6/23 defcon: strategies, taxes & trident tribunal

executive orders give pentagon new cyberwar guidelines*
officials 'expected to announce the entire strategy soon'*
ex-dhs chief warns of cyberwar with hackers*
cyber attacks grow more severe, frequent, say it practitioners*
bitcoin prices plummet on hacked exchange*
malware bitcoin theft a false flag on revolutionary currency?*
states look to internet taxes to close budget gaps*
righthaven loss: judge rules reposting entire article is fair use*
fbi seizes web servers, knocking sites offline*
$74m scareware ring raided in 'operation trident tribunal'*
winklevoss twins end appeal of facebook settlement*
google breaks billion-visitor barrier*
video: at new nyc hotel, a robot handles the luggage*

one in four US hackers 'is an fbi informer'

from guardian: The underground world of computer hackers has been so thoroughly infiltrated in the US by the FBI and secret service that it is now riddled with paranoia and mistrust, with an estimated one in four hackers secretly informing on their peers, a Guardian investigation has established. Cyber policing units have had such success in forcing online criminals to co-operate with their investigations through the threat of long prison sentences that they have managed to create an army of informants deep inside the hacking community.

In some cases, popular illegal forums used by cyber criminals as marketplaces for stolen identities and credit card numbers have been run by hacker turncoats acting as FBI moles. In others, undercover FBI agents posing as "carders" – hackers specialising in ID theft – have themselves taken over the management of crime forums, using the intelligence gathered to put dozens of people behind bars.

So ubiquitous has the FBI informant network become that Eric Corley, who publishes the hacker quarterly, 2600, has estimated that 25% of hackers in the US may have been recruited by the federal authorities to be their eyes and ears. "Owing to the harsh penalties involved and the relative inexperience with the law that many hackers have, they are rather susceptible to intimidation," Corley told the Guardian.

"It makes for very tense relationships," said John Young, who runs Cryptome, a website depository for secret documents along the lines of WikiLeaks. "There are dozens and dozens of hackers who have been shopped by people they thought they trusted."

related defcon updates:
hackers attack fbi partner website; atlanta infraguard exposed*
pbs website hacked with fake news*
video: did hackers deface fox news building in nyc?*
after cyberattack targeted lockheed martin -
second defense contractor l-3 'actively targeted' with rsa securid hacks*
gmail hack targeted white house*
cyber attacks can count as act of war*
writer urges internet junkies to 'switch off' and think*
video: sony loses $3.2b after playstation network hacked*
hackers attack another sony network, post data*
'world of warcraft' blamed for divorce as men 'prefer them to their wives'*
un report declares internet access a human right*
oregon senator wyden freezes second internet censorship bill*
facebook quietly switches on facial recognition tech by default*
apple patent will cripple devices when in proximity of 'a concert or a classified facility'*
how could so many crooks have managed to scam the national security agency?*

domestic surveillance court approved all 1,506 warrants in 2010

from threat level: The secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved all 1,506 government requests to electronically monitor suspected “agents” of a foreign power or terrorists on U.S. soil last year, according to a Justice Department report released under the Freedom of Information Act. The two-page report, which shows about a 13 percent increase in the number of applications for electronic surveillance between 2009 and 2010, was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists and published Friday. “The FISC did not deny any applications in whole, or in part,” according to the April 19 report to Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada). The 11-member court denied two of 1,329 applications for domestic-intelligence surveillance in 2009. The FBI is the primary agency making those requests. Whether the FISA court, whose business is conducted behind closed doors, is rubber-stamping the requests is a matter of debate... The Justice Department report, meanwhile, said the FBI issued 24,287 “national security letter” requests last year on 14,212 people, “a substantial increase from the 2009 level of 14,788 NSL requests concerning 6,114 U.S. persons,” Aftergood wrote in a blog post. In 2008, there were 24,744 requests regarding 7,225 people.

5/5 defcon: re-entry & removal

video: Spacecraft re-entry over Wash. & Oregon on may3?*

Department of Justice:
FBI Too Focused On Child Porn*
Feds Demand Firefox Remove Add-On That Redirects Seized Domains*
Mozilla Refuses to Block Extension for dhs - As Government's ICE Effort Continues to Look Silly*
flashback: 'mafiaa fire': firefox add-on to reverse US govt domain censorship
Gabrielle Giffords leaves Florida after shuttle Endeavor delay*

fbi tracking "suspects" online

A Freedom of Information Act(FOIA) request made in 2007 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), reveals FBI using secret spyware. A recent article at Raw Story shows "...that software called the Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier (CIPAV) was used by the FBI since at least 2001. The software allows the FBI to collect a variety of information from a computer every time it connects to the Internet, including the IP address, Media Access Control (MAC) address, open communication ports, list of the programs running, URLs visited, and more. It is unclear how the FBI installs the software on a computer, but it is suspected that the spyware exploits a vulnerability in the user's browser, like other common Internet viruses."

