DARE WE SAY CONSPIRACY?: REMEMBER JOURNALIST MICHAEL HASTINGS AND ALL ...
Dare we say "conspiracy" in the automobile death of investigative journalist Michael Hastings? Well, you tell us. Hastings, you'll recall, died in a fiery car crash on June 18, 2013, in Los Angeles. While some merely thought that the crash was an unusual and unfortunae accident, others - including us - were not so sure. Hastings had, of course, investigated General McCrystal in Afghanistan, causing him to resign. At the time of his untimely death - Hastings was only 33 - he was rumored to be investigating the CIA, though the specific focus of that alleged investigation is not known, though some speculate he was investigating the Director. In any case, Hastings had apparently toward the end of his life become very tense and anxious, and at one point had also asked a friend to borrow his car, as Hastings thought his car was being messed with, though I haven't been able to find any specific mention of how Hastings thought it was being done, nor by whom.
But in any case, the theories soon focused on anomalies of the crash itself, including the incongruous fact that the engine of Hasting's car was apparently ejected from the vehicle during the crash and thrown some distance from the car. These theories quickly concluded that the possibility existed that the car was hacked, and turned into a weapon against Hastings. Things were not helped by the fact that US counter-terrorism tsar Richard Clarke signed off on the possibility.
Well, now there's these two stories, shared by Mr. R.G. and Mr. V.T.:
Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway—With Me in It
Newest Remote Car Hacking Raises More Questions About Reporter’s Death
As the second article notes, measures are working their way through Congress to pass legislation ostensibly for the purpose of protecting drivers in their vehicles, which seems absurdly contradictory to the surveillance state that COngress, in large part, has allowed America to become.
But for our high octane speculation purposes, however, the scenario raises some disturbing potentials. If indeed Mr. Hastings was murdered through a cyber-attack on his own vehicle(and I am inclinced to think he was), then this would imply a fairly sophisticated player is in the mix. And this in turn would require a thorough investigation of its own, beginning with an attempt to determine, with as much exactitude as possible, for that in turn will establish motivation, and perhaps means. We are looking, in other words, at an automotive version of Global Hawk airplane remote control technology. Personally, I have my doubts that Mr. Hasting's unfortunate death was due simply to his alleged investigations of the CIA or its Director. After all, many people have done similar investigations, published riveting exposes. and have not crashed into trees or telephone poles. In short, a generalized "investigation" doesn't provide anything near the detail needed to make reasonable conclusions or assumptions regarding motive. Until more details are known, we are left with more questions than answers.
We are also left, however, with a number of anomalies, including Hasting's own statements to friends, and a very unusual "accident."
See you on the flip side...
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OK, it’s a perfect time to throw out this tidbit I gathered a few weeks ago (it’s long but relevant):
[hat tip to sgt_doom commenting on Zero Hedge]
Yes. . . yes . . .yes . . ., but let’s not forget the Carlyle Group connection, which owned ARINC during the time the Amtrak (National Railroad Passenger Corporation) contracts were awarded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARINC ARINC has installed computer data networks in police cars and railroad cars and also maintains the standards . . . A suddenly speeding Benz kills former Rolling Stone reporter working on a CIA/NSA story; A disintegrating cockpit (as reported by the two pilots to Vietnman ATC and Thai ATC) forces Malaysian Airlines MH370 into the ocean off the coast of Vietnam; and, An Amtrak train suddenly speeds up, derailing and killing some of its unfortunate passengers. http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,1666237
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20080507006151/en/ARINC-Wins-Centralized-Electrification-Traffic-Control-System
http://cache.freescale.com/files/training/doc/dwf/JNK_AUT_T1225.pdf [Seems like ARINC and Freescale Semiconductor chips just keep appearing in the news, without ever being mentioned?]
There may indeed be multiple reasons to dislike Blackrock:
Preamble: When I first read in the international news that both the Thai air traffic control and Vietnam’s air traffic control had both picked up faint radio transmissions of two pilots calling in a Mayday, stating that their “cockpit was disintegrating” – transmission in the vicinity where Malaysia Airlines MH370 was supposed to be, I beban looking into what could have caused such a horrendous event?
