Schneier on Security

That's gotta be the funniest thing I've seen in years...isn't that sad?

The 'Doggie Earphone" has already been done [although in a somewhat more-bulky form] see Here.

Oops - I mean http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/qf/c/PopularScience/6-1939/xlg_radio_dog.jpg

> Airplane Trap Door
[...]
> Bonus: Great prank to pull on the co-pilot going on a bathroom break.

!!!
This one had me spill me coffee all over the place laughing, but its certainly worth it !

I don't appreciate him making light of the zombie problem.

Obviously this is a terrorist plot to know which antiterrorist measures have been used by patenting them and noting who they receive royalties from and for what.

The link in the post is to the Airplane Sleeping Gas System. Trap Door is
http://www.google.com/patents?id=mJoTAAAAEBAJ

> Airplane Trap Door

> Problem: Terrorists want to hijack a
> plane by trying to break down the
> cockpit door.

> Solution: After hardening the cockpit
> door, airlines should add the next
> logical step: airplane trap door that
> springs open to entrap terrorists below > deck.

> Bonus: Great prank to pull on the
> co-pilot going on a bathroom break.

> Improvement Suggestion: Add an
> alligator pit to the trap door ...

And spikes. Don't forget the spikes.
And poisoned darts too.

Or, as in the famous Self-Defence System...

RELEASE THE TIGER!

The Railroad Missile System has already been done. Probably not patented since it's a military application.

The Passenger Control System During Flight sounds regrettably like the seatback cameras Bruce has been telling us about.

@ D0R

What about the sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads?

This list shows how borked the US-patent-system is.
Those are "ideas" not patents!

Mounting weapons on mobile carriages has been around since the middle ages, it was called cannons then. This totally lacks an inventive step. Trapdoors have been around for ages, etc.

Those patents totally lack ingenuity.

Counter-terror envelope

http://www.google.com/patents?id=AESJAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4

Yeah, these are great. Somehow someone got "War on terrorism flag" and "Anti-terrorism insignia" patented...! How are these a creative process? Doesn't seem like patents can be granted for these things.

Yes, the problem with the railroad missile system was that, while the missile could move, it could only move where the railroads were located.

Hardened silos are in known positions, but difficult to destroy. Mobile launchers on trucks are easy to destroy, but hard to locate. Railroad launchers are easily located since they have to be somewhere on the railroad, and easy to disable by removing a few spikes and letting the thing derail itself.

"Blocked by WebSense"

Well, WebSense thinks it's a joke...

It has become increasingly clear that P.T. Barnum was one of the most profound and far-seeing philosophers that America ever produced. There really is a sucker born every minute.

Since several of these items claim to work with "zombies" I suspect it was at least tongue-in-cheek.

And while "mobile-ing" missile launchers is a good idea against nation-state level attackers who have access to bombers and ICBMs, against terrorists who probably do not, I would rather use the formidable defense systems installed at USAF missile silos to defend MY missiles than a truck or train that can move into an ambush and whose outlying defenders would by necessity be moving and therefore easily detected.

As far as incapacitating gas why not use anoxia; which is already built into every jetliner flying above ~20,000 ft.

My fav is kevlar umbrella ;) Amazing... :D

"four-legged non-human trained animal"

There are four-legged humans??

"Doesn't seem like patents can be granted for these things."

They weren't. Well, I haven't checked all of them, but in the counter-terror enveoploe case, no patent was issued.

Security system: incapacitating gas.
Circumvention method: gas mask.

Someone should patent that, at least we can sue the terrorists for patent infringement.

When reading the article about that radio controlled dog, I noticed something:
"... and fired a revolver" (at the very end).

WTF?!? They made a revolver that a dog could operate? And this isn't even in the US, it's in Australia. Who is responsible if the dog kills an innocent person (or a guilty one, for that matter)?

Next product: Laser guided, Anti Terrorist Cream Pies.

