FCC ISSUES SIGNIFICANT RULE CHANGES

you mean "I can't answer that because I was just repeating someone who heard someone say that someone said....."

 

I think you have it pegged.

I don't see much of a game being played on this. All I see is a short, direct question ---- which isn't being answered.

Where's the game?

tim ab0wr

 

Nope, You can't. But as you don't seem to have very many, that doesn't really matter.

That's a long way short of having enough information to support your claimed "facts" that all EOCs had hams, et cetera. It's a very long way from having any knowledge about what happened in NOLA.

Let me ask you this: You've asserted as fact information about events for which you were not present and I was, and that I know are not facts. When I pointed out that the authorities told a different story about Loma Prieta than you did, you accused them of being "liars".

Given that in every instance where I can check your "facts" about incidents you weren't present for, they're wrong, and easily shown wrong, why should anyone believe your "facts" about anything to do with Katrina that happened outside of the tiny area where you were present?

In other words, you're a service tech with no formal training in communications, dispatching, disaster management or professional emergency communications, who has never been employed in any of those capacities, but who has been indirectly involved at the edge of a couple of emergencies and helped build out and document some ham system for Texas.

Er, about that, Google says

No luck substituting your name for WA5BEN, either. Could you, perhaps, give me some references on this?

 

I'm not going to be that hard on him. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, Albert. I believe that he's merely very enthusiastic and, perhaps, a touch naive.

I think he believes what he is saying.

Let us do what we can to educate him.

 

:0
ALOT OF TALK ABOUT WI-FI.
I have a laptop with a built in wi-fi. The little
button clicks it on and off. When on, it finds
connections to the web and other networks
on its own.
It also keeps doing funny little things behind
the scenes too!
When your computer is on, the computer is linking
on the web via those wi-fi ports. Viruses and
other info mining stuff can lurk.
Best bet---turn that thing off at all times unless
you are actively on the web or the network. I just
had to do a total reinstall with a new hard drive
recently since something got on my computer
and turned the computer into a useless box of
garbage! Remember on all computers to have the
OS and drivers on CD ready for backup!
But at last. Radio and high speed internet all
work perfect together!
But CW is still cool

 

Lack of knowledge is quite telling....

Operation S.E.C.U.R.E. (State Emergency Communications Using Radio Effectively) is a federally established system for state government intercommunication and federal government intercommunication. It operates on federally controlled frequencies between about 2.5 MHz and 12 MHz. The radios meet Part 90, Part 87, and Part 89. They are designed to be operated by public safety communicators -- volume, squelch, and channel are the only knobs.

The installed antennas operate on any frequency between 2.0 and 30.0 MHz with less than 2:1 VSWR without an antenna tuner. The antenna installations are optimized for 0 - 400 mile coverage with smothed sunspot numbers from 20 to 200.

Of course you could not find it under my callsign... You should have been able to find at least of of my internationally published articles, however. ... especially since I gave the name of the magazine ( Public Safety Communications )

Please do not do personal attacks. I will not tolerate it.

Even my brief relevant credentials are sufficient that your "service tech" remark is beyond the bounds of decency. I worked as a service tech at age 14, had a commercial license at 15, and an amateur license at 16. The only commercial license I have not held is shipboard Radiotelegraph.

I have had responsibility for product concept, product development, and technical marketing for a worldwide company. My designs are or have been in use by military and government users in quite a large number of countries -- including some special U.S. forces.

I beat out both Motorola and Harris to win the Operation SECURE contract. (My system cost less and did substantially more.)

I was elected to SMPTE -- with nominations by the chief engineers of two network affiliates -- after I had put in operation the first broadcast minicams in the Southwest. I was responsible for moving 35 stations from film to video tape -- and for teaching many of their photographers about filters. Then, my mobile studio won the contract to do the promos for 20th Century Fox films.

And that is just a sample.....

And I would hardly call over 40 years of SAR, EMCOMM, weather, and disaster relief training and experience "indirectly involved". (You usually aren't asked to write articles or speak at conferences if you don't know what you are talking about.)

And, BTW, I know that all of the EOC had hams because I was talking to them quite frequently -- and monitoring their communications all of the time -- both in our comm trailer and in my car. We had direct VHF comms to the state EOC in Baton Rouge; to Hammond, Franklinton, and Covington, LA; and to Jackson, MS (via Poplarville, MS).

My direct knowledge of NO comes from what I heard on the air as I cruised down I-12 on the way in. (Yes, I was cleared onto that closed "relief vehicles only" highway.)

