Greg Guma / Maverick Media: Oil Spill

Showing posts with label Oil Spill. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Cyber Threats: System Failures & Living in Denial

By Greg Guma

In August 2010, when Foreign Policy posted an article citing credible research and directly warned oil companies worldwide that their offshore oil rigs were highly vulnerable to hacking, few people took notice.

“Computer commands can derail a train or cause a gas pipeline to burst,” warned former Bush administration counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke a few years later in Cyber War, his book on the topic. The reaction: mainly silence. Until recently, such scenarios seemed more like movie plots than foreign policy concerns, and the threat looked more domestic than foreign.

In early 2009, for instance, a 28-year-old contractor in California was charged in federal court with almost disabling an offshore rig. Prosecutors said the contractor, who was allegedly angry about not being hired full time, had hacked into the computerized network of an oil-rig off the coast, specifically the controls that detect leaks. He caused damage, but fortunately not a leak.

After the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico the Christian Science Monitor reported that at least three US oil companies had been targets in a series of cyber attacks. The culprit was most likely someone or some group in China, and the incidents, largely un-reported for several years, had involved Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. But the companies apparently didn’t realize how serious their problem was until the FBI alerted them.

At the time, federal officials said that proprietary information – email passwords, messages, and information linked to executives – had been flowing out to computers overseas. Chinese government involvement could not be confirmed, but some data did end up on a computer in China. One oil company security staffer privately coined the term “China virus.”
Still, the companies generally preferred not to comment, or even admit that the attacks had happened. But the Monitor persisted, interviewing insiders, officials and cyber attack experts, and ultimately confirmed the details. Their overall conclusion was that cyber-burglars, using spyware that is almost undetectable, pose a serious and potentially dangerous threat to private industry.
According to Clarke, many nations conduct Internet espionage and sometimes even cyber attacks. China has been aggressive at times, but so have Russia and North Korea. Spying on defense agencies and diplomats has been one major focus; strategically important businesses and even national governments have also been targeted.

In 2011, when I first published an article on the problem, Google claimed that it had evidence of at least 20 companies that had been infiltrated by Chinese hackers. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, logic bombs were being infiltrated into the US electric power grid. If so, they could operate like time bombs. Now it looks likely that Russia was the actual culprit, or had the same idea.
On oil rigs, the advent of robot-controlled platforms has made a cyber attack possible with a computer anywhere in the world. Control of a rig could be accomplished by hacking into the "integrated operations" that link onshore computer networks to offshore ones. Until 2018 few experts would speculate publicly that this may already have happened. But there has been confirmation of computer viruses causing personnel injuries and production losses on North Sea platforms for several years.
One problem is that even though newer rigs have cutting-edge robotics technology, the software that controls their basic functions can still be old school. Many rely on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software, which was created in an era when "open source" was more important than security.
"It's underappreciated how vulnerable some of these systems are," warned Jeff Vail, a former counterterrorism and intelligence analyst with the US Interior Department who talked with Greg Grant, author of the Foreign Policy article. "It is possible, if you really understood them, to cause catastrophic damage by causing safety systems to fail."
The name of the article, by the way, was “The New Threat to Oil Supplies – Hackers.” It sounds a lot like “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US.”
To be fair, the US government’s failure to address private-sector vulnerability to cyber attacks goes back decades. Until recently, however, Congress and various administrations hesitated to challenge the status quo. Given the vulnerability of crucial infrastructure and much of the private sector, surprisingly little was done to prepare for what sounds inevitable.
The US Cyber Command has attempted to protect federal infrastructure, while various branches of the military have developed their own offensive capabilities. But not even the Department of Homeland Security is officially responsible for protecting the private sector. Legal and privacy issues get in the way of having the government directly monitor the Internet or business operations for evidence of potential cyber attacks. As you might expect, many businesses are wary of the regulations that might accompany government help.
Though cyber attacks have clearly happened, many leave no obvious trace. As Clarke explained, corporations tend to believe that the “millions of dollars they have spent on computer security systems means they have successfully protected their company’s secrets.” Unfortunately, they are wrong. Intrusion detection and prevention systems sometimes fail.
As it stands, no single federal agency is responsible for defending the banking system, power grids and oil rigs from attacks. The prevailing logic is that businesses should handle their own security. Yet their experts readily admit that they wouldn’t know what to do if an attack came from another nation, and assume that defense in such a case would be the government’s job.That’s capitalist thinking for you, private interests but socialized costs.
In 2011, a US Senate bill sponsored by Democrat Jay Rockefeller and Republican Olympia Snowe sought to change that, but became another victim of DC gridlock. It would have required the president to work with the private sector on a comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy, created a joint public-private advisory board, and led to a Senate-confirmed national security adviser position. Rockefeller said the goal was “unprecedented information sharing between government and the private sector.”
James Fallows has argued that the US suffers from “a conspiracy of secrecy about the scale of cyber risk.” His point was that many companies simply won’t admit how easily they can be infiltrated. As a result, changes in the law, the regulatory environment, or personal habits that could increase safety are not seriously discussed.
But sooner or later, Fallows concluded, “the cyber equivalent of 9/11 will occur.” That prediction is bad enough. But then he adds, “if the real 9/11 is a model, we will understandably, but destructively, overreact.”
So we’ve also got that to look forward to.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Hunting Finance Vultures: A Talk with Greg Palast