At a flip of a switch, Cream pies will descend from the roof and hit all passengers. The on board passenger tracking system combined with laser guidance will ensure that every passenger gets hit regardless of where they are on the plane. Seltzer water cannons also available for an additional charge.

four-legged non-human trained animal?

It reads to me that any four legged animal trained by humans won't count. Now if you have monkeys, turtles, robots or aliens train the four-legged animal, this patent will hold.

The "truck" - I used the same idea (but for terrorists to use) in the April competition a couple of years ago.

Missiles on the railway - I think the Russians have been using that since the 1950s.

Sleep gas - way too difficult to control. The Russians tried it on a theatre full of people and terrorists a few years ago and managed to kill a large percentage of hostages.

Mobile Crematorium - Herr Goebbels could probably claim prior art.

Overall, what are the chances of the terrorists, their method and the right equipment all being in the same place at the same time for any of these silly ideas to make sense?

I've often wondered why they don't just lock the !#$@*$ cockpit door on the ground and not open it again until after landing - either technically or using plain old keys that only ground staff have.

If they can't work out how to make a door which can't be opened using whatever an attacker can get into a cabin then the next logical step is to take away the door and put the pilots in from another entrance (eg trapdoor to tarmac).

If a terrorist wants to take over the plane and somehow manages to climb out onto a wing, under the belly of the plane and then into said trapdoor (all at 30k ft & hundreds of mile an hour) then the deserve their spoils, but in the mean time they just have to make do with tormenting fellow passengers.

Armchair: Maybe not, but there are certainly TWO-legged (and smaller/slower SIX-legged) non-human trained animals.

Sparky: Where are you seeing "revolver" or "Australia" in that patent application/document? Inventor is in Oregon, it's a US Patent, and no such mention.

The "Antiterrorist Vehicle" from '87 seems a response to the terrorists in the van from "Back to the Future". I prefer the DeLorean. :)

At least these are all '05 and earlier; I wonder how many movie-plot oddities have been proposed since '11.

@Eric: I was talking about the article linked to by Tanuki in the third post.

@Armchair Dissident
"There are four-legged humans??"

Not yet, but with gene splicing, that may be a reality soon. It's a very forward thinking article.

Can we patent the idea of a four legged human?

This is why we need drug testing for patent applications.

Has anyone else noticed how large the overlap is between technology for fighting terrorists and technology for dealing with zombies? Readers of Bruce's blog know well that the our governments are instilling in us a level of fear of terrorism which far exceeds the real threat of terrorism. Has anyone considered that perhaps they are quietly trying to prepare us for a different, darker and more sinister threat?

Bruce ... get back to work .. let's do some prime numbers for a change, enough of this horsing around, geez .. you were are CTO not CLO.

As mentioned above, the mobile missile system is an old idea, dating back at least to the Carter administration. There was something called the "Mobile MX". As I recall there was the "racetrack" option, which would do precisely as the patent suggests, mount missile launchers on rail cars.

Asinine then. Asinine now.

too funny :) the truck with the machine gun turret is my favorite

I love the drawings of the aircraft in the trap-door patent.

They describe the flight condition of the aircraft the first time someone uses the device and finds out it was built backwards. The pilots are incapacitated and the aircraft flies straight down...

I noted they all deal with the problem after it already exists.

Seems like (in terms of risk avoidance) terrorism prevention ideas should rise to the top, rather than response ideas like an umbrella, trap-door or even a crematorium.

No, really. How is a crematorium even close to being considered an anti-terror device?

I personally liked the mobile crematorium. Not the crematorium as used in a "terrorist" attack, but for general purpose (I'm thinking about a large flood where many are killed. Nice clean up). I'm upset at the trap door. I was hoping it would dump the hapless person out, not into a containment cell. An added bonus if there were a sound system that added a toilet "whooshing" sound.

