Here's a nice little variant on the traditional 419 scam letter that showed up in my inbox this morning:

THIS IS TO OFFICIALLY INFORM YOU THAT YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED AMONG THE 40 LUCKY VICTIM OF SCAMMED TO BE COMPENSATED WITH $500,000.00.FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS,THIS WAS CONCLUDED BY THE SENATE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA,SENATOR wALLIS KELLY WITH DELEGATE FROM THE UNITED NATION AND WORLD BANK AT THE AFRICAN UNION SUMMIT WHICH TOOK PLACE IN ADDIS ABABA IN (ETHIOPIA) AIMED AT REDEEMING THE COUNTRY'S IMAGE AND ALSO TO TRY TO PUT ANEND TO THE INCESSANT SCAM REPORTS BY FOREIGNER ESPECIALLY FROM USA AND AROUND THE GLOBE.YOU HAVE BEEN LISTED AND APPROVED FOR THIS PAYMENT AS ONE OF THE SCAMMED VICTIMS TO BE PAID THIS AMOUNT.

In David W. Maurer's classic 1940 book The Big Con (the basis for the movie The Sting), he describes how con-men would put their victims on the hook again and again, fleecing them, then convincing them to go home and borrow or steal everything their could from their friends in order to get their original money back. Like a desperate gambler doubling down, the poor marks would get deeper and deeper, and at every stage, it got easier for the grifter to con them again.

So here's the modern variant of it -- fleecing people who've been burned by scammers.

Suketu Mehta, author of the Pulitzer-nominated "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found" has a wracked and impassioned op-ed in today's New York Times about the Mumbai attacks. Mehta says that the terrorists want to kill the golden dream of Mumbai, and pledges himself to improving the city and its injustices, calling on all of us to renew our commitment to one of the largest, most beautiful, most maddening cities in the world.

I spent some time in Mumbai in September, and met some of the warmest, cleverest, most driven people I've ever encountered, from the slums of Dharavi to the IT parks to the Bollywood studios, it was a bottomless well of ambitious strivers who loved their city and worked and played around the clock. The poverty was crushing, the bravery inspiring, the city beautiful and terrible at once. Like most foreigners who visit the city, I stayed in the tourist quarter in Colaba, where many of the attacks occurred -- I had dinner at Leopold's, tea at the Taj, tried to get a train at VT.

I hope that all my Mumbai friends are safe and sound. I've been avidly reading the traffic on one of the Indian mailing-lists I lurk on, watching as the Mumbai residents check in, trade stories, give thanks for being alive and, like Mehta, pledge to answer the problems of their city with love instead of hate.

In the Bombay I grew up in, your religion was a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle. In my school, you were denominated by which cricketer or Bollywood star you worshiped, not which prophet. In today’s Mumbai, things have changed. Hindu and Muslim demagogues want the mobs to come out again in the streets, and slaughter one another in the name of God. They want India and Pakistan to go to war. They want Indian Muslims to be expelled. They want India to get out of Kashmir. They want mosques torn down. They want temples bombed.

And now it looks as if the latest terrorists were our neighbors, young men dressed not in Afghan tunics but in blue jeans and designer T-shirts. Being South Asian, they would have grown up watching the painted lady that is Mumbai in the movies: a city of flashy cars and flashier women. A pleasure-loving city, a sensual city. Everything that preachers of every religion thunder against. It is, as a monk of the pacifist Jain religion explained to me, “paap-ni-bhoomi”: the sinful land...

But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever. Dream of making a good home for all Mumbaikars, not just the denizens of $500-a-night hotel rooms. Dream not just of Bollywood stars like Aishwarya Rai or Shah Rukh Khan, but of clean running water, humane mass transit, better toilets, a responsive government. Make a killing not in God’s name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder.

What They Hate About Mumbai (via Jon Taplin)

A worker at a New York Wal-Mart location was crushed to death this morning, "Black Friday," when hordes of shoppers overwhelmed to get inside for bargain-hunting. Snip from AP account:

At least four other people were injured, and the store in Valley Stream on Long Island was closed. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Bentonville, Ark., called the incident a "tragic situation" and said the employee came from a temporary agency and was doing maintenance work at the store.

