Snowden Used Social Engineering To Get Classified Documents 276
cold fjord sends this news from Reuters:
"Edward Snowden used login credentials and passwords provided unwittingly by colleagues ... to access some of the classified material he leaked. ... A handful of agency employees who gave their login details to Snowden were identified, questioned and removed from their assignments. ... Snowden may have persuaded between 20 and 25 fellow workers at the NSA regional operations center in Hawaii to give him their logins and passwords by telling them they were needed for him to do his job as a computer systems administrator. ... People familiar with efforts to assess the damage to U.S. intelligence caused by Snowden's leaks have said assessments are proceeding slowly because Snowden succeeded in obscuring some electronic traces of how he accessed NSA records. ... The revelation that Snowden got access to some of the material he leaked by using colleagues' passwords surfaced as the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee approved a bill intended in part to tighten security over U.S. intelligence data. One provision of the bill would earmark a classified sum of money ... to help fund efforts by intelligence agencies to install new software designed to spot and track attempts to access or download secret materials without proper authorization.'"
Snowden is a hero! (Score:3, Insightful)
Lifting a little corner of the veil over the monstrous crimes of imperialism! Only a workers revolution will put an end to imperialist barbarism!
Re:Snowden is a hero! (Score:5, Funny)
I agree comrade! Snowden deserves to be recognized as a Hero of the Soviet Union [wikipedia.org], but since those are no longer available a Hero of Russia [wikipedia.org] will have to do. Perhaps the FSB [wikipedia.org] nee KGB will someday announce his promotion! Glory to the workers of the Cheka for this achievement! We stand in solidarity with those that would smash capitalism and the bourgeois internet! Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat!
Re:Snowden is a hero! (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly, disliking an overreaching government that wants nothing but control over it's slaves makes you a socialist now. Because, you know, socialists are totally against those things. Either that or you've been listening to way too much US government propaganda lately and the irony is lost on you.
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Edward Snowden versus totalitarianism (Score:3, Insightful)
The question regarding whether Edward Snowden is a hero, or not, requires more time for the world to judge.
However one thing is clear - Edward Snowden, and what he has done so far, with his expose of the dirty secrets of the so-called "democratic countries", shows that the guy does believe in the ideal of democracy.
Contrast this to those untold millions of power-craving freaks who have helped NSA/GCHQ (amongst others) putting up massive surveillance systems to spy on their own people in supposedly democrati
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Fjord seems rather fond of denouncing totalitarianism so it's to be expected.
FTFY
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Is it just coincidence that there hasn't been any leaks embarrassing to the Chinese or Russians?
Fire them (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone working in the security field who gives up their password is an idiot, and should be fired.
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Re:Fire them (Score:5, Funny)
Not Terry Childs!
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I totally agree. What kind of an idiot gives their passowrd to an administrator?
Victims of the BOFH [ntk.net]
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An authoritarian - someone who breaks laws, rules and regulations if a perceived authority figure tells them to.
Now, what kind of person is someone hiding NSAs dirty laundry likely to be?
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Never mind giving their password to an admin, you'd be amazed how many systems I've worked with through the years where the password is simply stored in plaintext. "So we can read users' passwords?", I ask. "Yes. So what? It's useful to remind them over the phone if they forget it."
These devs also don't quite seem to understand why I store password hashes instead of plaintext passwords...
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Not me. An administrator doesn't NEED my password to take possession of every file I own. He doesn't need my approval, permission, or anything at all - he can just TAKE possession of everything. That holds true for Linux, Windows, any Unix-like - and I suppose it holds true for any other operating system as well. Admin or root is god, the alpha and the omega, the be-all and end-all. Why should the administrator ever ASK me for a password? It's far more likely that Admin or root will tell ME what my ne
Re:Fire them (Score:5, Informative)
What org was it that wrote the SELinux extentions? Oh right the NSA.
I took an SELinux class a while back, it is not necessarily the case that this is true. Its true in all my environments, but, I have never seen any environment where SELinux was actually used.
The default policy on most distros the "Targeted" policy is pretty light weight. Its the horror movie equivalent of scream. Fully locked down SELinux is more like....faces of death.
