Railroad Association Says TSA's Hacking Memo Was Wrong 121
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."
Lying again? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm not surprised... TSA is a cancer.
Just like the rest of the government.
Re:Lying again? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not surprised... TSA is a cancer.
TSA THREAT LEVEL ORANGE
Talk like that will elevated it to PLAID
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Re:Lying again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lying again? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are absolutely right. If there is no threat, there is no job. So they will make themselves worthwhile any way they can.
Consider the current "Terrorists want to blow up your plane with binary explosives!" [theregister.co.uk]. You can't carry [tsa.gov] a soda on a plane, unless you purchased from a TSA approved vendor inside of the security perimeter. And dear god, a mother can't bring a bottle of breast milk [usatoday.com].
Even lighters [tsa.gov] were banned for a while, but after enough complaints, they again allowed them.
Terrorists must be anyone who isn't an old rich white guy. If they talk funny, look different, or behave differently due to cultural differences, they must be terrorists. The evil enemy that all Americans must fear.
The terrorist behind every Bush fear subsided. Then we killed the leader of the terrorists we were told to fear.
They are trying to find the next threat. If there isn't a threat, there isn't a need for DHS, is there? Those new threats will keep coming. They may be foreign nationals with a misguided grudge. They may even be regular, but insane, Americans. [google.com]
If they don't get enough real threats, they'll overstate some minor threat. They weren't clear what the real threat was. It could have been a local kid, who bounced through an off-shore server, who managed to log into a control box.
My question is, why the hell would they leave those controls accessible by the Internet in general? Why was it connected to the Internet at all? Assuming there was a good reason for it, why weren't they restricted to select IPs? Rather than freaking out and blaming "the terrorists", why don't we focus on the problems like "our infrastructure shouldn't be accessible by the whole Internet".
Hell, when I stick a server online with a previously unused IP, I get people trying to hit it in no time. If you want some entertainment, put an older unpatched distribution up with root logins enabled, and set the password to "password". I'd give it 10 minutes before it had new people running it.
Lets not forget who the new terrorists are. All those people who agree with, or fall into the category of 99%. Domestic terrorism is our greatest threat. They must be stopped. We're going to need bigger prisons and more guys with badges and guns.
Oh wait.. I forgot the right line. "I trust our government. Terrorists are behind every Bush. Protect me government. I'll give up any rights you ask me to."
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"My question is, why the hell would they leave those controls accessible by the Internet in general?"
Exactly.
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Terrorists must be anyone who isn't an old rich white guy. If they talk funny, look different, or behave differently due to cultural differences, they must be terrorists.
No, it's not like that at all. See, for example, Senator Paul getting escorted out of the terminal for refusing a pat down. The problem is that there isn't any official attempt at profiling. Instead, they have a completely asinine random selection system for triggering detailed searches, and despite the fact that it's bloody obvious that a 6-year old girl or an elderly woman in a wheelchair with a colostomy bag aren't going to have any explosives on them, they still search them. The only profiling by TSA ga
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I can't argue about the security theater, obviously.
On the subject of El Al, here's a bit more reading.
2002 El Al LAX shooting is terrorism [cnn.com]
2002 Security guards on Israel's national airline El Al overpowered a man who tried to hijack a flight from Tel Aviv to Istanbul [michigandaily.com]
2006 El Al bombing foiled by German authorities [ynetnews.com]
2010 - Former head of El Al security says [go.com] "... we have learned nothing from our past security breaches, including the attacks o
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I guess they weren't selling as well as the lots of knives and other assorted stuff.
This is almost entertaining [tsa.gov]. They cite the risk, and why they're seizing everything. Then they complain about the litigious nature of many organizations, so they can't donate seized liquids. As you can see linked in my previous post, those liquids aren't passively harmful. If you opened up a glass bottle of "water", and took a drink to find that it's sulfuric acid, that's a huge risk. By t
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Scary thought:
We don't buy into the BS, so they purposefully let something bad happen like a shooting at an airport or something. "See?! We're NEEDED!"
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don't be surprised the next time you fly if you're pulled to the side for "extra screening" due to that comment.
Re:And we want this gov't in charge of health care (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:And we want this gov't in charge of health care (Score:5, Funny)
Heh, I wish I had mod points - but I am sure the point will be lost on most of the mods. +5 Funny!
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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
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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?
Re:And we want this gov't in charge of health care (Score:5, Funny)
Whoosh?
