[Fwd: Public LHC outreach web site]

[Chris]

I have sent the below email to the Director General of CERN.... The top boss...

If any of you on the list have access to people who might be able to influence CERN decisions, please pitch in to help :)

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Public LHC outreach web site
Date:	Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:23:56 -0700
From:	Chris <C...@Xymox1.com>
To:	Rolf....@cern.ch

Good day Mr Heuer,

I am sorry to disturb you during these very busy times at CERN.

As a fan of physics and a huge fan of the LHC project I have followed it for 8 years via the CERN web sites. These publicly available internal web site have proven VERY interesting and define cool. The public outreach programs have been ok, but very limited compared with the vast amount of stunning cool stuff that is actually available from CERN.

I recently created a fan web site to get links together from the vast jungle of web sites at CERN into a nice and easy to use portal to watch the daily happenings at CERN. During this process I checked with IT security about my doing the web site to make sure I was not posting anything that was of concern. I had IT security review my site. I have been concerned and sensitive about this from the start.

I have gained quite a number of users of my site now. Teachers, kids, physics fans and the press. Everybody has just had a great time and is in awe at the project. Nothing like watching the project progress daily to really get into it. I feel I have done a remarkable job of outreach with my site. Being able to watch daily what is happening and what issues get worked through is really fascinating stuff. It also demystifies the project. Being able to go to a Vistar page and watch the LHC page 1 and see it turn on and do things live is just AWESOME and defines outreach.

However... It has come to my attention my site might have caused alarm recently and may have created privacy issues at CERN...

This is the LAST thing I wanted. I went through a lot of email with IT security to make sure my site was OK. I spent quite a bit of time, money and effort on the project. Its a cool hobby for me.

I understand that shortly almost all live data and many of the pages I have links to will become restricted. This is really sad news for many people who are fans of my site and of the LHC project. I have a number of very high profile science writers with major press outlets who are fans of my site. There are 2 news outlets who are working on stories for next week that will include my site. The loss of the ability of watch the project will be a sad event and might even be news worthy that CERN removed access. I hope not.

I fully understand and respect the decisions to restrict the sites to only authorized users. I have removed links immd after hearing they might be a problem.

I would like to work with CERN to provide a cool live data outreach program. I would also like to beg and plead with you to only restrict access to truly sensitive content, not just cut off all access.

The recent email and response I received are below..

Thank you for your time and I hope to hear back from you soon.

BTW.,... AWESOME JOB on the project !!..

Chris Stephens

http://LHCPortal.com/




-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Re: Comment or question from ATLAS public website
Date:	Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:33:37 -0700
From:	Chris <C...@Xymox1.com>
To:	Bar...@lbl.gov
References:	<Pine.LNX.4.64.0...@thpdg.lbl.gov> <4AFE3ABD...@Xymox1.com>

I have removed ALL the links on my site to ATLAS and provided a message explaining why.

I really hope you and other project managers at CERN reconsider. The information that is public is really harmless and VERY fun and interesting for the public. I cant imagine it does any harm.

Please let me know what you decide so I can update the web site.

ATLAS is THE coolest experiment. You guys have done a GREAT job with outreach. This is really just outreach to really geeky tech guys..

If I can make one suggestion. I would REALLY love to have a semi live page that shows the triggered collisions that were interesting from the last run. OR just raw collisions with lots of pretty colors :)  Splash events are very pretty ! hehehe..

I would VERY much like to have dialog with the other projects and make sure everybody is happy. Can you arrange this ?

Chris wrote:

:(

Atlas is the coolest experiment. You guys also have done the very best outreach job and have the coolest "status" pages of the whole LHC project.

I had over the last 2 weeks exchanged a number of emails with Stefan Lueders because I was concerned about the very subjects you discuss. Including not only the "internal" nature of the links but for other technical issues as well. My number one concern was that this was OK with CERN. The LAST thing I wanted to do was cause alarm..

The most recent email. I continue below.

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	RE: Question about use of cern resources
Date:	Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:57:17 +0100
From:	Stefan Lueders <Stefan....@cern.ch>
To:	Chris Stephens <c...@xymox1.com>
Stefan St

Dear Chris,

 

Thank again. If you are happy with the set-up of your web-page, this should be fine. I don’t think there are bandwidth problems here for CERN, even if requests might be redirected through your site. It would be the same as if all these users directly connect to us. However, you might worry about your sever performance J

 

Yours S>>L

 

---------- European Organization for Nuclear Research ----------
Dr. Stefan Lüders                                              -
Computer Security Officer                                      -
CERN ROC Security Contact                                      -
Head of Computer Security                 Office +41 22 767 4841
Building 31, Room 2-010, PostBox G20500   Mobile +41 76 487 0207
CH-1211 Geneva 23                         Fax    +41 22 766 9703
----------------------------------------------------------------

_________________________________________________________________

 

As you point out, I think the links are harmless. Also they generate a lot of public interest in your project.

I kinda beg you to reconsider and maybe look through what is OK for the public to have access to and just restrict things that really need to be restricted rather then just cut off all access.

p l e a s e   :)

Looking at the links as they stand right now they all seem to still work.

What would you like me to do ? what would you like me to remove ?

I will of course do whatever you ask..

