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Railroad Association Says TSA's Hacking Memo Was Wrong
McGruber writes "Wired reports that the American Association of Railroads is refuting the U.S. Transportation Security Administration memorandum that said hackers had disrupted railroad signals. In fact, 'There was no targeted computer-based attack on a railroad,' said AAR spokesman Holly Arthur. 'The memo on which the story was based has numerous inaccuracies.' The TSA memo was subject of an earlier Slashdot story in which Slashdot user currently_awake accurately commented on the true nature of the incident."
I'm not surprised... TSA is a cancer.
I really wish the /. crowd would lose the dissonance about huge governemnt.
Hate the TSA.
Hate the Patriot Act.
Hate the loss of privacy and freedom.
LOVE the idea of even more government power by putting it in charge of health care.
I think the railroads are the last form of transportation where TSA is not allowed and they want their grubby little hands in the pot. There is literally a conspiracy going on to track every citizen where they are. They can already track your car with all the camera's (to monitor traffic or give you tickets) and license plate detection in unmarked and regular police cars as well as pull you over, detain you indefinitely and search you without cause if you are 200mi from a US border or airport. Now they want in on the train stations too so all railways would be included in their 200 mile zones?
I say, kill the beast while you still can. The TSA needs to be shut down immediately.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
There's a difference. Putting them in charge of health care is a matter of ensuring our wellbeing. The others are about violating our rights.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Heh, I wish I had mod points - but I am sure the point will be lost on most of the mods. +5 Funny!
I'm sure TSA is unhappy about this. They've long been talking about their intent to spread out into other modes of transportation. Since Amtrak's police have been throwing them out of train stations lately, they've no doubt been searching for any politically-convenient justification they can find to invade rail transit. Doubly so since Amtrak ridership is at an all-time high with people taking trains for the sole purpose of avoiding TSA.
For the politically-active among us, this is perhaps a good opportunity to write to U.S. congresspeople to alert them about TSA's misrepresentation of this report, as well as state congresspeople to encourage them to pass state-level legislation reining in TSA (Tenth Amendment Center has a pre-written Travel Freedom Act that works at the state level to criminalize invasive TSA screening procedures).
TSA isn't going to stop their reign of sexual assault and desecration of Constitutional rights until and unless the people stop it for them. Public opinion has been turning against TSA lately, especially with the three elderly travelers who were strip-searched late last year (about which TSA blatantly lied). Now is as good a time as ever to push your elected officials to stop TSA. The site in my sig is a good resource, as is Freedom To Travel USA. Please do anything and everything you can to help stop TSA.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
Oh yeah. Cause for-profit industry is doing a great job bringing affordable health care to the masses.
We're all better served by folks with pre-existing conditions being denied basic coverage, huh?
Thats what u.s. 'deep government' backed by private interests have used to keep suppressing freedoms and keep progress and plurality outside not only u.s. but all nato members :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
Every nato member got one of these founded in their own country. these underground organizations then staged assassinations of non-u.s./nato aligned political figures, journalists, activists. in most cases, extra steps were taken to set up leftist (or whatever opposing faction) terrorist organizations which were actually under control of these gladio clones. these terrorist organizations then staged terror attacks while claiming to be doing these for the political views that gladio wanted to alienate public from. for most of the cold war, this was left ideas. and not surprisingly, in all countries these terrorist attacks were used to alienate public from those political views, marginalize their ideas, and also implement various 'security' measures and laws to limit freedoms.
i dont need to tell any american that after soviet union ended and there was no way that this scheme would work, suddenly the 'terror threat' from islamist groups replaced these - and you all know what happened after 2001. ...................
this is no different. in case you have noticed, we are having an extremely ridiculous amount of 'cyber threat' bullshit coming out of not only private interests, but also the government. they are basically just applying the same policies they used to control every aspect of life, to internet. internet was 'way too much' free for them.
i think we dont need to even dwell on the fact that tsa is just a cog in this machine. but, they are floppy at it.