Ostensibly the TSA, PATRIOT ACT, etc are there to ensure public well being.
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Re:And we want this gov't in charge of health care (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:And we want this gov't in charge of health care (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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 me
Re:And we want this gov't in charge of health care (Score:5, Informative)
Comparisons won't work (Score:2)
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 O
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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-t
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We're all better served by folks with pre-existing conditions being denied basic coverage, huh?
Re:And we want this gov't in charge of health care (Score:5, Informative)
health care != health insurance
Re:And we want this gov't in charge of health care (Score:5, Informative)
health care != health insurance
True, but in the United States, without health insurance, you cannot get adequate health care.
medical care (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:medical care (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
If providers would bill me what they bill to insurance, it might actually be worthwhile to drop to a major medical plan with a $5K deductible and pay out of pocket for routine costs (which fortunately for me has meant annual routine checkups and one x-ray in the past few years).
However, when I wanted to self-refer myself to a specialist for a specific problem, they quoted an office visit rate that was nearly 10 times higher than what they bill to insurance and any treatments would be billed at similarly high rates. I asked them about a discount for self-pay and they said that their policy was firm, the insurance rate is a negotiated rate with the insurance company and if I wanted to self-pay, I'd have to pay the full quoted rate.
So I ended up going to my primary care physician under insurance, insurance paid me to go through several sessions of his prescribed physical therapy before he was willing to refer me to the specialist that I wanted to go to in the first place.
Health care would be much more affordable if health care providers had to charge self-pay patients their lowest negotiable rate for that treatment.
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I switched to a high-deductible policy with a $6k deductible. My specialists charge me less than they charged my old insurance company. Maybe you need to find a new doctor.
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The first stage of fixing our cost problem for medical service should have been eliminating insurance companies being able to negotiate lower prices from the provider. The doctor/clinic/hospital should be charging every buyer (insurance company, private individual, Medicare) what ever price, and everybody pays it. This will make pricing close to what is actually paid instead of a multiple of the actual price. This would force the insurance companies to negotiate with providers on behalf of all of us, or use
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I went into the ER for severe abdominal pains a couple of months ago and was there for about four hours. One doctor, two nurses, one dose of Dilaudid, and some lab tests on one vial of blood for various possible causes of the pains racked up some $3000, and they weren't able to pin down the cause. Insurance covered two-thirds of it, but I still had to shell out for a little over a grand. (I have a PPO, so I expect to pay more in most cases, but if I'd known it would be that much out of my pocket, I might
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You were somewhat lucky. A friend of mine was in the ER for a stomach ache about 9 months ago. He had some kind of stomach flu or something and was in there for several hours. Couple X-Rays, medicines, and prescriptions later and his final bill came to over $13,000. He was uninsured, too, so he was stuck with the whole thing.
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And then there's me. I live outside the US as an expat working in Europe. I pay into the national healthcare. My back gave out and I had to be taken to hospital (I couldn't even walk). I was there 12 hours. I had x-rays, blood tests, and an MRI along with various meds to ease the pain and several examinations. Cost to me out of pocket.. zero.
My partner collapsed at work. An ambulance was called and she as taken to the hospital. Treated kept overnight and released the next day. Cost to her.. zero.
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Pick one in Europe. My examples were from Germany and the Netherlands. My experience in France was similar (although I didn't need to be taken to hospital there). The medical does cost, as in you do pay for it out of your taxes, as a percentage of your income, but from that you get what amounts to virtually free medical.
It breaks down something like this in Germany (simplified of course):
- you pay a percentage of your salary into the state health care pot (you can opt for private health insurance
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1 night hospital stay in california for a bleeding ulcer. My hemoglobin count had dropped to 8 (average healthy is 15) by 48 hours after the first symptoms.
Treatment consisted of 3 student doctors bickering over whether I deserved a single blood pack, then an EGD where they cauterized the ulcer ("The clot came loose completely by itself and at no fault of our own, so we had to close it."), and finally a boot out the door.
Total cost without insurance because I had just moved there 4 months prior and disney d
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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.
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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.
Re:And we want this gov't in charge of health care (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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The government isn't going to make health care more affordable
I'm not so sure about that. [theonion.com]
they could... (Score:2)
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.
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Increase the output of doctors from medical schools by increasing federal funding.
Apparently you don't understand how the system works. You don't need increased funding, you just have to remove the government caps on internships. That's the mechanism used by the health care industry to keep supplies artificially low.
