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FBI Cybercrime Director Comments On Hacktivism
bdcny7927 writes "In an exclusive interview with CIO.com, the FBI official in charge of cybercrime speaks for the first time with the media specifically about hacktivism. Here, Assistant Executive Director Shawn Henry describes the threats hacktivists pose, the challenges associated with investigating them, and the FBI's success disrupting these groups. He also delivers a special message to hacktivists."
The so-called special message: "My organization is a believer in civil rights and civil liberties, and the first amendment is something I hold very dear personally and professionally. I have no problem with people picketing and protesting in the street. I get all that. But the freedom for me to swing my arm ends where your nose begins. If you are impinging on others' rights, that's illegal."
Except when it gets in the way of my job or something I want to do. Also the 4th amendment is definitely out. Can't have that
Yes, that was my thought exactly.
We had those amendments and civil liberties. They are in the process of being destroyed or made to be impotent often by the companies being attacked. Do you have any suggestions as to the correct course of action in the face of that Mr. Shawn Henry?
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
"Hacking is illegal." Wow, and the sky is blue. I'm sure Anonymous will be deeply moved by that one.
I'll bet this first public FBI chat will be rewarded by Anonymous in some way that he won't like.
I shudder to think who would win in a hacking duel, Anonymous or the FBI.
And three letter agencies, hell, police in general, seem to want to ignore civil rights whenever it is convenient. They're the annoying things you need to work around, not uphold.
Sent from my PDP-11
"in a dedicated denial of service (DDoS) attack" didn't read further.
So let me get this straight. He's fine with protesting in person-- you know, in designated protest areas, with a permit, a mile away from where anyone would notice or care, in which you may be legally beaten, pepper-sprayed, or arrested by police-- but he considers hacktivism "impinging on others' rights".
I would say that either 1) he doesn't understand that the purpose of hacktivism is to be high-profile, or 2) he's a lying assbag talking about rights when the purpose of his job to silence agitation.
wake me up when the federal government stops using existing and new legislation to violate the rights of US citizens, including those who may have different religious or political views.
who watches the watchers?
who speaks when others can't speak for themselves?
who exposes that which is hidden by the government that has sworn to protect it's citizens?
who exposes that which is hidden by corporations actively paying politicians to pass legislation for the benefit of those corporations?
do your f-ing job you douche bag.
Vigilantes have no regard for the law. The law is not their concern. Their concern is getting retribution for offenses delivered or pending delivery by an entity they do not agree with or feel wronged by.
Pinning hacktivism as a form of illegal activity will only deter kids who jumped onto the bandwagon for fun or to revolt.
I hope for his sake the SOPA bill doesn't pass, or its going to push many of these hacktivists further away. Any legitimate protection of rights online they hoped for will be lost.
"when your right to free speech conflicts with my sacred right to business profit and the unimpeded influence of politics and policy, then I must strenuously object to your material support for terrorism and your declared enmity toward America."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The director of KGB gives an interview and answers a question about freedom of speech: "Our country has complete freedom of speech. But freedom after speech, that's a whole different matter."
Introduce your friends and family to The Onion Router.
Set up a Tor node yourself. Amazon will provide an entry level EC3 host to anyone free of charge for a year.
Register a domain that is not under US control and so cannot be taken from you by the Feds. .is looks good - Iceland.
Mirror some Samizdat at PRQ AB of Sweden. They have a full time legal staff to defend their customers against takedown orders. you can host anonymously and pay them with anonymous money orders.
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Mr. Henry mentions the First Amendment, but says nothing about the Declaration of Independence. The First Amendment specifies that free speech is not subject to the discretion of the government, and he swore an oath to defend that boundary of Federal authority. Saying he supports that is like saying he does not support interstate trafficking in illegal goods. That's just doing what he swore he would do -- he doesn't get a pat on the back for that beyond what we inherently owe him for his civil service. The First is not what is in question regarding hacktivism.
The Declaration is the closest thing we have to an official US document that covers what a hacktivist would claim gives him a legitimate mandate to act. Civil disobedience may often include elements of free speech, but it is the illegality of the action that define it as civil disobedience -- it is right in the name.
It is an easy topic to address from the official position of the FBI: "The role of the FBI is to enforce law, and the kind of civil disobedience embodied in the Declaration of Independence is unlawful activity. The Declaration does not make civil disobedience legal, and my job is to enforce the law."
The fact that he did not address it head-on implies one of two things to me: He may not have a deep understanding of the founding of this nation, and the reasons that it had to be founded as it was. Alternately, he may understand the disobedient nature of our founding, but be choosing not broaching the topic.