It is entirely possible to have a system administrator who does NOT have that kind of access under the NSAs mandatory access control model. That doesn't mean they have it implemented that way, but, it is possible that they could, the tools exist; and they wrote them.
Re:Fire them (Score:4, Informative)
You can fully divide the admin task with selinux like having 1 admin who can disable selinux ( or rather "update the policy" ), and having another doing operational stuff ( like logging as root ). So technically, the first one can disable protection for the 2nd one, but cannot do much by itself. And with protected physical access, you can pretty much have a rather locked down system. Not protected against 2 rogue admins, of course, but being protected against 1 is already better than most systems.
And regarding environment where SELinux is used ( besides targeted ), you can take a look at the openshift service from RH, they do use it a lot to separate users. But you are right that for most people, using more than targeted policy is a bit overkill, since people do not care that much about security ( and when they do care enough to not disable selinux, firewall and everything that make stuff so hard ).
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I have. It was a PITA. Shit would just "not work" and you'd have to dig through audit logs to find why. Most of the time it was some undocumented interaction with some other file or interface. Do not like!!!
Re:Fire them (Score:5, Informative)
I have never seen any environment where SELinux was actually used.
I worked in DOD for more than a decade, we used SE Linux from the time it was available. Before that, we used LAUS. If you don't use it or know people that do, why are you going to make false claims like "Fully locked down SELinux is more like....faces of death."? If you never used it, you obviously should not be making bogus claims. Fully locked down and properly configured SELinux is a nightmare for auditors, not admins.
It is entirely possible to have a system administrator who does NOT have that kind of access under the NSAs mandatory access control model. That doesn't mean they have it implemented that way, but, it is possible that they could, the tools exist; and they wrote them.
No offense, but your second sentence contradicts your first claim. Is it not more likely that where he was working they were not using a properly configured access control system? System being architecture, implementation, and auditing to ensure people don't break things.
Probably because I have lived the life, I can speak first hand to knowing that not all DOD places were the same. I happened to build and design the first classified networked systems off of a military base (yeah yeah, big whoop wanna fight about it?). My primary responsibility was building and designing these systems, writing tools for the auditors, and writing tools to ensure everything worked all the time. At the same time, I spoke often with agents that had other customers that did nothing, or, used good old fashioned someone watching a person at a single terminal and writing things down manually. (no SELinux, no tools, no automation).
By Snowden's own claims he had access to things he should not. That to me indicates that the contractor he was working for had no real security in place. Anything I can bypass by killing syslogd or removing history is not "real", sorry. SELinux is the answer, but it's time consuming to get right and takes a dedicated regular staff of good auditors and admins to maintain. If you cut corners to save money and lack the proper staff, of course people can do things you don't know about. If you are doing illegal things that your staff questions, you just fucked yourself no matter how much staff you have.
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> If you never used it, you obviously should not be making bogus claims. Fully locked down and
> properly configured SELinux is a nightmare for auditors, not admins.
Except when the admins are doing the system integration and expected to make it work, with no expectation of time allocated for integration (afterall the vendor said it worked) for whatever arbitary software package they brought in? As far as I can tell, I wasn't working anywhere special in those regards.
> No offense, but your second sen
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Except when the admins are doing the system integration and expected to make it work, with no expectation of time allocated for integration (afterall the vendor said it worked) for whatever arbitary software package they brought in? As far as I can tell, I wasn't working anywhere special in those regards.
Having built and designed these systems, there is no single arbitrary package you can bring in to do everything. Sure, there are tools that can help configure systems for secure modes. I wrote the Solaris and Linux tools we used, those were unified. There was no commercial package at the time I wrote ours, and as quickly as Linux changes I have no confidence there is such a commercial package today.
Auditing as mentioned is the important part and it's a separate set of software. There are commercial pack
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What org was it that wrote the SELinux extentions? Oh right the NSA.
And that should give complete pause to someone considering using those extensions. For someone that doesn't write kernel extensions, they'll never believe the source doesn't have backdoors/known exploits.
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I know right. It's not like a System admin can change or reset a password to gain access to the same document.
If he can change a colleagues password without the colleague knowing and without it being flagged in some audit log that arises suspicion, then the NSA has no password security at all.
