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Terror Plot, NASA, DHS Patch Alert
It was a tough decision to part with my laptop, PDA and mobile but I decided to take my chances. It only really then dawned on me the extent to which I depend on these items when I was waiting for hours to clear security ... While I could have found a public pay phone, all my phone numbers are stored in my mobile & PDA and I actually remember very few of them. I could speak to people, after somehow getting their numbers, but they could not call me back. All the usual channels that are normally available to me to get information about a delay were unavailable to me - no web access or even SMS messages to friends with access. You just have to stand in a queue like a sheep.
[...]
As has been reported, items allowed were limited to wallets/travel documents and baby/health-specific products. However, many of us brought books and papers with us also. Interestingly, Duty Free shops were open airside - although I didn't see if any electronics shops were. The focus this morning was really on what can be brought from landside to airside and they didn't seem to have thought about what you buy airside so much (although I would speculate that electronic items bought airside do not pose such a threat in that terrorists would use pre-modified devices to detonate explosives). The search at security was a remove shoes, belts etc. job - rather like being in the US :)
"First, congratulations to the Security Services for foiling this plot," writes reader ettlz, before raising a few relevant questions:
Did they need to detain someone for 90 days without trial to prevent this disaster? Would ID cards have helped?
And how long before I can travel with my notebook onto an aeroplane again, as we all know a cargo hold is no place for a lithium ion battery?
Null537 asks
Is anyone else more angry about the hassle this causes, than anything else? Terrorists spread terror, so they've hit their mark. By being foiled the plot does an amazing amount of damage on its own, spreading FUD.
I don't feel any safer by having my liquids/toenail clippers/pocket vibe/ipod/laptop taken away from me, when there are plenty of other ways to kill/be killed that airlines have no control over. I am more angry at terrorists for making American privacy close(er) to extinction than anything else. With a "war" on "terror" there are going to be casualties, my water consumption/music listening/laptop using/game playing/phone usage habits shouldn't be at the top of the list.
Why does the scapegoat have to be the common citizen?
Reader v1 left one of hundreds of comments on the missing original recordings of the first moon walk, which NASA would like to recover and safely archive before their inevitable deterioration past the point of rescue.
It would not surprise me if these tapes have been in some very rich person's "personal museum" for the last several years, the result of a quiet and large payoff to someone that had access to the archives. Things like this don't just "disappear," they "grow legs."
Ninwa questions the significance of the claim made in the linked article that "The only known equipment on which the original analogue tapes can be decoded is at a Goddard centre set to close in October, raising fears that even if they are found before they deteriorate, copying them may be impossible.":
Is the article honestly trying to suggest that NASA couldn't reverse engineer a format and design a player for it if the original player was lost? I personally find that a little hard to believe. It just sounds like a convenience excuse to create a "give-up searching" date. In my opinion these tapes are very important to our country's history. It's almost shameful to me to think they could have lost them so easily.
According to reader Detritus, "The format isn't a big mystery, it's IRIG 106 if anyone cares" -- but that's not the problem, he says:
The problem is that as part of the continuing budget crunch at NASA, made worse by the need to scrounge money from the existing budget for new tasks like a Shuttle replacement and going to Mars, many activities and facilities are being cut or eliminated. The lab that can handle these old tapes, the Data Evaluation Lab at Goddard, has lost its funding. That means that it will be closed at the end of this fiscal year. The equipment goes into storage or is surplused. The people have to find other jobs or be laid off or retire.
Building a recorder from scratch would be insanely expensive. These recorders cost anywhere from $50-100K when they were new and being manufactured in quantity.
It's easy to say that "they" should keep and maintain the hardware, catalog and store the tapes in climate controlled warehouses, and do all the other things needed to preserve the data for future generations. That doesn't pay the bills. Just storing a tape can cost a dollar or more a year. That doesn't sound too bad until you realize that a single spacecraft can easily generate tens of thousands of tapes. Another problem is that at $100-200 for a new reel of tape, there has always been a large incentive to recycle and reuse tapes for current missions.
