Slashdot Mirror
US Wants Upper Hand In Battling High-Tech Bad Guys
coondoggie writes "The US Department of Justice this week said it was looking to boost the research and development of technology that could significantly bolster new forensic tools for digital evidence gathering. The DoJ's research and development arm, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) said it was particularly interested in tools targeting forensics for mobile cellular devices; cloud computing environments; VoIP communication and vehicle computer systems."
I want a pony.
Translation. The government wants to invade the privacy of every man, woman, and child. Gotta get those terrorists.
Yeah, let's just keep giving the government more and more power.
There's a fundamental reason why tax cuts are good: starve the beast.
As more and more surveillence becomes adapted online less and less recources are put IRL. The smart criminals can even use this survaillence to their advantage. Some stuff you can do:
Let a friend take your phone somewhere while you bust in or do some other crime.
Plaster all kinds of activities on social sites that would make it impossible to do something illegal, while you are doing those crimes.
Send messages where you arrange a fake meeting.
Most important of all, never mention anything illegal while online, ever, anywhere. No matter what encryption you have its more or less useless if someone has access to your cell/comp/accounts. The sad in all this is that its crappy criminals that gets busted while the smart ones have the time of their life. Im also worried about it being misused for personal gain. If history is anything to go by, countless of innocent lives have already been ruined because someone with access to these informations used them for personal gain.
HTTP/1.1 400
And I want a tropical island, that i can retire to when I am older. Wishing something doesn't not materializes it. And in this specific field, they can only wish for it. There is always some genius (someone with a lot of time) to wreak havoc on whatever they have up their sleeves.
That my 35 pass Gutmann wipe I perform every month is now justified? I'm paranoid *and* they are after me?
I'm from the government and I'm here to help ..
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
It depends on who has control over access to the devices / clouds. Just make sure the evidence can only be collected with a subpoena related to a criminal investigation. No crime, no access.
For me, it'd be great if my device logs were admissible as evidence supporting my innocence. But in politics and law, it seems to depend more on the lawyer's ability to cast doubt on data and bring it down to who can make the more effective delivery of "truthiness". Which is why I avoid both of those fields like the plague.
I have a list of the latest criminal scams and fraudsters delivered to my inbox daily, if i contact any of them many would be more than happy to meet me or facilitate evidence on their own and iam not even a law enforcement person,
so what evidence does the goverment need exactly ?
perhaps the authorities want to read their own frickin Spam folders once in a while, there is more than enough evidence to choose from, if evidence is hard to find they 'aint looking at all
If the "Justice" departments really wanted to battle "bad guys" in high tech crime, they would be targeting the highest crime rate domains with the biggest losses already. That is phishing and spam/virus networks that already take over $BILLIONS in IT personal property, using it to rob its owners and amass it into bot networks to attack others. Those crimes are committed largely by a relatively small group of crime gangs, largely concentrated in Asia (including Russia) which are also connected to large non-virtual crime in smuggling dangerous drugs, stealing property, counterfeiting brands, slavery, weapons trading (including WMD components), kidnapping, blackmail. The phishing/spam/botnet networks are probably the least bad of their crimes, and the greatest exposure to the public where they could be caught, with most of their traffic passing through the US even if the endpoints are all foreign. They're the obvious place for US law enforcement. Existing law allows US law enforcement to spy on them and catch them, while only small technology innovations might be necessary to do so - even without the PATRIOT Acts and other violations of the US Constitution.
What is required is that US law enforcement actually want to catch "bad guys". Then they'd have the means and opportunity to do everything they say they want.
But evidently they lack the motive. Their motive is to gain ever more power to spy on everyone, regardless of evidence or crimes. They've already been spying on telephone and email comms of every American they can fit on a hard drive, for years. What they want now is just bigger budgets for hard drives, for more secret police, and more laws that violate the Constitution and our rights so they can do so with impunity.
These secret police are the "bad guys".
--
make install -not war
Is it just me or is anyone else disturbed by this trend to call people "bad guys". It kind of implies that there is no reason to try to understand their motives or what they are trying to accomplish. They are simply "bad" and must be thwarted. Clearly on the other side are the "good guys". These are defined to be the people attempting to thwart the "bad guys" and nothing more. Obviously the opposite of "bad" is "good" and if they are good, we need to question their motives even less. Heck, they're the "good guys" after all.
