Talk:Information assurance

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1 Ch-ch-ch-anges
2 Added header back
- 2.1 == GAUNTLET DOWN ON SELECTED IMAGE

[edit] Ch-ch-ch-anges

There's been a lot of them. And it looks like some IA practioners have been updating the article. How about adding the ALE SLE ARO formula? Luis F. Gonzalez 23:15, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Added header back

The IA Asset header was removed for some reason. Luis F. Gonzalez 01:55, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] == GAUNTLET DOWN ON SELECTED IMAGE

Image talk: Information Assurance.png,

DISPUTED AND OFFENSIVE IMAGE:

This image is an inappropriate image to be associated with the US Federal Government's "Information Assurance" missions.

The "Information Assurance" image that has been posted is contains an image from the medieval Christian Crusades, only the Christian cross has been removed from the knight's garment; see below link of traditional woodcuts:

http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/christian/blxtn_crus_knights.htm

The image of a Medieval European Christian Knight, welding a European broadsword against enemies of their Domain may be construed as deeply offensive and threatening to persons who are non-European, not of the Christian faith and to many persons supporting gender equality.

This image is especially offensive to persons from or with an understanding of non-occidental cultures, histories or influences.

For a well-researched discussion of the 'European Christian Crusading Knight' topic from a non-occidental academic researcher source; please read the following academic paper to understand why these seemingly innoculous images and cultural myths are highly offensive to others around the world:

"RIDING THE HORSE, WRITING THE CULTURAL MYTH: THE EUROPEAN KNIGHT AND THE AMERICAN COWBOY AS AS EQUESTRIAN HEROES M Bos,nak, C Ceyhan - Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations, 2003 - alternativesjournal.net Turkish Journal of International Relations, Vol.2, No.1, Fall 2003

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&cluster=4993855705917508131

Additonally, the thinly veiled Christian religious image in question, which was generated by the US Department of Defense [DOD], and is in current use by the USAF, also maybe seen as being highly offensive to the religious tolerance mandates and principals expressed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the first section of the Bill of Rights and as such they may represent a violation of recent court rulings and agreements on religious diversity tolerance issues within the DOD.

[Please read the text of the US national documents that govern US national principals and which all military members and elected officials swear an oath to @: Http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/constitution.html]

Please also review the DOD's own published material on Religious Diversity Training Awareness:

[1] As the DOD's own publications explain, the aforementioned US national documents were designed to:

1. The Amendment was designed to ensure domestic tranquility. The Founding Fathers intended to protect religion and religious groups from the control of the state; and to protect the wide variety of religious practices already in place in Colonial America. The effort tried to avoid placing any one religious organization in a favored position over another.

 2. The Amendment helped to diminish the abuse, taxation, discrimination, corruption, and persecution often associated with state religion.

3. The Amendment provided for the separation of religion from the control of the state, and to permit maximum freedom to the religious.

4. The Amendment is the basis for religious expression in our society, and in the military.

Given the DOD's own Equal Employee Opportunity [EEO] guidelines on religious awareness and tolerance, this particular art image is NOT an appropriate 'art graphic image' to be associated with the DOD's 'Information Assurance' programme; nor should it be used to advance any US Government programme in the future.

Clearly because this particular 'graphic art image' is inflammatory and smacks of 'Holy War' to many, it could expose the DOD/USAF up to litigation and lead to a legal challenge in the US courts on the basis of religious intolerance.

Therefore, because it could possibly put US taxpayer funds at 'waste risk' if the DOD has to defend again such a lawsuit in the US courts, it should be removed immediately from the active DOD art inventory.

Furthermore, for non-compliance to religious tolerance national principals, this image needs to be IMMEDIATELY RETIRED from active use as a US federally and DOD endorsed emblem associated with the subject of "Information Assurance".

When the DOD promotes internally and publishes images to the open 'world wide web' it should take into account, our US national principals and our nation's historical diversity.

A reponsible digital cyber graphic image art and DOD Information Assurance publication policy is not just about engineering, science, security technology and intellectual property issues. [See: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/internationalprojects/working_group_reports/digital_imagery.html]

A well formed knowledge driven "IA graphic digital domain art policy" at the DOD should include broad and collaborative research and education in the area of 'graphic image provenance'. As well as comprehensive field training on how to selected graphic images that are appropriate to and supportive of current US public diplomacy goals and efforts.

