Slashdot Mirror
Dick Cheney Had Implanted Defibrillator Altered To Prevent Terrorist Attack
An anonymous reader writes "According to the Washington Post, 'Former Vice President Dick Cheney says he once feared that terrorists could use the electrical device that had been implanted near his heart to kill him and had his doctor disable its wireless function. Cheney has a history of heart trouble, suffering the first of five heart attacks at age 37. ... In an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes, Cheney says doctors replaced an implanted defibrillator near his heart in 2007. The device can detect irregular heartbeats and control them with electrical jolts. Cheney says that he and his doctor, cardiologist Jonathan Reiner, turned off the device's wireless function in case a terrorist tried to send his heart a fatal shock.' More at CBS News."
How can anyone who kills Dick Cheney be a terrorist?
Frankly, anyone who understands how insecure wireless is should be terrified of having a built in personal "off switch." I would do the same thing, and so would a lot of slashdot.
Breaking News : Dick Cheney has a heart !
Frankly, anyone who understands how fragile the human body is should be terrified of walking outdoors, etc.
Murders don't happen all the time simply because most people aren't psychopathic cunts. But, in Cheney's case, it takes one to know one.
Extra Extra!
Read all about it!
Dick Cheney revealed to have a heart!
Progressives outraged over use of resources!
Yeah, I think we have a pretty clear case of projection here. If a terrorist got close enough to him to hack his pacemaker, why not just stab him?
Okay, given Cheney's historical level of paranoia (this is nothing compared to some of his hijinks as SECNAV), I can TOTALLY see Cheney not understanding something and therefore assuming it's going to be used by people out to get him. Both "not understanding something" and "worried about trivial crap" are WELL within Cheney's persona. Having said that, whose wise idea was it to make a defibrilator that can be remotely accessed wirelessly in the first place? If nerd history has taught us anything, it's vulnerable shit eventually gets broken into, and wireless protocols are by definition vulnerable.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
...most people aren't psychopathic cunts. But, in Cheney's case, it takes one to know one.
But you claim to recognize Dick Cheney as one. Apparently that means you are a ....
By attacking America on 9/11, Al Qaeda hoped to lure America into a foolish overreaction that would alienate the West from the Islamic world, weaken America's will, and help spread Al Qaeda's message of extremism and violence. Few people helped them achieve these goals more than Dick Cheney did. So why would they want to kill him?
My sis has an implanted defibrillator. It's a weird experience to be sitting in a doctors office when a technician comes in with a machine to test the installation.
"I just need to turn up your blood pressure and heart rate for a minute" says the tech, as casually as ordering a cup of coffee.
A couple of button presses later, the look of shock on my sister's face as she realized that she was not, in a very literal sense, in control of her own heart is something I'll never forget.
She needs her implanted defibrillator but, holy shit, the power she must cede to Miss Random Device Technician by having it in her body is scary as all hell.
He keeps it in a jar on his desk.
How close would a terrorist have to be? I mean antennas are great and you can hide them in other devices or out in the open and relay your cracking from a distance. That's the advantage of wireless isn't it.
Imagine a scenario where a terrorist gets a hotel room in the same hotel he is staying at. Would the security detail turn off the house WIFI so I couldn't access his pace maker from the hotel's WIFI in my room or the lobby or something? What if he visits a company that has wifi and I have a remote connection into the building?
perhaps we just aren't there yet, perhaps we already are.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2012/12/06/yes-you-can-hack-a-pacemaker-and-other-medical-devices-too/
Ah, but I'm a non-practising psychopathic cunt.
By attacking America on 9/11, Al Qaeda hoped to lure America into a foolish overreaction that would alienate the West from the Islamic world, weaken America's will, and help spread Al Qaeda's message of extremism and violence.
Good thing we're too smart to fall for that.
Correct. Pacemakers don't use wireless as in WiFi or Bluetooth. They use near field communications. It'd require a humongous coil to access it from more than a few inches.
Because it looks a lot more suspicious to drive a knife into someone's heart, than to press a button on your bluetooth headset which launches the attack code on your phone...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Killing a politician with subtle electronic sabotage is not appealing to terrorists. It is not dramatic. It is quiet. Terrorists would rather blow a city block with TNT to kill a politician. Killing somebody using defibrillator suits spies or other government agents.
IIRC the pacemakers have to be put in wireless configuration mode with a magnet placed in a specific spot on the pacemaker, so to hack one wirelessly would require physical access to him. It's not WIFI it's just wireless to prevent having to open him up to access the pacemaker, it still requires physical access.
Disabling wifi doesn't remove the danger. Directed energy weapons, like RF guns, can still target and disrupt the device in various ways since it contains electronics.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Cheyney obviously watches Homeland, in which the Vice President is killed by remotely acessing his pacemaker.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
No. As a previous poster mentioned, the device has to be in very close proximity initially. However, in most ICD models once the heart device has been paired with whatever device is on the outside, communication can happen over a bit longer distances ( a few meters or so). Remember that these devices have batteries - they don't need coils. I have one, and it communicates with a receiver in my home when I'm around, allowing my cardiologist to be alerted if something odd happens with my heart rythm.
