Posted: Wed Jun 19, 2013 10:45 am Post subject: McChrystal journalist Michael Hastings dies in 'car crash'
Quote:
Hastings gained national attention in 2010 after exposing inflammatory comments made by Gen. Stanley McChrystal about President Barack Obama and the civilian leadership of the military.
Rolling Stone, which employed Hastings as a contributing editor, praised him Tuesday as a “fearless journalist” who sought out hard stories and refused to “cozy up to power.”
“My friend Michael Hastings died last night in a car crash in Los Angeles... As a journalist, he specialized in speaking truth to power and laying it all out there. He was irascible in his reporting and sometimes/often/always infuriating in his writing: he lit a bright lamp for those who wanted to follow his example,” his friend and co-reporter Matt Farwell told the Rolling Stone.
On his show Tuesday afternoon, The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur choked up while reporting that Hastings had passed away. Hastings had frequently appeared on his show to discuss a number of issues. Uygur said Hastings death was a “great loss for the country.”
A person who witnessed the crash early Tuesday morning said he saw Hastings speeding down the road in his car when it suddenly jackknifed, slammed into a tree, and burst into flames.
The writing-about-writing crowd is abuzz with discussion about the rather unusual death of Buzzfeed/RollingStone/Gawker writer Michael Hastings. Mr. Hastings, whose name is never mentioned in the press without the immediate mention that he was “the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal”, died in a single-car accident in Los Angeles yesterday morning. This in and of itself is not unusual, but the circumstances of the crash and its aftermath won’t do anything to quiet the conspiracy theorists who are already claiming that the military-industrial complex found a way to cap the guy.
The definitive video of the incident can be found here. It features everything you’d want in a crash story, including:
The ejected motor and transmission (seen above)
Video of the car burning with the fury of a thousand suns
A man holding a goat in his arms and stroking it to keep calm as someone else discusses the incident
The mention of Mercedes-Benz
That last bit is the critical part. Mercedes-Benz USA is no doubt sweating bullets over this one. An eyewitness report says that Mr. Hastings was driving at an excessive rate of speed down a suburban street when his car “suddenly jackknifed” and hit a tree “with the force of a bomb”. The Benzo, which by the wheels and quarter-panel appears to be the relatively prosaic but cheerfully stylish C250 four-cylinder turbo coupe, proceeded to throw its powertrain out of the engine bay, immediately catch fire in a manner typically reserved for episodes of “Miami Vice”, and burn its driver until said driver was charred beyond recognition.
This isn’t good. The official ad copy for the C-Coupe states
Like every Mercedes-Benz coupe, it wraps four sport seats and passion for the road in sleek style. And like every C-Class, it’s a paragon of engineering virtue and extraordinary value. Put it together, and it’s like nothing else.
Nowhere in there does it say anything about “then this sucker is going to jackknife out of control and char you like a steak ordered by a high-school dropout at Ponderosa”. No wonder the guy in the video is stroking his goat to keep it calm. If I owned a C250 I’d be outside staring at the thing wondering if it was safe to drive it at 100mph in a suburb.
...
But I’m not here to speak ill of the dead. I’m here to state that I’ve seen dozens of cars hit walls and stuff at high speeds and the number of them that I have observed to eject their powertrains and immediately catch massive fire is, um, ah, zero. Modern cars are very good at not catching fire in accidents. The Mercedes-Benz C-Class, which is an evolutionary design from a company known for sweating the safety details over and above the Euro NCAP requirements, should be leading the pack in the not-catching-on-fire category.
Nor is the C-Class known for sudden veering out of control into trees and whatnot.
...
Mr. Hastings’ aggressively Democrat-friendly storytelling has the Internet already considering the idea that his death was engineered somehow. I can’t say it’s totally unlikely. As noted above, the reported (and videotaped) behavior of the C250 was not in line with what we’d expect. ...
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sat Jun 22, 2013 11:31 am Post subject:
Another Hitlerian Big Lie from the FBI
REPORTS: Hours Before His Death, Michael Hastings Sent This Email Saying He Was Being Investigated By The FBI
Pamela Engel, provided by
Published 2:01 pm, Friday, June 21, 2013
About 15 hours before dying in a fiery car crash at about 4:30 a.m. in L.A. on June 17, journalist Michael Hastings sent an email to several colleagues that said the FBI was investigating him and he was "onto a big story."
The 33-year-old had been working as a BuzzFeed writer and Rolling Stone contributing editor at the time of his death.
The subject line of the email, obtained by Los Angeles news station KTLA, was "FBI investigation, re: NSA."
Here's the full text:
Hey [words blurred out] — the Feds are interviewing my "close friends and associates." Perhaps if the authorities arrive "BuzzFeed GQ", er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.
Also: I'm onto a big story, and need to go off the [radar] for a bit.
All the best, and hope to see you all soon.
Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs, who met Hastings when he was embedded in Biggs' unit in Afghanistan, described the email as "very panicked."
"It alarmed me very much," Biggs told KTLA. "I just said it doesn’t seem like him. I don’t know, I just had this gut feeling and it just really bothered me."
The FBI has denied it was ever investigating Hastings, and police do not suspect foul play in his death.
It's not clear what "big story" Hastings was referring to in his email, but he reportedly had been talking to his boss, BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith, about a story on Barrett Brown.
Brown, a journalist affiliated with the amorphous hacker collective Anonymous, was arrested for threatening an FBI officer and sharing a link to stolen credit card information taken from Stratfor. The 31-year-old, who faces up to 100 years in prison, is in jail awaiting a September trial.
The LA Times notes that Hastings was also researching a story about a privacy lawsuit brought by Florida socialite Jill Kelley against the Defense Department and the FBI.
And the subject line mentions the NSA, which has been in the news all month.
Hastings is best-known for his Rolling Stone cover story called "The Runaway General" that led to the resignation of the commander of the entire Afghanistan War, General Stanley McChrystal. He also wrote about the Petraeus scandal and media's cozy relationship with military elites.
Wikileaks tweeted this message on Wednesday:
WikiLeaks ✔
@wikileaks
Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.
11:07 PM - 19 Jun 2013
No other vehicles were involved in the crash, and officials are working to determine whether the car Hastings was driving had any mechanical problems.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Sun Jun 23, 2013 2:57 am Post subject:
Veterans Today:
Michael Hastings “Boston brakes”
Yesterday, Michael Hastings, a 33-year-old reporter responsible for ending the career of renegade General Stanley McChrystal, died in a mysterious “one car accident.”
Hastings exposed General McChrystal as a “cowboy” military leader, unanswerable to civilian command, oblivious to the rules of war and a general more inclined to worry about keeping the flow of heroin from Afghanistan going than anything else.