If a person in his position is not aware of the anarchic nature of this nation's founding, and the reason that disobedience resonates even with lawful patriots, he should be removed from office. He has to at least understand that mentality in order to fight it, if nothing else.
If he is just not broaching the topic, I guess I understand his pragmatic decision, but I find it sleazy. He is being disingenuous and trivializing the extraordinarily delicate balance of true democracy.
It is intrinsic in the nature of Western Democracy that civil disobedience both violates the law and is necessary to refresh the tree of liberty. It is also clearly the charter of the FBI to enforce the law including by arresting people who engage in civil disobedience. Even if he thought it was wrong to arrest such people he would still be obligated to do so -- he is in the executive, not the judicial. The fact that those things are true and also in tension is part of what makes the FBI's job such a difficult task for the men and women who serve. Ignoring that fact does us all a disservice.
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Board a plane without being sexually assaulted?
Sure, saying my rights end at the end of my nose etc. makes for a good soundbite but the problem is that especially with digital media you have large monied interests who get to define their own nasal boundaries. SOPA is a good example where the mere implication that someone is TOUCHING MY CORPORATE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY'S NOSE can have far reaching penalties without any actual proof that there was harm done.
That sounds all fair and reasonable. But then I find myself asking this: If picketing and protesting are "cool" with you then why are we not permitted this exercise of civil liberties/rights? Oh, that's right, because embarrassing and generally offending the establishment is considered blooding their nose...
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
... the problem with these organizations is that it depends on the quality of human beings of said institutions and said society. If human beings are stupid and corrupt then they will corrupt the institutions (media, school, business, government) and especially the lawmakers. If that wasn't bad enough the law makers are too old/ignorant/stupid to even process the social complexity of modern societies. His platitudes mean little.
If anything these guys are simply blindly following dogma and not being able to think critically about how money allows you to game the system and transform what was once a free society into a society in which the people have rights in name only. The whole idea that the loss of rights would be 'obvious' to these organizations is nonsense. People are stupid, especially people in power. Most of humanity is too unsophisticated to understand the complexity inherent in how money transforms institutions and their effects on society and culture.
"My organization is a believer in civil rights and civil liberties"
Yes. We know: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
"We're the secret police for democracy!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
If you started going after someone like the FBI systematically, they'd track you down. You aren't anonymous on the Internet. Everything you do can be tracked. Now usually it isn't because why would anyone bother? However if there was a reason, it could be done. If they continually attacked the FBI, you'd better believe that the FBI, and other government agencies, would work to track them down.
Basically when it comes to someone with the resources of the US government it is all a matter of if they care enough to spend the resources to make you stop.
The ultimate example would be Bin Laden. Here is a man who is skilled in guerrilla warfare, knowledgeable in intelligence and counterintelligence, protected by zealous followers, hidden in a foreign country, cut off from the outside world, using only a contact chain for any kind of communication. However the US found him, and killed him. Reason was they cared enough to go to the great lengths necessary to track him down.
Now in the case of a group of people in a "hacking duel" with them they wouldn't care nearly as much. However it wouldn't be nearly as hard. The /b/tards are not nearly as smart as they like to think they are and when you get down to it, your ISP can monitor everything you do, if they want, and will do so upon a wire tap warrant from the government.
All that aside, please remember the US owns the very best of the best in signals intelligence: the NSA.
Those are just some of the things I've lost in the past 20 years. Some of those are related to the first amendment, some to the fourth. Some of them are rights we've always had, but are not specifically enumerated in the constitution. Some represent a weakening of first amendment rights due to the right being made useless for its intended purpose (like getting my representative to pay attention to me).
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
That Shawn guy is all huffy because Anonymous and LulzSec break the law, as if legitimate political protest is on the same level as robbery or mindless vandalism.
During the Civil Rights Movement some white clergymen published an open letter thatvwhile ostensibly supporting equal rights for blacks, urged them to comply with The Whie Mans law during their protests, for example by not shutting down entire cities for days on end.
While spending some time in the slammer, The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior wrote "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" on a few scraps of paper that he begged from the jailer, in which he said "One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
I regard that letter as King's most important written work.
My colleagues at Kuro5hin fault me for not being a Team Player because I regard raising Hell as the greatest contribution I can make to society. We would all be better off if there were fewer Team Players not more of them. Consider what happened when the "Guter Deutschers" - that was the German word for Team Player back in the day - failed to heed the dictates of their consciences and so encouraged Hitler's rise to power.
