This has CIA character assassination written all over it with a huge marker. Nice to see that Swedish courts are either lapdogs or dupes (or both). This is exactly what I expected the CIA to do to.
This is a wake-up call to a new vulnerability. There are a helluva lot worse ways to have found out about it than this relatively innocuous version. It also exposes stupid weaknesses like the fact that all Siemens PLC's (programmable logic controllers) have a hard-coded password that was never meant to be changed, and that all the obscure proprietary software in the world on PLC's doesn't mean jack for security--because they all still have to take their orders from a machine running it software on regular old Windows.
We could have realized these vulnerabilities only after a bunch of stuff started exploding.
Re:What's the deal with the rush of TSA stories re
on
TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old
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· Score: 2, Funny
Reminds me of the scene in Airplane 2 where the TSA pulls an old lady out of the line and puts a gun to her head while terrorists walk through the metal detector with machine guns in the background.
Not only that, but they're kind enough to nearly blow my TV speakers up by blaring the warning signal about 100x louder than the channel audio. And they do it at 2 a.m., so they can be sure to wake the baby too.
This is what happens when you pound regulations into people's heads and hire cheap robots instead of professional, intelligent employees. It's the same kind of mindless zero-tolerance policies that lead to kids being handcuffed and thrown in jail over school fistfights, bringing plastic knives to school--even if they're a 5-year-old just throwing a temper tantrum.
Has one of these security scans ever caught even ONE actual terrorist or criminal? In 9 years, even ONE?
Oh sure, we'll always be able to play the "chase the latest IP address of said torrent sight" game. But it will never be as simple as typing in thepiratebay.org again. You'll have to go to a site or alternate DNS server to find the latest IP address (and possibly demonstrate that you're not a cop to get access to it), and that's assuming that your ISP hasn't started blocking all the alternate DNS servers and sites with IP address listings for pirate sites too (which they probably will start doing at some point too). Anyone who thinks this can't be done in a way that can really frustrate need only use an ISP really locked down with Websense one time (they update their blocked sites every few minutes) to see that they can make it a big pain in the ass to chase the IP if they really want to.
I've been saying for a long time that the day will come very soon when typing in thepiratebay.org or other torrent site will only get you a "This site has been blocked for illegal material" message. the only question was whether it would happen by government mandate or voluntary ISP decision.
It cracks me up that they're making pilots go through these things now. If you don't trust the pilot to not bring a bomb or weapon on the plane then WHY ARE YOU TRUSTING HIM TO FLY THE FUCKING PLANE? It's not like a pilot needs a bomb or weapon to blow up or hijack the plane.
Even if it weren't possible, what are the odds they confiscate a screener's cellphone (with camera) before he goes in the room to watch them? Even if he can't save the picture of the hot chick on the drive (or even worse if he's a pedophile), he can snap a pic with his cellphone.
Penn and Teller once cleverly pointed out the obvious fact that having human beings behind the spying pretty much ensures that said spying will be abused (they did a rather amusing test to see if security staff would abuse their power if tempted, and almost all of them did). You can put all the regulations in place you like, but there will always be plenty of humans in charge who will ignore them for whatever reason ("Hey look, it's Angelina Jolie coming through the scanner! Get you're cellphone camera, Bill!").
Except who's Hitler in that analogy, Iran or Israel? After all, it's not Iran who's annexing territory and forcing a particular ethnic group into ghettos.
Most other countries have more sense than to waste their money on pointless shit like this. Even the U.S. would never have done it if the commies hadn't showed us up with their superior space program.
If you were Iran, you might look at it from the other side of the coin. Yes, Iran is minutes away from Israel, who ALREADY have nukes capable of wiping *Iran* off the face of the earth--and who have demonstrated many times in the past a willingness to engage in preemptive warfare against their enemies.
You think you wouldn't want to set up a more equitable system of mutually-assured-destruction if YOU were in those circumstances?
Well, it would be a world-changing annoucement
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The Beatles On iTunes
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· Score: 2, Funny
If the year was 1965, and we were undercover detectives on the hot rod circuit.
Iran already knows that the U.S. isn't going to attack them. The U.S. military is already stretched to the breaking point (and having to rely heavily on paid mercenaries at that), and we can't even resolve the two wars we're already in. Israel is more likely, but even they don't want to piss off their U.S. lapdogs (one of the few allies they have left, who they desperately need to supply them with their weapons).
Oh yes, because Israel is famed for their bloodless treatment of their enemies. Like how they bloodlessly blow up whole apartment buildings to kill one target. Or how they bloodlessly steal Palestinian land and force the Palestinians into ghettos. The Muslim holy war is nasty, but the Israeli holy war is just a-okay!
Cop: Sir, we've found a dead body. She's a wife. She has a million dollar insurance policy on her that the husband took out last week. She was killed by a knife that belonged to the husband. The husband is covered in blood. Obviously it's the husband
Lead investigator: I think it's just as likely that it's the babysitter trying to frame the husband.