General McChrystal along with Vice-President Cheney headed JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command), the half-military, half-political group that used death squads and drug cash to fight world terrorism.
JSOC knew no borders. They still don’t. JSOC doesn’t recognize the President as Commander-in-Chief, takes no orders from the secretary of defense or Joint Chiefs of Staff. In fact, many JSOC operatives are employed by civilian contracting firms under the control of political extremists openly opposed to America’s form of government.
Thus, it isn’t hard to understand why President Obama fired General McChrystal. It is equally clear why General McChrystal or his supporters might want Michael Hastings dead.
McChrystal’s friends have the expertise, giving all that is needed, means, motive and opportunity, for an arrest. There won’t even be an investigation.
Boston brakes
Another minor issue, which should be brought up. One of the common methods used by operatives of JSOC to “neutralize” opponents is “Boston brakes.”
The staged “one car accident” is actually taught in classes to members of a number of commands, Special Forces, Navy SEALS, CIA and others. All that is needed is access to a car, someone stupid enough to drive down a lonely road or be out very late at night, and control of accident investigators and a medical examiner.
Not that long ago, an Arizona sheriff who stood his ground against the Mexican drug cartels died in a “Boston brakes” accident. It may very well have been JSOC “operatives” who arranged his death. That man was Larry Deaver.
The “JSOC boys” are mostly “conservatives” and very amenable to “private enterprise.” They are fanatic Zionists, carry bibles wherever they go and account only to “God” who, according to them, seems to love their criminal enterprises...'
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/06/21/flight-800-investigators-admit -they-lied-about-plane-crash/comment-page-1/#comment-489594 _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Even more evidence of likelihood of 'Boston Brakes'; the driver totally loses control of brakes, steering and acceleration.
And he 'just happens' to be caught on (presumably) police dash-cam!!
Well, that explains it(!!); he crashed because he was driving like a lunatic!! _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Even with electronics is it still possible to disable the brakes? I imagine the brake boost system on that car is electronic, but there is still a mechanical hydraulic system, no?
In the dash-cam video, to me, it looks like his brake lights were on. I don't know if his brakes were actually being applied, but it says at least his foot was on the pedal.
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[–]TurkFromAustralia[S] 1 point 1 day ago
Because the electronic stability system uses the software initiated braking (ie: when you turn too sharply, or travelling too fast for your current steering angle), the software will hit the brakes an optimal amount for each wheel individually in order to do as much as it can to help prevent you from entering under-steer (by applying braking a specific amount on each wheel depending on your steering angle). Also, software controls braking through other processes such as, if you hit the brake peddle really fast but don't push it down all the way, it will assume you wanted to push it all the way down and apply 100% braking (which is then limited by the ABS etc), this is a safety feature and more to do with driving psychology. But there are many points of interception of the software interfering with the braking system. I used to have an E46 M3 (2003, first produced for 2001) and all these features were included, so I'm sure a current model Mercedes C250 (or C255?) would have these features and more without doubt.
So to answer your questions, software already does control the braking system, it literally controls everything. In fact, the software will also have a readout of how many objects are around the car and how far away they are (through the radar system on the car) and perhaps even a heat signature of the objects if it contains infrared sensors. I know the 7 series BMW's have the video (optical), radar, heat, sonar AND Lidar sensors all working together to create a real time map of exactly what is going on outside the car in order to correctly make decisions on behalf of the user when entering a potentially dangerous situation.
I bet the military coders could even tell how much distance was in between hastings car and the car in front of him (if there was one or not) in order to ensure there is maximum possible empty space in front of hastings car so that it knows when to hit full throttle and allows itself some distance (space/room) and opportunity to gain as much speed as possible. So, it probably takes this into account before committing to go ahead with the full throttle takeover of the car. Therefore, it would only make sense to do it when hastings was traveling above (say) 50m/h and has enough empty space between him and the road ahead in order to have the distance/opportunity to increase its speed without crashing into something at (say) 70m/h but instead at a speed over 100m/h - this way it ensures death and/or an explosion.
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[–]absconditus00 1 point 1 day ago
Thanks for the information. I have a 06 Lexus GS300 with some of the same features.
I know I can throw the car in neutral while in motion, but I'm locked from throwing it in reverse. I need to get back into the Toyota TIS system to find out if that could be over ridden by a third party hack. Maybe the best thing is just to install a master battery kill switch?
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[–]WideAwakeNWO 1 point 1 day ago
Really, two up votes? Wow. Great article, very informative. Hope this gets seen more.
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[–]TurkFromAustralia[S] 1 point 2 days ago
Please feel free to leave your comments, ideas, suggestions or thoughts below.
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[–]kynchie 1 point 1 day ago
Thanks for the info. The first thing I thought when I learned his car was accelerated past 100mph and there were no skid marks, and given his profile, was that his OnStar system was hacked. Your article is far more forgiving than I would have been about questioning what happened to Michael. It is just too obvious given everything that was going on with him and what is going on with the government right now. My concern, beyond that of what they probably did to Hastings, is that journalists will now be even more reluctant to challenge the government now they they know what the government is capable of and willing to do. I hope the opposite happens and they revolt, but that's unlikely. Thanks for the article and links. Shared.
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[–]TurkFromAustralia[S] 1 point 1 day ago
Thank you for your sharing, up voting and support. I do not have the capability to spread this message on my own, and rely on people like yourself and the wonders of the internet to pick it up and make it known. I created the wordpress blog + reddit account to give this story the possibility of being distributed, I just hope it doesn't end up getting buried and the investigators end up looking at this possibility properly. Once again, thanks for your support, and feel free to tweet, facebook and email around.
Did you notice the results of the poll I've started on the WordPress page? Awch!
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[–]Stupalski 0 points 7 hours ago*
the PBS video is scary as hell. any car with OnSTAR could be taken over in any way.
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[–]Raven_Arabian 1 point 3 hours ago
Which PBS video?
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[–]TurkFromAustralia[S] 1 point 2 hours ago
dude, didn't you click through to the LINK up top? See the main title? It's clickable and leads you to a WordPress blog post, which includes the PBS video and several other things.
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[–]Raven_Arabian 1 point 3 hours ago
Electronic Stability Program (ESP®) This safety breakthrough first introduced by Mercedes-Benz continually monitors your driving inputs and the vehicle's motion to help keep it going in your intended direction, especially in corners and during evasive maneuvers. If it detects wheelspin, severe understeer (plowing), or oversteer (fishtailing), ESP can brake individual wheels and reduce engine power to help bring the vehicle under control. (Disclaimer)
How come this was not there?!
