It's Time for the NCAA BCS National Digital Football Championship - MIT #1!

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Move over college football jocks and fans, because after decades of outright bias against those who are too smart to play football fisticuffs, we at the Coltons Point Times are calling for the establishment of the NCAA BCS National Digital Football Championship to be fought out among the top two colleges or universities in America in terms of the combined poll standings in computer science, engineering and overall quality of education.

Today we are prepared to release the first BCS National Digital Football top 25 Poll of those hallowed academic institutions whose brains far outweigh their brawn. Our poll is loaded with the most scientifically revered colleges in America whose endowment funds exceed that of the top jock shops. No one else can make such a claim.

Now, I do have a confession to make. Ever since I realized as a child that a terrible mistake had been made when I was dropped off by the stork in Iowa City, Iowa and not Boston, Massachusetts where I was supposed to go, I have suffered greatly. You see, I was created with Ivy League or MIT DNA and the corn fields of the Midwest are no place to create Microsoft or Facebook like I was bred to achieve.

I mean you know you are in the wrong place when your family laughs at your genetic tendencies. Like when I ordered lobster at the local cafe, put an Italian opera on the stereo, declared the Yankees (New York) and Red Sox (Boston) instead of the Cardinals (St. Louis) or Cubs (Chicago) my favorite team.

You most certainly would have agreed that I was odd. Don't get me wrong, I was a pretty good jock in all sports and that ran contrary to my DNA but I did get good at chess and croquet. In school I did most everything from get good to bad grades, being a jock yet a member of the speech and debate teams, playing in a rock 'n roll band and the school non-marching band.

If I had been delivered safely back at birth to the Rothschild family my name would have been a lot longer, I would have the name suffix III I fully expected to have, and in time I would have possessed all the alphabetical scholastic titles like B.A., M.B.A., J.D. & Ph.D. Knowing you were switched at birth and being helpless to correct this huge celestial mistake is a terrible cross to bear.

So I hung out with the freaks, geeks and misfits so I could at least assimilate my lost breeding if not experience it up close and personal. Thankfully I was well received. And later in life it helped me in understanding and relating to the powerful East Coast establishment who were products of the Ivy League and other educational institutions of higher learning than the other schools.

It even helped me survive working for people from Harvard, Yale and Princeton and working with people from MIT, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon. In spite of being part of groups like Marvin Minsky's Society of the Mind (MIT Media Lab) and other intellectually challenging groups, without the proper breeding you are never really one of them.

I never got to make my supreme contribution to the elite and I hope this BCS National Digital Football Championship helps pay back what I felt I owed. Perhaps I can get the ascot out of storage if we are a huge success?

As for the BCS NDFC it is time we make a statement, show the world that eggheads and geeks have as much to offer to Main Street as we (oops, a Freudian slip) you do to Wall Street and Washington. We want a playoff of the top 8 BCS NDFC teams at year end, meaning New Year's Eve, for the right to be the first of many future national champions of the National Digital Football playoffs.

Teams of four players with two alternates will be eligible from each school in the top 8 standing at year end. They will collectively agree as to the version of digital football to be played throughout the competition. The winner will be crowned, a trophy presented for the school, and whatever other prizes we can get from sponsors will be given. Oh yes, we are searching for a title sponsor like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft or whoever.

Now, for the official unveiling of the first BCS NDFC poll, here are the standings.

1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology--Cambridge, MA
2. Stanford University--Palo Alto, CA
3. University of California, Berkeley, CA
4. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
5. University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, IL
6. Cornell University--Ithaca, NY
7. University of Texas--Austin (Cockrell) Austin, TX
8. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
9. California Institute of Technology--Pasadena, CA
10. University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI
11. Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)--Atlanta, GA
12. University of California--Los Angeles (Samueli) Los Angeles, CA (UCLA)
13. University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI
14. University of Maryland-College Park, MD
15. University of California--San Diego (Jacobs) La Jolla, CA
16. Harvard University Cambridge, MA
17. Columbia University (Fu Foundation) New York, NY
18. Purdue University--West Lafayette West Lafayette, IN
19. University of Washington--Seattle, WA
20. University of Southern California (Viterbi)--Los Angeles, CA
21. Brown University--Providence, RI
22. University of Massachusetts--Amherst, MA
23. Rice University--Houston, TX
24. University of Pennsylvania--Philadelphia, PA
25. University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill, NC

That's it folks. We have a Beaver, Tree, Bear, Scottish Terrier, Abe Lincoln, Big Red Bear, Longhorn, Tiger, another Beaver and Badger for mascots for the top ten. It gets better down the list.