If you are not up to Hacktivism, don't just politely hand out some leaflets when you protest in meatspace. No, get yourself hauled off to jail by shutting down the entire business district of a city.
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Or to put it another way ... "But the freedom for me to swing my arm ends where your nose begins".
And when the "person" being affected does not have a nose?
Because said "person" is a corporation?
The property rights of corporations have become more important than human rights.
Corporations are not people. Despite what the law would say.
"better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone's_formulation
Fascism begins when the efficiency of the Government becomes more important than the Rights of the People.
Note that he's advocating disobeying unjust laws like, say, laws requiring segregation, laws treating people with a little more melanin in their skin as inferior.
So what are the laws "hacktivists" break? Laws like "You aren't allowed to DDoS someone's website," or "You aren't allowed to access someone's computer without their permission." Hmmm, those laws sound pretty just to me. I think when there's a victim, it is quite just to have a law against victimizing that person.
So if you believe that copyright law is unjust, and you distribute copyrighted works for that reason then ok I can understand that. However if you believe that the government doesn't respect your rights so you go and DDoS Amazon, I can't respect that. The first is like you refusing to obey a law banning breast feeding, because you believe it is unjust, by breastfeeding a baby in public. The second is like you burning down my house because you believe the city council isn't respecting your rights.
Something else to remember, something important: Those people involved in great acts of civil disobedience did so knowing the consequences, and putting their names on it all the same. They stood up publicly, and accepted the consequences they faced. Again look at Dr. King's letter you linked, that he wrote from jail, again with his name on it. He didn't try and circulate a manifesto anonymously, he was a public face for a movement and accepted the consequences for it. Or take the start of it all int he US, the Declaration of Independence. The founding fathers signed their names on it, knowing they were signing a death warrant for them if they lost the fight. They didn't write it anonymously and pin it to a tree then play dumb, they said "Yes this is us, we stand behind this with our lives if necessary."
This bullshit of random hacking and DDoSing of sites is not civil disobedience and is not the sort of thing people like Dr. King would respect.
All of Our Founding Fathers who signed The Declaration of Independence had sufficiently many testicles to do so with their real names.
One example does not a case make. Perhaps you have not heard of Publius. Anonymous speech and anonymous civil disobedience has a long history in democracy. Learn more.
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The FBI isn't all bad. they really do investigate corrupt politicians, such as the Portland, Oregon city official who now stands accused ofvtaking bribes from a parking meter company.
The problem we have is that it is not illegal to change your vote in response to a campaign "donation". I would like to see a Constitutional amendment that forbid any but individual live humans from contributing nonpolitical campaigns.
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Director Henry, could I please get your take on "Section 1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act". President Obama has already signed this piece of legislation and it declares the entire world including The United States of America as the battlefield. In short it give our government the authority to detain or assassinate American citizens, without due process, the right to an attorney, or even the dignity of informing our friends and families that y'all decided we should be shot.
Our government has just declared war on the American people, and how exactly would you expect that we deal with this? Tea and crumpets? A harsh dressing down of our political representatives... posh, you naughty boys have subjugates my civil rights and get off my lawn! Sir, our founding fathers fought and died to give us the rights we now cherish, and with the stroke of a pen, we've seen these rights obliterated by self serving sycophants.
You sir say you are a keeper of law, a protector of America's freedom, well then why have you not arrested the very people who have seen fit to rob every American of that which is most precious. We've seen this behavior before, in Germany in the 1930s. The rich and powerful building a mote around themselves to protect themselves from the havoc that followed. This is not the America of our Founding Fathers, and for myself, I protest, I protest to high heaven, and I demand that my government be returned immediately.
They wrent just violating segregation laws by refusing to sit in the back of the bus. They violated all manner of laws by braising all kinds if Hell. The "Civil" in Civil Disobedience doesn't mean one is polite, just that one is nonviolent.
An example of the way the Civil Rights Movement would violate the law, which those white ministers I mentioned claimed was wrong, was that the protestors would shut down entire cities by blocking the streets.
That negatively impacted corporate profits, pretty much what Anonymous has been doing.
In principle I agree with younthat one should commit such crimes under ones own real name. That lends legitimacy to ones argument. but consider the good sense that the French Underground and Eastern European Partisans had in hiding their identities from the Nazis. By not getting shot - or prosecuted in the case of Anonymous - they can survive to fight another day.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I've heard this many times, but I'm wondering if and where you find anything like this notion in the US Constitution. Or is it part of the writings of Madison or Jefferson? Or maybe it's something Thomas Paine wrote, or some other Enlightenment thinker?
