Grumpy Editor

S.F. police find no terrorism link to cockpit door pounder

Soon after the arrest of an unruly air passenger who was wrestled to the cabin floor after shouting in a foreign language while pounding on the cockpit door of an American Airlines 737 just before it landed at San Francisco International Airport Sunday night, police declared there was no terrorism link, observes Grumpy Editor. 

An Associated Press story filed 10 hours after the plane landed, quotes a San Francisco police spokesman saying the 28-year-old with a Yemeni passport taken into custody had no known ties to terrorism. 

That’s a speedy checkout considering warnings are being issued on possible terror plots following the death of Osama bin Laden. 

And it comes at a time when even a baby’s diaper is patted down on the same day by Transportation Security Administration agents at Kansas City International Airport.  (View the TSA action here.)  

On the San Francisco-bound 737, it took several people, including a retired Secret Service agent and a retired police officer, to subdue the male passenger about 10 minutes before landing on a flight that originated from New York City with a stop in Chicago. 

The Bay Area disturbance was the third of the day. 

Previously, a Continental 737 from Houston to Chicago was diverted to St. Louis after a man attempted to open the aircraft’s door.  Earlier, a Delta flight from Detroit to San Diego was diverted to Albuquerque where officials investigated an undisclosed security threat.

 

View how spam pages are overwhelming the Internet

Imagine, every hour one million spam pages are created.

That’s the finding on the Security Alert page in this month’s PCWorld magazine, notes Grumpy Editor.

Writer John P. Mello Jr. says analysts estimate 90 percent of email traffic is spam.

A clock at www.spamclock.com counts the number of spam pages created on the Internet every second.

Since Jan. I this year, the figure this morning passed the 2 billion mark.

Behind that site is search engine newcomer Blekko, points out Mello.

Based in Redwood City, Calif., Rich Skrenta, its founder, tells Mello that, “As the online economy continues to grow at double digits compared to stalled growth for the offline economy, the incentives for spammers get even more lucrative.”

 

13 illegals wearing Marine uniforms captured, then...

The arrest of 13 illegal aliens wearing U.S. Marine uniforms, being transported in a “hot” van with a phony U.S. government license plate, took eight days to surface --- and even then, major newspapers ignored the story, notes Grumpy Editor.

Fox News on its Web site and London’s Daily Mail were leaders in revealing the apprehensions by Border Patrol agents on March 14 at a checkpoint near Pine Valley, an unincorporated community in southeastern San Diego County.

Two U.S. citizens, one the driver, also were arrested.  They, too, wore U.S. Marine uniforms.

Some editors apparently weren’t too concerned about bringing to attention of readers that the illegals were clad in camouflaged Marine uniforms, complete with caps, and all 13 carried the same name --- Perez --- emblazoned on the backsides.

Also, the involved “U.S. government” vehicle turned out to be a privately-owned white van registered in Yucca Valley, Calif.  It bore a stolen government plate (one with the line, “For Official Use Only”) that was altered, including changing the center digit --- 0 --- to read as an 8.

It was determined that the license plate belonged to a one-ton cargo van, registered to the U.S. Marine Corps. 

Wearing U.S. military uniforms illegally --- especially by foreigners --- is enough to put those involved in the slammer for a long time.  And a private van impersonating a U.S. government vehicle usually gets those in such a caper a long term behind bars.

It wasn’t known if Homeland Security was concerned about the incident.

So what happened to the illegals garbed as Marines?

Not much.

A Border Patrol spokesman said they were returned to Mexico, their country of origin.

Maybe they will give a push into the U.S. another try --- perhaps wearing U.S. Navy uniforms.

Tip on how to set secure password(s) to thwart hacker

In these days of shifty-eyed characters prowling the Web, if you ever wonder how secure your password is, Grumpy Editor has the answer --- after noting a password calculation site in a column by Edward Albro, editor, PCWorld magazine.

Enter your password(s) at howsecureismypassword.net and get a quick response on the difficulty a shady, yet talented, hacker might have accessing a site.

For example, enter 123harry and the site’s instant calculation shows it would take about three days for a desktop PC to crack that password.

But make it 123harryx7 and a potential hacker would be more than a decade older --- about 11 years --- by the time the password is deciphered.

If top security is required, use something such as GiSoy752Hc842x.  That would take 39 billion years to decode.

Adding a 7 after the x would extend that to a mighty 2 trillion years.

A hacker, and his kin --- and other hacking relatives through the centuries --- would be long, very long, gone in attempting to capture those passwords.

Of course, if a hacker has access to the recently-revealed Chinese supercomputer Tianhe-1A, named the world's fastest, solving the password would come much faster.

The Tianhe-1A, built mostly with chips designed by U.S. companies, achieves a computing speed of 2,570 trillion calculations per second. 

 

Cozy relationships cited as airport scan machines grow

Not widely reported in  print/broadcast media, despite sources readily available, is revealing background information of interest to readers/viewers in connection with the mounting squabble over use of airport pat-downs and the growing number of full-body scanning machines, notes Grumpy Editor.

John J. Duncan, Jr. (R., Tenn.), former chairman of the House Aviation Subcommittee, blasted the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) during a speech on the floor of the House. 

He cited invasive pat-downs in pre-boarding procedures at airports and the role lucrative government contracts played in the scanning equipment.

Meanwhile, OSI Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: OSIS), which manufactures airport scanners, made no secret that Deepak Chopra, its chairman and CEO, “was selected to accompany U.S. President Barack Obama to Mumbai.”

Eyebrows were raised earlier this month over the extra-large presidential entourage that headed for India, first stop on Obama’s 10-day, four-nation Asia tour.

Congressman Duncan, in his House speech last Wednesday, mentioned fliers were being subjected to “frequent doses of radiation” from scanners and “we are going to spend up to $300 million to install 1,000 scanners.”

Bringing another cozy relationship to light, Duncan revealed “former Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, represents Rapiscan, the company which is selling these scanners to his former department.”

(Rapiscan Systems is a division of OSI Systems.)

“The American people should not have to choose between having full-body radiation or a very embarrassing, intrusive pat-down every time they fly, as if they were criminals,” pointed out Duncan.  “We need a little more balance and common sense on this.”

The information on Hawthorne, Calif.-based OSI Systems’ chairman and CEO accompanying Obama came from the company’s own news release fed to Business Wire on Nov. 12.