Reader Aufero has no trouble believing that if NASA did have to reverse engineer the format, it would run into more than a bit of bureaucratic barbed wire:
If NASA did it, it would require five years, fifteen administrators, and fifty million dollars. The quarterly funding reviews alone (much less the reviews of the reviews) would take up more time than the project, and the funding would be proxmired halfway through to pay for a bridge to an island owned by a friend of some congressman. If they ever find the tapes they should hand them over to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which would probably have them transferred to more durable media in six months at a cost of $30,000.
The problem of preservation sure isn't one confined to NASA, though: reader drDugan writes with an insightful comment on long-term storage of historically important but voluminous data:
I was recently at a meeting in Bethesda at the NIH and heard Don Lindberg, the director of the national library of medicine talk about long term information storage.
After going through all the normal stuff about media degrading and backups, etc -- he made a really interesting point: The only way to really ensure REALLY LONG storage - like tens of thousands of years is to keep having people accessing information. The point he made is that all the storage technology will continue to evolve, and it's only the information we stop accessing that will fall into danger of getting lost.
I thought it was a good point.
Why on earth do we not have access to the original data from the Moon landings? If we did, lots of people would have a copy around. Silly secretive state.
On the announcement that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had issued a strongly worded recommendation that Windows users update their computers with the latest security patches from Microsoft, tholomyes writes that the suggestion is a good one:
This update is as important as it gets. There are vulnerabilities in every major MS program which allow remote code execution, which means that as soon as the exploit is discovered, it can take advantage of holes all over your system.
Affected programs and services:
- MS Server Services (TCP 139 and 445)
- DNS servers
- Internet Explorer
- Outlook Express
- Microsoft Management Console
- HTML Help
- Visual Basic
- Microsoft Office
- Windows kernel
I'm not too surprised that they're trying to push awareness of this patch. It was the lack of patching several weeks beforehand that allowed Code Red to do as much damage as it did.
Many comments suggested that the Department of Homeland Security's motives for issuing its urgent suggestion to patch systems were less than admirable, if not not downright conspiratorial; in response to by ExE122's suggestion that "monitoring 10 million computers to find out what porn sites people like to visit isn't [a government priority]," Shaper_pmp offered a level-headed reason not to discount such suspicions:
How about monitoring 10 million phone calls?
And with a handy backdoor installed monitoring computers would be even easier to automate.
I'm not saying they have, merely that your pooh-poohing of the whole idea is a bit baseless when they've already been caught doing essentially the same thing in a different medium.
[...] The only way this makes sense to me is if you're saying conspiracy theories shouldn't attract tinfoil hat accusations any more... because everyone knows they're watching you, lying to you and breaking the law all the damn time?
Reader twofidyKidd outlines the tension that makes it hard to decide between tempting conspiracies and comforting trust:
The real problem is that our cynicism makes viewing realistic possibilities hard to imagine, and our tools [of] logical deduction sort of seem to fail. Occam's razor can't be used in a situation like this because time has proved over and again that the interests of people at the government level aren't always in the interest of people at the constituency level. This is one of those times that we (the Slashdot conflux) would like to imagine that someone (like Lawrence Lessig or Brad Templeton) has finally said something to an official that he finally understood and as a result has taken this action, but since we often have a hard time getting our own management to listen to the good ideas we put forth, we're hesitant to believe such a thing has happened. In fact, given the recent history of our government, we're much more inclined to consider a sinister purpose. The DHS press release has many of the "hidden agenda" trappings, like specifically indicating which patch to apply, as well as the call of immediacy. ...
Just to put things in perspective; right now, Britons are unloading all liquids and gels into trash cans prior to boarding U.S.-bound planes, while we're wondering if the U.S. government is acting in our best interest by adamantly suggesting we patch our Windows computers.
Many thanks to the readers (especially those quoted above) whose comments went into each of these conversations.
Still, you gotta figure that in a position like that, a potential bomber would have to be really sure that the flight would leave on time.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
Pretty much anything can be made into an explosive strong enough to bring down an airplane — a rather easy target, once you are inside it.
