Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Hazmat False Alarm/Raid near my house

Hazmat False Alarm/Raid near my house

Metacelsus - 11-4-2015 at 15:29

This happened yesterday, less than a block away from my house.

http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/299356501.html

Imagine what would have happened had they found my lab, with actual hazardous chemicals!

I was out of the house when it started, and I had a panic attack when I came back and saw all the hazmat trucks outside my house.

I will upload some of my pictures of the chaos tomorrow.

The saddest part is, they didn't realize there was no danger for over ten hours.

[Edited on 11-4-2015 by Cheddite Cheese]

Etaoin Shrdlu - 11-4-2015 at 16:21

Quote:

Around 6:30 p.m., Elder announced that authorities believed they were not dealing with a hazardous substance, but did not rule out whether a chemical compound was involved.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I wonder what really happened though.

Metacelsus - 11-4-2015 at 16:39

I tried asking the National Guardsmen (no, really!) outside my house, but they wouldn't tell me anything. They did allow me to go into my house, though. Others weren't so lucky.

My guess?

Someone called 911 for a chemistry-unrelated reason, and paramedics noticed an open, unmarked container full of odd-smelling powder that turned out to be old napthalene mothballs or something like that.

[Edited on 12-4-2015 by Cheddite Cheese]

Zombie - 11-4-2015 at 17:32

Apparently they did manage to save the neighborhood from a bag full of hazardous books.

Thank God for them.

I wonder what would have happened if there were a witch in the apartment?

Magpie - 11-4-2015 at 18:22

What is frightening is that that incident could happen to any one of us.

Loptr - 11-4-2015 at 18:26

Books and documents in evidence bags...

Pictures

Metacelsus - 11-4-2015 at 19:50

I came home and saw this. I thought they were coming for me, until I realized that they were concentrated at another building.

[Edited on 12-4-2015 by Cheddite Cheese]

Varmint - 11-4-2015 at 20:16

When I was very young (8-9 maybe) I was at my grandmas house, and I asked her why the closet smelled so bad.

She thought about it for a second, and said "oh, that must be the moth balls". I'd never heard of them before.

So she opened the door, took down the satchel, and showed me what they looked like.

I said "wow, must be HUGE moths!".

She though about it for a couple of seconds, then bust out laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes, I'd never heard the noises she made before, truly out of control. The whole rest of the afternoon she couldn't look at me without busting out again or at least giggling.

{Sorry for the hijack, but when you mentioned mothballs...}

gdflp - 11-4-2015 at 20:17

Wow, talk about a waste of tax dollars. It's a good thing that you weren't in the middle of an experiment when they showed up! That would have taken some explaining.

macckone - 11-4-2015 at 22:38

It sounds like someone injured themselves while doing something. No telling what they found but it sounds like a suspected drug incident given the seizure of books and papers. Possible a meth addict having a heart attack. Of course it could also be absolutely overblown and the dude simply had some unlabelled bottle with something that smelled weird on the kitchen table. Chinese fish sauce might be a good suspect.

Zombie - 12-4-2015 at 06:14

Plus 1 re: macckone

Yep! Meth addict, and fish sauce is most likely what it was.

Happens all the time around here.

BromicAcid - 12-4-2015 at 06:22

Overkill, as per the norm.

Not to be too paranoid, but since this sort of thing is in the news, and this is in a section of the forum frequented by search engines, someone related to this case could quite possibly find this thread. You admit to having <i>actual</i> hazardous chemicals in your house. Not only that but from the angle of your photos you could get a good guess as to what house you were in while they were taken.

Just something to take into consideration.

macckone - 12-4-2015 at 06:51

Bleach is a hazardous chemical

So is drain cleaner and many other household chemicals.

Metacelsus - 12-4-2015 at 07:10

Quote: Originally posted by BromicAcid

Overkill, as per the norm.

Not to be too paranoid, but since this sort of thing is in the news, and this is in a section of the forum frequented by search engines, someone related to this case could quite possibly find this thread. You admit to having <i>actual</i> hazardous chemicals in your house. Not only that but from the angle of your photos you could get a good guess as to what house you were in while they were taken.

Just something to take into consideration.

I knew the risks when I posted it, which is why I waited a day, until the government agencies had left. Yes, someone could figure out my address just from going on Google Street View.

However, I thought it was important enough to share.

Zombie - 12-4-2015 at 07:59

Nice to see you have a Big Pair Cheddite!