Good-bye, Mr. Chips!
(Or, why that missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 is a really, really big deal — besides the murder of 239 souls aboard.)
Onboard flight MH370 were twenty employees of Freescale Semiconductor, a major microchip producer, owner of major fabrication facilities (referred to as foundries in the industry).
Back in 2012, some researchers at an institute connected with Cambridge University discovered a backdoor, at the hardware level, in the Actel/Microsemi chip used for military purposes, designed and manufactured by the Microsemi Corporation. What the authors didn’t mention in their highly technical paper was that these chips are also to be found in ARINC avionics (ACARS: Aircraft Communications and Addressing Reporting System, formerly known as ARINC Communications and Addressing Report System — plus other avionics communications systems), transponders and the black boxes (flight data recorders, cockpit voice recorders, crash recorders, etc.). And the 777’s fly-by-wire ARINC system’s network controller and databus connects to the ACARS, satellite uplink, transponders and black boxes.
Microsemi chips are produced at Freescale foundries (outsouced by TMC-Taiwan), as well as Freescale chips are also to be found in ARINC avionics, transponders along with a wide range of other industry applications. (The Microsemi chips are FPGAs, or Field Programmable Gate Arrays, a customizable chip which can be programmed at the hardware level, after leaving the factory.)
It is important to note that the owners of Freescale Semiconductors are the Blackstone Group, the major private equity/leveraged buyout (PE/LBO) firm, and the majority owner, and the Carlyle Group, another PE/LBO firm and a minority owner.
It is also important to note that ARINC (designer and manufacturer of major avionics systems (fly-by-wire) aboard Boeing and Airbus jets was until recently owned by the Carlyle Group, and a portion of ARINC still is, as they moved ARINC’s DoD division over to Booz Allen, the major government intelligence contractor (where Edward Snowden last worked in America), and also owned by the Carlyle Group.
Malaysia Airlines, which may have figured into it, was at that time partially owned by the hedge fund of Lord Jacob Rothschild, long an advisor to the aforementioned Blackstone Group.
The previously mentioned Microsemi Corporation, whose chips are backdoored, or compromised, is managed by James Peterson, CEO and board member. Peterson is the son of Peter G. Peterson, founding member of the Blackstone Group.
Both the process of chipping (purposely introducing defects into chips for cryptographic penetration) and backdoors in chips, dates back to the late 1960s.
The first major successful operation involving backdoored chips was supposed to have occurred in the 1980s, when an American industrial controls computer system (SCADA) was sold illegally through a Swiss firm to the Soviets, and resulted in a series of major explosions at their northern Baltic Sea naval installation (chips set to control maximum temperatures of fuels did the opposite).
(At least four of the seven Freescale chip fabrication engineers aboard the MH370 flight had written papers during college or grad school on hardware malware or FPGA Trojans.)
When a group is seeking to compromise, and therefore control, both the Internet and a wide spectrum of computer hardware applications (communications, transportation, industrial, financial, etc.) the process of chip access is crucial, and to do that covertly it must be done at the chip fabrication point.
Hence the use of, and subsequent disposal (murder), of those Freescale Semiconductor engineers aboard flight MH370.
It is also important to mention the universality of ARINC systems or ARINC-specification systems: onboard the Inmarsat satellites, used in communication with the satellites, air-to-ground and ground-to-air, earth station systems and terminals (VSAT, etc.), air traffic control systems, and on and on!
Below is the Youtube link to a video from a SAIConference, the expert from University College London (who spent years with the GCHQ), explains in general how to hack into a Boeing 777, but then ends with his opinion that it wasn’t hacked into — unfortunately, he refrains from mentioning who the systems are designed and manufactured by, and also their ownership!
(And by the way, just how many Microsemi FPGAs are onboard the Boeing 777’s systems? 1,000!)
