City Anti-Light Rail Campaign Fumbles
posted by on September 8 at 11:24 AM
Seattle Transit Blog reported this weekend on efforts by the anti-Sound Transit campaign—headed, in this case, by Chris Van Dyk, most recently seen lobbying against taxi drivers on behalf of taxicab owners—to take over Sound Transit’s domain name, which expired briefly over the weekend. According to blogger Ben Schiendelman, Van Dyk claimed he had hacked in to Sound Transit’s web site (by guessing the user name and password) and paid $35 to renew the domain registration. Then, Van Dyk announced in a press release, he generously handed the site registration back to Sound Transit.
Unfortunately for Van Dyk and his crowing press release, the campaign didn’t do its homework: Instead of renewing soundtransit.org, Sound Transit’s official web site, they re-registered ratg.org—an old, long-disused site for the Regional Accessible Transportation Guide, which provided information on transit accessible to people with disabilities. (That information is now available at findaride.org). As Schiendelmen puts it: “This is like these guys tried to break into Sound Transit’s house, but ended up in the middle of the living room of the guy next door.”
In the comments to Schiendelman’s post, Van Dyk provided a bizarre, off-point “explanation” for his actions, which he said were made purely in the interest of Sound Transit’s “security.” If Sound Transit failed to take stronger security measures, Van Dyk wrote, it was likely that “someone malicious could access the address pointers for the website through Network Solutions—and literally redirect your traffic to a different website. By leaving the email address changed to us, we were able to monitor any activity subsequent to the domain name renewal, and prior to what was to be our presumed Monday contact with you for formal and permanent resolution of the problem.”
No response yet from Sound Transit on their opponents’ magnanimous efforts to preserve their web security.
These two campaigns are strictly amature hour. It's like watching half-witted chicks from rival sororities posting catty remarks about each other on a college webboard.
Is there any polling on whether this measure can be expected to do any better than the last one? The economy sure is more fucked up this year than last.
Erica: You do know what "Seattle Transit Blog" is, right?
It's just the same as this:
http://www.transitmiami.com/
Those posting there are different, but they are posting from the same script, if you get my meaning.
The public infrastructure contractors (PB, mostly) set these up in every metro area where public votes are needed for transpo taxes. They use the same template in each area. There's one in LA I saw as well - I don't have the URL for it handy though.
So, my day job is web & IT security consulting. I do this kind of thing all the time -- for organizations who grant me the legal authorization to do so.
If I ever accessed a company's systems or accounts without authorization, irrespective of any magnanimous intentions, it would be the end of my career.
And I would be criminally liable in all kinds of ways. Well-meaning but irresponsible people have been prosecuted and jailed for doing exactly this.
"Catch a clue" @2,
Wrong, try again. Not one of us works for any public transit agency, nor any contractor that has to do with trains or buses.
We're citizen volunteers, although that may be hard for your cynical mind to understand.
It'd be great if someone so much as bought us a beer for our efforts, but so far no luck.
@catch a clue - ridiculous, do better research! They're not contractors, they're transit supporters.
Martin -I'll buy you all a beer. Check with Ben. :)
Catch a clue is funny - I wish I were a construction contractor, I'd probably be raking in the bucks from all the condo construction around here! But I'm just a transit user who wants to help improve things. Hell, I don't even have a driver's license, I prefer to put my money where my mouth is.
I suspect transitmiami is the same - just folks who actually want to make things better.
This weekend just showed that the "no" campaign is totally incompetent, and willing to break the law for a little bit of PR.
"Not one of us works for any public transit agency, nor any contractor that has to do with trains or buses."
Nothing the poster @2 wrote suggests you "Seattle Transit Blog" posters are being paid, Martin.
Check out the "Transit Miami" blog entry about "Boondoggles" from a couple of days ago. It talks about Sound Transit, and how ST supposedly is creating value somehow for the northwest (like the Sydney Opera house, or something). W.T.F.?
I must say, some of the writing at "Transit Miami" does sound a whole lot like what gets posted at "Transit Now." The two sites look identical. Maybe that's just a coincidence though, right Martin?
