Oh How Times Are A Changin…

   
                                
                                  THE MAN
                                (irritably)
                         I can't help that. All I know is I 
                         got my orders. They told me to tell 
                         you you got to get off, and that's 
                         what I'm telling you.

               Muley stands in anger. The two younger men pattern after 
               him.

                                     MULEY
                         You mean get off my own land?

                                     THE MAN
                         Now don't go blaming me. It ain't 
                         *my* fault.

                                       SON
                         Whose fault is it?

                                     THE MAN
                         You know who owns the land--the 
                         Shawnee Land and Cattle Company.

                                     MULEY
                         Who's the Shawnee Land and Cattle 
                         Comp'ny?

                                     THE MAN
                         It ain't nobody. It's a company.

                                       SON
                         They got a pres'dent, ain't they? 
                         They got somebody that knows what a 
                         shotgun's for, ain't they?

                                     THE MAN
                         But it ain't *his* fault, because 
                         the *bank* tells him what to do.

                                      SON
                                   (angrily)
                         All right. Where's the bank?

                                     THE MAN
                                   (fretfully)
                         Tulsa. But what's the use of picking 
                         on him? He ain't anything but the 
                         manager, and half crazy hisself, 
                         trying to keep up with his orders 
                         from the east!

                                     MULEY
                                  (bewildered)
                         Then who *do* we shoot?
How is it that people have forgotten the cause and effects that bring us to these times?
	

The New Hoovervilles

Tent city becomes home in tough times

By Patrick Oppmann
CNN

SEATTLE, Washington (CNN) — The homeless men and women shuffle across the frozen ground of the tent camp and surround a steel drum burning wood. They use the flames to cook food and to stay warm.

The tents they live in are small, covered by tarps and plastic sheeting to keep water out. Several tents are collapsed under the weight of a recent snowfall.

For Bruce Beavers, however, this camp is just about the best place in the world he could be living right now.

“This is a place for people who lose their jobs, lose their houses, to have some kind of structure and for them to get back out in the world,” he says.

Set up in the parking lot of a church near Seattle, Washington, the camp houses anywhere from 50 to 100 homeless people each day.

Residents call it Nickelsville. The name takes a page from the infamous “Hooverville” shantytowns of the Great Depression that were named for a president many thought did not care about their economic hardships. Watch resident give tour, explain rules »

Some residents here say they blame Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and a system they believe makes it difficult to escape homelessness.

“In shelters, if you don’t get there in time enough, you don’t have your bed no more ’cause there are so many people trying to rush in to get it,” Beavers says. “Got a lotta people losing their homes. You don’t want to go all the way to the bottom. Nickelsville is kind of a catch in between.”

Like many of the other Nickelodeons — as the people who share this church parking lot call themselves — Bruce Beavers never expected to be homeless. He managed warehouses and hardware stores, had a 401(k) plan and owned his home. But Beavers said he lived beyond his means and eventually lost everything.

Beavers and other homeless say they were tired of a shelter system that often splits up families into different housing, does not provide a place for people to keep their possessions while they look for work and offers too few beds. So they say they decided to try their own way.

They formed a camp where the homeless living there would know they had a guaranteed place to stay. There would be around-the-clock security to keep people from having their things stolen, the tents would be built from donated materials, and alcohol and drugs would not be permitted. It would be a place for people trying to get out of homelessness.

Evan Balverde is a plumber who came to Nickelsville after an accident forced him to stop working.

“We don’t just take in everybody,” Balverde says. “We’d like to, but the thing is just a lot of these people out here are mentally incapable or they’re drug addicts or alcoholics and stuff, and that’s why they are on the streets. We don’t put up with that.

“We’re here for people in rough times and homeless, but if you are doing it to yourself, then this isn’t the place for you.”

The dubious legality of the camp set the organizers on a collision course with the city, and several times police have moved the Nickelodeons off the land on which they were squatting. An invitation to relocate the camp outside a local church gave Nickelsville a reprieve, at least for the time being.

Johnny Turner, a homeless man who helped found the camp, says he would like to see Nickelsville grow into a permanent shelter that could accept more people needing a place to go.

“We need more Nickelsvilles,” he says. “There’s nowhere else.” See photos of Depression-era tent cities »

Al Poole of the Seattle Human Services Department says the city spends nearly $8 million a year on the homeless. Still, there aren’t always beds available for every person needing one, and sometimes families do need to be placed in different shelters.

While tent cities might fulfill an immediate need, Poole explains, they also can have the negative effect of turning people who live near the camps against the homeless.

Walking around the neighborhood that borders Nickelsville, it is hard to imagine that many residents are happy that their homes now face a homeless camp.

And many residents were upset, says homeowner Roland Bradley, when the camp first arrived at their street.

“We had a meeting at the church the week before they came,” Bradley says. “One of the concerns that people had was about crime and people breaking into their home and children being molested and noise. But that hasn’t happened.”

Motioning to the camp, Bradley adds: “The reality is that could be us one day.”

It’s begun… When will the hyperflation start?

The Second American Revolution

Dude, you had me until you went all Xenophobic.

These videos are making the rounds in the bloggosphere and I have to say, some of what he says I can get behind. Term limits on senators, the criminality of what has been passing for governance, but then he gets all whack about illegal aliens and languages other than English. Look, the big copper girl in the harbor that stands for our shining city on the hill says this;

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

So, yeah, uh, if we are to keep her in the harbor and tout her being there, then we should consider that we are a “Melting Pot” and that our diversity is our strength. Perhaps your whig is on a little too tight? Maybe the powder is itchy and has you all cranky? I dunno, but, I do know that some of your yammering kinda reminds me of a certain other guy… Hmmm who might that be…
Oh yeah…

Nazi’s, I hate these guys…

I agree, we all may need guns, but I think it more likely that I will need the gun to fend off the likes of you and your rabble..

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Dunning Kruger Effect. America’s business model!

The Dunning-Kruger effect is an example of cognitive bias in which “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”^[1]. They therefore suffer an illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average.

OMG All this time rantng on the interwebs and someone actually came up with the theory!! DAMN!

More later…

These guys were on a Sherman’s march with “OUR” 401K’s

Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer: The Extended Daily Show Interview

John you are THE MAN!

It’s high time that the United States drew a line around its networks and pledged to defend its interests in cyberspace.

Recently, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton on what he termed “massive losses”. Although the details are classified, they include recent losses of intellectual property with military applications from an aerospace contractor as well as satellite and submarine technology. Other private sector losses include sensitive corporate and financial information which is often discovered on foreign computers by the intelligence community.

Illustrating the private sector security situation is challenging due in part to underreporting and non-detection, however it is clear that sensitive information is pouring into data black markets and into the hands of organized criminals. The Computer Security Institute (CSI) published the results of a 2008 survey of agencies, organizations, institutions, and private sector firms. CSI found that 49 percent of respondents reported virus activity on their networks, 44 percent reported insider abuse, 42 percent reported laptop or mobile device theft, and 29 percent reported unauthorized access. Instances of financial fraud, which were reported by 12 percent of respondents, cost an average of $500,000 each and especially hurt the financial sector.

Full article HERE

Meanwhile EVERYONE seems to be saying the same thing to the new administration:

Potential cyber attacks against federal and private-sector networks loom larger every day and while the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has made some important efforts, it has yet to fulfill many of the myriad responsibilities placed on it by the national cybersecurity plan.

Full article HERE

In other words, “WE’RE FUCKED SO FIX IT!” no more of the same old BS please Mr. Hope!

Yes, indeed that would be nice if the government finally got some shit straight huh? Well, I have news for all of Washington. No matter how nicely they say it, we are fucked UNLESS something is really done about this situation. Sure, I have been saying this all along, and in rather salty language… But, I am right!

We are losing the battle kids… Losing BADLY.

Another way of saying it was the following:

It’s high time that the United States drew a line around its networks and pledged to defend its interests in cyberspace.

Full story HERE

Just how many ways does it have to be said in order for some substantive action to happen? Ya know, the good kind? Not the “Hey, we are proposing a bill that you *the home user* have to keep 2 years of logs on your home router to save the children from kiddie porn!” kind of BS of late. How about some real legislation, laws, and oversight that MAKE companies as well as the government actually perform “DUE DILIGENCE” on cyber security?

WHOA big fella!

Here’s to HOPE we can dare to have. I will believe it when I see it.

Just How Important Is IT Security?

Cited from article HERE

Well, interesting little graph huh? Can you see the trending here? It seems that the corporate world STILL does not really “get” the whole idea of “Information Security” and its importance in this day and age. I still cannot fathom these numbers! How in the hell with all the hacking, industrial espionage, and outright theft going on out there today do they NOT get it and see INFOSEC as a real important commodity?

Sure, having information security can be costly especially if you have done NOTHING to secure your data, your clients data, your IP, whatever you hold dear and MAKES YOUR MONEY FOR YOU! But, uhh, if you LOSE that data, you lose your REVENUE STREAM you morons! Why? Why do you NOT get it out there corporate America?

What’s that?… You say it’s too hard? You’re too fat and lazy?

Oh… Yeah… I forgot for a second there.

I have said it before but I will say it again. Human beings are incapable of really sensing and avoiding long term tangential ideas of danger. It would seem a concept clear enough that there are people and state actors out there who want to steal your data for their benefit. Why then is this such an arcane concept when any of us in contracting as infosec warriors try to get this across to the “C” levels on down in any random corporate entity?

Is it because they just can’t get the concepts of computing? Sure, there are some luddites (ok, many really) so sure, they get that glassy eyed look and tune out. However, if you boil it down to;

“I just stole 20 million dollars from your bank! This is how and why.. I can help you fix it this way.. Please do these things”

and they don’t want to fix the issues or claim they are too “costly” to implement, well then, you have a recipe for another economic melt down on the macro scale. I have personally seen this in action many times, but the quote above actually happened. To the credit of the CEO though, he told the nay sayers in the board room to pay attention because he truly saw the implications of what I had done.

Now not all of these security issues just stem from “ninja’s” hacking the “Gibson” and this is where I really pop a blood vessel with corporate America. MUCH of the issues that need to be addressed for securities sake are low level and should be SOP for any company. It’s called “Best Practices” and you can get them in the ISO 7799 documentation. These involve the basics of “classifying data” and having “Policies and Procedures” in place and enforced. This is not rocket science! Why do they so often fail at even implementing these?

Laziness.

That’s how I see it. Not only are humans poor at determining long term threats, but they are often mentally lazy today. As a whole the picture portrayed by the movie “Office Space” is a true one. How many of you out there have “Ass Clown’s” running the show at your office? Many I am sure. Of all my years of consulting, rarely did I see a place with their shit together. All too often also I got called a “Bob” because I came around asking questions about what they do and how they do it. You could smell the fear.. Hell, I made an HR lady cry once! The Irony of it? I wasn’t even trying to be SCARY!

So, here we are… The economy is melting like a thermite grenade has been placed on the engine block. The state actors are getting more and more adept at hacking our systems and insinuating “industrial spies” in record numbers at our firms, and the government can’t even keep a “Cyber Czar” for more than a month as they keep quitting!

(As an aside, please read Why The Hell Was Secret White House Helicopter Data Found On A Computer In Iran? too. This is an excellent article on the MARINE ONE escape that ties back to my screed on security basics that government as well as government contractors who should be spanked for not following basic security processes.. Leading to an escape of epic proportions)

I give up.. I can only cry out in the howling storm so long before I just get too hoarse and clam up.

Ladies and gents.. Start digging bunkers and loading up the ammo, MRE’s, and other necessities. Cuz, I expect “Thunderdome” any day now.

CoB

Hey Rube: Fear And Loathing In America 9/12/2001

By Hunter S. Thompson
Page 2 columnist
It was just after dawn in Woody Creek, Colo., when the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City on Tuesday morning, and as usual I was writing about sports. But not for long. Football suddenly seemed irrelevant, compared to the scenes of destruction and utter devastation coming out of New York on TV.

Even ESPN was broadcasting war news. It was the worst disaster in the history of the United States, including Pearl Harbor, the San Francisco earthquake and probably the Battle of Antietam in 1862, when 23,000 were slaughtered in one day. The Battle of the World Trade Center lasted about 99 minutes and cost 20,000 lives in two hours (according to unofficial estimates as of midnight Tuesday). The final numbers, including those from the supposedly impregnable Pentagon, across the Potomac River from Washington, likely will be higher. Anything that kills 300 trained firefighters in two hours is a world-class disaster. And it was not even Bombs that caused this massive damage. No nuclear missiles were launched from any foreign soil, no enemy bombers flew over New York and Washington to rain death on innocent Americans. No. It was four commercial jetliners.

	Comment on tragedy
	Page 2 recognizes the need to entertain a variety of viepoints at this difficult time. If you’ve got something to say about any of the columns on the page today or if you’d like to comment on sports’ role in the tragedy, click here to send us your thoughts. We’ll run the best letters later in the week.

They were the first flights of the day from American and United Airlines, piloted by skilled and loyal U.S. citizens, and there was nothing suspicious about them when they took off from Newark, N.J., and Dulles in D.C. and Logan in Boston on routine cross-country flights to the West Coast with fully-loaded fuel tanks — which would soon explode on impact and utterly destroy the world-famous Twin Towers of downtown Manhattan’s World Trade Center. Boom! Boom! Just like that.

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.

It will be a Religious War, a sort of Christian Jihad, fueled by religious hatred and led by merciless fanatics on both sides. It will be guerilla warfare on a global scale, with no front lines and no identifiable enemy. Osama bin Laden may be a primitive “figurehead” — or even dead, for all we know — but whoever put those All-American jet planes loaded with All-American fuel into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon did it with chilling precision and accuracy. The second one was a dead-on bullseye. Straight into the middle of the skyscraper.

Nothing — even George Bush’s $350 billion “Star Wars” missile defense system — could have prevented Tuesday’s attack, and it cost next to nothing to pull off. Fewer than 20 unarmed Suicide soldiers from some apparently primitive country somewhere on the other side of the world took out the World Trade Center and half the Pentagon with three quick and costless strikes on one day. The efficiency of it was terrifying.

We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.

This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed — for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush. All he knows is that his father started the war a long time ago, and that he, the goofy child-President, has been chosen by Fate and the global Oil industry to finish it Now. He will declare a National Security Emergency and clamp down Hard on Everybody, no matter where they live or why. If the guilty won’t hold up their hands and confess, he and the Generals will ferret them out by force.

Good luck. He is in for a profoundly difficult job — armed as he is with no credible Military Intelligence, no witnesses and only the ghost of Bin Laden to blame for the tragedy.

OK. It is 24 hours later now, and we are not getting much information about the Five Ws of this thing. The numbers out of the Pentagon are baffling, as if Military Censorship has already been imposed on the media. It is ominous. The only news on TV comes from weeping victims and ignorant speculators.

The lid is on. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Don’t say anything that might give aid to The Enemy.

Absorb what Hunter had to say 9.12.01 with the perspective of time… My commentary later today.

Two disturbing stories from the current world of INFOSEC

Story 1

From HIPPA to Sarbox, a slew of regulations to protect customer and employee data force CIOs to step lively to comply. The punishment for failure to do so is costly and even dire. But once a company folds-and more are folding every week given the economy-what happens to that data? Who in the business and IT could be hit by the splatter if it all hits the fan?

“Certain companies have been disposing of records containing sensitive consumer information in very questionable ways, including by leaving in bags at the curb, tossing it in public dumpsters, leaving it in vacant properties and/or leaving it behind in the offices and other facilities once they’ve gone out of business and left those offices,” says Jacqueline Klosek, a senior counsel in Goodwin Procter’s Business Law Department and a member of its Intellectual Property Group.

