Ace Of Spades For Michael Hastings: DARPA Contractors Take Control Of Moving Vehicles— “And The Next Thing You Know, You’re On The News”
July 25th, 2013In his book, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan, Michael Hastings recalled the incident.
“We’ll hunt you down and kill you if we don’t like what you write,” the staffer threatened, according to Hastings, who responded: “Well, I get death threats like that about once a year, so no worries.”
—Michael Hastings Death: LAPD Rules No Foul Play In Journalist’s Crash
Ace of Spades, Vietnam Edition
See: The Death Card.
Here’s what the death card looks like in the Hastings assassination:
Most people wouldn’t connect these particular dots, but the message isn’t meant for most people. I’d suggest that if you are in a position to take down someone who has tasked an organization like the Joint Special Operations Command, this message is for you.
It’s also interesting that an incident in a garage is mentioned in this Forbes piece:
The soccer-mom mobile barreled through his garage, crushing his lawn mower and inflicting $150 worth of damage to the rear wall.
Does that ring a bell? It should, because there was a curious incident back in 2011 involving a, “soccer-mom mobile,” in a garage. See: Ashley W. Turton: Energy Lobbyist, Wife of Key White House Aide, Dies in Fire:
The wife of a key White House aide was found dead early Monday in a sport-utility vehicle that was heavily damaged by fire in the garage of the couple’s Capitol Hill home, sources familiar with the incident said. The cause of her death is uncertain.
Ashley W. Turton, 37, an energy company lobbyist and one-time top aide to former U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), was found dead shortly before 5 a.m. in a burning BMW, the back end of which was partly out of the garage, as if the vehicle had been entering or leaving when the fire started, authorities said Turton was the wife of Daniel A. Turton, 43, the White House’s deputy director of legislative affairs for the U.S. House. As such, he is President Obama’s point man on legislation moving through the House.
He and Ashley Turton, who have three children, were a Washington power couple well known in Democratic circles. She was a lobbyist for North Carolina-based Progress Energy, which announced a merger Monday with Duke Energy.
Coincidences, coincidences.
Via: Fortune:
Stomping on the brakes of a 3,500-pound Ford Escape that refuses to stop–or even slow down–produces a unique feeling of anxiety. In this case it also produces a deep groaning sound, like an angry water buffalo bellowing somewhere under the SUV’s chassis. The more I pound the pedal, the louder the groan gets–along with the delighted cackling of the two hackers sitting behind me in the backseat.
Luckily, all of this is happening at less than 5mph. So the Escape merely plows into a stand of 6-foot-high weeds growing in the abandoned parking lot of a South Bend, Ind. strip mall that Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek have chosen as the testing grounds for the day’s experiments, a few of which are shown in the video below. (When Miller discovered the brake-disabling trick, he wasn’t so lucky: The soccer-mom mobile barreled through his garage, crushing his lawn mower and inflicting $150 worth of damage to the rear wall.)
“Okay, now your brakes work again,” Miller says, tapping on a beat-up MacBook connected by a cable to an inconspicuous data port near the parking brake. I reverse out of the weeds and warily bring the car to a stop. “When you lose faith that a car will do what you tell it to do,” he adds after we jump out of the SUV, “it really changes your whole view of how the thing works.”
This fact, that a car is not a simple machine of glass and steel but a hackable network of computers, is what Miller and Valasek have spent the last year trying to demonstrate. Miller, a 40-year-old security engineer at Twitter, and Valasek, the 31-year-old director of security intelligence at the Seattle consultancy IOActive, received an $80,000-plus grant last fall from the mad-scientist research arm of the Pentagon known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to root out security vulnerabilities in automobiles.
Cop Fired for Speaking Out Against Ticket and Arrest Quotas
July 25th, 2013Via: Reason:
Auburn, Alabama is home to sprawling plains, Auburn University, and a troubling police force. After the arrival of a new police chief in 2010, the department entered an era of ticket quotas and worse.
