Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Used for Whistleblowing
fightmaster writes "A Lockheed Martin engineer with concerns about the safety and security flaws in a fleet of refurbished Coast Guard patrol boats turned to YouTube in order to publicize concerns he felt were being ignored by his employer and the government. From the article: 'The 41-year-old Lockheed Martin engineer had complained to his bosses. He had told his story to government investigators. He had called congressmen. But when no one seemed to be stepping up to correct what he saw as critical security flaws in a fleet of refurbished Coast Guard patrol boats, De Kort did just about the only thing left he could think of to get action: He made a video and posted it on YouTube.com.'"
It took me long enough to find this but here's the actual youtube video.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
Thank You slashdot editors for providing a link to the video in question.
It actually took me three tries to find it, entitled: "Homeland Security - Coast Guard Issues"
May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
That's like so Web2.0! He can even toss together a mashup of the boats' locations and some Google maps and have active video links pop up when you hover your mouse over the tags.
Or he could have just sent an anonymous tip to the press who would have loved to pick up on something like this...
Very interesting. While I don't think all the equipment should be replaced to meet the artic temperature thing, I think that the problem should be noted, and the contractor should have to pay some reimbursement for not meeting all the terms of the contract. Some number of ships should be retrofitted, but it may be a big waste to do it with all of them
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
...edit the Wikipedia entry? http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/28/18 1223
While his employers probably will administratively punish and / or fire him, because his actions may save my coastie brothers and sisters
in the long run,I tip my hat off to you. Sometimes you gotta grab life by the horns, to do the right thing.
Regards,
MBC1977,
(US Marine, College Student, and Good Guy!)
Regards,
MBC1977,
If you point the finger at someone else, there are three more pointing back at you.
In other words, the standard pointing gesture highlights the intense scrutiny the whistleblower will face.
Spend your silver bullet wisely.
I sincerely hope that follow-on work isn't hard to come by.
If YouTube had existed in time for some space-shuttle engineers, we might not have had two birds transferred to NADA.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I guess when your youboat is going to sink, you need a youtube to keep you afloat.
....of whatever NDA this guy signed?
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Seriously, this dude has some balls, if not much sense. Tip for all you would-be whistleblowers: make sure you have the facts, the media, and God (not necessarily) overwhelmingly on your side before you start. Otherwise, you're just screwed. I hope the guy can find another job, or get a book deal. De Kort, thanks for taking one for the team.
In the article it said that he was fired shortly after he posted the video, but he knew before hand that he was going to get canned. I wonder how much of his actions reflect wanting retribution or just having nothing to lose.
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
Once upon a time, corporate giants and goverment entities could ignore the little guys with impunity. Now, anyone with a sufficiently good story can post it and attract a large public audience.
Power to the people!
2 cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
No. Now that's been done. The only thing you can do now is buy some space on a billboard and plant a picture of your manager on it with the words "this person steals sauce!"
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
Cue Congress opening hearings on silencing the leak instead of solving the problem...
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
While I've never ever stolen from an employer, I have a multitude steal from me. Just recently, my gas utility, and I would have to spend far more to take them to small claims court, wherein they would probably win as they have a lot more pull in this state than I do. Today, I would say never turn in anyone in the USA who steals from their employer as you will consistently find that your employer has been stealing from you.....
The heritage of the SAME company that have bribed government heads, bureucrats in countries tenfold around the world, including germany, to oust their competitors and sell their f104s. Their FAULTY designs.
The SAME company who caused around 150-200 air service pilots to lose their lives around the world flying their faulty f104s.
The SAME company which recently admitted their wrong doing.
The SAME company, which is at it AGAIN.
Read radical news here
OK, let me summarize what he covers (I didn't finish the last bit of the video, though).
1. Blind spot in watch cameras.
OK, thanks for pointing those out. Now we can board the boats and steal them. Yes, this is an issue, and one that should be fixable, but extra cameras will also affect the systems that digitize and monitor them, as well. Still, this system should be fixed, but it's not a major thing, and now you've just told anybody who's interested (in a bad way) how to take advantage of the flaw. Thanks.
2. FLIR Equipment not rated for -40 deg
My problem with this is, working in automotive systems, we regularly see this requirement, and it's more of a "spec" thing. Most electronics are fine in cold weather... short of devices with moving parts (hard drive, for example). Just because the FLIR is not "rated" at -40 doesn't mean it can't handle such temperatures, only that one or more components (chips, capacitors, resistors, etc...) in the system are not CERTIFIED to operate at the wide range of temperatures. Certification for this requirement is often an expensive process and often, certified and uncertified parts are identical in everything but price (or availability, more often). I think he's a little bit out there on this one.
3. Use of non-shielded cable in "secure" communications systems.
This one is a bit ridiculous, and shows his paranoia. The cables failed "visual" - of course, because they are not shielded. He concludes that because they are not shielded, they MUST have failed the electronic test, and because they officially passed, somebody must have cheated. While Tempest-class (back in my days as a Marine) cables were shielded out the ying-yang, and there was, even back in the 80's some amazing intel gathering stuff out there (pull phone conversations from a telephone wire, 30 feet from the pole, wirelessly, for example)... we are talking about CUTTERS. ON THE SEA. Effectiveness of devices that can isolate and monitor any given cable line over more than 100 feet falls off dramatically, particularly in a signal-rich (i.e. "noisy") environment. I'm guessing the electronic test DID pass, which is why it was allowed to be built with the unshielded cable. Still, why couldn't they have provided proper shielded cable? It's not like a huge price difference, and if availability was an issue here, what about simple external mesh around the cable runs?
Like I said, I see he has concerns, but this is really the wrong way to deal with it, and puts our Coast Guards at much greater jeopardy than the things he's addressing!
When I first saw the headline I thought.. cool blow job videos on YouTube. They finally allowed the X rated stuff.
Sadly, I'm disapointed.
Or... maybe LM just has so many people that they pay-off they can hide things and look all good to the government. LM does not have a good image (but what defense contractor does...); it always amazes me at how they can keep getting contracts, hence RSA IIA on WR. "#3"
rv original research
Lockheed Martin is well known for crappy business practices. I had the misfortune of working with one of their products - The Defense Messaging System (DMS). They had one of those huge mega-indefinite supply contracts they milked for so many years....What a total piece of pigslop.
Many government contractors go out of their way to shaft the US government, all in the name of the dollar. I hate these unethical bastards!
No doubt as soon as he posted it. However, it is unlikely that Lockheed Martin will litigate, as this would be an admission that the video contains confidential information. Their official stance is that the video is BS, meaning that no confidential information was leaked. Thus he has a sort of immunity to this avenue of litigation. Lockheed Martin could never recoup the losses they would incur by admitting to these failures, especially not from one man.
It makes much more sense for them to pursue the libel avenue of silencing him. In this case, they are no worse off than if they did nothing, and have the chance to debunk the contents of this video if they are successful.
You just try and tax my tea, redcoat! 'Superior tools' didn't help you the last time . . .
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
"It may be very hard for you to believe that our government and the largest defense contractor in the world [are] capable of such alarming incompetence and can make ethical compromises as glaring as what I am going to describe."
No. Not even close. I think it's quite obvious that they're capable of such alarming incompetence. Consider: Katrina. WMD/Iraq. 9/11. Diebold. No-bid contracts. Overbilling.
There's really not much more that needs to be said.
I salute this guy. The cocksuckers in Washington are our own worst enemies.
IMO, this is more evidence that Bush's "War on Terror" is nothing more than a facade designed to cover up one of history's biggest robberies. What's a suitable punishment for someone who hijacks a country of 300 million with lies, crimes and stolen elections? GWB should be drawn and quartered on the Washington Mall.
If the employer AND the government AND the congressman AND apparently no one else will listen to this boob, maybe, just maybe, his issue ain't that important and he should quit bellyaching.
Does this also apply to engineers of electronic voting systems?
That doesn't cost taxpayers anything. Only Taco Bell customers would care. And if you ask me, that particular demographic has more things to worry about (they eat at Taco Bell, after all).
Now, when your nightshift manager starts building insecure and poor quality taxpayer funded quesadillas, THEN make a video.
When engineers warned that New Orleans levees could not withstand a moderate-strength hurricane and complained to their employees, AND to the state, AND to the federal government AND apparently no one else would listen to these boobs, maybe, just maybe the issue was important and someone should have listened to their bellyaching.
You idiot.
If this had occurred in Great Britain, De Kort would have been a loyal Myrmidon and refrained from causing such a scene. A British company would not have made such a mistake as Lockheed Martin's engineers. Also, the system used in the so-called "United States" is inferior. In Britain, such disloyalty would have caused De Kort's disappearance before he had a chance to release such material.