“In addition, company computers, often containing personal data, will find their ways to the auction block,” she adds. “All too often, the discarded documents and computer files will sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, social security numbers and driver’s licenses numbers. This is the just the kind of data that can be used to commit identity theft.”

Ok, so to start off let me say this.. HIPPA and SOX are NOT regulations with real teeth to them. I know the regs and both are paper tigers. In the case of SOX, there is only one page that really barely touches on real “network” security and as such, it is useless where the infosec rubber meets the legislative road.

That said, lets look at the articles thrust on “your” data being left on the front steps or in the dumpster. Umm, there’s nothing new here kids. In fact, this has been the mainstay of many a hacker from time imemorial. Dumpster diving, buying old hard drives etc, have always been used to harvest data from companies that are too stupid to really care for their client data. All too often drives are found with data on them even before the big bust of our economy. The real difference now is that companies are doing this perhaps en masse because they are failing. Overall though, this is nothing new. So, Network World is a little chicken shit on this one…

The rest of this article can be found HERE

The second article is a bit more scary for me…

Story 2

The U.S. government’s H-1B visa usage data for fiscal 2008 shows that offshore outsourcing firms based in India are employing a growing number of H-1B workers — a hiring trend that is affecting the IT workforces in communities such as Oldsmar, Fla.

Oldsmar is the home of a technology center operated by The Nielsen Co., which measures TV audiences, consumer trends and other metrics for its clients. Nielsen last year began laying off workers at the facility after announcing in October 2007 a 10-year global outsourcing agreement valued at US$1.2 billion with Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.

And while Nielsen cut employees, Mumbai, India-based Tata was increasing its hiring of H-1B workers. Tata received approval for a total of 1,539 H-1B visas during the federal fiscal year that ended last September, according to government data released this week. That was nearly double the 797 visas that the outsourcing and IT services vendor received in fiscal 2007.

In Oldsmar, “they are still bringing in Indians,” said Janice Miller, a city councilwoman who lives about a mile from the Nielsen facility. “And there are a lot of [local] people out of work.”

Yeah, so as they decrease and lay off people in this country they are still raising the H1B visa numbers? What? You would think that after all the problems lately too with foreign industrial espionage this might be thought about twice before plodding ahead. One has to wonder about this especially too after the whole Fannie Mae Logic Bomb fiasco too huh?

Look, I am not being protectionist here, but, it kind of is endemic whats going on.. Shouldn’t we re-think this a bit? Just how are we vetting these people anyway? A porous border with Pakistan, all kinds of tribal ties…. Meh.. As this economy goes up in flames I am sure I will see more shitty silliness…

The End Is Nigh

Well, this guy is a gloomy Gus huh? Unfortunately, I think some of what he is saying has some merit. I believe that potentially this could get very very bad indeed. Everything is tied together really and if the system cannot be re-set back onto the tracks, I fear that the derailment will only continue to happen at an even pace.

It is hard to concieve that this situation could reach the epic proportions that we saw in the “Great” depression but, given as the gent points out, there were no credit cards then etc. The monies being stolen now are mostly virtual in nature and as he states, gold, seems to be the only “solid” currency that he would invest in. Of course we all know what happened back in the GD when there was a run on gold. The government froze it all. So, get your gold now before the shit hits the fan again.

I also agree that the crime rates will be going up. I personally have seen what I feel is a spike in that in my own area here but given things could get worse for people (post 100K jobs being lost in one month, benefits from the local/state/federal drying up, and of course state governments going bust financially) I can foresee an uptick in crimes like bank robbery etc. In fact, this has already been in evidence but not necessarily in the news as much. A bank insider told me of some incidents that perhaps I just missed on the local news… Who knows… But, it’s happening as people become more desperate.

Now of course the source of this interview of Gerald Cerente is on a Russian news report. So, one has to look at that with a more jaundiced eye in the Putin era of nouveau Soviet mind. So, please, I do take that into account on this. I guess what I am saying though is take it with a bag of salt, but, do consider what you might do were these things come to pass.

How would you survive?