Musings

General-purpose musings

There are 781 posts filed in Musings (this is page 14 of 79).

Car thieves rob vehicles using ‘mystery’ wireless devices

Update 11 Aug 2015: Mystery solved?

Thieves are using a mystery device to break into cars and the cops are stumped. I came across this story back in June but never posted it here:

Cops across the country are investigating a new wave of car thefts that appear to be happening with nothing more than a click of a button, the “Today” show reports.

From California to Chicago, car thieves have been caught on camera breaking into parked cars using small electronic devices that could be “cloned” car remotes.

The thieves then raid the vehicles for valuables before skulking away.

Long Beach, Calif., Deputy Police Chief David Hendricks told “Today” he’s “stumped: by the robberies.

“We are stumped and we don’t know what this technology is,” he said.

via Car thieves rob vehicles using ‘mystery’ wireless devices: report  – NY Daily News.

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Guns and butter

Two things seemingly unrelated captured my attention last week. One was the threat of war with Syria, the other was a parent encountering a child who had shown up to school with an empty stomach.

President Eisenhower once called military arms a theft from those who hunger and are not fed. Sixty years later we have yet to heed his words. When will our country stop feeding the war machine and start feeding the needy among us?

I hope those advocating for war in the name of Syria’s children will consider the needs of our children first.

Fixing the home

Friday I was chatting with a neighborhood parent when she told me of a disturbing incident she witnessed as she drove through my neighborhood earlier this summer.

As she was passing one house, she saw a woman getting into a car at the curb as a young boy, probably 7 or 8, came running up to her. Anticipating a loving scene where the boy gets a big hug from his mom, my friend was instead shocked to see the woman turn and strike the boy with the back of her hand, knocking him to the ground!

The kid picked himself up off the ground and calmly walked back into the house. It was as if this wasn’t the first time that this kid had been hit.

I was aghast. Hearing this broke my heart. This kid lives in my neighborhood. I’ve waved to him many times as he’s quietly ridden his bike around his front yard, always by himself. He seems like a good kid but that’s beside the point. What the hell was this woman thinking to hit a child like that? How screwed up is she to think this is okay?
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Busing blues

Hallie boards her bus on the first day of school

Hallie boards her bus on the first day of school


Hallie has taken the bus to and from school for a week now and it’s been a bit of a rough ride for her (and not only from the traffic whizzing by her stop). She’s enjoying life in middle school but complains at how rude and unruly the kids are on the bus. On the bus, these kids play their music loudly when they’re told not to, then pretend not to hear the bus driver. They curse frequently, throw their trash out the window. They’re basically hellions.

This is so foreign to Hallie as she’s mostly ridden her bike to school until now. So today I took her through the carpool. While she still has to take the bus home, at least she doesn’t have to begin her school day in a bad mood.

Thinking about her observations made me shake my head at how some of these kids are being raised. Hallie quite astutely said she knows that some parents can be great parents and their kids still act up, but she has a feeling that the kids on her bus have parents who are just like them: parents who have no respect for others.

I don’t judge people based on how much money they make, what they look like, where they live, or any other external factor. I do divide people based on one thing: how they treat others. You can be filthy rich or dirt poor and still be a self-centered asshole. If you treat others fairly and with respect, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, odds are pretty good that you’ll succeed in life. I consistently remind my kids that the most telling thing about one’s character is how they treat others.
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Your gun rights end at my property line

Let me preface this post to say that I support all the rights we Americans enjoy through the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. I put on a uniform and faced down America’s enemies in order to uphold those rights, so I take them very seriously.

Thus my support of our rights includes Americans’ right to bear arms. I’ve fired weapons many times during my military service and stood countless watches as my ship’s roving patrol, armed with a .45. Like it or not, guns are a reality in our country and I fully support the right to protect oneself and one’s property with whatever means are necessary.
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Helen Thomas, bulldog reporter, passes away

Helen Thomas, legendary White House reporter, died today.

Helen Thomas, whose keen curiosity, unquenchable drive and celebrated constancy made her a trailblazing White House correspondent in a press corps dominated by men and later the dean of the White House briefing room, died Saturday at home in Washington. She was 92.

Ms. Thomas covered every president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama for United Press International and, later, Hearst Newspapers. To her colleagues, she was the unofficial but undisputed head of the press corps — her status ratified by her signature line at the end of every White House news conference, “Thank you, Mr. President.”

