You may recall that, back in 2012, Syria suddenly dropped off the face of the internet. It actually happened twice. There was all sorts of speculation about how it happened.
At the time, Cloudflare’s analysis was one of the most thorough, noting that it almost certainly “was done through updates in router configurations” rather than a physical failure or a cable cut or something. Of course, everyone assumed that it was the Syrian government, trying to cut off access to the outside world.
However, in James Bamford’s big Wired article about Ed Snowden, Snowden reveals it was actually an NSA hack gone wrong
Category: Spying
Mind-blowing hypocrasy
Keith Alexander Defends Patenting His Totally Brand New, Not Developed On Gov’t Time, Patent-Pending Cybersecurity Brilliance
“If I retired from the Army as a brain surgeon, wouldn’t it be OK for me to go into private practice and make money doing brain surgery?” he asked. “I’m a cyber guy. Can’t I go to work and do cyber stuff?”
The “brain surgery” analogy is not even close to be analogous. This is more like he was the administrator of an army hospital who has now retired and says, despite never having personally done a brain surgery, he’s now invented a miraculous new way to do brain surgeries so powerful people have only dreamed of them before. Naturally, most people should be skeptical of such claims.
Australia’s metadata debate is an utter shambles
Within a single day of the prime minister, Tony Abbott, taking to the microphone with attorney-general George Brandis and foreign minister Julie Bishop to announce the plan as a raft of counter-terrorism measures, the PM has:
- Broadened the justification for metadata retention from preventing terrorism to crime-fighting “in general”;
- Stated that the new laws are needed because carriers already store the data the government wants;
- Asserted that metadata retention will involve no cost to carriers because they already collect the data the government wants; and
- Broadened the scope of the data collection to Web browsing history, while simultaneously trotting out the national security establishment’s falsehood that metadata collection is no more than “reading what’s on the envelope”.
Nearly 40% Of Those On The Government’s Terrorist Watchlist Have ‘No Affiliation With Recognized Terrorism Groups’
Another leak has surfaced at The Intercept, notably a non-Snowden leak (“obtained from a source in the intelligence community”) that shows the utter ridiculousness of the government’s terrorist watchlist. Nothing states it better than the universal shrug judiciously applied to the 280,000 people that make up the largest portion of the chart.
The culmination of post-9/11 policies and the steady erosion of civil liberties in the service of “fighting terrorism” has opened up nearly 300,000 people to additional scrutiny because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
The list has increased 10-fold during Obama’s stay in office, growing from 47,000 at the end of Bush’s term to 680,000, 40% of whom the government is sure represent some sort of a threat, even if it can’t quantify that in any specific way.
After CIA Angrily Denied Spying On Senate, CIA Admits It Did And Apologizes
Here’s a surprise. An internal investigation by the CIA has determined — just as Senator Dianne Feinstein charged — that the CIA illegally hacked into the network of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers in order to spy on what they were doing with regards to a report on the CIA’s torture program. They did this despite an earlier instance of a similar problem after which the CIA promised it would not touch the Senate Intelligence Committee network any more.
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Either way, given that the CIA is now effectively admitting to the charges, it does seem noteworthy to highlight the DOJ’s decision not to do anything. After all, as Chris Soghoian points out, if this same bit of hacking were done by a 19 year old hactivist, he’d be rotting in jail, and there would be all sorts of condemnations about what a horrible person he was.
Keith Alexander: I’m Worth $1 Million Per Month Because I’m Patenting A Way To Stop Hackers
The Keith Alexander story just keeps getting more and more bizarre. Almost immediately after retiring from the top position at the NSA, where he oversaw the total failure of the NSA’s supposed “100% auditing” system, allowing Ed Snowden (and who knows how many others) to escape with all sorts of documents, Alexander announced that he had set up a cybersecurity firm — with the ridiculously Hollywood-ish name of IronNet Cybersecurity. A month ago, it was revealed that he’s going around asking banks to pay him $1 million per month for his “expertise.” That caused a few to wonder if he’s selling classified info, because really, what else could he offer?
Alexander has a new answer: Patents! Yes, Keith Alexander is claiming that he has an amazing new anti-hacker technique that is brilliant and wonderful and deserving of at least nine patents.
NUDE SNAPS AGENCY: NSA bods love ‘showing off your saucy selfies’
Edward Snowden has given an interview to The Guardian from his Russian hideout and warned that, among other things, those naked selfies people send to their loved ones are common currency among NSA staff.
“You’ve got young enlisted guys, 18 to 22 years old. They’ve suddenly been thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility where they now have access to all of your private records,” he said in the video interview.
“During the course of their daily work they stumble upon something that is completely unrelated to their work in any sort of necessary sense – for example, an intimate nude photo of someone of in a sexually compromising situation, but they’re extremely attractive. So what they do? They turn around in their chair and show their co-worker.”
Such activities are seen as a “fringe benefit” of the job among certain analysts he claimed, and the internal auditing procedures at the NSA are so lax that there’s no comeback if they swap nudie pics. As proof of the laxity shown by the NSA, he pointed out that he, a 29-year-old, had managed to walk out of the agency’s offices with a large chunk of their internal files.
Writing about an Australian Snowden would land Vulture South in the clink
Comment Australia isn’t just passing a spooks’ charter: it’s creating a regime in which journalists would be as much at risk as the whistle-blowers whose efforts they chronicle.
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In spite of Attorney-General George Brandis’ insistence that the government doesn’t intend to target journalists with the laws, the legislation itself certainly opens that possibility. For example, the legislation includes provisions “enabling the Minister responsible for Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) to authorise the production of intelligence on an Australian person who is, or is likely to be, involved in activities that pose a risk to, or are likely to pose a risk to, the operational security of ASIS”.
If ASIS believes an operation has been leaked to a news outlet, it seems trivially easy to make the case that the recipient of the leak is an operational risk.
Files About UK’s Role In CIA Renditions ‘Accidentally’ Destroyed
Remember how the tapes of the CIA’s torture campaign were “destroyed” under suspicious circumstances, despite orders not to destroy them? It appears something similar has happened in the UK, where files on the UK’s role in CIA rendition efforts have been “accidentally destroyed.” I’m wondering if anyone can read that claim without rolling their eyes.