popular logistics

To the long list of objects vulnerable to attack by computer hackers, add the human heart.The threat seems largely theoretical. But a team of computer security researchers plans to report Wednesday that it had been able to gain wireless access to a combination heart defibrillator and pacemaker.

They were able to reprogram it to shut down and to deliver jolts of electricity that would potentially be fatal — if the device had been in a person. In this case, the researcher were hacking into a device in a laboratory.

Barnaby J. Feder, “A Heart Device Is Found Vulnerable to Hacker Attacks, The New York Times

Probably not illegal; but it doesn’t quite seem right, either. According to Bob Fernandez of The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Comcast Corp. admitted yesterday that it paid people to attend a government hearing. Company critics say the freelance attendees were there to crowd them out; Comcast says they were merely saving seats for employees.

The five-hour hearing Monday at Harvard University was organized by the Federal Communications Commission to address the issue of net neutrality, a hot-button topic for those who think there should be minimal restrictions on Internet traffic.

The topic has drawn wide interest from college students, media-reform groups, and Internet companies.

An official at Free Press, a nonprofit advocacy group that has criticized Comcast for limiting the amount of data some of its customers send over its network, accused the cable company of “stacking the deck” at the hearing with the 30 to 40 “seat-warmers.” An official at Harvard said dozens of real participants were left standing outside the auditorium with placards.

“They were taking seats away from other citizens who had a right to be there,” said Catherine Bracy, administrative manager for the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School. “It was a PR thing. [Comcast] wanted more people in the room who were sympathetic.”

Comcast feared a loud and critical crowd at the hearing where executive vice president David Cohen was scheduled to testify. Comcast, which offers high-speed Internet to 48 million homes, has said it needs to manage Internet use so that a small number of customers transmitting very large video files do not clog the network for everyone.

Comcast admits paying attendees at FCC hearing | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/28/2008

Via Daring Fireball.

In conjunction with two blogs I’ve just set up - NewYork.PopularLogistics.com and EmergencyInformation.us - links to excellent articles and resources about blogs as communications tools during disasters:

“Blogging: reaching a global audience easily and affordably - from anywhere ,” by Teresa Crawford on Humaninet. Humaninet seems to have been an early adapter in using blogs as information toools by NGOs during disasters with this blog - humaninet.blogspot.com. Via Beth Kanter. 

This suggests an exceptional organizational agility. Ellen Perlman of Governing.com has this piece, “Crazy Cool in L.A./A fire department taps into microblogging to keep itself on top of situations,” published in the November 2006 issues of Governing magazine.

Last May, Los Angeles firefighters had their hands full. A blaze was spreading through 800 acres of Griffith Park but they only knew what was happening from the side of the fire where their trucks were parked. To get a sense of the extent of the conflagration, firefighter Brian Humphrey sent messages to strangers on the other side of the fire — explaining who he was and asking them to call him right away.

How did he know whom to contact? Humphrey twitters.  

Reverse Cowgirl - the ever-perceptive Ms. Breslin - has posted about a Claire Hoffman piece in Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com which notes precipitous declines in revenue at commercial porn sites, occasioned by the emergency of three free-download sites, in the nature of YouTube: Megarotic (megarotic.com), YouPorn (youporn.com), and Pornotuben (pornotube.com) (note links broken due to the positive correlation between porn sites and computer viruses and the negative correlation between porn sites and computer security. Ed.)

Link to Claire Hoffman’s piece on Portfolio.com.

WNYC’s On The Media - ran an excellent piece in 2002 interview with Jonathan Coopersmith, Douglas Rushkoff, and others making the case that pornography is often the driver of new communications technologies.

For my part, I’d put porn on a plane with two other markets which have different, but no less intense, needs for innovative advantage: illicit markets, and military/law enforcement uses. More my area of knowledge - I can easily name examples:

• There’s no end to examples of military organizations as first adapters of new technologies: two -way radio, the fax machine (during WWII - before the War Department figured out what to do with telecopiers, they used them for a while over radio - placed in vehicles in the States - sending new information to soldiers and officers who were in vehicles, driving around, making death notifications to the families of service members who had been killed) ((Personal conversations with the late Jack Fitzstephens, whose first military assignment in WW II was in “graves registration” - following behind troops, clipping dog tags, preparing bodies for burial. But not so far behind that he didn’t get shot at)).
• As soon as there were phones, organized crime (bootleggers, gamblers) used hijacked phone lines - called “cheeseboxes” in New York - so that when authorities followed a phone line to an address - they’d find an empty apartment - with a wired connection to another phone line - sometimes appearing in another apartment or nearby building - which redirected the calls. They could shut the line down, of course - but by the time the connnections got sorted out - targets and evidence had been moved away.An NYPD source has provided me with an explanation of “Cheesebox” as the name - one of the early such setups was hidden in a closet - the wiring then hidden in what had been a shipping crate for cheese.
• The first mobile telephone I ever saw or used was in law enforcement. (The person I had personal knowledge of using a car-based “radio telephone”was a United States Attorney General; this may be public record now, but not when I came by the information, so we’ll hold the name for the moment, it not being necessary to make the point);
• Let’s not forget what immediate use urban illicit drug-selling organizations made of pagers and then mobile phones;
• The first reported use (that I’m aware of) of a “silent,” vibrating pager was by Richard Helms, then DCI, who was reported in the early 1970’s as been “paged” at dinner parties by the then state-of-the-art “beeper.”
• The FBI was using portable audio recorder hard drives before anyone thought to add “i” to “pod.” Well before.

Sex, drugs, and espionage in the same piece. We’ll try to keep connecting these things as often as possible.

I’m not sure, though - about the extinction of porn as a business - perhaps this is a just a lull before some newer, better porn medium - with some sort of DRM - makes people willing to pay more for better.

I don’t understand it.

But - Michael Chertoff has started a blog. And, after a recent  post, David W. Stephenson, of Stephenson Strategies, made a comment that actually made it through DHS screening.

I’m not sure he could have gotten the comment onto a commercial flight, though, unless it was in checked luggage.

Check out Mirabile dictu! My comment on Chertoff’s blog was ok’d,  on Stephenson blogs on homeland security 2.0. 

Stephenson is co-author, with Eric Bonabeau, of Expecting the Unexpected: The Need for a Networked Terrorism and Disaster Response Strategy, in the February 2007 issue of Homeland Security Affairs. 

We’ve blogged about this article before - but it’s good enough that I’m happy to shill for it more than once - as I am about HSAJ’s parent organization, the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense & Security.

Between Stephenson, Bonabeau, and Professor Brian Steckler of NPS, I’ve been persuaded of the utility of wireless networks in emergencies - although it’s my contention that, organized from the bottom up - we need more than one system. More about system redundancy and about NPS soon.

New Coast Guard cutters apparently not compliant with data security standards. See David Axe’s post here.

Will this interfere with their ability to conduct SAR operations? How critical - without an adversary with massive SIGINT capabilities - is this capacity?

According to the San Francisco Sentinel,

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and other local officials came together at Treasure Island today to unveil an initiative aimed at making it easier for public safety agencies in the region to communicate with one another during emergencies.

Newsom said, “Today, as we mark the sixth anniversary of 9/11, the best way we can pay tribute to the fallen is by giving our local first responders the tools to handle a major disaster.”

Newsom said, “By making our emergency communications interoperable among all disciplines and jurisdictions, we are ensuring that we are prepared for any future disasters, either natural or man-made.”

Newsom said the so-called Bay Area Public Safety Interoperable Communications Initiative is the largest urban area interoperable communications collaboration in the nation.

Laura Phillips, the executive director of San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management, said the idea is to make it easier for cities and counties throughout the Bay Area to address and develop strategies to communicate, respond and recover in the event of human-generated and
natural disasters.

Dellums said, “This initiative provides our first responders with the ability to communicate with other cities and counties across the Bay Area, further improving upon the way our emergency officials can respond.”

Phillips said the problem known as “interoperability” developed over the past several decades and involves a scarcity of radio frequencies or spectrum that hinders the ability of public safety agencies throughout the nation to communicate with one another.

Newsom said the Bay Area initiative will cost about $200 million, of which San Francisco will contribute more than $72 million.

Phillips said the project will be funded by federal grants, including the Public Safety Interoperable Communications Grant, known as PSIC, and the Community Oriented Policing Services, known as COPS.

Newsom said parts of the project will be brought in gradually over the next year, additional parts will be in service by 2009 and it will be fully integrated by early 2010.

Phillips said the project currently includes the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose and the core counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Marin and Santa Clara.

She said other cities and counties also have expressed interest.

In New York City, we’ll remind our readers:

1. transit police (assigned to the subways, formerly a separate department) have spotty communications underground;
2. the police and fire departments don’t often drill together, don’t yet have substantial interoperability;
3. Radios long known to have been malfunctioning - especially inside the World Trade Center complex - led to the deaths of firefighters, other responders, and others on September 11th, 2001.
4. Interoperability with the Port Authority Police Department - a separate government entity which manages the three largest local airports, owns the World Trade Center site, and at least two bus terminals is  reputed to exist, according to one source, only between a few designated NYPD units and a few Port Authority facilities.

Interoperability  with adjacent authorities seems, given our perspective, quite an accomplishment.

But how are they going to pronounce BAPSIC?