A collaborative public diplomacy audit design and use review by DOD history and cultural reviewers would ensure that images that may be contrary to present DOD policies are not promoted or promlegated.

Such a collaborative public diplomacy review could also lead to building a open knowledge-driven cache of useful Information Assurance art training materials to be dissimination amoung the troops for use as cross-cultural trust building materials.

Such a review and such training would reference and build upon existing DOD guidelines on 'cultural diversity' and 'cultural sensitivity' and give fielded troops an understanding of and instruction about how to handle the diversity of graphic art digital imagery libraries that are available to them throughout the US government and DOD.

It would also assist troops in understanding how they and others can preserved, displayed, understand, perceived and be influenced by images presented in the global cyber domain.

To include a collaborative public diplomacy review of how significant cultural and historical materials maybe used is imperative, because published images on the open Internet have wide-ranging and potential negative impact on so many related areas.

The NIST, US State Department, Library of Congress [2] and other governmental agencies and departments can assist the DOD in designing and sponsoring Information Assurance training on "cultural sensitivity in the arts".

This art focused IA training will only assist the DOD in its current global missions and in understanding how their art images and art selections may project and appear to others around the globe.

To support further this removal request, I am also supplying selected academically, vetted, historical research links and information below. This is a fraction of what is available in the academic sphere in many languages on the World Wide Web.

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Why this Image is under dispute and offensive to many around the globe and why this image is not just some benign western "Camelot" movie happy image myth:

The Christian Crusades were conducted throughout Medieval Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and later in the Americas, Sub-Sahara Africa and Asia.

"The European Crusaders were religious, military, political, and commercial expeditions against rival religions."

[3]

Crusading European knights were the terrorist militias of their time and also at the vanguard of ethnic cleansing.

Rivals from the existing pantheon of global religions all became targets of attacks. Rivals included: Islam, Judaism, rival Christian, and an assortment of 'non-Abrahamic' religious groups, indigenous people's religions and the non-religious.

The rise of Crusading European Knights and their opposing warriors also had important and interesting impacts on women.

The Christian crusades led to accusations of soccery against women and men, seizure of the accused properties and subsequent grusome torture and public executions as examples for swaying the masses to submit to and obey the dominant religious doctrines in Europe of the time.

According to several academic researchers, "The society from which the crusaders were drawn was one dominated by men. The powerful military roles of warrior and ruler were expected to be fulfilled by men. These roles were active and influential. Women were considered to have a limited role within the military and political sphere, due to their socially constructed image of passivity, weakness, fearfulness and helplessness."

[Sources: Thesis: [1]"The Changing Roles of Women in Outremer at the Time of the Crusades", [2000] by Laura Joy Chandler,<thesis supervisor: Professor John Moorhead>LJ Chandler - scrimicie.smithware.ca [2] Vern L. Bullough, Brenda Shelton and Sarah Slavin, The subordinated sex A history of attitudes towards women, revised ed. (USA: The University of Georgia Press, 1988), p. 130; Jacques Dalarum, 'The clerical gaze', in Klapisch-Zuber, Silences of the Middle Ages, pp. 21-22.]

But to in an interesting twist on gender roles, to receive "eternal life", in a Christian vision of heaven and to supplement the crusading militia forces.

Some Christian and Muslim women bent their traditional medieval gender roles and even cross-dressed, so they too could participate in the medieval religious terrorism and pilgrammage campaigns according to research by Chandler and Near East eye-witnesses such as: Ibn Al-Athir.

"...the promise of the crusade, that those who died on the pilgrimage would receive the reward of eternal life."

[The Changing Roles of Women in Outremer at the Time of the Crusades", [2000] by Laura Joy Chandler; LJ Chandler - scrimicie.smithware.ca]

"It is interesting that Ibn Al-Athir describes...women being fully armed and mounted like knights."

Ibn Al-Athir writes:

"On the day of battle more than one women rode out with them like a knight… clothed only in a coat of mail they were not recognised as women until they had been stripped of their arms".

On the opposing sides, even in Muslim countries, women also did the same according to Usamah Ibn-Munqidh.

