Taking security too far

Here's a bizarre story that found its way into my inbox over the long holiday weekend. According to this news source, the co-owner of Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Security Solutions is accused of taking security into his own hands by making homemade explosives (or at least purchasing the supplies and equipment to do so) in an effort to blow up some people he didn't like.

Police said he planned to target homes of local gang members he came across in the course of his job. "It appears the motivation was some intimidation by what he perceived as gang members against employees of his company," Smith said. ...

Police said Leyer admitted to talking about making bombs to blow up gang houses, but he said he never intended to actually do it.

Uh huh. I mean who doesn't regularly purchase test tubes, rubber tubing, galvanized pipe, flares and shotgun shells? Police are just so keyed up these days.

Anyway, I did a quick Google search for Wisconsin Security Solutions and only came up with an address listing and brief description. Looks like this company is mostly in the guarding business rather than electronic security, which I imagine is a relief to most of you (the description even says this company rents guard dogs, which is a first for me).

I'd say that if this situation were an episode of Little House on the Prairie and there needed to be a moral lesson learned, Half Pint (that's Laura's nickname, for those of you who weren't adolescent girls in the 80s) would need to be reminded that there are just some things you shouldn't take into your own hands (even if security is your business). It also goes to show that every industry has its crazies.

Sleepover security nightmare

Sometimes it's fun to laugh at other people's security ignorance, especially when no one gets hurt, but in this case we can only chuckle a little because it sounds like this dad just got lucky. This article (which was sent to me by a reader, and yes, I do have readers) is about a father who was awoken at 3 a.m. one morning by two police officers standing in his bedroom. Turns out this dad wasn't so vigilant about security and not only was the front door left ajar, but so was the garage door AND he had left the keys in the ignition of his truck. The police officers were apparently conducting a "public service campaign to remind residents to secure their homes to prevent thefts" and this was likely one of the grossest lack of security these officers had seen (hence it making the local paper).

Oh, the article also notes the TV was left on, but that was probably because this dad was hosting a sleepover and there were four kids under the age of seven sleeping in the living room, so not only was he endangering his own kids, he was also risking someone else's offspring.

The father said he feels violated by the police officer's intrusion, but he's probably just pissed that he got publicly outed as an incompetent parent. Further indication of this guy's character is in the paragraph noting that the kids were too scared to wake him up. Chances are that would be true of a lot of kids (a steadfast childhood rule is that you don't wake dad), but they were likely scared to death when two adults appeared in their living room after they had spent all night watching Freddie Krueger go on a murdering spree or whatever horror movies kids are watching these days.

I bet those kids are catching some flak at school, too, since they'll never host a sleepover again, as no sensible parent would ever let their kid stay the night there. Poor kids, they can't help it if their dad is completely and utterly security-challenged.

An order of analytics, please

So, I finally got around to reading The New Yorker article about the man who was stuck in an elevator for 41 hours. Nicholas White, a production manager for Business Week, spent a weekend trapped in Car No. 30 of the McGraw-Hill building in New York City back in 1999. For 41 hours he paced the elevator, pried open the doors, repeatedly used the emergency phone, laid down to sleep and even smoked the rest of his cigarettes (aren't there smoke detectors in there!) ... but nothing. Nobody noticed him, not even the eight (yes, 8!) different guards who were on duty that weekend. Here's an easily overlooked parenthesized sentence in the 8,000 word article that caught my security-honed attention:

(Eight McGraw-Hill security guards came and went while he was stranded there; nobody seems to have noticed him on the monitor.)

Check out the video for yourself:



I don't know how many screens these security guards monitored, but it was a weekend, people. There's little to no activity in the elevators for the duration of the video, and, there's even elevator maintenance work being done, which should at least garner some attention from the guards. (Of course, there's no maintenance work being done on the elevator car that actually malfunctioned and trapped White inside.)

I'd say this is a great example of why security guards alone are not very effective. If it had been one guy who missed this, I'd say fine, maybe he was tired. But EIGHT! I know this was nearly 10 years ago and the analytic technology of today wasn't available, but if I were an analytic provider trying to convince companies to invest in notification-based video systems, this example would certainly be in my arsenal.