Or is it just another one of the many insufficiencies of the US Constitution that needed to be added by a wise and powerful Supreme Court? Sort of like "money is speech" and "corporations are people" and "war is peace".
I'm not saying I disagree with the notion of freedom and arms and noses and all that, but I really wonder how that gets morphed into "You have freedom of speech as long as it does not inconvenience anyone".
I think about the original Boston Tea Party and the mess those guys must have made in Boston Harbor, dumping all those crates and barrels and tea into the harbor. Plus, I'm sure that there were quite a few hard working colonial farmers and tradesmen and merchants who just wanted to sit down with a nice cup of tea with their dinner who were really put out by the fact that all that Ceylon and Oolong and Earl Grey got dumped into the drink. And what about the colonial merchants who just got by making a meager living selling tea to those folks? I wonder how much income they lost because of the Boston Tea Party and how many of them had their businesses shuttered because they couldn't float their expenses until the next shipment of tea came? Or the longshoremen who loaded the tea onto wagons and shipped it inland? Do you think they were inconvenienced? Did they lose income too, you think?
I think about that original Boston Tea Party in light of all the comparisons that get made between the misnamed "modern" Tea Party Patriots and the Occupy Wall Street movement. A lot is made about how well-behaved and "clean" and obedient the Tea Party Patriots are compared to the "filthy" and "violent" and obstructive OWS protestors, who caused the poor sandwich shop near Wall Street to lose income while they held their protest. The horror! LOST REVENUE!
I wonder how "clean" and "obedient" and "well-behaved" the original Tea Party dudes were when they dressed up like Indians and started dumping other people's property into Boston Harbor. I wonder if they cared that they were inconveniencing all the tea drinkers and/or tea sellers (which meant just about everyone at the time).
No, I just took a quick look at the Constitution again and I don't see any "right not to be inconvenienced by someone else's free speech". I see an "inalienable" right to free speech, but not the former. No "inalienable" right not to have protestors cause you to have a bad day. This is important, because it speaks directly to the notion of the innovative "free speech zones" that have been going up since the 2000 Republican Convention. And the idea that you can be arrested for singing near the Lincoln Memorial, or that free speech in Zucotti Park ends at 11pm (for safety purposes).
I'll have to think about this a little bit...
You are welcome on my lawn.
"My organization is a believer in civil rights and civil liberties, and the first amendment is something I hold very dear personally and professionally."
No he doesn't.
Nobody in government cares about rights. Just look at the votes for NDAA and the paucity of votes against, and the current SOPA bullshit.
Habeas Corpus - Eliminated
Due Process - Eliminated.
It's like the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights never happened. At least in England they still have the right to due process retained from the Magna Carta (there are only like 3 rights retained from the Magna Carta in England anyway, but the right to due process is a biggie).
As much as I thought Prison Planet and all that shit was bullshit, the past month has changed my mind.
I seriously think that Chilean style "Disappearances" are in the offing. But instead of a military junta doing it, it will be our "elected" government.
Remember, the dems and republicans are the same, so vote republican. *spit*
--
BMO
You haven't paid attention in the last month.
NDAA has just eliminated due process.
If you are a "hacktivist" you will be accused of terrorism (this has already been bandied about by various politicians, so I'm not making it up) and you will simply disappear.
Not kidding.
Even the guy over at Bad Astronomy is highly upset. You should be too.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/12/19/a-public-letter-to-the-us-government-upon-the-passing-of-ndaa/
--
BMO
Even it everything you claim is true (it isn't) you aren't a bit disturbed that the people who own all these things are taking all those rights away? It still holds that these experiences are quite a bit different over the last 20 years, regardless of who "owns" them.
Besides which, it is the TSA and not the airlines, buses, and trains that are instituting the ridiculous level of searches today. I started taking Amtrak all the time starting 3 years ago to get away from them, but now they've taken over that too. Amtrak is not privately owned.
Not all of us are interested in living in a world where our existence is dependent on more powerful entities bestowing on us the privilege of existing, regardless of whether these powerful entities are government or commercial in nature. If that's the world you want to live in, why do you want to force it on the rest of us?
Sure if I were to ride in your own personal car then I would be obligated to follow your rules. But if I wanted to ride in your bus, despite your bus company being privately owned, your bus is a "public accommodation". That's a legal Term of Art that enables the government to require that YOU follow certain rulers and that I have certain rights.
Some Americans are heavily into the ideavthat property rights are absolute and inalienable, but that is not and has never been the case.