"The Christian authors also seem to interpret their enemies' actions in terms of religious perversity, stating that Muslim women engaged in sorcery whilst present in combat settings." according to Chandler.

The many "Old World" Crusades and global medieval religious wars led to the bloody and intolerant Catholic Inquisition which spawned the next generation of 'European Crusading Religious Knights' known as the 'Conquistadores' and which kicked off anew centuries of oppressive European colonialism and asymetrical warfare around the global.

In fact, colonial mercenary Christopher Columbus's voyages, was an effort to erase Christian nation-states' excessive war debt and was a global "resource race" that took place at the end of seven centuries of the "Reconquista", in which the last Moorish kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula (in Granada) was brought under Christian control and there was a massive "ethnic cleansing" of the peninsula. [Points of view in the US are not homogeneous: OCT. 2, 2006 CULTURE AND SOCIETY "Goodbye, Columbus; hello, Indigenous Peoples Day?" http://www.religionlink.org/tip_.../ tip_061002.php]

Through Christopher Colon and his crews of Jewish, Christian and Islamic believers the "Abrahamic religions, traditions and over-heated arguements and prejudices" common in 1492 Seville, Spain for the first time to the Americas.

The European 'Conquistadores' were the successors to the Medival European Crusading Knights and when they were launched into the Americas, they:

- helped annihilate the indigenous populations and cultures of this "newly discovered resource rich" "New World"; - helped birth 'massive resource consumption and waste of "New World' resources; - helped initiate 'a global cheap labour search competition'; - pave the way for the 'African slavery terror and holocaust'; and - and opened the continent to 'waves of religious and political refugees fleeing from persecution and warfare' in their own native lands.

The non-mythical 'Conquistadors' and other 'Crusading European Knights' history was profoundly ugly and is clearly an extension of 'Old World' antagonisms, aspirations, greed and 'ethnic and tribal baggage' and it remains a very sensitive topic in most of the non-Western world and in the Americas to this day.

In the 'Old World', the Crusaders are impacting our present day world since:

"The relationship between Christianity and Islam was permanently altered and the Crusades continue through this day to influence how Islam sees the West."

[4]

++++++++++++

Image Log Data:

Public domain

"This image is a work of a U.S. military or Department of Defense employee, taken or made during the course of an employee's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain."

See the DoD copyright policy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Information_Assurance.png#filehistory

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

      Date/Time       User    Dimensions      File size       Comment

(current) 02:57, 28 February 2007 Pmsyyz 500×500 294 KB

Higher res

18:35, 4 January 2007 Pmsyyz 272×272 33 KB United States Department of Defense en:Information Assurance emblem

File links

The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed):

  * Information assurance

US Military Source:

http://www.schriever.af.mil/shared/media/ggallery/hires/AFG-060427-040.jpg

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Building the Traffic Brain

Four Stories Below Ground, a Team of Engineers and Computers Tries to Out-Think Rush Hour by Chris Coates LA Downtown News [5]

It's 10 minutes after 3 on a recent Tuesday, and across Los Angeles the afternoon rush is just getting started. Four stories below ground in City Hall East, Transportation Engineering Associate Kartik Patel is watching it all unfold behind a massive computer with page after page of flashing dots, numbers and codes. Four stories below the Civic Center, the Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control Center monitors 75% of the city's intersections through a system of cameras and sensors. It's worth about $210 million. Here, Kartik Patel watches afternoon rush hour. Photo by Gary Leonard.

All of a sudden, up pops a map tracking an Orange Line bus in the Valley. Patel appears perplexed. "There's not many buses running there for some reason," he says. "I wonder why."

Welcome to the Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control (ATSAC) Center, a big name for a little-known facility that controls virtually every stretch of road in the city. A mix of air traffic control and war room, it's the powerful brain of the most advanced traffic system in the nation.

From this windowless, 5,000-square-foot bunker beneath the Civic Center, engineers like Patel can manipulate every aspect of most of the city's thousands of traffic signals - from how long lights on Spring Street stay red to changing directional lanes on the Fourth Street bridge over the L.A. River. They also have the capability to monitor MTA buses and display messages on roadside signs in real-time.

The lion's share of the work, however, is devoted to controlling about 75% of the city's 4,200 traffic indicators. It's all accomplished through a network of software specially made by city transportation engineers.