However, the article notes a greater threat posed by a recent FBI proposal. "In February, the FBI urged members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security to update the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) and make it easier for authorities to eavesdrop on Internet." CALEA is the same 1994 law that the US administration was not observing just prior to the Iraq war!

4/14 defcon: opt-out botnet & fakebook revolutions

law would let you 'opt-out' of online web tracking*
private records of 3.5m people exposed by texas*
in a surprise appeal: tjx hacker claims US authorized his crimes as 'key undercover secret service informant'*
'facebook revolutions' & people-powered coups: US trains activists to evade security forces*
with an actual court order, fbi hijacks 'coreflood' botnet, sends kill signal*
police increasingly peeping at email, instant messages*
report: chinese far outstrip US cyber-spy fight for military, business secrets*
rhode island lawmakers look at law to school cyberbullying*
dozens apply for space pilot jobs at virgin galactic*
kochab star in little dipper about to go supernova;
last supernova observed by galileo in 1604*
audio satire: fbi director wishes he had some alien thing to cover up*

1950 roswell memo from the fbi vault: alien psyop

In 1995, ten million Americans watched "The Alien Autopsy", but producer Ray Santilli admits there were only two or three "authentic" frames of "the aliens". The remainder of the film was staged. This week's Daily Mail headline provides an echo of the past with "The memo that 'proves aliens landed at Roswell'... released online by the FBI". A sensational headline designed to draw readers. You can view the memo on YouTube, where someone does the navigation for you. The memo is at the FBI website under a subdomain called "The Vault". Is this what the internet has come to... self-serve disinfo?

Nancy Atkinson, a Universe Today writer, provides a more accurate assessment in "FBI Memo Does Not Prove Aliens Crash Landed in Roswell". "While the memo is genuine...it is not new, is not secret...having been released in 1976 by the FBI...[and]...a third-hand account from agent [Guy] Hottel reporting what an Air Force investigator was told by an 'informant'." It's disconcerting the FBI memo is presented as breaking news. It's clearly deceptive! Is it setting the stage for an alien psyop?

You can read the opinions of veteran UFO researchers in a previous post here, who came to believe aliens are mostly a psyop a means towards a one world government. If you missed the autopsy the first time around, you can view it on YouTube: "The Alien Autopsy". In this case even a psyop can be entertaining!

related update: fbi destroyed thousands of ufo reports, 1949 memo reveals

1/13 defcon: crimestop, doublethink, disconnect

child porn probe leads to fbi headquarters*
ex-tsa worker gets 2yrs for planting 'logic bomb' malware in colorado springs screening system*
US subpoenas twitter for wikileaks info*
how secret were the wikileaks state dept. cables?*
wikileaks contributes $15k to bradley manning's defense*
assange claims 504 'insurance files' on news corp.*
algorithms take control of wall street*
cyberdyne is real & making thought-controlled exoskeletons*
video: 'stop. think. connect.' - dhs announces new fear agenda of 'crimestop. doublethink. disconnect.'*

video barbie: camera streams download to computer

FBI warns 'Barbie Video Girl', a doll with camera in necklace and LCD on her back, can be used for child porn! A Mail Online article, "FBI issues warning over Barbie 'Video Girl' which could be used by paedophiles to make child pornography", supplies the details. Wow! "Video Girl can capture up to 30 minutes of footage and the video can be downloaded and streamed live to a computer. There is no indication it can be streamed directly to the internet." There is nothing to see here please move along!

no charges in pennsylvania school's webcam spygate

related: young people will have to change their names to escape 'cyber past' warns google ceo
from threat level: Federal authorities announced Tuesday they will not prosecute administrators connected to a webcam spying scandal at a suburban Philadelphia school district. Prosecutors and the FBI opened an inquiry following a February privacy lawsuit accusing Lower Merion School District officials of spying on students with webcams on the 2,300 district-issued MacBooks. The lawyers who filed the lawsuit claim the district secretly snapped thousands of webcam images of students, including images of youths at home, in bed or even “partially dressed.” Zane David Memeger, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, said he found no criminal intent in the alleged surveillance. “I have concluded that bringing criminal charges is not warranted in this matter,” Memeger said in a statement. “For the government to prosecute a criminal case, it must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person charged acted with criminal intent. We have not found evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that anyone involved had criminal intent.”

flashbacks: school spied on kids via webcams on school-supplied laptops & webcamgate expands as lawyers say 1000s of pictures taken

'hate blogger' hal turner burned by government he served

racist provocateur & radio host, hal turner, worked for fbi
from kurt nimmo: On Friday [aug13], a jury found “National Security Intelligence” asset Hal Turner guilty of threatening to kill a judge. Prosecutors argued the former radio host threatened federal judges Richard Posner, William Bauer and Frank Easterbrook after they upheld a law banning handguns in Chicago. “Let me be the first to say this plainly: these judges deserve to be killed,” Turner posted on his website in June 2009. He also posted the judges’ phone numbers and office addresses. Two previous attempts by the government to convict Turner resulted in mistrials with deadlocked juries.