Ben, Martin: _catch a clue_ did NOT say you two were contractors of ST, or that you worked for ST. You are misreading the post @2.
What it looks like is that the same types of blog post content is being posted on the two sites, entities who'd make money off of transit projects are backing these sites (and possibly others), and the sites' formats appear identical.
The entry from a couple of days ago about boondoggles at the Transit Miami site is just like the one from Seattle Transit Blog a couple of days ago - that's an example of congruent content as well.
If you're going to jump in here protesting your innocence boys, at least try meeting the charges actually levelled . . . .
Chris Van Dyk is a sad sack whose goal is to suck the vitality out of Seattle one issue at a time.
Screw him and his ilk: I want transit and I wouldn't mind getting my Sonics back too.
@7, 8:
The post @2 strongly implies that STB was set up by contractors, and that it follows some kind of template.
I know the guy who started STB, and he isn't a contractor. As for the template, it's a one of the Wordpress standard templates, so I'm not surprised someone else is using the same. When we were on blogger, we used one of their standard templates as well.
As for the content being similar, I just don't see it. If I'd ever heard of Transit Miami before today, I've forgotten, but regardless, we each report and opine about local transit news. We also experience the same national news, so it's not surprising that we see (or are tipped off to) similar stories.
I didn't write the "boondoggle" article, but it's pretty obvious Andrew is cueing off a Crosscut post on the same subject, and there are different points made in each article. Is Crosscut part of the vast light rail conspiracy, too?
If you think Sound Transit or the Sonics are what provides "vitality" to this town, then you are the saddest of sad sacks.
Want to know who the vitality vampire of Seattle is? Greg Nickels, with his huge sales taxes, road maintenance taxes, monorail taxes and grocery bag taxes.
@2, 7, 8: Guys, we're totally different sites -- but we both cover transit. I've never heard of Transit Miami, but it doesn't surprise me that they have some similar subject matter to us. To a transit supporter, this is more than just a local issue -- transit needs to be supported at the state and federal level more so than it is today.
The conspiracy allegations are ridiculous. No one is funding Seattle Transit Blog -- all of us work there out of our fascination with transit and a passion toward doing things right.
Two blogs look the slightly similar? Who could imagine that?!?! Two blogs about transit both post about an article about transit agencies in their area? OMG they must be exactly the same! I bet HA and slog are the same too!!!
The guy said that contractors set up these sites. I'm not a contractor, I work for microsoft, but I set up the seattle transit blog.
I've met these guys-- they aren't getting outside funding at all. If they were, I wouldn't have had to pay for my own bruschetta!
How awesome would it be if ST went for criminal charges?
Crap, AJ, I owe you some bruschetta, then. I was trying to pay for as many people as I could.
Furcifer, I don't think it would look great for Sound Transit to sue someone. The guy didn't do any damage.
First, the taxi drivers. My clients are taxi drivers; almost all own and drive their own taxicabs. Get your facts just a bit straight.
Sound Transit's website, we noticed, was out Saturday morning. We tried, but were unable to reach someone at Sound Transit to fix it. So fix it, we did. We are in the business of operating websites, and site addressing is nowhere as simple as your blog makes it out to be...
But so far as we can tell, Sound Transit is operating the soundtransit.org domain as a subdomain of ratg.org. Thus, if the domain ratg.org expires, the subdomain soundtransit.org will also be knocked out of service. In other words, when you go to soundtransit.org, the DNS (domain name server) is resolving that address (converting it from language to a numeric address for discovery on the web) in a two step process. For example, we run a half dozen websites for our clients through bainbridgemediagroup.org. If that domain expires, then all the subdomains (including notoprop1.org) will be knocked off the web, and you will get a message similar to that which was posted for Sound Transit early Saturday morning. For Sound Transit, first, the subdomain soundtransit.org is resolved, but in a second step the re-direct through ratg.org must also be resolved. As it is, to be sure we were correct in our analysis, we walked through the numeric addresses for Sound Transit with Network Solutions personnel; we determined that this was the only way to get soundtransit.org itself back on line. So we shelled out $35 bucks for that renewal. Sound Transit owes us a subsidized train ride.
