Posts tagged National security

All Your Message Are Belong To US

28
3 days ago
by Michael Weiss in

He’s look­ing at us, kid.

We learned last week, on the May 1 edi­tion of CNN’s Out Front with Erin Bur­nett, that our gov­ern­ment has been spy­ing on all of us for years. In the rel­e­vant por­tion of the tran­script, for­mer FBI coun­tert­er­ror­ism agent Tim Clemente tells us so matter-​​of-​​factly that he almost seems sur­prised that we didn’t already know:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obvi­ously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone com­pa­nies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a con­ver­sa­tion. There’s no way they actu­ally can find out what hap­pened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We cer­tainly have ways in national secu­rity inves­ti­ga­tions to find out exactly what was said in that con­ver­sa­tion. It’s not nec­es­sar­ily some­thing that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the inves­ti­ga­tion and/​or lead to ques­tion­ing of her. We cer­tainly can find that out.

BURNETT: “So they can actu­ally get that? Peo­ple are say­ing, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: “No, wel­come to Amer­ica. All of that stuff is being cap­tured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

At this point I don’t see any harm in dis­cussing it, though I’ve known about this for longer than I’d care to admit. One of the dif­fi­cult aspects of work­ing in the secu­rity realm is that I hear many things from many sources, and quite a few of them involve top­ics I can’t (or won’t) divulge to oth­ers. So it is in this case.

But now that the cat is out of the bag, it’s worth look­ing at this a bit more thor­oughly.  (more…)

Fighting the Next War II

0
2 years ago
by Michael Weiss in

Peo­ple who appear in pub­lic as mem­bers of “Anony­mous” wear Guy Fawkes masks, as an homage to the book and film V for Vendetta

A while back I posted an arti­cle, in which I men­tioned that the next war is likely to have a sig­nif­i­cant cyber com­po­nent to it.

HBGary, a com­puter secu­rity firm with exten­sive United States gov­ern­ment con­tracts, was com­pro­mised a few weeks ago by the loosely affil­i­ated group called “Anony­mous.”

Fans of the graphic novel V for Vendetta (or the film adap­ta­tion) will rec­og­nize in the photo the use of the masks of anonymity asso­ci­ated with Guy Fawkes, who was part of a failed attempt to blow up the British Par­lia­ment in 1605. Fawkes made his attempt to over­throw the gov­ern­ment under a false per­sona. Hence the use of the mask is often asso­ci­ated with attempts to over­throw total­i­tar­ian regimes through the use of anonymity and solidarity.

The trig­ger for Anonymous’s attack was a direct, pub­lic threat made by HBGary’s CEO, Aaron Barr, to the Anony­mous group to expose their con­stituents. Two weeks ago, Peter Bright pub­lished an arti­cle on Ars Tech­nica out­lin­ing how the attacks took place.

(more…)

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