School Riot

Los Angeles is beginning to look like something from a strange pseudo-science fiction novel set in what was thought to be a distant future. It appears yesterday there a riot at high school involving over 600 students. The riot began when two graffiti gangs set a pre-arranged fight (sort of "old school"). Things of course turned ugly as the two gangs involved were Black and Hispanic gangs.

If you're not aware of the current racial climate in L.A. between Black and Hispanics, I'll fit you in. A Hispanic prison gang leader in California sought to cut his competition - a black prison gang out of the drug market. This of course spilled onto the streets with the leaders proclaiming war on any person of the opposite race. This war has caused the death of countless innocent and not-so innocent people. Most of the folks behind this have been arrested but the animosity still exists.

This riot caused a tremendous headache for security staff as they had to scramble from one fight to another. You see the same sort of chaos being attempted in prison settings. This is why security personnel need to be trained to quell such incidents immediately or else it can and will spread throughout the school.

I suspect we haven't seen the last of such incidents in cities like L.A.. While most of these problems can be caused socio-economic perpetrators such as poverty and urban flight, I'm sure incidents such as this can be prevented with active and innovative school security techniques. If I could recommend a course of action for such institutions, I would have them look at a few areas to possibly improve on:

1. Design of your facilities. Fights and riots inside schools often occur in the same manner they do in prisons. They're usually not in the immediate sight of administrators and security personnel. Construct student congregation areas so administrators and security have the ability to rapidly respond to situations. You may wnat to look at ways to lock down an area where things could flare up once the incident is underway (cafeterias are prime spots to lock down or have students relocate from).
2. Evacuation plans. You may want to look at your current evacuation plans. Are students who don't get along (gang members) being forced to relocate with folks they have a certain social imperative to hate (gang war or "beef" as it's more commonly known)?
3. Training. Are your staff trained to recognize certain critical indicators of trouble? Can they recognize key gang signals? How about a recent change in gang graffiti throughout the school? Gangs will often try to "mark" over another gang's territory to "claim" it as their own.

Goods guys finidng it harder to catch a flight

I don't know about these guys but I would be pissed. I found a rather interesting article form Security Management which talks about a major problem with the "Don't Fly List" - some US Air Marshals are on it. I'm sorry, but this just goes to show how such lists can be truly ineffective on a lot of different fronts. If you're trying to make people feel safer with such a list, then when mistakes like this happen, they can't help but feel the direct opposite. If you can't get the good guys on the plane, then who's on the plane to fight off the bad guys. I know passengers are much more ready to be heroes now, but the hijackers prepared themselves for what would happen should the passengers have fought back. we know those contingencies worked in two out of three scenarios. Well, airline pilots have shown their ability to safely handle firearms aboard aircraft. The Security Management article can be found here.

Epileptics vs Hackers

Wired reported in March an attack hackers carried out against a forum where epileptics can go to exchange information and discuss their condition. The attack appeared as a post on a the forum which is run by the Epilepsy Foundation using Java

RyAnne Fultz, 33, says she suffered her worst epileptic attack in a year after she clicked on the wrong post at a forum run by the nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation.
Photo courtesy RyAnne Fultz

Internet griefers descended on an epilepsy support message board last weekend and used JavaScript code and flashing computer animation to trigger migraine headaches and seizures in some users.

The nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation, which runs the forum, briefly closed the site Sunday to purge the offending messages and to boost security.

"We are seeing people affected," says Ken Lowenberg, senior director of web and print publishing at the Epilepsy Foundation. "It's fortunately only a handful. It's possible that people are just not reporting yet -- people affected by it may not be coming back to the forum so fast."

The incident, possibly the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on the victims, began Saturday, March 22, when attackers used a script to post hundreds of messages embedded with flashing animated gifs.

The attackers turned to a more effective tactic on Sunday, injecting JavaScript into some posts that redirected users' browsers to a page with a more complex image designed to trigger seizures in both photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics.

RyAnne Fultz, a 33-year-old woman who suffers from pattern-sensitive epilepsy, says she clicked on a forum post with a legitimate-sounding title on Sunday. Her browser window resized to fill her screen, which was then taken over by a pattern of squares rapidly flashing in different colors.

Fultz says she "locked up."

"I don't fall over and convulse, but it hurts," says Fultz, an IT worker in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. "I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn't move and couldn't speak."

After about 10 seconds, Fultz's 11-year-old son came over and drew her gaze away from the computer, then killed the browser process, she says.

"Everyone who logged on, it affected to some extent, whether by causing headaches or seizures," says Browen Mead, a 24-year-old epilepsy patient in Maine who says she suffered a daylong migraine after examining several of the offending posts. She'd lingered too long on the pages trying to determine who was responsible.

Circumstantial evidence suggests the attack was the work of members of Anonymous, an informal collective of griefers best known for their recent war on the Church of Scientology. The first flurry of posts on the epilepsy forum referenced the site EBaumsWorld, which is much hated by Anonymous. And forum members claim they found a message board thread -- since deleted -- planning the attack at 7chan.org, a group stronghold.

Fultz says the attack spawned an uncommonly bad seizure. "It was a spike of pain in my head," she says. "And the lockup, that only happens with really bad ones. I don't think I've had a seizure like that in about a year."

But she's satisfied with the Epilepsy Foundation's relatively fast response to the attack, about 12 hours after it began on Easter weekend. "We all really appreciate them for giving us this forum and giving us this place to find each other," she says.

Epilepsy affects an estimated 50 million people worldwide, about 3 percent of whom are photosensitive, meaning flashing lights and colors can trigger seizures.