I double your sentiment. It's more important to discuss the issues that effect the masses, than it is to worry about trivial personal paranoia-s.

All this F'n drama that surrounds us is also killing us. What happened to the days where all we had to worry about was, Will there be enough rain this year?

Damn I hate people...

Magpie - 12-4-2015 at 08:08

We really don't know the facts of this incident ...yet. I hope Cheddite keeps us apprised from his unique viewpoint, ie, right next door. I'm sure the Star/Tribune will be right on top of the story also.

Along with our knee-jerk paranoia over terrorism is the ever-present need for professionals to preserve their jobs. The feds, in their knee-jerk due to 9-11 opened up a huge purse to every first responder organization in the country (our tax dollars). All this equipment and personnel have to be exercised periodically to justify their existence. It's about jobs, stupid!

[Edited on 12-4-2015 by Magpie]

Chemosynthesis - 14-4-2015 at 22:58

Really appreciate the pictures. I can have appreciation for what the NG probably thought they were doing, but seriously? Isn't this still considered a Posse Comitatus violation unless explicitly activated by the governor? Also, I opened this thread and I could only think "bet I could figure out where you live."

Then you had pictures and admitted you didn't care, and all I could think was that is way more open about your identity than I am. Granted, if you know what you're doing, it wouldn't be too hard to find out things about me either.

macckone - 15-4-2015 at 07:52

Posse Commitas only applies to the army (technically it may apply to the air force as well). It does not apply to the national guard, marines or navy. It also doesn't apply to the police. Obviously the intent of the law was to prevent the military from operating inside the us but they only specified the army.

Zombie - 15-4-2015 at 08:00

batteries not included

Magpie - 15-4-2015 at 08:14

Quote: Originally posted by Chemosynthesis

Then you had pictures and admitted you didn't care, and all I could think was that is way more open about your identity than I am. Granted, if you know what you're doing, it wouldn't be too hard to find out things about me either.

I am under the impression that with one's IP address and a judge's order (or not) the identity of any one of us will be handed over to the requesting authority. Correct me if I am wrong.

I keep checking for Star/Tribune updates on this story. Perhaps it's so embarrassing the police are not issuing any information?

Loptr - 15-4-2015 at 08:37

Quote: Originally posted by Magpie

Quote: Originally posted by Chemosynthesis

First, they would get a judges order. Then they would likely contact the owner of the site through the site registration information or the IP of the site itself. Eventually, they would make it to Polverone or one of the admins, and would request the IP address of the a specific user.

Remember what I said. If you use HTTPS, then all they know is that you are connecting to the site. They don't know who you are on the site, just that you visit it.

The username/password and session information would be part of the encrypted message sent over the secure session. From what I recall, the most revealing tell of an HTTPS connection is the URL and querystring that you see in your address bar. IIRC, that is unencrypted. So as long as cookies aren't in the query string, they just know that someone connected to SM.

They can, however, try and narrow down who you are based on the IP address and where you claim to reside on your profile or in the forum posts.

[Edited on 15-4-2015 by Loptr]

gregxy - 15-4-2015 at 10:57

I'm not an IT guy, but knowing the IP address, couldn't they just correlate the time of the incoming traffic to SM with the time listed on the posts when they show up?

The same issue as TOR for low traffic. Just correlate the input and output.

Etaoin Shrdlu - 15-4-2015 at 11:20

Quote: Originally posted by macckone

Posse Commitas only applies to the army (technically it may apply to the air force as well). It does not apply to the national guard, marines or navy. It also doesn't apply to the police. Obviously the intent of the law was to prevent the military from operating inside the us but they only specified the army.

Nope. It applies to the Marines, the Navy, and also to the National Guard unless the NG is acting under the authority of the governor of the state (because then it's not considered federal involvement, I suppose). I'd be surprised if this didn't happen under state authority, though.

Chemosynthesis - 15-4-2015 at 11:28

Also if you VPN or proxy, things get more difficult. If you do not, however, it would not be too hard for a mod to ID the owner of the IP address through illegal means.

