WORLD NEWS STORIES
December 6th, 2009 by Barry Eaton
Hacking Expert David Chalk Joins Urgent Call to Halt Smart Grid - MarketWatch
Posted in April 2012 by Stop Smart Meters Australia
http://stopsmartmeters.com.au/
“100% certainty of catastrophic failure of energy grid within 3 years”
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Apr 12, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) - The vulnerability of the energy industry’s new wireless smart grid will inevitably lead to lights out for everyone, according to leading cyber expert David Chalk. In an online interview for an upcoming documentary film entitled ‘Take Back Your Power’ ( www.ThePowerFilm.org ), Chalk says the entire power grid will be at risk to being taken down by cyber attack, and if installations continue it’s only a matter of time.
“We’re in a state of crisis,” said Chalk. “The front door is open and there is no lock to be had. There is not a power meter or device on the grid that is protected from hacking - if not already infected - with some sort of trojan horse that can cause the grid to be shut down or completely annihilated.”
“One of the most amazing things that has happened to mankind in the last 100 years is the Internet. It’s given us possibility beyond our wildest imagination. But we also know the vulnerabilities that exist inside of it. And then we have the backbone, the power grid that powers our nations. Those two are coming together. And it’s the smart meter on your home or business that’s now allowing that connectivity.”
Chalk also issued a challenge to governments, media and technology producers to show him one piece of digital technology that is hack-proof.
“The computer companies that are involved, the manufacturers that are involved, bring forward a technology and I will show you that it’s penetrable,” said Chalk. “I’ll do it on national TV, I’ll do it anywhere. But I can guarantee you 100% that there is nothing out there today - nothing - that can’t be penetrated.”
Chalk’s strong words come amidst increasing reports of the smart grid’s fatal insecurities, even from the governments and energy companies who are forcing their hand with the smart program. “Every endpoint [meter] is a new potential threat vector,” according to Doug Powell, manager, SMI Security, Privacy & Safety, for Canadian utility BC Hydro.
And in an interview with EnergyNow.com, former CIA Director James Woolsey was also highly critical of energy policy makers, whose plans received multi-billion dollar funding as part of the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. “The so-called ’smart grid’ that is as vulnerable as what we’ve got now is not smart at all,” said Woolsey. “It’s a really, really stupid grid.”
But there’s more. In an audit released in January, the US Inspector General Gregory Friedman was also highly critical. “Without a formal risk assessment and associated mitigation strategy, threats and weaknesses may go unidentified and expose the Š systems to an unacceptable level of risk,” Friedman wrote.
Energy officials knew of these weaknesses but approved plans for the projects anyway, auditors said. “The initial weaknesses had not always been fully addressed, and did not include a number of security practices commonly recommended for federal government and industry systems.”
And security is not the only technologically based obstacle faced by smart grid proponents. In March, alarm bells were rung following current CIA Director David Patraeus’ confirmation that governments will use wireless smart appliances to spy on citizens. “Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters,” Patraeus said at a meeting of In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. He added that this will prompt a rethink of “our notions of identity and secrecy.”
With strong criticism to the smart grid now coming from many directions, energy corporations and governments now have the challenge to explain to an increasingly unapproving public why they continue to fast-track smart grid installations.
Citizen groups and organizations throughout the US, Canada and Europe have launched legal actions to stop the installation of smart meters. They cite issues such as cost increases, health risks, privacy concerns, grid vulnerability and the lack of democratic process. In Chalk’s home province of British Columbia, Citizens for Safe Technology ( www.citizensforsafetechnology.
Options for opting out of the smart metering program have been announced in markets including California, Maine, Vermont, Louisiana, Michigan, Connecticut, Quebec, the UK and the Netherlands. In the US, several regions including the counties of Santa Cruz and Marin are enforcing outright moratoriums.
“Unless we wake up and realize what we’re doing, there is 100% certainty of total catastrophic failure of the entire power infrastructure within 3 years,” said Chalk. “This could actually be worse than a nuclear war, because it would happen everywhere. How governments and utilities are blindly merging the power grid with the Internet, and effectively without any protection, is insanity at its finest.”
The full video interview with David Chalk can be seen on www.thepowerfilm.org . The feature film documentary ‘Take Back Your Power’, which critically examines the smart grid program, will be released online this spring.
via Hacking Expert David Chalk Joins Urgent Call to Halt Smart Grid - MarketWatch.
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WHAT IS RFID AND WHY IS IT A PROBLEM FOR YOU?
RFID, Radio Frequency Identification, is the technology that lets you simply wave your credit card, passport or license in front of a nearby scanner instead of having to slide the magnetic stripe through it.
PayPass is Mastercard’s RFID Smart Card —- The Circled Icon on your Visa Card Shows the Card is RFID —- and ExpressPay is the American Express RFID card.
( In Australia its payWave ).
This is a fairly simple concept. The electronic scanner sends a signal which is received by an antenna embedded into the card, which is connected to the RFID chip in the card, thus activating it.