“The vultures get their hands on money that they claim is owed by the poorest nations, usually during a civil war. Then they find loopholes and seize all the wealth.” – Greg Palast

Palast and hat.

By Greg Guma In his new book, Vultures' Picnic, Greg Palast pulls together documents and stories from more than three decades of detective work, unraveling the schemes of the Energy-Finance Combine and exposing several real life vulture capitalists. On Dec. 12, he will visit Burlington and share some of what he has found out at Main Street Landing during a 7 p.m. talk sponsored by Toward Freedom.

We talked on December 4, covering BP's crimes in the Gulf and Caspian Sea, Entergy's exploitation of hurricane Katrina, what it's like to interview a corporate predator, making the transition from investigator to journalist, and why Uber-Vulture Paul Singer wants him off British TV. Here are some excerpts. Also check out my feature about Palast and the vultures for VTDigger.org -- In fedora and trench coat, Palast exposes "vultures" who profit from crisis. Below this interview you'll find recent radio coverage by Free Speech Radio News.

* * *

Guma: By the time I got to Page 348 in Vultures' Picnic, when you’re talking about Joe Stiglitz and the IMF riots, I had to wonder whether the current uprisings are part of the plan. You know, decriminalizing banking, privatization and the assumption that austerity will lead to unrest and a crackdown…

Palast: No doubt about it. Same smell, same scene. But Joe Stiglitz (economist and former member of the Clinton cabinet) doesn’t give me the information. It’s very important to him that he doesn’t violate his agreements.

Guma: Why did you use a reportage verite style for this book?

Palast: Because this is how I do it. Since The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, people are used to it. And people know about me from reporting on the presidential voting scandal. There I gave you the information that I cover. I thought it was important to say how I’m getting it - and sometimes failing to get it. I didn’t want to keep doing the same thing. Another reason is that I wanted to make the point that I’m an ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances. People should know my story.

Guma: If the British government is an arm of BP’s imperial power, what is BP an arm of?

Palast: Actually, BP is an arm of Morgan Stanley. It used to be that BP was an extension of military intelligence, now the roles are reversed.

Guma: There’s so much to say about BP. Starting with homicide…

Palast: Exactly. The information we got from an eyewitness right after the blow out was that this was not the first time. And it was the same reason, cheap crap cement. And they covered it up by beatings and bribery and blow jobs. Vulture Picnic is saying that they covered this up – and by doing that 11 guys died. I’m saying, as a former racketeering and fraud investigator, that it was a crime.

There’s a lock up between Big Oil, Big Finance and Big Government. All the oil companies knew about the problem prior to the blow out, and the Department of State may have hidden it from Congress.