Deeply scary in my book.
Teach cops what an IP address is and some foreign languages at police academies.
"White collar" criminals steal peoples' entire life savings; but don't get life in prison; and those eventually convicted usually don't live a life of destitution afterward. Until such time as the prosecution, conviction, and restitution phases for large scale white collar crime is equal to the crime, extra tools are pointless.The new tools may prove beyond a doubt the essentials of the crime. But these research requests should also include legislation which includes suitable punishment.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
The DoJ wants better evidence-gathering tools?! THEY MUST BE STOPPED!
Seriously, why must every attempt to increase security be viewed as the the end of all democracy & privacy?
I'm not advocating for complaceny, but not every proposal is evil...
Ken
Maybe you can start by not glamorizing idiocracy and stop giving attention to those that do.
Aren't we told again and again that our republic is a democratic one? So how is it that we all understand that "the government" is some big brother like entity which imposes on us freely to support its own devious goals? Where is the democracy in there? Anywhere?
Or does everyone now agree that the slippery slope to totalitarianism is now tilted pretty darn high?
Well, the one escape course from impending totalitarianism is to simply start over with Matagovernment.
Then it needs to stop treating IT, CompSci, and It security like the plumber and building manager and PAY FOR IT.
Sorry but it's fact. You want to have a crack IT team that keeps all the bad guys out and the company's data secure? Then you have to pay 6 figures each for Highly skilled and experienced IT staff instead of low 5 figures for the Freshly tested MCSE churnouts from University OF Pheonix. You have to have IT managers that have at LEAST 10 years experience in the IT field and IT security field, not some moron with a BSA degree that knows the CEO's daughter.
The US will forever lag behind the world in IT and IT security if you don't start paying for highly skilled and experienced professionals, and TREAT THEM AS SUCH!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Take for example George W. Bush's recent confession that he authorized torture in his "Decision Points" book. There is no doubt that torture is a violation of US law, US treaties and international law . . . and yet the Justice Department can't seem to get all of these facts together for some reason. It's just too difficult, I suppose.
The problem with this is that now they can quite easily snoop into even more of peoples business.I am all for watching out for the bad guys but not at the expense and loss of privacy of the good guys.
the beast starves you!
Oh... wait...
They want to **** with every little piddly thing on citizens, but when it comes to banks, monetary system, or the oath they ignore it.
Why the **** are We scared of our own government?
mobile cellular devices; cloud computing environments; VoIP communication and vehicle computer systems.
I do Digital Forensics. Fact is, decent tools are hard to come by and the judiciaries around the world aren't keen on letting you make your own, they want standardised methodologies and tools. FOSS ones aren't usually that suitable for real investigations and the commercial solutions are expensive and often inflexible. Biggest problem for mobiles/cellphones and vehicle computer systems is that they are locked down and proprietary, we can't create decent tools for these platforms if they are locked down. Hopefully anything they do make will actually stand up in court and meet minimum standards and hopefully with be open source, but I don't see that happened in the context of these locked down platforms because these same tools could (would) also be used for reverse engineering them.
What we need is a backdoor in to everything. Mafia revenues are down even as the top 0.5% of American's saw their income sharply rise during the recession. They will not be left behind.
Within 6 months of their putting a backdoor into SSL, legitimate businessman surveillance 'T's will comprise 9% of all traffic on the Internet owing to the booming business of stealing personal information without phishing.
But we'll all be that much safer from ourselves. Thanks DOJ Mom!
This falls under the Military-Industrial Complex umbrella, so your fellow Conservatives would never cut one thin dime.
The clever ones have worked out that crime doesn't pay as well as corporate fraud.
To state the obvious, the US wants the upper hand in everything. That's the nature of power... doubly so for a world "super power." When you're king of the hill, you perceive everyone as a threat to your supremacy. As such, you want a defense to anything the "enemy" can throw at you. You want to always be 15 steps ahead. The government bureaucracy has always been slow on the uptake when it comes to technology. In years past when the Internet was mostly the domain of nerds and researchers, there wasn't a whole lot to perceive as a threat. Now, everyone and their mother is using email, facebook, etc. That's a lot of information that is largely bypassing the scrutiny of the powers-that-be, and now with the trend of everything being online, they are feeling the fear that the knowledge of insecurity brings.