As a german citizen I always saw the USA as an example of freedom. Whats going on in the last few years is seriously disturbing, though. I hope Europe doesnt jump on the train again. I wouldnt love to see this kind of Orwellian politics over here as well. If this really takes off please rebel against since this trend really cuts into privacy and freedom rights of everyone of us...
I had a vision of the moron ahead of me in traffic talking on his cell phone disappearing in an expanding cloud of hot gas and molten metal.
In Bush's America, Homeland Security screws you!
at least we might finally get rid of the idiotic speed limit concept : if it's that important not to drive that fast, then we should have our car slowed down remotely instead of having some policeman whinning avout a "danger".
I once got a fine, by snail mail, one month after driving a 100km/h on an highway because some Belgian cop decided to put a 50km/h speed limit fine 10 meters OVER the lane.
I argued that the traffic was dense, so this only meant everybody was driving that fast but this just didn't help.
Now, once we get some very personal speed limitation, I hope they'll take our car engines into account : some get damaged quicker at 120km/h than at 128km/h... might be a resonance issue but if they waste my engine with an unadapted control device, they'll have to pay.
I however guess that we'll eventually get some custom processing which may allow awaken BMW drivers to speed up at night on straight highways if there's nobody in a 10km radius. If not, then it only means such laws are meant to milk the drivers with idiotic fines...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Umm,
Can you say Software Crash? I knew you could.
"Get Moose and Squirrel!"
Obviously there will be many comments along the lines of "bad technology will cause more problems than it solves".
In the case of bulk industrial transport, it's painfully obvious that what's needed is not just more automation, but a shift away from roads and onto rail.
Rail is much safer and better controllable than road traffic. No-one would argue against remote control (at least emergency override) of train traffic, indeed I believe this had been standard operating procedure for some time in many countries.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
If they make a commercial version of this, they will advertise it with something to the effect of "If your car is stolen, it can be shut down by satelite. Anywhere, instantly"
You can't legislate away these kinds of problems.
With the ability to bring national trucking to a halt, the satellite has applied for Teamsters membership.
the above comment is THE ONLY TIME THIS HAS EVER BEEN FUNNY. EVER. do not try to disprove this, it's just the way it is. now move on.
I'm a little concerned about all of this remote control stuff. Some things were just not meant to be accessible via the web, you know? Now some asshole in Michigan can change traffic signals with a remote you can get on ebay, and next year the other guy he cut off will be able to pay him back by shutting down a truck on some bridge with his cell phone.
The world is dangerous. Some guy might drive a truck into a building, but chances are you're not gonna get enough advance warning to trigger a remote shutdown. But if all vehicles wind up with these devices, there's gonna be a period of trial and error when the authentication's not perfect or there's buffer overflow in some satellite control code somwehere that's gonna shut down an entire state.
When are we going to implement this on airplanes? After 9/11, you know, we can never be too careful. Remote shutdown is a must have...
The point is, these systems are bound to be exploited, and when they are there's gonna be hell to pay, because it's going to do more harm than good.
ascii art
just on a troll.
Remember the scene in Minority Report, after John Anderton is on the run, where the authorities take control of the maglev car he's riding in?
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
Your a terrorist. You want to steal a tanker truck full of some toxic chemical and blow it up/release it in a city , whatever. Do you
A) Break into a truck depot at some obvious time (where there just happens to be a truck full of something nasty) and put the pedal to the metal
and hope no one stops you before you reach your target. Or
B) Steal a truck WEEKS in advance , have time to throughly remove any id , electronic shutdown aids, put fake plates on , respray, fill with a chemical
of your choice and drive normally into the city unrecognized?
Terrorists might be evil but generally they're NOT stupid. The is just more balony about "stopping terrorism" that we've had
consistently since 9/11 and I for one am sick of being treated like some wide eyed brainless child who's supposed to accept all these removals of libery
with a thumbs up and a "god sake america!"
This does not make any sense. A terrorist or criminal would certainly disable this device asap, like a car thief disables the alarm system. So, then what's the real use of such a system except being one more step towards 1984?
Kosi
And .NET will make sure it gets painted in a different color. Or was that ad only shown in Europe?
I can't fathom how this is news. Several companies have had the ability to remote shutdown there trucks for a long time. (over hours? pull off at the next stop, you are going to fast, motor dynamically governed to 45mph, you stopped to long to hit the head, etc) The tracking and logistics required by federal law, is nothing compared to what some of these goomba trucking company owners go thru to put there drivers in misery.
Like California can really afford this.
*eyeroll*
To the paranoid... get over yourself. Like they're going to track you down and shut down your car and arrest you for the CD full of pirated MP3s in your stereo.
If they know who you are, it's easier to just send the cops to your house. This is useful for hijacked hazmat vehicles and maybe eventually for stopping high-speed chases or tracking fleeing felons. Not for keeping tabs on everyone... not even California has enough state employees for that kind of volume.
The idiot generically whined: "Making GPS and disabling devices mandatory in all vehicles is nice idea on paper, but I don't like all the ways the system could be abused. And screw Homeland Security while I'm at it."
name a single fucking thing that cannot be abused.
guess what fuckhead, even if we assume what you said is true, cars can and are abused many many times every day in numerous ways including killing people.
you act like a retard NRA gun-nut who thinks a safety catch is an evil government conspiracy to take away all your rights.
that's what this idea is - a fucking safety catch for tools that are being used in a deadly way.
"can mandatory GPS and disabling devices in all vehicles be far away?"
Yes, yes they can. People are very protective of their cars in the US, kinda like their guns, and we all know what Charleton Heston has to say about how you take his guns away.
Besides, despite some recent concerns, the US has a relatively good record of respecting privacy.
Yeah, I gonna feel real safe plowing into that big rig that was disabled using this technology.
Get a clue people, just because it is possible does not mean it meets the reality check.
In the UK we already have 2 effective systems for disabling road vehicles.
One is called Road Tax and the other is the 3.80/gal fuel price.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
i can just imagine some nervous Nuke plant secuirty guard pissing himself trying to dial into this company "SHUT IT DOWN", and they like "ok what is truck # on the back of truck". "hold on let me run after it and write it down"
but thankfully you've alerted us all to this possibility.
I guess now you've shared your wisdom we won't get caught off-guard and all will be well.
I believe the On star system doesn't completely shut down the vehicle... it just limits its speed if the vehicle is stolen to something rediculuosly slow. The idea being that it's easier and safer to catch the thief.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
I guess a tunnel will shield signals to and from a satelite, right?!