The computer gets its information mostly through a system of wire sensors called "loop detectors" buried an inch below many major intersections. The wires give off a small electrical charge, which is interrupted when a vehicle passes over it.

"Most of them are so far back people don't know when they go over it," Patel said. "But when they do, a whole bunch of data comes back to the center."

In fact, the data come back once every second, giving the computer enough information to figure out how much traffic is moving through an intersection and whether a change in signal timing (called a "cycle") could maximize traffic flow. An engineer could then make the change manually via the computer, allowing the team to correct problems as they arise.

"Imagine if we didn't have this," Patel said. "We'd have to drive out there. It saves us tremendous amounts of time."

Electronic Decision-Making

At many intersections, the thinking is left to the computer, as it is programmed to determine the best signal times and make the changes itself. This auto-program, Patel explains, is best suited for intersections with constantly changing traffic patterns that would be impossible for engineers to keep tabs on. The program also gives priority to public buses, allowing them more time to get through intersections.

One area where it doesn't work, however, is on intersections in the Central Business District. "Downtown has very short blocks and a very consistent pattern. It's a bad candidate for this," Patel said, adding that Downtown streets are better served by lights programmed to a fixed daily schedule.

Aside from that, nearly everything at the ATSAC is done automatically. For example, if a signal goes out at First and Main streets, the computer will automatically page a crew to repair it. "We don't even need to be here to get these things fixed," Patel said. "We're trying to make everything as automated as possible."

In fact, the center is staffed with only 18 people from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., although bigger crews are called in for special events like the L.A. Marathon or the Grammys. The rest of the time, the computer runs everything, and engineers can check in via laptops.

That's not to say there isn't a lot of work to do. Engineers are constantly perusing data to determine which intersections need longer crossing times, turning arrows and dozens of other considerations.

Engineers can see the results almost immediately because of the network of 250 cameras posted high above some intersections. The cameras, fed to the center with fiber-optic cables, are attached to 45-foot-tall poles and some buildings. In Downtown Los Angeles, the cameras are on such landmarks as City Hall and Staples Center. On a recent visit, one camera above Figueroa Street and Olympic Boulevard offered a birds-eye view of the Downtown Car Wash and the massive hole for the planned L.A. Live entertainment complex.

"We try to place them strategically where you can see down corridors - five, six, seven signals in a row," Patel said.

Olympic Inspiration

While traffic has seemingly always been an issue for car-crazed Los Angeles, it wasn't until the run-up to the 1984 Summer Olympics that the city decided something needed to be done to monitor it.

The result was a modest traffic control system operated by the city's transportation department that watched over 118 intersections around Exposition Park and the Coliseum, home base for the Summer Games. The pilot program, which relied on loop detectors and closed-circuit cameras, proved a huge success and was soon a national model.

A decade after the Olympics, the ATSAC proved itself again in the aftermath of the Northridge earthquake. With many area freeways crippled, engineers reconfigured intersections to increase traffic flow across the city. "We essentially turned Washington and Olympic into the 10 Freeway by giving it 150 seconds" between signals, Patel said.

Today, the ATSAC facility is worth about $210 million, said Senior Transportation Engineer Verej Janoyan, and plans are in the works to have monitoring at every intersection in the city within the next few years. It's just a matter of funding - each intersection costs about $80,000 to equip. The facility has a $1 million annual budget, although many of the projects are funded through grants.

Genevieve Giuliano, a professor in the USC School of Policy, Planning and Development, said the costs are necessary because the city depends on the automobile so much. "For a place like Los Angeles it's worth the investment because the system is so critical to mobility," she said.

Patel takes the point further.

"Most people driving around L.A. don't even know there's a traffic management center," Patel said. "That's the beauty of it. They have no idea. Only when it's gone do you realize."

Contact Chris Coates at chris@downtownnews.com.

page 1, 1/30/2006 © Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to redistribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.