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[–]TurkFromAustralia[S] 1 point 2 hours ago
First of all, ESP would have been disabled by the software. I know in my E46 M3, if you wanted to use the fastest gear shift mode (the 80 millisecond gearshift) you needed to disable ESP & traction control (this was done with a button). Secondly, it wouldn't even need disabling, ESP can only assist you before you are about to crash. once you are at maximum speed, even if ESP was on, once you are at 250 km/h & loose control, what ESP can do is no where near enough to bring the car to a safe stop due to basic physics. He probably hit a curb, and at that speed, it would have flung the car around like a rag doll. He car would have been in the air for some time.
Researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Calif., San Diego, reportedly demonstrated in 2010 that, with physical access to car's electronic Engine Control Unit (ECU), a hacker could "adversarially control a wide range of automotive functions and completely ignore driver input, including disabling the brakes, selectively braking individual wheels on demand, stopping the engine, and so on." Researchers from the University of South Carolina and Rutgers University were similarly able to demonstrate being able to remotely activate a car's low tire pressure warning light from another vehicle 120 feet away, without even having gained any physical access to the car's ECU, using just low-cost radio equipment. Some ECU's are, in fact, specifically designed to permit a remote operator to wirelessly override the car's normally electronically controlled functioning by using special cell phone transmissions.
The ECU's were first introduced in the 1970's as a means to boost fuel efficiency, but have since become integrated into virtually every aspect of a car's functioning and diagnostics, including throttle, brakes, transmission, climate control, lights, entertainment, blue tooth enabled devices and communication systems, etc. Physical access to a vehicle's ECU can be easily achieved just by plugging a laptop or other miniaturized processor into the vehicle's federally mandated On-Board Diagnostic Port (ODB-II Port) now located under the dash of virtually all modern vehicles. A hacker could then introduce malicious re-programming into the ECU to change the functioning of the various electronically controlled aspects of the vehicle.
Alternatively, if the laptop or processor that is plugged into the OBD-II Port is wirelessly connected to another laptop, then the outside operator of that remote laptop can remotely control the vehicle's electronic functioning whenever desired to override the driver's attempts to control the vehicle. Some have asserted that current design safeguards and legal requirements provide inadequate security against potential malicious hacking of automobile ECU's considering the possible catastrophic risks.
It may be noteworthy in this regard, that just a few blocks away from the ultimate crash site, Hastings' vehicle was videotaped traveling at a very high rate of speed through a red light at a major intersection without slowing down. A short time later, a witness indicated that Hastings' car also sped through a different intersection at Melrose (also appearing not to have slowed down), hitting a median and bouncing up and down a few times before apparently going out of control and swerving into another median on Highland Avenue, before then crashing into a tree.'
Motto of this story, if you've got a pretty high anti-Establishment profile, buy a Morris Minor!! _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
'BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Andrea Parhamovich was fully in control of her impending engagement, detailing the ring she wanted as well as helping to plan the formal engagement trip _ Paris, Valentine's Day.
Parhamovich was killed in an ambush in Baghdad, and the Newsweek reporter in Baghdad who planned to marry her said Friday she had e-mailed him just last week with specifications for the ring.
"We were going to formalize everything," said 26-year-old Michael Hastings, recalling that Parhamovich's ring finger was a size 6.
They had been dating for about two years and wanted to travel to Paris in February so he could propose on Valentine's Day, but the trip had to be postponed until March because of logistics and work demands, he said.
Parhamovich, 28, an activist with the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, died Wednesday in an ambush on her convoy as it traveled through one of Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhoods. An al-Qaida-linked coalition of Iraqi Sunni insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack....'
Also, could mean nothing, but an American 'NGO' with three non-American security 'Contractors'?:
'Three security contractors from Hungary, Croatia and Iraq also were killed in the attack, and two other people were wounded. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
The peculiar circumstances of journalist Michael Hastings' death in Los Angeles last week have unleashed a wave of conspiracy theories.
Now there's another theory to contribute to the paranoia: According to a prominent security analyst, technology exists that could've allowed someone to hack his car. Former U.S. National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarke told The Huffington Post that what is known about the single-vehicle crash is "consistent with a car cyber attack."
Clarke said, "There is reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers" -- including the United States -- know how to remotely seize control of a car.
"What has been revealed as a result of some research at universities is that it's relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn't want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn't want the brakes on, to launch an air bag," Clarke told The Huffington Post. "You can do some really highly destructive things now, through hacking a car, and it's not that hard."
"So if there were a cyber attack on the car -- and I'm not saying there was," Clarke added, "I think whoever did it would probably get away with it."
Authorities have said that it may take weeks to determine a cause of death for Hastings, but that no foul play is suspected.
Hastings was driving a 2013 Mercedes C250 coupe when he crashed into a tree on Highland Ave. in Los Angeles at approximately 4:30 am on June 18. Video posted online showed the car in flames, and one neighbor told a local news crew she heard a sound like an explosion. Another eyewitness said the car's engine had been thrown 50 to 60 yards from the car. There were no other vehicles involved in the accident.
The fire was so all-consuming that it took the Los Angeles County coroner's office two days to identify Hastings' body, but Clarke said a cyber attack on the vehicle would have been nearly impossible to trace "even if the dozen or so computers on board hadn't melted."
Hastings practiced a brand of no-holds-barred journalism that tended to anger powerful people. His 2010 profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, published in Rolling Stone, was so damaging that it ostensibly prompted President Barack Obama to fire the general (the president denied that the article had a role in his decision).
In the days before his death, Hastings was reportedly working on a story about a lawsuit filed by Jill Kelley, who was involved in the scandal that brought down Gen. David Petraeus, according to the LA Times. KTLA reported that Hastings told colleagues at the news site BuzzFeed that he feared the FBI was investigating him. On June 20, the FBI denied that any investigation was under way.
"I believe the FBI when they say they weren't investigating him," said Clarke. "That was very unusual, and I'm sure they checked very carefully before they said that."
Clarke worked for the State Department under President Ronald Reagan and headed up counterterrorism efforts under Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He also served as a special adviser on cyberterrorism to the younger Bush and published a book on the topic, Cyber War, in 2010.
"I'm not a conspiracy guy. In fact, I've spent most of my life knocking down conspiracy theories," said Clarke, who ran afoul of the second Bush administration when he criticized the decision to invade Iraq after 9/11. "But my rule has always been you don't knock down a conspiracy theory until you can prove it [wrong]. And in the case of Michael Hastings, what evidence is available publicly is consistent with a car cyber attack. And the problem with that is you can't prove it."