--
Paranoia:
Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot?!?
Hijack the HAZMAT truck and switch the semi to one excempt from the remote disabling requirement. They need to do it so the whole rig is disabled, just killing the semi is not enough.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
I mean, if its working for a truck it could also work in a lawn mower. ;-)
;-)
Sorry for the cheesy comment but I read lawn mowers first and couldnt resist!
have to wait for theMIRT to start carrying "emergency vehicle remote shutdown devices"... Forget just being limited to making red lights green, now we can keep all the other cars off the road...
A proposed solution to a specific problem that doesn't solve _all_ problems is no less appropriate for solving that one problem.
If I were you I'd give that forehead a harder slap.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
As a trucker, I'll weigh in on this. The systems on trucks are generally Qualcomm satellite systems. The problem with that being it relies on a line-of-sight link with the satellite. Going up a mountain, pulling under a fuel island, all sorts of normal operation things cut the signal. Lots of guys put trashcans over their dishes at night so dispatch won't bother them while they're sleeping.
So this fancy-shmancy Homeland Security plan can be defeated with a trashcan. Satellite signal blocked = No shutting the truck down remotely. And I know what you're all thinking, "What a redneck, we could just make it where X minutes of signal blockage shuts down the truck!" Right. And if there's a traffic jam in a tunnel, you'll just exacerbate it by having a dead truck there? This is just another of the gov't's "Big Ideas That Will Not Work."
It's easy to block those satellite signals, and it's not reasonable to put a timer on it so that X minutes of no signal == shut down truck.
This looks like a geek project leader with too much money to spend. Maybe I don't read the papers too carefully, but how many cases of hazardous, runaway vehicles threatening Homeland Security have there been since that ISB (Insanely Bad Movie) Speed.
Even the stupidest terrorist is going to figure out how to cut the wires connecting the GPS device and the motor, so this obviously is not a counter-terrorist measure.
Sure. They'll pitch this as an anti carjack, kidnap, child abduction law to get soccer mom buy in and then they'll just make it a required part of the annual safety inspection for new vehicles. As old vehicles go out of service there will be little need to grandfather them in.
Step 2 is constant motion monotoring to insure speed limit and red light compliance. This will be pitched as a cost savings measure since fewer cops will be needed. You'll simply get a bill in the mail each month for your driving usage and overage a.k.a. speeding/violations.
Step 3 is a comprehensive shut down program. Unpaid fines, lapsed insurance, orders of protection, domestic violence, etc. Will all be used to trigger the vehicle's shutdown.
We're talking about dangerous materials trucks people not your hillbilly cousin Jonny in his pickup. It's not exactly like we have to protect the privacy of people carrying what are essentially large bombs on wheels roaming across the country.
The people who expect some sort of editorial integrity from Slashdot really piss me off admittedly. Slashdot is not a news service it's just a blog. That being said though the blatant cut-and-paste-dont-even-read-it policy has got to go. Don't post stuff thats blatant sensationalism right out of someones email to you. You think the links cool then fine post it with your own blurb.
Or are retarded.
You get to pick which one.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Some idiot wrote: "If it becomes mandatory, while driving is a privilidge not a right, one does have the right to their own property, essentially that would put our property at the will of the state."
Hello? Have you ever heard of Income tax, Sales tax, Property tax, ad infinitum?
Its called 'on-star'. its a customer 'feature', along with constant GPS type tracking of your movements. 24/7.
However currently its just to get people acclimated to the concept of others having control/monitoring. Incremental acceptance of loss of privacy.
Later it will be extended, then mandated "for our safety".. The police have been asking for this level of control for years.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm the sysadmin at a trucking company and we've had kill switches on engines as well as gps tracking for a long time. Most major carriers do, if not for hazmat, for pharmacuticals and baby formula. In fact, we have flowthrough to our EDI system so that our customers can track thier own loads if they want to and stop calling us about it. Anyone ever heard of AIRIQ?
-- Please don't use a sig that makes me hate you, do that in your post
There is a difference between tax and invasion on rights.
Some SICK FUCK has made a 634 MB AVI file of an animated goatse-guy and renamed it as "School of Rock (disc 1).avi"!
It took me 4 days to download it. Goddammit!
Maybe if we can have remote shutdown installed
:-)
into all government officials, they wont tax-and-spend and start endless wars...
That would truely promote national security!
Future News Report:
'They are signing the bill banning abortion AND women's voting - no wait, they've all slumped to the floor sleeping! - remote shutdown safety engaged! Thank Goodness - The Day Is Saved!'
a) This cuts out one method of opportunity for exploitation. Even if another X methods remain there is still value in reducing avenues for exploitation.
b) If I am a terrorist I do things the easiest and simplest way possible. If I can simply walk onto a plane with a box cutter then I do that rather fucking around with complex plans.
If I can effectively walk away with a truck preloaded with bad shit I will do that rather than committing a bunch of other independant crimes as a lead up, spending time loading up the toxic shit myself. As a terrorist or criminal the more fucking around I have to do before I commit my crime the more chance I have of getting caught.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Box cutters, explosives etc.
Much better to put these imobalisers on guns to stop crimes being commited with them.
I mean if it took weeks to catch some recreational snipers, who wernt even trying that hard not to be caught, then what will happen when a few military trained terrorist snipers go on a killing spree ??
This Department of Fatherland Security are the modern day equivalent of McCarthy witch hunts. Get every one fearing an emeny, and you can pass whatever laws you want.
Still I bet you wouldnt sell weapons to people who would use them against you.
Seems to me that its a mindset issue, that terorist mindsets like bush and bin Laden are the problem, not the mechanics.
Such technology should always be counter balanced with consideration of problematic mindsets, who are the controller behind such technology and machinery.
Is such technology making it possible to effectively shut down major highways during rush hour by simply getting ahold of the controls of the technology to do so?
In warfare, isn't control over communications and transportation top targets?
First of all I have to admit it: from where I'm sitting, everything looks like the thin end of a wedge, except the middle of an already-driven-in wedge. But vehicles are just the proving ground. The real target is people. How long do you imagine it will be before every child born is fitted with an implant in their brain, that will beam their location and what they are thinking by satellite to the Government, and allow the Government to remotely administer electric shocks?
You'll be taking a stroll in the country, minding your own business, then see a DMOS*. Your brain chip will zap a signal back to HQ: Impure Thought alert at grid reference SK2715! A sinister black-clad figure spots that you were up to no good. He jabs a small red button with his finger. Bzzzzzzzzzt!
Then they will fit bladder and bowel sensors to everyone, to prevent misuse of public toilets {you won't be allowed into a public toilet unless you actually need to go}. Some nosey git with nothing better to do will be reading through the logs one evening. They will notice that your bladder reading dropped from 500ml. to 50ml. some time earlier while your GPS co-ordinates showed you were nowhere near a bathroom; and next thing you know, you're up on an impropriety charge.
*DMOS: Desirable Member of the Opposite Sex
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
It might be that this is the first time a GAS truck was stopped using that kind of device, but satellite shutdown and monitoring of moving vehicles (trucks, cars, etc) is available for many years already.
Oh! Right! And because everything can be abused, we should go forth unto the world making more stupid mistakes that could have been avoided.
Ebola Zaire kits for Christmas!
A free tennis ball bomb inside every box of CocoaPuffs!
A television w/DVD player in every SUV's dashboard!
Fuckheaded right-wingers with an internet connection!
Fuck you for being so presumptuous. I said it was a nice idea, but there are more cons than pros, you stupid fuck.
- - - - - - -
"All hail the glory of the Hypnotoad."
It will make the Deputy's job in Smokey and the Bandit a lot easier though!
In the media, infrequently asked questions include:
Okie, time for work. Have a nice day, everyone!
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!
The nasty McGuffins in movies just aren't. If it's unstable, no-one wants to transport it, and will neutralize on-site. About the worse thing I've seen is used transformer oils (PCBs) and cutting oils.
There _are_ serious road-vector hazards (LPG, halogens), but no one is talking of them.
Why aren't all cars and trucks completely computer controlled by now anyway? It's so sad seeing such advanced technology available and I still have to freaking drive hours going to work and back every day.
... when I press this button, a signal will go out via satellite and the world's oil supply will come to a standstill... *evil laugh*
- I am made of meat.
I have wire-cutters.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
How is this overly useful? We won't know that an attack is coming by truck until one hits something...at that point, do we just shut down every truck in the country wirelessly, as we grounded all the planes on 9/11?
initiative.
from a comment alternatively titled:
bounty for corepirate nazi felons increased
that's right. we'll see your phonie ?pr? scams, & raise you a private communications system based on the creators' newclear power mandate. gooed luck?
they think everything's always just about payper monIE.
that's not the case here, as yOUR entire planet/population is in crisis mode, due to the confused thinking/poor training of a handful of stock markup fraud execrable.
there's a real risk of overheating (peacing off) the main processor. you don't want that?
consultations are in order.
Remote disabling in all vehicles sounds good to me.
After all, if you've nothing to hide you have no reason to speed away from police. So nothing changes for law-abiding citizens but dangerous criminals are brought to a halt.
Sounds like a great invention.
This company has already created a solution for position-based asset/fleet management over GSM networks. Regular SMS is used to send control messages to a service centre, apparently with maps on a desktop PC.
And in other news, based on these tests the US Government signed a contract for full support for follow-up product for remote control of mobile military weaponry. You know, to make sure control doesn't fall into the wrong hands. The product, called SkyNet...
And in Sov.. I mean Putin's Russia, the Politicians tell the Businessmen what to do!
The remote truck shutdown is largely pointless, as as blocking the radio will render the truck protected. Thus a terrorist can drive it without fear of the satellite.
Homeland security will eventually be providing all US citizens with "protective" cells to live in throughout our lives. These could be organised into a community structure we could call "prison".
This is the ultimate in a safe and secure homeland. No crime, no rape, no murders, no terrorists. Bliss!!
Maybe the same money and effort should go into aleviating the problems in those areas of the world that produce terrorists.
Looks like I'll have to keep drivnig my old '81 Datsun 510. No computer, no fuel injection.Just good old fashioned carbuerator. The elecetronics are the radio, lights and alternator. And the car will run with out the alternator as long as you don't use the first two. Oh, and for all the one that will say it's a gas waster, it still get's about 30mpg. that's better than most new cars.
Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
Instead of this remote cut-off device, they'll install The Clapper.
Furthermore, there are a *fuckload* of cars and lorries out there. Are they seriously suggesting retrofitting such a device to existing vehicles? How, exactly, would they be able to do this?
"With all of the police pursuits in California, can mandatory GPS and disabling devices in all vehicles be far away?" Well, the next time I want to evade police, I'll disable the GPS box or buy my vehicle out-of-state.
Holes in the plan aside, given how susceptible police are to litigation, the first time someone is injured in a crash after their car is shut down at 70 mph, they're going to sue to bejesus out of the cops. And probably win.
blog |
Ahh, good old alarmist Slashdot. I, for one, am glad to hear these unfounded paranoid predictions every so often. It makes me feel quite reasonable and level-headed, even though I always have to sit with my back to the wall in restaurants.
[insert witty quote here]
Oh, gee, I can't wait for this.
If this happens, watch "old" cars become a hot commodity... either that or people will just buy into it like sheep. Yeah, the sheep thing is more likely.
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
It will be oh so much more an easy task to stop a tanker for hijacking and uses seen fit by radicals. This is a stupid idea that goes beyond excessive control on the government's behalf. If satellites still cannnot be secured, what makes them think they can secure the easiest way to stop a heavy fast moving truck.
I hear you, fair enough, lets run with the idea this is supposed to stop a truck already hijacked because nobody would ever be able to figure out or aquire the knowledge to remove or disable this device. I'm so glad they were able to stop this truck full of high explosives and radioactive material because now since it's not moving there would be no way those explosives could be detonated and even if so there would be no way radioactive material would spread into the wind I mean...they turned the engine off using a satellite.
Mod it Overrated, mod it Troll, mod it Flamebait.
The assumed ignorance "That will never happen" is why shit like 9/11 was *allowed* to go down. A better investment would be to address the hatred that inspires such acts not start choking the targets of it and removing their liberties .
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
"...the RISKS are obvious."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Most Europeans (except the British) have first hand experience of war and real lack of freedom.
That's not true. Most europeans have no concept of war. Most of those that have experienced the privations of war are dead (except in those countries that can't resist a good civil war).
Countries like the US and Britain think it is a good idea to invade a defenceless country and even worse, try to make out that those that do not want to kill defenceless people are cowards
Oh please, get off your high horse. France didn't get involved because it was still owed a lot of money from arms sales in the 1980's and illegal sales in the 1990's.(the war referred to in the following quote is the Iran/Iraq war)
In 1987 the Paris-based Le Monde estimated that, between 1981 and 1985, the value of French arms transfers to Iraq was US$5.1 billion, which represented 40 percent of total French arms exports. Paris, however, was forced to reschedule payment on most of its loans to Iraq because of Iraq's hard-pressed wartime economy and did so willingly because of its longer range strategic interests...French military sales to Iraq were important for at least two reasons. First, they represented high-performance items. Iraq received attack helicopters, missiles, military vehicles, and artillery pieces from France. Iraq also bought more than 400 Exocet AM39 air-to-surface missiles and at least 200 AS30 laserguided missiles between 1983 and 1986. Second, unlike most other suppliers, France adopted an independent and unambiguous arms sales policy towards Iraq. France did not tie French arms commitments to Baghdad's politico-military actions...(source)
More recently, France helped move missile material from China: "The French connection - brokering the deal among the Chinese producer, the Syrian land transporter and the Iraqi buyer - is no great secret to the world's arms merchants. French intelligence has long been aware of it. The need for a French export license as well as UN sanctions approval may have been averted by disguising it as a direct offshore sale from China to Syria." (source)
France didn't get involved because it was owed money and knew once the deals were exposed wouldn't receive a franc.
That is why countries like France and Germany do not want to go to war for oil.
Really? So by implication the US and GB went to war for oil. Can you support this? I'm not aware of any "oil dividend" either nation has received...no spoils of war. You shouldn't spout rhetoric unless you can support it.
The real reason france and germany didn't go to war is because going to war would interfere with vacation time.
Germany has the shortest work week of any industrialized nation in the world. Depending upon the source, the average German work week ranges between 35 and 38.5 hours. In addition, Germany has a number of national holidays, which decrease the calendar work year that already includes between four and six weeks vacation. (source)
Of course, the french have that 35 hour work week with a similar amount of vacation time. See, that's why all the useful things like the Internet and computer you are using and the airplane you take on vacation were invented in the US.
No, no. You don't get the point.
The question is if it's not much more efficient to secure said transports "conventionally", i.e. policemen, security, trained personnel, than to rely on a computer-based system that, if it fails or gets hacked, can really f*** up things.
I don't need a signature.
The only electronic things are the radio and the revcounter. Just how I like it.
Not many people are aware that our nation's high explosive, biological, and chemical weapons are at RISK, and could fall into the hands of terrorists! To combat this, the pentagon has designed a new "detonation device" that upon signal from the correct handset will explode all these munitions simultaneously, so that they don't FALL INTO THE WRONG HANDS. HA HA Suck on that terrorists! I are now free to feel safer.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The story specifically applies to hazardous waste, not to consumer vehicles. This would fall under the same laws as the rest of saftey regulations. The article also didn't mention who had the remote control to the vehicles. It may be that the company itself is entirely responsible for maintaining control of the vehicles in which case the government isn't control their property at all.
I mean really, everyone keeps talking about Homeland Security as if solely a Bush ill but keep in mind that the Democrats voted for it too. And, the Democrats on the campaign trail are saying that we need to have MORE.
This is my sig.
Parents of teenagers take note, soon you will be able to shut down the car as soon as your kid start driving in the direction of that skanky girl/boyfriend's house!
What the government really needs to do is to ban vehicles altogether and require everything, including hazardous waste, to be carried by hand, in sacks, depending on the availability of suitable sacks.
Then, we could install GPS trackers and remote shutdown devices in people, and if one of these stout but horribly deformed hazardous waste carrying-peoples were to get personjacked, we could shut them down immediately!
Yay future! Yay technology!
When they put the disabling device on cop cars, it won't be long before every criminal has a disabler. ;-)
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
Forget the A-team approach, just remotely disable the vehicle, re-enable when you've taken over (or disable the disabler)
BTW, with all the video taped car chases, this kind of device gets proposed for _all_ California cars every year or so.
The odds of me leaving any such device intact in my car is exactly 0.
TODO: create/find/steal funny sig.
I will take my chances protecting myself. I don't need, nor want to be monitored by ANYONE. Having these ' features ' creep into society under the guise of 'helping' only creates the acceptance of the loss of privacy and control by the general pubic... In time people wont even blink when it becomes mandated, and when they DO start watching when you go to the grocery, and what brand of pop you just bought. Which the governments will gladly accept as individuals that can actual think for themselves or take care of them selves are a threat.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
(since only god guys read ./ ...)
What if the truck has one of these onboard?
http://phrack.org/show.php?p=60&a=13 {Phrack - Low Cost and Portable GPS Jammer}
As you can read these are not exactly state-of-the-art devices.
Will this be another case of the multy million $ system subverted by a 10$ gadget?
As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
Does this system require an active signal to allow the truck to keep moving? (Probably not.) How stupid do we think the terrorists are? Will possession of aluminium foil be prosecuted under the DMCA or the USA PATRIOT act?
What of the question of safety systems on the satellites? One or more of the units gets whacked by a micro-meteor and shorts out. Now you have the possibility of trucks being shut down over a wide area on interstates, local roads, wherever and causing accidents (i.e. cars/trucks slamming into the now disabled hazmat vehicles, or the drivers losing control and slamming into bridges...).
Think of all the hazmat all over the roads where these accidents have occurred. Do we have enough skilled clean-up crews available for such a possibility?
Visualize Whirled Peas
One can only imagine the gridlock that would happen if the recent solar flares were to play havoc on the satellites that are controlling shutdown of these tankers. And you thought your commute was bad now...
One sheet of aluminum foil over the satellite receiver unit and bingo, Mr. Satellite can't shut down my truck.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
...to NOT live in California. I'll add this one to the list of things to relieve us from our freedoms.
Time to get a classic car. No electronics to be controlled by anyone.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
So now all they have to do is spend a few hundred and get a GPS jammer, oops no longer can we track it. That little monitoring device, its probably always putting out a signal which means somebody could scan the freq's, figure out which it is and jam it as well...or maybe it requires some "keep alive" signal which they would have to spoof. Sure its all complex but its not that hard to do, hell you can find the GPS jammer stuff via google and anybody good with HAM could do the other part. Oh yea but we can all feel safe by the fact that next time the main server for this system crashes the freeways can grind to a halt as all has-mat vehicles stop at the same time.
and put the Control Chips in everyboy's head now?
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Why not? A hijacked propane truck is a BLEVE (boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion) waiting to happen in the hands of someone that knows what they are doing. The ability to stop a truck cold if someone figures out it's been hijacked could be a blessing. The Columbine little darlings tried and failed to set off propane fueled bombs in the school. If they had succeeded....
Now if they can use satellites to keep a truck going 54 MPH from trying to pass a truck going 53 MPH and blocking both lanes of the highway my traffic woes will be ended.
This will prolly get yanked by the copyright Nazis but what the hell it fits... Here crucify me. My uncle has a country place That no one knows about He says it used to be a farm Before the Motor Law And on Sundays I elude the eyes And hop the Turbine Freight To far outside the Wire Where my white-haired uncle waits Jump to the ground As the Turbo slows to cross the borderline Run like the wind As excitement shivers up and down my spine Down in his barn My uncle preserved for me an old machine For fifty odd years To keep it as new has been his dearest dream I strip away the old debris That hides a shining car A brilliant red Barchetta From a better vanished time I fire up the willing engine Responding with a roar Tires spitting gravel I commit my weekly crime Wind In my hair Shifting and drifting Mechanical music Adrenaline surge... Well-weathered leather Hot metal and oil The scented country air Sunlight on chrome The blur of the landscape Every nerve aware Suddenly ahead of me Across the mountainside A gleaming alloy air car Shoots towards me, two lanes wide I spin around with shrieking tires To run the deadly race Go screaming through the valley As another joins the chase Drive like the wind Straining the limits of machine and man Laughing out loud with fear and hope I've got a desperate plan At the one-lane bridge I leave the giants stranded at the riverside Race back to the farm To dream with my uncle at the fireside Rush
27b-6
GPS works one way, The truck still has to tell someone where it is. Likewise, the truck has to allow someone to shut it down.
How securely it can do both, is the key.
Keeping a track of trucks and sources means its harder to illegally get the "fill".
On paper, it sounds like a good idea.
I'll hold onto my very old 1976 Chevy Blazer. No computer to get fried by EMP, no GPS gizmo, no way in hell to stop it via satellite.
The expense of keeping it up and running is almost coming even with the costs (police state wise) of getting a new car.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Sounds like another press release from the Ministry of Truth.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
What if the system is hacked? Has anyone thought about the implications of that? After all, NASA even has not been immune to hackers. Insane traffic jams or accidents can happen if the satellite control fell into the wrong hands. The idea is good, putting it in practise? I don't think so.
The phaomnneil pweor of the hmuan mnid. Fcuknig amzanig eh!
OK. Let me see if I follow you. If the government takes your car then they have violated your property rights but if they take your money they haven't. Interesting logic.
Unless satellite technology has improved in the last year, would the vehicle not lose communication with the satellite as soon as it is covered up?
Ever tried to pull a truck load for Wal-Mart, Kraft, Tyson, or Bristol-Myers? They all require GPS tracking from the companies that they do buisness with. Legislation in this area is somewhat unnessessary because the buisness world already recognizes the need. This will only affect small companies (owner operators, mom and pop type places) not your big carriers like JB Hunt and Prime who've had at least the tracking part (Qual Comm, Highwaymaster) for years.
-- Please don't use a sig that makes me hate you, do that in your post
I think it was modern marvels a couple of months ago that had an hour long show about Haz-Mat Transportation. I used to be in the shipping business and had to deal with Haz-Mats so I was interested. They road along with a trucker that had all the Haz-Mat certs and endorsements and showed the GPS tracking, tracking station, remote guage reading, remote kill, etc. They talked to Chem-Trec that pretty much was the first to track Haz-Mats end-to-end, pick-up to delivery. They talked about the placarding system and how that started.
They started placarding trains carrying dynamite and separating the explosives from the passenger cars. (Salesmen were going on trains with a satchel full of TNT which was their product demo kit.) After several trains blew up in transit, they decided to put explosives only in separate freight cars. When they used the first placards on trains some good 'ol boys in the countryside would shoot at the placards for target practice. Just like they do with stop signs. Several more trains blew up. Big surprise.
Then the show talked about special handling and transportation containers for stuff like nuclear waste. No Homer Simpson here, they are REAL careful with this stuff. They made a container that was so tough that they broadsided it with a train engine at 90 miles and hour and it just put a little ding on the outside and no cracks.
It was a really cool show if you are interested in this stuff, but as others have stated, this is hardly new technology. It's easily several years old.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.
I've been reading all of the geekoid, techno ways to bypass or disable this device with growing amusement. The bill would require truck disabling devices, global positioning or other 'location reporting systems' on all hazardous material haulers.
The hazardous material is in the tanker trailer. If I'm a terrorist bent on destruction I'll bring my own tractor without a disabling device. Pretty low tech, but so was flying fully fueled jetliners into buildings....
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Yep! I reckon if I were Rumsfeld^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HSmokey, I could stall Bandit's car on some train tracks, and be rid of him once and for all...
This is such a brilliant tool! Imagine, a One Party State, where "by the Will of God" all political and ideological opponents keep dying in unfortunate traffic accidents. Stalling in 80 MPH traffic in front of semis carrying highly flammable materials, for example.
"Hello! OnStar!... Yes Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Nader is approaching the intersection now, and so is the speeding armored car. Yes Mr. Ashcroft, I can do that. God bless America, Sir!"
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
With all of the police pursuits in California, can mandatory GPS and disabling devices in all vehicles be far away?
With all the caloric intake of people at McDonalds in California, can a mass coronary failure across the entire state be far away?
has anyone else just stepped back for a second to count the number of federal law enforcement agencies this country has? We make the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany look better. Let's hit the list:
Secret Service (SS anyone?)
Homeland Security
Central Intelligence Agency
National Security Agency
Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Immigration and Naturalization Service
U.S. Marshalls
Drug Enforcement Agency
Not to mention local and state law enforcement
There are probably more, but each one of these has their own little paramilitary branch, like a swat team, that goes in and takes people out. Is it really necessary to have this much? I mean c'mon. The KGB handled their shit pretty well and the SS and Gestapo handled their shit very well, why do we need >= 9 organizations to do this?
Which of these departments are going to be able to shut off our trucks? A few of them, all of them? And for what reasons will they be able to? These are important questions. How far will these devices go? Will auto manufacturers be required to sell cars with them enabled one day? Will "suspicious" travel patterns make YOU the target of some unsubstanciated investigation? Or will the government say "This is as far as it goes"? Will they put rules into a computer that shut your car off when you try to get somewhere you shouldn't be? Once our cars are all tagged what will be next, our person?
It's okay if they put this on hazardous trucks, but please, leave it at that.
I don't want the next slashdot story to read "Truck transmitters a success. Feds consider putting them in cars also."
The people who own and drive hazmat trucks *WANT* this. This isn't the government messing with your right to drive on the highway, it's hazmat handlers in pursuit of safety.
