War on Anonymous: British Spies Attacked Hackers, Snowden Docs Show
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
I get spying. I get compromising and penetrating the networks of rival countries. I even get economic espionage, in the same way that I understand why the US Marines overthrew sovereign governments in service of United Fruit.
But DDOSing Anonymous? Were they loading up LOIC and firing their lazors at freenode? That just seems fucking pathetic. It looks like a bunch of children got written a big cheque and were told to go play.
We're constantly inculcated with notions of spy agencies as supremely powerful, supremely competent cloak-and-dagger organizations that work in the shadows to guide world events. But this just makes them look like bratty kids with a rich uncle. It's pathetic.
Anonymous are political agitators, of course they think that.
We're constantly inculcated with notions of spy agencies as supremely powerful, supremely competent cloak-and-dagger organizations that work in the shadows to guide world events. But this just makes them look like bratty kids with a rich uncle.
Self-important assholes that feel justified in being the biggest hardass possible towards anybody that rocks the boat? Sadly this is nothing new.
Much of the (UK) law enforcement response to potential civil unrest is to try to prevent escalation, this would seem to be in line with that.
Also the tactics and techniques used are frankly not something any of the other bits of UK govt outside the MOD would understand or be able to deploy.
I would love to see how the DDoS was argued as being "legal". Whose bandwidth was used? Where was the target server hosted? Is it legal for an intelligence agency to launch a denial of service attack against civilian infrastructure in another sovereign state to disable dissident political speech? And if it is legal for GCHQ to do it, then why is it not legal for MSS to do the same thing? If GCHQ can DDoS Anonymous, then MSS can DDoS Falun Gong. If GCHQ can hack Anonymous' laptops, then the PLA can hack Tibeten government in exile's laptops.
Allowing GCHQ to be used like this undermines the ability of the UK to be a force for good in the world. Losing the moral high ground for something as pathetic and petty as this? It is embarrassing to see Western Democracies behaving like script kiddies.
Using special branch to infiltrate political groups is commonplace. So much so that there are recent scandals from officers living false lives having children with the people they are surveiling, and trials collapsing.
GCHQ have to obey the laws of England. They are usually mentioned in law to give specific exemptions.
I have no idea how they handle the laws of other nations. I'm guessing that they obey those laws where they align with English law.
It's not the first time they've done "script kiddie" antics. Hacking terrorist information websites to replace bomb making instructions with the recipe for cupcakes is another example.
Who is deemed capable of deciding which political groups to infiltrate? It seems to me that there's a narrow line between manipulating politics the way you want them to go and observing threats.
In theory all of them get scrutiny.
The UK has had considerable trouble with things like employers compiling blacklists of political activists and union activists in order to deny them employment.
Some of the police infiltration scandals have been bad - police either get converted and refuse to provide evidence (while still being paid to gather evidence) or they encourage law breaking amongst legal groups.
I can understand monitoring all political groups (although I don't agree with it) but the UK does this poorly.
When the intelligence services do it, then it is not illegal. Nixon set the precedent here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejvyDn1TPr8
My bet is they didn't really consider Anonymous a threat, but just experimented to see how much effort it is to clobber them if need should arise at some point in the future.
The delineation between military intel and law enforcement is very much an Anglo thing.
[1] http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=...
That's really why they want to keep this power, and they don't have a good reason for keeping it, or at least not one they can say in public. That's why Clapper keeps saying "ok, we haven't foiled any terrorist attack - but trust us it's really important to keep it!". They know they can't just come out and say "hey, we need this to spy on allied politicians, judges, corporations, and other people you might think are innocent, but are really pissing us off, like many of the activists do".
- A government agency or government contractor notes a new threat to the status quo
- Question: Can we use technology to track, prevent, hinder or prosecute?
- If answer is 'yes' then invest large sums of public money to effect the plan
- If answer is 'maybe' then invest large sums of public money * 10 to evaluate and effect the plan
- If answer is 'no' then invest large sums of public money * 100 to evaluate and attempt and evaluate multiple possible solutions.
Therefore I believe that the underlying cause is money. Agencies and more often than not, third party companies who are trying to make a profit from government agencies are out there coming up with new ways to oppress the public. As a result the public fights back against the oppression. They can then be targetted as dissidents and the cycle ups a beat and continues round the merry-go-round. The sums of money getting higher and higher each time.
Invent the problem, sell the solution, profit, repeat.
It somewhat reminds me of the old idea that as a department (either of a private company or government) you should never ask for a new yearly budget lower than the year before. You always ask for more.
Anonymous is a threat not because of their actions but because they challenge the established powers.
I'd hope the training was more subtle than DDOS that group.
Don't forget that this is an event that became public and that we don't know what work GCHQ were doing behi d the scenes. The IRA and STEAKKNIFE operations show that British Intelligence isn't as hopeless as a lot of current stories make them seem.
Assume "their" (NSA, GCHQ) managers are as competent as yourself. So what would you do if you had all this info, all this infrastructure access and your prime objective is your mission, which you believe to be to observe and stop anything that brings danger or instability to the state.
That's what we are dealing with. A blunder here or there does not even make a dent in the position of power that these intelligence agencies now hold.
^^ thats the crux of it. However: s/state/status quo/ and you have a more accurate assessment.