Read radical news here
conspiracy theory Time! The rich are pushing government to do health care. If controlled by the government (that is controlled by corps) then they can kill off the poor (sorry, we could not save your son. The ingrown toenail was to bad. No, you can't see him. Health care requires that we turn in his organs. But you should feel better, your son just save the CEO in the next room.).
seeing how in 2012 railroad still use hole punch tickets taking seems a long way off and to have any thing like a TSA cheek point will need a BIG TIME rebuild of all the stations
wow, i guess face book comments are also good sources of information...
Whoosh?
Ostensibly the TSA, PATRIOT ACT, etc are there to ensure public well being.
This is not the funny you're looking for.
So that's the second false "cyberattack" in so many months..
Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency
health care != health insurance
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Oh yeah. Cause for-profit industry is doing a great job bringing affordable health care to the masses.
The government isn't going to make health care more affordable, they're just going to make someone else pay for it.
You need them to keep the invaders at bay? What, you expect to breathe air, not soot? You mean you expect to not get shot for your boots when you go to work? Clearly you need a nanny.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Which is effectively impossible given that so many stations are little more than a ticket booth and a platform. In rural areas, it's more like needing to BUILD a station in the first place than to rebuild or reconfigure existing structures.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
Trains carrying toxic chemicals will be derailing. School buses will be rammed by freight trains at inoperative crossings.
How will we know the difference between an attack and normal operations?
Have gnu, will travel.
health care != health insurance
True, but in the United States, without health insurance, you cannot get adequate health care.
The government isn't going to make health care more affordable
I'm not so sure about that.
Totally off-topic:
I had an ingrown (two actually, one each foot) nail. 1/4" deep past the skin (nail grew with a sharp curl on the sides, so it grew down like a knife-edge). I delt with that for over a year before we finally had an opportunity to get a doctor to cut them out and burn back the nail bed to prevent regrowth.
Local infection (drainage etc) but never receded even to the knuckle, we kept it at the surface. We did a damn good job at keeping that at bay, all things considered. ... fun times! Thanks for the reminder! (that shit hurt)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Why bother? It's not like you can fly a train into a building.
health care != health insurance
This needs to be +50, because neither the R's nor the D's understand it and continue to make serious policy decisions based on their misunderstanding that will affect us all.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
... still makes it sound like some major incident with their nomenclature.
Check your premises.
A ticket booth and a platform? Wow!
My hometown's station didn't have a ticket booth. We had a sign. Eventually, they got fancy and installed a button with a light inside a little shelter.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Or try this on for size, "sorry, your blog is critical of Obamacare..."
Obamacare is an entity which cares for its own well being.
The original currently_awake comment wasn't informative, it was merely a correct guess, and an extremely fuzzy one at that.
Slashdot comment threads will always be more accurate than authoritative information, as long as you grade them relative to a stopped clock.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Train_wreck_at_Montparnasse_1895.jpg
I have relatives from out of the country staying with us. One of them had a medical issue. We took her to several doctors, got x-rays, and perscriptions. Everything was surprisingly cheap, unless we were purchasing brand name medication.
Of course, surgical procedures and chronis conditions may be another story, but we didn't pay all that much more than 200 bucks for 3 doctors visits, medication, and the x-rays. I figured it was going to be closer to 1,000 based off what I see insurance is billed for on my own visits.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Increase the output of doctors from medical schools by increasing federal funding. Have lots more internists and GPs, or more nurse practitioners. It might not make the AMA happy as it may depress salaries.
Of course if billing wasn't as complex, then providers could lay off all the people they have on staff to deal with those issues.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Yep, TSA alright.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Actually, in most countries with socialized healthcare, the government DOES make healthcare more affordable. This is due to the fact that since they're footing the bill and are already in debt, they don't want to have to spend more on healthcare than they need to -- because unlike other budgets, it's hard to kick back some of the healthcare budget into perks for government employees without a huge backlash from the electorate.
