low-tech

Yesterday, the subway system in Oslo was put out of order by way of a low-tech sabotage.

10s of thousands of commuters where delayed for hours - all due to a person throwing a bicycle directly on the electrical power tracks at Majorstua station.

What makes this interesting?

Two things IMO.

• It does not take high-tech attacks to bring high-tech to a halt. From this we can learn that you need to consider also low-level, low-tech incidents when you do your risk assessment and planning
• The crisis respond team acted quickly and efficiently - using a well prepared contingency plan - reducing the impact on business, and reducing the delays for the travelers. From this we learn that having a crisis team and a contingency plan is key to success.

We had election here in Norway a couple of weeks back. We use some sort of electronic counting system of course. And as you would guess, discussions of election fraud has arrived here as well.

But - this post is not about that! This is about a low-tech election fraud. According to the police in Drammen, the elections in the city was illegal. Why? Because someone decided to buy the votes of the drug addicts in the city.

Each drug addict was offered 50,- NOK to go to the election station, and vote for a particular party. IMO, a good incentive to raise the number of voters. Except that they had to vote one particular party, obviously. On the other hand, there is not way to know what they did vote, so the addict could vote something else, and get the cash, I guess.

Still, the amount they where paid is ridiculously low. It equals less than US$10, in a country where a pint of beer cost more than that. Unless the prices of drugs are extremely low, that bill they got paid would get them nothing but a pack of Kleenex and a chocolate bar.

The police in Drammen now calls for reelection in the city. Shouldn't they be praising the politicians for trying to activate the people who most likely entered an election room for their very first time?