* Forwarded (from: netmail) by Roy J. Tellason using timEd 1.10.y2k.

More government "competence"...



Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 14:37:07 EDT
From: KCKnowlton{at}aol.com
Subject: Nuclear reactor guard asleep on the job

[Quoted from *The New York Times*, Metro Section, 28 Sep 2003, pg 43, by
Matthew L. Wald]

  When two Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials found a security guard
  asleep at his post at the Indian Point 2 nuclear reactor last year, the
  agency decided not to issue a notice of violation because there was no
  terrorist attack on the plant during the half-hour or so that the guard
  was sleeping, a Congressional audit has found.  ...  The report also says
  the commission did not treat the incident more seriously because no guards
  had been found sleeping "more than twice during the past year."

There was no comment in the story (or in the NRC report?) about sleeping
behavior of those who deal with knobs, dials, monitors and keyboards.

An interesting general philosophical attitude: post-hoc shrugs for all 
infractions that had no catastrophic consequences.

--

Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2003 08:39:55 -0500
From: Mark_H_Johnson{at}raytheon.com
Subject: Houston 911 System prone to crashes

To summarize - Houston has deployed a new 911 emergency response system
which has had a number of failures since it went "live" a week ago.
Pictures of the new facility look somewhat like Mission Control - large
consoles with multiple displays in front of each operator. It sure looks
nice, but the system does not appear to work reliably.

The latest incident occurred during the day when technicians were working on
the link between the computers and units within the cars. To quote:

  When the system started slowing, technicians reverted to the backup, which
  crashed within minutes. From 9:50 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., dispatchers resorted
  to dispatching by radio instead of by computer. Without the computer's
  locator system, they frequently had to ask emergency workers to volunteer
  for individual assignments rather than assigning them to calls.

Another notable quote is
  But city officials say the only way to test the system was by going
"live."

Sorry, but that does not sound reasonable to me.

For reference:
  http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2133809
  http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2134381
  http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2127855
  http://www.click2houston.com/editorials/2522205/detail.html
    [May not all be permanent...]



Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2003 11:41:08 -0700
From: "David Wj Stringer-Calvert" 
Subject: Parking chaos in York

The system controlling York's newly installed intelligent traffic
variable-message signs (VMS) were hit by a computer virus on 4 Oct 2003,
freezing 21 VMS displays at car parks that were intended to show the number
of available parking space.  Motorists thus went into full car parks
expecting to find space.  One VMS at St George's Field showed 349 spaces
when there were *none*, causing an enormous traffic tie-up.  [And no one was
around to slay St George's draggin' congestion.]  A similar problem had
occurred in August.  (The system, costing 1.5 million pounds, began
operation in July 2003.  The software is provided by Tennet and the hardware
by Variable Message.  A temporary fix is sought to enable the VMSs to be
blanked out if this happens again.  [Source: `Frozen' signs lead to car park
chaos, by Rosslyn Snow, *Yorkshire Evening Press*, 6 Oct 2003; PGN-ed]



Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 10:18:00 -0400 
From: "Mark Lutton" 
Subject: Computer blamed for bad pictures shown to Mexico's first lady

The wife of Mexican President Vicente Fox is a staunch defender of family
values.  Attending a charity presentation dedicated to helping children with
cancer, she viewed a picture of a naked man and woman together that was
somehow inadvertently included among the slides.  A "technical error" is
blamed.

[Source: Mexico's prim first lady gets eyeful of nudes, Reuters, 1 Oct 2003]
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=353643 4

  [Let's see if this issue gets spam-filtered.  PGN]



Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 13:20:43 -0400
From: Monty Solomon 
Subject: Another case of electronic vote-tampering? (Farhad Manjoo)

Another case of electronic vote-tampering? Representatives of the computer
vote-counting industry are unfairly dominating the standard-setting
process, say critics.

By Farhad Manjoo, Salon.com, 29 Sep 2003

When the IEEE, the world's leading professional society of engineeers,
decided in the summer of 2001 to create a technical standard for electronic
voting machines, most everyone concerned with the elections business thought
it was a grand idea.

For the most part, the IEEE operates just as you'd expect a bunch of
engineers to behave -- the group is rigorous, open-minded, dispassionate,
and reluctant to embark upon any major endeavor unless everyone with an
opinion has had an opportunity to hold forth.  "Consensus" is the
IEEE's main buzzword; and while that ethic can lead to some frustration, it
also explains why so many industries and government agencies ask the IEEE
to draw up technical standards for new technologies. People trust the
IEEE's open process, and when it sets down certain specifications --
governing everything from aircraft gyros to wireless networks -- the specs
are widely respected by technologists.

And by the summer of 2001, a standard for voting machines was clearly
needed. After the hobbled 2000 presidential election, officials across the
nation were rushing to purchase new equipment to replace their maligned
punch-card systems. Elections vendors were heavily promoting fully
electronic, ATM-style touch-screen voting machines, but many computer
scientists warned -- and are warning still -- of critical security flaws in
such systems. The key players in the debate over electronic voting saw the
IEEE as a good place to resolve concerns people had with the new systems;
they hoped that after hearing all sides, the vaunted body could create
respected technical guidelines for the machinery of modern democracy.

Two years later, however, the IEEE group charged with drafting a voting
machine standard is paralyzed by bitter in-fighting. Members of the body
can't agree on the substance of a proposed standard for voting machines,
nor can they even come to a consensus on a fair process for determining
such a standard.

The parties involved are arguing about big things -- about whether, for
instance, electronic voting machines should be required to produce a
"voter-verifiable" audit trail, which many security experts say
is the only way to guarantee security in electronic systems -- and tiny
things, such as the order in which topics are discussed in the meetings
they hold. To hear members of the committee tell it, the whole process has
become a circus -- a circus that illustrates how difficult it might be to
eventually create a national standard for voting systems.  [...]
  http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/09/29/voting_machine_standards/



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