“When I first heard about the quotas I was appalled,” says former Auburn police officer Justin Hanners, who claims he and other cops were given directives to hassle, ticket, or arrest specific numbers of residents per shift. “I got into law enforcement to serve and protect, not be a bully.”
Hanners blew the whistle on the department’s tactics and was eventually fired for refusing to comply and keep quiet. He says that each officer was required to make 100 contacts each month, which included tickets, arrests, field interviews, and warnings. This equates to 72,000 contacts a year in a 50,000 person town. His claims are backed up by audio recordings of his superiors he made. The Auburn police department declined requests to be interviewed for this story.
“There are not that many speeders, there are not that many people running red lights to get those numbers, so what [the police] do is they lower their standards,” says Hanners. That led to the department encouraging officers to arrest people that Hanners “didn’t feel like had broken the law.”
DARPA Hydra: Mothership That Deploys Both Submersible and Aerial Drones
July 24th, 2013Via: NBC:
Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are in the news constantly, but what about unmanned underwater vehicles? They could also be important in both war and peace, which is why the Defense Department’s research arm, DARPA, is looking into a mobile submarine base from which to launch drones.
The project, still in the earliest stages, is called “Hydra,” after the mythical beast whose heads multiplied upon being cut off. The idea is to create a sort of underwater version of an aircraft carrier.
“The rising number of ungoverned states, piracy, and proliferation of sophisticated defenses severely stretches current resources and impacts the nation’s ability to conduct special operations and contingency missions,” reads the introduction to the program in a paper issued by DARPA (PDF). “The Hydra program represents a cost-effective way to add undersea capacity that can be tailored to support each mission.”
The Hydra, itself an unmanned underwater vehicle, would be stocked with drones of various kinds and capacities, and could travel to wherever it’s needed, deploying whatever is needed.
Whether you need a drone circling overhead, scouting underwater for mines, or listening on the surface for pirates or distress calls, the Hydra could have them all ready to launch with the tap of a button.
Ireland: Teachta Dála Clare Daly on Barack Obama: “This Man Is A War Criminal”
July 24th, 2013Via: Russia Today:
More: Clare Daly’s Speech
Britain: Lawrence Family Hacks The Matrix
July 24th, 2013Via: Daily Mail:
A family sold their four-bedroom house for life on a narrowboat – because they could no longer afford the cost of living.
Now, the Lawrences make savings of £8,000 per year on household bills.
After their property went under the hammer for £249,000, they moved on to the 65ft boat, worth £80,000, in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire.
Debra, mother to Jake, seven, and Phoebe, 12, who attend local schools, said: ‘It was a big jump, but we were trapped and bored in our life.
‘I didn’t want the mortgage – it was a huge weight on our shoulders. The boat was our ticket to freedom.’
Mrs Lawrence has even been stripped of her title as housewife and husband Duncan, 41, who was a lorry driver, has taken over the duties while she goes to work in a cafe.
She said: ‘In the past, I was always left at home while Duncan went off to work. Now he gets to spend more time with the kids.’
Extremely Compartmentalized Information?
July 24th, 2013Update: 12 October 2014: “Exceptionally Compartmented Information,” or ECI
Via: The Intercept:
The National Security Agency has had agents in China, Germany, and South Korea working on programs that use “physical subversion” to infiltrate and compromise networks and devices, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.
The documents, leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, also indicate that the agency has used “under cover” operatives to gain access to sensitive data and systems in the global communications industry, and that these secret agents may have even dealt with American firms. The documents describe a range of clandestine field activities that are among the agency’s “core secrets” when it comes to computer network attacks, details of which are apparently shared with only a small number of officials outside the NSA.
“It’s something that many people have been wondering about for a long time,” said Chris Soghoian, principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, after reviewing the documents. “I’ve had conversations with executives at tech companies about this precise thing. How do you know the NSA is not sending people into your data centers?”
