They at least had a decent reason for it. That case is interesting because the ICBM force had two completely contradictory goals. First, they wanted to ensure that no ICBM could be launched without authorization, but second, they wanted to ensure that, in the event of war, all ICBMs could be quickly launched even with a massive failure in the command hierarchy. Weird stuff happens when an organization has opposing goals like that.

I don't think the same thing applies to a bank, so they have no excuse there.

Note that I'm pretty sure that control of the UK Trident fleet depends purely on trusting the senior officers on the boats to behave themselves - again, for what seemed like good reasons.

NB In the most extreme of events, actions would be based on the (rather pleasingly British) notion of hand written letters from the PM:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort

...and also whether they can get "Today" on the radio.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today_(BBC_Radio_4)#Notable_fea...)

> Journalist and historian Peter Hennessy has made an assertion, in one of his books, that a test that the commander of a British nuclear-missile submarine must use to determine whether the UK has been the target of a nuclear attack (in which case he has sealed orders which may authorise him to fire his nuclear missiles in retaliation), is to listen for the presence of Today on Radio 4's frequencies.

Well, they are subject to the CAP theorem. Usually consistency will trump everything, but 'usually' is not always.

Not very bad. The missiles are in a military base and require trained personnel to launch. PAL is just a bonus effort.

The president of Syria was using 12345 for his e-mail up until recently.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120208/03295517697/syrian...