Maybe if others at CERN have similar concerns we should co-ordinate this ? Can you contact or co-ordinate others so this can be dealt with ? You are the only email so far I have received. However it seems the web site was hit by huge numbers of CERN employees yesterday looking at the web server logs.

My intent is to provide a outreach portal for CERN. I want to help, not hinder or worse ALARM..

Let me know what you would like me to do. I can also be reached by phone at 602-788-4151.

Chris Stephens

bar...@lbl.gov wrote:

Hi Chris,

    Your email set off alarms with the leadership of our experiment because you have done a "good" job of finding private information that we are not yet prepared to make public.  We set up many webpages for our own information and while they are probably completely harmless, we do wish our own collaboration members to see this and comment on it before the public.

    So I am sorry but we will make this protected for now. Please stay in touch with me, and I will try to do what we can to help keep you informed.  We will soon make more information available on our public pages.

    We will also make event images and photos available when they start becoming available in 8-10 days.  Please keep in mind that the first events are not collision events.  The so-called splash events that we will get when we get beam (but before colliding beams) are reconstructed to look like collisions by our software but are not.  They are extremely useful because they light-up most elements of our detector which is very helpful in preparing for actual collisions.

    Thank you for your understanding.

         Best regards,
          Michael  (in Berkeley)

 Name: Chris Stephens
 Email Address: c...@xymox1.com

 Comments: As a fan I have created a new public fan outreach site for the LHC making it easy to monitor the cool experiments underway at CERN.

This includes a brand new forum as well..

http://www.LHCPortal.com/

[Chris]

I have looked around at the other major science labs around the world

Brookhaven

DESY

Fermilab

SLAC

Turns out they ALL have open access like CERN does to live data about operating experiments.

It would be a HUGE effort to restrict all of CERN's web sites. The vast jungle of web sites, all running on different computers scattered all over the place, would need to be secured. All of its partners, researchers and collaborators would need to be verified and given passwords. It would be quite the undertaking.

Its hard to believe that CERN would be the only facility in the world to restrict access in this way..

We shall see...

The hits to the web site have dropped off dramatically. Its down to just a few new people a hour. The CERN rampage on my site has completly stopped with only a few people in the last 6 hours from CERN. Most likely everybody is off on the weekends...

I do not expect to hear from the Director General until the first part of next week.

The LHC commissioning is progressing on time and on schedule. We should have the first circulating beams on about the 20th. Thats THIS friday. Might be as late as monday. I cant find any internal notes on a scheduled event day for this.. I know there must be one tho...

[Chris]

Chris wrote:

EXCELLENT NEWS !!!

The CERN ATLAS leadership team are happy with my site... except for one mysterious link.. But I have CERN blessings on my site and they understand that the press may publish my site and cause a large amount of traffic for them.. No word yet from the Director General, but that will come soon enough I am sure..

This is great news !

Also I added a "What is all this ?" to the portal explaining what everything on my site was and how to use it in nice easy non scientific terms. Im still working on this and will expand it. Its at the top of the portal links..

I have been posting like mad in the big science and physics fourms on the net in the last 24 hours advertising the site. This has turned out interesting as some famous physics guys have messaged me and sent me email. Everybody has enjoyed the site.

My fingers are worn out. The last 4 days have really been unexpected and entertaining.

Well back to check on the LHC forum. I am gaining users and posts..

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Re: Comment or question from ATLAS public website

Date:	Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:01:54 -0800 (PST)
From:	Michael Barnett <bar...@lbl.gov>
Reply-To:	Bar...@lbl.gov
To:	Chris <C...@Xymox1.com>
References:

Hi Chris,

     I guess I confused you with my message.  All I was 
doing was telling you that one (yes one) page that you 
were linking to was not supposed to be public.  That page 
will soon be password protected (as are some other 
internal pages), so there is no action we were requesting 
from you.  I have now confirmed this viewpoint with the 
leadership of ATLAS, and we do all agree.

     Also because of your note to the computer security 
person and later to the DG, I think I need to clarify 
another point.  CERN and the ATLAS Experiment are two 
different entities; clearly we are bound together in many 
ways (including structural ways), but in many matters, 
decisions are independent.  CERN is a European 
organization of 20 countries.  ATLAS is an international 
organization of 37 countries.  Our website is subject 
first to CERN rules (which are more basic) and then to our 
own rules.

    I doubt the DG has any idea what our web rules are, nor 
would he intervene.  He would intervene if we were 
violating CERN rules.

    You are free to link to anything you want.  I was just 
explaining that some links (maybe just one) were going to 
"disappear" (it was supposed to protected already) and 
why.

    We are working on using our public website to make many 
aspects of the forthcoming run available to the public. 
We will be posting news, events, photos, animations, and 
perhaps video (if someone takes it) as soon as we can. 
We have very limited resources for this (we are not NASA), 
but we are already planning how to do it.

   I hope this clears some confusion.

            Best regards,
             Michael

[Overbye, Dennis]

Hey Chris,

How come I can't get onto your website? It says my username is currently inactive, whatever that means. I forget my password and username the other day and tried to reregister and it said it would send me a confirmation and never did.

What happened? I know you are busy these days, but this is unsettling.

Cheers,

Dennis