Cop: Are you crazy, sir?
Lead investigator: She didn't like the wife, so there's a motive. And she could probably stab someone if she wanted to.
Cop: But...
Lead investigator: Let the husband go. We'll just treat him as one of many potential suspects, including the son too.
Cop: The son??? He's only 6 years old!
Lead investigator: An eyewitness said last week that he threw a temper tantrum and told his mother that he hated her. And he had access to the knife too.
Cop: Are you fucking high?
Lead investigator: There's probably just no way to ever know who did it. We should probably just drop the case altogether.
Cop: What?!?
Lead investigator:Anyway, she probably just did it to herself just to make the husband look bad.
It's equally likely neither Russia nor China would be very happy to see a nuclear Iran, but not want to be visibly seen discouraging them on the international stage. Stuxnet, lets either of them slow Iran's nuclear program, test a new concept of warfare, and leave the US and Israel holding the bad as "most likely."
Yeah, uh huh, and it's equally likely that someone besides OJ killed Ron and Nicole too.
Come on, Israel doesn't even hide it. They even announced their intentions to engage in preemptive cyberwarfare at a conference last spring. What do you want them to do, send you a signed letter saying "We did it"?
The "theory" that Iran sabotaged itself is the most bizarre bit of denial to come out of this whole Stuxnet mess. It reminds me of a friend who was such a Chris Brown fan that when reports first started coming out about him beating the crap out of Rihanna, his first reaction (I kid you not) was "Bitch probably did it to herself to get his money." It's no secret that Israel has a new cyberwarfare division that does just this sort of thing. It's no secret that Israel wants to stop the Iranian nuclear program at all costs. And it's no secret that western intelligence agencies have done this sort of thing before. So the idea that Iran sabotaged its own nuclear program just to frame Israel is just beyond the pale here. Like Fox Mulder and his "I want to believe" attitude, you can delude yourself to believe anything if you REALLY want to. But in the real world, everyone knows damned well who did this and why.
Israel has a LOT of enemies outside of Iran, and even the mainstream in a lot of countries distrusts them. This just adds to the list if creepy shit they're willing to do in their little holy war, and it adds more credence to everyone who claims that they willfully ignore the sovereignty of every other country but themselves and completely disregard international law as a matter of course.
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Yes, according to Captain Hindsight, we should have secured our PLC's and SCADA infrastructure better years ago.
This has CIA character assassination written all over it with a huge marker. Nice to see that Swedish courts are either lapdogs or dupes (or both). This is exactly what I expected the CIA to do to.
This is a wake-up call to a new vulnerability. There are a helluva lot worse ways to have found out about it than this relatively innocuous version. It also exposes stupid weaknesses like the fact that all Siemens PLC's (programmable logic controllers) have a hard-coded password that was never meant to be changed, and that all the obscure proprietary software in the world on PLC's doesn't mean jack for security--because they all still have to take their orders from a machine running it software on regular old Windows.
We could have realized these vulnerabilities only after a bunch of stuff started exploding.
Reminds me of the scene in Airplane 2 where the TSA pulls an old lady out of the line and puts a gun to her head while terrorists walk through the metal detector with machine guns in the background.
Not only that, but they're kind enough to nearly blow my TV speakers up by blaring the warning signal about 100x louder than the channel audio. And they do it at 2 a.m., so they can be sure to wake the baby too.
This is what happens when you pound regulations into people's heads and hire cheap robots instead of professional, intelligent employees. It's the same kind of mindless zero-tolerance policies that lead to kids being handcuffed and thrown in jail over school fistfights, bringing plastic knives to school--even if they're a 5-year-old just throwing a temper tantrum.
Has one of these security scans ever caught even ONE actual terrorist or criminal? In 9 years, even ONE?
Yeah, bombing a few sites is what's called an "act of war," in case you didn't know that.
Oh sure, we'll always be able to play the "chase the latest IP address of said torrent sight" game. But it will never be as simple as typing in thepiratebay.org again. You'll have to go to a site or alternate DNS server to find the latest IP address (and possibly demonstrate that you're not a cop to get access to it), and that's assuming that your ISP hasn't started blocking all the alternate DNS servers and sites with IP address listings for pirate sites too (which they probably will start doing at some point too). Anyone who thinks this can't be done in a way that can really frustrate need only use an ISP really locked down with Websense one time (they update their blocked sites every few minutes) to see that they can make it a big pain in the ass to chase the IP if they really want to.
I've been saying for a long time that the day will come very soon when typing in thepiratebay.org or other torrent site will only get you a "This site has been blocked for illegal material" message. the only question was whether it would happen by government mandate or voluntary ISP decision.