Previous disclosures about the NSA’s corporate partnerships have focused largely on U.S. companies providing the agency with vast amounts of customer data, including phone records and email traffic. But documents published today by The Intercept suggest that even as the agency uses secret operatives to penetrate them, companies have also cooperated more broadly to undermine the physical infrastructure of the internet than has been previously confirmed.
In addition to so-called “close access” operations, the NSA’s “core secrets” include the fact that the agency works with U.S. and foreign companies to weaken their encryption systems; the fact that the NSA spends “hundreds of millions of dollars” on technology to defeat commercial encryption; and the fact that the agency works with U.S. and foreign companies to penetrate computer networks, possibly without the knowledge of the host countries. Many of the NSA’s core secrets concern its relationships to domestic and foreign corporations.
Some of the documents in this article appear in a new documentary, CITIZENFOUR, which tells the story of the Snowden disclosures and is directed by Intercept co-founder Laura Poitras. The documents describe a panoply of programs classified with the rare designation of “Exceptionally Compartmented Information,” or ECI, which are only disclosed to a “very select” number of government officials.
—
Update: Extremely Compartmented Information?
I’ve received emails from three people who claimed to have had TS/SCI backgrounds who all explained this situation the same way. I won’t post their emails, but it was all right out of the Wikipedia pages for Classified information in the United States, Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Programs. Feel free to go through all of that if you want, but the point is: This is all well known information.
None of these people had ever heard of Extremely Compartmentalized Information. One of these people suggested that Extremely Compartmentalized Information might refer to some variety of Special Access Program.
Now, IB came across a reference to extremely compartmented information on this page from Sans Institute:
Of course, the ability to collect from more and more log sources, does come at a cost; the Snare infrastructure needs to be robust enough to deal with the rapid increase in log volume, and we also need to continually come up with effective ways to present the information to people who have to manage the security of the source data. As Snare finds it’s way into systems that protect extremely compartmented information, our customers have also asked us for a few extra features in our agent and server infrastructure, such as strong encryption, and verifiable delivery.
Close, but no cigar. Extremely compartmented information isn’t extremely compartmentalized information, which is what we’re after.
I found “extremely compartmented” in the right context used in the Nomination of Robert M. Gates: Hearings Before the Select Committee on Intelligence of the United States Senate, One Hundred Second Congress, First Session, on Nomination of Robert M. Gates, to be Director of Central Intelligence, Volume 2, page 24.
Again, close, but both of these examples could just be describing special access stuff that only a handful of people have been read into.
—
Update: Not Sensitive Compartmented Information
You guys are funny. Good try, though. The earliest reference I could find to SCI on Cryptogon is from 2003. There might be earlier ones.
You’ll have to go back to the drawing board to get my 10 bucks. 😉
The term we’re after here, again, is ECI, “Extremely Compartmentalized Information,” not SCI, “Sensitive Compartmented Information.”
—
In more than two decades of following information related to U.S. intelligence agencies, covert operations, etc. I have definitely never seen any reference to, “Extremely Compartmentalized Information.”
Bounty: I will pay US$10 to anyone who can provide me with any reference to the term, “Extremely Compartmentalized Information,” used within the context of the United States government information classification system, but not referencing Snowden. Let’s say that it has to be something printed before 2013.
Returning to the CNN piece, read on and you’ll see that the bogeymen are changing their behavior to make NSA’s job harder *wink*:
U.S. officials have said that terror groups are aware of the Snowden leaks and are responding internally, like adjusting communications and security.
Let me get this straight: Because of Snowden, and not Klein-Binney-Tice-etc., “The Terrorists” are no longer using the likes of Yahoo Instant Messenger to plan their strikes against The Great Satan?
You would have to be an imbecile with amnesia to believe this.
Anyway, 10 bucks for that pre-2013, non-Snowden-related reference to “Extremely Compartmentalized Information.” Make me pay.