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," co-worker Jimmy Overby, 43, told the Daily News. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too. ... I literally had to fight people off my back."

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500, which represented the deceased worker, has called for a investigation by OSHA and the NY State labor department.

Director of Special Projects for Local 1500 Patrick Purcell called Wal-mart's comments in response to the incident both "cold and heartless." "If the safety of their customers and workers was a top priority, then this never would have happened," Purcell stated. "Wal-mart must step up to the plate and ensure that all those injured, as well as the family of the deceased, be financially compensated for their injuries and their losses. Their words are weak. The community demands action," Purcell concluded.

Purcell also suggested that people visit the website walmartcrimereport.com to review other incidents of Wal-mart not providing a safe work and shopping experience.

(Thanks, Derek Bledsoe)

Google cryptographer and all-round security expert Ben Laurie's been blogging some great security thinking lately. Today he's got a really fascinating, thoughtful piece about the problems of passwords:

So, where does this leave us? Users must have passwords, so why fight it? Why not admit that its where we have to be and make it a familiar (but secure) process, so that users can actually safely use passwords, phishing-free?

The answer to this is deeply sad. It is because we have done a fantastic job on usability of passwords. They’re so usable that anyone will type their password anywhere they see the word “password” with a box next to it. Phishing is utterly trivial because we have trained the world to expect to be phished every time they see a new website.

Of course, we can fix this cryptographically - that’s easy. But let’s say we did that. How do we stop the user from ever typing their password into a phishable box from this day forward? So long as they only ever type the password into the crypto gadget that does the unphishable protocol, they are safe, no matter who asks them to log in. But as soon as they type it into a text box on a web page, they’re screwed.

So, this is why passwords are the worst usability disaster ever.

Do Passwords Scale?

Noah Shachtman at WIRED's Danger Room blog says,

Russia's top investigator is claiming that their wartime foes, the Georgians, deployed a cadre of female snipers from Ukraine and Latvia. The shooters sound an awful lot like the mythical "white tights" -- the exotic, stone-cold, blue eyed, Olympic bialthete killers of Chechen war lore who were said to pick off hapless Russian conscripts.

Read the post at Danger Room, by Nathan Hodge: The Return of 'White Tights': Mythical Female Snipers Stalk Russians

A Homeland Security Committee investigation has found that the TSA was negligent in keeping track of former officers' uniforms and badges, so that an unknown number are now floating around, ready to be worn by anyone who wants to impersonate a TSA officer in order to bring a 3.1 ounce tube of toothpaste into a major US airport, thus causing every plane in the sky to crash simultaneously.

Investigators found numerous cases in which former employees retained their passes long after they had left the agency.

The investigation also found that TSA uniforms were frequently not collected when employees left or were transferred.

People using improper badges, IDs or uniforms — particularly in combination — "could significantly increase an airport's vulnerability to unauthorized access and, potentially, a wide variety of terrorist and criminal acts," the report said.

Report slams TSA failure to track security passes (via Making Light)

MadScott sez, "TSA Screener Pythias Brown walked off with hundreds of thousands of dollars of passengers' belongings without ever being observed by the TSA, selling the items on Ebay (apparently he was good about customer service).

Pythias started small, stealing cameras, laptop computers, gaming consoles and eventually moved on to the good stuff including a video camera belonging to CNN, and a $47,900 camera stored inside the bag of an HBO employee.

The items were sold on Ebay, and as you can see from his feedback listing, these were not cheap items.

His greed eventually came back to haunt him, when CNN found one of their cameras listed on Ebay. With a little help from the local police department and the USPS, Brown was apprehended.

When agents entered his house, they found 66 cameras, 31 laptop computers, jewelry, lenses, GPS devices and more.

TSA agent helped himself to a $47,900 camera (and more!) (Thanks, MadScott!)

September 21, 2008 marks exactly one year since the day on which 19-year-old MIT engineering student Star Simpson walked into Boston's Logan International Airport wearing a home-made light-up sweatshirt, and asked an airport worker for information about a friend's arriving flight.