Clarke said the Los Angeles Police Department likely wouldn't have the expertise to trace such an attack. "I think you'd probably need the very best of the U.S. government intelligence or law enforcement officials to discover it."
Richard Clarke: Hastings Accident “Consistent with a Car Cyber Attack”
“Intelligence agencies… know how to remotely seize control of a car.”
Richard Clarke. Photo: National Communications System
Former U.S. National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism Richard Clarketold The Huffington Post on Monday that the fatal crash of journalist Michael Hastings’ Mercedes C250 coupe last week is “consistent with a car cyber attack.”
“There is reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers” — including the United States — know how to remotely seize control of a car,” Clarke said.
On Saturday, Infowars.com posted a video of a talk presented by Dr. Kathleen Fisher, a program manager for DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technologies. Fisher admitted that the Pentagon has researched remotely controlling cars through hacking on board computers.
In 2011, Car and Driver magazine published an article substantiating the Pentagon research. “Currently, there’s nothing to stop anyone with malicious intent and some computer-programming skills from taking command of your vehicle. After gaining access, a hacker could control everything from which song plays on the radio to whether the brakes work,” writes Keith Barry, citing research conducted by the Center for Automotive Embedded Systems Security, a partnership between the University of California San Diego and the University of Washington.
“What has been revealed as a result of some research at universities is that it’s relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn’t want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn’t want the brakes on, to launch an air bag,” Clarke told The Huffington Post. “You can do some really highly destructive things now, through hacking a car, and it’s not that hard.”
Clarke was careful not to directly implicate the government in hacking Hastings’ car. “So if there were a cyber attack on the car — and I’m not saying there was,” he said, “I think whoever did it would probably get away with it.”
He also put credence in the FBI’s claim – despite claims to the contrary by associates of the writer – that the agency was not investigating him. “I believe the FBI when they say they weren’t investigating him,” said Clarke. “That was very unusual, and I’m sure they checked very carefully before they said that.”
“I’m not a conspiracy guy. In fact, I’ve spent most of my life knocking down conspiracy theories,” said Clarke. “But my rule has always been you don’t knock down a conspiracy theory until you can prove it [wrong]. And in the case of Michael Hastings, what evidence is available publicly is consistent with a car cyber attack. And the problem with that is you can’t prove it.”
Despite the overwhelming evidence that Michael Hastings was targeted and assassinated for his journalism – most notably his story resulting in the fall of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and remarks on NSA surveillance – the establishment media continues to portray the attack on Hastings as the delusional meanderings of conspiracy theorists. Clarke’s comments serve as the latest pièce de résistance in an unfolding drama revealing just how far the government will go to silence critics and truth tellers.
Prior to his murder, Hastings said the Obama administration had declared war on the press. His desire to go into hiding – expressed in an email mere hours before his assassination – demonstrates the ability of the government to monitor opponents by using a well-developed NSA surveillance grid and take executive action against investigative journalists and others who dare to stand up to the national security state.
The picture that was shown was the gearbox/clutch assembly; it was not the engine.
I am not a mechanic, but have changed engines, big ends, clutches etc over some fifty years.
DARPA was the first of Mark Phillips' (her husband) jobs; he ferried film canisters for them.
It is the 'Heart of Darkness', posing as a National Defence 'good guy'.
But it really gives credibility to the concept of 'Boston Brakes' assassination technology. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 10:36 pm Post subject:
"It's steered by a robot"
"A Giant Leap Forward For Safety"
Unless your name is Michael Hastings?
This former Nazi company who made the Diana death-mobile is now world leader in driverless cars.
She and other reports say Hastings was driving a brand new 2013 Mercedes Benz C250
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 12:35 pm Post subject:
i wonder if the rolling stone and buzzfeed would be treated by mercedes benz usa like i get treated, if they would actually care about the fate of their colleague (i see no indications for the latter so far):
I replied by showing to Romy P the information I had received from Donna Boland (to whom I copied the e-mail) on behalf of Mercedes Benz USA on June 30. Afterwards, I asked:
Question: comparing both responses with each other and seeing the similarities between them, is this the official “Sprachregelung” of Mercedes Benz related to this case?
Moreover, is it in general possible to do with your cars what Richard Clarke stated? I don’t think you have to speculate about this — is it possible, yes or no?
“Richard Clarke, a former State Department official and adviser to several United States presidents, said the crash that killed the Rolling Stone journalist appeared to be consistent with what he called a ‘car cyberattack.’ …
“Clarke said the crash could have been orchestrated by a computer hacker able to gain access to the car’s controls.
“’What has been revealed as a result of some research at universities is that it’s relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn’t want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn’t want the brakes on, to launch an air bag,’ Clarke told The Huffington Post. “’You can do some really highly destructive things now, through hacking a car, and it’s not that hard.’”
Still no toxicology reports - was there any body at all?
No Police reports - Police surprised by level of interest
No Mercedes car reports - apparently there is a car "black box" which could provide vital info - Mercedes claim they have not been called in to help.
Friends say the scarey email he sent before his death was "different" - not Hastings usual style.
Reports of Police at Hastings house on the day of his death and "inspecting" his car!
Further reports of bomb explosion - no skid marks
The engine separation still seems incredible to University scholars
Still no toxicology reports - was there any body at all?
No Police reports - Police surprised by level of interest
No Mercedes car reports - apparently there is a car "black box" which could provide vital info - Mercedes claim they have not been called in to help.
Friends say the scarey email he sent before his death was "different" - not Hastings usual style.
Reports of Police at Hastings house on the day of his death and "inspecting" his car!
Further reports of bomb explosion - no skid marks
The engine separation still seems incredible to University scholars
Details uncovered by this reporter shed new light into the June 18 death of journalist Michael Hastings.
Hastings’ friend and confidant SSgt. Joe Biggs disclosed a macabre twist in the award-winning journalist’s death in a suspicious single-car accident. According to SSgt. Biggs, “Michael Hastings’ body was returned to Vermont in an urn.”
This revelation provides another wrinkle in the Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) handling of a case they labeled “no foul play” only hours after the writer’s death.
Nevertheless LA County assistant corner, Ed Winter, said it took two days to identify the burned-beyond recognition body of Hastings. Officials also confirmed that an autopsy has been performed, but the cause of death is still pending. Unfortunately the family will have to wait for cause of death answers as LAPD media spokesperson Lieutenant Andrew Neiman indicated, “It will take several weeks to get the toxicology results.”
SSgt. Biggs also emphatically stated that liquor was not a factor in the accident, as Hastings hadn’t consumed alcoholic beverages in five years.