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I suspect the admins can't actually change passwords and can only apply a reset. I assume when they perform a reset they don't have access to the new password either.
Anytime I've had a password reset, the sysadmin tells me what it's reset to. Even on very highly "secure" networks.
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Re:Fire them (Score:4, Informative)
We have not heard Snowden's version of events.
We haven't really heard anyone's version of any alleged events; RTFA — the sources for this piece are literally referred to as "sources."
If this is a propagandist's attempt at a smear-piece, it's bad one. If the claims in this article are true, it's a greater indictment against NSA's security policies than it is against anything Snowden has done. What I see is NSA's propaganda/media relations contractor grasping at straws here.
Re:Fire them (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. There is literally no other way of stopping this kind of secret government behaviour than kicking up a massive shitstorm before it gets too out of hand. Boohoo, the guy did something illegal while outing you for all your illegal and immoral bullshit. Everyone else in the world would give him a medal, but the government (apparently) think that pointing out that he stole some passwords will make us hate him?
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I see more someone saying "OMG NSA is so stupid" rather than someone trying to tarnish Snowden reputation.
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Re:Fire them (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it invariably is? Same with the blatant concern trolling over Manning, where authoritarian hacks spend all day bitching about the rules broken by Manning, but never make a peep over the lawbreaking revealed by Manning. So they had a great deal of Concern over the UCMJ, etc, but would never mention the contractors that traded child sex slaves to warlords to be raped, or infants shot in the head during home invasions in Iraq.
If you're not an authoritarian hack AND you have a functioning sense of proportion, you'd never get to Snowden because you'd be too busy talking about the mountains from the NSA (warrantless wiretapping, fusion centers, perjury before Congress, etc etc) to ever get to the whisteblower.
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The telco firms, OS developers, hardware designers, software coders, crypto experts, gov standards, trusted academics, computing press, internal legal teams, political oversight groups have all been exposed as tame, incompetent, junk, a joke or as willing collaborators.
Very few wanted to understand or talk about what was been done in terms of on going unconstitutional domestic spying.
Thanks to many whistleblowers and now Snowden t
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> ... he stole some passwords ...
and he didn't even do that, he merely copied them. This intellectual property debate is going out of hand!
Re:Fire them (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's a failed character assassination attempt. It backfires, and proves just how stupid 20 odd NSA employees can be. The goal was obviously to try to taint Snowden to show that he "broke the law" to get the data he later released. What it ends up showing is how readily alleged "security officials" are willing to hand anyone the keys to the operation.
I'm sure Snowden is no saint, however his agenda was to either confirm what he suspected and/or let the "cat out of the bag" about flagrant abuse of power by government. Even if his method was wrong, it does not make governments' behavior any less wrong. And the fact that government is trying to use its power and influence to minimize, trivialize, ignore or otherwise deflect attention from the revelations (with NO intention to change their behavior) is far, far worse than Snowden asking someone for their password who should have known better than to give it to him in the first place.
Re:Fire them (Score:4, Interesting)
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Do not give anyone your password, for any reason.
If you feel your job is in jeopardy because of the person asking, comply with the request but immediately contact myself or HR
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How did doing that turn out for Terry Childs again?
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This is the content of every single (mandatory) security training I've been required to take, over the years. It just seems unbelievable to me, that various government agencies spend so much money in this training, and developing strong security practices, that the NSA, of all agencies, would not be following these procedures.
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Highly unlikely that Snowden solicited the accounts. If there's anything that's "theoretically against policy but happens every day", it's a task/project getting late, and some higher-up manager telling subordinates "Just give Department X whatever they need to get this done quickly".
Much more likely than Snowden soliciting the passwords (which would obviously tend to look pretty suspicious well before 20 people), is people systematically pushed passwords on him over time with the mandate "Now get it done now" on various tasks..
20+ years in the industry, and a smell-test of the official story, tells me this is what happened, and this is just more scapegoating of Snowden and CYA on the part of the NSA.
I can believe it - someone hands a computer over to him or reports an application problem, Snowden says "Weird, I can't reproduce it under my user, give me your password so I can try it with yours, you can reset your password after I'm done".