Re:And we want this gov't in charge of health care (Score:4, Insightful)
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.....
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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.
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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 privat
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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
Fearmongering (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Fearmongering (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fearmongering (Score:4, Insightful)
After this little incident, and last year's "Russian Hackers Remotely Destroyed Your City's Pump, So Panic Now" incident, renaming them to be Minitrue [wikipedia.org] might be more appropriate.
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The TSA simply needs to change it's name to reflect reality TRVPA The Rich Versus Poor Agency. Don't think so.
What authority does the TSA have over private jets, how about charter jets, none, not one inspection, not one scan, not one probe.
Who funded 911, would that be one of the richest countries in the world all to capable of providing funding for charter flights fully loaded with explosives, Saudi Arabia. Yet not even a hint of exploratory probing.
So the 1% are enacting legislation and regulations
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Re:Fearmongering (Score:4, Informative)
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TSA also recently started set up some checkpoints along interstates.
Citation needed. I saw that claimed in an earlier comment thread and it was debunked then.
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Sorry, not doing your research for you.
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IIRC, TSA is not allowed on BART property. All screening has to be done off-premises. BART does their own screening. NYPD/NYS has CHOSEN to let TSA do this for them; it's not their remit by default. If NYC residents don't like it, they can get the municipality to revoke TSA's license, and there's nothing anyone outside NYC can do about it.
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They were banned from Amtrak property for a while, too, after one of their little stunts. To the extent that they are allowed at all, it is at the sole pleasure and discretion of the Amtrak Police, who have final authority over the operation of the entire system, including all aspects of security. If they cross the line, they have been, and will continue to be, escorted off the premises. :-)
seeing how in 2012 railroad still use hole punch (Score:3)
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
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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.
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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. [phespirit.info]
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I was being serious. It looks much like this [wikipedia.org] now.
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Why bother? It's not like you can fly a train into a building.
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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
Re:Fearmongering (Score:4, Funny)
But what if a terrorist hijacks a train and drives it into the White House [youtube.com]?
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The TSA isn't "not allowed" to be involved in trains; they've already done trials which were probably just done to work out costs.
How inconvenient for TSA (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [tenthamendmentcenter.com] 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 [fttusa.org]. Please do anything and everything you can to help stop TSA.
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How can TSA help with cyber attacks/hacker issues on railroads. Are they going after railroad workers and IT staffs to make sure they follow security protocols; then station TSA staffs at train control room doors?
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Scaremongering, inventing enemies. (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org]
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.
Re:Scaremongering, inventing enemies. (Score:4, Interesting)
Lovely reading in the official Team B report, thoughtfully provided in PDF format at the end of that page.
I found out about Team B, btw, through a BBC documentary, 'The Politics of Fear', findable on Youtube or at your friendly neighborhood video pirate.
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Now that was informative. Thank you.
Not surprising.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Terrorist Attack? (Score:2)
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?
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More like:
Ticket agents will be sending money off to pay the fees on Nigerian Oil Ministry inheritances.
Conductors will be giving away their World of Warcraft account information.
Popups may start appearing on train information screens.
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> How will we know the difference between an attack and normal operations?
We would know because each accident on the railroads is meticiously investigated.
See e.g. the web page of the Accident Investigation Office of the German Federal Railroad Agency [German knowledge required]:
http://www.eisenbahn-unfalluntersuchung.de/cln_031/nn_316888/EUB/DE/Publikationen/Untersuchungsberichte/__Function/untersuchungsberichte__tabelle.html [eisenbahn-...suchung.de]
Includes a report on an air condition failure (admittedly that specific failure
Funny how TFA... (Score:2)
... still makes it sound like some major incident with their nomenclature.
Weird plug (Score:3)
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.
Really TSA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, TSA alright.
Pre-emptive goodbye (Score:2)
To /. crowd: what are the plans continuing to maintain the existing reader / commenter base of this site once the government shuts down the Internet?
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BTW, those links are annoying for people like me that want to read SOMETHING about what a video is about before hitting play. I suppose it's all very cool and post literate but instead it conveys an impression of illiteracy and stupidity whether that is deserved or not.
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Yes, but those are going to be walled gardens. If you want to get out of those you will need to pay .10 per byte roaming charges.
Signal outage, maybe. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:1)
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.
Failing voice radio, there are also the emergency wired phones near the signals, one of the engineers call the next station for orders. when the train arrives in station the station manager phones the next station to ask if the line is clear.