Besides Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, most Democrats abandoned their civil liberty positions during the age of Obama. With a new leak investigation looming, the Democrat leadership are now being forced to confront all the secrets they’ve tried to hide.
posted on June 7, 2013 at 12:10pm EDT
Michael Hastings
BuzzFeed Staff
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Image by Jeff Chiu / AP
For most bigwig Democrats in Washington, D.C., the last 48 hours has delivered news of the worst kind — a flood of new information that has washed away any lingering doubts about where President Obama and his party stand on civil liberties, full stop.
Glenn Greenwald’s exposure of the NSA’s massive domestic spy program has revealed the entire caste of current Democratic leaders as a gang of civil liberty opportunists, whose true passion, it seems, was in trolling George W. Bush for eight years on matters of national security.
“Everyone should just calm down,” Senator Harry Reid said yesterday, inhaling slowly.
That’s right: don’t panic.
The very topic of Democratic two-facedness on civil liberties is one of the most important issues that Greenwald has covered. Many of those Dems — including the sitting President Barack Obama, Senator Carl Levin, and Sec. State John Kerry — have now become the stewards and enhancers of programs that appear to dwarf any of the spying scandals that broke during the Bush years, the very same scandals they used as wedge issues to win elections in the Congressional elections 2006 and the presidential primary of 2007-2008.
Recall what Senator Levin told CNN in 2005, demanding to “urgently hold an inquiry” into what was supposedly President Bush’s domestic wiretap program.
Levin continued, at length: “It means that there’s some growing concern on Capitol Hill about a program which seems to be so totally unauthorized and unexplained…The president wraps himself in the law, saying that it is totally legal, but he doesn’t give what the legal basis is for this. He avoided using the law, which we provided to the president, where even when there is an emergency and there’s a need for urgent action can first tap the wire and then go to a court.”
There are two notable exception to this rule are Senator Ron Wyden, from Oregon, and Sen. Mark Udall from Colorado, who had seemed to be fighting a largely lonely, frustrating battle against Obama’s national security state.
As Mark Udall told the Denver Post yesterday: “[I] did everything short of leaking classified information” to stop it.
His ally in Oregon, Ron Wyden, was one of the first to seize on the Guardian’s news break: “I will tell you from a policy standpoint, when a law-abiding citizen makes a call, they expect that who they call, when they call and where they call from will be kept private,” Wyden said to Politico, noting “there’s going to be a big debate about this.” The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, admitted he’d mislead Senator Wyden at a hearing earlier this year, revising his statement yesterday to state that the NSA didn’t do “voyerustic” surveillance.
The state of affairs, in other words, is so grave that two sitting Senators went as close as they could to violating their unconstitutional security oaths in order to warn the country of information that otherwise would not have been declassified until April of 2038, according to the Verizon court order obtained by Greenwald.
Now, we’re about to see if the Obama administration’s version of the national security state will begin to eat itself.
Unsurprisingly, the White House has dug in, calling their North Korea-esque tools “essential” to stop terrorism, and loathe to give up the political edge they’ve seized for Democrats on national security issues under Obama’s leadership. The AP spying scandal — which the administration attempted to downplay at the time, even appointing Eric Holder to lead his own investigation into himself —was one of the unexpected consequences of one of two leak investigations that Obama ordered during the 2012 campaign.
It’s unclear where a possible third leak investigation would lead. However, judging by the DOJ’s and FBI’s recent history, it would seem that any new leak case would involve obtaining the phone records of reporters at the Guardian, the Washington Post, employees at various agencies who would have had access to the leaked material, as well as politicians and staffers in Congress—records, we now can safely posit, they already have unchecked and full access to.
In short: any so-called credible DOJ/FBI leak investigation, by its very nature, would have to involve the Obama administration invasively using the very surveillance and data techniques it is attempting to hide in order to snoop on a few Democratic Senators and more media outlets, including one based overseas.
Outside of Washington, D.C., the frustration that Wyden and Udall have felt has been exponentially magnified. Transparency supporters, whistleblowers, and investigative reporters, especially those writers who have aggressively pursued the connections between the corporate defense industry and federal and local authorities involved in domestic surveillance, have been viciously attacked by the Obama administration and its allies in the FBI and DOJ.
Jacob Appplebaum, a transparency activist and computer savant, has been repeatedly harassed at American borders, having his laptop seized. Barrett Brown, another investigative journalist who has written for Vanity Fair, among others publications, exposed the connections between the private contracting firm HB Gary (a government contracting firm that, incidentally, proposed a plan to spy on and ruin the reputation of the Guardian’s Greenwald) and who is currently sitting in a Texas prison on trumped up FBI charges regarding his legitimate reportorial inquiry into the political collective known sometimes as Anonymous.
That’s not to mention former NSA official Thomas Drake (the Feds tried to destroys his life because he blew the whistle ); Fox News reporter James Rosen (named a “co-conspirator” by Holder’s DOJ); John Kirakou, formerly in the CIA, who raised concerns about the agency’s torture program, is also in prison for leaking “harmful” (read: embarrassing) classified info; and of course Wikileaks (under U.S. financial embargo); WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (locked up in Ecuador’s London embassy) and, of course, Bradley Manning, the young, idealistic, soldier who provided the public with perhaps the most critical trove of government documents ever released.
The attitude the Obama administration has toward Manning is revealing. What do they think of him? “* Bradely Manning,” as one White House official put it to me last year during the campaign.
Michael Hastings was that rarest of breeds: a mainstream reporter who wasn’t afraid to rail against the system, kick back against the establishment, and bite the hand that feeds him.
A couple of hackers show off a series of nasty new attacks on cars—with Forbes' Andy Greenberg behind the wheel.
"Stomping on the brakes of a 3,500-pound Ford Escape that refuses to stop--or even slow down--produces a unique feeling of anxiety. In this case it also produces a deep groaning sound, like an angry water buffalo bellowing somewhere under the SUV's chassis. The more I pound the pedal, the louder the groan gets--along with the delighted cackling of the two hackers sitting behind me in the backseat.
Luckily, all of this is happening at less than 5mph. So the Escape merely plows into a stand of 6-foot-high weeds growing in the abandoned parking lot of a South Bend, Ind. strip mall that Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek have chosen as the testing grounds for the day's experiments..."
Apologies for any poor formatting, just copy pasting it as is without pictures and embedded videos and possible links; from Forbes website.
Quote:
Hackers Reveal Nasty New Car Attacks--With Me Behind The Wheel (Video)
This story appears in the August 12, 2013 issue of Forbes.
