Do You Like Online Privacy? You May Be a Terrorist

schwit1 passes on this snippet from Public Intelligence: "A flyer designed by the FBI and the Department of Justice to promote suspicious activity reporting in internet cafes lists basic tools used for online privacy as potential signs of terrorist activity. The document, part of a program called 'Communities Against Terrorism,' lists the use of 'anonymizers, portals, or other means to shield IP address' as a sign that a person could be engaged in or supporting terrorist activity. The use of encryption is also listed as a suspicious activity along with steganography, the practice of using 'software to hide encrypted data in digital photos' or other media. In fact, the flyer recommends that anyone 'overly concerned about privacy' or attempting to 'shield the screen from view of others' should be considered suspicious and potentially engaged in terrorist activities. ... The use of PGP, VPNs, Tor or any of the many other technologies for anonymity and privacy online are directly targeted by the flyer, which is distributed to businesses in an effort to promote the reporting of these activities."

Comments

Sounds like the Drug Wars

[mbone]

I remember the loathsome brochures passed around in the Government during the Reagan / G.H.W. Bush drug wars years. They basically boiled down to

- anyone acting strangely might be on drugs, and
- anyone not acting strangely might be on drugs, and covering it up.

Sounds like the DOJ is falling down the same rathole once again.

Code?

[Bucky24]

"Suspicious or coded writings, use of code word sheets, cryptic ledgers, etc"

To the average citizen, most programming languages would fit this.

Re:Code?

[idontgno]

According to Esperantist legend, when Zamenhof (the initial creator of the Esperanto language) went to medical school, his father found his initial work notes on the language and burned it all, fearing that it was evidence that young Zamenhof was a spy.

This was in 1881, according to the sources I could find. So the "OMG SEECRET CODEZ" panic is well over a century old, at least.

Working = Terrorism?

[Wamoc]

So this means that anytime I am at a public place and fire up a VPN to access work materials I am engaged in terrorist activities? Hopefully tech companies will shed some light over how absurd the FBI and DoJ are being on this.

Self-generated work a problem with law enforcement

[Animats]

A useful metric for law enforcement organizations is what fraction of their work is self-generated, and what fraction is complaint-driven. When a police department responds to a call to 911 or a crime report, they're performing a service function. When they run a drug sting, they're doing self-generated work. Some self-generated law enforcement work is useful and necessary, but too much of it corrupts an organization.

The FBI was traditionally complaint-driven. Historically, their self-generated work didn't go well. The Red Squads and the investigation of the civil rights movement of the Hoover era are historical examples.

The FBI's anti-terrorism operation is mostly self-generated work. So is their Internet operation. (40% of FBI Internet investigative resources are devoted to kiddie porn. Most of the rest is "national security". Fraud on the Internet, about 4%. The FBI is soft on Internet fraud - stopping that takes real work, and results are measurable.)

Measurability is the big issue here. On their complaint-based work, law enforcement success rates are easily measured. There were N bank robberies last year, and the people who did M of them were caught. Success rate: M / N. Running a law enforcement operation on that basis keeps it productive and honest. Metrics for self-generated police work tend to be less meaningful. The US has had so little terrorism in the last decade that metrics for that are mostly have an N of zero.

Measurability was William Bratton's approach. Bratton headed the Boston PD, the NYPD, and the LAPD, and is generally considered to have improved all of them. He was big on measuring results, and put in systems to track, on a daily basis, how his cops were doing against crooks. There was a lot of software and mapping involved, and twice-weekly crime strategy meetings. In a big department, it was quite possible to have a whole crime spree before someone at the command level noticed a pattern. He fixed that. Focusing his cops on solving identified problems tended to keep his departments pointed in the right direction.

Re:Chicken or egg?

[PortHaven]

Founding Fathers were largely considered to be terrorists by the British.

My personal definition of terrorists is one who targets and attacks civilians.

Hijacking the planes, an act of terrorism.
Crashing planes into the Twin Towers, an act of terrorism.
Crashing planes into the Pentagon, a legitimate act of war.

Had 9-11 involved a UPS cargo plane being crashed into the Pentagon I would not have called them terrorists.

Bombing of the U.S.S. Cole was not an act of terrorism, it was an act of partisan warfare.