Depends on who 'we' is and if your country has a veto or not. Makes a huge difference as if you're in one of the five that have the veto capability it gives enormous power.
Depends - if you bring in HP or IBM to do provide a solution for you all the way from business requirements, applications development, systems, networking, security, etc, etc, and then at implementation you have IBM, Juniper, Cisco, etc on site to support and something happens...you've covered yourself perfectly. No one can blame you because you got 'the best in the business'.
The reality is that whenever something goes wrong, the vendors/contractors are almost always blamed regardless of who is at fault. It's standard business practice for the customer to bring in a vendor for just this reason - if something goes wrong, they can point at the vendor. The bigger the vendor name the better this works. If you can bring the manufacture(s) in that's best of all. Who can blame you then?
The 'abnormal' incidents where an internal employee is blamed are probably instances where there was absolutely no way for that employee to escape responsibility (ie the syslog entry shows that user logged in, using a one time password token in his possession so that there's no chance of "the vendor has my username and password bullshit", and entering the command 'reboot').
I'm not saying that vendors, contractors and manufacturers don't make mistakes - they're human and from the manufacturer standpoint there are always bugs that are going to cause problems. I'm just saying that the employee / external aspect should be taken into account and thus these statistics taken with a very large grain of salt.
Every category listed has agencies at every level of US govt that would report upwards in the event of. I find it very hard to believe that a subcontractor (possibly multiple levels of subcontractors) scanning social media for these keywords and then calling DHS if necessary (per TFA) would be more efficient.
This strikes me as someone creatively using up some DHS funding that had to be spent somewhere.
Sorry but I find your thinking to be more like rationalizing what possibility might exist for them to be scanning for these words rather than anything a realistic statement of why they would be scanning social media networks.
If there's any kind of an emergency I am quite sure that local, state, regional, etc authorities (ie your local 911 hotline people) have procedures they should be following to be CLEARLY stating to the feds that there is a crisis, what the situation is, etc. that would be much more efficient than scanning the chaos of twitter (etc). There is NO need for such agencies (or in this case YET ANOTHER private subcontractor) to be scanning public social networks for such information.
I think it more likely there's a subset of these terms that is really of interest to the agencies and the rest of it is fluff to make it look more reasonable. I can't even begin to imagine how many 'hits' they would get if they actually cared about all of the keywords listed.
Also, it's easier to capture a bunch of script kiddie front line 'cyber-solders' (I doubt they caught anyone of significance but maybe, who knows) than to stop the real threats like those coming from certain other countries that have organized crime funded teams or who have no boundary between commercial and government applications and thus use military tech to industrially invade the rest of the world.
The real problem, of course, being that the western agencies are neither competent enough to go after the real threats nor would our lame ass governments do anything about it if they did actually track anything significant back to said countries.
Get your management to buy into you sharing your time between networking and systems for perhaps two or three weeks (you decide based on volume and complexity of what needs to be handed over) and spend as much time as needed to (a) evaluate the skills of the new 'guy' and (b) get them up to speed on whatever they need to know. If you don't do it in the beginning you'll be doing it for months.
During this 'handover' period, track questions, answers, issues and concerns in one document that you and the new admin review at least once a week (again I don't know the scale of your environment). If any questions come up later and you've documented the entire handover period this way you're covered.
You really should think thing through before hitting submit...you aren't making sense here. You said..."A private intelligence/security company working at this level and unhindered by governmental limitations makes me very nervous." Where does that come from? Absolutely everything that goes on in the US has government limitations, why should Stratfor be any different?
You also said..."same justification was used re the hiring of mercenary companies as they could do things outside the laws that restricted the normal armed forces."
You might want to re-read what I wrote before pressing submit;-)
Stratfor is not 'in the US' as you write, but is a private multinational company that would not be regulated like Federal intelligence agencies are. There would be fewer restrictions overall and probably none that couldn't be got round by going offshore. When a US federal agency operates outside of the US it still has to follow US laws restricting its behavior and there are checks and balances in place to minimize abuse (granted the US govt hasn't done a great job of keeping the checks and balances in place but that's another discussion).
You seem to think the military is the answer to everything.
I can't even begin to guess how you got that out of what I wrote. I was making a reference to private 'security contractors' such as Blackwater, a mercenary company hired by the US government that was responsible for killing civilians in Iraq but who was never correctly prosecuted.