I suspect, we'll be flying naked without any "carry-on" luggage whatsoever — cloth-curtains separating the male and female sections of the planes...
It will be bizarre, but we'll get used to it as we did to having to present ID, having to part with scissors and box cutters, etc.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
While the islamofascists and extremists do not really hold the United Kingdom close to their heart, they hate the United States a lot more. This attack was directed at the US. I don't know if that's good or bad as far as the brits are concerned =)
And even that does not compare to their virulent hatred of Israel - or as they like to call it, the "Zionist entity".
Don't feel bad though. Maybe in a few years they'll hate you as much or even more. It takes time =)
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
" One day some of ya'll are going to grow up and realize that "the man" isn't out to get you. "
and perhaps one day you'll bother to open a history book.
"I know, its far easier to blame our government and Bush (in fact its popular among some segments) but the truth is that they didn't create this enemy."
Bush failed attempt to deal with this issue has done nothing but create more terrorists.
"The media has already handcuffed them with the help of paticular interest groups from doing what is truly effective, profiling. So whats left?"
The media holds the government accountable. The only thing accountability can handcuff is illegal actions.
"This will continue until this group is either rendered harmless or their attempts so futile they go back to doing what they did before."
See, some people know this, that is why there created a war on somthing that can never be conquered.
"The truth is that there is a group of people out there who only want to kill."
you abviously do not understand what is happening. What there are is people who will kill to fullfill a goal. There where somepeople whon would kill to get amaerica out of the mid east. Now there are a whole bunch more people who want to kill Americans to revenge dead civillians.
"honestly, what would you expect of your government with regards to this situation? "
1) Go after the specific enemy, i.e. alquade
2) not use this issue as an excuse to push there agende to go into other countries and establish military bases.
3) not lie to the people
4) increase talks and communication with people in the mid-east
5) continue good relations with our allies
6) give the military real adjectives within there training
7) increase law enforcement while respecting civil liberties
8) government oversight on military contracts a'la Trumen committee
9) educate and finance law enforcement. This is how you catch terrorist.
10) obey the law.
Yes, the government is only out to get the 'bad guys'. unfortuantly everyone is now a bad guy to some degree.
Of course, when you deviate from a recorded pattern you are suspect. When all your patterns are recorded, any deviation will make you a suspect. Look at the history of any large body of people who where monitored.
I don't mind a law that says someoen can tap my wire, but needs to prove to a court of law they have cause. even if they present it to a court 7 days after the action.
But, if the court rules against thenm I want to be notified, and I want the request removed from all records.
As for this recent incident, you are aware that there was a nearly identical plot in 1995 that was stopped? So clearly they do not need these new regulation to stop them.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Since FUD is in the interest of Bush, Blair, Israel and the usual "bad guys."
And only an amateur intelligence analyst would not look long and hard at the known objective evidence and the credibility of the sources coupled with a list of benefactors -including backlash and provocateurs. And since almost all papers and stories I've seen seem to be victim to the same terror spin doctors (or -shudder- misinformation specialists.) All the above begs for the following questions:
Where is the evidence?
Do you trust the sources?
Why would the bad guys NOT do a dramatic diversionary action, or even feign one? While really going for something else?
Why does nobody with media clout ask the tough questions?
(Usually anything controversial and with political overtones about the US or Israel is moderated down on Slashdot. Maybe this will be the exception?)
Cheers!
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Yeah but we should work to lessen the risks as long as they are reasonable and do not interfere with our "core values" like freedom of speech, etc. I don't think being prohibited from carrying certain items on board is unreasonable. People act like they are living under a dictatorship in here.
In some way, this can be nothing than the protectionism of Microsoft. Rather than addressing why Microsoft has been allowed to be a monopoly and hold so much influence while giving so little back to the world vs. what they have taken from it (the funds you see Gates giving away are technically our money). The DHS should be pushing Microsoft to spend some of that monopoly gained profit to spend that on fixing the issues once and for all.