Quote: Originally posted by Etaoin Shrdlu

Quote: Originally posted by macckone

This. Even organized state militias under control of the governor tend to fall into PC Act in states where they exist, according to my questioning two of them in different states. NG has to be activated by the governor. Now, I suppose there could be a governor's order or law stating permanent standby, or delegate the authority to someone designated by the governor in times of emergency or something and it would maybe be valid under a state constitution, but it just sounds suspicious to me. The governor activated a NG unit for this? I have to be missing something here. http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/call/docs/10-16/ch_12.asp

Loptr - 15-4-2015 at 11:37

Quote: Originally posted by gregxy

I'm not an IT guy, but knowing the IP address, couldn't they just correlate the time of the incoming traffic to SM with the time listed on the posts when they show up?

The same issue as TOR for low traffic. Just correlate the input and output.

Not all accesses are posts, so there would be a lot of overlap. However, yes, they could use correlation to provide a confidence score of who is who, but that is more involved than your average joe, and would be a collective effort. Given enough data, yes, they could guestimate who is what IP address.

This wouldn't just require a subpoena for a particular IP address, etc., but would be site-wide for SM as a whole. It goes back to my Tor posts, if they can watch the entire population, Tor or SM, then they can start making inferences as to who is who. HOWEVER, a big however, this takes a LOT of effort and man hours. You would have to be a very important target in order for them to go to this much effort.

I have worked with the machine learning over big data arena before, and it is certainly possible that you can be identified using HTTPS, but the point is to not make it EASIER FOR THEM TO DO SO.

A school of fish has a much higher chance of not getting eaten, but the outliers, they are shark bait.

Chemosynthesis - 15-4-2015 at 11:50

Here is the section of Title 10 of the US Code law on PC Act that pretty forcibly restricts Navy+Marines, not in the PC Act itself: 10 U.S.C. §375.

NG swears two oaths, to state and federal constitutions, but when acting in Title 10 federal capacity is considered Army for Army National Guard.

macckone - 15-4-2015 at 12:20

Quote: Originally posted by Chemosynthesis

Here is the section of Title 10 of the US Code law on PC Act that pretty forcibly restricts Navy+Marines, not in the PC Act itself: 10 U.S.C. §375.

NG swears two oaths, to state and federal constitutions, but when acting in Title 10 federal capacity is considered Army for Army National Guard.

The PCA was originally army only. Various modifications have been made through the years. Now there are exceptions for terrorist attacks and natural disasters. The exception for active insurrection was removed in 2008, I think. The army can also act against foreign persons on American soil, ie. to stop illegal immigration or foreign militias, armies and unlawful combatants.

The navy and marines are restricted by regulations, not law, drawn by the dept. of defense. The law specifying these regulations could easily be reinterpreted from its clear meaning. Oh side note, other laws can be interpreted to mean that intentional injury of a cop is an act of terrorism, so in theory the army can be called out if someone attacks a cop. Not sure what this really has to do with the original incident except for the NG at the scene, which isn't covered be PCA unless they are nationalized by the President.

Chemosynthesis - 15-4-2015 at 14:24

We disagree. National Guard has no authority unless activated by the governor or president, so it is a little more complicated than just being prohibited when activated by the president. They then must be activated through the authority of the governor. All these minor points about what constitutes justification for activation are irrelevant to the procedure itself. Your logic means that the governor's office was somehow alerted and activated the National Guard for this case. That sounds fishy to me given my knowing more than one governor. Now I don't know the secret details of the applicable governor's machinations, so I am ignorant of that, but it sounds weird to me. Possible, but weird... at least in my state (working off of hurricane deployments, including out of state to Katrina). Their state may work differently. This is part of why I was asking; perhaps someone could inform me that their state has active units for some other reason that were re-assigned, or their constitution is drawn up differently.

And of course the PCA has been amended. Most notably in 1981, but this likely isn't relevant. You said it only technically applies to Army and AF. Not true. Law binds it to Navy and Marines. Specifics are delegated to DoD, but the law is applicable. Whether you can argue it in court is irrelevant. It is also irrelevant to my original point of the Army National Guard, and was originally phrased in a manner I believe is not accurate. PCA applies to Marines and Navy through law, title 10 USC, in contrast with what you had said. If you had said the law itself read as being, or was originally not applied to other branches, you would have a historical point.

