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McCain Asks For Committee On Wikileaks, Anonymous
Trailrunner7 writes "In the face of continued attacks on federal agencies and contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton and IRC Federal that do highly sensitive security work for the U.S. government, Sen. John McCain has asked Senate leaders to appoint a select committee to look into the attacks and data leaks that have plagued Washington throughout 2011. In a letter to Democrat leader Harry Reid and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, McCain (R-Ariz.) said that a temporary Senate committee is necessary in order to get a handle on all of the disparate cybersecurity legislation proposals and to address the threat posed by groups such as Anonymous, LulzSec and Wikileaks."
That oughta solve the problem, by garsh!
In America, you have a choice between the party that works for one set of corporations, or the party that works for another set of corporations.
Palm trees and 8
Ted Stevens is dead.
The summary is 10% facts and 90% moronic rambling by the submitter. If you actually read the letter, you'll see that McCain was specifically referring to insider threats such as the Bradley Manning case. He doesn't mention Anonymous or LulzSec at all.
Dig him up!
I bet he still knows just as much about the internet now as he always did!
We keep seeing court cases and lively debate over "Freedom of the Press," usually with regards to whether this blogger or that product reviewer etc... have a right to say what they say without "press credentials" or a large corporate news organization backing them, etc... A lot of self-professed "patriotic" US citizens want Wikileaks destroyed.
So where does the phrase "Freedom of the Press" come from? First Amendement of the US Constitution:
At the time this was written, what was "the press?" What was the relationship between the authors and founders of this country and "the press?" The press was a nifty machine that several of these men owned... a printing press. They used these devices to take their speech and propogate it further than mere voice could. They used this kind of speech to foment revolution against an unjust government and the press was a vital tool in this effort. Upon establishing a new government, they sought to extend that protection to all citizens.
So, when someone issues communications through technology, that is the press protected by the 1st Amendement.
If they really want to do something productive, they should investigate how it's possible that government contractors are so incompetent when it comes to computer security.
and prevent leaks at the source.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
The problem is government contractors.
Time to offend someone
We cannot have private groups picking up the slack for our stenographer media. After burning Dan Rather and firing numerous other investigative journalists, and imprisoning more reporters in the Iraq invasion than were imprisoned in all other wars combined -- I thought we made it clear that we do not want investigative journalism.
Whistleblowers like Bradley Manning, are a threat to our incompetence and graft -- and we'd really appreciate being able to continue this "war on whatever" scam so that we can burden the middle class with lots of debt that will require austerity -- we cannot train your kids to be indentured servants if we continue this concept of "RIGHTS" and such, now can we?
The only way to win the war on Terror, is to allow your military, government and secret services, total access to everything, no responsibility or questions on failure or missing Billions, and to be able to say; "nothing to see hear, move along." With the lack of transparency, we reserve the right to humiliate and/or jail the people who speculate on Conspiracies. Not that they are a threat, we just don't like those geeky twerps and we enjoy crushing the nuts of someone -- so it might as well be them.
After that brain fart, McCain would go back to his soft spoken tones as if he were a reasonable adult, and use words like "concern", "responsibility" and "prudence." As if he gave a rats ass and wasn't thinking about the Poker and Prostitutes party at Boehner's house this Friday night.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
The problem is government .
There, Fixed that for you.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Just to clarify... He is taking the steps to investigate the vulnerabilities, and take precautions against further intrusion. This is not to be confused with "let's go catch these boogeymen."
This just seems like a reasonable reaction (for once), unless I am mis-reading here. I did not RTFA.
Well, the article is not really much more informative than the summary on this matter, but both of them suggest that at least part of the focus is on improving security at these sensitive sites rather than going after whichever baddies this week hacked into a government contractor's network and divulged sensitive info they found there. And that is indeed the right focus; it is obvious that the knowledge necessary to break into these sites is in the wild and capturing one group of attackers is going to do little to secure the information stored on other, as-yet-unhacked networks. The problem is that inadequate methods have been used to secure the information in the first place. So I have to agree with you.
Furthermore, what is pointed out in the article is that there are multiple Congressional committees claiming at least partial jurisdiction over the issue and suggesting cybersecurity legislation. McCain proposes a single committee to clearly govern this area and thus to consolidate this legislation in one place to avoid conflicting bills coming from different groups. I can't say whether this will actually succeed in doing something useful -- it really depends on whether they get knowledgeable people on the committee -- but it has a better chance than the current approach. In theory, the knowledgeable people, even if they aren't on the committee or even in Congress, should know to address this group; hopefully the committee gets populated with Congressmen who are able to distinguish the ideas of value from those of everybody else who wants to restrict computers or the Internet in whatsoever way.
The United States WAS crawling with communists. The Venona intercepts generated leads. Of course, it was classified, so most did not get access to that information.
the venona decrypts were fascinating but there are several reasons i disagree with your interpretation (which has been repeated by many others)
1. the actual decryption took decades, and was not finished until the 70s or 80s, so during the actual mccarthy period of the late 40s early 50s, many of the contents of the crypts were not known.
2. alot of the decryption was of poor quality
3. alot of it used various code names
4. the biggest problem of all, is that you are decryption messages from KGB(NKVD)field agents back and forth to headquarters. the Soviet Union was built on a system of faking your reports and your production numbers, no matter what your field, in order to meet quotas and keep from getting executed. they couldnt even get a reliable census going in the 1930s because politics worked its way into every bureaucracy of the country. to believe the venona decryptions at face value, you have to believe KGB(NKVD) agents statements to moscow at face value, which to me seems like a horrible way to research history.
5. alot of them are 'proven' by cross referencing them with the statements of elizabeth bentley or others. what was her source? the same agents who were writing the cables back to moscow.
the venona has a lot of fascinating information in it and shows a lot of soviet inlfuence in ameirca, but alot of those 'leads' were fucking bullshit.
you can just look at the 'Silvermaster Files' for information, take Bela Gold for example. they put his wife under surveillance. what intelligence do they get? she went shopping. she met with other suspects for an hour here, an hour there. she went shopping. she got pregnant. case closed. Thats the 'damning evidence' somebody wanted to use in a courtroom.
since in America the courts are somewhat independent (unlike, say, the soviet union) the government dropped these cases. Venona couldnt be used in courtrooms not simply because it was 'classified', but because it was unreliable garbage.
then take alger his and whittaker chambers. they decided the laws were not good enough to prosecute him, so they broadened them. what did that leave us with? the Espionage Act subparagraph (e) , which is now being used against whistleblowers like Thomas Drake...
and of course the Emergency Detention Act, completely unconstitutional and cancelled by Nixon when he became president. Think about that. it was too draconian for Nixon.