Britain will use this knowledge when it moves to take back its colonies.
De Kort is correct: his government is incompetent. The solution is obvious: Americans, subject yourselves to superior British rule.
England Prevails
2. Equipment not working at -40.
Considering that these ships are intended to be used by the coast guard in the gulf of Mexico, I don't see the problem.
It's not a technical problem, a financial one. If the Coast Guard wrote the requirement that the equipment be certified to -40, you can be damn sure LM is charging them the cost of certified components, even though they (allegedly) don't all meet spec.
3. Unshielded cables.
WTF is he talking about? The only way to sniff data from an unshielded cable is if you are right next to it. It is not going to help you when the cable is on a ship in the middle of the ocean. Further, the moment data is transmitted off the ship via radar, all bets are off. Unless you encrypt it *anyone* can listen to it.
Once again, it's a financial issue. Somebody at the Coast Guard decided that the cables needed to be shielded, and paid for shielded cables. If the cables aren't shielded, it's not a security risk, it's fraud.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
This video was posted 3 weeks ago and only had a 100 odd ratings, even after appearing on slashdot. Meanwhile a regular skanky youtube teen could get thousands within a hours. Even you guys will probably move on to the next story in a few minutes. I think the government is safe.
Did you even watch the video?
Basically the entire project he was working on was a sham. Not only were the systems not designed to specifications but were flawed in such a way as that if they did fail they would do so catastrophically.
Do you even know what FLIR is? It's how they know navigate and identify targets in low-level light conditions or fog (which, I hope I don't have to tell you is very common on coastlines). It's very simple, if the FLIR system fails (and according to him it will at low temperatures), people can die--either from collisions or friendly fire. If what he's saying is true, he should be making a stink.
Furthermore, the security camera issue is huge too. It's one thing to have blind spots. It's quite another to have two symmetrical approach angles that lead right ONTO the ship which can't be seen. Again, a failure due to this design flaw could lead to either the capture or deaths of American servicemen. And it could've been fixed by only adding one more camera.
As far as the non-TEMPEST compliance goes--I don't know. As I understand it, TEMPEST is literally tin-foil hat paranoid, but honestly there's no reason not to use something as simple as shielded cables is that's all that's preventing compliance.
Regardless, this is just another example of how government incompetence combined with corporate greed serves to hurt the American taxpayer and unnecessarily puts the lives of our service-men and women at risk. If you don't think there's a connection between this very believable story and deadly screw-ups like the lack of armored vehicles in Iraq or the Ospreys crashes, you're the boob--not the whistleblower.
-Grym
Shouldn't the Coast Guard have paid to have the equipment certified though? I mean, we're talking about putting multiple servicepersons' lives at risk; shouldn't the equipment at least be formally tested for the very circumstances in which they're going to be used?
Unfortunately, I think he's going to be arrested for treason for the very reasons you mentioned. I thought this as soon as I saw him put up a diagram of the camera's blindspot. He's violating United States national security in a very big way. I wouldn't be surprised if he quietly disappeared.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This just gave me an excellent idea for a remake of "Turk 182"
That made money, right?
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
But will the french save our ass this time?
I give bread to the poor, they call me a saint.
I ask why the poor have no bread, they call me a communist.
I, for one, welcome our British overlords. (Is that the proper response here?)
His DUTY was to INFORM his management, government, congressman, intelligence services, etc. that he had SERIOUS concerns relative to the project he was leading. Anything less is unworthy of the status of Lead Engineer
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
I was listening to a story on this on NPR. Government oversight is gone in this decade. The NPR story had a few experts basically reporting on he last portion of this video, which is a laundry list of the government officials he talked to and how they all turned him away with nonsense reasons.
There is no one in government who cares right now. The signs of something very bad happening within my lifetime within my country are numerous, and they all evolve around a populace that doesn't vote, and small groups of people who do vote for people who don't really care about anyone but themselves and the businesses that give them tons of money.
It's so bad I don't even believe that this will cause enough outrage for anyone to do anything. The government is teflon-coated now, and the american voters made it so.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
In spite of modern attempt at historical revision, it is clear to honest historians that Britain won all the battles of 1776 and then left a humbled America to govern itself as punishment for disloyalty. Shortly thereafter, the country spiralled into civil war and went further downhill from there: freedom of its slaves, freedom of speech, and that snake in the grass: "democracy".
So far from England, the Green and Pleasant land, America struggles under inferior governance.
Because of their inferior education, Americans have inferior intellects. This corruption began before the country broke away from British governance. The colonists believed their British brothers had added more tax to their their tea when in fact the wise governors in England had enabled the colonists to purchase tea at a lower price than even smugglers could offer. This allowed the colonists, whose economy had suffered due to their grumblings against Britain, to purchase superior British tea without breaking superior British law.
Our superior tools, dentistry, and teas have made Britain the proud ruler of the world it is today. Our enemies crumble at our feet, as emphasized in the way we single-handedly defeated Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti and hanged, drew, and quartered him at Tyburn.
I have heard CNN and Fox News have been lapse in reporting this to Americans. No surprise, they are inferior news corporations. If you had been watching BBC News, you would know this already.
England Prevails
Yes, although I regret that you have chosen to paraphrase an inferior American television production in showing your loyalty.
The Simpsons is an inferior televised production except when shown in syndication by the BBC.
England Prevails
Compaired to who? Last I checked Lockheed makes the best radar systems in the world. Last I checked Lockheed makes the ONLY anti-ballistic missle defense systems in the world, not just land based by sea based.
It was also the company that is bailing out Raytheon on the Zumwalt class destroyers ( DD(X) / DD-21 ). Politics screwed that decision, almost forcing the contract to Raytheon who didn't have the capability to really design the ship. Realizing this Raytheon subcontracted Lockheed to do a lot of the work...
Again, inferior compaired to who? Now I do think that this might have some merit, but if no one cared at the Coast Guard, the people who are ordering the ships, I don't think there is anything more to say. In the end, they are the ones who need to say that it is unacceptible. They are the ones who need to say that we want X% of money back due to not meeting X requirement(s). Once they had been notified by this engineer of the concerns, I don't know what more you can say. Do we know if Lockheed themselves brought this up to the Coast Guard? As the engineer states, he no longer works on the program, and wouldn't be privy to that knowledge. If Lockheed brought the matter up to the Coast Guard and the Coast Guard didn't care, this is all a big nothing in my opinion. Yes, improvements could be made, but we can say that about everything out there. It all comes down to costs to make the improvements. If the Coast Guard would rather have the ships as is now instead of waiting x months for redesign, re-fit, then so be it.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
With the Republican government persecuting whistleblowers by stripping their protections, I expect people publishing stories of government ripoffs on YouTube to be sent to jail for "leaking".
--
make install -not war
Duly noted.
We will take back France, too. We don't like the way they have polluted the country since we handed it back to them. Too many French people for our liking.
England Prevails
> 1. Blind spots.
>
> I understand his point: because of the blind spots you need to keep guards on board,
> which kind of defeats the purpose of the cameras. But is it actually realistic to
> *not* have guards on board? I would hope not!
Even if there is no immediate intention to do so, if the potential exists then someone will mandate it as part of cost-cutting measures.
>2. Equipment not working at -40.
>
> Considering that these ships are intended to be used by the coast guard in the gulf
> of Mexico, I don't see the problem.
Even if there is no immediate intention to do so, if the potential exists then someone will mandate it as part of cost-cutting measures.
He said "We found out the FLIR system would not survive temperatures below -5". There is a vast chasm between saying "this FLIR is not rated for -5" and saying "the FLIR would not survive temperatures below -5". I'm not sure on FLIR sensitivity to cold weather, but he is implying it would then break.
Oh another point, all tactical systems that handle classified material and are not in special facilities, e.g. a SCIF, need to be protected against TEMPEST / COMSEC & all that jazz. This is common knowledge for anyone with a SIGINT background in the mil/intel arena.
Obviously a cutter is built for shallow water work. That means near to shores not way out in the Atlantic Ocean. Big Antenna on the shore, camo'd in the trees, picks up classified comms - not unrealistic.
There is no such thing as paranoia when it comes to protecting classified material.
Initially, I was considered as written by an amateur, but then I noticed that part about you being a Marine. Figures!
I think you might want to do a little research into the NSA's TEMPEST security standard. This evolved primarily out of the revelation of Wim van Eck who in 1985 demonstrated that it was possible to duplicate the display of a monitor at a range of several hundred meters, using $15 worth of electronics and a TV set. Unless they've been training people to decrypt (with their eyes and brains) information they read off a monitor, I think it's safe to assume that data displayed on a monitor aboard one of these ships is unencrypted, and potentially containing text messages about current intelligence, commands to the ship, etc. It's not that big of a reach to think with the advancements in DSPs since 1985, that $1500 worth of sniffing equipment could easily extend that several hundred metre range to 5 or 10 miles.
