|
 |
Friday, June 18, 2004 |
 NPR report: there is now a flood of expatriates leaving Saudi Arabia. It's working.
3:27:59 PM 
|
|
Saudi al Qaeda hostage, Paul Johnson is dead (graphic photos of the beheading -- mature content only). Saudi al Qaeda chief, al-Moqrin, is reported to have been gunned down disposing of the body in Riyadh (this is being verified).
1:54:40 PM
|
|
Iraq buys new aircraft to monitor pipelines.
12:22:24 PM
|
|
WP. Lots of confidence here. Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence and now the country's ambassador to Britain, said security forces have eliminated four of five known al Qaeda cells in the country in the past year. He also expressed confidence that Muqrin's group would be rounded up soon as well. "Only one al Qaeda cell remains operational in Saudi Arabia," Turki said in an interview this month with Jane's Intelligence Review, a London-based publication. "Even now, it's in the process of being dismantled."
10:30:44 AM
|
|
Another example of how our security establishment (including NASA) is riven by sweetheart backroom deals with companies run by former employees. No security "transformation" is possible without ending this process. Elon isn't the only person worried about this.
Someone who worries about this is Elon Musk, a co-founder of PayPal, a highly successful online-payments firm, who has also founded SpaceX, which builds cheap launch vehicles for satellites. He criticises the space agency for recently awarding, without an open tender, a $227m contract for launch services to Kistler Aerospace, of Kirkland, Washington, which last year filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and, says Mr Musk, is packed with ex-NASA staff. “What sort of signal does that send to the marketplace?” he asks. So indignant is Mr Musk at what he calls this “backroom” deal that he is looking at the possibility of buying Kistler to get his hands on the NASA contract, which he believes he can fulfil at a much lower cost. If America’s spirit of free enterprise can be harnessed to exploring space while also relieving the burden on taxpayers of NASA’s extravagance, so much the better.
8:36:36 AM
|
|
Another example of a corporate network being hijacked for terrorism. There's much more to this. Small company phone networks and websites are routinely used for terrorist communications. Frankly, despite the hype to the contrary (to the benefit to the cyber security industry), this is the only cyber threat we face from global guerrillas in the near to medium term.
7:34:35 AM
|
|
Some notes on the hullabaloo about the end of weblogs.com's free hosting. First, the people complaining aren't the people that own the sites in question. Second, it needed to be done. Third, Dave is getting a raw deal on this. The fact that one of the most creative people in technology is spending cycles on this issue is a travesty. It proves the motto: let no good deed go unpunished.
7:22:01 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
|
|
|