I believe your apology is in order....

 

That's nice. It doesn't answer the question, though. You're sidestepping questions, again.

Why can I find no reference on the interweb that mentions you in the context of the Texas SECURE system you claim to have built out?

While you're at it, why doesn't Public Saftey show up in InfoTrac?

and why do I get

when I ask InfoTrack for the article?

This from the guy who called San Francisco officials "liars" because they disagreed with him.

Datotek was a small player and had a bad reputation in the industry. Here's a comment from a trade article:

It's been ten years since they finally went bankrupt, no?

Also, why doesn't a patent search for Datotek patents show your name if you had such a wide ranging responsibility for product design and implementation?

Not that it matters, much, as 20 year old crypto hardware hardly qualifies as EMCOMM credentials.

And you still haven't provided any references for "your" system.

Would that be this system?

If not, would you care to point us to the press releases and news storys about your beating out Moto and Harris?

You do realize that your second sentence contradicts your first, right?

I'm sure you deserve your position in SMPTE. But again, alas, hardly credentials for EMCOMM.

In other words, you don't have any; you're just recalling bits and pieces you heard second hand.

You believe incorrectly. As you do of much of what you've claimed here that has been shown to be wrong.

You've made up, or misheard, stories about NOLA during Katrina and San Francisco during the Loma Prieta recovery. Everything you've claimed as fact that can be independently checked has turned out to be wrong. You have credited amateurs for working relief efforts that didn't even happen.

On other issues, where the audience here has been unable to directly check your claims, you have refused to produce independent confirmation, either by flat out refusing, as when you claimed someone else was "playing a game", or, more often, sidestepping the question and responding with irrelevant information, as you did in the post I'm responding to.

 

Marty,

I've been down this road with Larry before.

You are wasting your time.

I've found that it is best to just refute his arguments and let the self-aggrandizement go by un-noted. People tend to figure out what is going on pretty quickly.

tim ab0wr

 

No, I am directly answering questions. I just typed in "public safety communications magazine" and got an immediate hit.

The funny thing is that you claim expertise and experience in public safety communications, yet with every imaginable clue -- including the full name of the magazine -- you did not identify that magazine as the magazine of the Asociation of Public Safety Communications Officers International, otherwise known as "APCO". Perhaps you have heard of the various APCO Standards ?

 

As a matter of fact, Datotek NEVER went bankrupt. It was purchased and "assimilated" by AT&T. AT&T basically purchased all of the top Crypto houses, then had no clue what to do with them, so it got out of the business.

The voice devices, including the DNV-2000 (which incorporates many of my features) were sold by AT&T to Technical Concepts Corporation (TCC).

Contrary to this article from some alleged "trade article", Datotek was a leader in both strategic-level and tactical-level cryptographic equipment. Again, contrary to the article, it was purchased and dissolved by AT&T, who only wanted the KAK (Key-Auto-Key) Key Generator technology.

As one of about 4 people authorized to discuss the workings of the key generator with national government cipher committees, I can state unequivocally that the Mark II and Mark XII key generators were tested over millions and millions of iterations by both private and national government cryptananalysts who had at their disposal the both the full internal workings and the actual schematic diagram. Given that, and a fully functioning identical machine -- but not the Master Key, not one was ever able to read traffic.

Cycle = 10^65 bits
Master key = 10^52
Single bit key change produces 50% non-correllated output (maximum possible when dealing with 2 values: 1 and 0)
No keystream is a shift of another keystream

Defeated known plaintext, spoof ciphertext, code homing, and all other known attacks in extensive tests conducted by both labs and customers.

Our most respected competitor on the data side was Gretag. Our chip compared quite well with theirs, and we beat them for numerous contracts that were awarded on head-to-head competition for Strategic and Diplomatic level devices.

Crypto AG was essentially becoming the third guy in the house. They had relaxed R&D to the point that their products were old technology. Their principle market was shrinking as TELEX faded. We normally won the analog voice (Tactical Scrambler) competitions against them.

Some old Argentenian equipment was breakable, and they knew it. These were very old 5-level TTY (Baudot) devices that were essentially electronic versions of the ENIGMA -- in other words a substitution cipher with relatively long length. The cipher alphabet was further constrained by the requirement that it stay within the teleprinter PRINTABLE characters. They were designed for TACTICAL encryption of 45 Baud to 110 Baud teleprinters in a 1960's environment.

Datotek, Gretag, and Crypto AG were the ONLY competitors in the global crypto world. There simply were no other players. Gretag and Crypto AG were not constrained by United States laws, so they could address a wider arena.