Boston is the city from which two terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks departed in 2001. They boarded planes at Logan and flew them into the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York, destroying the buildings and killing nearly 3,000 people.

In January 2007, a false terrorism scare happened in Boston when a guerrilla marketing team working to promote Cartoon Network's Aqua Teen Hunger Force show placed LED signs around the city. Authorities mistook the colorfully lit boards for bombs.

Just eight months later, in a persisting environment of anxiety over terrorism, a Boston Logan Airport worker mistook Star Simpson's LED-adorned wearable tech garment for a suicide bomb. That airport worker phoned Boston police. A small misunderstanding over a hoodie quickly became a surreal debacle during which police said they came close to killing Ms. Simpson.

Last Friday, we aired an interview with Star Simpson -- her first public comments on the incident since that day -- in a ten-minute video feature on Boing Boing tv (here's the direct MP4 link).

Some viewers asked if we could publish a transcript of our entire 45-minute Skype video chat, and here it is. One year, countless court dates, and much media uproar later, Star's wry advice to other would-be wearable electronics makers? "Hide the batteries." Snip from the transcript:

XENI JARDIN: So what exactly happened? What was the moment that changed from you going to pick up your friend with this shirt and another device which you'll show us in a moment... when did everything switch.

STAR SIMPSON: The woman who made the call surprised me. I was asking an information woman for, 'has the flight come in, can you tell me which baggage claim to be at...' and she looked at my jacket and glazed over completely in fear. And I was very surprised by that, I didn't know what to say. That was how everything started. I tried my best to explain everything to her, and I turned the lights off the jacket. Nothing calmed her down. No words could convey anything calming to her. I thought maybe I could at least get out of her sphere of terror, whatever was causing her such anxiety, by maybe going somewhere else and trying to find my friend on my own. Then, I didn't expect that things would go so badly from there. After that I was trying to leave the airport, I was catching the shuttle bus to go home because I realized that I'd missed my friend and the next best thing I could to was find a phone. I was waiting on the traffic island for the next shuttle bus to get on the subway when all of a sudden my hands were grabbed from behind me.

XENI: Who was grabbing your hands?

STAR: It turned out to be the state police. They have this magic trick where 40 of them can appear all at once out of nowhere. I didn't see them coming ever. Just, all of a sudden my hands were wrenched up over my head and my stuff was thrown on the ground, and they're everywhere, and some of them were holding really big devices that I realized were machine guns, later. I was -- I couldn't identify them at the time, I thought maybe they were camera tripods. I had no idea what was going on.

Full text of the interview follows after the jump.

Loraksus sez, "The recently released report about Taser use by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is quite interesting. Not only did they find that RCMP did an "inadequate" review of the literature available on Tasers and had an 'overreliance' on anecdotal information., but they also tore into 'excited delirium', saying'ED should be considered 'folk knowledge'' and '...should not be included in the RCMP's operational manual' It looks like the use of Tasers in a "ensuring compliance" role is diminishing. In most of Canada at least."

"Perhaps there would have been a delay in implementation, or at least a limited deployment (e.g., to supervisors or their designates and to tactical squads)."

The review, which questions the safety of stun guns — especially when used on pregnant women, drug users or people with medical conditions — argues that there should be national standards to guide Taser use by police forces across the country. The standards could be developed with the help of the Canadian Firearms Centre and Public Safety Canada.

RCMP relied too much on Taser manufacturer info: report (Thanks, Loraksus!)

See also: Taser death at Vancouver Airport

A house in North Texas burned down killing two occupants (me stupid, me misread article, no one die) because the local authorities had switched off the fire-hydrants to stop terrorists from poisoning the water supply through them (?!?!). As Schneier sez, "This pegs the stupid-meter." At 11.

He explains all the district's hydrants, including those in Alexander Ranch, have had their water turned off since just after 9/11 - something a trade association spokesman tells us is common practice for rural systems.

"These hydrants need to be cut off in a way to prevent vandalism or any kind of terrorist activity, including something in the water lines," Hodges said.

