Academic Paper in China Sets Off Alarms in U.S.

By JOHN MARKOFF and DAVID BARBOZA

It came as a surprise this month to Wang Jianwei, a graduate engineering student in Liaoning, China, that he had been described as a potential cyberwarrior before the United States Congress.

Larry M. Wortzel, a military strategist and China specialist, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 10 that it should be concerned because “Chinese researchers at the Institute of Systems Engineering of Dalian University of Technology published a paper on how to attack a small U.S. power grid sub-network in a way that would cause a cascading failure of the entire U.S.”

When reached by telephone, Mr. Wang said he and his professor had indeed published “Cascade-Based Attack Vulnerability on the U.S. Power Grid” in an international journal called Safety Science last spring. But Mr. Wang said he had simply been trying to find ways to enhance the stability of power grids by exploring potential vulnerabilities.

“We usually say ‘attack’ so you can see what would happen,” he said. “My emphasis is on how you can protect this. My goal is to find a solution to make the network safer and better protected.” And independent American scientists who read his paper said it was true: Mr. Wang’s work was a conventional technical exercise that in no way could be used to take down a power grid.

The difference between Mr. Wang’s explanation and Mr. Wortzel’s conclusion is of more than academic interest. It shows that in an atmosphere already charged with hostility between the United States and China over cybersecurity issues, including large-scale attacks on computer networks, even a misunderstanding has the potential to escalate tension and set off an overreaction.

“Already people are interpreting this as demonstrating some kind of interest that China would have in disrupting the U.S. power grid,” said Nart Villeneuve, a researcher with the SecDev Group, an Ottawa-based cybersecurity research and consulting group. “Once you start interpreting every move that a country makes as hostile, it builds paranoia into the system.”

Mr. Wortzel’s presentation at the House hearing got a particularly strong reaction from Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California, who called the flagging of the Wang paper “one thing I think jumps out to all of these Californians here today, or should.”

He was alluding to concerns that arose in 2001 when The Los Angeles Times reported that intrusions into the network that controlled the electrical grid were traced to someone in Guangdong Province, China. Later reports of other attacks often included allegations that the break-ins were orchestrated by the Chinese, although no proof has been produced.

In an interview last week about the Wang paper and his testimony, Mr. Wortzel said that the intention of these particular researchers almost did not matter.

“My point is that now that vulnerability is out there all over China for anybody to take advantage of,” he said.

But specialists in the field of network science, which explores the stability of networks like power grids and the Internet, said that was not the case.

“Neither the authors of this article, nor any other prior article, has had information on the identity of the power grid components represented as nodes of the network,” Reka Albert, a University of Pennsylvania physicist who has conducted similar studies, said in an e-mail interview. “Thus no practical scenarios of an attack on the real power grid can be derived from such work.”

The issue of Mr. Wang’s paper aside, experts in computer security say there are genuine reasons for American officials to be wary of China, and they generally tend to dismiss disclaimers by China that it has neither the expertise nor the intention to carry out the kind of attacks that bombard American government and computer systems by the thousands every week.

The trouble is that it is so easy to mask the true source of a computer network attack that any retaliation is fraught with uncertainty. This is why a war of words, like the high-pitched one going on these past months between the United States and China, holds special peril, said John Arquilla, director of the Information Operations Center at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

“What we know from network science is that dense communications across many different links and many different kinds of links can have effects that are highly unpredictable,” Mr. Arquilla said. Cyberwarfare is in some ways “analogous to the way people think about biological weapons — that once you set loose such a weapon it may be very hard to control where it goes,” he added.

Tension between China and the United States intensified earlier this year after Google threatened to withdraw from doing business in China, saying that it had evidence of Chinese involvement in a sophisticated Internet intrusion. A number of reports, including one last October by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, of which Mr. Wortzel is vice chairman, have used strong language about the worsening threat of computer attacks, particularly from China.

“A large body of both circumstantial and forensic evidence strongly indicates Chinese state involvement in such activities, whether through the direct actions of state entities or through the actions of third-party groups sponsored by the state,” that report stated.