You might also do well to actually watch the video. Only the first batch of retrofitted ships are on regular patrol in the Gulf of Mexico. Eventually all the 123-foot Cutters, including those used in the Arctic and The Persian Gulf will receive the same retrofits.
cat
Just as Zulus' pointy sticks were inferior to British muskets, anti-ballistic missle defense systems are inferior to Britain's defenses. The British, who invented RADAR, have since moved on to using superior detection systems.
Raytheon is another inferior company. It is no surprise such poor engineers needed bailing out of their ship. Lockheed Martin is an inferior company, but does have the capacity to design a fine bucket fitted for such a purpose. It would, however, be inferior to buckets of British manufacture.
England Prevails
If he had put his text on a regular webpage with the one pic of the boat's blind spots it would have saved bandwidth, and wouldn't put his face and voice out to be recognizable to thousands of people.
Though perhaps he used Youtube because it's the latest happenin' thing, the "new media."
I just checked a URL that came to mind, there IS a website at whistleblowers.org but there's no mention of any youtube video. Maybe next week they'll get the word. I already heard the story on the radio four hours ago:
"Whistleblower takes his case to YouTube"
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/
Tag lost or not installed.
Professional engineers usually have a legal requirement to put public safety before obligations to employers and whatnot.
http://outcampaign.org/
From the video:
"I will not share my name on this video to avoid harassment to my family".
From the article:
"Michael De Kort was frustrated."
Here is a direct link to the .flv file, if you want to archive it in case it mysteriously disappears from YouTube.
http://outcampaign.org/
2. Equipment not working at -40.
Considering that these ships are intended to be used by the coast guard in the gulf of Mexico, I don't see the problem.
Even if operating in the waters off Alaska, an operating temparature of -5 F (-20 C) should be fine. The freezing poing of the sea is -2 C (29 F). The air above the sea is warmed by the sea. I just checked the weather records of a Bering Sea weather station, and for example in 2005 the temperature never dropped below -8 C (18 F).
There were going to be 49 of these at the time. Going all over the world. They stopped at 8 because the hulls were so badly rusted that they decided not to continue. Plus boats like this get deployed all of the world when needed. Additionally this is a System of Systems effort. Since this was the first platform it means these designs will be pushed to other assets to keep implementations similiar. They did 8 boats like this on purpose - planning on 49. My guess is they intend to continue to do this for commonality reasons as well as to not get caught (change would draw attention.
You say that out of jealousy and spite because you recognize Britain's superior nationalism. It is America's nationalism that is liken unto claptrap. British nationalism is a pure, noble thing refined by our centuries of experience. You could crush together the nationalism of 50 Americans and still fail to muster the superior nationalism that marches through my veins.
No, my poor, delusional, inferior friend. It is not my nationalism that is at fault, it is your failure to recognize and reward a country for its superiority.
England Prevails
What does any of that have to do with any of the issues in question here? Interesting, Maybe. Relevent, no.
The guy's employers disagree with him that there is a problem. Simply because he's a "little guy" doesn't make him right. Apperently, no one else on the project agrees with him. But just because he's going up against the "big bad Lockheed Martin" doesn't make him right. We have no proof at all that anything he says is anything more than opinion.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Or maybe. . .just maybe. LM and the CG realize comming clean would be extremely damaging. the DHS IG has already told me there preliminary look has validated my concerns. $24 billion is at stake - do you think they will come clean after doing this on 8 or more boats without be forced?
By the way - I am the one who did the video
I understand his point: because of the blind spots you need to keep guards on board, which kind of defeats the purpose of the cameras. But is it actually realistic to *not* have guards on board? I would hope not!
Sometimes, yes. Take bad weather, for instance. Even if it's not so bad that you can't have a guard up top, they will still be very distracted and may miss something. There's also the advantage (though I don't know if these cameras have the capability, they should and probably do) of things like zoom, IR, Nightvision, etc.
Considering that these ships are intended to be used by the coast guard in the gulf of Mexico, I don't see the problem.
Wrong, plain and simple. They are -stationed- in the Gulf of Mexico. It's like soldiers stationed at any given military base in America. Barring very unusual circumstances (e.g., an outright invasion of the continental U.S.), they don't actually intend to -use- them there. They're just keeping them there until they decide where they -do- want to use them. He specifically said that the temperature guidelines were in place because the ships were expected to be used anywhere from Alaska to the Middle East. They found that the system which is used to detect nearby objects tends to fail below -5f. They have no idea how it performs at high temperatures, nor how any of the other systems perform at any given temperature, because they were ordered to stop looking into it.
WTF is he talking about? The only way to sniff data from an unshielded cable is if you are right next to it. It is not going to help you when the cable is on a ship in the middle of the ocean. Further, the moment data is transmitted off the ship via radar, all bets are off. Unless you encrypt it *anyone* can listen to it.
Ok...so we have established that they have a system which, especially in the dark and / or during bad weather, is highly prone to a sneak attack. At the narrowest point it is still a "ten foot wide blind spot". Also, in the case of fog, rain, etc., especially at high or low temperatures, the secondary detection system, and possibly other systems on the ship, are prone to failure. That is easily enough room for somebody to take advantage of the camera issues during a good thunderstorm etc., and, through the use of, for instance, a small boat and divers (they -are- near the coast most of the time, after all), sneak right up next to the bridge. That's easily close enough to those unshielded cables for a sniffer / amplifier / transmitter to be mounted to the side of the ship.
Number one, you're downplaying the risks too much. Sure, it's not like he's saying that the hull is made of wax paper or something, but the risks are signifcant. Number two, and this is the more important one, you're separating them. It's not so much about the individual risks. It's the bunch of them together, and of course the way the higher ups responded to them, that is the issue. Who knows what other systems also failed to meet spec that this whistleblower was not involved with? Or what other systems on entirely different ships, planes, etc., have been treated in the same fashion? This is not a situation that needs to be downplayed.
Unpleasantries.
If you dont meet TEMPEST standards, there is a high chance someone can intercept 'unencrypted' information either within the 'encrypted' information or on its own, or simply 'sense' it on a power line to the building. (also look up Van Eck phreaking)
There are a few considerations to help ensure the system will pass a TEMPEST test:
- Proper physical separation of Red and Black.
- Suitable filtering of power supplies.
- Propper shielding (parent got that one)
- Propper termination of shielding into correct EMI Backshells
- Correct assembly and termination of backshells
- More about what I've said Here [PDF]
Basically if you skimp on any of these to save a few dollars (and it aint cheap), the bad guys can intercept your communications (COMINT), which means your likely to get your ass handed to you on a plate...
PS: All of what Ii've said above is unclass and is in the public domain....
Assuming this guy is sincere, he's tried the official channels for fixing this. The official channels didn't listen. He's seriously concerned for the safety of the Coast Guard. If he believes there is a real security problem and that official channels don't care, he'd be doing the wrong thing if he just kept silent.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Have you ever used equipment from lockheed and martin? All the equipment I've ever used breaks all the time. Their stuff sounds good, untill you actually use it. Then the flaws in their design come out.
BTW,
Tempest was not only a secret Government study, it is also an acronym: Telecommunications Electronics Material Protected from Emanating Spurious Transmissions.
Cheers...
-- Posted from my parent's basement
I hope he gets to keep his job but you know how that sort of stuff works out in the end.
This is the sort of BS that pops up years latter when service men and women who are serving aboard these vessels and discover the gear is faulty,blowing up or sinking.
Makes for great politics and in the end nobody is to blame and it becomes yesterdays news and all you have to show for it is dead service men.
Then we will pledge a witty saying "we will never forget" Yeah we will.
A lot these government contracts are big freaking wastes of money due to the fact that a lot of companies short change the system or by the time the contracts are approved the specifications change and it takes another 2 years to approve the changes. That means more money for the companies who's 3 year contract is extended for 10years.
- Gulf of Mexico != middle of the ocean - but that's just a nitpick
- RADAR != transmission device - see RADAR
- Maximum distance to electrically sniff from an unshielded cable != right next to it - see TEMPEST
- Encrypting something != only you can listen to it - it simply means that other folks will have a hard time understanding it which is a critical distinction
It's also worth considering that, today, the vessels are going to be used in the Gulf. However, their specs say they'd be fit for use farther north. Lockheed was probably banking on getting a refit contract when it was discovered that the FLIR equipment failed in cold weather once the ships were reassigned. I'm sure they could find a suitable patsy to take the fall for the "oversight" at that point and not jeopardize the rework. This is a pattern that continues to play out, over and over, in the DoD contracting arena. The Pentagon Wars is a good flick to catch for another example of this sort of stupidity (albeit one with some dramatic license taken).James
Are you pretending to be an uneducated american such that you wouldn't pick up the sarcasm of the previous post, or are you involuntarily proving the previous poster's point?