But Hodges says fire departments know, or should have known, the water valves can be turned back on with a tool.

Wait wait wait. Turned back on with a tool? So these fire-hydrants will prevent terrorists who are capable of poisoning the water supply through them, but only if they're incapable of getting a tool? Are the fire hydrants in your neighborhood turned on? (via Schneier)

A man in Orem, Utah had the Homeland Security flying squad at his house because he'd planted a castor bean plant on his front lawn, prompting a neighbor or passing snitch to decide he was making ricin:

A startled homeowner got a visit from Orem Police Tuesday afternoon. They were interested in a plant that he was growing by his mailbox in the front yard. They were so interested that they put a call into Homeland Security. No, it wasn’t marijuana. It was a castor bean plant...

He says with a laugh, “I’m not a terrorist, but I was terribly frightened when the call came in. I was terrorized (for) my humble little plant that’s over there in the corner.”

Orem man's bean plant investigated (Thanks, Sam!)

In case you're still worried that the universe will wink out of existence in 5 days when they turn on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, rest easy: a new report from the LHC Safety Assessment Group says it ain't gonna happen. Or, as one physicist told me when I asked about this last month while researching my Petacentres article for Nature, "Look, it's a 10^-19 chance, and you've got a 10^-11 chance of suddenly evaporating while shaving."

The report explains that if particle collisions at the LHC had the power to destroy the Earth, we would never have been given the chance to exist, because regular interactions with more energetic cosmic rays would already have destroyed the Earth or other astronomical bodies.

a The Safety Assessment Group writes, “Nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programmes on Earth – and the planet still exists.”

LHC Switch-on Fears Are Completely Unfounded

A TSA inspector decided to get a closer look at some American Eagle jets at O'Hare, so he climbed up on them, using a fragile, vital instrument (the Total Air Temperature probes) as handholds. He damaged the craft so badly that the regular maintenance crew grounded them -- and if they hadn't noticed, the lives of everyone on-board could have been endangered. Remember, folks, the "S" in TSA stands for "Security."

Citing sources within the aviation industry, ABC News reports an overzealous TSA employee attempted to gain access to the parked aircraft by climbing up the fuselage... reportedly using the Total Air Temperature (TAT) probes mounted to the planes' noses as handholds.

"The brilliant employees used an instrument located just below the cockpit window that is critical to the operation of the onboard computers," one pilot wrote on an American Eagle internet forum. "They decided this instrument, the TAT probe, would be adequate to use as a ladder."

Commuter Flights Grounded Thanks To Bumbling TSA Inspector (via MeFi)

John Joseph Adams sez,

I've just launched the website for my new anthology, Seeds of Change. The stories aim to confront some of the pivotal issues facing our society today, such as racism, global warming, peak oil, technological advancement, and political revolution. It features original fiction from Tobias S. Buckell, Ken MacLeod, and Jay Lake, among others.

You can read the complete text of three of the anthology's nine stories on the website, in HTML, PDF, or Mobipocket format. There are excerpts available of the remaining six stories.

Other bonus features include interviews with the authors and further reading lists for people who'd like to learn more about the issues discussed in the stories. And finally, the site also features a book trailer which features a short dramatized excerpt of each story, along with original musical score (which you can also download as an instrumental MP3 track).

It's available in the usual online bookstores as well as in ebook format for Kindle, Sony Reader, and Mobipocket, and is available in all the usual formats from Fictionwise.

Book's homepage, Seeds of Change on Amazon

Annelle of the Big Think says:

Here's a followup to your August 6 post "The new generation of resistant infections is almost impossible to treat" that mentions Dr. Bonnie Bassler.

While the post was fairly pessimistic, in our recent interview with Dr. Bassler she offers a slightly sunnier view. Namely, that outbreaks of bacteria, (for example, the recent salmonella tomato scare, last year's spinach crisis,) are not the result of pathogens necessarily becoming stronger: the salmonella was still regular salmonella. The problem lies in the set up of our food system, in which any contamination is immediately spread over a wide area, making it difficult to control or even track it. (I think the answer is for everyone to become a locavore.)

Dr. Bonnie Bassler, "Dealing with Bacterial Crises."

