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Originally posted by zeeon
I posted a message about that very question in the questions and info forum - and then chrissler moved it to complaints.
I don't know whats going on...even the rats thread is messed up?
It looks like all of val's posts are gone.
Originally posted by Gools
Don't panic people and please stay on topic.
This is a news thread.
.
Originally posted by NGC2736
The real question is if you make such a mistake on a code usage for this, could you make one testing the nukes?
Oops, I just sent 200 missiles heading for Moscow.
Digital moles in White House? Terrorists had top-secret presidential codes
"Air Force One is next," read the message received by the U.S. Secret Service at 9 a.m. Sept. 11, after two hijacked planes struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York...
The terrorists' message threatening Air Force One was transmitted in that day's top-secret White House code words. As the clock ticked away, the Secret Service reached a frightening conclusion: The terrorists had obtained the White House code and a whole set of top-secret signals...
In the week after the attacks in New York and Washington, more hair-raising facts emerged. The terrorists had also obtained the code groups of the National Security Agency and were able to penetrate the NSA's state-of-the-art electronic surveillance systems. Indeed, they seemed to have at their disposal an electronic capability that was more sophisticated than that of the NSA.
More...
U.S. intelligence has been unable to trace their authors and recipients in the three years since first detecting evidence of their existence in the files of the bin Laden organization. U.S. agencies now believe that the attacks in New York and Washington were coordinated through those encrypted electronic messages, which were opened by "key" holders.
They also believe that terrorists are in possession of all or part of the codes used by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the National Reconnaissance Office, Air Force Intelligence, Army Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, Marine Corps Intelligence and the intelligence offices of the State Department and Department of Energy.
Along with its capability of providing a national message to the entire public simultaneously, the EAS structure provides authorized state and local personnel with a quick method to distribute important local emergency information. A state emergency manager may use the system to send out a public warning by broadcasting that warning from one or more major radio stations in a particular state. EAS equipment in other radio and television stations, as well as cable systems in that state, can automatically monitor and rebroadcast that message.
30+ radio stations are designated as National Primary Stations in the Primary Entry Point (PEP) System to distribute Presidential messages to other broadcast stations and cable systems. The Emergency Action Notification is the notice to broadcasters that the President of the United States or his designee will deliver a message over the EAS via the PEP system. "You [AM and FM broadcasters] will hear the following Emergency Action Notification Message from the EAS decoder. This is an Emergency Action Notification requested by the White House. All broadcast stations will follow activation procedures in the EAS Operating Handbook for a national level emergency. The President of the United States or his representative will shortly deliver a message over the Emergency Alert System."
Because the header lacks error detection codes it is repeated three times for redundancy. EAS decoders compare the received headers against one another, looking for an exact match between any two, eliminating most errors which can cause an activation to fail. The decoder then decides whether to ignore the message or whether to relay it on the air based on whether the message applies to the local area served by the station (which is pre-programmed into the decoder).