I have quite a serious mental illness. I have spent quite a lot of time being one of those bums in the street that you claim has no right to elected representation. the very fact that the stigma against mental illness led someone to direct three security guards to beat the living crap out of me for no other crime than that I was photographing my own hallucinations is the reason I devote psych tireless effort to pointing out the error of your ways to gentlemen such as yourself.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
...
The ultimate example would be Bin Laden. Here is a man who is skilled in guerrilla warfare, knowledgeable in intelligence and counterintelligence, protected by zealous followers, hidden in a foreign country, cut off from the outside world, using only a contact chain for any kind of communication. However the US found him, and killed him. ...
Well, actually, our government claimed they killed him, then destroyed any evidence that could of proved it. That is what we call a classic coverup. Did we kill
Bin Laden? Probably not, dude probably died a decade ago or so, but hey, it makes our government look good to it's people, mainly in a time when people were getting fed up.
Be seeing you...
Ride a bike without being electrocuted to death?
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Never claimed to have one. I was a Lawyer, by the way. A bloody good one.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Posting AC because I moderated on this thread. There is a lot I am not allowed to do now that was acceptable 20 years ago:
1: Be treated as a paying customer when boarding a plane.
2: Ride a bicycle to the university campus without having it impounded as being unlicensed.
3: Walk in a local university building to use the bowling alley or bar without being threatened with criminal trespass (and no signs present stating this.)
4: Walk into the state capitol building anytime, 24/7.
5: Go on an open Army post to show a friend's kids a local museum and fallen soldier memorial.
6: Drive down a state highway at night with intersection lights flashing yellow. (These were replaced by stoplights with cameras and road sensors for increasing town revenues.)
7: Firing off model rockets in the air at a city park.
8: Use a jogging track at a nearby high school in the summer when school isn't in session.
9: Carrying a piece of electronic equipment in my vehicle and not being subject to searches at whim.
10: Being arrested for hacking actually required definite proof. Now, just a phone hunting for an open wi-fi connection is grounds for an electronic criminal trespass charge.
11: Drink a beer in public.
12: Piss on a building, or bush on the side of the highway. These days, one can rack up enough felonies for a life prison sentence under three strikes, as well as a sex crime registration for doing this.
13: Have a suitcase that had actual sturdy locks on it for checked baggage.
14: Ride Amtrak without having freight trains always have right of way, forcing you to end up having to take Greyhound buses for your intended trip instead.
15: Smoke. I personally don't care for this, but it definitely was a right that was utterly destroyed.
16: Make mistakes. One arrest (not conviction) for *anything*, and I'm talking PI, failure to identify, or anything, and one can never get a meaningful job. Almost every place of employment checks *arrest* records and not *conviction* records because they believe "you can buy your acquittal, but if a cop thinks you are guilty enough to yank out cuffs and do paperwork, you are guilty". I see people, with far more qualifications in IT than I ever will have, denied employment because they got arrested for something stupid like public intoxication when they were 21 and stuffed in the drunk tank for a few hours. Now because their fingerprints show "arrested for something", their resume gets shitcanned every place they apply.
17: Change opinions. What is posted is posted forever.
18: Actually be able to take a political side without having it affect your employment. In one company I worked for's HR department, part of a potential employee's employablity score is what politicians they donate money to for campaigns (this is public info). Too many donations to lefties, and that person's resume gets chucked for the guy who donates to the Tea Party candidates.
19: Actually fixing or dealing with deliberately broken products and not having to deal with DMCA laws so you can use third party ink in your printer for example.
20: If arrested, just shutting the heck up was enough to invoke the right to remain silent.
I really fear to see what life will be like in 20 years. I think we will be rendered into serfs because revolution is completely impossible in most First World countries like the UK and US.
Indeed. We have always been at war with Eastasia. So do not be critical of things you claim are "new" for they always have been and always will be. Rest assured, Citizen, you will not be able to change things for the better.
I think that about sums you up.
Being reasonably confident that my representative cares more about what I and 50 of my neighbors say than what his or her corporate sponsor says (though that's been a serious problem for more than 20 years).
This is why we need to ban all donations to political entities. Money, gifts, expensive restaurants, 3rd party support ads etc. Give each candidate a fixed budget to work with, paid for from taxation. The only requirement for getting this allowance is to have polled at least say 5% in a previous election that you paid for yourself (with strict limits on spending).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
17: Change opinions. What is posted is posted forever.
You can still change opinions, it's just that there will be a concrete record of your old opinion. It would be better to change this to "do something really embarassing without becoming an international laughing stock"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel