Remember all of the discussion in the summer of 2007 about wildfires in California and in Greece? Many people raised questions about whether some of those fires were, in fact, ecoterrorism. There was also some evidence that devices made from cellular phones may have been used to ignite wildland fires. This is plausible enough, considering that remote bombs triggered by cellular phones have been used in other terrorist attacks. But after the fires were extinguished, the story disappeared from the news.
These mysterious remote cell phone bombs have now surfaced - in California.
San Jose and Santa Clara police chiefs announced Wednesday the results of a massive sting operation in their cities. Operation Meltdown, as the joint effort was called, netted investigators hundreds of criminals, tons of stolen copper, dozens of stolen cars and weapons, and in one case, homemade bombs.
A Fremont man was arrested in October as part of Operation Meltdown. He is accused of trying to sell the officers improvised explosive devices capable of being denoted remotely by a cell phone. During a news conference at San Jose Police headquarters Wednesday morning, police showed a video, recorded by hidden camera, of the suspect demonstrating the technology to officers by detonating a bomb for them.
Operation Meltdown was begun in March 2007. Undercover officers from both departments opened a fake metal-recycling business in the city of Santa Clara called Jose Clara Co-Op.
Within days, San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis said, customers started showing up offering to sell what appeared to be stolen copper. Over the course of the next year, the undercover officers purchased 14 tons of copper with a street vale of almost $100,000. Soon after the officers began buying the copper, though, Davis said visitors to the recycling shop started offering to sell other stolen goods. The officers eventually purchased 40 stolen vehicles and 74 firearms, including 21 assault weapons.
Over the life of the operation, Davis said, 273 suspects were investigated, 63 of whom were arrested over the course of the investigation. Another 73 suspects were picked up during a sweep Tuesday. There are still another 70 suspects with outstanding warrants yet to be arrested…
Vehicle theft was also part of the picture, including some mighty fancy rides:
40 stolen vehicles were purchased. The vehicles include a BMW, Porsche Carrera, Nissan 350Z, Audi, Toyota MR2, SUV’s, sedans, motorcycles and a new Ford Edge SUV.
Who is involved?
The article mentioned that “many of the suspects were identified as gang members,” but no suspects were named, nor were the gangs identified.
U.S. officials monitoring terrorist web sites have discovered a call for using forest fires as weapons against “crusader” nations, in what may explain some recent wildfires in places like southern California and Greece.
A terrorist website was discovered recently that carried a posting that called for “Forest Jihad.” The posting was listed on the Internet on Nov. 26 and reported in U.S. intelligence channels last week.
The statement, in Arabic, said that “summer has begun so do not forget the Forest Jihad.”
The writer called on all Muslims in the United States, Europe, Russia and Australia to “start forest fires.”
The posting quoted imprisoned Al Qaida terrorist Abu Musab Al-Suri, as saying “Jihad is an art just like poetry, music, and the fine arts. There are people that draw and there are others that are jihadists. They both act upon inspiration.”
But don’t get too excited. The test will run for just six months, only within Europe, and only on the Airbus A-318. And the experience will be just as regimented and micromanaged as everything else having to do with air travel in the twenty-first century:
During the first three months of the study, passengers will be allowed only to send text messages and e-mails. But during the second three months (originally the study was scheduled to last a year), passengers will be allowed to make voice calls. According to Wi-Fi Net News, calls can only be made above 10,000 feet and depending on passenger feedback, cabin crew can disable the service at any time. As you may expect, the satellite calls will be $2.50 per minute. Also, passengers will not know they’re flying on the test aircraft until after they board.
Hmmm…wonder what would happen if a flight attendant were to overhear a passenger using a cell phone to complain to someone about the airline, the plane, or the flight crew?
Since cell phone towers don’t reach thousands of feet into the air the cellular signals will be converted into satellite communications that will vault into space and then connect to a ground network.
The technology used by the new generation of aircraft is now so advanced that aviation officials fear that terrorists could use it to fly the plane.>
Aviation regulators have refused to certify Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner passenger jet until it redesigns its computer system to protect against such an event, The Times has learnt.
The Federal Aviation Authority is concerned that terrorists could use the Dreamliner’s in-flight internet system to connect to “systems critical to the safety and maintenance of the aircraft”.
In a report released last week, the FAA said that Boeing had left the pilots’ computers open to attack by connecting the Dreamliner’s entertainment system to the pilots’ controls.
A hacker with a computer and some IT training potentially could hijack the system from his seat.
No, you can’t go to the Google menu and order a fancy new phone! Google is not providing cellular phone service at this time, nor is Google manufacturing or selling phone handsets.
The Google Phone is a project under development. No new products or services are ready to be offered to consumers.
The Google Phone project, code-named Android, is to create a new cellular phone software platform. This will consist of a cell phone operating system, together with mobile applications, that will run on many different cell phone handsets offered by various major service providers.
