New Technology Could Kill Fullerton Commuters

The OC Register reported yesterday that the Federal Railroad Administration has granted Caltrans with $55-million to construct, among other things, a third rail to connect Fullerton and Commerce. 

The Register's report also includes an important but completely misunderstood issue.

And $13.5 million will fund a global-positioning-based system for much of the line between Moorpark and San Onofre. Also called Positive Train Control, the system prevents collisions and derailments. The Federal Rail Safety Improvement Act makes the system mandatory by 2015.

“The implementation of the Positive Train Control will improve safety for our passengers,” said Laura Scheper, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Transportation Authority, which oversees Metrolink service in the county.

So what's the problem?  A new company known as LightSquared.  Their use of a nearly identical frequency as that used by global positioning systems (GPS) causes GPS receivers to fail.  

I have expressed serious concern regarding the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granting LightSquared, LLC conditional approval to build a nationwide 4G-LTE wireless broadband network (FCC File No. SAT-MOD-20101118-00239). Early testing by GPS technology leaders, Garmin and Trimble Navigation, demonstrated that LightSquared’s technology would likely interfere with Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, degrading their performance in the best case scenario and completely jamming GPS receivers in the worst case scenario.

The Department of Defense, FAA, DHS, NASA, DOI, DOT, DOC, and the Professional Land Surveying and Engineering professions, have all expressed serious reservations in regards to this plan by LightSquared, LLC to build 40,000 ground stations in the U.S. that could cause widespread interference to GPS signals.

The National Marine Manufactures Association said in a letter to the FCC that "they are especially concerned with the apparent lack of concern shown in the Technical Working Group report to the effect of the LightSquared proposal on existing devices."  The July 29, 2011 letter goes onto to say that "it is notable that the testing that was done by the Technical Working Group did not include recreational marine applications."

This network of ground stations will transmit signals within the L-band frequency immediately adjacent to the GPS L1 frequency at more than one billion times the strength of the low-power GPS signal from space!  Furthermore, each mobile phone using LightSquared’s wireless service would potentially become a portable GPS jamming device by jamming GPS receivers in its immediate vicinity.

The result of having GPS-guided trains AND LightSquared means a nearly certain disaster is on the horizon!

LightSquared has openly admitted to the interference after conducting their own tests! "Initial tests of LightSquared’s terrestrial base stations, however, have shown that these transmissions can cause interference issues for GPS receivers."

Telecommunications lobbyists acknowledge that "it is likely there will be interference issues that will need to be solved".

I wrote a letter to the FCC and Congressman Royce and have not heard back from either.  I'm not holding my breath...

TSA Officer Indicted in Series of Thefts from Luggage

LOS ANGELES—A federal grand jury this afternoon indicted an officer with the Transportation Security Administration on theft charges related to watches and a pre-paid debit card that were stolen from the luggage of airline passengers at Los Angeles International Airport.

Paul Yashou, 38, of Torrance, was named in a five-count indictment that charges him with two felony and three misdemeanor theft counts.

The indictment alleges that Yashou stole four watches and the debit card from luggage going through security screening in Terminal 1 at LAX.

The indictment specifically alleges that Yashou stole an IWC GST chrono perpetual calendar moonphase watch valued at approximately $15,000, a Breitling Crosswind watch valued at approximately $5,000, a $1,000 Antima watch, a $1,000 Movado watch, and a $1,000 pre-paid debit card.

The investigation in this case started when the owner of the IWC watch noticed that his watch had been offered for sale on eBay. The investigation revealed that Yashou had sold the watch to the jewelry store that was offering the watch for sale on the Internet.

An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.

The two felony counts in the indictment, which relate to the IWC and Breitling watches, each carry a statutory maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison. The three misdemeanor charges each carry a maximum sentence of one year in prison.

Yashou will be summoned to appear in United States District Court for an arraignment on August 3.
The case against Yashou was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Airport Police.

CONTACT:
Assistant United States Attorney Meghan A. Blanco
Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section
(213) 894-2253
Release No. 11-102
Source: http://www.fbi.gov/losangeles/press-releases/2011/tsa-officer-indicted-in-series-of-thefts-from-luggage

The Case for Profiling

By Robert W. Poole, Jr.

Director of Transportation Studies

Reason Foundation

In recent years when discussing a risk-based airport screening system, I have avoided using the word profiling, even though it’s a legitimate concept. Since most people hear the word “profiling” and immediately think “racial,” “ethnic,” or “religious,” I decided that the term itself confused more than it clarified.

But recent online discussions, including an attack on me by two writers for The Nation as a “high-profile charlatan pushing racial profiling as the alternative to TSA pat-downs and body scans,” has led me to change my mind. In a blog post last week for Reason magazine’s “Hit & Run” blog, I explained the legitimate meaning of evidence-based profiling, both positive and negative. (http://reason .com/blog/2010/12/10/the-case -for -profiling-air-tra)

Rather than repeat that argument here (please read the blog post), I’d like to elaborate a bit on how I envision negative profiling (i.e., identifying the high-risk category of travelers) would work. The idea would be to make full use of the various databases the government already maintains, using various intelligence sources, to assign more people to the “selectee” category for which secondary screening is mandatory. Only high-risk travelers, so defined, would be required to face body scans or intrusive pat-downs. Stewart Baker, a former DHS official, points out in National Review (Dec. 20, 2010) that the TSA’s sister agency, Customs & Border Protection, “knows a lot about [people’s] travel plans and uses a database ten or twenty times larger than the selectee list to decide who will be screened closely. And yet for 99 travelers out of 100, border screening is far less hassle—and far less of a privacy invasion—than air security.


The original anti-skyjacking system developed by an FAA task force in 1969-70 used a characteristics-based profile that was not challenged by the ACLU and was ruled constitutional by a New York Federal court. It included 23 elements, of which only half of one percent of air travelers met as many as six, according to David Brown, one of the task force’s members. But according to Brown, all 19 of the 9/11 hijackers would have been flagged by that system—had it still been in use in 2001.
Shifting aviation security from looking for dangerous objects to looking for dangerous people should be high on the agenda of the new Congress.