I loved Helen Thomas. She was a reporter who wasn’t afraid to ask the tough questions – and to keep on asking them if she didn’t get a straight answer.
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Morsi and Egyptian revolutions

Last week’s military ouster of Egypt’s first freely-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, had me troubled about what to think. Is this a coup and, if so, how do we address it? One can’t say one supports democracy and then support the overthrow of a duly-elected candidate, right?

Then I decided there might be more than meets the eye here. Morsi may have won a relatively fair and clean election but once he did, did he uphold democratic principles? Once president, he essentially put himself above the law by flatly refusing to be bound by judicial oversight. Was that the will of the people? It’s hard to argue that it was.

This is the inevitable tension that arises in a democracy, where the majority rules but must still respect the rights of the minority. I don’t believe you can have democracy without this balance.

So, do I think the Egyptian military took power in a coup? I’m not convinced. Instead, I think what Egypt has is more of a democracy “do-over.” The country’s been ruled autocratically for decades: it doesn’t have much experience with true democracy. Morsi’s ouster may actually be Revolution Part II in a country still trying to sort itself out.

Regardless of the pros and cons of the lastest activity, Egypt’s transition to democracy remains incomplete.

Weaver’s waste

In a recent city council session, Mayor McFarlane asked then-city manager Russell Allen for an estimate of how much the ongoing Moral Monday protests were costing the city. Allen replied there’s an interagency agreement where the Raleigh Police Department cooperates with the General Assembly Police and vice-versa. “We could ask,” he replied when the mayor asked if the GA Police could reimburse the city.

This interagency arrangement seems a bit one-sided if you ask me. There’s what, probably a dozen or GA officers at most, compared to over 700 Raleigh police officers? What does Raleigh get in return from this arrangement? A dozen officers wouldn’t even cover a shift in one Raleigh police district.

General Assembly Police Chief Jeff Weaver could hand out citations to these protesters rather than put them through the booking process but he chooses to so he could “disperse the protesters.” That sure is easy for him to say, with RPD muscle doing all the work, the City of Raleigh paying overtime for their cops, Wake County doing the booking, and Colin Willoughby having to schedule court time. It seems to me that Jeff Weaver is happily spending other peoples’ money when he could be taking a more sensible approach by handing out tickets.
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Everybody’s in

One of my shipmates, an engineer who served with me on the Elliot, posted a comment to one of my NSA Facebook posts that made me think. Referencing my cryptologic technician past, he said.

You should have been an engineer. No one would care what you say or think.

This implies that I have something worth listening to – which as anyone who’s ever read this blog knows is patently ridiculous. Tales of my past as a crypto tech are about as far removed from James Bond as possible. It would bore anyone to tears.
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Mystery web traffic from DoD contractors identified?

A few years ago I noted very strange web requests coming from military bases and large defense contractors. Several of these sites were requesting a specific URL in my collection of over a decade of posts. That struck me as something highly unlikely for a casual web visitor to do, so I became alarmed at the possibility that these defense contractors and military units were compromised by a malware agent, perhaps planted by a foreign government. I emailed one of these groups, doing my patriotic duty by alerting them to this possiblity. Ususally when I point out potential hacking to a fellow sysadmin I receive some sort of thank you email in return. In this case I received no response (I’ll dig up my email and post it here if I can find it). I found the lack of reply unusual (and, well … rude), but kept open the possibility that I’d reached the wrong person.

Today, Techdirt had a story describing how a simple search through LinkedIn turns up a vast trove of resumes containing secret codeword programs. There’s obviously money to be made in surveillance – Edward Snowden made upwards of $200k per year – so analysts advertise the programs for which they have training. The corollary to this is that there are companies willing to pay for this experience – perhaps companies on the list I noticed knocking on my website door.

I can’t help but wonder if the unusual web traffic I noted might be part of one of these secret programs. Whatever it is (or was), it was obviously coordinated, so the only question is whether it was the bad guys or the good guys (i.e. Americans). Viewed through Occam’s razor, it’s more likely that these highly-secure defense contractors aren’t compromised (or at least they have some clue about network security), which leaves the possibility that the traffic came from some as-yet-unknown system. At least I hope our side’s responsible for it – we’re in a world of hurt if it’s not.

So, do I breathe easier knowing these massive defense contractors are not likely compromised as I once thought, or do I lie awake at night scared shitless that they appear to be spying on anyone and everyone?