Yet ANOTHER Obama CO INK A DINK, all these add up to something. NO? YES!

[Busybody]

Journalist who brought down U.S. general is killed in Los Angeles car crash



LOS ANGELES | Wed Jun 19, 2013 8:36am EDT

(Reuters) - Journalist Michael Hastings, whose 2010 Rolling Stone magazine profile of the U.S. military chief in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, led to the general being relieved of command, died on Tuesday in a car wreck in Los Angeles, his employer said.

A statement from the editor-in-chief of online news outlet BuzzFeed reporting that Hastings, 33, had been killed, gave no details of the accident, and neither Los Angeles police nor the county coroner's office would confirm his death.

But police said a man who had not been identified was killed before dawn on Monday when his car slammed into a tree near Hollywood and burst into flames in what authorities say was the only fatal traffic accident reported in the city during the day.

The driver was the lone occupant of the automobile, police said.

Coroner's Lieutenant Fred Corral said the body of the driver was burned beyond recognition and that further investigation was required to make a positive identification.

Authorities said they had no further information about the circumstances or cause of the accident, which left the trunk of a palm tree at the corner of Melrose and Highland Avenues gouged and charred black.

"We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone," BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith said in a statement. "Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered, from wars to politicians."

Hastings was best known for the Rolling Stone feature, headlined "The Runaway General," that brought about the resignation of McChrystal as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in June 2010.

Rolling Stone's executive editor, Eric Bates, said at the time that the U.S. military apparently had given the magazine access to the general in hopes that a positive profile reaching its young readers might help boost Army recruitment.

Instead, the article Hastings wrote portrayed McChrystal and his aides making disparaging comments about President Barack Obama and other civilian leaders, prompting the president to relieve the Army general of his command.

Hastings, who remained a contributing editor to Rolling Stone as well as writing for BuzzFeed, covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and previously worked for GQ magazine and Newsweek.

 

[Busybody]

But police said a man who had not been identified was killed before dawn on Monday when his car slammed into a tree near Hollywood and burst into flames in what authorities say was the only fatal traffic accident reported in the city during the day.



Coroner's Lieutenant Fred Corral said the body of the driver was burned beyond recognition and that further investigation was required to make a positive identification.



Obama didn't know

 

[phrodeau]

Even the trees support Obama.

 

[Busybody]

just the stumps

 

[Busybody]

Obviously the Obama REGIME already has this weapon




The Scary Truth Of How Terrorists Could Crash Your Car

As more software runs critical car systems, automotive cyber terrorism becomes a real fear



Imagine this grisly scenario: You're driving down the interstate with the cruise control set at the speed limit. Without warning, your car accelerates. The speedometer pushes past 100 miles per hour. Suddenly, the car turns left and crashes into the concrete median.

If you are lucky enough to survive, you emerge from your wrecked vehicle and see crashes all along the highway. Hundreds of identical, high-speed accidents have taken place at the same time.

Although it sounds like a scene out of a Stephen King novel, experts are worried that sort of mass-scale automotive terrorist attack could actually happen here. As cars become reliant on software and electronics to run everything from infotainment to engines and brake systems, they are increasingly vulnerable to people with malicious intent.

"Cars basically look like they have for 50 years, but underneath they've changed dramatically," said John D. Lee, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin. "A car is a rolling computer network with 80 to 100 microprocessors and 100 million lines of code."

It's become such a concern that last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration quietly opened up a cyber terrorism department to keep track of software issues that could make cars vulnerable to attack.

Software is entwined with every conceivable system aboard today's vehicles, linking everything from brakes, powertrain and throttle to infotainment, Bluetooth connection and MP3 players.

Connected cars -– or rolling computers -– hold great promise for automotive safety. Human error causes more than 90 percent of the 10.8 million motor-vehicle accidents in the U.S. each year, according to Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Safety developments both inside the car and along the highway could dramatically reduce accidents and fatalities.

But there is a dark side. Experts fear terrorists could launch an attack by breaching security in the software of a particular automaker or, in the years ahead, through the wireless infrastructure being developed to provide information for connected cars.

Critical systems hacked

"Can some 14-year-old in Indonesia shut a bunch of cars down because everything is wired up?" That's the question U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller posed to a panel of automotive experts during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last month.