In terms of a threat to the United Kingdom, or in terms of a threat to GCHQ's budget?
Groups like Anonymous are a gift to intelligence services. They're mildly subversive and therefore "other people" to most people, and most people don't understand what they do or how they do it; they're shadowy and mildly scary.
Anonymous is a force multiplier for budget and mission creep.
"My name is Legion, for we are many." - A demon, in Mark 5:9
It's clear he (the demon) borrowed the word from the romans. And anonymous is using it the same way. "There are many of us" is not an existential threat. "We are demons" is silly and would make me think they're imaginary.
Your entire point is one of semantics, so don't be so dismissive. You made a claim based off what Anonymous says, picking apart the semantic meaing of "Legion". I'm well within my rights to call bullshit on "existential threat" as nothing more than a rhetorical flourish.
Yes, in the sense that hacker groups can harm a country more than other country with non digital weapons.
We are living exciting times moving to a new balance of forces.
I remember when this idea was still pretty much seen as a "conspiracy theory" around the time when Wikileaks was getting DDOS'ed.
http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-...
This part especially stuck out to me:
> Pike was less interested in sensational scandals like Church’s poison darts and foreign assassination plots than he was in getting to the guts of the intelligence apparatus, its power, its funding, its purpose. He asked questions never asked or answered since the start of the Cold War: What was America’s intelligence budget? What was the purpose of the CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies and programs? Were they succeeding by their own standards? Were taxpayers getting their money’s worth? Were they making America safer?
> Those were exactly the questions that the intel apparatus did not want asked. The Church Committee focused on excesses and abuses, implying that with the proper reforms and oversights, the intelligence structures could be set right. But as the Pike Committee started pulling up the floorboards, what they discovered quickly led Rep. Pike and others to declare that the entire intelligence apparatus was a dangerous boondoggle. Not only were taxpayers getting fleeced, but agencies like the NSA and CIA were a direct threat to America’s security and democracy, the proverbial monkey playing with a live grenade. The problem was that Pike asked the right questions—and that led him to some very wrong answers, as far as the powers that be were concerned.
From what I've noticed, nobody is asking these questions today, and yet NSA and CIA keep getting bigger and bigger funding, with NSA having nothing to show for it and yet with expanding capabilites, and CIA wanting more funds mainly to operate more drone strikes in secret (i.e. covert wars). This is a path that's actually dangerous for national security, either because they are collecting data on people that can later be hacked and gotten by rival nations, or because they're starting wars with other nations who knows for what selfish reasons, without the people knowing anything about it. We should have a big debate about it, yet no one seems to be starting it.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The NSA, CIA, GCHQ - these are the most corrupting influences on western society, and they are responsible for a great deal of terror, instability, and insecurity in the countries they operate.
The day we depose these people and put them in the asylum where they belong, will be a bright one indeed.
[...] proverbial monkey playing with a live grenade.
(Also, am I missing something, or did they completely miss an opportunity to collect intel by taking them offline and making them move to more private channels?)
The legality of this is interesting. I suppose it takes a peculiar legal structure to operate a botnet lawfully.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/snowden_anon...
"For the third time in less than a year the sentencing of Hector Monsegur (aka Sabu) has been delayed without explanation."
Subu as a founder of Lolzsec, organized "elite hackers" to attack a number of targets, until (and after) he was arrested and immediately turned informant.
Working for the FBI, Subu continued to recruit new hackers for new operations while feeding all information to his government bosses.
Read these chat logs. How is that not entrapment?
No more lobbying (= legalized corruption).
But how are you going to do that when rich people are already in power and are using their financial dominance to protect their monopoly of power?
A simple approach would be to let each person subdivide their tax "share" (which is equal among all voters) by 1% increments. In addition, private individuals could establish "tax baskets" that could be used to fund a number of smaller entities with a single appropriation, so that your 1% could be apportioned among hundreds of entities without you having to type them all in.
This approach completely eliminates money from politics: politicians no longer have the power to tax specific individuals (or grant special exemptions), and they also no longer have the power to give money to people within (or outside) government.
It does not eliminate the ability of government to meddle with regulations, but the populace can trivially respond by docking their budget immediately in retaliation. It's amazing how much better behaved government institutions are when they are directly answerable to the people.
This approach is completely reasonable in the information age and with monetary systems, like the US, where fiat money is used. We already calculate GDP numbers, and the number for taxation would simply be fixed as an amendment to the constitution (while simultaneously invalidating all other tax powers from the government).
For extra fun, double the amount of tax dollars created and give everyone in the country a basic income out of it. I suggest that half of all taxes go towards a basic income (social money for individuals), and that the other half go to the community in the form of government, law enforcement, schools, police, etc. and whatever other social programs individuals want to apportion their social tax dollars to (social money for the community).
In other words, it can be summed up as 1 way to make democracy more direct. (The problem is, Washington with its ever-increasing level of corruption, is never going to want a more direct democracy.)
Has anyone done a kickstarter to buy cocaine in bulk?
The government says if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear. We'll wtf governments?! Why you so scared? If I were to apply the same logic, I could get the impression you're hiding something.
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But looking at how things have been in America for the last 10+ years (since the justification of WTC) I don't see much hope unless the citizenry rises to the occasion and fixes these rascals to their place. I sincerely hope they do, but I am given up on this already.