Despite warnings not to hand over passwords to *anyone*, our helpdesk still gets laptops for repair with a yellow sticky that says "Here's my password: FooBar123".
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"Weird, I can't reproduce it under my user, give me your password so I can try it with yours, you can reset your password after I'm done".
That's not what should happen. Pretty much every secure environment I've worked in, the procedure is: "Sorry about your user-profile bro, we're wiping the machine, and you need to start over. You *did* have backups of all the stuff in your profile. Right?"
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Some one senior at both the NSA and Booz Allen needs to be fired over this if you did this at any uk bank you woudl get canned on the spot certainly the CEO and Chairman of the contractor needs to fall on their sword.
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Anyone working in the security field who gives up their password is an idiot, and should be fired.
There should have been extremely clear training on that. This is the fault of the people who were managing the staff. If it were one, maybe even two people, sure. But when 25 people don't know that you're not supposed to give your creds to anyone, including an admin, that's bad management.
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Sucks to Have Worked with Snowden... (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny that the people he duped to obtain some of the information are being relieved of their jobs (though not their lives, presumably), but the people participating in the overreach won't suffer any consequences.
Re:Sucks to Have Worked with Snowden... (Score:4, Interesting)
The real question is how many other times these same NSA morons were duped by our country's actual enemies. Only a fool would believe Snowden was the first to come across all of this information.
Re:Sucks to Have Worked with Snowden... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not funny, but arguably well deserved.
If your job is to work with sensitive data which has extremely limited access, providing someone with your password is an epic lapse in judgement, or a downright lack of understanding of basic security protocol.
If the NSA doesn't have a training course which loudly tells you to never give your passwords to anyone, they're idiots. If you didn't listen to that training and do give your password, then you have no business safeguarding sensitive data.
Two different things, really. In their minds, the surveillance was legal and authorized (which, from their perspective is probably technically true). But completely failing to adhere to security policy means that you can't really be trusted.
I should think if you fall for social engineering at the NSA, you've completed a huge faux pas and demonstrated you might be the weakest link.
Hell, most companies routinely do phishing tests and the like, and failing that will get you onto the remedial information security policy -- and repeated lapses might lose you your job. I get fake phishing emails from our security department all the time -- and everyone I report right back to them and get told "congratulations, you did what we hoped you would".
I work in the private sector, and I take security very seriously. I'm often the one making the most noise about security, to the point that I preface many things with "look, I know I say this a lot, but ...". How someone in the NSA could be so stupid as to do this boggles the mind.
More reason to oppose their data collection (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only does the NSA have your data, probably any other organization interested in it is able to obtain it from them.
Classified sum of money . . . (Score:2)
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It's more like we had $30,000,000 for a number of classified projects, of which we broke it down into X1 through Xn.
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it's called black ops. . (Score:2)
there are undisclosed sums in bills out of Congress all the time when it comes to security. the way it works is, there is a backroom deal between the chairman and the agency, and Treasury is told there is authorization for $???,???,???.?? for account XYZ.
committee chairmen are in on a ton of secrets, and go along with a bunch more on the order of "I need this sum (flashes paper quickly and back in the pocket) on authorization of the President for national security purposes." the rest of the committee trust
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$500 hammers.
They will never learn (Score:3)
There are no secrets.. They eventually get out.
What I am curious about, is with all this data they are sifting how come there is nobody from Washington in Jail? You know they are
mostly self serving scumbags.
What bothers me more about all this data, and is never mentioned, is that it is possible now for people who have access to all this
big data, to profit from it on the stock market very easily.
This just in... (Score:2)
....the guy who installs your logging software has a good chance of subverting it.
This is a training problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news, there are a lot of stupid employees at the NSA regional operations center in Hawaii.
If the NSA had trained its employees competently, they wouldn't be so naive as to give their login passwords to anyone, even an admin.
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In other news, there are a lot of stupid employees at every office for every company everywhere.
Everybody can be fooled, and in a "secure" environment where everybody has gone through a vetting process already, it's actually easier. Imagine you work on the latest top-secret missile project. While out grocery shopping one day, someone comes up and starts asking you detailed questions about work. Of course, that will raise a few flags. Now suppose you're sitting at your desk at work, and a coworker from down
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No, it is a consequences problems. Snowden has been charged with espionage, which can put a capital punishment situation on the table. If these guys aided and abetted, they should be charged as an accessory, not moved to a new assignment. If the NSA were interested in security, and not just optics, this is what they would do.