Charlie Miller (left) and Chris Valasek behind their Prius’ dismantled dashboard. Credit: Travis Collins
Stomping on the brakes of a 3,500-pound Ford Escape that refuses to stop–or even slow down–produces a unique feeling of anxiety. In this case it also produces a deep groaning sound, like an angry water buffalo bellowing somewhere under the SUV’s chassis. The more I pound the pedal, the louder the groan gets–along with the delighted cackling of the two hackers sitting behind me in the backseat.
Luckily, all of this is happening at less than 5mph. So the Escape merely plows into a stand of 6-foot-high weeds growing in the abandoned parking lot of a South Bend, Ind. strip mall that Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek have chosen as the testing grounds for the day’s experiments, a few of which are shown in the video below. (When Miller discovered the brake-disabling trick, he wasn’t so lucky: The soccer-mom mobile barreled through his garage, crushing his lawn mower and inflicting $150 worth of damage to the rear wall.)
“Okay, now your brakes work again,” Miller says, tapping on a beat-up MacBook connected by a cable to an inconspicuous data port near the parking brake. I reverse out of the weeds and warily bring the car to a stop. “When you lose faith that a car will do what you tell it to do,” he adds after we jump out of the SUV, “it really changes your whole view of how the thing works.”
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SIM Cards Have Finally Been Hacked, And The Flaw Could Affect Millions Of Phones Parmy Olson Parmy Olson Forbes Staff
No Hands, No Feet: My Unnerving Ride In Google's Driverless Car Joann Muller Joann Muller Forbes Staff
This fact, that a car is not a simple machine of glass and steel but a hackable network of computers, is what Miller and Valasek have spent the last year trying to demonstrate. Miller, a 40-year-old security engineer at Twitter, and Valasek, the 31-year-old director of security intelligence at the Seattle consultancy IOActive, received an $80,000-plus grant last fall from the mad-scientist research arm of the Pentagon known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to root out security vulnerabilities in automobiles.
The duo plans to release their findings and the attack software they developed at the hacker conference Defcon in Las Vegas next month–the better, they say, to help other researchers find and fix the auto industry’s security problems before malicious hackers get under the hoods of unsuspecting drivers. The need for scrutiny is growing as cars are increasingly automated and connected to the Internet, and the problem goes well beyond Toyota and Ford. Practically every American carmaker now offers a cellular service or Wi-Fi network like General Motors’ OnStar, Toyota’s Safety Connect and Ford’s SYNC. Mobile-industry trade group the GSMA estimates revenue from wireless devices in cars at $2.5 billion today and projects that number will grow tenfold by 2025. Without better security it’s all potentially vulnerable, and automakers are remaining mum or downplaying the issue.
As I drove their vehicles for more than an hour, Miller and Valasek showed that they’ve reverse-engineered enough of the software of the Escape and the Toyota Prius (both the 2010 model) to demonstrate a range of nasty surprises: everything from annoyances like uncontrollably blasting the horn to serious hazards like slamming on the Prius’ brakes at high speeds. They sent commands from their laptops that killed power steering, spoofed the GPS and made pathological liars out of speedometers and odometers. Finally they directed me out to a country road, where Valasek showed that he could violently jerk the Prius’ steering at any speed, threatening to send us into a cornfield or a head-on collision. “Imagine you’re driving down a highway at 80 ,” Valasek says. “You’re going into the car next to you or into oncoming traffic. That’s going to be bad times.”
A Ford spokesman says the company takes hackers “very seriously,” but Toyota, for its part, says it isn’t impressed by Miller and Valasek’s stunts: Real carhacking, the company’s safety manager John Hanson argues, wouldn’t require physically jacking into the target car. “Our focus, and that of the entire auto industry, is to prevent hacking from a remote wireless device outside of the vehicle,” he writes in an e-mail, adding that Toyota engineers test its vehicles against wireless attacks. “We believe our systems are robust and secure.”
But Miller and Valasek’s work assumed physical access to the cars’ computers for a reason: Gaining wireless access to a car’s network is old news. A team of researchers at the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego, experimenting on a sedan from an unnamed company in 2010, found that they could wirelessly penetrate the same critical systems Miller and Valasek targeted using the car’s OnStar-like cellular connection, Bluetooth bugs, a rogue Android app that synched with the car’s network from the driver’s smartphone or even a malicious audio file on a CD in the car’s stereo system. “Academics have shown you can get remote code execution,” says Valasek, using hacker jargon for the ability to start running commands on a system. “We showed you can do a lot of crazy things once you’re inside.”
One of the UCSD professors involved in those earlier tests, Stefan Savage, claims that wireless hacks remain possible and affect the entire industry: Given that attacks on driving systems have yet to be spotted outside of a lab, manufacturers simply haven’t fully secured their software, he says. “The vulnerabilities that we found were the kind that existed on PCs in the early to mid-1990s, when computers were first getting on the Internet,” says Savage.
As cars approach Google’s dream of passenger-carrying robots, more of their capabilities also become potentially hackable. Miller and Valasek exploited Toyota’s and Ford’s self-parking functions, for instance, to hijack their vehicles’ steering. A car like the 2014 Mercedes Benz S-Class, which can negotiate stop-and-go traffic or follow a leader without input, may offer a hacker even more points of attack, says Gartner Group analyst Thilo Koslowski. “The less the driver is involved, the more potential for failure when bad people are tampering with it,” he says.
In the meantime, Miller and Valasek argue that the best way to pressure car companies to secure their products is to show exactly what can be done with a multi-ton missile on wheels. Better to experience the panic of a digitally hijacked SUV now than when a more malicious attacker is in control. “If the only thing keeping you from crashing your car is that no one is talking about this,” says Miller, “then you’re not safe anyway.”
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Roger Doit Roger Doit 1 day ago
The alphabet soup organizations of America killed Michael Hastings by hacking his vehicle.
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Nikola San Nikola San 21 hours ago
I quit working at shoprite to work online and with a little effort I easily bring in around $45 to 85 per/h. Without a doubt, this is the easiest and most financially rewarding job I’ve ever had. I actually started 6 months ago and this has totally changed my life. Here’s what I do , Going1.C0M_
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StopOCSmartMeters StopOCSmartMeters 5 hours ago
Just think how “funny” it will be to take over the electronics in your home using your Smart Meter!!! DARPA can and will remotely hack your home…just like your car.
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Jason Mailer Jason Mailer 1 hour ago
Pentagon research ….
Hastings was the journalist who was investigating Benghazi until he suddenly died by crashing his car at very high speeds last month.
