Slashdot Mirror
25% of US Hackers Are FBI/CIA Informers
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian reports that the FBI and CIA have 'persuaded' up to 25% of US hackers to 'work' for them. 'In some cases, popular illegal forums used by cyber criminals as marketplaces for stolen identities and credit card numbers have been run by hacker turncoats acting as FBI moles. In others, undercover FBI agents posing as "carders" – hackers specialising in ID theft – have themselves taken over the management of crime forums, using the intelligence gathered to put dozens of people behind bars. ... The best-known example of the phenomenon is Adrian Lamo, a convicted hacker who turned informant on Bradley Manning, who is suspected of passing secret documents to WikiLeaks.' What implications does this hold for privacy? Or is it just good work by the authorities?"
As you may have guessed, the estimate appears to be based only on the number of black hats, rather than all hackers.
It's effective work by the authorities. However, if people under FBI or CIA are actively encouraging or facilitating illegal activities that may not have happened otherwise, I may have some heavy objections as to whether it's "good" work.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
In other news 47% of all news articles are speculative bullshit with no grounding in reality. See we can all make up numbers.
They say there are vast, anonymous networks of hackers, yet somehow they know they they've gotten 25% of them to work for the FBI? How do you calculate 25% of an unknown number? Or is there some Hacker registry at 2600 magazine that I'm not aware of (not being a hacker myself, I didn't get an invitation to join).
Yes, because LEAs never, ever conducted undercover investigations or made informants out of criminals (eg, in Mafia cases) until nowadays, and the fact that they do so is symptomatic of dawning fascism, right?
Idiot.
I call shenanigans.
There is simply no way this is anything CLOSE to accurate. This is pure FUD and self-promotion. First, they don't have accurate stats on how many ID theft operators there are (if they knew who was doing the stealing, they'd be able to close them down, right?), so this is just a "guestimate" to make people who deal with bulk operators worried that they might be dealing with a "dishonest crook", and to justify their budgets.
Pitifully transparent.
the FBI didn't "turn" Lamo. His hypocritical moral superiority turned him into a rat. Lamo is lucky he has no friends like himself. I have trouble believing he as any friends.
The Admin and the Engineer
What about ThinThread and other domestic surveillance programs? We know they're catching all US traffic at the ISP level. So if you're hacking computers in the US they can trace you back to the plug at the wall, from there they know you're either the person paying for the connection or someone leeching off his Wifi. A little detective work and they know if you live on the same block or if you're a roving wifi hacker who lives somewhere in downtown Portland.
Now how many non-US governments are doing the same thing and sharing this data with them? They already know who you are and what you're downloading, they simply don't have a reason to bust you right now.
So yeah, I bet they do have a pretty good estimate of the number of currently active hackers at least in the US. There's a profile on each one, and they know about zero-day attacks before anyone else does. It's just on the down-low since it's illegal. Do something big enough and they'll find a way to use it against you.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
The thing that makes me actually partially believe them is the remarkable efficiency of department of homeland security's incredible ability to recruit "neighbourhood spies".
The numbers may be inflated, but make no mistake - authorities have noted just how efficient it is to essentially make a lot of small people into informants on minimal pay. Stalin would have had a major hard-on if he saw what they did in the States, he tried really hard to make the system in USSR to be similar, but it failed because of lack of ability to process large amounts of data at rapid pace.
We have that thanks to computerization and networking, and USA authorities can proudly state that they already have more spies then USSR spying on their own people. I really don't see why lessons from that can't flow into even more valuable hacker world, where informants are so important. Hell, case Manning makes for a great example - the #1 enemy of intelligence machine wasn't caught because of awesome hardware, awesome software or great investigation work. He was caught because someone Manning viewed as a friend and a "comrade in arms" so to speak was actually a snitch who fingered him.
And it's the importance of having snitches like that anywhere you can have them, and making sure that even if you don't have a snitch in a particular organisation, they THINK you do is the proven, effective control maintenance strategy for authorities. So yes, we can doubt the exact number, but the argument that a very large portion of US hackers are snitches is beyond reasonable doubt.
And if you ever doubt that snitches are the most important part of intelligence, look at case Bin Laden. Hunted with best equipment and millions of men for years, no luck. And in the end, the one who killed him wasn't a bunch of SEALs, or an advanced helicopter. It was some pakistani guy who was a snitch and fingered him. And funnily enough, to show just how well our media is penetrated by intelligence, in between massive dick waving about SEALs, helicopters and other thing that really didn't matter in the end, we didn't hear a word about the one thing that really did matter - THE SNITCH.
You'd rather live in a society where everyone is so afraid that they're all looking for someone else to inform on?
Ask an East German how that worked out.
Better to set up rules for law enforcement that are no less strict than the ones the rest of us have to live by.
You are welcome on my lawn.