All too often officials are just interested i
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SERIOUSLY: If the NSA wants to relocate me to Hawaii and pay me 6-figures, I am totally down with that, and I *promise* not to share my creds with anyone!
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Everything you say is true. However in this case, Snowden *asked* for the password and the employees *gave* it to him. That's just stupidity on the users' part.
Not shocked (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who has been a sysadmin for years, I can say, unequivocally, I never ask people for their passwords. If I need access to your account, I can have it. If I really need to do an end to end test, I can probably do it by swapping out your password hash and then restoring it so I never need your password. If that can't be done, i will change it and then reset it so you have to change it again.
Yet... despite this... from time to time people just.... send me their passwords.
"Account X on machine Y with password Z can't login, can you check it?"
So no shock at all here.
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What? You mean you haven't gotten to a desktop computer with the password written on a post-it affixed to the monitor? I think you're among the lucky ones!
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This is the NSA we're talking about - the elite security professionals. They know better than to stick a post-it with their password onto their monitor.
They stick the post-it under their keyboard.
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sure I have, but not since I was doing desktop support.
Actually my favorite wasn't those. It was the post-it notes where someone had my direct phone line on it. They were not supposed to be calling me directly but the tech I replaced had been pretty loose with it.... a few times I waited till the user wasn't looking and then shoved the post-it with my number on it in my pocket :)
Of course, back then, the user password was a 5 character upper case alphanumeric string, generated by an internal system, which c
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The problem is that puerile see it as an IT thing. They don't see any aspect of IT security as part of their job so they just don't care. They just figure if they give you all the information then it's your problem to deal with and they can forget about it.
Until companies start enforcing and having meaningful penalties enforced upon them for such misdemeanors I don't see this changing.
Give a verbal warning, followed by a written warning followed by the sack. I'd wager 99% of employees never reach the sack a
Yeah! (Score:2)
This whole pandora box gets never cleaned out. Needs the method how the gordian knot was solved...
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Needs the method how the gordian knot was solved
Let the Greeks do it for us?
Actually, that's not what happened. (Score:2)
If you'd like to know what really happened, post your slashdot username and password in a reply, and I'll let you in on the secret...
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My Slashdot username is Sarten-X.
My password is Glernhab75.
That's not actually the password for my Slashdot account, but your instructions weren't clear enough on that matter.
Perchance to dream (Score:2)
Who would have suspected? (Score:5, Funny)
Why shouldn't they trust him? He was polygraphed.
FTA:
"In the classified world, there is a sharp distinction between insiders and outsiders. If you've been cleared and especially if you've been polygraphed, you're an insider and you are presumed to be trustworthy," said Steven Aftergood, a secrecy expert with the Federation of American Scientists.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/net-us-usa-security-snowden-idUSBRE9A703020131108 [reuters.com]
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Which is stupid, because polygraphs are pretty much theater and have very little scientific support. Even in someone untrained in beating them, they are far from perfect. If you know a few countermeasures they are worse than useless. Anyone who bases their measure of trustworthiness on the polygraph has not a single clue what trustworthiness is, and frankly deserve to get burned time and time again for it until they get a clue.
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"cleared" == background, criminal, and credit-history check.
So, if you don't have any credit problems, if you don't have a criminal history, AND if they interview your friends and family, and they don't say you're a lying cheating scumbag, then you're golden.
Complete lack of controls? (Score:2)
If people working with Top Secret/Classified information are so easily manipulated, you more or less have to conclude they had very few policies and controls in place.
This super-duper secret surveillance plan clearly wasn't relying on anything other than good manners to secu
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That's not a bug. It's a feature. It allows the agency to ignore its already-flimsy privacy protections, at any time, for any reason.
Snowden releases X info that was in Patriot Act (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm getting really sick of this shit over and over....
We've finally concluded that Snowden is no hero, by some a traitor, for others a dupe...and we're over it...
