Blackberry REACT August 2008 NewsletterQuick ClicksAfter the July 29 quake, phones not availableEarly reports about the July 29 quake in southern California indicated that there was no dial tone available in parts of LA as people jumped on their phones to find out if loved ones were safe. News stations here were advising people not to call into the LA area to keep lines open for emergency service. This is where we say, "When All Else Fails - Amateur Radio." Costco selling "275-serving" food kitNow this is 'servings,' not meals. Thirty servings of Potato Bakon and twenty-five servings of Whey Milk, for example. The stuff is packed in a big bucket and claims a twenty-year shelf life. It's $80, including shipping and handling. Get 'em while they're hot. This instructions on the bucket say that the contents are packaged in five-serving packages, and you just boil water, add package contents, and simmer for 20 minutes. See Food for Health International for more information. That company sells cooking kits, water purification systems, and smaller containers of emergency food supplies. I note that Costco also offers a 7-day Gourmet Instant Meal Kit from AlpineAire - freeze-dried food in a pouch. This kit offers a week's worth of meals for one adult. The price is $80, including shipping and handling. Federal requirement of high visibility vests for emergency respondersEffective November 28, 2008, a new federal regulation mandates high visibility vests for anyone working in the right of way of "federally-aid highways." High visibility vests are strictly defined, as described in the second article. Vests must be worn day or night. The rule "responders to incidents within the high- way right-of-way," so that's us. There are requests for revisions, but none were timely filed, so the regulation will go into effect as published. This new regulation means our spiffy white shirts with orange epaulets will not comply with the federal mandate if we are on a federal-aid highway. High visibility vests are required to comply with Performance Class 2 or 3 requirements of the ANSI/ISEA 107-2004. If you are considering buying a vest, check to see if it is compliant. Neither of the two vests I have is labelled. For those who want to know, federal-aid highway is defined in 23CFR 470A, Section 470.103: (4) "Federal-aid highway systems" means the National Highway System and the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways (the "Interstate System"). "All other public roads" pretty much covers us. I am unable to determine who will enforce the rule. The rule says that "States and other agencies shall comply with this rule ... ," but it gives no information on responsibility or liability; I'm sure those who work with DOT rules know the answer. For those who want to know, Class 2 is a high visibility garment with reflective stripes that covers the torso only (i.e., a vest); Class 3 garments have sleeves and legs of high visibility material and reflective stripes. See 3M's .pdf file on ANSI/ISEA 107-2004. (3M of course wants you to use their Scotchlite reflective materials.) Note that Class 3 garments are suggested for emergency response personnel and flagging crews, duties we are likely to be performing. Beijing blogVincent Laforet is a photographer, and he says he'll be blogging from the Olympics, showing behind the scenes goings on at Beijing. Even if you have no interest in the sports, his blog may be of interest for the culture and the people of the city. Overdriving your headlampsThere are two lessons here. First, don't drive at night so fast that you can't stop when your headlamps show something in the road. Second, notice that the view you see out the windshield immediately starts drifting by - the car is being swept away by the flood waters the cop drove into. There is no control over the car from the instant it enters the water. I'm sure we all remember our Weather Spotter training when our trainer said most people die of drowning in hurricanes when they try to drive through flooded parts of the road. MURS radiosOur pair of MURS radios arrived, and we have photos of the unboxing. No chance yet to really test them, but we'll be using them at Burning Man, so we'll get to torture them for a week. According to the company's filing with the FCC for certification, the high power setting gives a whopping 0.5W ERP, so I doubt their utility for Blackberry REACT uses. Logic gatesI'm sure we all remember those circuit diagrams from our ham test. Here's a video of logic circuits demonstrating OR, AND, and XOR gates -- built out of dominoes. This way, you can actually see the circuit and gates in action. A trip to Bletchley ParkCorey Doctorow (a Sci Fi writer) went to Bletchley Park and took a ton of photos. This is a brief description of his visit with a link to the official site and more photos of the museum there. Bletchley Park was the home of British code-breakers during WWII, and it's where Enigma was solved, among other things. Doctorow's photos include the racks with computers programmed by hard wire to solve the enigma puzzle. Hams of Bletchley ParkAnd to top it off, there is an amateur radio club that actually meets at Bletchley Park. It's the Milton Keynes Amateur Radio Society. Tail Reconnection Triggering Substorm OnsetActually, you really are interested in this article. Scientists from NASA have discovered what makes the auroras flicker and and dance. Telephones after we have our big earthquakeHow to steam your franksThis has little to do with emergency services, but this is Neverwas Haul, a group which was at Maker Faire this year. Disgruntled SF employee locks city's computer networkA City of San Francisco computer network administrator has been charged with disabling all administrative passwords but his own. He has, so far, refused to provide his account information, and