If you know any students at these schools you should let them know they are in the top 25 poll of computer scientists, geeks and engineering freaks and we will be tracking the hits from each college town because in two weeks the number of hits from each college will be factored into the poll. Until the end of the season, year end, it will be the only way a college can move up through the ranks.

Marvin again?

The top 8, if sponsorship can be found, will play for the 2010 BSC National Digital Football Championship and full bragging rights to being the Other BCS National Football Champion. I want to see if anyone can knock off MIT and their Media Lab where Marvin Minsky should be coach.
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What is Really Causing the Auto Recalls? Maybe it wasn't Toyota's Fault?

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Now that number one auto seller Toyota and the company with the highest consumer ratings has suffered a series of recalls on nine different models we see the price one does pay to be first. But wait a minute, why are there right now 45 different cars being recalled for a variety of reasons?



Could it be that it may not be just the fault of the auto companies? For many years I have been involved in the study of frequencies and the effect on people and the electrical devices we have come to depend upon.



Nearly 25 years ago I got involved with the Monroe Institute and the work Robert Monroe, a former audio engineer at CBS, was doing to open the doors to the use of energy frequencies to heal people. In addition his research was followed closely by the Defense Department as he explored ways to leave the physical body and project to other locations, a technique the military and intelligence agencies pursued called remote viewing. More will be written on this in a later article.



Much earlier I had studied the work of Dr. Royal Rife from the Midwest.



The following account is posted on the Minnesota Wellness Directory website.

Dr Royal Rife was probably one of the most brilliant (not to mention persistent) scientists ever to have walked upon this planet. He won 14 awards from the government for his research and was given an honorary medical degree from the University of Heidleberg.

When the technology didn't exist, Rife invented it. Financed by millionaires like Henry Timken, Rife invented the Universal Microscope with 5,682 parts. It was a miraculous machine that could see things smaller than waves of light (which was then and is still today thought to be impossible). Rife was the first to see a live virus. Today's electron microscopes see viruses, but they destroy them in the process through the bombardment of electrons.



While examining bacteria and viruses, Rife noticed that each one gave off a distinct light (or color) pattern. (In the late sixties it was discovered that every living cell actually gives off light and the healthier the cell the healthier the light; conversely the sicker the cell the weaker the light. But this research by Rife was done in the twenties using technology Rife himself invented.) So Rife began to experiment with instruments he invented that oscillated at the frequencies he'd determined from the organisms (bacteria and viruses) and he discovered that by playing back their own pattern of oscillation, slightly modified, he could destroy them without affecting the tissues around them. In other words, Rife could kill a particular virus or bacterium using light rays alone, light rays that were absolutely harmless to the host animal, but deadly to the microbe.

Now comes the really interesting part of Rife's work: he discovered a virus that caused cancer. And he discovered a cure.

Rife named his human cancer virus Cryptocides Primordiales (primordial hidden killer). He injected his virus into 400 lab animals creating 400 tumors. Then, using equipment he had painstakingly designed and tweaked, he exposed the diseased animals to a modified form of energy that was unique to the Cryptocides Primordiales virus, and destroyed all the tumors. You can read all about this in The Cancer Cure That Worked.

Rife diligently worked for decades isolating patterns, modifying them, and playing them back killing microbes that caused disease.

When Rife went public, the University of Southern California sponsored a special medical research team to evaluate this new therapy on the terminally ill. After 130 days, every patient recovered with no side effects to the treatment.

The head of the AMA hopped a train from Chicago to visit Rife in San Diego. Pictures were taken, the story ended up on the front page of the San Diego Evening Tribune: Rife was on his way to a Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Today you would be hard pressed to find any reference to Rife in history books. Contact a newspaper for a specific date or story and they will probably tell you that that one is missing from their archives. It is as if Rife and his work have been utterly expunged from the annals of history. His microscope did not exist. His instruments did not exist. His research did not exist. The man himself did not exist.