In the end, Microsoft is being supported by them. What the DHS will be doing next is telling everyone that they need to be upgrading to Windows Vista because it is more secure. This is what this alert by the DHS is all about. If they can tell us to do those upgrades/patches then there is no reason either they or Microsoft couldn't just say that you need Vista to help foil terror plots.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Forcing the enemy to adapt to your tactics is a fundamental principle of victory.
Profiling would require terrorists to try to beat the profile.
Now, beating the profile wouldn't be as easy as it sounds; you just can't take a twenty-something Durka male and make him look like an eighty-something Dystopian female. Elaborate disguises would stand out on their own, regardless of the profiling policies. They would be a risky and failure-prone solution to profiling.
You'd pretty much have to start recruiting outside your most sympathetic demographic, to find people that didn't fit the profile. And that itself would be very risky and failure-prone. After all, not fitting the profile, your prospective new recruits are more likely to turn you in than join your cell.
Either way, or even if you came up with another solution than the two I've thought of, it's still a new technology as far as you're concerned. You still have to test it, experiment with it, try repeatedly until you get it right.
Suddenly your current tactics, refined through many years of R&D, no longer work. Many more years of R&D are now necessary. You have to start all over again, with an all-new learning curve. Your mistakes are going to increase in number overnight, and formerly "quiet" operations will now be "noisy" operations. Your whole jihad becomes more noticeable, and easier for security forces to engage.
As you improve your new tactics, profiling will lose some of its effectiveness, of course. But as long as jihad is appealing in some circumstances more than others, profiling will always be a threat to your operations.
Meanwhile, as its effectiveness is reduced, profiling will be replaced as the top weapon by other weapons, better-tuned to the new tactics you've been trying to perfect since profiling ruined your old ones. And since you needed some time to practice these new tactics, you've been giving off clues as to how your tactics were evolving. Vigilant security forces will be able to shut down your new tactics even faster than your old ones. So now you have to adapt and change tactics again.
Pretty soon, you're spending so much time trying out new tactics that you don't have any time to put together a successful and devastating major attack. Plus, with all the fuckups that attend any experimental new technology, your entire organization is falling apart. More test runs are getting busted sooner by security forces, fewer recruits are able to complete a training course without getting caught or killed, etc.
If nothing else, profiling would be an excellent first step in keeping jihadis on the hop, rather than giving them a free ride to mass murder.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
The latest news is that not one of the "terrorists" arrested had a plane ticket for yesterday, or in fact any imminent travel plans, and that one has already been released without charge. [1]
Please note that this comes one day after the Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, assumed power in Prime Minister Tony Blairs' holiday absence, in spite of a lengthy public campaign to highlight that he was unfit to hold office. The Prime Ministers response so far has been to strip him of all responsibility, leaving him with only "ceremonial" duties. Such as co-ordinating national security while Tony's in Barbados. [2]
It was also, coincidentally (!), the day that MP Jim Sheridan quit his defence post in protest at the governments' stance on the situation in the Middle East, and the circumvention of proper procedure on the part of the US authorities while refuelling aircraft in Scotland carrying weapons to Jewish Palestine. [3]
It was also, coincidentally (!), the day that one-quarter of the elected representatives of the British public (including over 100 members of the incumbent government) are threatening to revolt if Tony Blair does not curtail his holiday and recall Parliament. [4]
What with all these coincidences, the cynical among you might not be surprised to learn that Tony was briefed about it six weeks ago. And chatted to George about it on Sunday. And decided to do something about it on Thursday.[5]
If any uncaptured members of this terror cell are still in any doubt as to who among them is being held, and which aspects of the plot need to fall back to Plan B, please check the official list (including dates of birth and postal codes). Presumably this disclosure is suddenly standard procedure, and the established process of witholding potentially useful information from terrorists has been deprecated.[6]
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I love freedom. The only thing that makes me feel secure is Tor.
Here's a blast from the past:
Wouldn't it suck if Kerry was right? Cheney mocked him for saying that we didn't need a 'war on terror', but instead better intelligence and coordinated police action. Better intelligence and coordinated police action seems to have worked yesterday for the U.K., thankfully.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.