It cracks me up that they're making pilots go through these things now. If you don't trust the pilot to not bring a bomb or weapon on the plane then WHY ARE YOU TRUSTING HIM TO FLY THE FUCKING PLANE? It's not like a pilot needs a bomb or weapon to blow up or hijack the plane.
Even if it weren't possible, what are the odds they confiscate a screener's cellphone (with camera) before he goes in the room to watch them? Even if he can't save the picture of the hot chick on the drive (or even worse if he's a pedophile), he can snap a pic with his cellphone.
Penn and Teller once cleverly pointed out the obvious fact that having human beings behind the spying pretty much ensures that said spying will be abused (they did a rather amusing test to see if security staff would abuse their power if tempted, and almost all of them did). You can put all the regulations in place you like, but there will always be plenty of humans in charge who will ignore them for whatever reason ("Hey look, it's Angelina Jolie coming through the scanner! Get you're cellphone camera, Bill!").
All my emails started showing up with fortunes and free eggrolls.
Except who's Hitler in that analogy, Iran or Israel? After all, it's not Iran who's annexing territory and forcing a particular ethnic group into ghettos.
Most other countries have more sense than to waste their money on pointless shit like this. Even the U.S. would never have done it if the commies hadn't showed us up with their superior space program.
Hush! Your dose of reality will make the baby boomers cry.
My father was a clod, you insensitive jerk!
If you were Iran, you might look at it from the other side of the coin. Yes, Iran is minutes away from Israel, who ALREADY have nukes capable of wiping *Iran* off the face of the earth--and who have demonstrated many times in the past a willingness to engage in preemptive warfare against their enemies.
You think you wouldn't want to set up a more equitable system of mutually-assured-destruction if YOU were in those circumstances?
If the year was 1965, and we were undercover detectives on the hot rod circuit.
Iran already knows that the U.S. isn't going to attack them. The U.S. military is already stretched to the breaking point (and having to rely heavily on paid mercenaries at that), and we can't even resolve the two wars we're already in. Israel is more likely, but even they don't want to piss off their U.S. lapdogs (one of the few allies they have left, who they desperately need to supply them with their weapons).
Oh yes, because Israel is famed for their bloodless treatment of their enemies. Like how they bloodlessly blow up whole apartment buildings to kill one target. Or how they bloodlessly steal Palestinian land and force the Palestinians into ghettos. The Muslim holy war is nasty, but the Israeli holy war is just a-okay!
Cop: Sir, we've found a dead body. She's a wife. She has a million dollar insurance policy on her that the husband took out last week. She was killed by a knife that belonged to the husband. The husband is covered in blood. Obviously it's the husband
Lead investigator: I think it's just as likely that it's the babysitter trying to frame the husband.
Cop: Are you crazy, sir?
Lead investigator: She didn't like the wife, so there's a motive. And she could probably stab someone if she wanted to.
Cop: But...
Lead investigator: Let the husband go. We'll just treat him as one of many potential suspects, including the son too.
Cop: The son??? He's only 6 years old!
Lead investigator: An eyewitness said last week that he threw a temper tantrum and told his mother that he hated her. And he had access to the knife too.
Cop: Are you fucking high?
Lead investigator: There's probably just no way to ever know who did it. We should probably just drop the case altogether.
Cop: What?!?
Lead investigator:Anyway, she probably just did it to herself just to make the husband look bad.
It's equally likely neither Russia nor China would be very happy to see a nuclear Iran, but not want to be visibly seen discouraging them on the international stage. Stuxnet, lets either of them slow Iran's nuclear program, test a new concept of warfare, and leave the US and Israel holding the bad as "most likely."
Yeah, uh huh, and it's equally likely that someone besides OJ killed Ron and Nicole too.
Come on, Israel doesn't even hide it. They even announced their intentions to engage in preemptive cyberwarfare at a conference last spring. What do you want them to do, send you a signed letter saying "We did it"?
The "theory" that Iran sabotaged itself is the most bizarre bit of denial to come out of this whole Stuxnet mess. It reminds me of a friend who was such a Chris Brown fan that when reports first started coming out about him beating the crap out of Rihanna, his first reaction (I kid you not) was "Bitch probably did it to herself to get his money." It's no secret that Israel has a new cyberwarfare division that does just this sort of thing. It's no secret that Israel wants to stop the Iranian nuclear program at all costs. And it's no secret that western intelligence agencies have done this sort of thing before. So the idea that Iran sabotaged its own nuclear program just to frame Israel is just beyond the pale here. Like Fox Mulder and his "I want to believe" attitude, you can delude yourself to believe anything if you REALLY want to. But in the real world, everyone knows damned well who did this and why.
Israel has a LOT of enemies outside of Iran, and even the mainstream in a lot of countries distrusts them. This just adds to the list if creepy shit they're willing to do in their little holy war, and it adds more credence to everyone who claims that they willfully ignore the sovereignty of every other country but themselves and completely disregard international law as a matter of course.