The AMA wanted a cut. Drug companies pressed for more proof before allowing his instruments to be used. It seems that when a medical device wants FDA approval, each and every use must be evaluated (at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars). Now, keep in mind that Rife had built his microscope and instruments and had worked for decades studying and destroying microbes all before 1930. From 1934 to 1939 doctors all over America used the Rife machines to cure disease, and all over America doctors were being pressured to stop this practice. Offices were broken into and their machines were confiscated. With the backing of the AMA an engineer working with Rife, filed suit against Rife, and this was the beginning of the end. The unending court battles wore Rife down, and the more depressed he got, the heavier he drank and then came the unexpected, the terrifying conclusion: his microscope was stolen and soon afterwards his laboratory went up in flames and his records and research burnt entirely.

The Burnett Lab in New Jersey where Rife's work was being independently validated burned to the ground. Dr Milbank Johnson, a supporter of Rife's and one of the people who had worked to validate Rife's research was poisoned. Dr Nemes who was duplicating Rife's work just 40 miles from Rife's own lab was killed in a mysterious fire that consumed his lab and research papers. Rife's closest associate was given a grant for $200,000 and quickly vanished. People who had worked with Rife suddenly denied knowing him. Rife sunk further and further into depression and alcoholism. By 1940, Rife's work had been wiped out entirely. Every time he tried to pull himself back on track to reduplicate his research, he was hounded and harassed and finally his life ended in a hospital by an overdose that was not self-administered.

No one has yet been able to rebuild Rife's microscope. Many of Rife's associates have come forward in the past two decades, and some have reengineered Rife's equipment for creating these light waves. The frequencies at which certain bacteria and viruses are killed are once again being compiled. However, without a powerful enough microscope (and Rife's perspicacity) and all the while battling the powers that be (thriving drug companies backed by the power of the FDA) it could take years to reduplicate Rife's work.



People have been stopped before with miracle cures in order to protect multi billion dollar industries intended to treat your illness, not cure it. The use of science and frequencies by Dr. Rife and Robert Monroe demonstrated how little we know about the impact of frequencies on our lives.

Now fast forward to today. We are being bombarded by frequencies from satellites, cell phone towers and who knows what other sources. We are also being blasted by solar radiation at levels not seen for years from unusual sunspot activity. A new development that has caught the attention of our own scientists as noted from the following report by the BBC last week.

Researchers say the Sun is awakening after a period of low activity, which does not bode well for a world ever more dependent on satellite navigation.

The Sun's irregular activity can wreak havoc with the weak sat-nav signals we use.
The last time the Sun reached a peak in activity, satellite navigation was barely a consumer product.

But the Sun is on its way to another solar maximum, which could generate large and unpredictable sat-nav errors.

It is not just car sat-nav devices that make use of the satellite signals; accurate and dependable sat-nav signals have, since the last solar maximum, quietly become a necessity for modern infrastructure.



Military operations worldwide depend on them, although they use far more sophisticated equipment.

Sat-nav devices now form a key part of emergency vehicles' arsenals. They are used for high-precision surveying, docking ships and plans are even underway to incorporate them into commercial aircraft.

Closer to home, more and more trains depend on a firm location fix before their doors will open.



Simple geometry

The satellite navigation concept is embodied currently by the US GPS system and Russia's Glonass network, with contenders to come in the form of Europe's Galileo constellation and China's Compass system.

Solar flares - vast exhalations of magnetic energy from the Sun's surface - spray out radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from low-energy radio waves through to high-energy gamma-rays, along with bursts of high-energy particles toward the Earth.

The radiation or waves that come from the Sun can make sat-nav receivers unable to pick out the weak signal from satellites from the solar flare's aftermath.
There is little that current technology can do to mitigate this problem, with the exception of complex directional antennas used in military applications.
Sat-nav receivers will be blinded for tens of minutes, probably a few times a year at the solar maximum.

Charged up

A further complication comes from the nature of the outermost layer of the Earth's atmosphere, the ionosphere.

That is composed in part of particles that have ionised, or been ripped apart by radiation from the Sun, with the composition dependent on how much radiation is coming from the Sun at a given time.

The problem comes about because sat-nav technology assumes that signals pass through at a constant speed - which in the ionosphere isn't necessarily the case.
"The key point is how fast the signals actually travelled," said Cathryn Mitchell of the University of Bath.