We tracked them to Azerbaijan and got arrested in the desert, but Badpenny gave me a camera pen so I got the documents out. When I work for BBC and The Guardian, I’m under British law. I have to give this evidence to BP and ask them whether it’s right. And they have never denied it. Did you have another blow out? No denial, just blah blah blah.

There were three crimes. Crime number one: PB destroyed the Caspian Sea and the Gulf. The Gulf of Mexico is a crime scene. Crime number two: The government knew and covered it up. And crime number three: The US press is ignoring it, except maybe a public whipping, maybe.

The New York Times is a local paper that does gossip. And NPR has become the National Petroluem Network. In Britain I’m mainstream, I work for the BBC and The Guardian. So, they can’t tell us that didn’t know this.

Guma: You say that one of the lessons for BP was, “Don’t prevent, don’t pay.” Which brings us to the vultures. Who are they?

Palast: You can get a lot of the details in 1^st chapter, which you can download free.

First, there really is a Goldfinger, and compared to him the movie villain was a girl scout. The vultures get their hands on money that they claim is owed by the poorest nations, usually during a civil war. Then they find loopholes and seize all the wealth.

The number one US vulture is Paul Singer, an advisor to Romney. His office recently called the BBC in London to say they have a file on Palast. They really want to smear me and implied that a lawsuit was coming. Paul Singer is the number one donor to the Republican Party. So, they are not minor players. He makes his money by literally killing babies, according to the former Deputy Secretary of the UN. And what Singer wants is Palast off the air. He sent a complaint to The Guardian.

His buddy – they literally have a club – is Goldfinger, who bribed the President of Zambia with $3 million. In return he let Goldfinger collect a phony debt and take $45 million off the Zambian treasury – the money we gave them to fight AIDs. This is also a crime.

We tracked the trail of the president. His bank was in Geneva and Badpenny followed the trail, pulling off the role of a TV star. She says, “We’re from a reality show, Shopping with the Rich and Famous.”

Since we put this on the air the laws have changed in several nations. Now they bar these vulture speculators. But this was a case of bribery. The door is closed, but not in America.

Guma: When you get into the room with someone like that, or the generalissimo of globalization, is anyone really there?

Palast: I find that the government guys are just careerists. But the actual vultures are brilliant and frightening, and most are fairly charming. And they know their shit. The oil guys are actually quite brilliant. You really have to know your stuff, and not get charmed. Think back: How many news guys licked the loafers of Ken Lay?

Because they know me – and I have a degree in international finance – they have a tough time saying I don’t understand. Actually, they run from me in some of these stake outs.

Guma: Let’s talk about nuclear power. Vermont Yankee may close next March…

Palast: The operative word is “may.”

Guma: …and Entergy is suing. What can you add to the discussion for Vermonters?

Palast: There’s no effective earthquake proofing. Remember we’re talking about a seismic event, for instance the kids from Al Qaeda. If things screw up you have only one thing between you and disaster—those diesel generators. But we know that they might as well as put Hanukah bushes around the plant.

There is no way those generators can fire up – actually maybe a 50 percent chance. In nuclear power, the problem is always something cheap. There are three things involved in every plant: cement, steel and fraud. The companies just change their names.

Entergy had enough brains to get Hillary [Clinton], a smart move. When I investigated them for the City of New Orleans I went through their books and found a corrupt cesspool. The NRC calls the standard “management integrity.” They don’t have it.

They were the power company for New Orleans. Parts of the city were dark for more than a year after the hurricane. There are places that still don’t have electricity. They said that unless rates went up the lights wouldn’t be turned on. The city went down and they took the power for the plant and sold it for profit. As a result Entergy made a fortune off Katrina. They could sell power at a premium elsewhere. They took the gain and pocketed it.

When they run scams like that, don’t trust them. If they’re lying about the money they’re lying about everything.

Guma: After years investigating corporate crimes was making the change to investigative journalist empowering?