So what you get is big pharm saying "here are these drugs for $X." and government saying "Not if you want to sell them in this country, they're not. You get our contract only if you sell them for $Y*."
*usually, YX.....
I really wish the Republican crowd would lose the dissonance about huge government.
/. crowd leans more libertarian than Republican. This is the "dissonance" you're seeing.
Love the PATRIOT ACT.
Love the loss of privacy and freedom (habeas corpus & due process suck!)
Love any and all military action.
Love vast expansion of the deficit, as long as it's by Republicans.
Hate the idea of taxes being spent health care (except Medicare part D, a givaway to Big Pharma) and education.
I'd venture to say that most of the
The government should be restrained from doing anything that not only the government can do.
The government is wasteful and slow. everything it does can be done better, faster and cheaper by private enterprise.
There are of course no exceptions to this rule. There is however a problem. There are certain things that ONLY a government can do.
Defense being just one. Only a federal government can be effective dealing with foreign governments. You need a federal government to dole out the radio spectrum. You need a federal government to make the state governments play nice. You need government to protect your rights. The government has to do these things.
It still does them at great expense and badly. Still it is government that needs to do them.
Health care.
Let me start by reminding people what "rights" are. "Rights" are things that the government should never be allowed to take from you and that the government should protect from being taken from you. They are not things that are given. I have a right to my spiritual beliefs. I have a right to speak my mind. I had a right to bear arms to protect myself, my neighbor, my community and my country if need be. I have a right to a fair hearing before my rights are taken from me. I have a right to not be compelled to incriminate myself. These and a few more are rights.
I do not have a "right" to your car. I do not have a right to your money. I do not have a right to health care. These things would be nice. I am not saying they are bad. They however are most certainly not rights.
That which is given to you can be taken from you. Protect your rights and stop giving them up for your wants. It feels good now but as all governments do. This government will continue grow and take your rights. They will offer you candy for your rights. You will give them up. When you finally see what they are doing it will be to late. You will have given up freedom of speech to protect suicidal teenagers from mean high school bullies. You will have given up your right to a gun in a vain attempt to take them away from evil people. You will have given up your right to a fair trial to protect yourself form scary terrorists. You will have given up your rights. They will not taken them from you. You will give them up. Then you will have no protection left.
Understand the difference between what you want and your rights. Then make sure you do not give up your rights for warm feelings inside.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
This is due to the fact that since they're footing the bill and are already in debt, they don't want to have to spend more on healthcare than they need to -- because unlike other budgets, it's hard to kick back some of the healthcare budget into perks for government employees without a huge backlash from the electorate.
Yes, but we are talking about America where half the nation thinks its fine when the guys they voted for (because they told them what they wanted to hear) literally borrow trillions per year, and do not "backlash" when it is found that the money just went to the corporations that supported the guys they voted for.
They think that they are "entitled" to shit so cant for the life of them figure out what can be cut enough to balance the budget, let alone pay for their new spending idea.
"His name was James Damore."
Well said :)
To /. crowd: what are the plans continuing to maintain the existing reader / commenter base of this site once the government shuts down the Internet?
You can't handle the truth.
As a freedom loving person, you will probably grow up, realize that health insurance is cheep, and finally figure out that national healthcare is evil.
LOL on the cheap health insurance, heh, that is amusing. If national health care is evil why do Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan Norway, Sweden, and the UK* in comparison to the USA all have:
Nationalized health care
longer life expectancy
lower infant mortality
higher number of MD's per capita
AND
spend less $'s per capita on health care (a little bit more than half as much per person)
spent much less as a percent of GDP on health care (about 9-10% versus US's 16%)
Unless, of course, by evil you mean people living longer and paying half as much for their health care.
Perhaps some day you might realize that the freedom to either get very little health care while contributing to record profits of large health insurance companies or opting to spend even more for direct health care because of monopolistic practices by same companies, isn't really freedom.