"When they come through the ionosphere, they slow down by an amount that is actually quite variable, and that adds an error into the system when you do the calculations for your position," Professor Mitchell told BBC News.

The amount of solar activity runs on many cycles; the ionisation will be different on the sun-lit side of the Earth from the night side, and different between summer and winter; each of these cycles imparts a small error to a sat-nav's position.

But the disruption caused by solar flares is significantly higher.

The increased radiation will ionise more molecules, and the bursts of particles can become trapped in the ionosphere as the Earth's magnetic field drags them in.

The effects that sat-nav users will face, however, are difficult to predict.
"We can look at the measurements from the last solar maximum," Professor Mitchell said.

"If we project those forward, it varies quite a lot across the Earth; looking at the UK it will be about 10-metre errors in the positioning."

The errors would be much more long-lasting than the "blindness" problem, lasting hours or even days.



Researchers have no idea what the effect of this solar radiation will have on the machines we have become dependent upon. However, it is enough to cause them to spend millions trying to determine what is happening. They also have no idea what the effect of the concentration of cell phone towers will have on people or machines.



We all know that all recent autos are dependent on a computer driven operating system and that virtually every function in a car is computer driven. Could it be the same radiation is causing a breakdown in the computer chips in autos?

That would explain why the most reliable cars in the world have suddenly become unreliable. It would also explain why suddenly 45 different cars are having major problems with functions directly related to the computers in cars.

I have seen enough over the years to know how little we know and it would seem that if the problem is related to the natural occurrence of solar activity or even to the saturation of the earth with our own microwave, cell phone and other devices then what we have experienced to date could be the beginning of our troubles, not the end.



Science owes us answers to the effects of what they are doing and if they don't know then they should warn us. Much of the work of Nicola Tesla, a pioneer in energy and it's use, Rife and Monroe has been suppressed by authorities and could give us much insight into what is the truth. You should take some time to look in to these matters.

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Letter to the Editor

Seems Anonymous has decided to write again this time in defense of the internet. Now since I normally let all responses stand without comment I shall change from past practice since there is a clear misunderstanding on the part of Anonymous as to what I know.

Anonymous said:

You shouldn't be so tough on Internet advertising: this blog you spread your message on is given to you for free as a result of it. Just several years ago you would have had to pay to host an expensive server and rent a domain name to get your message out. Not to mention that Google has taken on the likes of Microsoft with their free suite of Google Doc publishing tools. Yeah, they even let you store your created documents on their servers also for free. And if you choose you can do all this in complete anonymity. Google and Internet advertising, albeit annoying, has changed the world for the better.

Nothing is free on the internet. I refuse constant attempts by Google and others to insert their advertising and that of their millions of advertisers. Any day they will require it and I will lose the ability to give you an ad free source of information. I have my own domain names and servers in place for the day the intenet is no longer free which will be very soon. Besides, we all pay to access the "free" information. There is no free distribution of my stories on the internet either by Google or anyone else. In spite of the fact I am a long time registered journalist any distribution of the stories short of extremely hard work and constant networking is at a very high cost as the Googles of the world along with the internet media refuse to run stories without payment. Just posting on the internet gets one nothing, including exposure.

Automated banking? Are you talking Internet banking? Just think about all those dummies recently standing in line to get their money out of failed banks. The fools should have been sitting at home moving their dough to safer institutions with their mouse and a few clicks.The biggest injustice we face hasn't changed, it's the use of media companies to further political agendas. At least the Internet is helping anyone who chooses to do so to harpoon those institutions.

You know those dummies standing in line at banks, well they got every cent they had deposited. The bigger dummies on the internet lost about $500 billion to fraud directly or indirectly related to the internet and credit cards last year. The cell phone users were losers as well with over $20 billion in losses. And even ATM machines were looted by hacking bank records to the tune of billions of dollars. If you add the other ramifications of identity theft from the internet the losses could be approaching a trillion dollars and guess whose internet, credit card and cell phone fees are adjusted to cover the losses, you!

Don't like what others say? Start a newspaper and put it in everyone's mailbox. The County Times should come to mind. Finally, some food for thought. No better tool has ever existed to expose corruption and find the truth than the Internet. Everything is archived and searchable. You've got the library of the world right at your desk 24/7. Just imagine how it would have changed your life had it been there in your youth.