Palast: It was necessary. What was the point of doing this, I thought, when I had to dump stuff in a file and seal it. I was going insane, not being able to make this public. Going public is vital to me. In London I am on the front page, and all over Europe and Africa. Here I can barely get on the radio. But at least I can shout from across the water, as opposed to not being able to say anything because it’s under seal.

Guma: So, the vultures eat the carcasses – whole countries sometimes – but the real killing is made by Switzerland, Norway, US and Britain – the so-called donor nations. And the ultimate winners are the energy-finance combine. Is this an institutional or structural problem, or mainly the actions of the vultures and others in the 1%?

Palast: I hate the bad apply model. That’s why I hated the Enron story. I wrote about it as an example. The whole tree is rotten to the roots; that is the key. And the so-called investigative journalists are the biggest part of the cover up because they find a bad guy for you to pick on. This justifies the status quo.

Guma: Despite all that, aren’t you more optimistic with the rise of Lula, Chavez, and Morales in Latin America, and the overall mood at the moment?

Palast: Sure. The problem is religious, and this is a religious book. These are matter of faith and personal courage. That’s the story I’m telling. It’s about whether we have the courage not to be slaves, toadies and greedsters.

Greg Palast: Vultures in the Congo

Friday, December 17, 2010

MAVERICK CHRONICLES, 12/17/2010

This week on Maverick Media’s Rebel News Round Up, broadcast live at approximately 11:30 a.m. Friday on WOMM (105.9-FM/LP – The Radiator) in Burlington. The Question: Do we prefer the virtual to the real? Looking back at 2010: celebrity misadventures, earthquakes and other disasters, corporate crimes, governing toward gridlock, return of the culture war, media breakthroughs, endangered humanity, and the rumor of the week.

Live Stream: http://www.theradiator.org/drupal/webcam.html
Call-in: (802) 861-9666

SEASON OF THE RICH: 2010 in Review

Rednecks out to back a witch
Two parties running in a ditch
Yes, it’s strange very strange
Must be the season of the rich

It was a time of corporate theft, natural disasters, cultural counter-revolution and a general retreat from reality. According to Time, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the person of the year. Personally, I still can’t decide whether social networking is like the invention of the telephone, just an excuse to gossip, or a way to collect information on people and make it feel like fun. Still, my personal choice for most influential person is Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. And both wunderkinds owe their prominence to the existence of the Internet. So, maybe that was the year’s defining characteristic – the power of cyberspace, eclipsing both inner and outer space. Strange, very strange. And it raises the question: In 2010 has the virtual officially become more compelling than the real?

The year actually started with more traditional media madness and misbehaving celebrities. In January the big talk in TV circles was another late night war. After failing at 10 pm, Jay Leno reclaimed The Tonight Show and Conan O’Brien was bumped from the lineup. Tiger Woods, who was already a major meal for the press cannibals, apologized for his sexual misadventures and decided to take a break from golf. Both he and Conan returned to the spotlight before too long. And, of course, there was the pleasant distraction of the Olympic Games in February. But more shattering events were already erupting.

Here are five of the year’s major story lines – some acknowledged, others under or misreported.

EARTH SENDS A MESSAGE

As the argument over climate change continued, deniers got more than their fair share of attention and the planet sent some pointed messages of its own. In January Haiti, which has endured centuries of environmental abuse, was hit with a devastating earthquake. Thousands died and millions continue to suffer. How much can one small country take, especially the poorest in the Western hemisphere? Less than a month later, on February 24, came an 8.8 Earthquake and tsunami in Chile. The body count was much lower, but the quake itself was one of the largest in recorded history.

Less than two months after that, on April 14, ash from an exploding volcano in Iceland disrupted air traffic across Europe. And on October 25, another earthquake created another tsunami, this one off the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra. Hundreds died. Still, despite such calamities and another year of strange weather, little was done to prepare for more environmental upheavals in the future. Message from the planet ignored.

CORPORATIONS GO TOXIC

Not to be outdone by nature, big businesses demonstrated that they’re ready to compete at creating chaos and putting humans at risk. They weren’t creating many jobs, but they certainly produced a few disasters. As Haiti reeled Toyota launched the year’s recall mania. Honda, Ford, even Lexus soon joined the club.