My meta-meta-sarcasm meter is gebrokenkaput.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Certainly we have no proof, but having worked several years for a prime defense contractor, I'm inclined to believe him just because this sounds exactly like the kind of shenanigans I saw firsthand in that environment. It's all about CYA, and whether a deliverable actually meets the requirements spelled out in the Statement of Work is often secondary to how much shit the CO or COTR will have to endure if it doesn't. Raising a red flag indicating that sub-standard deliverables had been accepted by the contracting agency was generally frowned upon quite intensely, as no one in the front offices of our organization wanted to bite the hand that fed them. I can't imagine that Lockheed would be much different.
The guy has basically destroyed his career and probably ruined himself financially to present this information, so I would think it's something he feels pretty strongly about.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Red/Black isolation and COMSEC requirements are described in Orange book.
Slashdot's name? When my compiler sees
As prior military who worked on UHF SATCOM (satellite communications systems) for a period of nearly four years as a lead programmer in the Air Force, I would tend to believe rather than disregard these statements. I have worked with forces from US Coast Guard, Navy, Army, Air Force, NATO forces, etc and in real-world scenarios, operational security is often overlooked or even covered up in order for projects to not lose funding or lose face in the eyes of upper management and project supporters high up in the government. It is also overlooked sometimes because of the BS red tape involved to implement the simplest security protocols. I pray that some of these issues have been resolved or that the shortcomings described have been negated by other means, however I doubt it. I wish you good luck in your fight and hope that in the end you are vindicated - if so, I hope you sue LM's ass off for the hell I'm sure you've been through. Thanks for standing up - let us know how we can help.
And if not legal, they (we) have the ethical requirement to do it anyway.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
The real question is whether any of these items were brought up in one of the multitudinous specification reviews, design reviews or configuration audits that such a project goes through. One reason why no one may have cared is that this could have all been spelled out at some point and a decision made to go with the solutions he complained about.
I've seen lots of systems that didn't meet some aspect of their original requirements because the requirement got changed. I've also seen some very creative interpretation of requirements so the requirement is met. On the other hand, its also possible to meet requirements in ways that may not be obvious. Picking just on the cable shielding requirement, the "system level" requirement may have been that no useful signal be emitted beyond a given radius of the ship. Lots of people might interpret this to mean the cables have to be shielded. Bzzt; wrong answer. Its possible the locations of the cables within the hull or superstructure are sufficient to prevent signal leak. Saves a little on implementation and lots on testing for full TEMPEST compliance.
As the OP pointed out, meeting some of these requirements can be very expensive and I'd like to think that the people in charge actually did the right thing to lower the cost to me, the taxpayer.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I am a "navy brat". If you don't know what that means, look it up. I also attend UCSC. If you think you know what that means, I bet you're either a graduate or using some stupid list.
I have a dream in which the military and the hippies in America come together to fight those who are interested ONLY in their own power and money.
I too feel that such speech is dangerous. But I Respect this man more than I repsect my fear.
I believe his story. It sounds very, very true to me. I am not willing to say that it "is" true. But it fits perfectly with my perception of Lockheed Martin and "the military industrial complex". If you think you know what "the military industrial complex" is, please: don't. Listen to Eisenhower's words and then think about what they mean.
Please don't kill me.
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
But at least America had the foresight to STEAL all of Hitler's smartest Nazis. Good thing Werner von Braun (German scientist, Nazi, SS, US Army employee, NASA administrator and all around "salesmen of space") had the foresight to surrender to the Americans: he knew that the Russians would kill him (for using Russian slave labor), and he knew the French would kill him (for using French slave labor). But he also knew that the Americans would use him (for his brain, not his evil deeds).
And it's a good thing someone everyone that "EVERYTHING HITLER EVER DID IS EVIL".
And it's a good thing that America then used Facist scientists to get to the moon. (the US "Saturn Rocket" is a direct decendant of the Nazi "V-2". The Soviet rockets that launched the Soviet space race were also, to a fair degree, based on the Nazi --engineering--, not scientists. (it is true that many, even most US scientists were not facists -- I am not claiming otherwise).
And it's also a good thing that SOMEONE told the world that a Cold War was happening, and that the United States HAD to fight the Soviets, making von Braun's background IRRELEVANT.
I have met Linda Hunt. I have not read her book Operation Paperclip, but I hear it is quite a read. I also hear that America has NO INTEREST in reading Linda Hunt's book. I wonder why?
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
I am a Program Manager for a large defense contractor. I have no first hand knowledge about the specific program and concerns described in the video. However, I can provide some insight into how and why the Coast Guard and a contractor might ethically and responsibly act in the ways described in the video.
First, most defense contracts of the type described are so called "Cost Plus" contracts. That means that the Government and the contractor share the financial risk of executing the program. The government agrees to reimburse the contractor for whatever the actuals costs of executing the program are plus a pre-negotiated profit. The government retains complete control over the contract, regularly audits the contractor's financial data to establish the actual costs, and reserves the right to modify or cancel the contract at any time.
The DoD also has standard military specifications (mil-specs), and the -40 to +140 deg. temperature range cited in the video sound like a standard mil-spec to me. Now, if you are the government and I tell you the cost of refitting ships with FLIR that operates at -40, you might decide you don't really want that feature and grant a waver on the mil-spec. Why would you do that ? Well, you might know that the ship's engines won't work at that temperature either because the fuel oil will be too viscus. Why go to added expense for one component if another critical component won't work anyway ?
The government is in complete control. When the government insists on over-specifying systems, you get the notorious $1000 hammer. The classic example was a spec that required every component of an aircraft be able to survive 72 instantaneous Gs (a very hard landing). Do you have any idea how expensive coffee pots that can survive that many Gs are ? Guess what, you paid for them. The smarter decision would be to replace a $13 coffee pot after every such "crash". I assure you that the coffee pot is a lot cheaper than the pilot's back surgery.
Similarly, blind spots in camera coverage can be inexpensively corrected, and the Coast Guard may have elected to pay a low cost small business supplier to correct the problem instead of paying a large defense contractor's rates. Again, the government has control over all of these decisions.
Finally, if the cabling passes the TEMPEST tests, then it passes. It is entirely possible that the hull of the ship makes a very effective Faraday cage, and additional shielding on the cables is a wasted expense. Again, the government may actually be saving you money.
I don't know if the accusations have merit or not. I just wanted to point out that everything accused might be true and still be both ethical and down right sensible.
lose their lives around the world flying their faulty f104s.
:(
Here's a hint: If a company is in the business of making, marketing, and selling bombs, they have 0% respect for human life.
Try and keep that in mind
You can't take the sky from me...
See the comment from a DoD ProgramManager http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195339&cid =16005044
See the comment from a DoD Program Manager http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195339&cid =16005044
1. Blind spot in watch cameras.
OK, thanks for pointing those out. Now we can board the boats and steal them. Yes, this is an issue, and one that should be fixable, but extra cameras will also affect the systems that digitize and monitor them, as well. Still, this system should be fixed, but it's not a major thing, and now you've just told anybody who's interested (in a bad way) how to take advantage of the flaw. Thanks.
Dammit, I can either leave you on neutral, or put you either foe or friend... where's the "this guy believes in security through obscurity" coloured pill?
Like I said, I see he has concerns, but this is really the wrong way to deal with it, and puts our Coast Guards at much greater jeopardy than the things he's addressing!
He tried the right way, and was ignored.
If pointing it out is putting them in jeopardy, then, by golly, ignoring him was wrong, wasn't it?
You can't take the sky from me...
Just because a cable is not shielded does *NOT* mean it will radiate. If the circuit is an unbalanced circuit that is unshielded, it will radiate. If the circuit is a balanced circuit that is unshielded, it will not radiate so long as there is no imbalance on the circuit.
I can see how it could fail visual inspection and pass the actual real world test.
--fatboy
Spelling error. Should be "Taco Hell".
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
This video was posted 3 weeks ago and only had a 100 odd ratings, even after appearing on slashdot. Meanwhile a regular skanky youtube teen could get thousands within a hours. Even you guys will probably move on to the next story in a few minutes. I think the government is safe.
You're comparing apples and oranges. Just because they're both on YouTube doesn't mean that they are in competition or are being viewed by the same audience. The story has already hit Time and The Washington Post.