the Department of Technology has, so far, failed to gain access to the network on its own. The network contains email, payroll information, and law enforcement documents. The fear is that he or a confederate can delete all documents on the network. This follow-up article at Info World paints the admin as someone less a rogue than as a protector of his cyber domain. In either event, the results are the same: if you trust only one person with the password to your network, you are at that person's mercy - vacations, illnesses, death can all lead to disaster. This guy apparently had a temper, so disgruntlement is still part of the problem. Having a network used by many people under the control of one person is a problem. This slashdot article gives a link to the report of the employee giving the password to Mayor Newsome. According to the post, the admin is concerned that the IT department is mismanaged, negligent, and corrupt, and that it cannot properly manage the network without him. Even if the motive is pure, the result is the same as if the actor were evil and holding the password for ransom. Finally (maybe), the San Francisco DA then filed a pleading listing the usernames and passwords of 150 users of the network in an apparent attempt to prove the admin's claim that the IT department is mismanaged and negligent. NO, wait, the pleading was filed to prove that the admin had them on his laptop, thus endangering the security of the network because of, uh, ... . Wow! The usernames and passwords are for the police department, the mayor's office, and the city's IT office. And the DA says that since the admin had access to these usernames and passwords he could have accessed the network by impersonating legitimate users. The usernames and passwords now on file at the courthouse. Disgruntled bank tech in Liechtenstein sells customer bank secretsThe tech stole banking information on 'secret' customers and is selling it to governments in exchange for a percentage of their take in unpaid taxes. Privacy Isn't 'Something to Hide'Last month Forbes Magazine ran an article detailing a survey of marketers and corporate privacy officers. There is a disconnect. You may recall that at one time the American Red Cross wanted to do criminal, credit, and lifestyle background checks on volunteers, using an outside contractor. Many people to the attitude of "if you have nothing to hide, what's the problem." I'm here to tell you there are problems. The major problems are that we lose control over that information, that we have no idea what happens to it, and that there is no accountability for misuse of our private details. In the survey Forbes quotes, 75% of the responding privacy officers said their companies limit sharing of customer data. (The companies were in "industries ranging from health care to financial services.") In contrast to the privacy officers, a third of the marketers surveyed said they place no limits on the data they share with third parties, including email marketing agencies. 80% of the marketing side said their companies share email addresses with their parties. 45% of the marketers said their firms distribute social security numbers, but only 7% of the privacy professionals said their companies share SSANs. Who is right? According to the article, NEXT Financial Group shared customer financial data with brokers it hoped to recruit as clients. Convio had its files accessed, revealing financial data of donors to a hundred charities that use Convio (a company that helps charities get donations). Data broker Choicepoint sold the personal data of 145,000 people to Nigerian scammers that it was mislead into believing were legitimate marketers. So my problem can be stated that I do have something to hide from the American Red Cross, since I don't know who their contractor is, and I don't know what will happen to my data once it gets into the hands of that contractor's marketing department. Further, I don't want the Red Cross to have that information: (a Red Cross employee used blood donor databases to steal the identities of donors; all donors at that location [initially limited to 8,000 people, expanded to one million after further investigation] are affected; the employee passed all background checks) Yet another theft of identities from blood donors at another Red Cross branch by an employee. The email addresses of almost 300,000 Red Cross workers were stolen from Convio, along with an unknown number of passwords to Convio, enabling the scheme referred to above. Someone got in by using the password of a Red Cross employee. Another stolen laptop, this one from a Red Cross office, containing social security numbers, medical histories, names, and birthdates of blood donors from Texas and Oklahoma -- because it was a database of blood donors, the medical histories included sexual histories, as well as diseases, all matched to names. Please read that last sentence again. I understand that the Red Cross wants to ensure that all the people it helps are not exposed to crooks and thieves. But I want to know that I'm not exposed myself. And I'm not assured at all by what is available to me on the Web. It's not that I have something to hide from the Red Cross about my wrongdoings. It's that I want to hide my personal data from the Red Cross and its contractor's marketing department. Events
*events for which we sometimes receive a donation UpdatesOur next meeting will have a discussion about the use of our club repeater. Should we allow anyone licensed GMRS-user to have access to it? Our meeting this month had a discussion of planning for events where we provide communications. One important issue was how to handle medical emergencies, including knowing available routes for ambulances. See http://www.blackberryreact.org/event-analysis.html for a guide on preparation. |