The problem with the internet is there is no test of truth to what is posted. When it was originally started it was as a research tool with real institutions verifying the information. Now anyone can say anything with no relationship to truth and the gullible public believes much of what is posted. Just look at the vicious campaign rumors about both Obama and Palin that never went away, even after the truth had been established. As an entertainment tool the internet is great. As a source of truth it has led to the destruction of journalism as a source of true information and that is a sad commentary on life in general.

I was a newspaper reporter for a real newspaper and we had to have multiple sources, survive editing and fact checking and be able to capture the public attention before our stories were even published. Too bad such standards are not possible on the internet.

Finally, if the internet was such a valuable tool to protect us from corruption why is fraud and corruption using the internet and electronic trading, swaps and derivatives thriving, why did it just cost trillions of dollars in losses to unsuspecting people throughout the world, why has it destroyed our economy, and why can't anyone stop it?

Jordan Christopher

China's Cyber-Militia

National Journal
(Excerpts from COVER STORY - China’s Cyber-Militia)

Full story:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/cs_20080531_6948.php

Chinese hackers pose a clear and present danger to U.S. government and private-sector computer networks and may be responsible for two major U.S. power blackouts.

by Shane Harris

Sat. May 31, 2008

Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military, have penetrated deeply into the information systems of U.S. companies and government agencies, stolen proprietary information from American executives in advance of their business meetings in China, and, in a few cases, gained access to electric power plants in the United States, possibly triggering two recent and widespread blackouts in Florida and the Northeast, according to U.S. government officials and computer-security experts.

One prominent expert told National Journal he believes that China’s People’s Liberation Army played a role in the power outages. Tim Bennett, the former president of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, a leading trade group, said that U.S. intelligence officials have told him that the PLA in 2003 gained access to a network that controlled electric power systems serving the northeastern United States. The intelligence officials said that forensic analysis had confirmed the source, Bennett said. “They said that, with confidence, it had been traced back to the PLA.” These officials believe that the intrusion may have precipitated the largest blackout in North American history, which occurred in August of that year. A 9,300-square-mile area, touching Michigan, Ohio, New York, and parts of Canada, lost power; an estimated 50 million people were affected.

Officially, the blackout was attributed to a variety of factors, none of which involved foreign intervention. Investigators blamed “overgrown trees” that came into contact with strained high-voltage lines near facilities in Ohio owned by FirstEnergy Corp. More than 100 power plants were shut down during the cascading failure. A computer virus, then in wide circulation, disrupted the communications lines that utility companies use to manage the power grid, and this exacerbated the problem. The blackout prompted President Bush to address the nation the day it happened. Power was mostly restored within 24 hours.

There has never been an official U.S. government assertion of Chinese involvement in the outage, but intelligence and other government officials contacted for this story did not explicitly rule out a Chinese role. One security analyst in the private sector with close ties to the intelligence community said that some senior intelligence officials believe that China played a role in the 2003 blackout that is still not fully understood.

Bennett, whose former trade association includes some of the nation’s largest computer-security companies and who has testified before Congress on the vulnerability of information networks, also said that a blackout in February, which affected 3 million customers in South Florida, was precipitated by a cyber-hacker. That outage cut off electricity along Florida’s east coast, from Daytona Beach to Monroe County, and affected eight power-generating stations.

Bennett said that the chief executive officer of a security firm that belonged to Bennett’s trade group told him that federal officials had hired the CEO’s company to investigate the blackout for evidence of a network intrusion, and to “reverse engineer” the incident to see if China had played a role.

Bennett, who now works as a private consultant, said he decided to speak publicly about these incidents to point out that security for the nation’s critical electronic infrastructures remains intolerably weak and to emphasize that government and company officials haven’t sufficiently acknowledged these vulnerabilities.

The Florida Blackout
A second information-security expert independently corroborated Bennett’s account of the Florida blackout. According to this individual, who cited sources with direct knowledge of the investigation, a Chinese PLA hacker attempting to map Florida Power & Light’s computer infrastructure apparently made a mistake. “The hacker was probably supposed to be mapping the system for his bosses and just got carried away and had a ‘what happens if I pull on this’ moment.” The hacker triggered a cascade effect, shutting down large portions of the Florida power grid, the security expert said. “I suspect, as the system went down, the PLA hacker said something like, ‘Oops, my bad,’ in Chinese.”