There are other reasons to believe that De Kort won't get Lockheed or the Coast Guard to change anything, but the number of times his video has been viewed on YouTube isn't one of them. The cat is out of the bag, and they'll have to respond to the charges now, one way or another.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
TEMPEST was around long before 1985. The NSA has been concerned about compromising emanations since its inception. It was an issue with electro-mechanical teletypes, coding machines and electric typewriters. One method used to spy on foreign embassies was to monitor their power lines for noise induced by the operation of equipment handling sensitive information.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Also with the challenger disaster, where the engineers' concerns were overruled by management.
Wrong. Think about crosstalk. All it takes is crosstalk from a cable carrying unencrypted data to a cable connected to a radio transmitter to ruin your security. That's why the NSA is normally such a stickler for proper shielding, filtering and isolation of secure communications systems.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I haven't worked with anything requiring the TEMPEST spec., but having done a little work in EMC labs (specifically, testing of leakage / interference in signal lines) I can say that unshielded lines DO leak signals out by default, sometimes with enough intensity to make nearby sensitive equipment not work (meaning way more than enough to detect). It is possible that it just happened to be pretty quiet this time, but that would just be good luck--and hopefully they checked every boat, since the results won't be the same.
Not just activity originating on the boat, but anything they happen to receive (since their equipment probably decodes all the classified signals going past) will leak out unencrypted.
These aren't just random people who would be trying to listen in on the Coast Gaurd--they've got to protect their data against other countries' equivalents to the NSA. Just because we're not at war with any Central / South American country doesn't mean it would be OK for them to hear our communications, or that they won't listen.
(imispgh is apparently the guy in the video, judging by his other posts, FYI)
He is going to get two "villas" at Güantánamo. One for him and one for his cojones. :-)
We need more men like him.
YouTube finally gets put to good use.
Gov't doesn't actually want to pay what it COSTS to make their Spec a reality.
So you underbid.
You deliver something close-ish.
Then the gov't gives you a follow on contract to pay you to make it work like they initially wanted it to but didn't want to pay for.
Any questions?
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
What did the GAO do when you went to them? They are obligated to open an investigation, and when they do, the CG must comply because of 18 U.S.C. 1001. What happened with the GSA?
Be realistic. This guy leaks security information.
He's a terrorist and will be punished accordingly.
Privacy is terrorism.
We had a whistleblower where I work a few years back. He claimed some sort of technical problem in one of our products.
The problem was, and I was in a position to know, he was absolutely, completely wrong. But he kept up and kept up like it was a mental illness or something.
So I tend not to automatically side with the so called whistleblowers until I have better info.
I wasn't aware of how far back TEMPEST went. Thanks.
cat
Thank you for taking the time and effort to make a transcription!
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
Thanks for taking your responsibilities seriously. We need more people that do.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Surely your mention of an engineer means you believe that they are engineered!?
From everything I've seen so far, the "designing" does not stretch far below the PHB line!
giving the Starfighter a low-level ground attack mission was about as sensible as using Me-262s as bombers...
of topic, but damn if this isn't one of those gems that makes slashdot interesting
and to Mr Engineer - Thank You Thank You
I've worked on systems for these guys
no one cares as long as you get paid
it's insane
you promise the world
deliver 2/3rds
and 40% of that has 'issues' slated for fix in a future release
yeah right
pass go, collect 200, and the circle of life keeps turning...
you think it's easy, but you're wrong...
I used YouTube to voice a complaint against Freedom Furniture several months ago, after they sold me a "Laptop Table" that promptly destroyed my laptop. Freedom Furniture wouldn't cooperate in fixing the damage their product directly caused, so I released the video to the public.
Watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly0-Vbqyby8
While not even remotely original in concept, it's an effective method of getting a warning out.
Freedom Furniture Shattered My Laptop's LCD
A skeptic might think that the Lockheed Martin is right about the firing having been decided long ago. In that case, the engineer's motivation would be to get sweet revenge on his way out, and maybe some handsome compensation, if he can successfully make his dismissal look like whistleblowing related.
EVEN if this guy is wrong, it takes no effort for Lockheed to come out and say "we have shielded cables and we have the extra cameras".
But what if the guy is right about the unshielded cables and blind spots, but wrong about the risk that those deficiencies pose? Maybe, at some point Lockheed Martin did a risk vs cost calculation, and assessed that those weaknesses were actually not that important in the grand scheme of things.
Well, that was just playing Devil's Advocate. Personally, I'm still rooting for the small guy, but I can see how skeptics would spin this.
failing to work at merely -5 is ridiculous for any equipment imo, let alone something critical that lives can depend on, such as the FLIR he lists specifically.
Management nixed the idea, because they never "got it" in the first place. And in this particular case, it was not management's fault for being dense, but the engineer's for choosing to do a powerpoint presentation rather than plainly saying to management: "Houston, we have a huge problem, and we need to do something about it now".
Predictably, management dosed off during the boring powerpoint presentation, and only learned about the tiles when they saw the accident coverage on CNN...
I know boobs are for looking at... fondling... sucking... but I never tried listening to one. Or two.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Having been in the navy for 10 years with extensive knowledge of these systems.... although the cameras have blind areas one would have to first get passed base, port and pier security to even attempt to gain access to the boats
I'm going to assume you are not one of the 17 sailors killed aboard the USS Cole, which was moored and protected by port and pier security when it was attacked by a small boat packed with explosives.
If nothing else he totally compromised any security that they did provide.
Oh, like how airline security since 9/11/2001 continued to allow passengers to bring liquids onboard airplanes. Your argument suggests that all airline security experts conspired to remain silent knowing that these liquids could very well be nitro glycerine, which would be undetectable by xray screening. After all, to have made a fuss about the vulnerability posed by explosive liquids would be to comprimise the security provided by xray equipment.
Finally, you must consider that these blind spots could be identified from external scruitiny of these vessels. While docked, foreign spys are shooting photos of these ships in great detail. Scrutinizing those photos would probably reveal the cameras' blindspots.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
To simplify things further:
- If passing through unshielde cables, internal ship comunications, commands and sensor data can be read from a distance using a proper (directional) antena, a good low noise amp, an analog to digital converter (ADC), a notebook and some software.
This might not be an issue if the patrol boat is facing a couple of guys with AK-47s in a rubber boat, but it can be an issue if facing another nation's navy or a drug baron (both of which having the means and the smarts to take advantage of such a vulnerability).
Tempest attacks are only a "tin-foil crowd" thing when we're talking about non-descript individuals shielding their computer screens against "being read from a distance" even if such individuals are highly unlikely to be under surveilance by an organization with the right means and know-how.
It's way more likelly that the right persons (or should i say the wrong persons) are interested in intercepting internal communications of ships used in war or for security purposes (even if they are hardly aircraft carriers) than in reading the porn and unix commands of a non-descript geek with a little too much paranoia.
Or putting things another way, the higher the value of a target, the more likelly it is that complicated, expensive and/or specialized techniques are used against it.
Did you consider wind chill? That is the apparent temperature felt on exposed skin, or in this case, equipment. It is paticularly important at colder temperatures because its affects become more and more obvious as temperatures drop. Wind chill is always lower than the temperature because it combines the air temperature with the affects of wind speed (because more heat is removed with higher wind speeds because more moisture and/or sweat evaporates, carrying heat with it). Equipment may not sweat like human skin, however, if it is in the sea with waves and wind, then moisture and water will fall on the equipment. As the water evaporates off of the equipment, heat is carried away. To complicate matters a bit more, the calculated chill index one sees in a weather forcast is based on a formula used to calculated the chill on the human face. Different materials such as metals can radiate heat much more efficiently. This means that the chill index on the metal electronics will be even lower than what you percieve on your own skin. So when you take into account the natural wind, the moving air felt as the boat moves, the water and humidity from the sea, and the heat dispursing properties of the equipment, -5 will not be enough.
"It's a series of tubes."
Yes, so far, YouTube, quickly followed by PornoTube. . .
Replace prefix "i-" with suffix "-Tube" , add joke memes, mix in a few lame marketing guys and typo-squatters, and our political friend is _way ahead of the curve.
This engineer should have gone to SueTube
What a cool video. Scott Adams can probably come up with a months worth of new cartoon's based on all this. Mr Adams hasn't spent enough time lambasting government clients and I think all that is about to change.
OMG, that is one funny video. Did the documentation for the table come with any warnings "DO NOT ADJUST TABLE WHILE IN USE" or something to that effect?
"These are not the boobs you are looking for."
how long until
This kind of asymmetric journalism could throw a major wrench in the typical damage control playbook of the government and big business.
Personally I expect govt contractors do this kind of stuff five times before they even get to breakfast every day.
