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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
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.
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"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.
"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."
That's working under the assumption that the FBI is more competent than a bunch of script kiddies, and not taking into consideration that while the majority of the people involved in a particular operation are merely script kiddies, there are often more competent people involved.
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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...
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"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.
"while the majority of the people involved in a particular operation are merely script kiddies, there are often more competent people involved."
That's the part that few people understand. You get a thousand, or ten thousand, dummies worldwide to launch pointless annoyance attacks, while as few as a dozen competent people sit back and evaluate the responses and defenses. When they find a crack in the defenses, then they exploit it.
I'm fairly sure (can't be positive) that the FBI has some pretty sharp hackers among their ranks. But, Anon is a lot bigger than the FBI, and they have plenty of cannon fodder to keep the FBI's real hackers busy. The FBI can claim a "victory" when they bust a few stupid script kiddies, but they are only grasping at smoke and mirrors, while the real actors remain invisible behind proxy chains, and botnets.
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"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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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.