Mr. Wang’s research subject was particularly unfortunate because of the widespread perception, particularly among American military contractors and high-technology firms, that adversaries are likely to attack critical infrastructure like the United States electric grid.

Mr. Wang said in the interview that he chose the United States grid for his study basically because it was the easiest way to go. China does not publish data on power grids, he said. The United States does and had had several major blackouts; and, as he reads English, it was the only country he could find with accessible, useful data. He said that he was an “emergency events management” expert and that he was “mainly studying when a point in a network becomes ineffective.”

“I chose the electricity system because the grid can best represent how power currents flow through a network,” he said. “I just wanted to do theoretical research.”

The paper notes the vulnerability of different types of computer networks to “intentional” attacks. The authors suggest that certain types of attacks may generate a domino-style cascading collapse of an entire network. “It is expected that our findings will be helpful for real-life networks to protect the key nodes selected effectively and avoid cascading-failure-induced disasters,” the authors wrote.

Mr. Wang’s paper cites the network science research of Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, a physicist at Northeastern University. Dr. Barabasi has written widely on the potential vulnerability of networks to so-called engineered attacks.

“I am not well vested in conspiracy theories,” Dr. Barabasi said in an interview, “but this is a rather mainstream topic that is done for a wide range of networks, and, even in the area of power transmission, is not limited to the U.S. system — there are similar studies for power grids all over the world.”

SOURCE

The TSA Is Funding Airport Mind-Reading Scanners

" Amid the media furor over the attempted Christmas Day attacks and a renewed political focus on enhancing airport security, attention is turning to a technological advancement that will have civil rights activists -- or, for that matter, anyone with a secret --seriously worried: Mind-reading machines.

"As far-fetched as that sounds, systems that aim to get inside an evildoer's head are among the proposals floated by security experts thinking beyond the X-ray machines and metal detectors used on millions of passengers and bags each year," AP's Michael Tarm reports.

Tarm focuses on an Israeli company called WeCU Technologies (as in "we see you"), which is building a system that would turn airport waiting areas into arenas for Pavlovian behavioral tests:

The system ... projects images onto airport screens, such as symbols associated with a certain terrorist group or some other image only a would-be terrorist would recognize, company CEO Ehud Givon said.

The logic is that people can't help reacting, even if only subtly, to familiar images that suddenly appear in unfamiliar places. If you strolled through an airport and saw a picture of your mother, Givon explained, you couldn't help but respond.

The reaction could be a darting of the eyes, an increased heartbeat, a nervous twitch or faster breathing, he said. The WeCU system would use humans to do some of the observing but would rely mostly on hidden cameras or sensors that can detect a slight rise in body temperature and heart rate.

Homeland Security officials have long been keen on Israeli counter-terror technologies, given the country's extensive experience with terrorism and its reputation for having some of the most effective security systems in the world.

According to numerous news reports, WeCU has received two grants, from the US Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, for their research. Raw Story was unable to determine how much money WeCU received from the US government, but regulatory filings show the company spent at least $60,000 on lobbying in Washington in 2006 and 2007.

WeCU has already developed a prototype model of the mind-reading technology, which, according to an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, has already been demonstrated to government security officials in the US, Germany and Israel. It was evidently from that demonstration that US agencies decided to fund the project.

"It sounds like science fiction," WeCU CEO Ehud Givon told the Jerusalem Post. "But I can assure you that the technology is very real. We have accuracy rates that are higher than 95 percent."

Supporters of mind-reading technology argue that it would reduce waiting lines at security checkpoints and reduce the hassle for travelers. But the risks to personal privacy inherent in mind-reading technologies are self-evident. AP reports:

Some critics have expressed horror at the approach, calling it Orwellian and akin to "brain fingerprinting."

For civil libertarians, attempting to read a person's thoughts comes uncomfortably close to the future world depicted in the movie "Minority Report," where a policeman played by Tom Cruise targets people for "pre-crimes," or merely thinking about breaking the law.

WeCU's technology is by no means the only mind-reading security system in development today. Another Israeli company, Suspect Detection Systems, has developed a technology that reads a person's "hostile intent" by measuring bodily responses, through the person's hand, while being asked questions. That system was field-tested at the Knoxville, Tennessee, airport last summer.

Between 2005 and 2006, SDS received $460,000 in grants from the TSA and the science directorate of Homeland Security.

The company appears to have ramped up its public relations in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt.

"A simple five minute automated interrogation during the Visa application process, or at the airport security checkpoint, would have most assuredly exposed the evil intention of Christmas terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before he ever boarded," SDS CEO Shabtai Shoval said in a press release.

But while these methods are still in development, other behavior-detection technologies, that have less to do directly with reading minds, are on the cusp of being ready for deployment. The Department of Homeland Security has given the green light to FAST, or Future Attribute Screening Technology, which uses a combination of biometric scanners to measure a person's pulse, breathing, pupil dilation and other signals that can determine "hostile intent."

While FAST isn't quite as intrusive as the WeCU system, it appears to be much closer to implementation, with field testing of the $20-million technology set to begin in 2011. "

© 2010 Raw Story All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/145041/

Rapport sur l'environnement, la sécurité et la politique étrangère

"S'agissant des aspects légaux des activités militaires

26. demande à l'Union européenne de faire en sorte que les nouvelles techniques d'armes dites non- létales et le développement de nouvelles stratégies d'armements soient également couverts et régis par des conventions internationales;

27. considère que le projet HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Project), en raison de son impact général sur l'environnement, pose des problèmes globaux et demande que ses implications juridiques, écologiques et éthiques soient examinées par un organe international

indépendant avant la poursuite des travaux de recherche et la réalisation d'essais; déplore que le gouvernement des États-Unis ait à maintes reprises refusé d'envoyer un représentant pour apporter un témoignage sur les risques que comporte pour l'environnement et la population le projet HAARP financé actuellement en Alaska, durant l'audition publique ou à l'occasion d'une réunion subséquente de sa commission compétente;

28. demande à l'organe chargé de l'évaluation des choix scientifiques et technologiques (STOA) d'accepter d'examiner les preuves scientifiques et techniques fournies par tous les résultats existants de la recherche sur le programme HAARP aux fins d'évaluer la nature et l'ampleur exactes du danger que HAARP représente pour l'environnement local et global et pour la santé publique en général;

29. invite la Commission à examiner les incidences sur l'environnement et la santé publique du programme HAARP pour l'Antarctique, en coopération avec les gouvernements de Suède, de Finlande, de Norvège et de la Fédération de Russie, et à faire rapport au Parlement sur le résultat de ses investigations;

30. demande en particulier que soit établi un accord international visant à interdire au niveau global tout projet de recherche et de développement, tant militaire que civil, qui cherche à appliquer la connaissance des processus du fonctionnement du cerveau humain dans les domaines chimique, électrique, des ondes sonores ou autres au développement d'armes, ce qui pourrait ouvrir la porte à toute forme de manipulation de l'homme; un tel accord devrait également interdire toute possibilité d'utilisation réelle ou potentielle de tels systèmes;

31. demande à l'UE et à ses États membres d'oeuvrer à la conclusion de traités internationaux visant à protéger l'environnement contre des destructions inutiles en cas de conflit;

32. demande à l'UE et à ses États membres de veiller à ce que les incidences environnementales des activités des forces armées en temps de paix soient également soumises à des normes internationales;

33. demande au Conseil des ministres de l'UE de prendre une part active à la mise en oeuvre des propositions de la Commission de Canberra et de l'article VI du TNP;

34. invite le Conseil et les gouvernements britannique et français en particulier, à prendre la tête dans le contexte du TNP et de la conférence sur le désarmement en ce qui concerne la poursuite de négociations relatives à la pleine application des engagements pris quant à la réduction des

armes nucléaires et à un désarmement aussi rapide que possible, de façon à atteindre un niveau où, provisoirement, le stock global des armes encore existantes ne constitue plus une menace pour l'intégrité et la durabilité de l'environnement global; "

Rapport téléchargeable ici.