Time before breakfast is spent getting the children out of the cages and into the fryers. You only screw the taxpayers on a full stomach.
paintball
Accusation is not guilt. We may never know if these issues have merit. They might have great merit, and got him fired for whistle blowing. They might be without merit, and this is the last straw to break an overly paranoid engineer's employment.
It all hinges on the merit of the claims, which we can't validate.
Zapman
You are absolutely correct. I work for a non-defense large agency and it's the same sort of thing. The COTR makes deals with the business orgs "We'll deliver some unusable hunk of crap by December of 07 and you'll claim to be using it and we'll both get clean audits and then we can start work on the real system". It's actually even MORE depressing when you know from day one that the next 18 months of work you do is going to be thrown away in 18 months and one day.
It's a great use of taxpayer dollars.
Working for a federal agency has done what no amount of conservative pundits and economists could do for 20 years: made me an advocate of smaller government.
no analogously perverse incentive exists for them to deploy defective gunboats.
How about the fact that they've already been deployed, and fixing the problem will thus be expensive and inconvenient for the government/coast guard, and the contractor doesn't want egg on their face. Seems like a couple of good incentives to me.
Big deal. Given that there are only five "big" defense contractors left, it doesn't mean much when you say that any one of 'em are the only ones that make anything.
Besides, we all know that big programs such as these are never awarded based on their technical merit. How could they be? The gov't folks that evaluate the proposals are as dumb as rocks. It's all about shmoozing. And Lockheed has a lot of damn good shmoozers on staff.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
I agree that TEMPEST is a bit out there, but we are talking about building according to specifics. Engineers don't get to decide arbitrarily to vary from design specifics because they don't feel them necessary. Differences from design to implementation cannot be allowed to happen. The design must match the finished development. If a change away from TEMPEST specs was in order, the design should have been changed.
Otherwise, we would have buildings in California not designed to hold up during a big earthquake because some engineer from the mid-west decided to build it how he always had "back home". Car tires could shred at eighty miles per hour because some engineer only tested at 55 because that is how fast he drives. You see where I am going with this?
Click here or here.
The original design called for no blind spots because of the number of cameras. Engineers must build to the design. Some drug smuggler or pirate enters a Coast Guard boat via a blind spot and kills a crew member: the next six months of Fox News will be about corporate greed and neglect and not following engineering specifics.
Fine, until someone needs some boats off Greenland or Antartica. They will punch up operating temperatures in a computer and say, here are some boats that will do just fine. One hundred of them ship and all Hell breaks loose because the implementation doesn't match engineering plans.
The original design called for TEMPEST compliance. The end product was not TEMPEST, and that is a problem. Whether or not you believe in the TEMPEST specifics is not up to engineering to arbitrarily ignore. Engineers must build to specs.
Click here or here.
Best radar systems in the world hey? I don't suppose you have heard of JORN, developed in Australia? It can detect stealth aircraft over 3000km away, but i'm sure lockheed must have something better right?
Umm, can I submit a response later?
Or rifles, but it still happens.
Never underestimate the power of corrupt representatives, well-funded lobbyists, wealthy defence contractors and congressional pork.
The example given (the SA80 Assault Rifle) is even one from the UK, and we don't have anything like the problems the USA does with corruption, patronage and lobbying (at least, not yet).
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Or engineers who notice buggered O-rings on shuttles?
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Apparently the government's response was that they've looked into his complaints repeatedly and never found anything wrong.
So, the alternatives are (a) he's wrong but obsessed or (b) the cover up is pretty big.
For his sake, I hope it's (b), but for the sake of our sailors, I hope not.
Clear, Dark Skies
The air temp might be -40 while the water temp is higher...
Clear, Dark Skies
Sounds somewhat similar to Alaska Airlines Flight 261 in Jan. 31, 2000. A maintenance guy reports all kinds of problems to the government because Alaska Airlines wanted to save money instead of properly maintaining their planes by keeping them in the air, but in the end nothing gets done and 88 people die because of it.
h t_261
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flig
What isn't listed in this Wikipedia was the guy that reported all the problems. His story is told in the National Geographic Channel's Air Crash Investigation about the crash. (it was on last night)
In my mind, the issue here is not what the product was, or if it was acceptable. Because, this would be fine if it were private Coast Guard dollars paying for the boats. The issue is if tax dollars, gleaned from the hard working citizens, were squandered on a goverment program intended to protect the people, and the people end up not being protected either because of government inefficacy, or corporate greed. That is the real question.
I disagree with you in your statement that all of these issues are up to the Coast Guard to decide what's acceptable.
The communications flaws are the most obvious, in that, I'm sure communication standards are put into place by the DOD.
Especially if communication is also between other depts. that handle sensitive information.
I, personally, think this is potentially a very big issue, and should be corrected, regardless of cost.
My mother was one of the people who assembled the heaters for the O-rings on Challenger. The government investigators asked a lot of questions at her place of work. The engineers there very quickly pointed out to them that the shuttle was flown well outside the specs for which the heaters had been designed. They had been designed for specs more stringent than for what they had been commissioned, just to give some extra padding room for error.
Let me restate what that means. The shuttle, to save some dollars associated with delaying the launch, was flown well outside the specs for the components given to the engineers at the subcontractors who made those components. And with those tens of thousands of dollars as a goal, they gambled the billions invested into the shuttle program, the PR they had put into the teacher in space idea, and the lives of six astronauts and a public school teacher. They lost.
I bet it's not as common as it was in 1985. I'm not surprised that a government that had the support of a nation for a space program that was going well but went and blew it all for some financial savings would do the same on some Coast Guard patrol boats. I'm not surprised at all. When was the last time you saw an elementary school playground full of kids in Young Astronauts t-shirts watching a model rocket go up in the air?
You slightly messed up the link HTML. The comment is here.
BTW: (Unless I misunderstand it...) According to the Wikipedia article you quoted, the red is "classified or sensitive information" and black is "classified or sensitive information"
Hey look! They have a snazzy web form for emailing complaints directly to the contacts!
t o=8
i p/deepwater.htm
http://www.teamdeepwater.com/contacts/email/?send
It's a little hokey - change the number at the end of the url to change the contact you're emailing. This are linked from the contacts page.
Here's the official take on the project:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/sh
I'm sure it would be a shock to the project if a mob of people started calling in to complain:
http://www.icgsdeepwater.com/contacts/
CPO Jeff Murphy
Integrated Deepwater System
Deepwater Public Affairs
Office: 202-267-2649
Facsimile: 202-267-4020
Margaret Mitchell-Jones
Communications Director
Integrated Coast Guard Systems
Office: 571-218-3352
Facsimile: 571-218-3342
Jim McIngvale
Director, Sector Communications
Northrop Grumman Ship Systems
Office: 228-935-3971
Facsimile: 228-935-5766
Kenneth B. Ross
Senior Manager, Strategic Communication
Maritime Systems & Sensors, Lockheed Martin
Office: 856-722-6941
Facsimile: 856-273-5744
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
is a job requirement in Security work.
"Use of non-shielded cable in "secure" communications systems.
This one is a bit ridiculous, and shows his paranoia. "
A professional recognizes the difference between Professional Paranois and the personal affliction variety of paranoia.
Such amatuer archair diagnosis is enough branding evidence to reveal the real insecurity behind a flawed accusation.
Courage is doing the right thing even when you're scared shitless of the risks.
You are an excellent example of what modern patriotism is all about. You didn't have to make this sacrifice, at least from a legal standpoint, but by doing so, you may have saved the lives of Coast Guardsmen and perhaps those whom they protect.
Ironic that those who bandy about terms like 'freedom' and 'terrorism' most glibly are the ones whose incompetence and graft you are exposing.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
The night manager ... has been taking home 2 packets of the mild sauce and 1 packet of the hot sauce... Should I put a video up of her taking them?
Absolutely! I expect everyone employed at such a fine establishment to be using the Fire sauce. As such, she is obviously not using these packets on her own food, but is clearly selling them on some sort of black market, probably to Canadians.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Generally: Both 'Red' and 'Black' carry "classified or sensitive information", the difference is the "Black" information is Encrypted.
(bold added by me)
Because the 'black' is encrypted, it is generally considered 'safe' for broadcast or transfer outside the system.
The common exception is power lines. They are typically considered 'black', and testing is done to esure there is no Red information on them. The aim is to ensure no Red (unencrypted) information leaves the facility - at all. Have a read of that PDF I referenced in my (grandparent) post.
As far as I know this project is already canceled. Maybe attributed to him? But it's already a done deal, it's cancelled. Now Its true that I didnt take the time to read the linked article but inside sources say cancelled.