I have a pacemaker/defibrillator, and I really couldn't give a shit. Besides, my tech says that my model requires a magnetic field in order to pull a magnet inside the device and make a contact so that the wifi is turned on. Without someone sticking that round thing on my chest, no one can talk to the machine. Honestly if strange people go around putting heavy chunks of metal on my chest without my permission I think wifi is the least of my worries.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Probably someone who thought that sticking a cable through your chest to change the things configuration is an even worse idea.
Not in this case.
My sister has an implanted cardiac defibrillator that also functions as a pacemaker. It was my understanding that all implanted defibrillators have this functionality.
Of course, I could be completely wrong about that. The defibrillator she has replaced a previous pacemaker that was just a pacemaker. We were not informed if there was actually such a thing as a defibrillator that was just a defibrillator because such a device would not have been appropriate for her. For that reason, I may have the wrong impression.
Suffice it to say, she has a combo device that is always referred to by medical professionals as an "ICD" without mentioning that it also functions as a pacemaker. I assume they all do. If not, I'm sure someone on here more knowledgable than me will correct me.
if his pacemaker is anything like the one my fried has, you basically have to touch his chest with another gizmo to see it.
so wireless in the sense that there are no wires sticking out of his nipple... not AQ can kill him from an internet cafe in Pakistan.
what's Cheney's IP? /duh.
One of my favorite headlines fromThe Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-heart-device-allows-cheney-to-experience-love,2294/
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
Classic case of the dumbasses we put in charge who go sticking their fingers in things they know absolutely nothing about. Cheney strikes me as a prepper and we need to keep dipshits like that out of office.
These devices have to be "woken up" with a sensor placed on the chest. Then it'll communicate with the interrogation equipment which can induces shocks via a defribillation test. The range is limited to about 15 feet. Despite the wireless option being turned off, anyone with the device used to interrogate can still induce a shock with the chest sensor.
Still, a shock could still be induced without the tech by causing artifact in the leads. Inappropriate shocks have been reported in people operating heavy equipment like jackhammers and chainsaws. So shake the shit out of him and he may get an inappropriate shock. Worst that would happen there is induction of ventricular fibrillation which would only cause an appropriate shock.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
First of all, Israel is conducting large scale state terrorism basically since it exists.
Israel was granted its existence by the UN in 1947. The problem with Middle East is that Arabs have never been able to accept that because they don't like Jews. If Israeli Jews were Muslim, the problem wouldn't exist, simple as that. The expansion of Israel's territory since then came in my view in a fair way, as they won one after another defensive war against attacks by vastly superior Arab forces.
Second, some of the worst dictators in the Middle East have been explicitly supported by the US government
So what. It was right to support them when it suited our interest and there was a greater danger to us and to the word to worry about (USSR - the most evil empire in the 20th century). As far as I'm concerned, dictators are a fair game to support or to depose according to our interests and once we defeated the Soviet Union, we are now knocking them out one by one. Saudi royal family has a special deal with the US that temporarily keeps them in power because of oil but as soon as that reason is behind us they will be next in line.
Also, it would perhaps also be a good idea to get a clue at the size the "islamic world" you're talking about, because you talk an awful lot as if it was confined to the Middle East.
And it would be a good idea for you to get some perspective of what a total failure Islamic civilization has been. There is no progress at all of any kind, technological, political or otherwise that happened in any Muslim country in hundreds of years. 2 Nobel Prizes in science by Muslims compared to over 100 by Jews! The best university in any Islamic country (in Turkey, among the least Islamic of the Muslim countries) is not even in the top 200 in the world. Democracy has either failed or been under attack by Islamists in just about every Muslim country. Every border where Islamic civilization meets a non-Islamic one there is trouble, just look at the world map. Israel has shown how to turn a backward desert wasteland into an advanced 1st world country in less than 50 years. Why can't any Muslim country do the same? I think it is obvious to anyone but Western cultural relativists that the reason is Islam.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Sources report that the IP address was 666.666.666.666.
You are mixing things up, and you are incorrect. The plan was to take the Caucasus oil fields [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Caucasus], not Ural. There was no way Germans could take Ural in 1943, and there was no oil there anyway.
The real story is that Hitler needed to take Caucasus oil to keep his war machine running. He had to take Stalingrad to keep his flanks safe. Look at the map [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Eastern_Front_1942-05_to_1942-11.png]. It wasn't a detour, Hitler had to take Stalingrad to keep the front stable, and he failed. He failed due to his underestimation of Russian heroism and overestimation of Wehrmacht.
Terrorists obviously know the best way to terrorize Americans is to keep people like Cheney alive.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
The people that want Cheney dead in the Western world are pretty much limited to mainly committed leftists, and maybe some extreme fringe libertarian types. Probably not much more than that.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Particularly when the assault would look to observers exactly like a heart attack, of a man who has heart disease. As opposed to looking like a bloody knife sticking out of his chest.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
The problem with Middle East is that Arabs have never been able to accept that because they don't like Jews.
So utterly wrong. It's all about LAND and it being taken from the Palestinians. Taking land from one group and giving it to another tends to make the locals mad.
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.