Eideard

Federal officials said Wednesday they have found no evidence to support an initial state report that foreign hackers caused a water pump at an Illinois water plant to fail this month.

The preliminary report, collected by a statewide terrorist intelligence center in Illinois, had said that a Russian hacker had taken control of the operating system at the water plant in Springfield. The pump turned on and off repeatedly, burning out the motor, the report said…

But the Department of Homeland Security and FBI said they failed to confirm reports of a cyber­attack. DHS spokesman Chris Ortman called the Illinois state report nothing more than “raw, unconfirmed data.”

He said that the federal investigation also failed to confirm the report’s claim that hackers broke into a software company’s database and retrieved user names and passwords, which enabled access to the water plant system.

“In addition,” Ortman said, “DHS and FBI have concluded that there was no malicious traffic from Russia or any foreign entities, as previously reported.”

Officials from the state intelligence center did not return phone calls seeking comment…

Please, let’s don’t start letting reality, verifiable conclusions or facts stand in the way of Cold Warriors who are required by that alien implant in their brain to transform every possible SNAFU into an assault upon God, Apple Pie and the American Way of Life.

Tightened security at airports has created new problems for medical patients, who may be subjected to embarrassing public pat-downs after imaging machines detect devices or implants related to their health.

The latest case involves Lori Dorn, a 44-year-old New York woman who learned in March that she had breast cancer. After tests revealed a high genetic risk for cancer, Ms. Dorn underwent a bilateral mastectomy in April as well as a grueling chemotherapy treatment that just ended in September. As part of her breast reconstruction, tissue expanders were implanted to stretch her skin before placement of a permanent breast implant.

But…last week, on her way to San Francisco to visit friends, she was treated with hostility and humiliated after the tissue expanders were detected by a body scanning machine at Kennedy Airport in New York. She said the workers from the Transportation Security Administration would not let her retrieve a medical card explaining the implants, a situation she wrote about on her blog:

I told her that I was not comfortable with having my breasts touched, and that I had a card in my wallet that explains the type of expanders, serial numbers and my doctor’s information and asked to retrieve it. This request was denied. Instead, she called over a female supervisor who told me the exam had to take place. I was again told that I could not retrieve the card and needed to submit to a physical exam in order to be cleared. She then said, “And if we don’t clear you, you don’t fly,” loud enough for other passengers to hear. And they did. And they stared at the bald woman being yelled at by a T.S.A. supervisor.

I have been through emotional and physical hell this past year due to breast cancer…. I understand the need for safety when flying, but there is also a need for those responsible to be compassionate and sensitive to each situation.

Ms. Dorn said she is not opposed to being patted down, but believes she should have been given a chance to explain her medical situation and taken to a private area for the pat-down. She said a private pat-down was never offered.

She also says she still has several painful areas on her chest where her body is still healing. “The areas are very sensitive with or without touch”…

The T.S.A. e-mailed a statement about the incident, saying that proper screening procedures were followed.

The Obama administration hasn’t improved on the range of incompetents, dullards and burger-flippers that met the standards of the Bush administration. Nor has the White House of Change interfered with other vile and criminal standards for conducting the anti-terrorism patrol more critical to the federal budget than, say, health, education or air quality. No surprise.

But, treating all citizens as criminals and cattle has got to stop! Constitutional protections against behavior common to kingdoms and dictatorship were originally instituted for the same reasons they need to be revived. We are decent human beings supposedly living in the Land of Liberty. Focus the crap behavior on legitimate targets not the whole populace.

Protesting a security demand that an al-Jazeera producer remove her bra, fellow colleagues bowed out of a meeting with Israel’s prime minister.

Israeli security personnel screening those attending the annual foreign correspondents event in Jerusalem Tuesday, asked al-Jazeera producer Simri Diab, 31, to remove her bra. She refused and was not permitted to enter the hall where Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was due to speak, Ynetnews.com said Wednesday.

Diab told Ynetnews three reporters from the station planned to attend the event. She said she was forced to wait for a long period in the queue and then singled out with other Arab reporters. One of the security guards allowed her to sit down because of she is pregnant. She later agreed to a body search in a holding room downstairs, she said.

“They later took me downstairs to the security check cell. They asked me to take off my coat and then my vest. I did. Then they asked me to take off my shirt. I took a deep breath and did it. I was left with just my undershirt and trousers, without my shoes and the rest of my equipment. The female officer felt me with her hands for 15 minutes in any place possible. I told her I was pregnant and asked her not to use the manual device, but compromised on that later too.” When later asked to remove her bra, she said she refused and was told she would not be permitted to attend…

Yes, this goes beyond the usual depths of paranoia and political dementia that infects the actions of self-important pimps of national security, TSA, Shin Bet or otherwise. But, then, there’s probably a race to the bottom between Israel and the United States over who can produce the greatest number of bigoted incidents per month.

