How To Stop the Next WikiLeaks

Hugh Pickens writes "Eli Lake reports that the U.S.'s 16 intelligence agencies are using a program called SureView that makes it easier to spy on the spies and catch whistleblowers early in the act. SureView is a type of auditing software that specializes in 'behavior-based internal monitoring' that monitors the intelligence officer's computer activity. If the officer acts like a potential leaker, sending an encrypted email or using an unregistered thumb drive, the analyst might push a button and watch a screen video of the officer's last hour of work. Once a case is made that a leak might be imminent, it is checkmate: the agent is thwarted. 'Had SureView been on Bradley Manning's machine, no one would know who Bradley Manning is today,' says Ryan Szedelo, manager for Raytheon's SureView software. The intelligence community has had auditing software for years. SureView came on the market in 2002. But the programs were buggy and often prone to false positives, alerting a network administrator too often to routine behavior. 'The technology has gotten substantially better in the last year,' says Jeffrey Harris, a former head of the National Reconnaissance Office. 'The problem with audit files was it took an army of people to understand them. Now we have rule-driven systems and expert systems that help us reason through the data.'"

Comments

Stay classy!

[lisaparratt]

'Had SureView been on Bradley Manning's machine, no one would know who Bradley Manning is today,'

They say that like it's a good thing...

Re:Stay classy!

[mjr167]

Manning knew the consequences of leaking classified information. They make it very clear to you when you get access. It's not just a form you sign, but an hour long meeting where they go into explicit details about duties, responsibilities, and consequences. They then repeat this training on an annual basis. He may have believed he wouldn't get caught, but he had no reason to not know the seriousness of what getting caught would mean.

Re:Stay classy!

[kilfarsnar]

From a security perspective, yes it is a good thing. But at the same time the level of secrecy and classification has become absurd. It is undermining our democracy because the citizenry cannot find out some basic stuff that their government is doing. It is (or should be) common knowledge that the three letter agencies (and a bunch you've never heard of) spy on Americans on an ongoing basis. We can't find out just what they are doing because it is classified, and if we try to sue we have no standing because we can't prove we were spied upon because it's classified. That is absurd and Kafkaesque. These days leakers are the only way we find out about the shenanigans our agencies pull.

On a side note "senior white house officials speaking on the condition of anonymity" leak classified material all the time. But they are never prosecuted. I wonder why.

Recursion

[GhigoRenzulli]

If a spy spies a spy who spies, who spies the spy who spies the spy?

In italian is funnier because both "spy" and "spies" translate into "spia".

Se una spia spia una spia che spia, chi spia la spia che spia la spia?

The real purpose

[dkleinsc]

'Had SureView been on Bradley Manning's machine, no one would know who Bradley Manning is today,' says Ryan Szedelo, manager for Raytheon's SureView software.

And nobody would have evidence of the serious crimes he told the world about. That's what they're really worried about.

Another solution

[Kidbro]

Or, you could stop committing and covering up crimes and routinely classify any and all information regardless if it's needed or not. Then nobody would feel the need to leak the things that are rightfully secret.

Just a thought.

I think Dr Seuss said it best

[Rogerborg]

Oh, the jobs people work at!
Out west, near Hawtch-Hawtch,
there's a Hawtch-Hawtcher Bee-Watcher.
His job is to watch...
is to keep both his eyes on the lazy town bee.
A bee that is watched will work harder, you see.

Well... he watched and he watched.
But, in spite of his watch,
that bee didn't work any harder. Not Mawtch.

So somebody said,
"Our old-bee-watching man
just isn't bee-watching as hard as he can.
He ought to be watched by another Hawtch-Hawtcher!
The thing that we need
is a Bee-Watcher-Watcher!"

WELL...

The Bee-Watcher-Watcher watched the Bee-Watcher.
He didn't watch well. So another Hawtch-Hawtcher
had to come in as a Watch-Watcher-Watcher!
And today all the Hawtchers who live in Hawtch-Hawtch
are watching on Watch-Watcher-Watchering-Watch,
Watch-Watching the Watcher who's watching the bee.
You're not a Hawtch-Watcher. You're lucky, you see!

Re:What if...

[durrr]

Use a VGA/DVI interception hardware device to save to external storage. People will be stuck thinking in the box so you'll have no problems whatsoever as long as you don't save or move any data "in-system".

Please don't forget to mention how SureView is awsome and ensures 100% data security while at it to keep the blinders on.

How to stop the next wikileaks?

[dbIII]

Three Swedish girls next time.
And two guys willing to throw everything away from the Bank of America leak.

Re:What if...

[ElectricTurtle]

I am a federal contractor and we're required to encrypt attachments that contain 'sensitive' information. (Which isn't to say 'classified' since that's not supposed to get tossed around in the first place.) If this were rolled out in the agency I work with, everybody and their dog would be setting off this 'alarm' every hour of every day.

Sounds like bullshit to me.