[continued from previous message]

restrictive to innovation." Said ACM policy director Tom Romanoff, "If state lawmakers want to enact these laws, they will now have to risk losing
federal funds to do so."

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2025 11:01:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: Nearly Half of All Code Generated by AI Found to Contain Security
Flaws (Craig Hale)

Craig Hale, TechRadar (08/01/25), via ACM TechNews

New research from application security solution provider Veracode reveals
that 45% of all AI-generated code contains security vulnerabilities, with no clear improvement across larger or newer large language models. An analysis
of over 100 models across 80 coding tasks found Java code most affected with over 70% failure, followed by Python, C#, and JavaScript. The study warns
that increased reliance on AI coding without defined security parameters, referred to as "vibe coding," may amplify risks.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2025 11:01:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: One-Fifth of Computer Science Papers May Include AI Contents
(Phie Jacobs)

Phie Jacobs, Science (08/04/25), via ACM TechNews

Nearly one in five computer science papers published in 2024 may include AI-generated text, according to a large-scale analysis of over 1 million abstracts and introductions by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. The study found that by September 2024, 22.5% of computer science papers showed signs of input from large language models like ChatGPT. The researchers used statistical modeling to detect common word patterns linked to AI writing.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2025 11:01:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: Palantir Gets $10-Billion Contract From U.S. Army
(WashPost)

Elizabeth Dwoskin, The Washington Post (07/31/25)

The U.S. Army awarded Palantir a contract worth up to $10 billion over the
next 10 years, the largest in the company's history. This agreement
signifies a major shift in the Army's software procurement approach by consolidating existing contracts to achieve cost efficiencies and expedite soldiers' access to advanced data integration, analytics, and AI tools. The contract aligns with the Pentagon's strategic focus on enhancing data-mining and AI capabilities amid escalating global security challenges.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2025 11:01:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: Judge Allows the National Science Foundation to Withhold Hundreds
of Millions of Research Dollars (AP)

Adithi Ramakrishnan, Associated Press (08/01/25), via ACM TechNews\a

On Aug. 1, a federal court declined to order the Trump administration to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in terminated funding that had been awarded to research institutions by the National Science Foundation. A coalition of 16 states argued that the cuts "violate the law and jeopardize America's longstanding global leadership in STEM." U.S. District Judge John Cronan in New York said he would not grant the preliminary injunction
because the court may lack jurisdiction to hear the suit.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2025 11:01:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: Dutch Court Says Diesel Brands Now Owned by Stellantis Had Cheating
Software from 2009 (Reuters)

Bart Meijer and Makini Brice, Reuters (07/30/25), via ACM TechNews\

Diesel cars sold in the Netherlands by Opel, Peugeot, Citroen, and DS since 2014, and likely since 2009, were equipped with software that manipulated
their emission control systems to cheat emissions tests, according to a July
30 Dutch court ruling in a class action lawsuit against Stellantis, owner of the automobile companies. The court said the software was designed to
maintain artificially low levels of nitrogen oxide emissions during official tests. Stellantis denied the accusations.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2025 11:01:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: Tesla Found Partly to Blame for Fatal Autopilot Crash
(Lily Jamali)

Lily Jamali, BBC News (08/02/25), via ACM TechNews

A Florida jury on Aug. 1 found that flaws in Tesla's self-driving software
were partly to blame for a 2019 crash that killed a 22-year-old woman and severely injured another. The verdict is a significant setback for the carmaker, which is staking much of its future on developing self-driving
taxis. If upheld on appeal, the verdict would require Tesla to pay as much
as $243 million in punitive and compensatory damages.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2025 11:01:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: China Says U.S Exploited Old Microsoft Flaw for Cyberattacks
(Bloomberg)

Jane Lanhee Lee, Mark Anderson and Colum Murphy, Bloomberg (08/01/25)
via ACM TechNews

The Cyber Security Association of China has accused U.S. hackers of stealing military data and perpetrating cyberattacks against the nation's defense sector. The association said the U.S. actors exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange email servers to attack two major Chinese military companies, which it did not name. The hackers reportedly controlled the
servers of one key defense company for almost a year, according to the association.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2025 11:01:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: NIST Consortium and Draft Guidelines Aim to Improve Security in
Software Development (NIH)

