Aliens cause security breach

A REPORT ON Associated Press tells of sixteen employees and a contractor who compromised security at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) by downloading a program intended to search out the existence of off-planet aliens. (Our thanks to Hermie for the link).

According to the report, the employees, by downloading SETI@Home, compromised TVA policy and breached guidelines by participating in the scheme, which, supposedly, has the intent to filter noise from space for evidence of intelligent life.

Although the TVA said there was no evidence that hackers had entered systems because of the distributed software, the Inspector General of TVA, Richard Chambers, is quoted as saying the action of the employees generated additional risk to the electricity suppying utility.

Some conspiracy crazies allege that the SETI project is really a scheme hatched by the US government to allow it to monitor communications on earth, rather than on space, by declining the Puerto Rico radio telescope by a couple of degrees, and then using the gullibility of earthlings to persuade them to do the hard work of processing the results.

We assume that downloading UD's cancer busting software is also against TVA guidelines. Mind you, if there is any intelligent life out there, they'd be well advised to steer clear of the intelligent monkeys who run this sphere of existence, far more scary than the hypothetical lizards that are lurking in another space. µ

ABC News version of the story External
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