Hal Turner’s conviction and possible ten year prison term is yet another example of the government habitually burning trusted assets.

Turner was not a garden variety operative working for the FBI. He was a National Security Intelligence asset and worked for the FBI on “National Security, terrorism, foreign counterintelligence. There are people that are giving information that affects the national security of the United States, terrorism, matters that are going to affect the population or people overall, something that’s really going to hinder and hurt a large group of people or the national security of the United States,” Assistant Special Agent in Charge Amy Pickett, the third highest ranking FBI Official in New York City, said in December, 2009. His code name was “Valhalla” and “he received thousands of dollars from the FBI to report on such groups as the Aryan Nations and the white supremacist National Alliance, and even a member of the Blue Eyed Devils skinhead punk band,” according to The Record. Turner’s service was apparently so valuable to the government he was sent to Brazil where he reported a scheme to send non-military supplies to Iraqi resistance fighters.

Government burning formerly prized minions and those who follow illegal directives is nothing new. After Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued orders to torture Iraq detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions, a number of military personnel were prosecuted. Eleven soldiers were convicted of various charges relating to torture at Abu Ghraib. Two soldiers, Specialist Charles Graner, and his former fiancée, Specialist Lynndie England, were sentenced to ten years and three years in prison.

In 1934, Hitler betrayed and had the Gestapo murder trusted members of of the Sturmabteilung, also known as the Brownshirts, a paramilitary group responsible for engaging in terrorism and mass murder as Hitler ascended to power. “The measures taken on June 30, July 1 and 2 to suppress treasonous assaults are legal as acts of self-defense by the State,” Hitler declared after the Gestapo killed hundreds of people.

In much the same way, the formerly trusted operative Hal Turner was declared a threat to the state, although he has yet to suffer the fate of Ernst Röhm, the leader of the SA, who was assassinated.

If anything, the case of Hal Turner should serve as a warning to those considering cooperating with the government in its ongoing effort to infiltrate and “neutralize” — as the late FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover characterized the actions of his COINTELPRO — any organized opposition to the establishment.

defcon 8/12: cyber lies & gag orders

cyber lie exposed: power plants not connected to internet*
dhs needs to take threat of emp attack seriously, physicist warns*
google ceo: no anonymity is the future of web*
google raided by s. korea police street view probe*
appeals court rules against secret police gps tracking*
cars hacked through wireless tire sensors*
geoeye & digitalglobe get $7b from intel agency to implement next-gen sat imaging*
'john doe' who fought fbi spying freed from gag order after 6yrs*

defcon 8/5: gold mines & greatest threats

the web's new gold mine: your secrets*
obama wants fbi to access browsing history without warrant*
google & verizon near deal on pay tiers for web*
biometric & other locks fail to foil hackers at defcon*
now aiming to seize control, hackers target power plants as US, industry scramble to respond*
'greatest threat': dhs battles hackers head on*

shadowy spy group building dossiers on internet users for feds

from paul joseph watson: An organization that tracks 250 million IP addresses a day has been developing portfolios on Internet users and handing the information to U.S. federal agencies as the latest incarnation of the supposedly defunct Total Information Awareness spy program is revealed.

A group calling itself Project Vigilant went public at yesterday’s Defcon security conference in an effort to add more recruits to its 600 member strong cyber spy force. The outfit announced that it had been tracking “Internet villains” for no less than 14 years and handing the information to federal authorities as part of a massive intelligence gathering program.

However, the target of one such investigation did not fall into the category of cyber criminals - “terrorists, drug cartels, mobsters” - that the group claims to be fighting.

The organization “encouraged one of its 'volunteers', researcher Adrian Lamo, to inform the federal government about the alleged source of a controversial video of civilian deaths in Iraq leaked to whistle-blower site Wikileaks in April,” reports Forbes.

Project Vigilant director Chet Uber used Lamo’s friendship with Bradley Manning, the former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who allegedly released the classified video, to out Manning, who now faces criminal charges...