National Institutes of Health (07/30/25)

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), together with 14 member organizations in its Software Supply Chain and DevOps Security Practices Consortium, is developing guidelines for secure software development in response to White House Executive Order 14306. Their draft, NIST Special Publication 1800-44, outlines high-level DevSecOps practices and intends to expand on the Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF). Public comments
on the guidelines are being accepted until September 12, 2025.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2025 11:23:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: Microsoft Exchange Server Vulnerability Enables Attackers to
Gain Admin Privileges (Cyber Security News)

Guru Baran, Cyber Security News (08/07/25), via ACM TechNews

A critical vulnerability (CVE-2025-53786) in Microsoft Exchange Server
hybrid deployments allows attackers with on-premises admin access to
escalate privileges to Exchange Online without leaving clear audit traces. Demonstrated at Black Hat 2025, the flaw stems from shared service
principals in hybrid authentication. Microsoft began mitigation in April
2025 by introducing dedicated hybrid applications, later formalizing the
issue in this CVE.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2025 12:13:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: China Urges Firms to Avoid Nvidia H20 Chips after U.S. Ends Ban
(Bloomberg)

Mackenzie Hawkins and Ian King, Bloomberg (08/12/25), via ACM TechNews

Chinese authorities have sent notices to firms discouraging use of less-advanced semiconductors, particularly Nvidia's H20, though the letters
did not call for an outright ban. Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices
Inc. both recently secured U.S. approval to resume lower-end AI chip sales
to China, reportedly on the condition that they give the federal government
a 15% cut of the related revenue.

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2025 06:52:48 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Subject: Some doctors got worse at detecting cancer after relying on AI
(The Verge)

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/758672/some-doctors-got-worse
-at-detecting-cancer-after-relying-on-ai

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2025 13:50:39 -0700
From: "Jim" <jgeissman@socal.rr.com>
Subject: Russia Is Suspected to Be Behind Breach of Federal Court Filing
System (NYTines)

Adam Goldman, Glenn Thrush and Mattathias Schwartz, *The New York Times*,
12 Aug 2025

Federal officials are scrambling to assess the damage and address flaws in a sprawling, heavily used computer system long known to have vulnerabilities.

Investigators have uncovered evidence that Russia is at least in part responsible for a recent hack of the computer system that manages federal
court documents, including highly sensitive records that might contain information that could reveal sources and people charged with national
security crimes, according to several people briefed on the breach.

It is not clear what entity is responsible, whether an arm of Russian intelligence might be behind the intrusion or if other countries were also involved, which some of the people familiar with the matter described as a yearslong effort to infiltrate the system. Some of the searches included midlevel criminal cases in the New York City area and several other jurisdictions, with some cases involving people with Russian and Eastern European surnames.

The disclosure comes as President Trump is expected to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, in Alaska on Friday, where Mr. Trump is planning to discuss his push to end the war in Ukraine. <https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/us/politics/trump-putin-alaska-meeting.h


Administrators with the court system recently informed Justice Department officials, clerks and chief judges in federal courts that "persistent and sophisticated cyber threat actors have recently compromised sealed records," according to an internal department memo and reviewed by The New York Times. The administrators also advised those officials to quickly remove the most sensitive documents from the system.

"This remains an URGENT MATTER that requires immediate action," officials wrote, referring to guidance that the Justice Department had issued in early 2021 after the system was first infiltrated.

Documents related to criminal activity with an overseas tie, across at least eight district courts, were initially believed to have been targeted. Last month, the chief judges of district courts across the country were quietly warned to move those kinds of cases off the regular document-management
system, according to officials briefed on the request. They were initially
told not to discuss the matter with other judges in their districts.

In recent weeks, judges of the Eastern District of New York have been taking corrective measures. On Friday, the chief judge of the district, Margo K. Brodie, issued an order prohibiting the uploading of sealed documents <https://img.nyed.uscourts.gov/files/general-ordes/AdminOrder2025-10.pdf>
to PACER, the searchable public database for documents and court dockets. Ordinarily, sealed documents would be uploaded to the database, but behind a wall, in theory preventing people without the proper authority from seeing them. Now those sensitive documents will be uploaded to a separate drive, outside PACER.

