I was serving as the founding executive director of the Tor Project and being called a tin hat for blogging about NSA officer whistle blowers Binney/Weibe/Stark in 2007, around the vintage of the "Tor Stinks" Snowden leak. But I have been following this field for decades.
No news story I have seen is tracing the important players here, like Mike McConnell, former NSA chief.
He was W's Director of Natl Intel -- Clapper's job -- and sold Bush on the future of cybersecurity. Mike shepherded in a series of public/private initiatives that moved a huge pork pie slice of military industrial complex dollars from open, auditable contracts in aerospace or even the love-to-hate Halliburton merc contracts to black line cybersecurity intel.
Then, he took the revolving door to become executive at Booz Allen Hamilton. By extension, a couple tiers up, he was Edward Snowden's boss.
We are at the point where (per USA Today) the black line budget is so huge that 0.5% of the American population has high clearances just to go to work. To get in the gate, or work in the mailroom.
When Al Gore, years ago, started his initiatives to track down waste and pork in MIC spending (the famous three figure USAF toilet seat) it apparently just made the MIC classify the toilet seats.
I am a fanatic for civil liberties. But civil liberties are, I predict, collateral damage here. When you hear someone say "They hate our freedoms," that person is likely ignorant or blowing smoke.
It's always about money, influence, and power in DC. But that doesn't make a nice 6th grade level three minute story on the news, and most Americans would rather think of the game of thrones as something only in barbaric fantasy fiction.
Frankly, I find the real life thing far more fascinating. You should too. If more geeks played this LARP, we might find politics less of a clusterfuck.
It's hard for those of us seeking adequate oversight, accountability, and upholding our Constitutional rights nonviolently with these asymmetrical odds. Damn good thing we're smarter. ;)
Standard disclaimer: haven't worked for Tor since 2007, but I like them bunches
In 2001, the USA PATRIOT Act mandated the Secret Service to establish a nationwide network of Electronic Crimes Task Forces (ECTFs), a network bringing together not only federal, state and local law enforcement, but also prosecutors, private industry and academia aimed at combating technology based crimes. The common purpose is the prevention, detection, mitigation and aggressive investigation of attacks on the nation's financial and critical infrastructures.
Effective March 1, 2003, the Secret Service was transferred from the Department of the Treasury to the newly established Department of Homeland Security. In 2009, the Secret Service made nearly 2,866 criminal arrests for counterfeiting, cyber investigations and other financial crimes, 98% of which resulted in convictions, and removed more than $182 million in counterfeit U.S. currency from circulation.
Today, the Secret Service continues to protect our nation?s leaders, visiting world leaders and the integrity of the nation?s financial systems. With a rich tradition of service to the nation and its people, the agency continues to evolve, adding a variety of duties to our original charter.
(my emphasis)
Even before PATRIOT, the Secret Service was investigating crimes where there were questions of Social Security numbers being used for fraud and a wide variety of other issues beyond what you list. Your list is abbreviated and I have no idea where you got it but it's hearsay quality. Plugging in Secret Service investigatory powers into Google blew it to pieces in fifteen seconds.
Why fan the flames falsely? There's so much valid to do here. You are going to discredit good work.
I was Aaron's friend. I appeared on a panel on privacy with him at the MIT Museum on privacy. I was in the Berkman blog group with him. Various stuff. Before I knew him personally I knew him as this genius kid on email lists and such since he was a teenager.
I mourn him terribly. The day of his funeral I and some others were in front of the Boston Federal Courthouse holding vigil.
But there's no reason for this kind of poorly researched thing -- it does no good in the community in our out of hacktivism. Be rigorous and non-violent, if you want to honor what Aaron did, be impeccable.
I'd post the same on Empty Wheel, but they seem to have closed comments over there.
Previous discussion from the very beginning have included plans for a pseudonym system om G+, but that system was planned, it was hinted, to still require a real name on the Google Profile. Pseudonyms would live in a nicknames field, and be used at user discretion.
