Rails and Domestic Terrorism
The Sovereign Citizen movement. Last week I attended a conference of school security. One of the modules was on the Sovereign Citizen movement. For those of you that are not familiar with this group, as of this moment, it consists of approximately 100,000...
NSA Has It Right
As an intelligence professional, I understand that NSA really doesn’t care what you do with your life as long as it does not deal with terrorism. Such is the case with the recent disclosure that, through monitoring of communications, NSA discovered that Al Qaeda...
TSA Says “Active Again in the Near Future”
So, we just lost some more eyes and ears that could tell us about potential terrorist or criminal threats on one of our critical infrastructures. The “First Observer” program just lost funding by the TSA. For those of you not familiar with the “First Observer”...
Fox in the Hen House
Recently, Norfolk Southern announced that they will be joining the BNSF in a similar program to Citizen's for Rail Security (CRS). The NS program is called "Protect the Line (PTL)." I joined with just a simple address, zip code and e-mail. We have always insisted that...
As Plain as the Nose on Your Face
We recently learned that Iranian intelligence agents were videotaping various infrastructures to include subway tunnels. So, now not only do we have to worry about third world terrorists, now we have to worry about professional intelligence officers. In the world of...
Cyber Attack on the Rails
Recently it was announced that “hackers, possibly from abroad, executed an attack on a Northwest rail company’s computers that disrupted railway signals for two days.” The railroads and TSA are saying that this was not a “dedicated” attack. Our Comment: Whether this...
New TSA Chief on Transit Security
"Protecting riders on mass-transit systems from terrorist attacks will be as high a priority as ensuring safe air travel," the new TSA Chief told a reporter. Mr. John Pistole, the new TSA Chief and career FBI officer, also said "that some terrorists consider subway...
Rail Cyber Attack?
Recently a report came out stating that the TSA disclosed that "Hackers, possibly from abroad, executed an attack on a Northwest rail company’s computers that disrupted railway signals for two days." The railroads and the AAR are saying that this never happened.
Senator Gets It
Last month, as a result of an investigation by KOMO news out of Seattle, Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Wa, asked the head of TSA what was going on with locomotives left unlocked and in some cases having the "reverser" sitting on the locomotive counsel on rail sidings. Mr....
We Told You So
Well, seems as if what we at Hot Rail LLC have been saying for a while has come true. It has now been confirmed that the U.S. rails were/are going to be a target for terrorists. Intelligence from the recent raid at bin Laden’s residence revealed a planned attack on...