Peter Kaplan, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which helps administer the system, declined to comment.

A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.

Federal officials are scrambling to determine the patterns of the breach, assess the damage and address flaws in a sprawling, heavily used computer system long known to have serious vulnerabilities that could be exploited by foreign adversaries.

Last week, administrators with the U.S. court system publicly announced they were taking additional steps to protect the network <https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/judiciary-news/2025/08/07/cybersecurity- measures-strengthened-light-attacks-judiciarys-case-management-system?utm_ca mpaign=usc-news&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery> , which includes
the Case Management/Electronic Case Files system used to upload documents
and PACER.
They did not address the origin of the attack, or what files had been compromised. The breach also included federal courts in South Dakota,
Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota and Arkansas, said an official who requested anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation.

"Sensitive documents can be targets of interest to a range of threat
actors," the authors of last week's notice wrote. "To better protect them, courts have been implementing more rigorous procedures to restrict access to sensitive documents under carefully controlled and monitored circumstances."

Politico earlier reported that the system had been under attack since early July by an unnamed foreign actor. <https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/06/federal-court-filing-system-pacer- hack-00496916?ICID=ref_fark&utm_content=link&utm_medium=website&utm_source=f


Concerns about the hacking of the courts' electronic filing system predate
this summer. The courts announced in January 2021 that there had been a cyberattack but did not name Russia. <https://www.uscourts.gov/data-news/judiciary-news/2021/01/06/judiciary-addr esses-cybersecurity-breach-extra-safeguards-protect-sensitive-court-records>

Former federal law enforcement officials said Russia was behind that
hacking. It was not clear if other countries also exploited vulnerabilities
in the system, but the former officials described the breach as extremely serious.

After the announcement in 2021, federal investigators were told to take significant precautions to mitigate the intrusion. That meant
hand-delivering search warrants with potential source information to the
courts and filing sensitive complaints or indictments by hand -- at least in some districts, particularly in the Southern District of New York, where prosecutors were encouraged to file documents on paper.

Former Justice Department officials said their efforts to keep filings
secret, while an improvement, did not entirely mitigate the risk given the
vast scale of the system and complexity of the cases.

The courts had already begun taking defensive measures by the spring of last year, according to two court officials. Judges were barred from gaining
access to internal court filing systems while traveling overseas, and were sometimes given burner phones and new email addresses to communicate with
their own chambers and court clerks. And in May, the Administrative Office
of the U.S. Courts announced that it would institute multifactor
authentication to gain access to the system. <https://pacer.uscourts.gov/announcements/2025/05/02/multifactor-authentication-coming-soon>

In 2022, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, claimed he had obtained information that the court system's computer network had been
breached by three unnamed foreign entities, dating to early 2020.

Matthew Olsen, then the director of the Justice Department's national
security division, later testified that he was working with court officials
to address cybersecurity issues in the courts -- but downplayed the effect on cases his unit was investigating.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2025 12:13:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: Encryption Made for Police and Military Radios May Be Easily Cracked
(Kim Zetter)

Kim Zetter, *WiReD*, (08/07/25), via ACM TechNews

Researchers in the Netherlands uncovered critical vulnerabilities in
encryption algorithms for the TETRA radio standard, widely used by police, military, and intelligence agencies. Earlier, the team, from Midnight Blue, uncovered intentional backdoors and weak key reductions in TETRA's TEA1 algorithm. More recently, they found similar flaws in the end-to-end
encryption solution through reverse-engineering. One flaw enabled a 128-bit
key to be reduced to just 56 bits, enabling eavesdropping.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2025 12:13:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Subject: Conversations Remotely Detected from Cellphone Vibrations
(Mariah Lucas)

Mariah Lucas, PennState News (08/08/25), via ACM TechNews

Computer science researchers demonstrated that transcriptions of phone calls can be generated from radar measurements taken up to three meters (about 10 feet) from a cellphone. The team at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) used a radar sensor and voice recognition software to wirelessly identify 10 predefined words, letters, and numbers with up to 83%
accuracy. Explained Penn State's Suryoday Basak, "If we capture these same vibrations using remote radars and bring in machine learning to help us
learn what is being said, using context clues, we can determine whole conversations."