Neither nation produces any justification greater than “people hate us” – without ever examining the larger question of “Why does everyone hate us?”

Mother Nature Network reader and friend Charlie D. shot this photograph at LaGuardia airport of a TSA poster warning travelers that “snow globes are not allowed through the security checkpoint” because our safety is their priority.

This would be funny if it wasn’t so stupidly sad. We’ve wasted billions of dollars on responding to the old attacks while creating an airport security apparatus that stomps all over average citizens while doing little to prevent an attack from any half-bright would-be terrorist. It’s airport security theater.

And you know you can’t have a snow globe in a theater. Heavens no. That would be far too dangerous.

It’s a stretch to come up with a new commentary about the inmates in charge of this asylum.

And drives the rest of us nuts!

Visitors to dozens of Web sites purportedly linked to illegal file sharing and counterfeit goods were greeted by this message.

The U.S. government has launched a major crackdown on online copyright infringement, seizing dozens of sites linked to illegal file sharing and counterfeit goods.

Torrent sites that link to illegal copies of music and movie files and sites that sell counterfeit goods were seized this week by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security. Visitors to such sites as Torrent-finder.com, 2009jerseys.com, and Dvdcollects.com found that their usual sites had been replaced by a message that said, “This domain name has been seized by ICE–Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court…”

The seizures came after a Senate committee unanimously approved a controversial proposal earlier this month that would allow the government to pull the plug on Web sites accused of aiding piracy. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) allows a Web site’s domain to be seized if it “has no demonstrable, commercially significant purpose or use other than” offering or providing access to unauthorized copies of copyrighted works.

The bill hasn’t been voted into law, however.

The proposal has garnered support from dozens of the largest content companies, including video game maker Activision, media firms NBC Universal and Viacom, and the Motion Picture Association of America and Recording Industry Association of America lobbying groups. However, critics such as…civil liberties groups say the COICA could balkanize the Internet, jeopardize free speech rights, and endanger legitimate Web sites.

Slimeballs like the MPAA aren’t deserving of anymore support than their forerunners in the RIAA. But, geeks who go out of their way to break archaic laws in the name of freedom are more than likely to get busted – in this land of liberty. It’s Congress and the courts who get to define what is liberty and what isn’t.

A bizarre case of a young Asian man successfully boarding a plane disguised as an elderly Caucasian man has the governments in Hong Kong and in Canada scrambling to review their security procedures at airports and placed an airline under scrutiny for its passenger screening procedures.

The story of the Asian man in his 20s who stowed away aboard a Hong Kong-to-Vancouver flight continues to play prominently in newspapers and TV news broadcasts as well. And it has captivated a public puzzled over how screening staff at airports would fail to halt a person who wore a silicone mask disguised to be significantly older than his actual age of a different race…

What is known is that the man boarded the plane wearing the disguise and presenting a U.S. passport of a Caucasian man born in 1955. The aging face contrasted with the traveler’s “young-looking hands,” according to a Canadian Border Service bulletin issued over the case. Sometime during the flight the man removed his disguise, further alerting airplane staff who notified the Canadian authorities. Border officers met the man as he arrived in Vancouver…

Golly! They actually noticed the difference.

No link to terrorism has been suggested in the case.

Phew! I’m glad I needn’t worry about that for another day or two.

RTFA and you can add all the excuses to your list of Homeland Insecurity favorites.

Michael Arato…is charged with one count of accepting bribes, one count of conspiring to commit theft and three counts of theft by a government employee.

He was expected to turn himself in Tuesday morning, but was arrested Tuesday night at Newark’s Penn Station, a law enforcement source told CNN…

Arato was the supervisory transportation security officer for the Transportation Security Administration at Terminal B of the airport, and worked with the colleague to steal from passengers, according to the complaint. He and the colleague — who has been cooperating with authorities — frequently worked together at “the B-3 checkpoint.” The checkpoint is typically the security checkpoint for international airlines including AirIndia, the complaint said.

Beginning in August 2009, TSA and the Port Authority Police Department of New York and New Jersey “received numerous complaints from passengers scheduled to depart the airport on the 6:20 p.m. AirIndia flight that money and other valuables in passengers’ carry-on baggage were missing after their baggage was hand searched by TSA employees at the B-3 checkpoint,” the complaint said.