"mobile missile system is an old idea, dating back at least to the Carter administration"

er, to be precise, the soviets mounted RT-23 (SS-24 SCALPEL) ICBM missiles to trains in the mid-1980s.

this was AFTER carter's administration.

timeline: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/chronology_missiles.html

pictures:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/icbm/rt-23.htm

the US had plans to do the same but they were never realized, fortunately, as gorbachev unilaterally dismantled the soviet system and thus stopped the competition.

incidentally, despite the "mobility" concept, trains sit on highly vulnerable rails, as demonstrated by the nazi bombardment of polish armored trains in 1939.

thus, wheel-mounted missiles (e.g. the soviet SS-25) are a far more resilient/mobile design and used frequently today.

I suppose an actual implementation is required for prior art, and that's too bad - because it's been thought of (and documented!) before. A slight twist, though - the trap door was in the flight deck's private restroom, for jettisoning waste mid-flight.

http://drmcninja.com/page.php?pageNum=44&issue=10

It seems that the "trap door" I linked to was considerably different than that described in the patent. Still amusing though.

It seems that the "trap door" I linked to was considerably different than that described in the patent. Still amusing though.

(Also, you have to read a few pages ahead to get to the part with the trap-door.)

Two thoughts:
- a friend got an email saying all women should be made to walk around naked, because Muslim terrorists would have to kill themselves for the shame of seeing such a thing. Or something like that. Sounded like a good idea to me!
- re: all the airplane devices - I seem to remember that pilots can alter the airflow / CO2 content and/or temperature to pretty much put everyone to sleep - so why do we need all these things??

Good point, Dan.

Just dump the pressurization. Everyone gets a sudden earache, but they're out within 30 seconds above 30K feet.

The pilots have oxygen masks.

Deployable Kevlar umbrella really cracked me up.

Because *I* want to be the unlucky chump who has to get within range of a suicide bomber (within seconds of positively identifying one and moving into position before the device is detonated) to deploy that ridiculous contraption. Not to mention that the blast from the explosive will simply blow the umbrella OFF the target and negate whatever infintessimal degree of protection that it provided.

In the South the "Mobile Crematorium" is called Bubba's Mobile BBQ Pit.

Sam:
== I've often wondered why they don't just lock the !#$@*$ cockpit door on the == ground and not open it again until after landing - either technically or using == plain old keys that only ground staff have.

What if the terrorist is one of the flight crew?

Also if you lock these guys in you will also need to provide them with a personal bathroom, sleeping area, kitchen and catering staff (esp for long-haul flights) in the sealed area. It's starting to sound expensive and the more people who need to staff this area, the more scope you have for a terrorist to infiltrate.

Lockable cockpit doors are not a bad idea to stop the odd unruly passenger from bursting in unannounced, but terrorists don't take over planes all that often. They are more likely to blow up the plane which they can do quite happily from the cabin.

The first thing I though of when I looked at the drawing for the railroad missile system was the toy train set with missiles, exploding boxcars, etc. that Lionel and other manufactures offered in late 1950s and the 1960s.

Examples can be seen at
http://thortrains.net/armymen/44missile.html
http://www.theworldwide.org/Lionel2.html

Actually railroad missile systems have been used by the US and Soviet Union in the cold war.

I notice that the illustration for the explosion containment net shows a hippie being trapped under the net. Damn those terrorist hippies!

Why is everybody joking? Don't ya all know that: "Terrorists can pop up at any ti leaving me, local authorities totally defenseless against their raging attacks" ;-)

sorry, typo, that should have been:

"Terrorists can pop up at any time leaving local authorities totally defenseless against their raging attacks" ;-)

"Terrorists can pop up at any time leaving local authorities totally defenseless against their raging attacks" ;-)

That assumes that people are going to rely on them for security. The public is vigilant. Plus we have friends with the capability to one up terrorists with stuff like Predator drones to even scores.

Don't forget the Safety Mailbox, US Patent 6,772,939. Apparently, adding air slots to an otherwise standard mailbox "will aid in eliminating the threat that terrorism poses to the delivery of mail."

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6772939