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2025 23:21:18 -0600
From: Matthew Kruk <mkrukg@gmail.com>
Subject: For Some Patients, the Inner Voice May Soon Be Audible (NYTimes)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/science/brain-neuroscience-computers-speech.html

For decades, neuro-engineers have dreamed of helping people who have been
cut off from the world of language.

A disease like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, weakens the muscles in the airway. A stroke can kill neurons that normally relay commands for speaking. Perhaps, by implanting electrodes, scientists could instead record the brain's electric activity and translate that into spoken words.

Now a team of researchers has made an important advance toward that goal. Previously they succeeded in decoding the signals produced when people tried
to speak. In the new study, published on Thursday in the journal Cell, their computer often made correct guesses when the subjects simply imagined saying words.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2025 14:56:43 -0600
From: Matthew Kruk <mkrukg@gmail.com>
Subject: AOL to end dial-up internet services, a '90s relic still used
in some remote areas (CBC)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/aol-discontinues-dial-up-services-1.7605970

AOL is discontinuing its dial-up service, which helped millions of
households connect to the web during the internet's formative years and was instantly recognizable for its beep-laden, scratch-heavy ring tone in the
1990s and early 2000s.

The company, which once dominated as the world's largest Internet provider, confirmed the move to CBC News on Sunday, saying it would discontinue
dial-up as a subscription option on 30 Sept 2025 "as we innovate to meet the needs of today's digital landscape."

Dial-up services were a mainstay of the early internet -- as famously
depicted in the 1998 romantic comedy You've Got Mail -- and involved using a phone line to connect devices to the web. Those of a certain age will recall that this meant choosing between your landline and your internet access.

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2025 13:39:01 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Subject: Musk tries to block fiber in Virginia, to enrich Starlink and
SpaceX (ArsTechnica)

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/starlink-tries-to-block-virginias-plan-to-bring-fiber-internet-to-residents/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2025 08:41:50 -0700
From: Steve Bacher <sebmb1@verizon.net>
Subject: Albania turns to AI to beat corruption and join EU; politicians
themselves could soon be made of pixels and code (Politico EU)

[I am enclosing the entire article because for some reason I can access it
from one of my computers but not the other.  politico.eu has locked down its content and requires me to login to an account to read it and even after logging in I can't access it. politico.eu might be similarly broken for
other RISKS readers. Feel free to edit it down to your liking. seb]

Albania turns to AI to beat corruption and join EU

Besides generating weird AI baby versions of European leaders, Albania's politicians themselves could soon be made of pixels and code.

https://www.politico.eu/article/albania-use-ai-artificial-intelligenve-join-eu-co
rruption/

TIRANA, Albania — While the rest of Europe bickers over the safety and scope of artificial intelligence, Albania is tapping it to accelerate its EU accession.

It's even mulling an AI-run ministry.

Prime Minister Edi Rama mentioned AI last month as a tool to stamp out corruption and increase transparency, saying the technology could soon
become the most efficient member of the Albanian government.

“One day, we might even have a ministry run entirely by AI,” Rama said at a July press conference while discussing digitalization. “That way, there
would be no nepotism or conflicts of interest,” he argued.

Local developers could even work toward creating an AI model to elect as minister, which could lead the country to “be the first to have an entire government with AI ministers and a prime minister,” Rama added.


While no formal steps have been taken and Rama's job is not yet officially
up for grabs, the prime minister said the idea should be seriously
considered.

Ben Blushi, a former ruling party politician and author with a keen interest
in AI, said he believes there is nothing to fear from the technology, and
that AI-run states are a real possibility that could turn our concept of democracy on its head.

“Why do we have to choose between two or more human options if the service
we get from the state could be done by AI?” Blushi said. “Societies will be
better run by AI than by us because it won't make mistakes, doesn't need a salary, cannot be corrupted, and doesn't stop working.”