Here’s a partial list of the product recalls from our less-than-safe free market: Tylenol, Rolaids, cheese and eggs, cribs, strollers, car seats and kids medicine, pet food and 27 million pounds of meat and poultry processed for human consumption. Actually, in terms of food recall it may have been the year of egg: half a billion eggs were pulled after 2400 people were hit with salmonella contamination.

Other notable food recalls included lobster, chopped celery from a San Antonio processing plant that was linked to at least four deaths, more than a million pounds of salami and Italian sausage after people in 44 states got sick (the culprit turned out to be black pepper used to coat the meats), lettuce possibly contaminated with e. coli, salmonella and listeria, and lunch meat and frozen vegetables distributed by Walmart. (Some packages of veggies included a special bonus – shards of glass.)

But these mishaps pale when compared to the April 5 mine explosion in West Virginia, the Chilean miners trapped underground from August 4 to October 13, or the big Kahuna – the Gulf oil spill. On April 20, the Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded. Eleven people working on the rig died right away. We may not ever know the full body count. The spill spread for months, damaging the US coastline, killing wildlife, and briefly prompting doubts about offshore drilling. Heck of a job, BP.

FROM CHANGE TO GRIDLOCK

You had to know it would be a rough year when, right out of the box, the Supreme Court announced its Citizens United decision, clearly one the year’s defining moments. Corporate funding of candidate ads couldn’t be limited anymore under the First Amendment. For a century corporate leaders couldn’t spend a company’s general funds in elections. They had to set up separate political action committees. But Citizens United says that corporations have the same First Amendment rights as real people, and restrictions violate those rights. Result: the 2010 elections saw an explosion of corporate money in campaigns, much of it anonymous. Obama went after the Supremes for that decision in his State of the Union, which probably didn’t help. They’re likely to become even more partisan in any future decisions about things like health care reform and gay marriage.

At first it looked like this would be a landmark year for legislation. Health Care Reform – not perfect, but perhaps a step in the right direction – became law on March 23. Four months later, the Democrats muscled through a financial reform bill. Elena Kagan, a pragmatic political player, joined the Supreme Court in the summer. But as the year proceeded it became tougher and tougher to get anything done. By December Republicans were vowing to block everything until the richest two percent get to keep their current tax rate. We had gone from modest reform to hostage taking in less than nine months.

RETURN OF THE CULTURE WAR

Most pundits saw the May primary victories of Tea Party and Palin-backed candidates as a key sign that some kind of revolution was brewing on the right. But I’d argue that the handwriting was on the wall by February 18. That was the day 53-year-old Joseph Stack, a software engineer, flew a small plan in an IRS building in Austin. Stack died in the crash but left a suicide note that explained his reason: he was upset about the government.

Another early warning was the April 23 signing of Arizona’s harsh "Papers Please" immigration law, which set off a national chain reaction of resurgent xenophobia. A few weeks later Rand Paul beat an establishment Republican candidate in the Kentucky Senate primary. The Tea Party was on the electoral map. Its endorsed candidates also scored upsets in Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Nevada, New York, South Carolina and Utah. A strange new and somewhat uncontrollable force was gaining momentum.

By mid-summer we were in a political zombie movie. Anything could spark an attack of the brain-dead. On August 13, they declared a fatwa on what came to be known as the Ground Zero Mosque. Extremists competed for months to see who could be more anti-Muslim. Meanwhile, Glenn Beck transformed himself again – from rodeo clown (it’s just a hobby) to talk show host, and now televangelist and self-appointed savior of the nation. On August 28, he took the show to Washington, attempting to appropriate the civil rights movement by holding a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Angry, middle-aged pudgy white folks were demanding “their” country back. Finally.

If the high water mark came in the spring, the low point was in October, when Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell produced a TV ad to explain that she isn’t a witch. Now, I’ve known some witches, and I have to agree. She’s no witch. She’s something else – a celebrity politician and professional narcissist, the latest media creation. They don’t have to win or do anything to be influential. In fact, the crazier and more irresponsible the better.

