Snowden: NSA Working On Autonomous Cyberwarfare Bot

WIRED published a long piece on Edward Snowden today (worth a read on its own), and simultaneously broke news of "MonsterMind," an NSA program to monitor all network traffic and detect attacks, responding with a counterattack automatically. From the article: Although details of the program are scant, Snowden tells WIRED in an extensive interview with James Bamford that algorithms would scour massive repositories of metadata and analyze it to differentiate normal network traffic from anomalous or malicious traffic. Armed with this knowledge, the NSA could instantly and autonomously identify, and block, a foreign threat. More than this, though, Snowden suggests MonsterMind could one day be designed to return fire — automatically, without human intervention... Snowden raised two issues with the program: the source of an attack could be spoofed to trick the U.S. into attacking an innocent third party, and the violation of the fourth amendment since the NSA would effectively need to monitor all domestic network traffic for the program to work. Also in Bamford's interview are allegations that the NSA knocked Syria offline in 2012 after an attempt to install intercept software on an edge router ended with the router being bricked.

Comments

A digital version of the "Doomsday Machine"

[Advocatus Diaboli]

Do the morons in NSA seriously believe that the USA is the only country with the technology to build a Digital Doomsday Machine? Has anyone of them watched Dr. Strangelove? Having said that, the level of hubris they are displaying seems about right.

Where the fuck is the EU?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every US citizen is yelling for their constitutional rights broken by the NSA. But no Europeans complain about what the NSA is doing to THEM. Which is even worse. EU, fucking wake up.

Re:On come on now Edward

[ganjadude]

or he knows what hes talking about. Treason is what the NSA is currently doing by failing to uphold the constitution, specifically the 4th amendment

Re:Snowden's comments at odds with his actions

[AmiMoJo]

Do you understand what he means? He is saying that if there was some real, genuine change due to his actions he would be willing to return and give evidence in open court, to help with that change, even if it meant a prison sentence due to the letter of the law.

That seems amazingly charitable, considering he should really get a presidential pardon and be welcomed back as the heroic guy who did the right thing to expose law breaking and billions of constitutional violations.

Re:Mark my words

[Noryungi]

Newsflash! Slashdot already has been targeted by NSA!!

Don't take my word for it: Link 1 and Link 2.

Re:Should we really be worried?

[mspohr]

Incompetence is never good.
Incompetence in collecting and acting on information just means that the wrong people will be targeted and the "bad guys" will be missed.
A powerful, secretive, incompetent organization is the worst of all possible worlds.

Re: On come on now Edward

[eyegone]

He acted for the benefit of the people of the United States, so he is working for an enemy of the United States government.

Re:Snowden's comments at odds with his actions

[AmiMoJo]

"Identifying and blocking foreign threats" is the NSA's job

Sure, but that doesn't extend to knocking Syria off the internet or inserting back-doors into encryption standards or failing to report known vulnerabilities and the like. How about recording every single phone call in made in two countries? Some spying on foreign countries is expected and acceptable, but not the lengths the NSA has gone to. Spying on your allies, like Merkel, is definitely something America should be ashamed of and that the German people have a right to know about.

Knowing what is happening and their capabilities is essential for us to re-build the internet to be bulk-surveillance proof. There is zero chance of the NSA and GCHQ stopping what they are doing, so the only solution is technological.

Re:On come on now Edward

[DarkOx]

if he was a true patriot as he claims he'd have faced the music

Oh come on, what the hell is patriotic about being shoved in an oubliette some place, after a show trial where you can't present any evidence because everything is classified?

Snowden would never get anything resembling a fair trial before a jury of his peers. A show trial is the most he could hope, but its just as likely he'd be held pretty much indefinitely without trial on some flimsy constitutionally unsound national security pretext. If you want to know who the cowards are its Kerry, Clapper, and Alexander who want to burry him or avoid tackling his criticism with lies and indirection rather than confronting it with actual facts.

Going through the system, and there is evidence he did try does not work. Just try filing and FOIA request about anything that is connected to "terrorism" in their wildest imaginations (like animal rights) and see what happens. The first time you will probably get a nice letter back telling you: "they can't tell you why they can't tell" you what you wanted because 'national security'. Send a another request for ANY information on how they handled your first request and they will probably just stonewall. Which is ILLEGAL the law say they have 20 days to do something and the three letter agencies won't do that.

Statistically you are more likely to die falling out of bed than you currently are from any kind of terrorist attack. Logic would then dictate at the very least we would create a "Bedtime Safety Authority" to make sure we are all tucked in at night before investing more in counter terrorism and yet we keep allocating more and more federal to that; well that is what the NSA tells us they are doing with them anyway preventing terrorism. Then we also dump more money into policing while crime nears all time lows, and yet no recruitment fliers for the BSA are there to be found.

There are no good reasons for these people to be doing what they are so they instead just want to silence critics like Snowden. No Snowden is no coward he is the guy that gave up home, family, and a cushy job in paradise to keep this issue alive.