The media fucked up reporting this **from day 1**
We knew this in **2006** NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls [usatoday.com]
yet there was no public outcry...
then the big one...PATRIOT ACT
full text of the Patriot Act has been reported on and available to anyone with an internet connection or library card since 2001...
I'm sick of Snowden's puppet mas
good info on Greenwald (Score:2)
thanks for that...I was in a politics tweeting phase and I tried to get a conversation started about Greenwald's background, b/c I used to work in news (at a low level staffer, but I was at a network and later was web editor for a newspaper)
The way Greenwald operated bothered me...it seemed he didn't care at all about **protecting his source**
That's journalism 101...the USA has well understood laws that can, **if the journalist is willing to go to jail for 2-6 months** protect a source of a news story...see
If the story is true (Score:2, Insightful)
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Do the ends justify the means?
When the means is social engineering? Yes. Edward Snowden isn't even a hot chick, how many NSA employee's have handed out their credentials to even less 'trustworthy' people?
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We are no where near the point where this does any real harm. At worst its revealed some services and tools are not so safe to some minor criminal enterprises who probably already could have guessed.
Beyond that NOTHING Snowden has revealed has done anything but confirm things people had been hearing murmured rumors about and speculating on for some time. I know people who worked at the telco and were well aware of various people around who were feds, they could guess what they were up to based on which bu
Re:If the story is true (Score:5, Insightful)
That point was about 6 months ago. On Slashdot, where there's a pretty vocal community who thinks Bluray ISOs of the latest Hollywood releases "want to be free,"
Not really. I just won't buy BluRay releases until the MPAA get their fingers out of my hardware and remove DRM. The pirates have the better product that I can use in ways that I want to use them rather than their "our way or the highway" approach that isn't even backed by law in a lot of ways, just draconian corporate policy. So as far as I'm concerned, studios that sign up with them are complicit idiots that deserve to burn right along with them.
So yeah, as far as I'm concerned I would love to sit and watch that whole industry burn. Through illegal means if necessary. I lost any sympathy I had for them about a decade ago.
any secret data reveal is presumed to be some kind of a public service.
Any secret data that involves the government targeting Americans as if they were criminals with no due process IS ABSO-F**KING-LUTELY a public service. His personal motives don't matter to me much. He's done a good thing by helping to throw a monkey wrench (or at least a small screwdriver) in the gears driving the New World Order.
Any blow against tyranny is a good one regardless of the initial motives. If they were worried about their "national secrets" maybe they should gather these secrets legitimately according to the laws of the United States of America without attempting to redefine the English language to justify their illegal, immoral acts against the people.
Snowden long ago exposed himself as just a guy interested in finding as much as he could find about government secrets, then indiscriminately dumping that information on the press.
If this was true, either way, who gives a shit? I don't care about Snowden the man. I don't care about his personality. I don't care if he's a douche. Regardless, it was something that needed to be done.
He's not whistleblower,
Maybe not intentionally, but he certainly is. And any chaos and instability he creates I view as a positive and necessary thing. Our government needs to be reigned in and taught exactly who they hell they work for and who owns them again.
I'm not mad that both the NSA and CIA dropped the ball. I'm glad they are incompetent. I'm glad they did it. Folks that incompetent that are willing to break the law (and rarely face consequences) shouldn't be in control of the biggest spy machine on the planet if they can't keep simple checks and balances and well...... follow the law. There never should have been so much *scope* to infiltrate to begin with.
I find it hilarious that folks want to crucify Snowden for breaking the law but think the NSA just needs to get better at it and adjust some procedures (which will be ignored anyway).
These people are uncaring, brutal tyrants that care nothing about your freedom or securing your rights. They are there to subvert them and therefore have no legitimate right to exist. Period.
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***He'll continue to be cheered on by a certain demographic of IT guys who idolize hacker culture because of *scope* of his infiltration, and not the benefit he's provided the country.***
As a former IT guy/hacker/geek I cheer the results of what Snowden has provided and will provide (the scope is incidental). It makes the world a better place. It does not matter to me how he acquired the information that is being revealed. I draw the line at torture, but it is apparent, so far, that he did not water-board a
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If you think this little of slashdot what the fuck are you doing here? Trolling?
Snowden is a hero you are not qualified to lick the boots of, even after you have finished licking the boots of the NSA.