The Republicans came out on top on November 2, taking over the US House in the biggest swing in more than half a century. Then, as if it was a sign from above, former big wheel Tom Delay was convicted of crimes he committed while helping to run Congress. For some it was a warning of what lies ahead, for others just more evidence that there’s a vast conspiracy out there, trying to impose justice on a righteous right-wing movement that won’t be restricted by radical, socialist ideas – like fairness, facts and honesty.

NEW MEDIA PUSHES THE ENVELOP

As I mentioned at the start, this was a banner year for the Internet. But let’s not forget Rolling Stone, which published a remarkable cover story on June 23. Their feature on General Stanley McChrystal, who was running the war in Afghanistan, was so frank that he was forced to resign. By this time Wikileaks had already released a video that vividly demonstrated the unnecessary brutality that has been a feature of US wars. More leaks were still ahead, building toward a climax in late November. The big document dump, which still continues, exposes all manner of diplomatic hypocrisy and scheming. We’re heard about less than 1 percent of those 250,000 State Department cables.

No wonder there’s so much pressure to prosecute and repress. Too much transparency and we might see right through our overseers. Wouldn’t be prudent, even during a year when right-wingers were so eager to attack the government and talk revolution and freedom. I guess those leaks are just a bit too real.

AN ENDANGERED SPECIES?

Obviously, this isn’t the whole story of 2010. But it’s probably fair to say that the year was rife with contradictions – and danger. Class war and cultural reaction, cyberspace power and creeping repression. Where are we heading? Too early to tell. But science did provide one intriguing clue. On December 2, NASA announced the discovery of a new life form, one that thrives on arsenic. Called GFAJ-1, it’s a microbe that apparently substitutes arsenic for phosphate in its DNA. One implication: across the universe, alien creatures could be bubbling up, not limited by our terrestrial chemistry.

On Earth, arsenic is a dangerous poison, enough like phosphorus that the human body will mistakenly take it up and circulate it into cells. Not helpful. For humans it’s a crafty poison. Any organism able to tolerate it in high doses is both fascinating and vaguely threatening.

So, the future holds untold possibilities. But some of them could be deadly for human beings – including the rich. Strange indeed. As George Carlin once said, maybe the Earth backed the development of humans so that we could provide it with plastic. Now that there’s enough, we may no longer be necessary.

RUMOR OF THE WEEK: THE BLOB IS BACK

If I'm being too negative for the season, how about this – the rumor of the week: They’re working on a sequel to The Blob. In 1958, Steve McQueen figured out that the alien Jello could only be stopped by cold temperature. They froze the sucker and sunk it at the North Pole. As long as the ice remained, we were safe. But the flick did end with a question mark. So, guess what? Climate change. The ice is melting and that deadly blob is on its’ way back.

James Franco is set to play Steve, an angry rebel hacker trying to get enough people to believe that the planet is in trouble. Blobs is set for release next summer, most likely on Independence Day. As mini-blobs spread out across the planet Steve organizes a band of cyber warriors to get the warning out. Will we go viral – or extinct? Eventually a blob is about to engulf the White House. But the rebels’ Wikiblobs Alert is reaching critical mass. And then Interpol breaks in, drops a hood over Steve’s head, and ships him to an undisclosed location. Will humanity survive?

Don’t want to spoil the ending but they say it’ll be in 3D. An Armageddon-load-of-fun for the whole family.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Oil Spill Video Feed Crashes Website

Under pressure from Rep. Ed Markey, BP released a live video feed today that shows the oil gushing from the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico. It was briefly available online, but not many people got to see it before the U.S. House website on which it was posted crashed.

In this 2 minute clip, with Markey providing commentary, we can see the large plume of oil and gas that is still spewing into the Gulf, shot from a camera 5,000 feet below the surface. Among other things, it shows that BP vastly under-estimated the amount of oil being released every day. The feed was posted on the Web site of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, which was overwhelmed by the traffic. A spokeswoman for Markey said staffers were trying to fix the problem.