*(I pick these because the info was easy to find via Wikipedia and comes from an OECD 2007 study)
There was one event a few years ago where some attack on a network resulted in a signal outage. That was because the long-haul links to wayside signal controllers went over an IP network.
But those aren't safety related. The safety logic is all local, in wayside boxes. That's where the train detection to signal control logic is. The long-haul connections are for dispatching - which train goes where, setting up routes, etc. Both the dispatching and safety information have to agree to produce a green light.
An outage of the links to the dispatcher turns signals red and stops trains. Such outages happen occasionally, and they're a huge headache, but not a safety issue. As a backup, trains can be given train orders by voice radio, but they're limited by slow-speed operation in that mode.
Yes, we should put private enterprise in charge of our roads and highways. Won't travel be more fun when every road is a toll road.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Reality seems to contradict you. The US healthcare system is neither cheap (most expensive on the planet) nor efficient/good (usually towards the bottom of the list when ranking 1st world countries). In contrast, many of the cheapest and best systems for healthcare are either national healthcare systems (e.g., Canada and UK) or hybridized systems (e.g., the Netherlands).
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Have you noticed how far this thread has strayed from original subject of a railroad signal system being hacked?
Someone else ALREADY pays for it. A lot. Twice as much as the rest of the civilized world. That somebody is you, and me, and everyone unfortunate enough to live in this privatized paradise.
You think the 20 plus percent off the top of your premiums, the taxes for programs to help those without insurance (inefficient due to lack of scale), write offs for indigent care, idiotic rules about which labs you can use or which doctors you can see, plus all the paperwork associated with helping insurance companies say no to you costs NOTHING?
I once had a claim denied because the receipt was printed on a dot matrix printer with a bad ribbon. I had to FAX the receipt because our modern capitalist insurance company couldn't use better tech, and it didn't fax well. I'd have mailed them the damned thing but they only took faxes. Took months to straighten out, and involved 3 director-level people where I work. You think all THAT was free? And that was incredibly minor to the hell that a lot of people go through. At least I wasn't waiting for care for a life-threatening illness while that was going on.
Purely socialized or highly regulated private systems (as in mandatory not-for-profit but privately run hospitals and insurance companies) are proven to work. Ours is a proven disaster. Something's got to give, and soon.
Medical charges without insurance in America are off the charts. This doesn't seem consistent with the idea that health care is something private industry can do efficiently.
You had a sign? Luxury! We had a message scrawled in the dirt! If it rained, you didn't know what to do until the guy with the stick came by and re-wrote the message!
And you try and tell the young people of today that. They won't believe you.
Yes, we should put private enterprise in charge of our roads and highways. Won't travel be more fun when every road is a toll road.
Life will be so much better when every road now to make a profit rather then simply having tolls to offset some of the cost.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I was being serious. It looks much like this now.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Oh yeah. Cause for-profit industry is doing a great job bringing affordable health care to the masses.
The government isn't going to make health care more affordable, they're just going to make someone else pay for it.
The facts dont agree with you. The average American with their god like private system pays over $13,000 for insurance. The average Australian pays around $4000 for top private health care with our evil government backed Medicare system. And yes, I included the Medicare levy in that figure. Based on a family of four, parents aged 35-45 avg income A$66,000 used for Medicare levy calculations.
The public system in Australia is good enough that a lot of people, especially young people dont have to get private. This alone puts the private insurance rate for basic cover at $500 for a single 25-35 yr old, top cover starts around $1000.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
seeing how in 2012 railroad still use hole punch tickets taking seems a long way off and to have any thing like a TSA cheek point will need a BIG TIME rebuild of all the stations
Dont be so quick to knock it. Where I live we moved to a RFID system that had millions of dollars in cost overruns before the roll-out and now has millions of dollars in cost overruns because the machines dont work properly. Not to mention the delays because people cant use the RIFD cards properly.