NOTE: VERY SOON ALL CREDIT CARDS AND DEBIT CARDS WILL HAVE RFID CHIPS EMBEDDED IN THEM. About 100 million credit cards now have RFID technology embedded into them. However, over the next two to three years, credit card issuers plan to replace every single magnetic stripe credit and debit card with a new contactless smartcard. These cards can be read without even taking them out of your wallet. The RFID shielding technology in our original Tyvek smart card sleeves blocks this transmission from happening as long as the card is inside the sleeve.
It seems so simple, however it has been discovered that in spite of claims by Smart Card marketers that the information on these cards is safe and secure, mounting evidence shows otherwise. Lately there have been numerous media stories on television like this very recent CTV news special “Steele on your Side”:
New credit cards vulnerable to electronic pickpockets and here is part two: Protect your bank card from electronic pickpockets and in newspapers like this CBC Canada article - “Hacker shows CBC how to crack ‘contactless’ MasterCard”, where industry experts are publicly contesting these claims. Worse yet the new RFID cards are easily hacked and so your data and identity is in danger just by walking down the street.
But, of course you trust your banking institutions to safeguard your information, right? Isn’t it only natural to trust these squeeky clean banksters after what they are doing to the economies of dozens of countries around the world? Absolutely NOT but anyway……. here is some interesting information off of Visa Canada’s web site:
“Shopping with your Visa PayWave Card
You can use the Visa payWave feature for transactions of $50 or less, including taxes. So it’s ideal for fast food restaurants, gas stations, movie theatres, convenience stores, news stands and video rental stores.
And don’t worry if your purchase totals more than $50 then you’ll just be asked to swipe or insert your card instead.
So, If this technology is so safe why the $50.00 limit on transactions that utilize the “contactless” feature?
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Swine Flu Drug may be ‘no better than Aspirin’By Anna Salleh from Science Online
Updated April 11, 2012
http://www.abc.net.au/news/
Pharmaceutical companies should make full data from their clinical trials publicly available so the risks and benefits of the drugs can be independently analysed, researchers say.
The researchers have documented a number of cases in which access to full trial data “radically changed public knowledge of safety and efficacy” of widely used drugs, including Vioxx and Tamiflu.
Professor Chris Del Mar points to insufficient evidence that Tamiflu - stockpiled by the Australian Government in 2009 to quarantine swine flu - had any preventative effect.
Professor Del Mar, from the Centre for Research in Evidence-Based Practice at Bond University, and colleagues presented their argument today in the peer-reviewed Public Library of Science Medicine journal.
Read the article in full - http://www.plosmedicine.org/
“It is the public who take and pay for approved drugs, and therefore the public should have access to complete information about those drugs,” the researchers said.
Earlier this year Professor Del Mar was involved in a review of Tamiflu, which concluded that although it does reduce symptoms, there is no reliable evidence the drug reduces the complications of influenza and hospitalisations.
He says governments around the world rushed to stockpile Tamiflu largely on the basis of these claims.
“All the data we’ve seen so far suggests it’s no better than aspirin. It could be, but we don’t have the data to say so,” Professor Del Mar said.
He adds the available evidence is insufficient to tell whether Tamiflu is successful in preventing influenza and stopping its transmission.
Professor Del Mar says there is far better evidence available for physical barriers such as handwashing, masks, gloves and quarantining.
Turned on its head
Professor Del Mar says the evidence for Tamiflu reducing hospitalisation came from a publication which summarised data from a number of trials by drug manufacturer Roche.
“It wasn’t until you scratched it a bit that you realised there was a problem,” he said. In 2009, the professor and his research group sought to verify the conclusions of the published study by checking lengthy clinical study reports, which describe in detail what happened in the trials.
When the first author of that study did not have the full data, Professor Del Mar and his team turned to Roche, but after two years of “extensive correspondence” they only received a fraction of the reports from the company. Prof Del Mar’s group then supplemented the incomplete data from Roche with reports obtained from regulators under freedom of information requests, along with leaked documents.
“This information has turned our understanding of the drug’s effects on its head,” the researchers said. “Our review has led to the detection of numerous reporting biases and fundamental problems in trial design, and we have concluded that previous effectiveness claims were not supported by the available evidence.”
The researchers also found evidence that serious adverse events were not reported in published papers. “The drug companies are not publishing some of the experiments they’ve done,” Professor Del Mar said. “Suspicious people around the world say, ‘well, it’s because those data don’t say what the drug company wants to show and will affect their shareholders’ interest’.”
Roche responds
In a statement to ABC Science Online, Roche said it stood by the efficacy and safety of Tamiflu. It said it provided the Cochrane research group that analysed Tamiflu with access to 3,200 pages of very detailed information, and says more information was made available on a password-protected site.
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Banker Likens Obama Administration to Hitler Invading Poland
Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the private equity giant Blackstone Group ….. Schwarzman fiercely denounced initiatives by the Obama administration: “It’s war. It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” Time magazine had previously included Schwartzman on its list of the100 most influential people.
But what was striking about the Hitler comment – besides its sheer viciousness and absurdity – was what had provoked it. Schwarzman wasn’t complaining about undue military force, torture, or ethnic cleansing. He was likening the president to the most reviled man in history on the grounds that Obama was trying to close a tax loophole that allowed hedge fund and private equity managers (like Schwarzman) to pay tax at a rate that Warren Buffett famously noted was lower than that paid by their secretaries.