Can you say slush fund (Score:3)
One provision of the bill would earmark a classified sum of money
Nothing like unaccountable monies in unknown quantity; that'll show'em. The NSA will never make such mistakes again after getting such harsh treatment.
New Software? (Score:2)
Regardless of whether Snowden was right or wrong (Score:3)
I can safely predict one thing:
If you're a systems type working at any US national security TLA*, your job is going to get a whole lot harder. Maybe your whole life, since you're going to be under massively more suspicion and scrutinly ALL THE TIME. And the tools you need to do your job (not just software tools, but interactions and communications with those you're supporting) will be harder to use, and much more restricted, and viewed with more suspicion.
NSA may just wind up cutting itself off at its technical knees in a rampage of self-inspection and the internal purges I suspect are underway right now.
*TLA: Three-Letter Agency. By odd coincidence, most organs of the U.S. intelligence apparatus seem to name themselves by three-word names, and therefore are colloquially named by three-letter initialisms.
so..... (Score:2)
And the rest of them.... (Score:3)
He just read off of the post it note in their cubicle...
This Thing Reeks (Score:5, Interesting)
Excerpts from Reuters "article:"
This garbage has the same quality sourcing as the hit-piece published by The New York Times and The New Yorker that spread unsubstantiated rumors claiming that Snowden had given classified documents (i.e., unpublished material) to Chinese and Russian officials.
What else do you expect from cold fjord? (Score:2)
He also slipped this into his summary:
Just his standard issue repetition of corrupt authoritarian talking points.
Re: (Score:3)
From been pro USA, bringing up 911, lawful acts, a count of the number of issues 'detected', the media makes it all so hard, the US gov needs the telco/OS/crypto/academic community...
Re: (Score:2)
You didn't expect the national media cozily sleeping with the Feds to not be shills, did you?
Duped? (Score:2)
Who says he duped anyone? I do some sysadmin work and I've probably had just as many people over the past year send in support tickets like:
"HEPL!! My computers broke and I can't make it work! The red thingy is blinking! Numbers are due out tomorrow!!! My logins XXXXX and pass is ???? Employee # 123456 Please call me asap! @ 555-5555"
etc... etc... etc...
Next ticket is "You broke it even worse! Now my accounts locked!!!"
to which I reply "Yes, corporate security will be contacting you shortly about that. In t
Wow ... (Score:2)
Not only is the NSA breaking the law, they also consist of idiots who ought to know better about social engineering and the likes ... Does anybody need more proof that the NSA should be shut down?
Recursive (Score:2)
" One provision of the bill would earmark a classified sum of money ... to help fund efforts by intelligence agencies to install new software designed to spot and track attempts to access or download secret materials without proper authorization.'"
Ok, so they will spy on those who spy on Internet users. But who will spy on them, in turn?
Is this story true? (Score:2)
Is this story true? I have no reason to believe this at all. Admins don't need users passwords. Admins "own" the systems that they work on and can become any user they want to be without passwords.
The NSA lies. If we are to believe anything that comes out of that agency they better have hard evidence verified by the third source if one exists. This is a claim, nothing else.
C'mon people! Who has been telling the truth? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who has been telling the truth since June? Snowden.
I am amazed that so many are taking this sniff-test-doubtful story at face value and debating whether the engineered sysadmins should be fired or shot.
Ain't it funny how these "sources" might layer on a bit of devious sociopathy, to try to make Snowden fit the role of criminal wrecker?
Among the principals (NSA, GHCQ, executive branch, most politicians, Snowden) it is pretty much only Snowden's testimony and participation that hasn't been full to the gills with half-truths, contradictions, lies and attempts at character assassination.
Oh and how devious:
"People familiar with efforts to assess the damage to U.S. intelligence caused by Snowden's leaks have said assessments are proceeding slowly because Snowden succeeded in obscuring some electronic traces of how he accessed NSA records."
Read: "You ought to believe that Snowden did more than totally embarrass us, but he is so devious that you'll ave to take that on faith!"
"Sources said". Blech
NO CLEMENCY FOR FEINSTEIN
Re: (Score:2)
Beat me to it. There is no government program more money can't fix, right?