The short answer is yes. Researchers from the University of Washington and University of California-San Diego hacked into an ordinary, mid-priced, late-model sedan available to any consumer. They unlocked car doors, eavesdropped on conversations, turned the engine on and off and compromised critical vehicle systems.

In a follow-up experiment, the researchers, affiliated with the Center for Automotive Embedded Systems Security, breached all sorts of security measures, uploading malware from a doctored CD and obtaining "full control" over the sedan's telematics unit by calling the car's cell phone, according to their research.

They also compromised a Pass-Thru device, which helps auto technicians diagnose problems, which allowed them to subsequently connect to every car that later was plugged into that device. This was particularly troublesome, because it meant hackers could infiltrate more than one car from a single entry point.

"We demonstrate the ability to adversarially control a wide range of automotive functions and completely ignore driver input –- including disabling the brakes, selectively braking individual wheels on demand, stopping the engine, and so on," the CAESS researchers wrote.

Another daunting conclusion that presents complications for crash investigators: The researchers successfully attacked the car's telematics unit in a way that "will completely erase any evidence of its presence after a crash."

Since the studies were completed, in 2010 and 2011, much has changed, and not necessarily for the better.

Wireless multiplies potential risks

Automakers are now wirelessly updating software. Customers can use services like OnStar's RemoteLink to unlock their doors and monitor their cars on their iPhones. Researchers are beginning to connect cars both with one another and through smart infrastructure that will help govern self-driving cars. All these wireless transactions multiplies risk.

Along those lines, the NHTSA recently opened a special division dedicated to automotive cyber security threats. The Electronic Systems Safety Research Division employs 12 people with engineering and software backgrounds and investigates "cyber vulnerability" that presents "emerging challenges for auto safety," according to NHTSA.

But several congressmen questioned whether NHTSA had the necessary expertise to handle such an assignment, noting the agency needed to seek outside assistance from NASA there years ago during its investigation of Toyota's unintended acceleration accidents.

During the commerce committee hearing on May 15, NHTSA administrator David Strickland told the congressmen he was satisfied with the staff on hand – he intends to add more – and, seeking to reassure the committee, said he understood "we don't want to be behind the eight ball on this."

Ignoring the CAESS study, Strickland said, "What we do know, at this point right now, is there has never been an unauthorized accessing of a vehicle currently on the road today."

But especially as vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure technology develops, cyber threats will be a major concern for the auto industry in the years ahead and are already a key part of their design process.

Automakers already investing in cyber security. Ford, for example, utilizes a "threat modeling methodology" to review potential weak links, has a built-in firewall to separate infotainment and vehicle control systems and uses key cryptography to prohibit updates to its SYNC software unless it receives a unique code that's verified from Ford.

Lee, the Wisconsin professor, is skeptical that those kinds of methods will work.

"I know the industry is attentive to this, but just like computers these days – and your car is a computer – you have some documented cases where companies that have very good attention to security can be compromised," Lee said.

"They are striving to overcome the hackers, and the hackers are striving to overcome the obstacles," he said. "It's an arms race."

Pete Bigelow is an associate editor at AOL Autos. He can be reached via email at peter.bigelow@teamaol.com and followed @PeterCBigelow.

 

[doubleover]

So
You can't drink and drive.
You can't get high and drive.
And now you can't talk about obama and drive.
Fuck, I'm buying a bicycle.

 

[kbate]

So you're upset that a liberal journalist was snuffed by the government? You've been demanding that for a decade, I'd think you'd be yelling "No Term Limits for Obama!"

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[Busybody]

yes

 

[imalickin]

And if you have the owners vin number you could single out an individual car.

Gangster politics at work.

 

[Busybody]

He was VICE FOSTERIZED

 

[Busybody]

Do you know that the cops that TALKED to the BOSTON BOMBERS

"FELL" outa helicopter during training

CO

INK

A

DINK

 

[Busybody]

wow

LOOK AT THIS!



WikiLeaks says Michael Hastings contacted it just before his death. Are they implying he was murdered?