I worked for Lockheed for about five years, and I have no difficulty believing this story. I wouldn't fly in a plane they built (unless it came from the skunk works!).
I personally Doubt your arguments for a single reasons:
You did not create an account, and you are not holding yourself Personally Responsible for your words.
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
Didn't we just see a repeat of this last shuttle launch? And again it will happen in the next few weeks. Engineers who understand and report the deficiencies, and management trumping their educated answers to meet a deadline.
I think they did listen, but let the calculator decide. To build and maintain Category 5 protectection for New Orleans would cost more than occosionally rebuilding it when anything above Category 3 hits. That is why they are still only building Cat 3 protection. I think 10 years would be an optimistic estimate of how long it would take. Hell, some of New Orleans leaves dated back to 1718.
Listening and being able to actually do something about it are two different things.
Because, A. he works for a highly suspect organization that is presently operates in war criminal status as their VP was one of the crucial players in getting this country to do a fraudulent invasion of another sovereign nation, B. he no longer has any worker's rights under this fascist regime and the US Congress is now 100% corrupt and exist only in criminal mode. So to simplify it for the simpletons, he is most probably not guilty of anything but honesty while trying to exist in a criminal society.....learn, don't worship ignorance....
Now I do think that this might have some merit, but if no one cared at the Coast Guard, the people who are ordering the ships, I don't think there is anything more to say. In the end, they are the ones who need to say that it is unacceptible. They are the ones who need to say that we want X% of money back due to not meeting X requirement(s).
That's not precisely true either.
The people paying for this are the TAXPAYERS.
The people making the contract are usually a DoD intermediary of some kind, or a Special Projects Office, etc.
They set the contract requirements, and they pay the contractor.
Not the Coast Guard.
It could be that the Coast Guard is overstepping their bounds here, or is possibly otherwise unable to communicate the actual requirements to the contract authority (whoever that is).
If Lockheed can't meet the requirements, they file for a deviation, with the contract authority (whoever that is in this case). The Coast Guard should have input into the process, but unless the money's coming out of their budget directly, (it's not, it's coming from DHS), then their opinion can be overridden by the folks who are actively paying.
It's difficult to glean the whole story from this guy's video. But I'd be really shocked to find out that the contractor's management and the Coast Guard were in cahoots to deliver a product that didn't meet requirements, without approval of the contract authority. With all the exposure this case has gotten (they guy says there have been ethics reviews, and involvement at the DoD level, and the contractor Executive level), I just really find it hard to believe that this is going on the way he's telling this story.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Do you have any idea what LM's total business is?
LM has nothing to lose and everything to gain by "coming clean" if that's the case.
Past ethical behavior does have a measure of effect on winning future contracts. There are plenty of examples where ethical contractors have pulled the plug - sometimes painfully - on contracts where they knew they couldn't meet the customer's requirements. This short-term pain pays off, in long-term reputation.
It's not just about ethics, it's good business.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Again, and how do we know that they havn't filed for a deviation? This person who reported this hasn't worked on the project for years according to him. He wouldn't know if a deviation had been filed, and the people he contacted probably can't or wouldn't tell him even if there was one filed, since he no longer works on it, it is not information he needs to know. Since all of this is technical information about a military vessel, it would be most likely classified or protected information due to security reasons.
He wouldn't be informed of anything because he no longer is in a position to know the information. And as we have just seen with his publishing of this information, he probably shouldn't be trusted to have it in the first place... How do any of us know if these problems havn't been resolved? All we know is that someone who worked on the project a while ago had informed his management of the problem at the time he worked on the project. Yes, that is exactly what he was suppose to do. He then left working on that project, yet still somehow wants to be kept in the loop about this? I don't think that would happen... What if he is working for a different company? He certainly would not be kept informed of progress on a project he is no longer a part of...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
And how do we know this guy's not a poser, and this video was meant to give terrorists/smugglers/pirates a false sense of security so when they attempt some type of assault, they get their asterisks blown out of the sea?
Exactly what i told them over and over. Come clean - no one else does that - you will be better off a year or so from now. I even offered to go back on the job as Chief Engineer and get it right. Here's why they don't. So many trusted managers said I was wrong that they simply don't know they are. I think they never really looked at the data.
Have you seen this?
We had a problem at the intersection we live at. People were getting into accidents. Yet the City thought the best thing to do was to take away our parking in front of our house even though those of us near the intersection knew the problem was (a) speeders on Grove St and (b) people not stopping at the stop sign on Vale. I videotaped several hours of video and condensed one of the tapes to 6.5 mins of video to show the people not stopping at the stop sign. The result was a meeting with the City and it also turned out that the crash data statistics showed that all but one accident happened during business hours on weekdays when we were not parked out front of our house. Without the video I never would have had my chance to discuss the issue with the City and also would have lost our on street parking. http://www.alexandre.polozoff.com/ has a link to the video.
Given the crap labour has done recently I don't think it will be very long until we lead the world in corruption and the like...
I am pretty much against all kind of military things. I am not a nutjob and I do know that we need it.
My point is that if we had more people like this engineer the world would be a better place (and have less wars, for example). Thank You!
For another thing the damn Cole had no business even being in Yemen.
Oh, I see. Our weapons systems are not intended to be versatile. The Cole wasn't where it was 'supposed to be'??!! So your concept of warfare holds that ships and soldiers should only be in certain spots and if their responsibilities require them to step outside those boundaries, you're writing them off. I sure hope these Coast Guard ships don't visit some place they're 'not supposed to be'.
So while in a foreign port, you've got these active watch guys stationed around the boat. There are two camera blind spots. Silenced sniper rifle head shot takes out one sentry. Scuba divers swim up to the ship, throw a grappling hook over the railing, climb on board, and take control of the ship. "Well, that boat wasn't supposed to be where that could happen."
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I dunno. We're on parallel courses but the USA is still a fair way out in front IMO.
The frustrating thing is that Blair is faithfully following the course the USA is taking, when he should be looking at the consequences and using the USA as a blatant example of what not to do.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
There's no question he raises a valid point. Several valid points. Ok, many valid points.
But this is not the way to communicate an issue of National Security.
Goodness, this is just as bad (hypothetically) as some yahoo stumbling on a gaping hole in Windows that no one has found yet and running to NBC to be the first one on the news as discovering it. A responsible person knows that some other bright yahoo will figure out what they figured out just because it was broadcast. But that fact that the majority of Internet-connected desktops can be compromised now doesn't really matter, because "I found it first, and I want the whole world to know!"
Maybe I missed it but I didn't hear him having called any Senators. They just love to have a flavor of the month to beat their chest about. Better yet, I didn't hear him calling any Senators who used to be in the Coast Guard.
I do see him, however, INTERNATIONALLY BROADCASTING that you can sneak up on a Coast Guard vessel. Great; now there's more exposure to our Boys and Girls in Orange and Blue while patrolling our southeastern waters.
Seems to me he's one of the dumbest smart people in the world.
==>dim strStatus = "DONE."<==
There is no one in government who cares right now. The signs of something very bad happening within my lifetime within my country are numerous, and they all evolve around a populace that doesn't vote, and small groups of people who do vote for people who don't really care about anyone but themselves and the businesses that give them tons of money.
/.)
And you just hit the nail on the head. *sigh* Well, I suppose that will make it all the easier for us that do actually give a shit about our country and our way of life to stand up and do something when the overbloated, overhyped, and overPAID, seat warmers in Congress, and in State Legislature, IMPLODE. Believe me... there are enough of us out here that believe bad things are going to happen soon if things continue on the way they are, and making contingency plans for those reasons. Including infrastructure and data protections.
So you younguns... you just keep on voting for Big Brother and American Idol and continue to watch 230 years of hard work, belief, and faith in the greater good that freedom brings go right on down the shitter. Just make sure you spend all your money on rims and iPods and help make fat the corporate giants that keep buying off the very people you protest to hate. (this is clearly rhetorical, as most of them would NOT be reading
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
Hahahahahaha, good one.
Your international calls are eavesdropped on by the NSA, an agency specifically not permitted to conduct surveillance on US citizens. Your domestic calls are traffic-analysed for "patterns indicating terrorism". Your ISP, telephone and library records are browsed by law enforcement not only without a warrant, but with punishments for the librarians/engineers/companies responsible if they tip you off.
You're holding hundreds of foreign nationals in legal limbo in a concentration camp, where they're regularly humiliated and tortured with complete administration approval. They're subject to secret trials without legal protection, and "due process" isn't even paid lip-service. The CIA has been caught illegally flying suspects to authoritarian regimes through your allies airports without permission so they can be "properly" tortured without US personnel being directly held responsible.
