FEMA Phones Hacked, Calls Made To Mideast and Asia

purplehayes writes "A hacker broke into a Homeland Security Department telephone system over the weekend and racked up about $12,000 in calls to the Middle East and Asia. The hacker made more than 400 calls on a Federal Emergency Management Agency voicemail system in Emmitsburg, Md., on Saturday and Sunday, according to FEMA spokesman Tom Olshanski."

Comments

Hacker?

[ilovegeorgebush]

Shouldn't this be 'phreaker'? The article even states the break-in was over their PBX (i.e. a convential phone system, not VoIP).

Re:Hacker?

[AP31R0N]

See? Apologism and insults.

As if the rightness or wrongness of something depends upon how many people accept it. The majority can be wrong. Just because a use is accepted in everyday use, doesn't make it right. If you have to cite definition 3 to defend use of a word....

It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
- George Orwell

http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html

'But languages change'

There's evolution and there's corruption. By allowing the corruption of the word hacker, people who are hackers in the correct sense are lumped in with those in the incorrect sense. Now we have to come up with another word for those who are hackers in the original sense... when we already had words for both! By allowing copyright infringement to be called piracy, they are associating it with something far more sinister than kids swapping files. If some Germans were Nazis, it would be wrong to call all Germans Nazis, wouldn't it? Unless we water down what we originally meant by Nazi.

We think in language. Propagandists use this against us all the time. "It's not murder... it's execution."

Another clip from Orwell:

Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

____

An Anonymous Coward saying something silly throwing in some childish ad hominem passes for insightful?

At least have the courage of your convictions. If you're you going to slam someone, don't hide behind anonymity where you can't be held accountable. You could try posting like an adult, and then you could make your point without cowering.

Re:Who hacks phones anymore?

[seeker_1us]

It should be pointed out that FEMA used to be a very competant organization before GWBush merged it into his Department of Fatherland Security and cut it's budget.

Re:In FEMA's defense

[apparently]

Just curious, would you advocate privately run police forces?

The DEA is already employing private security for their raids.

Re:Who is valuing these minutes?

[e4g4]

Personally I've always thought people stupid enough to call weed "schwag" would be stupid enough to pay 50 grand for a quarter of it.

"Schwag" refers to the quality of the weed, like "middies", "kind" and "dank". "Schwag" refers to brownish, dry, shakey crap with seeds and stems (usually outdoor bud grown in Mexico). A quarter of schwag isn't worth much more than $20-$30 (at least on the east coast).

Re:In FEMA's defense

[megaditto]

"Ask not what your country can do for you[...]

I recognize these words. I think these were uttered by JF Kennedy, the man who started the war in Vietnam, sent thousands of American conscripts to die there, all while snorting coke off Marilyn Monroe sweet butt (and while his brother the Attorney General Bobby Kennedy wiretapped Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders).
No wonder that asshole didn't want us asking what our country could do for us.

[...] but what you can do for your country!"

You actually believe that shit? Talk about "useful idiots"...