The power company has blamed “human error” for the incident, specifically an engineer who improperly disabled safety backups while working on a faulty switch. But federal officials are still investigating the matter and have not issued a final report, a spokeswoman for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said. The industry source, who conducts security research for government and corporate clients, said that hackers in China have devoted considerable time and resources to mapping the technology infrastructure of other U.S. companies. That assertion has been backed up by the current vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said last year that Chinese sources are probing U.S. government and commercial networks.

Asked whether Washington knew of hacker involvement in the two blackouts, Joel Brenner, the government’s senior counterintelligence official, told National Journal, “I can’t comment on that.” But he added, “It’s certainly possible that sort of thing could happen. The kinds of network exploitation one does to explore a network and map it and learn one’s way around it has to be done whether you are going to … steal information, bring [the network] down, or corrupt it.… The possible consequences of this behavior are profound.”

Brenner, who works for Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, looks for vulnerabilities in the government’s information networks. He pointed to China as a source of attacks against U.S. interests. “Some [attacks], we have high confidence, are coming from government-sponsored sites,” Brenner said. “The Chinese operate both through government agencies, as we do, but they also operate through sponsoring other organizations that are engaging in this kind of international hacking, whether or not under specific direction. It’s a kind of cyber-militia.… It’s coming in volumes that are just staggering.”

The Central Intelligence Agency’s chief cyber-security officer, Tom Donahue, said that hackers had breached the computer systems of utility companies outside the United States and that they had even demanded ransom. Donahue spoke at a January gathering in New Orleans of security executives from government agencies and some of the nation’s largest utility and energy companies. He said he suspected that some of the hackers had inside knowledge of the utility systems and that in at least one case, an intrusion caused a power outage that affected multiple cities. The CIA didn’t know who launched the attacks or why, Donahue said, “but all involved intrusions through the Internet.”

Donahue’s public remarks, which were unprecedented at the time, prompted questions about whether power plants in the United States had been hacked. Many computer-security experts, including Bennett, believe that his admission about foreign incidents was intended to warn American companies that if intrusions hadn’t already happened stateside, they certainly could. A CIA spokesman at the time said that Donahue’s comments were “designed to highlight to the audience the challenges posed by potential cyber intrusions.” The CIA declined National Journal’s request to interview Donahue.

Cyber Terrorism - America's Achilles Heel

Cyber Terrorism - Part 1
What Price for Freedom?

Series by Jim Putnam


We live in a society that dictates the need to protect our selves, families, homes, property and business. America without insurance would be like air without oxygen. It is difficult to find a single aspect of life in America in which protection is not integrated and essential.


Yet our leadership tell us that the most basic services in which our life and lifestyle depends, the infrastructure of the American standard of living, cannot be protected. The necessities of life, food, air, water, housing and transportation, are all vulnerable to terrorist attack.


We can protect the president. We can protect our money, our gold and our treasures. We can even protect our nuclear arsenal and weapons of destruction. But we cannot protect our quality of life and our people from the threat of cyber terrorism.


Former Bush Administration cyber expert Richard Clarke predicts an “Electronic Pearl Harbor” and has blasted the private sector for failing to protect our infrastructure. Yet all experts agree it is a complex issue. Cyber security seems to demand a trade off. More security can be given if we are willing to sacrifice our freedom and privacy.


America’s corporate world, especially the financial and international commerce communities, refuse to accept the government intrusion into their world of corporate secrets for fear the information will be used to tax or prosecute them. Recent examples of corporate greed and abuse suggest there is a lot to hide from the government. Yet the privacy issue is valid.


At the same time, the corporate world has been reluctant to tell us if they have been successfully hacked. To do so would acknowledge they are vulnerable. It would raise doubt as to their ability to protect their records, clients and intellectual property. It would threaten their credit rating and worst of all, it could cause their stock value to fall. Better to cover up the attack than to undermine investor confidence.


Politically, with the federal elections on the horizon and control of the White House in the balance, it is always safer to blame someone else or deflect blame than to assume responsibility. The politicians use the convenient mantra we can’t protect our infrastructure from cyber attack. They blame the private sector for failing to develop adequate security. And they accuse the private sector of refusing to cooperate and of withholding information about cyber vulnerability.


Wouldn’t you refuse to tell the government all your secrets? The government can’t keep it’s own secrets, let alone be trusted with proprietary corporate secrets. Still it is a “Catch 22” that must be overcome for the average citizen to go to sleep at night feeling secure that their essential services are protected from the hands of blood thirsty, hate filled terrorists committed to killing Americans and destroying our way of life.


Because tonight the water supply could be poisoned. Tonight the electrical grid could be shut down and air conditioners would stop working in the heat wave. Nuclear reactors could have a melt down sending clouds of deadly radiation into the air and contaminating the countryside. Air traffic controllers could be stopped from contacting the thousands of planes in the air.


Floodgates on dams could be opened sending billions of gallons of water crashing down on communities. You could wake up tomorrow and your bank records could be gone, your insurance coverage cutoff, and health care disrupted. Raw sewage could be diverted into your drinking water. Emergency calls to 911 could go unanswered.


Because our standard of living is excessive, it takes an excessive infrastructure to support it. Our lifestyle is computer and energy dependent. From the cockpit of an airplane to the control room of a nuclear reactor, the 500 digital TV channels to the cell phone attached to your ear, we need the infrastructure to feed our addiction for more.


The techniques that could be used by a single terrorist cell working through cyber space could threaten the very existence of our national infrastructure. Every single catastrophe I mentioned is possible from a few keystrokes on a keyboard. So if the politicians are not responsible, the government can’t help, and the private sector is in denial, where do you turn for help?


We need a wake up call to America, to the government leadership and the business community on the threat to our national infrastructure and what can be done to protect our resources and people. It is too late for theories and hypothetical solutions to very real problems of today threatening our standard of living and quality of life.

Cyber Terrorism - Part 2
Media Awareness?


In America there are time-honored traditions for using the media to sell you everything from the news to the latest unnecessary drug. Once upon a time you could distinguish between media’s supposedly unbiased news stories, and those selling goods, services and points of view.


That day is gone. The editorial policy of the media outlet dictates the slant of the news coverage. Revenues rule philosophy and news is no longer a service but a profit center. News content and presentation is designed for ratings, sales and advertising revenue, not objectivity and public good.


In light of this, why is news coverage of cyber terrorism generally limited to technology stories for special interest groups and safely tucked away in the egghead section? Three obvious reasons come to mind. 1.) It is a complex issue. 2.) It might scare the public. And 3.) It might upset the advertisers on the media.


Cyber terrorism is the largest single threat to the quality of life for our citizens. It represents a far greater threat than corporate corruption, government inertia, media bias or bank and phone company service charges. So why are we not being warned about it?


Sure, the cyber world is complex, isn’t all technology? How many consumers know how their air conditioner, television, automobile or computer work? How many know how their money got from a bank into the ATM to them? They don’t. You throw a switch, push a button, or turn a key and it works.


People are not stupid. They don’t need to know how technology works, just what it can do for them. They know all aspects of American life are dependent on the computer, or the electricity that powers the computer. They know we are being bombarded by microwave beams and every other form of electronic signal and frequency to support that technology.


I have a simple way to perceive the cyber world. Our physical world is three dimensional and interpreted by the physical senses. The cyber world is what is beyond the physical realm, is limited only by one’s imagination, and is interpreted by the expanded mind.


As to our concerns cyber terrorism stories would scare the public, so what! One of our constitutional freedoms has always been the right to be scared to death. Stephen King and Dean Koontz wouldn’t sell many books if the public did not want to be scared. Many movies and TV shows were successful because they were very scary.


People pay billions of dollars to be frightened. Supposedly “free” news stories on cyber terrorism would be a great bargain. Sometimes the power of the media to scare people can change our way of life, and sometimes for the better.


Finally, there is the concern that cyber terrorism stories might upset advertisers. Does anyone doubt it? Computer manufacturers, software companies, technology driven companies and companies dependent on communications and advertising for sales are all directly affected. So are services that are electronically dependent like ATM banking, credit cards, phones, etc.


Of course they don’t want stories about how their product can be hacked by terrorists, or how easily services can be disrupted. Billions of dollars in advertising revenue from these companies are poured into the media, the same media that brings you the news. Do you really think “truth” is more powerful than investor confidence or corporate stock valuation?


Those advertising dollars can buy a lot of influence, especially when the advertising and media companies are losing ratings, readers and revenues. As long as the news sources are owned by the same media companies dependent on ad dollars for valuation and survival, there could be a potential conflict of interest. The recent collapse of stock prices, lost advertising revenues, increased cable and digital competition, and fewer viewers or readers have already caused media companies major problems.


They can ill afford to lose more. In spite of all these reasons why the threat of cyber terrorism is not adequately covered by the news media, occasionally there are stories that contribute to understanding the truth. Barton Gellman, Washington Post Staff Writer, wrote a story titled, “Cyber-Attack by Al Qaeda Feared”, published June 27, 2002. It clearly identified the problem. Unfortunately, to find it you had to get to the Internet online technology section of the Washington Post, but at least it was a start.

More recently The National Journal, not the traditional news media, ran a cover story (May 31, 2008) titled China's Cyber-Militia by Shane Harris which discusses how Chinese hackers pose a clear and present danger to the U.S. government and private sector computer networks and may be responsible for two major U.S. power blackouts. The story is reprinted in the CPT.

Cyber Terrorism - Part 3
Who are the hackers?


Most experts seem to agree we face an unprecedented threat from cyber terrorism, and we are all but helpless to stop it. Who are these “hackers” poised to bring the mighty America to its knees through a cyber space assault? Webster’s New World Dictionary defines a hacker as “a talented amateur user of computers, specifically, one who attempts to gain unauthorized access to files in various systems.” I think the definition falls far short.


Hackers are the new Messiahs of the cyber universe immersed in a quest to create like God. The fact they are creating illegal ways to access other people’s files is not a concern to them, as long as they are creating. Still, there is no convenient way to stereotype hackers.


I sense there are at least three distinct types of hacker, the Idealist, the Invisible and the Insidious. Popular books and movies glorify the first type, the Idealist. Hacking secured systems is a challenge to them and when they are successful it is essential they receive proper recognition for their prowess.


The need for peer recognition and ego insure they take credit for their handiwork. But in a distorted way they are not malicious in their intent. Their goal is not the destruction of property or disrupting lives, although that may very well be the consequence of their efforts.

Far more dangerous are the Invisible types. To them successful hacking is not merely to penetrate a secured file or system, but to go undetected in the process. Thus they are able to come and go at will. Government, quasi-government and shadow government agencies fall into this category. They all want to know everything you are doing. There is no system or network in the world safe from their prying eyes.


Thanks to the digital revolution our Constitutional guaranteed Bill of Rights is now obsolete. There is not a phone call, bank transaction or Internet communication safe from big brother. Private corporations have their own Invisible hackers as well so it is not just the government monitoring your life.


Curiously, all those politicians claiming to be defenders of freedom, and that includes Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, are mostly silent about the wholesale invasion of privacy now underway.


Fortunately, the eavesdroppers are so successful at capturing all calls, emails and transactions that the sheer volume is beyond their processing capability. For now our dwindling freedom is protected more as a result of bureaucratic constipation than political action. Super computers will soon eliminate that processing limitation, and everything about your life will be an open book.


The last category of hacker, the Insidious, is the most dangerous. Insidious hackers possess the skills and resources of the Idealist and Invisible hackers, but their motivation is without conscious. To them the art of hacking is a tool to get what they don’t have but want, or for bringing about war and destruction.


Criminals and fanatics, and often they are one in the same, go beyond the game of hacking through computer security barriers. Penetrating the systems is not enough. They steal the information, divert money or damage their targets in a way they cannot be caught. Or, they become cyber mercenaries for a terrorist cause and will use hacking to wreak havoc, devastation and destruction on unsuspecting victims.


Lives destroyed and human deaths resulting are nothing more than digital statistics in a higher cause being served. Unfortunately the combined power, resources and might of the vast American intelligence, law enforcement and defense communities is of no advantage when confronting cyber criminals or cyber terrorists.


The Insidious hacker is incorporeal, without material body or substance in the cyber universe. They have no base of operations, no geographic limitations and no political boundaries to restrict them. You cannot identify them with metal detectors or profiling and you most certainly cannot stop them with current computer security techniques and technology.