The PATRIOT act powers, far from only being used to catch terrorists (as promised) have been used to harrass holidaymakers, arrest peaceful demonstrators and deny innocent people flights and passports. In addition, said powers were recently renewed and made permanent, even though they were firmly promised to be "only temporary" when introduced after 9/11.
Your democratic system is hopelessly corrupt - one party controls (and is consolidating its hold) on all three branches of your government, your representatives are either corrupt or powerless in the face of the Whitehouse, judicial oversight of the executive branch has been gutted, your leaders are known to have broken the law multiple times and that's not even counting the constant background noise of corrupt representatives (to be fair, more Republicans than Democrats, but still both) being outed in dodgy financial deals and abuses of power. Your elections would embarrass a south american banana republic, with Diebold and ES&S machines showing all kinds of voting irregularities (when people haven't been erroneously thrown off the voting rolls for daring to have a similar name to a convicted felon), machines so easy to hack a chimpanzee has been videoed doing it and programmers testifying the systems are insecure by design, and that they were paid to produce election-subverting tools for Republican party members.
You've lost the rights to: not be searched without due cause, not permit law enforcement entry into your home without "good reason" to believe a crime is being committed, the right to free speech and the majority of rights ensuring your privacy.
And that's without even touching on the deliberate treason by the current administration outing an undercover CIA operative for political gains, "clamping down on terrorism" by selling off your ports to a middle-eastern company with decidedly dodgy connections, an illegal war in Iraq, thousands of US soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent foreign nationals dead, an army so unpopular it can't recruit enough people to mintain parity and so financially fucked it can't afford proper equipment for the people they already have.
Plus, y'know, Creationism/ID being taught as "science", the environment, your entire foreign policy making you a pariah in the international scene and all the other fun things that haven't changed a bit since 9/11.
Need I go on?
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
Ever hear of ACS?
Yes - there were noises (official noises) about trouble with ACS long before it's cancellation. I don't think there was any kind of cover up involved there.
I am willing to bet that there was a customer acceptance of the risk, or a planned fix during the next spiral of development.
More like; the customer didn't really know what they wanted.
While we don't actually know for certain what has happened, I can probably make a fair guess that this guy was frustrated by the bureaucracy of the company.
Not likely. You don't work there very long if you can't handle the bureaucracy. People either learn to live with it, or they're out fairly quickly. Same with other big defense contractors. It's the nature of the business. My take on the attrition issue (in the industry) is that it's a compansation issue - very simple to solve, until you take on the denial component ("no, our engineers don't need to earn enough to be able to buy a house. We're paying the going market rate"). People will leave because of the bureaucracy fairly quickly, no matter what you pay them. The ones that stay, will leave later on, when they realize they could afford to raise a family if they went to work in the private sector. It's that simple.
It's true - technical concerns go up the chain of technical management. Ethical concerns go up the chain of "functional" management. This is not unique to LM - it's called a "matrix organization". In my experience, the functional managers are hired out of the same pool as technical managers, most often they wear two hats, technical and functional, but they're technical manager to the technical team, and functional manager to a different group of workers. There's nothing special about the relative competence between functional and technical managers. LM (as well as most other large corporations in the US) has a separate, anonymous, if necessary, mechanism to report ethics issues up the chain.
(there is still not enough info on what happened to make a stong opinion IMHO).
It is pretty simple. We don't have enough information.
Either the Ethics system didn't work for this guy, or there was a deviation letter he didn't know about (why they wouldn't tell him about it after he made such a fuss is beyond me).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Sorry - I replied to other posts not realizing you were the person this story is about.
I'd really like to discuss this in more detail. If nothing else, maybe it will give me more insight into how these things work; I'm a relatively low-level employee, and have only been in this business a couple of years. I can't imagine this kind of thing going on on my project. However, I don't think it's a good idea to go into more detail in this forum, and we would both have the responsibility to protect proprietary and controlled information. Which is why I try to speak in analogies and generalities.
All engineering is trade-offs, of course, and some trade-offs, you can't know about ahead of time, no matter how competent or diligent you are. But if you keep your customer informed of the trade-offs as they arise (which, by the processes WE use, they have full and ready access to pretty much all of our engineering data, plans, test results, etc.) and if the customer agrees to the path things are taking, even if they don't get 100% of what they originally wanted, it should be okay, ethically speaking - right? Sailors are at risk - but they're at risk all the time. You can't ever 100% eliminate risk, but you mitigate it. If the Coast Guard accepts the mitigation, then doesn't that make it all right, from a LM perspective? Even if the mitigation (whatever that is - no details!) may not, in the opinion of some engineers, be sufficient? If there's a concern that the individual people making this call were not technical enough to understand the ramifications, I guess there is a duty of the technical engineer to inform. . .
These situations get sticky when you've got multiple customers, subcontractors, independent oversight agencies, etc. in the mix.
Now, if the contractor is not truthful with the customer, that's where the problem can arise. I don't see precisely where that happened - except in the relationship between the DHS and CG. Since LM is getting paid by DHS (right?), that makes this kind of a fuzzy area if the CG okayed the deviation.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I do not know how complete and truthful LM was when they told the CG about the issues. LM's own ethical practices should not have permitted them to make this an option for the CG. We are not talking about grey areas here. I know - that happens all the time. We are talking about grave errors. However - the CG should never have accepted the boats.
I can see where you're coming from now.
LM's hired for technical expertise - as well as delivering the product.
And LM focussed only on delivering the product as defined in the contract, and perhaps ill-conceived deviations.
I guess the reason why I can't imagine this happening in my situation is that my current customer is pretty sharp, and probably wouldn't make a decision like this.
Don't get me wrong - one can be pissed off as a taxpayer at the waste that goes on, or the dangers to our troops, and, at the same time, as an engineer, accept that the process happened as it was designed to, and everyone did their best. I normally do a pretty good job of separating those two feelings. When you look at what the American military (and associated industries) are capable of, has accomplished, compared to most other nations, some of the most stupid things seem worthwhile. (ie. maybe it's worth it to pay $1000 for a hammer, because in the context of our technical military success in Bosnia, or the initial Iraq invasion, $1000 hammers are worth every penny - even if they were unnecessary).
It sounds like you feel that not everyone did their best. Not knowing the details, I don't know if that's correct or not, and I probably can't know that. But your background and experience, and your passion, tells me that you're probably right. (though I question your judgement in posting what may be proprietary and national security details to YouTube - again - you probably have your reasons for feeling it was necessary, though I would hope if I were in a similar situation, I'd try to find a way to make my point without violating my SF-312).
I hope this works out for you, because this country needs more passionate and honest engineers, not less.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
No violation. The original position of the CG and LM was that there was no 360 degree requirment for the cameras (which is nonsense) Also LM and others have said my allegations were baseless. Can't have it both ways (Which is why I found the CGs request to have YouTube pull the video very telling. If it is a security violation like they say then why are their blind spots on 8 boats. Very avoidable blind spots)
From the wikipedia entry on JORN:
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
Fnar, again: good one.
I'm as hot as you on the media sensationalising trivial occurrances, and the damage the inevitable knee-jerk reactions by short-sighted citizens and bandwagon-jumping representatives. I think this is one of the major problems with modern society in the West - we're hearing news from all four corners of the earth, but we've got brains evolved for living in small groups of 100-150 people, so at a subsconscious level we assume anything we hear happening to anyone must be happening to people in a group that size.
We hear about a child getting abducted and murdered, and instead of going "well, that's a 1 in 10,000,000 chance, nothing to worry about" we go "Shit! My kids are playing inside now for the rest of their lives!!!111!!11eleventy!!!1".
Nevertheless, when you have clear and incontrovertible proof that your own government is eavesdropping on the population (and, like it or not, Echelon is listening to your calls and eavesdropping on your e-mail, and traffic analysis is being done on your phone), in defiance of the laws of the land, that's neither "media manipulation" nor "isolated".
When you look at the statistics and see the economy tanking, you see Creationism/ID being given the status of a "science", you see the "before" and "after" versions of a scientific report that's been vetted by the Whitehouse, it's hard to write those off as media manipulation.
When you read amateur blog postings of people who have been arrested and detained for days for taking part in a peaceful (pre-arranged!) protest, or when you read self-published accounts of people being denied visas or flights because their name sounds a bit like a suspected terrorist, that's not media manipulation.
When you see time and again the law enforcement admitting the use of PATRIOT Act powers in situations completely unrelated to terrorism, that's neither media manipulation, nor something that's "always happened".
"There are almost no stories of abuses by normal citizens in the news media. It just doesn't happen."
Maybe not in Fox news, mate, but try raising your head occasionally (fuck it: just do a Google search) and you'd be amazed what you see.
And that only took a couple of minutes and a quick search.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself