I-kid-you-freakin’-not, from the AP via WUSA9: Trains, Bloggers Are Threats In Drill:
It’s the government’s idea of a really bad day: Washington’s Metro trains shut down. Seaport computers in New York go dark. Bloggers reveal locations of railcars with hazardous materials. Airport control towers are disrupted in Philadelphia and Chicago. Overseas, a mysterious liquid is found on London’s subway.
And that’s just for starters.
Those incidents were among dozens of detailed, mock disasters confronting officials rapid-fire in the U.S. government’s biggest-ever “Cyber Storm” war game, according to hundreds of pages of heavily censored files obtained by The Associated Press. The Homeland Security Department ran the exercise to test the nation’s hacker defenses, with help from the State Department, Pentagon, Justice Department, CIA, National Security Agency and others.
The laundry list of fictional catastrophes – which include hundreds of people on “No Fly” lists suddenly arriving at airport ticket counters – is significant because it suggests what kind of real-world trouble keeps people in the White House awake at night.
And it shows what idiots are at the Department of Homeland [In]Security.
Imagined villains include hackers, bloggers and even reporters. After mock electronic attacks overwhelmed computers at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an unspecified “major news network” airing reports about the attackers refused to reveal its sources to the government. Other simulated reporters were duped into spreading “believable but misleading” information that worsened fallout by confusing the public and financial markets, according to the government’s files.
Isn’t this the point when you call Jack Bauer to find the source?
The $3 million, invitation-only war game simulated what the U.S. described as plausible attacks over five days in February 2006 against the technology industry, transportation lines and energy utilities by anti-globalization hackers. The government is organizing another multimillion-dollar war game, Cyber Storm 2, to take place in early March.
So, bloggers and journalists are homeland security threats, now?
Where’s the wargame for the thousands of people coming across our southern border? What about the northern border?
How about the Iraqis illegally entering through the southern border? Illegal border crossing isn’t just for people from Central America anymore.
Wait, I forgot what Director Chertoff of the Department of Homeland [In]Security has previously said: ““We’re living in a world in which lettuce and fruit is not being picked because we are enforcing the law.”
And, another comment:
Secretary Chertoff: I mean, I understand it’s personally difficult—must be personally difficult sometimes for people to hear discussion on the radio or on television or on blogs which is intemperate, where people are called names. That’s where I do think we step over the line if someone says that you’re a sellout or a traitor if you support the bill. Or sometimes—I mean, I don’t spend a lot of time in the blogosphere but sometimes I see blogs. And, you know, when people write blogs, some of them are well reasoned. But some of them have a lot of capital letters and exclamation points and a lot of language that you tend to hear in an Army barracks and a lot of cursing and attacking of other people’s motives. I don’t think that that’s particularly helpful.
How about a nerve gas attack at a mall? Or a suicide bomber? We still haven’t caught the anthrax mailer!
How about totally incompetent security checks at the airport? How does a 16 year-old get on an airplane with a bag that has rope, handcuffs, and duct tape?
How about our ports? Wait, I forgot, Dubai isn’t running them, so everything is safe there. *snort*