So yes, taxes are different from a car. because, get this. You earn your money minus taxes, you didnt actually own that portion of the money unless you are entitled to a tax refund at the end of the fiscal year. You do however, buy a car with your hard earned money, do you buy your taxes?
I knew i could fit a reductio de absurdum in there.
With all of the police pursuits in California, can mandatory GPS and disabling devices in all vehicles be far away?
With murder now illegal, how long before we can't even pick our nose without danger of arrest?
while driving is a privilidge not a right,
This is off topic, I know, but there are people who believe driving is now a right.
I am not sure whether that GPS tracking case has been ruled on by the supreme court yet, but i do know that some suspected murder led police right to the body by the use of a hidden GPS. Privacy issues as well
This was a little different IMHO. Here it wasn't an onboard gps like the one described in the article, it was a "bug", for lack of a better word, planted under warrant by the police. I don't know if it's going to the SCOTUS but the state supreme court said it was OK if done under a warrant.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
Easy. They'll just control the trucks using Windows (way too easy)...
Hey freaks: now you're ju
===========
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
What if the tankers are being towed by wreckers?
Of course then whole country could be shut down by some unheard-of, strong electromagnetic disturbance, like X30 scale solar flare, but what are the chances of that happenigh, eh? Nothing to worry about.
C)Acquire access to one of the remote shutdown utilities and remotely disable the vehicle on the expressway when it reaches a given location. The resultant traffic backup makes for a high casualty count when your cohorts detonate their car bomb next to the truck. The combination of a large quantity of flammable material and a car bomb could be quite dangerous - the car bomb injures and backs up traffic while the gasoline spill bursts into flames, denying emergency crews access to the victims.
No, I don't feel any safer with this kind of system. We should be working on destroying the causes of terrorism rather than merely applying patches.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I was in the oil and hazardous spill cleanup industry for a while and one of the things that surprised me was that when transporting pressurized containers with unknown contents private companies had to depressurize it (usually by having someone from the police department rifle it from a safe distance) while the state could move these unknown chemicals still pressurized. This was a big issue especially when dealing with methlabs. Now the big question is do these laws apply just to private industries or do they also affect the government's transportation of hazardous materials. Also, this will likely raise the costs of companies in this field many of whom are already financially unstable which brings up the issue of whether these should be completely private companies or if the service they provide is for the greater good and should be funded by government.
Here's an example of how American security relies on private citizens keeping our freedom, while corporate/government "citizens" are more constrained. Satellite can shutdown corporate/government vehicles that provide services, like hazardous material transport, from which private vehicles are prohibited. That increases safety in the face of attacks on those vehicles. Protecting the private vehicles from central control protects our transport infrastructure from an attack on the central control. Corporate/government systems benefit from a client/server model, while private property benefits from peer-to-peer, and everyone benefits from the integration of the two different architectures.
--
make install -not war
My point was that it WILL become mandatory.. it isnt now i agree.. first they have to get acceptance from the masses to give up their freedom willingly..
...that is already under way...
Then you get hit with a law.. and opting-out wont be an option.
Much as black boxes are now.. your car wont pass inspection in some states if its not intact and working. My car is currently under recall due to the fact the ECM's wernt monitoring enough data points to make some states happy.. and they were rejecting the cars..
Before you call me paranoid, its a slow process
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I also fail to see how can be practical at all. There all all sorts of bypasses besides the one you mentioned even if the remote kill is operationally sound. The only thing this will acomplish is making it so that only big dumb companies can carry hazmat.
There are plenty of holes in the stupid system to start off with. How will the system know the truck has been hijacked? Because it goes where it's not supposed to be? That sounds completely impractical for independent truckers. Besides that, a clever terrorist will know what materials are moved where by observing them. It would be easy enough to find a hazmat truck that goes to the wrong place and blow it up without ever bothering to hijack the thing. The biggest hole, of course, is the rail system that carries far greater hazards far closer to where people live and play. Anyone who wants to kill everyone in Baton Rouge, for example, has only to derail and destroy a train full of chlorine next to LSU while it passes by early one morning. This will save terrorist the trouble of dealing with a truck driver and turning off the stupid box.
All this kill switch is going to do is add costs to everyone else. It will eliminate independent truckers because they won't be able to use their turcks for hausing anything else. Eliminating competition imediatly raises costs. Then it will inconvenience the big dumb companies that will take the buisness and pass all of their costs on to all of us. Besides the big dumb overhead inherent in big dumb companies and the forced ineffiecent use of trucks, it will inevitably strand their drivers when those drivers get lost or suffer equipment failure. The big dumb company will then pass their costs off again. What a stupid waste this is!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Exactly. They will only stop the truck if it's involved in a crime or suspected to be involved in a crime. Just like they would stop YOU if you were involved in a crime or suspected to be involved in a crime. Are you really that thick?
Lots of guys put trashcans over their dishes at night so dispatch won't bother them while they're sleeping
So basically, in the future I might not need my tinfoil hat, but my car will?
I don't know if you were paying attention during the analysis of the WTC attacks, but the guys with the box cutters spent two or three years planning the attacks. They had false IDs, covert means to deliver money and intelligence, and a whole support infrastructure in place before they "just carried a bunch of box cutters onto a plane." This was a completely professional job.
...), insert IED, and drive it to the doorstep of the target. A school bus isn't a threat, right?
Given that, future acts of terrorism will probably be equally complex. Having the ability to shut down a hazmat tanker won't do squat to deter the bad guys. They'll purchase a school bus, mod it to look like it's got kids inside (or worse
This proposed "remote shutdown" thing/crap is probably a result of two situations: a) a company looking for a way to peddle it's crap; and b) the Homeland Secutiry folks looking to demonstrate that they're "doing something to protect the common folks." Unfortunately, this does nothing to address honest-to-ghod real security. It's just meant to placate Joe and Jane Sixpack into going about their daily lives.
How about a film of of one of these trucks being disabled by terrorists on a road that always gets lots of traffic. The news crew can get lots of footage of dead people who were poisoned in their cars in rush hour when someone nails the truck with a shoulder fired missile. Great stuff, eh? Really stupid.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
As a former hazmat hauler-gasoline/diesel in the bay area-this will not work as it is to easy to by pass.
My son also hauls gasoline/diesel and a company he worked for had several "added features" that the drivers were able to by pass very easily.Some rigs even already have the "shut engine down" feature installed and is a pain in the ass when you are stuck in traffic grid lock as the engine WILL shut down if no forward movement is NOT detected
Amigian and proud of it!