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How Solar Activity Is Influencing Human Consciousness
http://preventdisease.com/
Recently we are experiencing an intensive amount of solar activity on the Sun which is affecting both the Earth and Humans. Solar flares can affect the Central Nervous System, all brain activity, along with human behaviour and all psycho-physiological (mental-emotional-physical) response.
A solar flare is a magnetic storm on the Sun which appears to be a very bright spot and a gaseous surface eruption such as in the above photograph. Solar flares release huge amounts of high-energy particles and gases that are tremendously hot. They are ejected thousands of miles from the surface of the Sun.
According to Mitch Battros - Earth Changes Media, “One of the best known prophecies/predictions of our Mayan elders is the message of a changing paradigm of our era. In the words of the Maya, it is said that we are now in a time of “change and conflict”. The change is coming from the ‘outside” in the way of weather, natural phenomena, celestial disturbance (sun flares) and manmade self-inflicted trauma. The conflict comes from the ‘inside’ in the way of personal challenge, grief, bewilderment, depression, anxiety, and fear. It is said we are “at the cross roads”. A time of choosing a new path, deciding on a new self and community direction, venturing into the unknown, finding our true identity of being. Others will choose to stay on the same road, stay with the familiar, and place great effort to maintain “predictability.”
A recent study published in the New Scientist, indicates a direct connection between the Sun’s solar storms and human biological effect. The conduit which facilitates the charged particles from the Sun to human disturbance is the very same conduit which steers Earth’s weather through the Magnetic Field on Earth, and also through the magnetic fields around humans.
Geomagnetic Activity on the Sun Influences our Thoughts: -
Solar flares can cause us to be nervous, anxiousness, worrisome, jittery, dizzy, shaky, irritable, lethargic, exhausted, have short term memory problems and heart palpitations, feel nauseous, queasy, and to have prolonged head pressure and headaches.
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Stripped down as you’ve never seen her:
Pictures of Tower Bridge during construction found dumped in a skip
By Daily Mail Reporter
This is one of the London’s most beloved landmarks as you’ve never seen her before.
Stripped down to her underwear, the never before seen pictures of Tower Bridge - one of the world’s most recognisable structures - have been unveiled after the stash of hundred-year-old prints were found in a skip.
Coinciding with the 125th anniversary of the bridge’s foundation, the 50 sepia photos reveal in incredible detail the ingenuity behind one of the capital’s most popular tourist destinations, which was the first bridge of its kind in the world.
Never seen before: The pictures of London’s Tower Bridge were found in a skip and then wrapped up in brown paper and put in a carrier bag under a bed
The unique pictures, dating back to 1892, document the construction the iconic bridge, which at the time was a landmark feat of engineering nicknamed ‘The Wonder Bridge’.
The discarded pictures, which were retrieved by a caretaker who was looking after a building being turned into flats in 2006, have spent the last five years in a carrier bag underneath his bed.
The 59-year-old, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that after the occupants of the Westminster office building moved out, the album and a number of documents were thrown into a skip outside.He said: ‘I took the ledgers to the Tower Bridge Museum because I thought they might have some historical value.
Remarkable find: The prints reveal in incredible detail the ingenuity behind one of the capital’s most popular tourist attractions and how it was put together
A view of the bridge: The sturdy steel frame of Tower Bridge can be seen, before it was covered with its distinctive stone-cladding on the orders of architect John Wolfe-Barry
‘They included records of the materials and used in the bridge’s construction and what they cost.
‘I told the man at the museum that I had also found some photos but he told me they already had plenty of those.
‘I didn’t know what to do with them so I wrapped them in some brown paper and put them in a bag under the bed.’ It wasn’t until earlier this month, when the owner of the photos mentioned them to his neighbour, City of Westminster tour guide Peter Berthoud that the significance of the find fully emerged.
Mr Berthoud, an expert in the history of London who gives guided tours around famous landmarks including Tower Bridge, said he was gobsmacked by the haul.
Stripped down: The photographs show how the bridge was put together over eight years, revealing why it was nicknamed at the time the ‘Wonder Bridge’
Landmark: Tower Bridge remains one of the capital’s most iconic structures and a tourist attraction today, 125 years after building started
Sepia to silver screen: The incomplete Tower Bridge features in the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, where Holmes battles with his adversary Lord Henry Blackwood
And contrary to popular misconception, the images reveal the bridge is a sturdy steel frame beneath the instantly recognisable stone-cladding.
Mr Berthoud said: ‘When my neighbour gave me a disk with the images on I just couldn’t believe it.
‘I spent hours going through my books to see if these pictures were already around, but I couldn’t see them anywhere - they are totally unique.
‘Quite simply London Bridge is the world’s most iconic bridge, and it’s the only bridge over the Thames which has never needed to be replaced at some point.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2067581/Stripped-youve-seen-Pictures-Tower-Bridge-construction-dumped-skip.html#ixzz1iaHtRQvk
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