Considering Google's record for leaking profile info in other services, this means anyone wanting to use a handle for casual personal/professional identity management should be very cautious. Anyone concerned about a strong correlation should avoid Google entirely.
Until the full mechanism and policy is clarified, celebration is premature. Don't take the heat off yet - there's no real policy here. The devil is in the details - we don't know if qualifies as "don't be evil" until we see more.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by shava23.
follow the money
I was serving as the founding executive director of the Tor Project and being called a tin hat for blogging about NSA officer whistle blowers Binney/Weibe/Stark in 2007, around the vintage of the "Tor Stinks" Snowden leak. But I have been following this field for decades.
No news story I have seen is tracing the important players here, like Mike McConnell, former NSA chief.
He was W's Director of Natl Intel -- Clapper's job -- and sold Bush on the future of cybersecurity. Mike shepherded in a series of public/private initiatives that moved a huge pork pie slice of military industrial complex dollars from open, auditable contracts in aerospace or even the love-to-hate Halliburton merc contracts to black line cybersecurity intel.
Then, he took the revolving door to become executive at Booz Allen Hamilton. By extension, a couple tiers up, he was Edward Snowden's boss.
We are at the point where (per USA Today) the black line budget is so huge that 0.5% of the American population has high clearances just to go to work. To get in the gate, or work in the mailroom.
When Al Gore, years ago, started his initiatives to track down waste and pork in MIC spending (the famous three figure USAF toilet seat) it apparently just made the MIC classify the toilet seats.
I am a fanatic for civil liberties. But civil liberties are, I predict, collateral damage here. When you hear someone say "They hate our freedoms," that person is likely ignorant or blowing smoke.
It's always about money, influence, and power in DC. But that doesn't make a nice 6th grade level three minute story on the news, and most Americans would rather think of the game of thrones as something only in barbaric fantasy fiction.
Frankly, I find the real life thing far more fascinating. You should too. If more geeks played this LARP, we might find politics less of a clusterfuck.
It's hard for those of us seeking adequate oversight, accountability, and upholding our Constitutional rights nonviolently with these asymmetrical odds. Damn good thing we're smarter. ;)
Standard disclaimer: haven't worked for Tor since 2007, but I like them bunches
Perhaps a little better research is called for?
A simple web search comes up with this from the Secret Service recruiting site's history "about" page:
http://www.secretservice.gov/join/who_history.shtml
(my emphasis)
Even before PATRIOT, the Secret Service was investigating crimes where there were questions of Social Security numbers being used for fraud and a wide variety of other issues beyond what you list. Your list is abbreviated and I have no idea where you got it but it's hearsay quality. Plugging in Secret Service investigatory powers into Google blew it to pieces in fifteen seconds.
Why fan the flames falsely? There's so much valid to do here. You are going to discredit good work.
I was Aaron's friend. I appeared on a panel on privacy with him at the MIT Museum on privacy. I was in the Berkman blog group with him. Various stuff. Before I knew him personally I knew him as this genius kid on email lists and such since he was a teenager.
I mourn him terribly. The day of his funeral I and some others were in front of the Boston Federal Courthouse holding vigil.
But there's no reason for this kind of poorly researched thing -- it does no good in the community in our out of hacktivism. Be rigorous and non-violent, if you want to honor what Aaron did, be impeccable.
I'd post the same on Empty Wheel, but they seem to have closed comments over there.
Le Sigh.
Previous discussion from the very beginning have included plans for a pseudonym system om G+, but that system was planned, it was hinted, to still require a real name on the Google Profile. Pseudonyms would live in a nicknames field, and be used at user discretion.
Considering Google's record for leaking profile info in other services, this means anyone wanting to use a handle for casual personal/professional identity management should be very cautious. Anyone concerned about a strong correlation should avoid Google entirely.
Until the full mechanism and policy is clarified, celebration is premature. Don't take the heat off yet - there's no real policy here. The devil is in the details - we don't know if qualifies as "don't be evil" until we see more.