The Android project will introduce more competition into the cellular phone marketplace. To keep their market share, other smartphone vendors that are not part of the Android consortium will have to lower their prices, open up their proprietary software to outside developers, or both.
This project will undoubtedly encourage more experimentation and innovation in terms of what can be done with cellular phone devices.
Google to bid on wireless spectrum - What does Google plan to do with it?
Google is lining up financing to bid on wireless spectrum in the Federal Communication Commission’s upcoming 700MHz auction, and it’s already built a small high-speed wireless network at its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., to test out what it could do with the spectrum, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The Journal cited sources saying the company is planning on bidding in the auction, set to take place early next year. Google has obtained a test license from the FCC that it’s using to test technology on a small wireless network on its campus, the article said. And it’s supposedly using prototypes of handsets that use the company’s newly announced Android software…
After all the fuss and hoopla surrounding Google and the auction, it would seem ridiculous if the company didn’t bid. Google lobbied the FCC hard for rules to be passed as part of the auction that would require license winners to allow open devices on that part of their network.
CNET News suggests that Google will probably lease this spectrum to other wireless providers to use with the Android project, rather than attempting to build its own wireless network from scratch.
Minivan News has been covering the Male’ Explosions, the arrests, and the aftermath. The important thing to remember, of course, is that Islam is not to blame (?!)
This is yet another way to do evil. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are terrorist training videos on YouTube or sold on DVD to show how to do this. Next time, they’ll use a stolen card so that it will not be traced back to the perpetrator, but to the rightful owner of the phone. Make sure it doesn’t happen to you!
Take-Home Lessons for Everyone:
If your phone is lost or stolen, report it immediately.
Send unwanted or obsolete cell phones to a recycling facility that will wipe out all of the information in the phone pertaining to you, and either resell or destroy the phone.
Credit for this goes not to international media but to the efforts of hundreds of Myanmar’s citizens using the Internet and mobile phones to send first hand accounts, photographs and video footage to the rest of the world…this time technology is playing a crucial role in helping subvert the Myanmar government’s attempts to control the media meaning that the eyes of the world are on Myanmar and its oppressive regime like never before.
The White House criticized Myanmar on Friday for cutting off Internet access and called on “all civilized nations” to pressure the military-run government to end its violent crackdown on protesters.
“They don’t want the world to see what is going on there,” White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said….(more)
…Myanmar’s Internet service is tightly controlled and only sporadically available even in the best of times, but the military has tightened its controls amid anti-government protests.
In Bangkok, an official at a Thai telecom that provides satellite services to Myanmar also said some Internet service inside the country had been cut….
There have been massive support from Myanmar bloggers for the current protest activities, and the whole Myanmar blogosphere is overwhelmed with news and photos. Because of that, Myanmar Junta got chickened out and banned the political blogs, almost immediately followed by banning the whole blogger domain hence all other Myanmar blogs. A few bloggers tried to bypass proxy and blog using email-to-blog techniques….
The Burmese junta was last night desperately trying to shut down internet and telephone links to the outside world after a stream of blogs and mobile phone videos began capturing the dramatic events on the streets.
In the past 24 hours observers monitoring the flow of information have noticed a marked downturn, with the reported closure of cybercafes and the disconnection of mobile telephones.
Yes, but Myanmar is a Socialist nation, we’re all thinking…that could happen waaaay over there, but not here, in the west, where we have freedom of speech. You think? The methods may be different, but the results are the same. Check out these ongoing updates about internet censorship:
We don’t have all the evidence in yet, but we need to be asking a lot more questions. Just because a few of the local outbreaks of fire appear to have been caused by simple carelessness does not mean that all of them were.
Greek broadcasting station SKAi reported that arson devices triggered by cell phones were found. Where have we heard of that before?
For quite a while, I’ve been keeping a separate “scratch pad” blog, called 1389 Message Blog. Throughout the day, I post various links, along with comments and messages, sometimes through the blog editor, but mostly by cell phone. I use this later on as raw materials for other writing that I do, including articles on 1389 Blog, the Ft. Hard Knox Wiki, and other places.
Well…I finally realized that I am not going to get around to using all of this material myself, so I’ve decided to open it up to public viewing.
Please don’t expect anything fancy! I treat 1389 Message Blog as a workspace, so it’s always “under construction.” The posts that come directly from my cell phone might not have titles or tags. If I happen to be testing something new, I might change or delete a blog post. If I’ve used the material in an article, I may move everything to another blog or to a Wiki page and link to the new article from the post in 1389 Message Blog, so that I don’t have to update it in two places.
Thus, if you find a link on 1389 Message Blog to something interesting that you want to do some serious writing about, I suggest that you link directly to the source, not to the post in 1389 Message Blog.