Wait until Bill Gates becomes the architect for car computers. He won't stop at just disabling vehicles, he'll offer to steer them to their destination.
This will make Windows viruses look like minor annoyances.
the issue was whether it could legally be mandatory, not when they would use such a system.
GM has been putting automatic shutdown and tracking in vehicles for a few years now as On-Star and all of their computers incorporate black-box recording of accidents (although it's constantly overwritten and only gets saved when there is a collision). So, at some point the NHSTA could mandate all vehicles with On-Star be registared and all new cars incorporate it to facilitate highway safety...after all if airbags kill people, passive safety does not work so we need active safety to stop accidents from happening... Don't pay your license fees? No car. Don't pay your insurance? No car. Drive to many miles? No car. Speed? No car.
but if cars and trucks can be tracked, and stopped;
couldn't the powers that be also handle the 'accelorator'? this way i get in my car, type in destination, and let traffic control handle it from there? hell, if i catch up on a handful of things while those that 'allow us the privilage' to use the roads drive the car, this function would be very useful, and not just another way to be short sighted.
I believe the point was that if you have a deadly weapon that you're going to put in a single individual's hands, it is not a bad idea to put a check in there that allows society to have a check over that single individual's control of that weapon. We wouldn't give the police the right to use deadly force and not put any safety checks in for stopping them if they are abusing it, would we? So why do we hand over the keys of a car to a person, without the ability to stop them from abusing it?
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
This is my truck, there are many others like it but this one is mine!
Hazardous Waste Trucks don't kill people,
People kill people !
You know, if this technology is installed on all motor vehicles there would probably be ways to circumvent it. In a high speed chase it would be more useful to cause a traffic jam ahead to prevent the perp from taking a desired route. How would you like to be used as a tool for the law?
The real end-game here is cars that fly-by-wire and can semi-intelligently (at least better than most drivers) avoid doing obviously stupid things. Think putting your car into reverse instead of drive or vice/versa and driving into the garage wall or another car when you meant to pull out of your parking spot. Also think about assistive technology like a newtork of cars relaying warnings to each other like a rear-end collision sends a warning up the chain of cars on the expressway faster than human perception activating a warning buzzer and dashboard light.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
People have been slapping LoJack and other vehicle recovery systems onto their cars for years, yet cars still get stolen. If your car is valuable enough, high-tech thieves will always be able to disable any alarm or tracking system you have installed. They can drive the car into a shielded garage (or simply deep into an underground garage) and work on it at their leisure, without being tracked.
The principle at work here is identical to the principle that drives software piracy. If someone gets hold of your protected object and has free reign to do anything he wants to its guts, then any protection you can built into the object is surmountable given a sufficiently determined cracker/thief with the right tools.
If I were a terrorist I would make sure that I properly marked my weapon delivery vehicle as a hazmat carrier. McVean and Nichols did it all wrong and put theirs in a UHAUL - sheesh
These are not the
if ((options == (__DESTROYVEHICLE | __CRASHVEHCILE)) && (current->uid = 0)) {
disablevehicle(vid);
}
retval = -EINVAL;
Sig under construction since 1998.
What keeps attackers from hijacking the remote controls for the truck instead of the truck itself? I hope there is a better authentication protocol than used in those DMCA-protected garage door openers :)
This follows the same lines as gun control. Criminals will not install the device and you won't be able to shutdown the criminals. It just opens the doors for exploitation of honest people.
How cool will it be when planes get fitted with these things?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Not In Back My Yard, huh? Reminds me of those backwoods 'folk' saying "Whut can ah do yah fer?"
the challenge of controlling rogue hazardous waste vehicles that could pose a threat to homeland security
HAHAHAHA!... cough.. cough... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Thank you my american friends. Life in Europe would be so boring w/o that shit from oversea...
Slamming the brakes in that scenario is a Felony here. Part of the new Road Rage laws. Failing to yield to a passing vehicle is also a traffic infraction, albeit minor. Forcing someone off the road is a felony.
And not to be a jerk... I don't mind if u drive the limit, but i hate people that drive UNDER the limit in the fast lane. Also slowing down to hold up traffic is a Class B moving violation. Speeding is usually a class C violation, so you would be subject to a worse ticket (ie more expensive)
This is all part of the vast right wing conspiricy first brought to our attention by the all knowing Hilary Clinton. The Republicans plan on passing legislation mandating that all vehicles in the United States be equiped with these boxes. Then on election day the evil Republicans will shut down cars owned by registered Democrats and Independents and only allow registered Republics to drive!
Republicans will finally be able to secure their stranglehood on the US goverment and begin the process of cutting down all of the trees, murdering all of the minorities and homosexuals and forcing the remaining citizens to turn over their first born children and pledge alligence to oil! We must put a stop to this madness before it begins, but first, we must save the whales, pull out of Iraq, stop global warming and repeal Bush's tax cuts for the rich which have destroyed our economy. Then we can begin stopping this madness of the black boxes.
Now imagine Timothy McVeigh in the control room of this system....
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Well, excellent for the United Snakes, although I'd hate to see it implemented in my own country.
Will Aahnold still be governor?
Bill Wattenburg's Truck-Stopping Device (TSD) for Hijacked Trucks.
OK, McVeigh, let's roll!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
All the really scary stuff couldn't go missing for weeks a at a time without someone noticing. Second, the materials requried for transfering this stuff are probably on a FBI watch list somewhere. Third, hopefully the agency in charge of tracking these things will notice that one of their hazmat trucks has suddenly gone off the air.
I agree that terrorist are generlly not stupid and this is why they use a simple plan.
9/11 worked because they first time they did anything related to their attack the planes were already in the air.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Aren't they the most hazordous material ever created by mankind? I agree they don't blowup or anything but I wouldn't want that stuff in my drinking water.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
If the trucks are "protected" against hijacking via some whoopdie doo satellite transciever, then I can predict that a few things will happen:
1) Terrorists will discover a way to disable the system... Jam it, trashcan it, disconnect the cut-out circuit, etc... Generally, they're pretty stupid, but they seem to have a propensity for getting around techno-solutions...
2) Terrorists will go after unprotected trucks... Put on your thinking caps boys and girls... It's time for a trip to conception land:
A) Gasoline tanker... Ummm, think about it...
