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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?"
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!
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!"
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.
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.
The "Black box" would be about the size of a deck of cards and would look just like any other control box on the car truck.
But presumably these trucks are mass produced, and so the control box is likely to be in the same place in each one. Find out where it goes (either by industrial espionage, or just stripping one down and looking for it) and that little bit of security through obscurity is useless.
To hack it you would have to be INSIDE the control center as (I hope) they don't allow the systems on the Internet, the beam things up directly from a sat. dish on sire.
That only increases the difficulty of the attack, it doesn't make it impossible. If the control computers are on the company's network, then it may be possible to get in with a laptop and connect to the network that way. Ultimately though, if a group is resourceful and determined enough, they could just turn up with some firepower and take the place by force.
Note that I'm not screaming that the sky is falling - just pointing out that very little is impossible. I actually agree with you that this is probably a pretty good idea, for that class of transport. Making something harder to do than it's worth is what security is all about, after all.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Unlike most North Americans, most Europeans where in the middle of the cold war, most people in Germany had relatives on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
Most Europeans can drive for a couple of hours and still see how "bad" it was over there, you can still find places where you can see bullet holes in Walls. If you go through some woods you can still see bomb craters, some old, destroyed buildings.
If you go a bit east of Berlin and walk through woods and fields you can still find human remains from the battle of Berlin in '45.
If you have a Metal detector you can still find bullets, Dog Tags and other stuff.
Even though "Western Europe" was pretty much war free for the past 50 years, conflicts where always raging nearby. While the US lived in "harmony" with itself there was terrorism in Europe (think RAF in Germany for example).
Yeah, Europeans have no concept of cultural diversity either, right?
Go, get a passport and travel a bit.
If anything they were afraid of loosing Euros. But in reality the US supplied just as much, if not more, materials to Iraq than the Europeans did.
Furthermore, it is very clear that the US Government knew what Saddam was using it for. While in Germany for example there were public investigations into the involvement of the then German Government in those deals and the companies fined money, the US didn't do anything like it.
Despite that there even is Photograhic evidence that Rumsfeld was shaking hands and telling jokes with Saddam.
Well,
it looks like you still pay the price in Blood these days, but you honestly think the US went in there out of the good of their heart? When was the last time the US did something just out of pure humanism?
The reality is the US is about money (or the illusion of it), humanitarian effort don't quite fit in there.
So tell me, why exactly did the US go into Iraq (and the UK happily followed)? If it wasn't for the oil, then it was for what? WMDs?
Wow, now that was a real good argument.
Actually the Computer was invented in Germany, too bad, so was TV btw, but heck, who really cares right?
You are just jealous because people can actually live a happy life without working 50 weeks out of the year.
Furthermore, you seem to think the more people work the more productive they are, that this might not be the case somehow escapes you.
I worked in both places and I can tell you that the per hour productivity in Europe is a lot higher, when people are at work, they work, don't talk at the water cooler, but hey, it's all about stereotypes here, isn't it? No real arguments, so use stereotypes.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.