A grandma will literally stare at a smarcard reader because she doesn't know where to swipe the RFID card and of course the RFID system is the only way she can get a senior citizens discount. Also people keep them in the inner most pocket of a massive purse so they cant be read properly. They'll keep swiping it 10 or 20 times getting the error beeps before taking it out of their massive purse. The old magnetic strip card system was easier and faster. So thanks to Modern Technology(TM) public transport is more expensive and less efficient.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
There'r no point making outside comparisons, the view is that American healthcare is the best on the planet because it is goddamn American! Instead it's better pointing out parts of their system already quietly inspired by successful examples overseas.
Their problem is they have an insurance system with a side order of heathcare but they do not understand why that makes it so expensive and inefficient. Even Nixon saw that as a problem and attempted to fix it with a proposal that suggested a lot more than Obama dared to try.
No, it won't. Not as long as you have the option of private insurance to supplement what the government will cover, or paying for things the government won't cover out-of-pocket.
What makes the TSA so insidious is that you don't have the option of flying through a no-bulls**t airport... unless you can afford to own your own private jet. It took over security, and did so in a draconian way, without allowing any other voices to participate in the discussion—any other players to participate in the day-to-day operations—any other alternatives short of choosing a radically different form of transit (which, incidentally, is probably the main reason Amtrak ridership has increased by almost 30% since September 11th after being nearly flat for the twenty years previous).
Besides, when the government health care does it, they are checking for disease.... :-D Turn your head and cough, please.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
As a non-US citizen i just can't understand what's the difference between (for example) private property rights (the right to your car, and that not being taken away) and right to publicly funded medical care? Basically you are using mutual funds to guarantee both rights. You really have only the rights that the society around you grants you. You have it all backwards when you think the government takes your rights. You are the government. You are living in a democracy. It's not the government taking anything away from you, it's your common will granting and protecting your rights.
How is funding health care any different from funding roads, they are both essential services which we require in modern day society. Lack of health care increases wealth gaps and makes our society less efficient.
null
There's a difference. Putting them in charge of health care is a matter of ensuring our wellbeing. The others are about violating our rights.
Really, you believe that. Putting the government in charge of health care is a matter of increasing the amount of power bureaucrats have over our lives. What makes you think that self-serving bureaucrats who, when put in charge of ensuring our security, take the opportunity to infringe on our rights in order to increase their power won't use the opportunity, when put in charge of our well-being, to further increase their power by infringing on our rights?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Yeah, that would explain why for almost every major illness, your prognosis is better if you live in the U.S. than if you live somewhere else (there are countries that do better than the U.S. on one or two illnesses, but then they do much worse on most other major illnesses. The U.S. is the only country that ranks highly on 5 year prognosis for every major illness).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Your fantasy propaganda reality might contradict him, but nobody is running off to Canada for advanced health care. I am all about some reform, but nationalized health "insurance" is just a little too spooky for me.
In all fairness, you guys probably export more than ideas these days....
I have to disagree, all hospitals are required to take you whether you have insurance or not. In a lot of hospitals around here, you're not even ASKED about insurance until after you receive treatment. Additionally, not having insurance equates to a roughly 62% discount vs having insurance. These numbers are based on a friends recent experiences with heart problems, without health insurance.
Source?
You can fly without the TSA BS, just get a private license and rent a plane. It takes away pretty much everything that makes commercial flying worthwhile in the first place, but even the TSA doesn't have the resources to have an agent at every tiny airport to check the Cessna pilots.
The government isn't going to make health care more affordable, they're just going to make someone else pay for it.
Well, that's the very definition of "insurance". The idea that what goes around comes around, and in the end, we all pay for it and we all need it, subject to statistical variances.
In fact, one of the biggest problems with medical care these days - aside from the outdated idea that you'll probably have a single employer for life, and therefore may safely tie your medical insurance to your job - is that modern statistical and computational improvements have made it possible for insurance companies to do "cherry picking" and "lemon dropping". They improve efficiency (profit) by removing as many of the statistical variances as possible. And if you happen to [i]be[/i] one of those statistical variances, that's just too bad.