B) Diesel tanker... Smash it into a wall, the diesel becomes an aerosol, small flame ignites... Slightly more work than a gas tanker, but pretty good results (from a terrorist's perspective)
C) A simple van - fill the back with tanks of bleach and ammonia... Drive down the street while spraying said substance out the rear of the van... Chlorine gas, people sick... Good results (from terrorist's perspective)
D) The Ryder rent-a-truck with fertilizer and diesel trick - next to (water plant | sewage plant | electrical generation plant | substation, etc...>
E) Cook up some meth, or some LSD, cause it to backfeed into the water system right close to the plant... Ummm, whole town's trippin'....
F) Couple pieces of heavy steel wire, launched over the high-transmission lines w/a modified potato cannon... Do it in the right place, knocks out a large area... cf. recent east coast blackout...
G) Get jobs as cleaning people in a few highrise buildings, spray glass-eating acid on the windows over the weekend... Wind comes along, flying shards of glass...
H) Just remove all the manhole covers you can find - all over the place...
Anyway - I think you get the picture here - there's really no concrete 100% effective way of preventing terrorism. And this bullshit where they say we're going to only install this on Hazmat vehicles is a crock too... It might start there, but that slope becomes extremely slippery, pretty fast. It's best not to even start down it at all, because it's not going to have any measurable effect at all - OK, maybe against the one whackadoo who steals a truck and goes joyriding, but how often has that happened (I think Fox has all the video of it - and one was with a bus, and one was with a tank...)
I vote NO FSCKING WAY!
this is we need Instant Runoff Voting.
kill the two party system.
kill government by the lesser of two evils.
kill the party-line campaign donations (castrate lobbying).
return to actually campaigning on the issues.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Imagine the US gets attacked by an organised force. Suddenly, the enemy has the full ability to completely disable the transport infrastructure. Not only that, with a minimum of their own vehicles they can have a replacement that they fully control within days.
You're completely wrong. Even if every commercial transport truck in the US were equiped with a shutdown feature like this (lots of them already are, just not by satellite.), that's only commercial trucking. You might not realize this (it's only incredibly fucking obvious), but the military has an enormous transport system of it's own, which would certainly not be equiped with such an insecure system.
Sounds to me like you don't know what you're talking about.
With all of the police pursuits in California, can mandatory GPS and disabling devices in all vehicles be far away?
There's no need for such devices. Starting a chase on the freeway is suicide... there are agents everywhere. No one has ever succeeded before the 2nd movie^H^H^H^H^H historical document, unless you count Jennifer Garner driving off the pier and into the ocean. I guess agents can't swim.
The government has had a plan to remotely disable vehicles for some time. It's called OBD III, and it's original intent was to allow vehicles emitting excess emissions to be remotely shut down.
But don't take my word for it, Google it.
"With all of the police pursuits in California, can mandatory GPS and disabling devices in all vehicles be far away?"
Simply put... No, that won't happen. Do you know why there are so many police chases in California? Because the police enjoy them, think about it, I know I certainly would love chasing around bad guys at high speeds then beating the snot out of them once they were caught. Here in Toronto the police were banned from chasing cars if the persuit became to dangerous (i.e. high speeds on city streets). Because innocent bystanders not to mention the fleeing criminals themselves were getting injured and killed all the time. But of course nothing like that would ever happen in the U.S. because of the sheer amount of power the police have.
The problem in the U.S. is that policing has been turned into a business. There are many people making large sums of money from enforcing nonsense laws, such as marijuana possesion. What reasoning is there behind spending millions of dollars a year on busting teenage kids for $10 worth of weed and sending them to jail till their 30? Not only does the state end up spending even more money on keeping those kids in jail but it also screws up their lives. What is more likely to mess up someones life, smoking a joint and getting stoned for a couple hours or going to jail for ten years?
Extra security in airports? Hell no, I use airports! I don't want any damned Ashcroft crony frisking me in no airport. I've got rights dammit! And no cameras at the stoplights to see if I'm speeding, and no sniffing my network to see if I'm sharing music.
But go ahead and slap equally stupid measures on trucks, because I don't drive a truck. It's okay with me...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
the Homeland Secutiry folks looking to demonstrate that they're "doing something to protect the common folks."
I wonder how many Slashdotters are against GPS tracking in cars but in favor of universal health care? How can they live with such fundamental conflict in their lives?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Oh my god!
"eventually for stopping high-speed chases or tracking fleeing felons."
So they'll require all cars to have one in case the fleeing felon steals my car? Or would they take it one step further and require all persons to have microchips for tracking that "would be used to find kidnapping victims and fleeing felons, not (wink wink) for developing marketing data for sale to the private sector." I don't trust the govt. *that* much. (Why? You have nothing to hide!) How about the frequency of my attendance at a local strip joint?
How about applications for detecting restraining order violations when I inadvertently travel within 1000 feet of the protected person?
I'd rather put my own tracking device on my car both to make cool maps and in case it was stolen. That seems reasonable enough, it's just the issue about requiring it that bothers me.
So now we have a technology to remotely disable a truck. But the actual problem is not the truck - the danger is the load on the trailer that the truck is hauling.
Unless this technology allows you to detect the specific trailer (or trailers in the case of B-Doubles and road trains) attached to the truck, and for law enforcement to search the system for a specific trailer_id to see which truck it is attached to, hooking-up a different truck to the dangerous load will render the system useless.
Even tracking the trailers as well would not stop someone transferring the dangerous load to a different trailer. Detecting this event might be achieved by matching correlating GPS coordinates of parked units over a period of several minutes or more.
Perhaps in conjunction with this a "stun gun" for trucks would be more helpful. Police armed with such a device would be able to stop a runaway or fleeing truck in its tracks regardless of what load it may be carrying.
Any terrorist worth their weight in salt would hopefully be aware of this law.
He or she would then, prior to assuming control of a hazardous waste material hauler, disable such a device as to undermine the entire effort.
Pointless I say!
A simple aluminum foil over the antenna can disable the signal comming from Satelite. Where do they hire these professional from?
Do I really need to say anything more?
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
You think the US govt REALLY is doing this to combat terrorism.
Haha. Just like all those post 911 laws were to combat terrorism?
"a viable solution to the challenge of controlling rogue hazardous waste vehicles that could pose a threat to homeland security,"
Sounds to me like somebody's been playing too much Blast Corps.
"I never lived in this century." --Dan Quayle
I heard a while back that if you wrap a GPS device in foil you prevent the signal from penetrating the "material". Therefore you can incase the truck in foil and keep on driving without interuption.
> So this fancy-shmancy Homeland Security plan can be defeated with a trashcan.
Outlaw trashcans.
I believe it would fall under "posession of a circumvention device".
After all, we cannot take Father^H^H^H^H^H^HHomeland security lightly!