The complaining passengers were predominantly non-English-speaking women of Indian descent and nationality who were returning to India after visiting the United States, according to the complaint. Authorities launched an investigation, including video surveillance of the checkpoint.

Arato’s colleague, identified in the complaint as the “co-schemer,” began cooperating with authorities in September 2010 and told police he has been stealing from passengers at the checkpoint since about October 2009. The colleague said that he and Arato had agreed that when he stole from passengers, he would “kick up” half the money to Arato. Arato also regularly stole from passengers himself, sometimes giving his colleague some of that money, according to the complaint.

Great job of supervising the supervisors, checking on the security providers. Something you should always do.

Playing pinochle with friends, even friends who are coppers. You trust your friends; but, you cut the cards.

A study by the Tzomet Institute titled “Forbidden sexual relations for the sake of national security” released this week rules that female Mossad agents may have sex with the enemy in missions against terrorists.

Rabbi Ari Shvat explains: “There are occasional, lone cases in which female agents in our secret service initiate seduction in order to protect our nation’s security. The question is: Is it permissible for the state to initiate and use forbidden sexual relations in rare and extreme cases, if that is the fastest and most efficient solution for getting necessary information or stop an act that endangers national security?”

Shvat says that seduction is “an efficient weapon” that was used to take down “the most righteous amongst the righteous (King David), the wisest amongst the wise (King Solomon) and the strongest of the strong (Samson)…”

The halachic justification allowing women to literally sleep with the enemy is that, according to the Talmud in Sanhedrin, women are passive in the act of intercourse. There are rabbinical opinions that say this does not apply if the woman initiates the act; to them, Shvat brings sources that say Esther and Yael’s acts were justified, because they saved the Jewish people. However, forbidden sexual relations are not justified when they save only one, or a few, lives…

In addition, if a woman is married, “it would be best for her husband to divorce her. After the act, he would be able to bring her back,” Shvat explained.

Shvat also recommended that the job of seducing the enemy “be given to a woman who in any event is promiscuous…”

The Tzomet Institute is a non-profit research institute dedicated to merging halacha with modern life. They are known for developing elevators, coffee machines and metal detectors that can be used without violating the Sabbath.

Ain’t life in a theocracy exciting?

To prevent attacks like the Lockerbie bombing, caused by a suitcase containing a bomb loaded onto a plane without the passenger who checked it also on being on board, airlines are supposed to remove the bags of any passengers who check luggage onto flights they do not board.

In an era of suicide attacks, that precaution no longer seems as reassuring as it once did, but it is still observed carefully enough to trigger alarms like the one on Monday [about 2 Yemeni-Americans].

But, while all passengers — and their carry-on bags and checked luggage — are screened before they board flights, passenger jets flying into the United States from abroad still routinely carry unscreened cargo, a loophole The Lede pointed out in January.

Asked about the cargo shipped on passenger jets, Nicholas Kimball, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration, drew our attention to the fact that 100 percent of the cargo loaded into the holds of passenger jets alongside luggage in the United States is now screened at some stage. In January that figure was said to be “at least 50 percent.”

But in a statement earlier this month announcing that accomplishment, the agency acknowledged that one part of the loophole had yet to be closed: cargo loaded onto jets flying passengers into the country from abroad does not have to be screened…

The agency’s administrator, John Pistole, said in the statement, “International air cargo is more secure than it has ever been.” He added, “T.S.A. continues to work closely with our international partners and is making substantial progress toward meeting the 100 percent mark in the next few years.”

Or – real soon now.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology offers up this article with a straight face:

With summer travel season hard upon us, specialists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have helped create two new standards designed to increase safety as we rush from gate to gate in crowded mass transit centers. Their efforts will help to fortify against potential bomb threats in the nation’s transportation centers…

In case you considered worrying about this.

While industry has been producing blast-resistant trash receptacles for years, there were no widely-accepted specifications for judging a manufacturer’s particular claims of product safety. The Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and several manufacturers began working with NIST in 2007 to address the lack of standards for blast resistance among trash receptacles. The results of the DHS-funded work now have been published by the standards development organization ASTM International…

“In practice, this means a transit center manager can make a purchase with confidence in the performance of the unit, the specific threat level anticipated and cost,” explains Chris White, a researcher in NIST’s Building and Fire Research Laboratory. “If, for example, you know you can, at a minimum, detect the trafficking of five or more pounds of plastic explosive, you can purchase trash receptacles that will redirect the blast at up to that level of explosive force.”

You can also pour endless amount of taxpayer dollars down every rathole paranoid profit center the government can think up.