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Michael Fahn Michael Fahn 1 day ago
I agree with John Hanson’s comment that this is really not that impressive b/c there is a LOT of assumptions made. Firstly, the remote attack discovered by InfoSec researchers in 2010 was via a compromised cell phone of a would be victim driver whose phone was paired with the car. The malware was introduced physically and logically to the phone as a catalyst to the remote exploit. There is a reason that remote exploits haven’t been found in the wild yet – not to say that it isn’t possible, but lets not sensationalize this to put things into the proper context and denote the level of barriers that exist for mitigating these compounded attacks (obtaining target mobile device, injecting it with malware, interfacing with ACU of paired vehicle, successful API to car functions….). Face value, very sexy, but you dust off the details and you get some more drab results. Auto industry should definitely not play this down, but the InfoSec industry shouldn’t play this up either….especially when they ironically downplay FUD (Fear Uncertainty & Doubt) in their own circles.
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Kacie12q Kacie12q 1 day ago
just as Roy replied I am dazzled that anyone can earn $4547 in four weeks on the computer. did you look at this link Go to site and open Home for details
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Kurt Windibank Kurt Windibank 1 day ago
Thats why the QNX Car2 platform is gaining so much ground as the OS of choice with Automakers. QNX is secure and reliable…powering high speed trains, nuclear reactors etc….
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Victor A Victor A 3 hours ago
This is why I believe the new BlackBerry 10 platform running QNX OS will survive and gain popularity in the long run. I love my Z10.
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Michael Butler Michael Butler 1 day ago
Hastings….
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Anon Anon 1 day ago
A journalist was recently murdered via this technique. Do a web search for Michael Hastings to read all about it.
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ninnybau ninnybau 1 day ago
Perhaps this is what happened to the journalist Michael Hastings?
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charlie wallace charlie wallace 1 day ago
Replicating CAN bus messages and other networks system within a car is also old news, this has been done time and time again by people for many years now.
This article is mostly FUD , you can’t tie onstar together with a Toyota and say because one was hacked to do a specific thing, therefore all other cars are at risk. You need physical access, and once you have physical access you can mess with all the sensors anyway.
Even the other report makes it seem like they remotely hacked into a car via cellular connection with no physical access and couple potentially control the car.
Companies like AIM etc all decode the CAN buses for use in aftermarket telemetry systems too, injecting messages is just a matter of buying a CAN adapter and sending in the same messages, i’ve yet to see one thats encrypted but thats whats nice about it, you get OBD2 diagnostics, J1699 and J2534 reflashing etc.
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Victor A Victor A 3 hours ago
I feel safe that my 2008 Lexus GS460 does not have any servo motors to control steering, gas and brake etc:)
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Raj Brar Raj Brar 1 day ago
Its time for cars to be powered by QNX , patches can be rolled out wireless and remotely saving dealerships money and helping solve many issues.
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Victor A Victor A 2 hours ago
My BlackBerry Z10 running QNX OS is my absolute favorite phone I have ever owned. Having ios, android & windows the Z10 is by far the fastest and simplest interface.
Brianna. true that Virginia`s blurb is inconceivable, I just received a great Ford from having earned $6297 this-past/five weeks and a little over $10,000 last-munth. this is certainly the most-comfortable work Ive ever done. I began this eight months/ago and right away started making a cool at least $78 per hour. I use the details on this web-site,…….. www.Yad7.com
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Edgar Rivera Edgar Rivera 21 hours ago
Automotive hacking already in use… Exposed in last movie Fast and Furious 6… Movies are a communicating method and would be amaze of how many things exposed in movies before happening… Federal funding to pay for people to check for gaps they have missed… Can’t deny it is quite smart… No wonder Cuba like their 1950′s and 70′s vehicles… Oh well… Just saying….
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Gordon Wagner Gordon Wagner 17 hours ago
Is this how they killed Michael Hastings?
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Libertarian Amazon Libertarian Amazon 16 hours ago
Now doesn’t this make you want to revisit the Toyota sudden acceleration incidents about three and four years back? Wouldn’t it be interesting to have forensics done to see if those Toyotas were hacked to make Toyota look bad while Obama was trying to bail out the American auto makers?
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Charles Brixey Charles Brixey 8 hours ago
Using a car’s bus to add commands to cause havoc is easy if you have some proprietary technical information. What is ignored or covered up is that the automotive industry’s expanding use of software controlled systems brings with it the problems of other software controlled devices like computers, cell phones, and cable TV controllers which freezes up and does not perform any function as designed to do. Automotive ABS Brakes are software controlled systems that fails on a regular basis and the brakes do not stop the car. I was behind the wheel and experienced panic in traffic with two different cars. Reports to NHTSA have been ignored. The neat thing about failed software systems is that when you restart the computer, cell phone or car, the system works perfectly until the exact inputs recur to cause it to fail again. In automotive crashes, the certified investigators turn the car on and verify the brakes work and go on to find another cause of an accident which for all ABS Brake caused accidents the reports are bogus. The Toyota sudden acceleration issue was caused by ABS Brake failure but every one tries to blame other modules. Failing to find other causes – They blame the driver.
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Len Smith Len Smith 7 hours ago
My Plymouth , Ford and Jeep would do all of these things WITHOUT computers on board.
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Margie Lyle Margie Lyle 7 hours ago
I’m sure the feds having links to all new cars through a black box interface will be a plus…
This week Elise Jordan, wife of famed journalist Michael Hastings, who recently died under suspicious circumstances, corroborated this reporter's sources that CIA Director, John Brennan was Hastings next exposé project (CNN clip).
Last month a source provided San Diego 6 News with an alarming email hacked from super secret CIA contractor Stratfor’s President Fred Burton. The email (link here) was posted on WikiLeaks and alleged that then Obama counter-terrorism Czar Brennan, was in charge of the government's continued crackdown or witch-hunt on investigative journalists.
After providing the Stratfor email to the CIA for comment, the spymaster's spokesperson responded in lightning speed. Two emails were received; one acknowledging Hastings was working on a CIA story and the other said, “Without commenting on information disseminated by WikiLeaks, any suggestion that Director Brennan has ever attempted to infringe on constitutionally-protected press freedoms is offensive and baseless.”
The emails also prompted a phone from CIA media spokesman Todd Ebitz. He said they were saddened by Michael’s death and reiterated their position that they had a cordial working relationship with the investigative reporter.
On the other hand, Stratfor, specifically Fred Burton, remains nonresponsive.
As for Hastings’ final story, his wife said Rolling Stone would publish the Brennan piece in an upcoming edition of the magazine.
Was speed a factor?
The release of a new surveillance video from a nearby Italian restaurant by Michael Krikorian, an author, freelance blogger who also writes for LA Weekly, reveals a lot of information about Hastings’ final seconds.
A University professor told San Diego 6 News that calculating the speed of Hastings car follows a simple mathematic equation. By using the video and the distance traveled (195 feet) as well as the seconds that lapsed prior to the explosion – the car was traveling roughly 35 mph.