Very crucial data . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVWc9P4EiME
Suggested reading:
Breakthrough silicon scanning discovers backdoor in military chip (DRAFT of 05 March 2012):
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sps32/Silicon_scan_draft.pdf
Financials:
The Blackstone Group was founded by David Rockefeller protégé, Peter G. Peterson with Rockefeller family money, who was expelled from MIT for cheating, and then taken under the wing of Rockefeller, who would be paramount in getting Peterson appointed to various positions, both private sector and political.
Blackstone’s co-founder was Stephen Schwarzman, who belonged to Skull & Bones at Yale, and was endorsed for that elite fraternity by George W. Bush. (Interesting to note that the origin of the Walker-Bush family money originates from the Rockefeller-owned company, Buckeye Steel Castings Company of Ohio.)
The majority stock holder in Microsemi is BlackRock, which was spun off from the Blackstone Group. Microsemi’s financial reporting agent is Rockefeller & Co. (Blackrock is the largest asset manager, or hedge fund, in existence, and is one of the Big Four, the four major investment firms which comprise the majority stock owners of the majority of major corporations in America and Europe: State Street Corporation, Vanguard Group, BlackRock and FMR or Fidelity.)
The Carlyle Group was founded with Mellon family money by Frank Carlucci, a retired CIA employee who was with the agency when President Kennedy was assassinated. The co-founder was David Rubenstein, the nephew of Jacob Rubenstein, who would later change his name when he became mobbed up to Jack Ruby, the murderer of alleged presidential assassin, Lee Oswald.
The Transfer Agent for Freescale Semiconductor is Mellon Investor Services, while their financial trustee is Bank of NY Mellon.
ARINC
http://www.nbaa.org/events/amc/2012/news/presentations/1030-Tue/NBAA2012-1030-SatCom-Buyers-Guide.pdf
http://www.nbaa.org/events/amc/2010/news/presentations/1019_tue/SATCOM/Thompson-ARINCDirectSatServices.pdf
http://www.citemaster.net/get/02baa57e-f4b3-11e3-b859-00163e009cc7/yeh98_777-fbw.pdf
http://www.rockwellcollins.com/Services_and_Support/Information_Management/ARINC_Aviation/globalink-air-ground/Inmarsat-services.aspx
http://www.arinc.com/news/press_releases/2013/10_21_13_arinc_direct_signs_agreement_w_honeywell.html
ARINC DirectSMSigns Agreement with Honeywell to ProvideInmarsat GX Aviation Ka-band Service and Custom Applications to the Business Aviation Industry.
https://www.dol.gov/ebsa/regs/fedreg/notices/2004020538.htm
ARINC also provides engineering services such as systems engineering, acquisition and program management, operational support, and life-cycle support for defense aviation systems, with offices located at every U.S. Air Force base.
Microsemi
http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/MSCC/2567075557x0x658020/F3056DCF-9622-4F91-BF0F-1388772756CF/
http://semiengineering.com/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-and-the-progress-of-technology/
http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/print/volume-24/issue-6/special-report/avionics-ahead-of-the-curve.html
http://commandercat.com/2013/04/hitb2013.html
There are currently two primary service providers of ground networks in the world (ARINC and SITA), although specific countries have implemented their own network with the help of either ARINC or SITA. Until recently, each area of the world was supported by a single service provider. This is changing, and both ARINC and SITA are competing and installing networks that cover the same regions
https://globusmax.wordpress.com/2015/03/21/the-brains-of-a-boeing-777-simple-and-complex/
The ARINC 629 is the main mission critical nervous system of the plane, however, and for good reason as it is quite ingenious. A single twisted pair of wires up to 100 meters long can connect up to 120 LRUs. This simplifies plane wiring by using a single communications bus or wire. If you’re familiar with a typical office wired LAN, there is a cable going to each computer or device on the LAN from a router – lots of wires. The bus is two-way, and any LRU could talk to any other if they know the language, and every LRU can listen to all of the conversations. Connected LRUs politely wait their turn to talk following a set timing protocol. There is no central point of failure as there can be with a router. If one LRU goes down, the others can still talk. Except for redundant control timers to allow each LRU to decide when it’s time to talk, there is no control, and it is robust to failure.
http://www.icao.int/APAC/Meetings/2013_FIT_Asia2_RASMAG18/10.%20ICAO-ATC%20Datalink%20on%20Boeing%20Airplanes.pdf
ARINC 717 digital flight data acquisition unit (DFDAU)
http://mh370.mot.gov.my/download/FactualInformation.pdf
Forgot to leave out my other question/speculation:
Are these possibly more complicated versions of BOLI (bank owned life insurance) schemes? Or are they a series of booby traps simply left until needed to be employed?