By Tim Stanley US politics Last updated: June 19th, 2013





Michael Hastings certainly knew and met with Julian Assange

WikiLeaks just threw some gasoline onto the conspiracy fire. On Wednesday night, they Tweeted: “Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.”

What exactly are they trying to say?

Michael Hastings was a much admired freelance journalist who covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and helped to bring down General Stanley McChrystal. He was tragically killed this week in a car crash in Los Angeles, after his car hit a tree. Hastings is believed to have been alone in the vehicle.

Hastings has certainly been in contact with WikiLeaks before. In 2012 he wrote a profile of Julian Assange for Rolling Stone in which he asked tough questions – but the overall tone is sympathetic. Hastings appeared willing to accept that the US government might have targeted Assange in an effort to discredit him; the interview also highlights the failure of mainstream media outlets to expose mistakes made by the US military and generally permits Assange to push his side of the story. Hastings’ empathy for WikiLeaks ties together the deceased journalist, Julian Assange and (through Assange) the leaker Bradley Manning. You can throw Edward Snowden into that mix because he, too, is an admirer of WikiLeaks. And Hastings’ last article was about the evils of the NSA – which ended with the tantalising line, “Perhaps more information will soon be forthcoming.” Glenn Greenwald Tweeted a link to the piece after Hastings' death. Of such connections are conspiracy theories made. In the minds of the highly imaginative, that is.

So what is WikiLeaks trying to say with this Tweet? Is it simply priming us for a revelation about why Hastings was being investigated? Or is it trying to imply that there’s some link between Hastings contacting Jennifer Robinson and the journalist’s death? If so, we might have – in the words of Michael Moynihan – a peg for yet another kind of truther.

 

[Busybody]

I know

TONED ARMS

 

[unregistered]

 

[Busybody]

STACY MCCAIN: The Short Career and Sudden Death of Michael Hastings. “Details of the circumstances leading to his death remained elusive. While the journalistic world paid tribute to their late colleague, none offered any explanation of why Hastings, who married a former Bush administration staffer two years ago, would have been driving recklessly through the palm-lined streets of northwest Los Angeles in the wee hours of a Tuesday morning. Hastings had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, but there was no immediate indication from police officials that he was intoxicated at the time of his fiery fatal accident. The Los Angeles Times reported that ‘neither the LAPD nor the coroner’s department could officially identify the body found in the vehicle,’ which was ‘burned beyond recognition.’” Sounds like the beginning to a thriller novel.

 

[ryan8558]

STACY MCCAIN: The Short Career and Sudden Death of Michael Hastings. “Details of the circumstances leading to his death remained elusive. While the journalistic world paid tribute to their late colleague, none offered any explanation of why Hastings, who married a former Bush administration staffer two years ago, would have been driving recklessly through the palm-lined streets of northwest Los Angeles in the wee hours of a Tuesday morning. Hastings had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, but there was no immediate indication from police officials that he was intoxicated at the time of his fiery fatal accident. The Los Angeles Times reported that ‘neither the LAPD nor the coroner’s department could officially identify the body found in the vehicle,’ which was ‘burned beyond recognition.’” Sounds like the beginning to a thriller novel.

Sounds like the ending of a DUI episode.

 

[Busybody]

maybe


a quiet street

one car

BURNED BEYIND RECOGNITION????????????????????

really?


he called WIKILEAKS days before and said FBI after him???????????????????

 

[unregistered]

 

[Busybody]

bullet proof

fire proof

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[Busybody]

Yup

Does anyone not believe he wasn't killed by

Obamacare?

 

[phrodeau]

For the boneheads: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/20/fbi-no-investigation-hastings/2444101/

The FBI is denying reports that journalist and Vermonter Michael Hastings, who was killed in a single-vehicle car wreck Tuesday in Los Angeles, was the subject of a bureau inquiry.

"At no time was journalist Michael Hastings ever under investigation by the FBI," L.A. Field Office spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told the Burlington Free Press on Thursday.

In other developments Thursday in the death of Hastings, 33, a prominent war correspondent and a 1998 graduate of Rice Memorial High School in South Burlington, Vt.:

The L.A. Police Department said detectives have concluded no foul play was involved in the crash.

The Los Angeles County Department of Coroner said it has positively identified Hastings as the victim, using his fingerprints.