Also, that is why, when the website host gave notice that it was down due to domain name registration lapse, and provided a link for renewal, it linked to the renewal page for ratg.org. Left to its own devices, from Sound Transit's own explanation, it seems apparent that Sound Transit would still have a dysfunctional soundtransit.org website. They don't get it.
It's all kind of funny. At the end of the day, it seems they don't understand their own systems (this stuff is not easy, and worse, it is rarely dealt with by techies even in large organizations. Also, very few organizations have formal and rational systems for tracking how they set this stuff up, and it is hardly intuitive) and they have poor security to boot. The important thing is that the system was put back on line, as quickly as possible. If we helped, that's great. If not, it was a cheap refresher course in domain name addressing.
If there is any benefit, we have alerted Sound Transit to tighten their internet security. Happy to have them take credit for that, too. All we really wanted to do was---get this---use their damn website. But it comes as no surprise that Sound Transit would act in its normal, insular manner in denying the existence of a problem. That seems to be, after all, their modus operandi, and why they will deservedly lose the Prop 1 vote, again.
As for the criminal charges, look up the definition of the word "intent".
Best,
Chris Van Dyk
Principal,
Bainbridge Media Group, Inc.
206-854-6127
cvandyk5@msn.com
First, the taxi drivers. My clients are taxi drivers; almost all own and drive their own taxicabs. Get your facts just a bit straight.
Sound Transit's website, we noticed, was out Saturday morning. We tried, but were unable to reach someone at Sound Transit to fix it. So fix it, we did. We are in the business of operating websites, and site addressing is nowhere as simple as your blog makes it out to be...
But so far as we can tell, Sound Transit is operating the soundtransit.org domain as a subdomain of ratg.org. Thus, if the domain ratg.org expires, the subdomain soundtransit.org will also be knocked out of service. In other words, when you go to soundtransit.org, the DNS (domain name server) is resolving that address (converting it from language to a numeric address for discovery on the web) in a two step process. For example, we run a half dozen websites for our clients through bainbridgemediagroup.org. If that domain expires, then all the subdomains (including notoprop1.org) will be knocked off the web, and you will get a message similar to that which was posted for Sound Transit early Saturday morning. For Sound Transit, first, the subdomain soundtransit.org is resolved, but in a second step the re-direct through ratg.org must also be resolved. As it is, to be sure we were correct in our analysis, we walked through the numeric addresses for Sound Transit with Network Solutions personnel; we determined that this was the only way to get soundtransit.org itself back on line. So we shelled out $35 bucks for that renewal. Sound Transit owes us a subsidized train ride.
Also, that is why, when the website host gave notice that it was down due to domain name registration lapse, and provided a link for renewal, it linked to the renewal page for ratg.org. Left to its own devices, from Sound Transit's own explanation, it seems apparent that Sound Transit would still have a dysfunctional soundtransit.org website. They don't get it.
It's all kind of funny. At the end of the day, it seems they don't understand their own systems (this stuff is not easy, and worse, it is rarely dealt with by techies even in large organizations. Also, very few organizations have formal and rational systems for tracking how they set this stuff up, and it is hardly intuitive) and they have poor security to boot. The important thing is that the system was put back on line, as quickly as possible. If we helped, that's great. If not, it was a cheap refresher course in domain name addressing.
If there is any benefit, we have alerted Sound Transit to tighten their internet security. Happy to have them take credit for that, too. All we really wanted to do was---get this---use their damn website. But it comes as no surprise that Sound Transit would act in its normal, insular manner in denying the existence of a problem. That seems to be, after all, their modus operandi, and why they will deservedly lose the Prop 1 vote, again.
As for the criminal charges, look up the definition of the word "intent".
Best,
Chris Van Dyk
Principal,
Bainbridge Media Group, Inc.
206-854-6127
cvandyk5@msn.com
Chris, Chris, why are you still trying to peddle your story? Don't you sound dumb enough yet? You got into ratg.org, an old and disused address. You had no impact on Sound Transit except to make them think you're crazy.
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