Samizdata

I was probably one of the first in Europe to hear about the US blackout. I’ve customers in Manhattan. One of them rang me in Belfast as soon as she determined not only her Upper West flat, but also her Chinatown server rack were both affected. She has a big UPS but no backup generator. It just isn’t feasible for a facility her size. I advised an immediate controlled shutdown.

It seems government officials were announcing “this wasn’t a terrorist incident” almost before people like my customer completed their emergency procedures. I found and still find this strange. It may well be true. It probably is true, but the haste to discount the possibility was unseemly.

Terrorism and sabotage are not necessarily spectacular events. It doesn’t take a bombing or an armed attack to bring down a power grid. In 1964 the East Coast power grid came down all by itself. It was due to a cascade of protective shutdowns after a “First Cause” failure. That may be the case this week as well, but we don’t know yet. A sudden reversal of power flow on the Lake Erie power loop occurred instants before the cascading failures began. That is sufficient information to tell us absolutely nothing.

Thus unarmed with facts, I will now sally forth into the vacuum of hard data and suggest some attack scenarios.

The Saboteur. Someone with appropriate knowledge may have penetrated a targeted power facility and simply thrown a few switches. A “mole” at a power station would be best, but power stations are not Fort Knoxen. A trained agent could probably get in and out of some “weakest link” facility somewhere without being detected.

Does anyone remember the incident of November 11, 2001 (see Charleston Daily Mail, “Guard Chases Men Near Power Plant”) during which a security guard slugged a person attempting to enter power plant grounds from the river?

The Hack. Someone could have cracked a power company control system and “adjusted” a few things. I once authored software systems for control of large building complexes. Most such systems have queues of time based actions. If an attacker penetrated several systems, they could insert minor events synchronized to milliseconds. Even the actual queue insertions could be handled by stealthy, pre-positioned “Trojan Horse” programs. An innocuous looking message could trigger the countdown sequence. The trigger could be sent from anywhere on the planet. Perhaps the Microsoft worm was a diversion.

Each event on it’s own would be insignificant, but the sum of all could be a big problem.

A trail might be left, but it would be difficult to uncover if there was a dispersed attack. If only one site were involved it would be much easier to find evidence both because the source of the First Cause would be pin-pointed and because the event itself would be out of the ordinary.

If the attackers were moderately good they would leave a trail only discoverable by computer forensics. The critical computer log entries would be gone unless printed on paper as they occured… or if they were intended to be found.

These scenarios are an intellectual exercise. Taking down a power grid is an annoyance but doesn’t accomplish anything in and of itself. There has been no “other” event connected to it. No claims of holding American infrastructure under threat. No major attack during the early blackout confusion. No operational movements and pre-setting of people or material… hmmm.

Just thought I’d keep y’all worryin’ over there!

A cascade of power blackouts have hit the north eastern USA and parts of Canada, causing widespread chaos. It was also reported that due to the power cuts, the United Nations building in New York City has been closed.

So, not entirely bad news then.

It turns out that the US government’s asinine “equal time” rule for broadcasters, which requires them to give all candidates for office equal time on their stations, will be applied to effectively bar the broadcasting of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies in California for the duration of the recall campaign.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s foray into California’s gubernatorial recall election poses a dilemma for broadcasters who might be tempted to show his films during the race: Doing so would allow rival candidates to demand equal time.

For that reason, broadcasters in California will likely not air Schwarzenegger movies such as “Total Recall” and the “Terminator” or a repeat of a “Diff’rent Strokes” episode with Gary Coleman for the next few months.

Cable channels are not covered by the Federal Communications Commission’s equal-time provision, which in the past kept reruns of “Death Valley Days” off the air while Ronald Reagan ran for president.

Since there are 240 candidates, no broadcaster would possibly risk having to cough up 2 hours for each candidate as “equal time” for Arnold’s movie appearances.

All the coverage of California we have had in Britain has not mentioned the fact that another large State in the United States has just balanced its budget.

I believe I am right in saying that the second largest State in the Union (Texas) has balanced its budget without increasing taxes.

Texas has achieved this by the strange practice of – cutting government spending

This policy does not often occur to politicians or media folk.

According to Fox News, the FBI has released a new list of “things that can be used as weapons”. Airport security personnel are being briefed on how to spot the new no-no’s. I am certain we are all pleased the FBI are on their toes. In a mere two years they have discovered hidden knives and other weapons are available in martial arts catalogues. I’m sure we will all breathe easier knowing we are now completely safe.

I am of course being facetious. The list is inadequate and will always be so. They could perhaps force us to check everything at the ticket counter and fly naked. That certainly would limit the possibilities for smuggling knives on board. While the idea does have its’ charms and would certainly ease the boredom of long transoceanic flights, it would be insufficient. There is an old adage: “There are no dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous people.” In the hands of a trained warrior virtually anything is a deadly weapon quite capable of intimidation of the cowardly. One can do terrible things with bare hands.

So let’s get real guys. You are wasting your time and ours at the gate. You will fail to spot the terrorists or their weapons. They will do something you have not thought of. They will get on board a number of airliners again one day. They will imagine they can intimidate an airliner full of Americans into submission again… and we, the flying public will then tear them into pieces too small for burial.

There is a field in Western Pennsylvania that shows who the truly dangerous people are.

David Bernstein, posting on the Volokh Conspiracy, notes that:

The political views of Latinos are troubling for advocates of limited government, who also tend to be advocates of liberal immigration policies. As the New York Times reported yesterday, and has been well-known for some time by those who follow such things, Latinos, like prior waves of immigrants from poor Catholic countries, tend to be socially conservative and in favor of big government in the economic realm. In the famous Nolan Chart, Latino voters are disproportionately in the “authoritarian” quadrant, the opposite quadrant from limited government-oriented libertarians.

Given that Latinos are already considered a very important swing vote, and will become ever more important as they become a larger percentage of voters, the current volume of Latino immigration can’t be good news in the short to medium term for fans of limited government.

This is depressing news, given that Latinos are such a large and rapidly growing ethnic group in the US, and have been identified by both parties as a critical consituency to court. Identifying Latinos are social conservatives likely to, say, oppose gay marriage could go a long way toward explaining the apparent ease with which leading Democrats and Republicans have come out in opposition to the idea. The pursuit of the Latino vote, while it may lead to pandering/sensitivity (take your pick) on immigration issues that is congenial to at least some libertarians, may also lead both parties further into the swamps of government-enforced morality.

One wonders if there are any ethnic groups that are culturally predisposed to liberty. One also wonders whether the fabled ‘self-selection’ of the immigration ordeal skews the immigrant profile toward those who want more freedom than they have at home, or toward those who are inured to enduring the immigration and naturalization bureaucracy.