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Datamining the NSA
elmartinos writes "With official permission from the data protection committee in the Austrian Office of the Federal Chancellor, quintessence (an association for the re-establishment of information civil rights) has data mined an extensive mailing list related to the Biometric Consortium, which is part of the NSA. Heise (Google translation) writes that a quintessenz activist was able to get access to the mailing list through social engineering, and used a PHP script to extract 1GB worth of data. Quintessenz is using the open source tool Weka for data mining, and Kea for text mining. The first chapter of the gathered information is available online."
...people will stop downplaying social engineering?
And why does it matter what language the script used was in, unless there was some bug in a script on the webserver related to the script parser...
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
But, your honor, I'm not a Con Artist, I'm a professional Social Engineer!
Don't give anybody any ideas.
The Austrian government gave someone permission to hack the NSA? That's got "serious diplomatic incident" written all over it.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
1) The Biometric Consortium is not "part of the NSA"
2) Somebody lied a bit to get onto a relatively open mailing list
3) This whole thing is on par with kids grabbing some telephone switch manuals out of a dumpster and bringing them to a 2600 meeting to show off to other losers.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
One man's activist is another man's terrorist.
The German article says that the NSA wants open or free patents for 'biometric' data.
Sounds like a good idea to me.
Looks like they are working on the right things.
And who of you running 2.6 kernel has turned off the SELinux hooks?
Paranoia is a dangerous thing.
Not everyone in government works on the same thing or agrees about the same thing. If you believe that all who work in secret agencies are facists, then I suggest that you reasses and understand that they may actually be anti-facist.
Social engineering? Signing up for the listserv is a matter of going to this website., then filling out such hard hitting forms as "Name" and "Interest in Biometrics", and waiting for an e-mail confirmation stating you've been approved. Since the website says that its a free listserv for anyone interested in Biometrics, I don't think approval would be all that hard to get. After they signed up, they then summarized the most interesting things from each year that were posted to the listserv, and posted the results on the web. Wow! From the summary and translated article make it seem like they pulled a government approved hack of the NSA using cunning wit and unmatched skill or something.
It doesn't matter what your little groups of enlightened friends thinks. It's what Joe and Jane Q. Public think, and what they are led to believe by your government.
Unfortunately, I have encountered a lot of people who are for biometrics. Some can change their minds once they learn the truth about the insecurity of biometrics. This does not mean everyone can learn/understand why biometrics is not necessarily a good thing.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
The story isn't that they got onto the mailing list.
/. and it's an entirely different thing to analyse thousands of postings to prove that and how they influence whom and when.
The story is that they have sifted through huge amounts of data to extract the interesting parts, and essentially made an analysis of the history of biometric standards, and the respective attempts of NSA people to push it this way or that.
It's one thing to post "I think the NSA is influencing biometric companies" to
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Most Austrians hate Arnie since he called Austria a "socialist state". Also, his stance on the death penalty isn't very popular over here ...
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
Why do you think MS is trying to force the software patents issue thru the EU?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
if the US actually invaded a european country
Like, ummm, Yugoslavia?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
go to the page that links to that image...t ions/Echelon/
http://www.greaterthings.com/Word-Number/Organiza
and you'll see that the author uses the words ecdysis and echidna to tell us why Echelon is so bad. Apparently they come either side of Echelon in his '71 Websters, so they must be related...
My point is that no matter how true your position is, we are more likely to accept it if you use exampels and proofs from someone on our side of reality. In fact, the less credible the source, the less likely we are to accept it at face value.