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More reading about "Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control (ATSAC) Center" system at:

http://trafficinfo.lacity.org/html/atsac_1.html

[edit] ============== Insider Hacking? Information Assurance SABATOGE? =====

Mischievous duo plead not guilty to LA traffic hacking scandal Posted Jan 11th 2007 12:01PM by Darren Murph Filed under: Transportation; Source: http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/11/mischievous-duo-plead-not-guilty-to-la-traffic-hacking-scandal/

"We've seen our fair share of scheming and conniving, but a duo of engineers that were previously employed by LA's Automated Traffic Surveillance Center allegedly pulled off one of the most impactful jobs we've ever heard of. Both men have just pled not guilty to charges of "manipulating traffic signals to disrupt transportation across the city in the run-up to a union protest last August," a case which pins them with deeds such as identity theft and illegally using those 1337 skills to wreck havoc. In a situation eerily similar to that seen in The Italian Job, the pair overrode intentional barriers to access the traffic light system in LA, and proceeded to not only force lights to stay red for extended periods of time in some of the city's most critical and congested intersections, but locked out city officials from entering back in and reversing the changes as well. Ranking right up there beside the numerous ATM hacks we've seen, this job led to massive amount of chaos in the following days, creating gridlocks in some areas that reportedly took "four days" to totally clear out. If convicted, the two could face several years in prison, but if not, we're sure risk-loving tech executives everywhere are drooling to pick these two up and put 'em to (honest, law-abiding) work.

[Via The Register]

Tags: court, crime, criminal, hack, hacking, illegal, la, traffic, traffic light, TrafficLight

++++++++++++++++++ California | Local News LA Times 2 L.A. traffic engineers must face trial

"They are accused of trying to sabotage traffic flow at four busy intersections just before a job action by the city's Engineers and Architects Assn."

By Tami Abdollah, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer October 13, 2007 A judge on Friday ordered two high-ranking Los Angeles transportation engineers to stand trial on felony charges of allegedly gaining unauthorized access to the city's computer system in order to sabotage traffic flow at four busy city intersections in August 2006.

Gabriel Murillo, 38, and Kartik Patel, 34, both engineers with the city's Automated Traffic Surveillance Center, were charged in January with illegally accessing the computer system that controls 3,200 of the city's 4,300 traffic signals.

Prosecutors said the men changed computer codes preventing transportation managers from reprogramming and reactivating traffic lights for four days at four intersections. No accidents were attributed to the outage.

The four intersections were allegedly chosen, authorities said, because they would significantly disrupt traffic. The intersections were Sky Way at World Way at Los Angeles International Airport; Coldwater Canyon Avenue at Riverside Drive in Studio City; Glendale Boulevard at Berkeley Avenue in Echo Park; and 1st and Alameda streets in Little Tokyo.

The illegal access occurred hours before a job action by members of the Engineers and Architects Assn., which represents 7,500 city workers. About 1,500 union members walked off their jobs. City officials had temporarily blocked engineers from access to the computer system during the labor dispute.

"This amounts to sabotage and [should] not be tolerated no matter what the dispute or cause," Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said in a statement.

Murillo was charged with two felonies: identity theft and unauthorized access to a city computer. Patel was charged with five felonies: unauthorized access to a city computer and four counts of unauthorized disruption or denial of computer services. Both men were released on their own recognizance, but they may not access city computers or set foot on Department of Transportation property without their attorneys.

James Blatt, Murillo's attorney, said he was disappointed by the judge's decision and that his client had not been informed that access privileges on the system he helped design had been changed. Blatt said when his client discovered the system had been altered, he changed it back to the original settings.

"There was never a desire by him to damage or sabotage the system in any way," Blatt said. "In fact, it was the opposite, his sole goal was to protect the system."

Attorney Alan Eisner, representing Patel, said he believed his client would be exonerated in the trial. "In essence, this is a work-related dispute that the prosecutor has escalated into a criminal accusation," Eisner said. "We feel that's not supported by the facts in the case."

Authorities said it took four days to get the city's traffic control system fully operational.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Samuel Mayerson ordered Murillo and Patel to return to court Oct. 26 for arraignment. If convicted the men could face several years in state prison. Neither man has a criminal record.

tami.abdollah@latimes.com

>>>>> Ziled Group

Talk:Information assurance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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[edit] Ch-ch-ch-anges

[edit] Added header back

[edit] == GAUNTLET DOWN ON SELECTED IMAGE

[edit] ==================== ================= =========

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[edit] ============== Insider Hacking? Information Assurance SABATOGE? =====

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