I've finally cracked it! John Leyden is actually a sophisticated version of MegaHAL, and the last few paragraphs of this article are the final, incontrovertible proof!

I wish more businesses would take that kind of approach to their security. You know the little firms I'm talking about, Visa, Mastercard and other such financial institutions across the globe...

In the movie War Games.

I see: Lets play a game: "Global Thermonuclear War".

Cue Lights and WOPR computer.

Now, how would you like to play a game of chess..........

Alert the mods.

Batten down the ports.

The asbestos trousers, please.

Why hundreds of people on the No-Fly List?

Are they saying these people really are terrorists?

Or are they thinking of a lot of pissed off Americans making a protest about their incompetence?

Both scenarios have the same effects on how the IT systems cope, but have very different failure risks.

Hmm, but banks don't have to invent hypothetical people, in hypothetical scenarios that are highly unlikely ever to "attack" a bunch of hypothetical targets. in the way the game describes.

(i) The people that "attack" banks are already doing it for real every day. (ii) The profile of the potential attackers isn't a small list of "no fly" people or other small lists / groups, it's practically "anyone" (iii) The target is obvious. (iv) The way they'll do it is "via any method that'll work" - ultimately via very mundane methods that have been used for decades, like BSing the bank's customer and then BSing their bank.

Not much of a game. It certainly won't compete with the 007 wannabees playing the US Army stuff. Perhaps because it's real rather than imagined?

You mean "Flashmob - the War" ?

So they keep fiddling with the game until they win, then declare that their version of the game represents reality?

Frankly, although the US has some really good geeks on their payroll, the people actually making the decisions are so hampered by bureaucracy and corruption that I doubt they could react fast enough in the case of a real "attack". Which won't come from any vector they've predicted anyway. It never does.

Most militaries spend a lot of their time engaged in these style of exercises when they are not at war. There is the hypothetical invasion of the UK by USA and vice versa that comes up every now and again. It is interesting they are recruiting outside of the military for this one though, their tech levels cannot be too high in the services itself. Or yes, it is just an identification exercise.

As to the no fly list scenario, I think that is akin to thinking a firewall gives you added security by default and does not count as another application surceptible to attack.

If a load of people who were on the no-fly list did appear at airports, it would divert attention from other areas, as security folks would be sent to deal with that problem.

It is like a firewall disabling itself and your net connection, or someone taking a suit of armour to a lightning fight. It is using security procedures themselves as a form of weakness.

A military coup d'etat is another security problem, that increase in risk as you increase your security, and is perhaps the most obvious one, though probably also the most ignored one.

The postulated enemy here is the "anti-globalisation" crowd, along with "people on no-fly lists"... it's not "terrorists" or "paedophiles" any more. Anti-globalisation: that's anyone who doesn't agree with the idea of corporations taking over the planet, and anyone who believes in national sovereignty rather than a US-led "one world order". Hmmm. People on no-fly lists: not necessarily terrorists either, just someone who happens to be on a no-fly list for whatever reason (such as being an anti-globalist).

Finally, we're coming to the endgame. The powers-that-be are starting to openly admit that "we the people" are the real enemies of the state. Before long, laws will start to be enacted openly and directly to reduce freedom on their own strength, without any need for the "terrorist" excuse. Which means that these laws can be be aimed at destroying civil liberties directly, rather than by roundabout methods.

All they need to do is stop pissing off other peoples throughout the world. Then nobody will need or want to attack them.

As it stands now - "the bomber will always get through", if he'd want to.

Isn't the point of these "games" to find potential weak points? If the systems running these simulations can be hacked then that's a valid problem.

Further, I don't think the location of rail cars with something nasty in them is really classified. Maybe trips with radioactive waste is on the list of things not to be spoken of, but most budding terrorists can do just as well blowing up a chlorine laden rail car. And honestly, there's a rail yard just down the road from me where I could just walk right up to a rail car and give it a big ole' wet smooch if I wanted, let alone leave something that goes boom. Cars with hazardous chemicals in them are usually marked for safety reasons (i.e. one jumps the track and first responders need to know what's in them).

For the benefit of the nice US SS man reading this, no, I don't have any intention (or time for that matter) to go blow something up.

Dave, not sure whether you're querying the fact that there are "hundreds of people" on the no fly list or why they should cause a problem if they all turned up simultaneously at airports across the States.

If the first, then you're in for a bit of a shock. As of April last year (can't find a more up to date story) the number of names on the No Fly list was 119,000 and included such obvious threats to National Security as Senator Ted Kennedy

http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/04/watchlist3

If the second, I'm guessing that the problem is that each No Flyer triggers a response which ties up a handful of Airport security personnel for - generally - at least an hour. A lot of that time is spent consulting Gestapo HQ where they only have a few dozen staff to cater for such inquiries. Hence, if several hundred No Flyers turned up simultaneously, their Security Theatre would be overwhelmed...