Via: CNN:
U.S. intelligence now believes Edward Snowden did not gain access to the “crown jewels” of National Security Agency programs that secretly intercept and monitor conversations around the world, CNN has learned.
The Obama administration is reviewing what the admitted leaker of classified information actually got his hands on and what damage he may have caused.
The ongoing damage assessment indicates he did not gain access to what is called ECI or “extremely compartmentalized information,” according to a U.S. official familiar with the review.
…
U.S. officials have said that terror groups are aware of the Snowden leaks and are responding internally, like adjusting communications and security.
NSA Director Keith Alexander said last week the United States has concrete proof terrorists are making changes and taking actions that are going to “make our job harder.”
Hillbilly Tracking of Low Earth Orbit Satellites
July 24th, 2013Via: Travis Goodspeed’s Blog:
In this article, I’ll demonstrate a method for modifying a naval telecommunications dish to track moving targets in the sky, such as those in Low Earth Orbit. My dish happily sits in Tennessee, while I direct it using my laptop or cellphone here in Europe. It can also run unattended, tracking moving targets and looking for downlink channels.
Spain Taps Social Security Reserve Fund to Pay Pensions
July 23rd, 2013Via: Reuters:
Spain tapped its social security reserve fund for the second time in a month on Monday, the Labour Ministry said, to help with extra summer pension payments as unemployment and retirement costs deplete government funds.
The government turned to the fund for 3.5 billion euros ($4.6 billion) on July 1 then for a further 1 billion euros on Monday. Spanish pensioners receive two cheques in summer and two over the Christmas holidays.
Spain was forced to tap the reserve for the first time last year to help pay pension costs, using some 7 billion euros.
Record high unemployment, which hit over 27 percent in the first quarter, and a growing number of retirees on a state pensions have put an unprecedented strain on Spanish social security funds.
The Bell Labs of Quantum Computing
July 23rd, 2013Via: MIT Technology Review:
Raymond Laflamme can’t yet sell you a quantum computer. But he’ll sell you a $13,000 logic board for measuring entangled photons.
It’s a start.
Laflamme is head of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, a research center that’s part of a quixotic, grandiose effort by Mike Lazaridis, cofounder of the smartphone maker BlackBerry, to invent a quantum computer and turn this city 70 miles from Toronto into a “Quantum Valley.”
Since 1999, Lazaridis has put $270 million behind his vision, paying to recruit some of the world’s best theoretical physicists. While he thinks a true quantum computer is still 10 years away, he believes initial discoveries can be commercialized now, turning Waterloo into a thriving industrial cluster built around quantum information science.
Google Responsible for More Internet Traffic Than Facebook, Netflix, and Instagram Combined
July 23rd, 2013Via: Wired:
Everyone knows Google is big. But the truth is that it’s huge. On an average day, Google accounts for about 25 percent of all consumer internet traffic running through North American ISPs.
That’s a far larger slice of than previously thought, and it means that with so many consumer devices connecting to Google each day, it’s bigger than Facebook, Netflix, and Instagram combined. It also explains why Google is building data centers as fast as it possibly can. Three years ago, the company’s services accounted for about 6 percent of the internet’s traffic.
“What’s really interesting is, over just the past year, how pervasive Google has become, not just in Google data centers, but throughout the North American internet,” says Craig Labovitz, founder of Deepfield, the internet monitoring company that crunched the data. His probes show that more than 62 percent of the smartphones, laptops, video streamers, and other devices that tap into the internet from throughout North America connect to Google at least once a day.
Labovitz calls Google’s traffic “astounding.” The lion’s share of it comes from YouTube. But Google traffic involving search, analytics, web apps, and advertising is far from insignificant.
Take these numbers with a grain of salt, though. It’s impossible to get a total picture of the internet, so Deepfield’s numbers are a best guess based on the traffic flowing through its internet service provider partners. Still, there’s no question that Google is big and getting massive.