[Edited on 16-4-2015 by Chemosynthesis]

gregxy - 15-4-2015 at 19:39

I don't think it would be difficult (for the NSA, CIA etc) to automate. The big part is getting the taps on the data line of any interesting site or the user. These record the IP address and the arrival/departure times the data is sent/recieved. (the meta data, Snoden said they are already doing this).
You then build a signature from these times and match them up. As long as the data path is constant and delay time variation << than the time between data exchanges (mouse clicks) after 5-10 data exchanges they can match you. For a low traffic site given enough exchanges from a visitor, there is no need to even match the IP addresses.
The matching should be O(N) where N is the number being watched.
First sort them into bins bases on the times. N=millions is not an issue.

I think TOR uses the same data path for each session, so its no help,
against the NSA, its a "honey pot".

Algorithm:

Write bot to read SM look for interesting words.
Identify interesting poster, get his post times.
Match post times to data io times
Match data times to joe-blows data times tapped from his ISP.
Send robot cop to arrest joe

Loptr - 15-4-2015 at 19:55

Quote: Originally posted by gregxy

I don't think it would be difficult (for the NSA, CIA etc) to automate. The big part is getting the taps on the data line of any interesting site or the user. These record the IP address and the arrival/departure times the data is sent/recieved. (the meta data, Snoden said they are already doing this).
You then build a signature from these times and match them up. As long as the data path is constant and delay time variation << than the time between data exchanges (mouse clicks) after 5-10 data exchanges they can match you. For a low traffic site given enough exchanges from a visitor, there is no need to even match the IP addresses.
The matching should be O(N) where N is the number being watched.
First sort them into bins bases on the times. N=millions is not an issue.

I think TOR uses the same data path for each session, so its no help,
against the NSA, its a "honey pot".

Algorithm:

Write bot to read SM look for interesting words.
Identify interesting poster, get his post times.
Match post times to data io times
Match data times to joe-blows data times tapped from his ISP.
Send robot cop to arrest joe

Haha, explain how this could be achieved in O(N) time?

Again, they have bigger fish to fry. They have the resources to do whatever they want. The point was to not make your self an easier target, that is completely susceptible during a drive by attack.

Tor also combines multiple messages during forwarding, so ingress can not easily be correlated to egress. You would have to capture a lot of Tor traffic to do this, and I mean across all nodes in the Tor network.

You have over simplified the problem and inflated your important as a target to them.

I am not here to debate Tor or whatever. Just take the necessary precautions that you believe will put one or more steps in between you and them. Use clear text browser sessions, what do I care? Go ahead. Nothing will likely happen, simply because SM itself is not a target.

[Edited on 16-4-2015 by Loptr]

turd - 16-4-2015 at 13:10

Quote: Originally posted by Loptr

From what I recall, the most revealing tell of an HTTPS connection is the URL and querystring that you see in your address bar. IIRC, that is unencrypted.

Hell no, that would completely defeat the purpose of SSL/TLS!
This was also the reason why for HTTPS you needed an IP address per virtual host, since the name of the virtual host is sent in the encrypted message creating a chicken and egg problem.

The problem was fixed (intermittently?) by SNI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication though I'm not sure how widely deployed this is.

It may become obsolete anyway with IPv6, since with that we get a bazillion (give or take) IP addresses per physical device.

On the other hand you might consider it a disadvantage that the IP address is unambiguously associated with one virtual host.

Bert - 16-4-2015 at 13:49

I still have seen nothing on what actually caused this whole incident... And am curious, as I lived in twin cities for a while.

The rest of the security related stuff could better go in another recent thread.

Loptr - 16-4-2015 at 15:47

Quote: Originally posted by turd

Quote: Originally posted by Loptr

From what I recall, the most revealing tell of an HTTPS connection is the URL and querystring that you see in your address bar. IIRC, that is unencrypted.

On the other hand you might consider it a disadvantage that the IP address is unambiguously associated with one virtual host.

You're right, turd. For some reason, I thought the first line in the HTTP request header was visible. I am not sure why I thought this--memory from somewhere.

Quote:

GET /webpage.htm HTTP/1.1

I think I am confusing it with the HTTP CONNECT method, that is initially sent over HTTP in cleartext, which then causes a secure session to be established.

[Edited on 16-4-2015 by Loptr]

Bert - 16-4-2015 at 15:59

I am going to split this thread and merge most of it with a recent thread more in line with the computer security subject...

If anyone knows anything about OP's neighborhood chemist- Love to hear it.

Zombie - 16-4-2015 at 16:27

It was Cou! He chlorinated the sewer system in a hasty attempt to flush the evidence.I believe he got his arm stuck in the john, and had to dial 911.

That's what I heard.