Heh Renny - if you lie hard enough, it becomes true!

An interesting article at Wired on General Keith Alexander:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/general-keith-alexander-cyberwar/all/

INSIDE FORT MEADE, Maryland, a top-secret city bustles. Tens of thousands of people move through more than 50 buildings—the city has its own post office, fire department, and police force. But as if designed by Kafka, it sits among a forest of trees, surrounded by electrified fences and heavily armed guards, protected by antitank barriers, monitored by sensitive motion detectors, and watched by rotating cameras. To block any telltale electromagnetic signals from escaping, the inner walls of the buildings are wrapped in protective copper shielding and the one-way windows are embedded with a fine copper mesh.

This is the undisputed domain of General Keith Alexander, a man few even in Washington would likely recognize. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. A four-star Army general, his authority extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army.

Lots more there.

It gets into Stuxnet, cyberwarfare, and some other interesting things.

The article does a pretty good job (for the purposes of this thread) of illustrating some of the scale of what is going on.

And he has the 2nd army at his immediate command - that's some pretty scary stuff there, and that's only on part of the conventional side. Armies are big. Very big.

An interesting article at Wired on General Keith Alexander:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/general-keith-alexander-cyberwar/all/
...

Superb story. However, given the nature of the subject matter, one has to wonder how true any of it might be, or whether there are all kinds of embedded and deliberately misleading points and/or half-truths in it. Separate cases in point being the "Star Wars" and "Neutron Bomb" stories.
Some people (not me, you understand), might say that "War is deception" is the normal rule - whether it be according to SunTzu protecting his empire, or Muhammed his empire, or the British Raj protecting The British Empire, or the Marxist Manifesto, or CAGW alarmists fighting for The Cause of "The Greater Good" or World Government or whatever, or modern-day US military strategists fighting to support the preservation/continuation of supremacy of "The American Way" (as in the article you link to), but I couldn't possibly comment.

There is another, similar, great story that Hacker News pointed to here, the original source being The NYPD Division of Un-American Activities (see the whole thing here).
Interesting that these great stories seem to be coming out in the Internet media and more MSM outlets now...they seem to indicate that quite a bit of journalistic research has gone into them. However, as we can all observe, journalists don't really do much of any research nowadays, but merely just engage in publishing "leaked" and already formatted press releases and regurgitating other Internet posts - what they scatalogically refer to as "t#rd-eating".

The NYPD Division of Un-American Activities

Now there's a name that's more than just a bit chilling. All they need now is a list of properly American Activities,  a "study" that shows the "proper" participation levels, and they should be ready to start rounding up people "decenters" in no time.

The NYPD Division of Un-American Activities

Now there's a name that's more than just a bit chilling. All they need now is a list of properly American Activities,  a "study" that shows the "proper" participation levels, and they should be ready to start rounding up people "decenters" in no time.

It would be funny if

http://nymag.com/news/features/nypd-demographics-unit-2013-9/

I weren't busy cleaning the shit out of my pants.

I saw somewhere that Russia says they didn't want Snowden, but that he was indeed on his way to Cuba when (I think?) they denied him so he got stuck.

This would explain a lot. But it also signifies an end of Fidel's Cuba as we knew it. What sort of leverage could the US use over them, considering the over half a century of economic blockade etc?

I suppose there has been a thawing of relations recently with the US and maybe they didn't want to jeopardise that? But it also shows that Russia wasn't able to convince Cuba to take him, which is quite a reversal of roles between the US and Russia vis-a-vis Cuba.

HA! We were all WRONG!

The NSA actually ARE the good guys!

They ARE spying on the terrorists! Here's the proof!

(Page 1) http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/secret-nsa-documents-show-how-the-us-spies-on-europe-and-the-un-a-918625.html
(Page 2) http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/secret-nsa-documents-show-how-the-us-spies-on-europe-and-the-un-a-918625-2.html

Codename 'Apalachee': How America Spies on Europe and the UN

The European Union building on New York's Third Avenue is an office tower with a glittering facade and an impressive view of the East River. Chris Matthews, the press officer for the EU delegation to the United Nations, opens the ambassadors' room on the 31st floor, gestures toward a long conference table and says: "This is where all ambassadors from our 28 members meet every Tuesday at 9 a.m." It is the place where Europe seeks to forge a common policy on the UN.

...

'Thou Shalt Not Get Caught' (page 2)

With few exceptions, this electronic eavesdropping not only contravenes the diplomatic code, but also international agreements. The Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations of 1946, as well as the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, long ago established that no espionage methods are to be used. What's more, the US and the UN signed an agreement in 1947 that rules out all undercover operations.

