'Project Vigilant' Recruits At Defcon To Track You

angry tapir writes "A secretive volunteer group that tries to track terrorists and criminals on the Internet went to the Defcon hacker conference in hopes of recruiting information security experts, but it will first have to overcome some skepticism. That's because most information security professionals have never heard of the group, called Project Vigilant."

Comments

bogus

[bsDaemon]

So, I got curious and clicked the link to the article. Then I clicked the link to the project's website, which beyond a splash screen with an INGSOC-esque logo with a half-assed latin slogan, you find a cheap-ass Drupal site which requires an OpenID account to log into. The list of logged-in users includes such gems as a guy named "poopcracker."

If this is cointelpro, its either extremely terrible, or extremely brilliant for looking so shoddy. Chances are, its just misguided vigilantism by people who read "gray hat python" and now think they can 'hack the Gibson'. I'm not sure which would disturb me more.

Re:bogus

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say "half-assed latin slogan," I hope you mean "pseudo-Latin slogan" - because that motto is the result of someone who doesn't know Latin trying to come up with something and getting it wrong. I think they were going for "We Watch Together," in which case they certainly shouldn't have used the first person *singular* of vigilo (not to mention misspelling "vigilo"). I think they meant Evigilamus Jugiter, to give the phrase the proper tone of menace (if they meant something less menacing, they should have gone with a variation on vigilamus pro te, which is the motto of the Canadian land forces and a translation of the chorus of O Canada).

Re:bogus

[maxwell demon]

Romanes eunt domus!

Follow the cash and access

[AHuxley]

Two links with some more reading on Project Vigilant.
"that it monitors the traffic of 12 regional Internet service providers, hands much of that information to federal agencies, and encouraged one of its "volunteers," researcher Adrian Lamo, to inform the federal government about the alleged source of a controversial video of civilian deaths in Iraq leaked to whistle-blower site Wikileaks in April."..
but said that because the companies included a provision allowing them to share users' Internet activities with third parties in their end user license agreements (EULAs), Vigilant was able to legally gather data from those Internet carriers and use it to craft reports for federal agencies.
from:
Stealthy Government Contractor Monitors U.S. Internet Providers, Worked With Wikileaks Informant
http://blogs.forbes.com/firewall/2010/08/01/stealthy-government-contractor-monitors-u-s-internet-providers-says-it-employed-wikileaks-informant
"Elite US cyber team courts hackers to fight terror"
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hKoXQdL-L1HFYObz0_UUHMactSWg

Top tip, stop chatting to strangers, try a sneaker net gap and again stop chatting :)