That revelation is important because Jose, an employee of ALSCO a nearby business, and a witness to the accident told KTLA/Loud Labs (Scott Lane) the car was traveling at a high rate of speed and he saw sparks coming from the car and saw it explode BEFORE hitting the tree.
The pre-explosion could possibly explain the flash of light on the video that preceded the appearance of the car in the video. The pre-explosion and slower speed could also explain the minimal damage to the palm tree and the facts the rear tires rested against the curb. It also provides an explanation for the location of the engine and drive train at more than 100 feet from the tree impact area.
This new information prompted another round of FOIA/CPRAs and only adds to the questions that remain unanswered. One of those questions is where was Mr. Hastings going at 4:30 in the morning? Based on the accident location, Hastings was only 1.5 miles from his home and was headed away from his address.
Other unanswered questions point to the contents (computer, phones, notes, etc.) of his home, so far there has been no response from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) FOIA request regarding these issues. Also, numerous FOIAs have been filed with other federal agencies concerning details of Hastings suspicious car “accident.”
I would like to thank the tens of thousands of people following this important story and the supportive comments that include many helpful tips. You can post anonymous tips for me at theKDreport.com or sandiego6.com or email: Kimberly.dvorak@hotmail.com _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
As I drove their vehicles for more than an hour, Miller and Valasek showed that they’ve reverse-engineered enough of the software of the Escape and the Toyota Prius (both the 2010 model) to demonstrate a range of nasty surprises: everything from annoyances like uncontrollably blasting the horn to serious hazards like slamming on the Prius’ brakes at high speeds. They sent commands from their laptops that killed power steering, spoofed the GPS and made pathological liars out of speedometers and odometers. Finally they directed me out to a country road, where Valasek showed that he could violently jerk the Prius’ steering at any speed, threatening to send us into a cornfield or a head-on collision. “Imagine you’re driving down a highway at 80 ,” Valasek says. “You’re going into the car next to you or into oncoming traffic. That’s going to be bad times.”
A Ford spokesman says the company takes hackers “very seriously,” but Toyota, for its part, says it isn’t impressed by Miller and Valasek’s stunts: Real carhacking, the company’s safety manager John Hanson argues, wouldn’t require physically jacking into the target car. “Our focus, and that of the entire auto industry, is to prevent hacking from a remote wireless device outside of the vehicle,” he writes in an e-mail, adding that Toyota engineers test its vehicles against wireless attacks. “We believe our systems are robust and secure.”
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Oct 10, 2013 6:06 pm Post subject:
Mercedes-Benz showcases driverless tech
October 7, 2013 Written by Dawinderpal Sahota
The Mercedes-Benz S-Class, S 500 Intelligent Drive research vehicle
Vehicle manufacturer Mercedes-Benz has revealed the progress that it has made with its driverless technology by taking its S500 Intelligent Drive concept car on a 100km trip in the South of Germany.
The luxury car firm set out to re-enact the journey made by Bertha Benz, the wife of the firm’s founder Karl Benz, in 1888 to demonstrate the suitability of the Benz patent motor car for everyday use. 125 years later, Mercedes-Benz has set out to prove a similar point using driverless technology.
“Developed on the basis of the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the S 500 Intelligent Drive research vehicle autonomously covered the approximately 100 kilometres between Mannheim and Pforzheim,” the firm wrote in a statement. “Yet, unlike Bertha Benz all those years ago, it did not have the road “all to itself”, but had to negotiate dense traffic and complex traffic situations.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv8ia64O-uM
Mercedes-Benz has successfully completed the first autonomous long-distance drive ever, involving both town and cross-country traffic, using near-production-standard sensor systems. The Mercedes-Benz S 500 INTELLIGENT DRIVE research vehicle covered 100 kilometers from Mannheim to Pforzheim, Germany, under real traffic conditions and complex situations including traffic lights, roundabouts, pedestrians, cyclists and trams. Mercedes-Benz will reveal the full details of the first autonomous long distance drive at the Mercedes-Benz & smart Media Night
A must-watch interview with Michael Hastings talking about his book "The Operators" - this is the term the special ops people refer to themselves...
He claims there is 27,000 PR people just in the DoD monitoring and molding "the message" of the US Wars of aggression. (So how many people in CIA, DHS?!)
Elise Jordan is an American journalist, political speechwriter and commentator. She served as a director for communications in the National Security Council from 2008-09. She also worked in the White House Office of Presidential Speechwriting, at the U.S. Embassy, Baghdad and for the Commanding General's Strategic Advisory Group at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan, and was a speechwriter for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.[1]
Jordan has been a commentator at CTV, BBC, National Public Radio,[2] Fox Business Network, and a regular guest on Fox News,[3][4][5][6][7] MSNBC[8][9] and CNN.[10] Jordan's articles have appeared in Marie Claire, The New York Post, The Atlantic.com, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard and National Review Online.
In 2007 she worked with press and communications strategy for Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan with the National Security Council. Elise Hastings is part of the advisory board to the Girls 20 Summit, a summit for young women from G20 nations and the African Union and UNICEF’s Next Generation Steering Committee. 1
Background
Born Catherine Elise Jordan to Kelly and Susan Jordan in Holly Springs, Mississippi,[11] Elise Jordan, also sometimes known as Elise Hastings, graduated from Marshall Academy in 2000 and with a degree in history from Yale University in 2004.[2]
Personal life
Jordan married journalist Michael Hastings on May 21, 2011 in Hernando, Mississippi.
Michael Hastings died in a single-vehicle car crash on June 18, 2013.[12] Due to Hastings ongoing investigations of CIA chief John Brennan and previous critical investigations of other well known figures, there was speculation of foul play.[13] Jordan played a role in clearing up speculations about her husband's death as being nothing more than a "tragic accident".[14][13]
This video also wonders about Jordan... (and shows the Hasting car blowing up from CCTV camera - doesn't look a car crash to me).
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 10:39 pm Post subject:
Ok - we have the Christmas book
He came to believe his Mercedes was being tampered with. His behavior grew increasingly erratic. Helicopters often circle over the hills, but Hastings believed there were more of them around whenever he was at home, keeping an eye on him. He came to believe his Mercedes was being tampered with. "Nothing I could say could console him," Thigpen says.
One night in June, he came to Thigpen's apartment after midnight and urgently asked to borrow her Volvo. He said he was afraid to drive his own car. She declined, telling him her car was having mechanical problems. http://www.laweekly.com/2013-08-22/news/michael-hastings-crash/
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I hope the opposite happens and they revolt, but that's unlikely. Thanks for the article and links. Shared.