But even in UN circles a little bit of spying has always been viewed as a minor offense and, according to statements made by former government employees, the Americans have never paid much attention to the agreements. But this could change with the revelations of US spying on the EU. "The US has violated the 11th commandment of our profession," says a high-ranking US intelligence official: "Thou shalt not get caught."

I told ya that the UN were the real terrorists! And the NSA agrees with me. So nyah~!



There is UNLIMITED comedy in all of this if you simply choose to...


ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE~!

^^ Thanks!

It does seem very odd.

It said Cuba had changed its mind after pressure by the United States, which wants to try Snowden on espionage charges.

Carrot?
"Don't let Snowden through Cuba, and we might stop pummeling you quite as hard as we've been doing for the last half century."

Stick?
"Don't let Snowden through Cuba, or we might pummel you harder than we've been doing for the last half century."

It does seem very odd.

Something doesn't add up... Earlier I wondered whether security agencies were just going through the motions in pursuing Snowden or he indeed had some incredibly important documents with him.

Details that emerged from the UK High Court today suggest (or at least the security agencies suggest) that Miranda had 58,000 encrypted documents on his hard drive, which they suspect contain the names of UK agents. If that was true (and presuming that names of US security agents are also on the list), then it would explain the fervour with which Snowden and everyone who is suspected to be related to him somehow (including Bolivia's El Presidente) is being pursued.

However, Greenwald said that Snowden gave him around 20,000 documents. So where did the rest come from? And how could a contractor like Snowden possibly get access to identities of UK and US agents? If he really did, then it would be a massive cock-up on somebody's part within the NSA, and the CIA, and MI6 etc. On the other hand, this could also be a white lie to justify the "going through the motions" in order to deter future whistleblowers.

Here is the quote:

In his statement, Robbins claimed the encrypted material included personal information of UK intelligence officers, any compromise of which would result in a risk to the lives of them and their families and the risk they would become recruitment targets for terrorists and hostile spy agencies. The hard drive seized from Miranda contained approximately 58,000 highly classified UK intelligence documents, the compromise of which "would do serious damage to UK national security and ultimately risk lives".

Once again, my super-powers of not pissing myself laughing have come in quite handy! (Still working on the pooping powers...)

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/26/edward-snowden-leaks-misguided-cyber-attacks

Edward Snowden's leaks are misguided – they risk exposing us to cyber-attacks

Journalists are not best placed to identify security risks; we have to trust those who oversee the intelligence-gathering

BWAHAHAHAHA~! SERIOUSLY?

Yes - seriously. It's not an Onion article. It's real. This guy actually means that!

I really wonder what colour the sky is in some people's worlds.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds!

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly;
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Cellophane flowers of yellow and green
Towering over your head;
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,
And she’s gone.

Whatever view we take on where as a society we want the balance between our right to privacy against our right to live in security, we all need to have confidence that in the hands of our authorities these powerful tools of interception are not being abused.

HAHAHAHA!

Yeah, if we all just believe hard enough, the magic will become real!

I also want a plaid pegasus pony with a polka-dot saddle so I can ride over the rainbow and go swimming in a leprechaun's pot of gold!

We have to have trust in those we ask to verify the activities of the state on our behalf:

BWAHAHAHA!

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain,
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies.
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers
That grow so incredible high.

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore,
Waiting to take you away.
Climb in the back with your head in the clouds,
And you’re gone.

Professor Sir David Omand is a former director of GCHQ and a former intelligence and security co-ordinator for the prime minister

Ahhhhh!

Stay tuned... more hilarity will ensue! It always does!

^from the Guardian link for Sir David Omand

David Omand is visiting professor in the War Studies Department of King's College London and a former director of GCHQ, permanent secretary of the Home Office and UK security and intelligence co-ordinator. He is author of Securing the State

So not at all biassed in his views ...

Trust us - we are legion !

Great discussion below the article by the way ...

Ahhh... and here is a very insightful comment:

Why not continue to use early versions of PGP?

I forget the version, but there was one PGP version (2.3? 2.13? 2.4? something like that) that had a bug in it that allowed arbitrarily large bit-depths rather than just 40 or 256 or 1024 or 2048. This was 20 years ago, so my memory is a bit fuzzy there.

You think he "actually means that"?!

I think he thinks that most people are stupid enough to swallow his BS if they haven't already bought into it. (I'm scared he's right.)

All news is The Onion these days. That's the ultra meta point of the Onion!

Sigh... Pretty darn close if not bang on.