And there were absolutely, positively no bugs in any Datotek equipment. It was shipped to a tighly controlled list that included some of the most sensitive areas in the world. The problem with a "bug" is that if you can read it, your enemy can -- and will -- read it. (Most of our customers also conducted EMI/EMC and probe testing of the devices.)

Several of us have questioned the report of "bugs" in the Crypto AG equipment, by the way. The mechanism by which plain text was readable "under" the cipher more nearly implies bad design of the "Red - Black Interface". These were relatively primitive TTY encryptors that operated on-line in real time. Failure to carefully and fully isolate the (relatively) high current (40 mA to 60 mA) input loop (and ground) from the output loop (and ground) would inevitably result in feedthrough of the plaintext at the levels detected. The fact that they did not correct it -- even if a design flaw -- is inexcusable.

 

That system is a linking of communications at a municipal airport with about 20 gates -- reading between the lines, probably by VOIP or a conference bridge. The main airport (DFW) has a fully monitored security center in each of the (now six) terminals. Each terminal is covered by enough cameras that it is just about impossible to hide, and by other sensors that I cannot reveal. (I wrote the specification for the security surveillance and recording system for DFW. It was the first anywhere to allow simultaneous multi-event dedicated recording - which became a requirement at all airports.)

My system was installed state-wide in 1993.

Small companies do not have public relations departments. I think a local paper ran a couple of column-inches. It may have been Dallas Business Journal, but I don't recall. Local publicity would not have brought much -- if any -- additional business, so we did not make getting it a high priority. We were too busy delivering the system, winning the installation contract, installing the system, winning the training contract, and delivering the training package (manual, video tape, and live "hands on" training).

 

There is no contradiction. Our VHF comms were on AMATEUR repeaters, talking to AMATEURS in each of the EOC. We were the only link to the state EOC, to the parish "HQ", and to other "HQ" of other parishes.

Re: NO

Since I was there, and you weren't, I choose to believe what I heard over what you claim. What was available depended upon where one was. To the West, it was more or less "so what". To the East, increasing devastation -- with a wide swath of TOTAL devastation. South of NO, I understand there was also heavy devastation from surge.

 

I encourage people to check out this article about amateur radio efforts in the Lomo Prieta quake.

http://earthquakeadvisor.com/articles/00032.html

Quoting: "Here are some of my post event notes.
I started the tape about 10 minutes after the main event. Seconds before I pushed record, we had a Mag 5x aftershock. If you listen closely, you can hear my neighbor's alarm sounding in the background. There were several more aftershocks that happened during the taping. One knocked my phone off the hook. You can hear the alert beeps. One aftershock interrupted the net due to net control having to leave the Sunnyvale Fire Station he was in. I pulled out my generator at dusk and we had the whole neighborhood at our house watching the news. We were without PG&E Power for 3 days after the event! The night of the quake around 11:00pm, I was called to open a Red Cross Shelter at the Senior Center in Mountain View. I checked people in all night, but in the morning the city condemned the building due to damage. We moved the shelter to the Rengstorff Park Recreation Center where I finished my shift.
Hope you enjoy the audio files, '73 Eric N6OIM"

And this from the City of San Jose:
http://www.sanjoseca.gov/emergencyServices/races/history.asp

Quoting: "San Jose RACES has a dedicated radio room as part of the City's Emergency Operations Center (EOC). The EOC Radio Room enables the Emergency Operations Center to communicate with other Amateur Radio Stations throughout the City. In the hours and days following the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, San Jose RACES operated its equipment 24 hours per day for nearly a week. In some affected areas,Amateur Radio was the only means of two-way communication during the hours immediately following the earthquake. The 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake demonstrated the need, the use, and the value of Amateur Radio to the City of San Jose, and greatly facilitated the approval of previously planned upgrades to the City's Amateur Radio equipment. The EOC Radio Room is equipped with commercial radios which operate on multiple frequencies and gives the City of San Jose an excellent local and world-wide Amateur Radio capability."

It appears that your "I was here in California" information is rather suspect. I gathered as much from the fact that we were unable to reach our family members in Sunnyvale for about 3 days -- but got a message by (ta-da) ham radio that they were OK.

WHOSE independently checkable information is totally and completely inaccurate ? ("T'ain't" mine.)

 

I simply refuse to re-answer a question that several of us have answered ad nauseum. Regardless of how many times -- or in how much detail -- the question is answered, it is rephrased as a "new" question.

The best way to stop a silly game is simply to refuse to play.

 

Roger that.