Uber also founded InfraGard, the ominous FBI-affiliated public-private partnership that is a key component of the unfolding implementation of martial law in the United States. InfraGard made its intentions to act as a political police force clear in March 2009 when the group announced that questions surrounding Barack Obama’s presidential eligibility were “potentially harmful to civil order and national security”.

Uber’s organization poses as a volunteer orientated crime-fighting private outfit, and yet it is nothing more than a tentacle of the military-industrial complex’s sprawling unconstitutional internal spy apparatus.

related updates:
project vigilant is a fraud*
wikileaks posts mysterious 'insurance' file*
wikileaks' julian assange & conspiracy theories*
diarydig.org: 'afghan war diary' search tool*
jacob appelbaum, wikileaks volunteer, detained at US border for 3hrs*
pentagon demands wikileaks return all documents*

defcon 4/1: cybercensors & torrents of controversy

censorship act: new amendment could block wikileaks*
army intel acorn-ing wikileaks? web publisher under attack*
uk lords pass controversial internet piracy bill*
computer-controlled swarm of bacteria builds tiny pyramid*
don't believe the hype: there's no such thing as 'cyber'*

school laptop spy case prompts wiretap act rethink*
isohunt told to pull .torrent files offline, likely to close*
indie filmmakers sue 1000s of bittorrent users*
how the fbi busted one youtube nutjob in under a day*
comcast rolls out broadband meters coast to coast*

defcon 3/25: killswitch, siphons & existential threats

large hadron collider cranked to 'maximum redline power'*
obama's veto power/killswitch over net removed in amended bill*
time to split the nsa?*
break up the nsa!*
US secret service paid tjx hacker $75k a year*
update: tjx hacker gets 20yrs in prison*
cyber-assaults bombard federal computers*
uk anti-terror police seek help from internet cafes*
acta draft: no internet for copyright scofflaws*
your health, tax & search data siphoned*
toronto man with al-qaeda ties ran extremist blog*
why cnn exec fears social-networking sites*
wireless survey: 91% of US use cell phones*
cyberattacks an 'existential threat' to US, fbi says*
cybersecurity & the 2 homelands hypothesis*
google exits china - except for part known as hong kong*
cyber-attack on US firms, google traced to chinese*
chinese media: google is tied to US intelligence*
chinese academics’ paper on cyberwar sets off alarms in US*
video: US gov uses google proxy to attack china*

defcon 3/18: cyberpocalypse, command & control

US to roll out major broadband policy*
earth under attack from invisible star?*
venezuela's chavez calls for internet controls*
google '99.9%' certain to pull china plug*
5 doomsday scenarios for cyberpocalypse*
paypal says sorry to cryptome*
iran arrests 30 accused of US-backed 'cyberwar'*
'boogeyman bomb':
what america needs to know about emp's*

sec says hacker manipulated stock prices*
fbi uses phony profiles on social networks to track suspects*
undercover feds on social networking sites raise questions*
your new facebook friend: the irs*
revised cybersecurity bill introduced in senate*
1 in 4 uk schoolkids admits hacking*
uk clinic opens for children addicted to video games & internet*
could terrorists on the net be next dot com bubble?*
US cyber command preparations under way, general says*

ex-tsa worker sent virus to sabotage terror watchlist computers

from 9news: Federal prosecutors have charged a former Transportation Security Administration employee with attempting to sabotage terror watch list computers. Douglas Duchak, 46, of Colorado Springs, faces two charges of attempting to damage protected TSA computers.

Duchak pleaded not guilty and was released from custody. The suspect allegedly tried to send a virus into the computer system's servers, after learning he would be terminated, 9Wants to Know confirms. The computer system includes the government's no-fly list.

Duchak worked at the TSA's Colorado Springs Operation Center where the government loads computers with data received from the federal government's Terrorist Screening Database and the U.S. Marshal's Service Warrant Information Network, according to a U.S. Attorney's office spokesman.

Duchak worked at the Colorado Springs Operations Center from August 2004 to Oct. 23, 2009 as a data analyst.

Federal prosecutors say Duchak was not successful in his attempt to introduce a virus into the computer system, but if he had been successful it "would have caused damage affecting a computer used by the United States government in furtherance of national security," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

"Prosecution of the defendant is critical to protecting the integrity of the government's security databases," said U.S. Attorney David M. Gaouette. Duchak is expected to appear in Denver federal court Wednesday afternoon. If convicted, he faces 10 years in prison for each count. This case was investigated by the TSA, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

"While this threat was an attempted internal attack on a cyber based system by a U.S. citizen, the FBI will invest the time, resources, and hard work necessary to pursue prosecution of these cases," FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Denver office Jim Davis said. "The tampering with a computer that is used as a tool to protect National Security of the United States will not be tolerated," he said.