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State Department Developing Cyber Toolkit
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. State Department, known for its recent RFID passport embarassment, seems to have developed a key tool in the Department of Homeland Security's cyber toolkit for federal agencies. There's not much out there on it other than mention of a tool called SandStorm in a recent press release from State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security. According to the site, "SandStorm simultaneously collects, correlates, and analyzes data on multiple computer systems and departs, leaving no trace of its activities. The White House is championing this cyber tool and the Department of Homeland Security has selected it as a cornerstone application for a cyber toolkit being made available to all Federal agencies." Sounds scary to me, but may be a step in the right direction."
a step in what direction? hell?
because this america, not china. our property is supposed to be free from search without a warrant. it has something to do with the constitution...
Looks interesting...I give it 20 minutes before a copy is up on the torrent...*grins*. Then the script-kiddies can all go use it to spy on each other and prove their "1337-ness"...
Althought, truth be told - why exactly is the government telling us this? I mean, for all we know, they could have been developing these sorts of computer surveillance programs for years...in fact, they probably have. So why tell us about it now, in a highly-publicised press release? Or are they just trying to be seen to doing something, and seeming like they're on the cutting edge of technology? So maybe in truth they're actually quite clueless, and this program is nothing more than a hashed-up, worthless keylogger that looks like sample code from "Windows Internals"?
One wonders about their motives for this news release, though...
cya, Victor
In fact, it sounds really cool. In fact, *everything* sounds cool with "cyber" in it. No seriously, try it. Cyber jail. Cyber llama. Cyber tubgirl.
Told you so.
Ben Franklin wrote those words over 200 years ago.
They apply today just as much as they did then.
Somebody needs to remind the current incumbent of the White House about his nation's history.
Do you have any idea what how slim the chances really are to be killed by terrorists in the US? Even after 9/11 it's next to none. You are far more likely to be in a car accident, die of cancer, get a heart attack or being shot by a family member. This terrorist "threat" is no reason to take away our freedoms and slowly install a police state where the citizens are the "threat". Sure we cannot just ignore the threat but I for one prefer a little "unsafer" world over privacy invading security
Remember how the existence of Eschelon was denied until some British guy confirmed that it did in fact, exist? Remember the cheesy "agreement" that the US would not be collecting data on its own citizens, but would have every opportunity to access such data from that collected by any of the four other Eschelon participants? There is absolutely no reason to believe that it WON'T be used on U.S.-owned sites. Even worse, there's absolutely nothing that will stop them, if they so choose.
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With the internet being the defacto standard for terrorist communication
In other news, air just became the defacto standard for terrorist respiration.