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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 08:16am Mar 2, 2001 EST (#819 of 825)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Large new technical risks come from the internet rshowalter "Science News Poetry" 3/1/01 11:58am

Microsoft get's penetrated ....The military does, as well ....Microsoft may find out ....Military folks are much less likely to know. ........Things are harder to hide .....than they used to be, these days .....And switches can sometimes be flipped .....In surprising ways .....

rshowalter "Science News Poetry" 3/1/01 2:07pm

"Lets see --- six billion people ......And a tenth chance of dying from nukes per year .....A "statistical expected value" of a hundred Jewish holocausts, per year ....or one point six million "expected deaths" per day."

"It seems to me that some facts need to be checked. With umpires, and in public, So that facts get clear. So the world can go on."

lunarchick - 11:11pm Mar 2, 2001 EST (#820 of 825)
lunarchick@www.com

High Horses must be a dying breed .... reading the above I'd expect those with clout to start to shout!!

rshowalter - 06:44pm Mar 3, 2001 EST (#821 of 825)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Nuclear weapons don't kill people - People kill people. .......Guardian Talk Europe .... started by "beckvaa"

rshowalter - 11:44am Mar 4, 2001 EST (#822 of 825)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

This intrusion - a serious one, happened to be detected.

However, "moles" in computer programs, and unstopped breaches in security, involve ALL the problems familiar to Le Carre and real spy groups. And involve many more problems, as wel. And the speed with which attacks can happen, and can combine, in this new electronic world is enormous.

Here is one example, among MANY of the reason why our nuclear weapons system, telephone based, and with core controls essentially as specified in the Eisenhower administration, is dangerous, obsolete, unpredictable junk, that could easily destroy the world, and should be taken down.

Hacker Gets Hold of Top Secret U.S. Space Codes

(taken from deban123 "Bush's Foreign Policy" 3/3/01 6:41am )

Friday March 2 9:29 AM ET STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - "An unidentified computer hacker has got hold of top secret U.S. computer system codes for guiding space ships, rockets and satellites, a lawyer in Sweden said on Friday.

"Computer experts raided the offices of an information technology company in Stockholm last month and found a copy of the source codes for the software program OS/COMET developed by U.S. firm Exigent Software Technology, Johan Starell, legal counsel for Exigent in Sweden, told Reuters.

"A source code contains full details of how a software program works.

"OS/COMET has been deployed by the U.S. Air Force on the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS) Colorado Springs Monitor Station, Exigent said in a statement in December.

"The suspected source codes theft, carried out remotely over the Internet on Christmas Eve last year from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C., was detected on December 27.

"The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI (news - web sites)) was put on the case. The trail led to Freebox.com, an Internet Web server run by the Swedish IT company Carbonide, Starell said.

"``A stolen source code was found on their server but nothing indicates they had anything to do with getting it there,'' Starell told Reuters.

"Analyses of the Carbonide server accessed by the hacker known only by the username ``LEEIF'' showed that the perpetrator had been able to hide his or her true identity by breaking into the account of a genuine Freebox.com client and using that person's Internet account.

``We couldn't get any further information about where it came from or find out if it had been copied and sent elsewhere,'' he said.

``Sweden seems like a closed chapter. We can't get any further here,'' he added.

" The OS/COMET source code could be used by terrorists to disturb computer systems guiding various space programs or it could have been stolen in industrial espionage for commercial advantage, the Swedish tabloid Expressen reported.

rshowalter - 11:46am Mar 4, 2001 EST (#823 of 825)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

There is REASON to be concerned. Now is a fine time to reassess our nuclear policies, because, for reasons of world safety, our current systems MUST be taken down. They aren't protecting us - they are risking our lives, and endangering the entire world. rshowalter 3/2/01 8:16am

This thread is being read. Would anybody in the government, with a traceable name, care to deny that the nuclear weapons system the US has in place, considered as a technical and human system, is now DANGEROUSLY OBSOLETE ?

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