Albania has long grappled with corruption in all facets of society, and politics is no exception. The ruling party has seen its fair share of
officials charged with and convicted of corruption. Opposition leader Sali Berisha is currently facing a corruption trial, and former prime minister
and president Ilir Meta is behind bars.


AI is a tool, not a miracle, according to Jorida Tabaku, a member of
Albanian parliament with the opposition Democratic Party. She said that in
the right hands, it can transform governance — but that in the wrong hands, it becomes “a digital disguise for the same old dysfunction.”

While she supports digital innovation and AI, Tabaku said the entire
governance system needs a reset before AI could be rolled out.

AI is already being used in the administration to manage the thorny matter
of public procurement, an area the EU has asked the government to shore up,
as well as to analyze tax and customs transactions in real time, identifying irregularities.

The country's territory is also being monitored by smart drones and
satellite systems, which use AI to check for illegalities on construction
sites and public beaches and for cannabis plantations in more rural areas.

Additionally, there are plans to use AI to combat problems on Albanian roads
by using facial recognition technology to digitally issue a prompt to a driver's mobile device to slow down, as well as to send details of speeding fines via text message or email. The country currently has one of the
highest rates of fatal traffic accidents in Europe, according to the state statistics agency, mainly due to speeding.

There are also aspirations to use AI in health care, education and digital identification of citizens.

But Tabaku said that there must be public consultation and clarity around
how the technology will be applied, how much it costs — and most
importantly, who is programming the algorithms.

“If the same actors who benefited from corrupt tenders are the ones programming the algorithm, then we're not heading into the future. We're hard-wiring the past,” she said.

“You can't fix a rigged system by putting it in the cloud,” Tabaku said. “In a country where 80 percent of the budget runs through public contracts —
and a third are handed out without real competition — AI won't clean up corruption. It will just hide it better,” she said.

Albania made headlines in 2024 when the prime minister announced that AI was being used to help Albania along its path to membership in the European
Union.

After formally opening negotiations in 2022, the country started aligning
with the EU acquis, comprising some quarter of a million pages of laws,
rules and standards. With Rama's landslide victory in the 2025 general elections on a ticket trumpeting EU membership by 2030, the race is on to
get the work done.

The idea is that AI would take care of the translation, and then do the hard work of identifying divergences in national and EU laws — the first time it has been used in the EU membership process.

Albania has partnered with Mira Murati, the former chief technology officer
of OpenAI and the creator of ChatGPT, who was born in southern Albania.

“We reached out to her in the first week after ChatGPT was launched when we became aware of its existence,” Rama said. Thanks to that collaboration, “Negotiations with the EU are being conducted with the assistance of artificial intelligence,” the prime minister said.

Rama noted that Croatia, which he said "excelled" in EU integration, took
seven years to complete the process — whereas Albania aims to do so in five, completing the paperwork by 2027.

Odeta Barbullushi, a former adviser to Rama on EU integration and a
professor at the College of Europe in Tirana, agreed that the “sheer volume of the EU aquis is overwhelming and the number of staff needed to translate this in a traditional manner would be massive.”

For the technical translation tasks, she said, AI can be “beneficial” and “truly accelerate” the process. But it cannot do the whole job, she added.

“The process of the actual adoption and alignment with the EU acquis is essentially a political process and as such, needs political oversight and policy orientation,” Barbullushi said.

Rama and Murati's company, Thinking Machines, did not reply to request for comment.  [Note: This is not the same Thinking Machines that was an AI
pioneer in Cambridge, MA, US in the 1980s. seb]

The AI push comes amid a broader focus on digitalization in Albania. Rama announced in July that he wants the country to be cashless by 2030, shifting
to digital-only payments. The country also recently moved 95 percent of all citizen services online through a portal called e-Albania.

Logging onto the platform, users are greeted by a cheerful AI “virtual
public servant” that helps them file tax documents, download birth certificates and apply for licenses and permits.

While several cyberattacks from Iran have hit the platform, and some elderly citizens have struggled to come to grips with it, Rama says it has managed
some 49 million transactions in five years, saving 2.4 million Albanians in
the country and 2.8 million in the diaspora more than €600 million.

But AI is not just being used for practical purposes in Albania.