The link to the full interview is here, wherein Dr. Bassler discusses the issue of women in science, her discovery of quorum sensing, and what she hopes to accomplish in the future.

Kevin Fu (associate prof at the UMass Amherst/director of the Medical Device Security Center) gave a Black Hat presentation in Vegas yesterday in which he demonstrated a way of remotely disabling a pacemaker, using open radio technology. It sounds like other implantable devices, like those used for auto-administering drugs, would also be vulnerable to the attack. The attack relies on the fact that the control protocol for these devices does not use any cryptographic security -- that sounds like it'd be easy enough to fix for future models. Not sure how you'd field-patch the 2.6 million devices that have already been... installed to date, though.

A computer acts as a control mechanism for programming the pacemaker so that it can be set to deal with a patient’s particular defribrillation needs. Pacemakers administer small shocks to the heart to restore a regular heartbeat. The devices have the ability to induce a fatal shock to a heart.

Fu and Halperin said they used a cheap $1,000 system to mimic the control mechanism. It included a software radio, GNU radio software, and other electronics. They could use that to eavesdrop on private data such as the identity of the patient, the doctor, the diagnosis, and the pacemaker instructions. They figured out how to control the pacemaker with their device.

“You can induce the test mode, drain the device battery, and turn off therapies,” Halperin said.

Translation: you can kill the patient.

Defcon: Excuse me while I turn off your pacemaker, Pacemakers and Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators: Software Radio Attacks and Zero-Power Defenses (Thanks, Kiltak!)

This year's OSCON was treated to a chance to see the first RepRap "progeny." RepRap is a deluxe 3D printer that is capable of printing copies of itself.

On the way back, the TSA opened the case it was in and destroyed the printer.

On the return journey from OSCON, baggage handling found themselves outclassed. Instead of simply smacking the box around a few times as had happened on the outbound trip, the TSA dismantled the custom hard-case for the RepRap by removing the 16 bolts securing the top panel rather than undoing the 8 bolts marked "Open".

Unable to fit the panel back on again - it was not meant to come off so the nuts were not captive - they simply sent it on its way with the panel detached. I retrieved it from the conveyor - as opposed from the fragile/outsize section despite clear "Fragile" stickers on every face...

Link (Thanks, Steve!)

A new Rand Corporation report comprehensively surveys the ways that terrorist groups have been disbanded in the past: "Military force was rarely the primary reason a terrorist group ended." Instead, historic wars on terror have been won with policing and settlements. Rand's conclusion? To defeat Al Qaeda, we need to end the war on terror.

A recent RAND research effort sheds light on this issue by investigating how terrorist groups have ended in the past. By analyzing a comprehensive roster of terrorist groups that existed worldwide between 1968 and 2006, the authors found that most groups ended because of operations carried out by local police or intelligence agencies or because they negotiated a settlement with their governments. Military force was rarely the primary reason a terrorist group ended, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory.

Terrorism’s End: Jon Taplin, How Terrorist Groups End: Rand Corporation

An 82-year-old woman in Southampton, UK was told she couldn't take photos of an empty wading pool because she might be a paedophile. Because, you know, anything that children touch regularly becomes part of their souls, and if a paedophile looks at those objects, it's just like sexually assaulting a child.

Makes me glad, as a father, to live here in the UK, where the clear-eyed, sensible view of paedophilia is doing so much to ensure the safety of my daughter from assaults by strangers (an occurrence that is so rare as to be practically nonexistent) while doing practically nothing to protect her from the people who are statistically most likely to assault her -- her family, her friends' parents, her teachers, and other people known to her, who account for the overwhelming majority of assaults on children.

> An amateur photographer was told she could not take snaps of an empty paddling pool because she might be a paedophile.

Betty Robinson was ordered to put away her camera by a council worker when she began snapping the outdoor pool.

'It's absolutely ridiculous – it's bureaucracy gone mad,' said the 82-year-old widow from Southampton.

She was with friend Brenda Bennett as she took pictures of the city's common – where the pool is situated.

My pool picture ban over paedophile fears (Thanks, Marilyn!)

The NY Yankees banned sunblock at Yankee stadium "to prevent terrorism." On a blistering hot day. And sold high-markup, crappy sunblock inside the gates. You know, as soon as we said "There is no price too high to pay in the war on terror," we lost -- and every sleazy con-artist, profiteer, greedhead and crook won.

Security guards collected garbage bags full of sunblock at the entrances to Yankee Stadium over the sweltering weekend, when temps hit 96 degrees and the UV index reached a skin-scorching 9 out of 10 - a move team officials said was to protect the Stadium from terrorism...

"I was really pissed because, since I am Irish and I have a bald head, I need my sunblock," said Sean Gavin, 40, who had to toss his SPF 30 at the gate Saturday.

"After they saw me dousing myself with it, it should have been obvious to them that it was sunblock and not some explosive."

The team contends that sunscreen has long been on the list of stadium contraband, but there is no mention of it on the Yankee Web site.

Four weeks ago, Stadium officials decided that sunscreen of all sizes and varieties would not be permitted, a security supervisor told The Post before last night's game...

The Stadium does sell 1-ounce bottles of Arizona Sun SPF 15 for $5 - a huge markup that makes its beer seem cheap.

Link (Thanks, Jason!)

Wired's Danger Room has a good interview with Dan Kaminsky, whose DNS hack has been burning up the wires. Dan figured out a means of disrupting the entire Internet by poisoning DNS. The exploit's existence and scope have been hotly debated ever since, and it all came to a head when details of the exploit leaked:

Well you know, there were people who said, Dan, I wish I could patch but I don't know the bug and I can't get the resources I need to patch it. Well you know the bug now.

You know, Verizon Business has a blog entry where they say that the greatest short-term risk from patching DNS was from the patch itself, from changing such a core and essential element to their systems. I know this. I was a network engineer before I was a security engineer. So that's why we took such extraordinary lengths to try to get people as much time as possible (to patch their systems). There's just a lot of complexity in doing something on this scale. This is something I think a lot of people don’t realize. It was difficult to get the patches even written, let alone get them all released on a single day.

But let me tell you, the complete lack of whining from the (DNS software) vendors . . . if I could have gotten as little whining from the security (professionals) . . . no I'm not going to say that. It's so tempting! I'm simply going to say this in positive terms. I wish everybody could be as cooperative and understanding and as helpful as Microsoft and ISC (the Internet Systems Consortium) and Cisco and everyone else was who worked so hard to get customers what they needed to protect our networks.

Link

A policeman in Kent, UK has been suspended after he detained a child with autism and cerebral palsy. The child is mixed-race and was travelling with his mother and father, whose skin is a different colour from his and each other. As the family approached the chunnel entrance, they were stopped by the policeman, who sent for reinforcements. Police surrounded the car and detained the family under the Terrorism Act.

The family were then detained under the Terrorism Act and surrounded by "at least 10 police officers" who ordered them to get out of their car.

Ms Maynard was separated from her husband and son, who is autistic and has cerebral palsy, and taken to a detention room for questioning, leaving Joshua distressed.

Ms Maynard said the woman officer told her: "It's obvious he [Joshua] has nothing to do with you".

She said officers had told the family they had powers to hold them for up to nine hours under Section 7 of the Terrorism Act, but they were released after more than two hours.

Link

Stewart and Mueller's paper, "Assessing the risks, costs and benefits of United States aviation security measures," (published by the University of Newcastle, Australia) does an amazing job of unpicking which post-911 security measures actually work and which ones are showy wastes of money and pocket-liners for slimy government contractors:

Hardening cockpit doors has the highest risk reduction (16.67%) at lowest additional cost of $40 million. On the other hand, the Federal Air Marshal Service costs $900 million pa but reduces risk by only 1.67%. The Federal Air Marshal Service may be more cost-effective if it is able to show extra benefit over the cheaper measure of hardening cockpit doors. However, the Federal Air Marshal Service seems to have significantly less benefit which means that hardening cockpit doors is the more cost-effective measure.

Link (via Schneier)

From the WashPo:

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world ... Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.' Congress told the USAF twice that they could not spend the money on this frivolous project, but they did it anyway...

Changing the seat color and pockets alone was estimated in a March 12 internal document to cost at least $68,240... Air Force documents about the SLICC, dated June 8, 2006, emphasize the need to install "aesthetically pleasing wall treatments/coverings" -- in addition to the monitor, footrests and a DVD player. The beds, according to one document, must be able to support a man with "no more than 50% compression of the mattress material." The seats are to swivel such that "the longitudinal axis of the seat is parallel to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft" regardless of where the capsules are facing, the document specified...

The e-mails state that McMahon ordered that the seats be re-covered, and one e-mail complains that the contractor "would not swap out the brown seat belts for replacement blue seat belts." The changes delayed the project by months and added to its cost.

Link (via /.)

There's something grimly fascinating about this Blackhatworld forum in which spammers are discussing with comradely zest the best means of overcoming the new Craigslist phone-verification technique that prevents duplicate listings being posted in CL forums. There's the whole spectrum of netly emotion here: technical generosity; greed; self-pity; quick anger. They could be talking about debugging a video-driver, except that they're talking about turning a beautiful community service into a pile of shit.

They've just started doing this in the computer services section too. I'm seriously freaking out now because I make the majority of my income off that section. I'm a freelance designer.

I don't know how I'm going to pay my bills if I can't find a way around this. Anyone have a suggestion? Please?

Link

Barnegat, NJ schools were put into "lockdown" because someone saw a "ninja" (turned out to be a camp counselor in a karate uniform going to a costume party). Lesson learned by students: security alerts are bogus, grownups are idiots.

Public schools in Barnegat were locked down briefly after someone reported seeing a ninja running through the woods behind an elementary school.

Turns out the ninja was actually a camp counselor dressed in black karate garb and carrying a plastic sword.

Link (via Schneier)

Yoder sez, "Bill Jakob, a former trucking company owner with law enforcement experience, spent 'several months' pretending to be a federal agent in the town of Gerald, MO. Jakob apparently spent his time aggressively busting drug suspects, with the complicity of the local police department, claiming 'he did not need search warrants to enter their homes because he worked for the federal government.'"

Gosh, I guess that spending seven years telling everyone that the War on Terror demands that we defer to authority and trust in secrecy means that we end up being credulous patsies for con-artists -- who could have foreseen it?

The strange adventures of Sergeant Bill have led to the firing of three of the town’s five police officers, left the outcome of a string of drug arrests in doubt, prompted multimillion-dollar federal civil rights lawsuits by at least 17 plaintiffs and stirred up a political battle, including a petition seeking the impeachment of Mr. Schulte, over who is to blame for the mess.

And the questions keep coming. How did Mr. Jakob wander into town and apparently leave the mayor, the aldermen and pretty much everyone else he met thinking that he was a federal agent delivered from Washington to help barrel into peoples’ homes and clean up Gerald’s drug problem? And why would anyone — receiving no pay and with no known connection to little Gerald, 70 miles from St. Louis and not even a county seat — want to carry off such a time-consuming ruse in the first place?

Link (Thanks, Yoder!)

The US's "Terrorism Liaison Officer" program is being expanded -- this is a program that trains utility workers and other government employees to snitch on people whom they deem "suspicious" and embroil them in a never-ending round of Orwellian surveillance and background checks.

Because nothing helps us find the terrorist needles in the haystack like inviting every junior G-Man in the land to make the haystacks larger!

In Colorado, TLOs report not only illegal but legal activity, such as bulk purchases along Colorado’s Front Range of up to 150 disposable cellphones. TLO supervisors said these bulk buys were suspicious because similar phones are used as remote detonators for bombs overseas and can be re-sold to fund terrorism.

Taking photos or videos can be deemed suspicious because “surveillance is a precursor to terrorist activity,” said Colorado State Patrol Sgt. Steve Garcia, an analyst in Colorado’s intelligence fusion center south of Denver, which handles TLO-supplied information.

Colorado, California and Arizona are among the first to deploy TLOs after establishing robust state-run fusion cente