Just Like Obama’s Dogs

"This link will take you to the Open Congress website. The site is pretty good as a research tool and I have used it often in digging up information that my Washington reps would rather not tell me about.

The item under question here has shown up in a few rumor blogs and in other less reputable sites as yet another diabolical scheme by Obama to enslave the US. Really? Let’s look at the language…

The Obama Health care bill under Class II (Paragraph 1, Section B) specifically includes in its lists of things that must be in registered in the NATIONAL MEDICAL DEVICE REGISTRY: ‘‘(ii) a class II device that is implantable.” Then on page 1004 it describes what the term “data” means in paragraph 1, section B: 14 ‘‘(B) In this paragraph, the term ‘data’ refers to in 15formation respecting a device described in paragraph (1), 16 including claims data, patient survey data, standardized 17 analytic files that allow for the pooling and analysis of 18 data from disparate data environments, electronic health 19 records, and any other data deemed appropriate by the 20 Secretary”

What is meant by the term, “class II device that is implantable”?

According to the FDA, a class II implantable device is a “implantable radiofrequency transponder system for patient identification and health information.” The purpose of a class II device is to collect data in medical patients such as “claims data, patient survey data, standardized analytic files that allow for the pooling and analysis of data from disparate data environments, electronic health records, and any other data deemed appropriate by the Secretary.” In other words an RFID chip such as are used in a number of dogs and cats. Just like Obama’s dogs."

Rappel

"Et voilà !! la voici !!! la énième vidéo de Ben Laden, destinée comme les précédentes, à nous faire croire qu’il est encore en vie ! Et comme les précédentes, nous incite à croire plutôt que notre homme est bien passé de vie à trépas, et qu’on essaie de nous fourguer est bien une fable de plus. Car cette fois, franchement, c’est encore pire que les fois précédentes ! Ou plutôt la fois précédente, vu qu’on a pas vu son spectre bouger depuis 2007, dans ce qui semblait déjà une vidéo montée de toute pièces. Non, franchement, on nous prend pour des cons, et les « preuves » de vie de Ben Laden sont désormais purement et simplement grotesques. La dernière en date, en prime, démontre une étrange filière de désinformation. Nous avons pris l’initiative de vouloir la détricoter, pour nous apercevoir assez vite que cette fois, on tirait sur une nouille italienne et non sur les grosses ficelles habituelles dénoncées en détail à cette adresse. Séance de décorticage de ce qu’est une propagande désormais grotesque et ridicule."

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - G. Orwell

America: Freedom to Fascism - Director's Authorized Version

Des élèves équipés de puces pour pister le virus H1N1

" SANTÉ - Qu'y a-t-il de mieux pour un virus, disons au hasard de type H1N1, qui veut se propager le plus rapidement possible ? Quel est l'endroit où l'on se touche les uns les autres en permanence, où l'on se fout de savoir si c'est poli ou pas de postillonner sur son interlocuteur, où l'on se prête allègrement ses mouchoirs et ses bonnets ? L'école, bien évidemment (même s'il y avait aussi le stade de foot en réponse b). D'où l'idée de plusieurs scientifiques lyonnais de calculer les probabilités de propagations d'un virus en répertoriant et analysant tous les contacts des enfants d'une même école entre eux. Durant deux jours, une équipe de physiciens et médecins ont équipé de puces électroniques 241 élèves et 10 institutrices d'une école primaire et enregistrés leurs moindres interactions… "

Heureux hasard

" Depuis des années, c’est devenu une habitude, les faits divers sont souvent instrumentalisés afin de créer, qui une nouvelle loi (depuis 2002, 30 textes de lois sécuritaires ont été adoptés), qui un nouveau fichier policier (on en dénombre 58, soit +70% en trois ans).

Comme de juste, et plutôt que de prendre le temps d’analyser les dysfonctionnements, et l’impréparation, de ses services de renseignement, Brice Hortefeux en appelle donc à la création de deux nouveaux fichiers : un pour identifier les “mouvances anarchistes potentiellement violentes”, un autre pour recenser leurs “lieux de vie communautaires”… "

Les yeux du net

"Derrière leur écran, des Britanniques scrutent le moindre incident. À eux de cliquer sur une touche dès qu'ils détectent un comportement suspect (vol, vandalisme, etc.). Un SMS et une capture d'écran partent alors chez le commerçant. L'internaute peut espérer toucher jusqu'à 1.000 euros, promet Internet Eyes. Pour cela, il faut être rapide, car plusieurs individus peuvent en effet scruter la même caméra au même instant. Seul le premier à cliquer gagne des points, convertis ensuite en livres sterling. Mais gare à la précipitation. Tout clic abusif sera puni par une perte de points. Un véritable jeu en ligne."

Délation, Délectation.

"La police de l'Essonne espère ainsi que les habitants des quartiers sensibles oseront plus facilement témoigner des délits ou des nuisances dans leur voisinage. Une initiative qui fait débat. "

In Test of Water on Moon, Craft Hits Bull’s-Eye

" MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — More than 230,000 miles from Earth, aNASA spacecraft hit a bull’s-eye on the Moon on Friday morning. Actually, two bull’s-eyes. But at least the early images failed to show the expected plumes of debris rising out of the impacts. At 4:31 a.m. Pacific time (7:31 a.m. Eastern time), one piece of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite — LCROSS, for short — slammed into the bottom of a crater at 5,600 miles per hour, excavating about 350 metric tons of the moon and leaving behind a hole about 65 feet wide, 13 feet deep.

Trailing four minutes behind, a second piece sent its observations back to Earth before it also slammed into the same crater. "

«Nous sommes entrés dans un monde totalitaire»

" Francoise Bouchet-Saulnier était à Oslo lors de la remise du prix Nobel de la Paix 1999 à l'organisation humanitaire Médecins sans Frontières. Elle se souvient et déplore le crédit perdu de l'humanitaire sur la scène diplomatique. "

Mystery over missing Iran scientist

"The mystery surrounding the disappearance of an Iranian scientist, said to be involved in Tehran's nuclear programme, has deepened with speculation that he may have defected

to the US. "

Check also:

"Les USA impliqués dans l'arrestation d'un Iranien en Arabie saoudite."

Simone Bitton

"Les bobines de « Rachel » sont arrivées à Ramallah ! Sans moi pour le moment, mais je les rejoindrai bientôt. Il faut savoir qu'en tant que citoyenne israélienne, je n'ai le droit de me rendre dans ville palestinienne de Cisjordanie. La raison officielle de cette interdiction relativement récente est sécuritaire : l'armée considère que tout civil israélien circulant dans une ville palestinienne est une cible ambulante de kidnapping ou d'assassinat. C'est arrivé, même si les cas sont très rares et se comptent sur les doigts d'une seule main en dix ans.

La seconde raison de cette interdiction, c'est bien sûr d'empêcher toute relation d'amitié ou de solidarité, et de transformer en délinquants les Israéliens de mon espèce, qui s'obstinent à vouloir montrer aux Palestiniens un autre visage que celui des soldats qui les assiègent et les humilient."

Vive la France !

France ready to expell Afghan people from Calais 'Jungle'

Secretary Sacked After Nibbling From Boss' Buffet

"A German woman who worked at the same company for more than three decades recently got fired for pilfering a small burger from her boss' buffet. Her supervisors say she abused the trust they had in her. The case will soon be heard by a labor court."

Algerian writer, Anouar BenMalek:

"Today, the Arabs Constitute Nothing But Thousands of Zeroes... [They] Have Lost Their Worth, Their Humanity, Their Culture"