Think Airbus (a la Germanwings crash) has any similar chip compromises?
Whoa dude did you do all this or was this from the comment on zero hedge?
Lots on the Hastings ‘murder’ here:
http://jimstonefreelance.com/hastingsmurdered.html
Relevant paragraph to car control:
” So to have Hastings definitely dead, kill him first, put him in his car, and blow the gas tank. It may have been possible to remote control the car to where it is with the engine computer via an ECU hack with the oh so convenient Federally mandated always on 3g cell connection to the heart of the car’s control computer with Hastings dead the entire time, and just blow the bomb when the car was where they wanted it. Mercedes are extremely advanced, and it is possible Hasting’s car was full drive by wire.”
More general stuff on car control:
http://jimstonefreelance.com/carhack.html
“But few people know about the Federal mandate which in 2005 forced manufacturers to include a similar always on internet connection via the cell network in EVERY car sold in America… And this team of hackers has proven that a remote connection can indeed allow commandeering of these cars … that could be used to turn the car into a murder weapon.
The issue is with all cars that use networked control modules which use the CAN (Controller Area Network) Protocol, which functions in a manner similar to a wired computer network which connects PC’s. Each module in the car, be it the ABS controller, throttle controller, spark controller or even the modern radios, communicate via this network which also integrates with the main engine control unit.
If any one of the devices on this network can be hacked (and the team proved that ALL can), it can be used as an insertion point through which total vehicle control can be taken away from the driver and the car operated at the whim of a remote attacker. And the Federally mandated always on cellular internet connection in all cars 2005 and later provides a remote access point through which ANY car can be hacked, provided you are high enough in the government to be priviledged with the ability to use this connection.”
And these stories don’t even go into some bodies using these vehicles to kill someone. When the intended target isn’t in it imagine being killed by a remotely controlled vehicle with no driver turn into road kill by a remote controlled assassination.
The JADE 2 AI running the JADE-Helm exercise will eventually be plugged into everything; thus taking control away from everyone but the military and the government (or the ones who virtually own the government). This will include infrastructure, smart anything’s, and everything with a connection to the internet.
Can you say “rise of the machines”?
Eventually it may “logically” determine that the human species is a threat to humanities very existence and may begin to take steps to eliminate that threat. Once it does, it will take steps to eliminate what it “perceives” to be a threat. When that happens, who will be able to stop it, as it is programmed to protect itself above everything else. With the rise in the use of drones for everything it may assume control of them and begin to purge those perceived threats.
We have been warned about this by people like Stephen Hawkins and others.
The movie “Eagle Eye” explores this very topic as well as the “Terminator” series. A bit of predictive programming?
..the human species is a threat to humanity’s very existence…
Loved It!
As Wellstone is known for the plane assassination so will Hastings be known for the car; same nefarious gangsters & high technology kills.
I’m thinking those Banksters deaths would definitely put him in the crosshairs. If he somehow picked up that thread and began unraveling it. Well, that thread was really the tigers tale that was never told.
Control Access Network aka CAN, written in Java is the culprit. It grew out of the diagnostics on vehicles. I won’t own a vehicle that is older that 2003. The more fly / drive by wire features a plane or auto has, the more compromised it is. CAN is supposed to be in all the smart appliances, tooth brushes, etc. You may want to think twice before getting anything (else) that has it’s own IP address.. So, guess where this is going?
Remember of course that the hackers found their way in using the digital radio, which means that you could global lemming someone from a satellite.