In May, some 47 heads of state and government from around Europe descended
on Tirana for the European Political Community summit, and were treated to a nearly two-minute video welcoming them to the country in their own language.

[This is really too long. Remainder of monster article pruned for RISKS.
PGN]

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2025 06:57:41 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Subject: Google AI Overview directs user to fake customer service number
that scammed him (Slashdot)

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/08/18/0223228/googles-ai-overview-pointed-him-to-a-customer-service-number-it-was-a-scam

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2025 09:51:43 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Subject: In idiot move, MSNBC rebrands as MS NOW, but web addresses and
social media accounts are already used by others (Gizmodo)

https://gizmodo.com/msnbc-rebrands-as-ms-now-but-the-web-domain-is-for-korean-snowmobiles-2000644353

------------------------------

Date: 11 Jul 2025
From: RISKS Forum Editor
Subject: Do not fall for this Phishing Attack!

Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2025 22:20:19 +0000
From: United States Ambassador <ambasard.us.consolate@hotmail.com>
Subject: Are you dead if you are not died reply we need Urgent confirmation

United nations is paying a Compensation of 1.5 Million Dollars too all retired services worker and individuals whom their names is in the pay
list, I want to let you know that your names is among the people who will receive 1.5 USD as a reward please get bank to me with your full details
so we can start your funds release paper work ASAP. Regards Rechard
Mills

[url removed for obvious reasons. PGN]

[This message was sent to RISKS, which reminds me of a postcard Tom Lehrer
said he once received in the mail -- ``If you do not reply immediately, I
will kill myself.'' It was addressed to ``Occupant''. PGN

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2025 14:53:39 -0400
From: David Lesher <wb8foz@panix.com>
Subject: Re: Railroad industry first warned ... (RISKS-34:72)

RISKS-34.72 discusses malicious activation of the FRED-to-cab link. There
is another issue with that design, a proven fatal one.

The engineer in the cab can, with the FRED, vent the air at the rear,
stopping the train from the back to the front, car by car. (The delay time
of the pressure drop along the train's consist is significant; roughly 67%
of the speed of sound.) An emergency stop would vent air from both ends, speeding brake applications.

But as trains have gotten longer and longer, the RF propagation end to end
has become less certain. A coupler-mounted FRED's 450 MHz RF signal is
shielded by many cars between it and the locomotive, and the terrain.

On 4 Oct 2018, eastbound Union Pacific (UP) freight train MGRCY04 crested a grade and started downhill. With the compaction of the slack in the
consist's couplers, a brakeline become crimped. The engineer engaged the
brakes by venting air, but only the first 9 cars braked because of the
crimped line there.

In theory, the FRED would have also vented from the rear at the same time,
but it was not receiving the RF signal.

The train kept increasing speed, until miles later it ran into a parked
train, killing the crew.

The core issue is the FRED system is not a "fail into safe" design; loss-of-signal does NOT stop the train. Further, the cab is not even alerted
to the communications failure until sixteen minutes has elapsed.

Plus, the cab-sent FRED emergency brake application signal STOPS being sent after 2 minutes. "After that 2-minute window, the HTD would not
automatically send an emergency brake command to the ETD. A locomotive
engineer would have to attempt an additional emergency brake application no sooner than 2 minutes after the initial emergency brake application to
initiate an ETD emergency brake command." [NTSB]

The same link issue is true with "distributed power" where long trains have additional engines mid-consist. Their throttles are controlled via a RF-link from the front. When they have a loss-of-signal, they maintain the same throttle setting until a timer expires; at least then they do they drop into idle. (Further, locomotive-to-locomotive links benefit from roof-mounted antennas and far more generous power budgets.)

The Risk: relying on problematic RF links for vital safety systems.

ref: NTSB/RAR-20/05 PB2020-101016

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2025 06:33:32 -0700
Subject: Re: Flock's Surveillance System Might Already Be Overseeing
Your Community (RISKS)
From: Steve Bacher <sebmb1@verizon.net>

It's been reported that the Scarsdale contract has been cancelled.
The link has been fixed.  Here it is:

The link has been fixed.  Here it is:


[continued in next message]

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