You seem to think the military is the answer to everything. So for internal matters, should we eliminate police forces and rely solely on the military? And for external matter we should eliminate the state department?
No, each job has it's own requirements so use whatever tool works best for the job.
Frankly my belief is that we already have national intelligence agencies and I'd prefer they do their job rather than farming it out to private companies of dubious loyalty to the best interests of the citizens of the US (or any other country for that matter). We also have a (more than) fully funded and functional military and should have no need to resort to mercenaries, either military or intelligence, to avoid the laws and treaties that our government(s) signed up to.
Nothing immoral about it by the way, any more then you would have second thoughts about crossing to another company for a higher salary which might be displacing someone who's already there.
And there are people who never get a flat tire (I'm one - haven't had one since I was in high school a very long time ago) but that doesn't mean I shouldn't carry a spare tire.
People like you don't need it, ok. You're the exception rather than the rule and people like you in France would have to shell out two Euros, not more, as they never drink they never use up the two one Euro products we're discussing.
A lot of people do drink. In France it's perfectly normal to have a glass or two at lunch, for example, even for business. No one would think anything of it.
With regard to passing the breath test, if people pass the breathalyzer test then they're they're at a level of alcohol in their blood that won't cause a problem driving. In countries with zero tolerance this will be equal to what you're stating.
On the other hand, people who think that they can drink three glasses of wine and still be legally able to drive will find out otherwise.
I think people are missing the point. The police won't use these to check the driver. These are a self check that people can use after going for a drink or to dinner. The police will use devices that are accepted by the tribunal (court) as proof.
As I said in another post here, I live in France and I can see this working very well. I certainly have no problems with it and expect to use it when I go out.
I live in France. I doubt that the idea is to get money to companies but simply that if someone is drinking and goes to drive, if they have such a thing in the car they're more likely to use it to check if they should drive or not then if they don't have something to check with them.
Well...I wish this were true but the reality is that we lose our jobs to bright young Indians all the time. They don't do it as well, they make more mistakes...but they can do it.
And if local people refuse to work then that opens the door for international people to get work visas to do the same.
Other people will pop up and take over their paychecks to keep things running. I know we like to think we're not replaceable but the sad fact is that we are. Things might stutter a bit but realistically speaking they'll keep right on keeping on.
"...government internal intelligence seems hampered by ideological slant and internal politics"
Not to mention national and international law, some level of oversight and what passes for morals and ethics. The same justification was used re the hiring of mercenary companies as they could do things outside the laws that restricted the normal armed forces.
A private intelligence/security company working at this level and unhindered by governmental limitations makes me very nervous.
It also makes me nervous that national security information is being passed to a private non-governmental entity in the hope of a job after leaving 'public service'. Such people should be prosecuted as traitors.
From what I read in TFA the ASBOs have been applied for but not (yet) granted. Think we have to wait and see what the UK legal system says about this before we can comment intelligently.
It's not possible to have bandwidth in the core equal to or exceeding (in order to guarantee no congestion) bandwidth at the edge - especially if we started talking about FTTH with speeds of 10, 100 or conceivably 1000Mbps at some near point in the future.
Business realities aside, you still have to allow for peer to peer which will consume any available bandwidth if you don't choke it down at the access layer.
I recently built an ISP core in a western European country who is trying to have enough bandwidth in the core to avoid having to use QoS. They're using RBFRs (Really Big Fucking Routers) in the core with 16x10G links between them (extended to various POPs around the country) and you know what? They still need QoS in a failure scenario in the core and they still need QoS at the edge so that parts of the country that don't have 16x10G core links aren't completely choked.
This should be a subsidized and open (ie not locked to one provider) solution countrywide just to help America try and keep up with the infrastructure in developing countries.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on who 'we' is and if your country has a veto or not. Makes a huge difference as if you're in one of the five that have the veto capability it gives enormous power.
We can't answer you as we're all busy installing the addon...please hold...
Depends - if you bring in HP or IBM to do provide a solution for you all the way from business requirements, applications development, systems, networking, security, etc, etc, and then at implementation you have IBM, Juniper, Cisco, etc on site to support and something happens...you've covered yourself perfectly. No one can blame you because you got 'the best in the business'.
Nice try -
The reality is that whenever something goes wrong, the vendors/contractors are almost always blamed regardless of who is at fault. It's standard business practice for the customer to bring in a vendor for just this reason - if something goes wrong, they can point at the vendor. The bigger the vendor name the better this works. If you can bring the manufacture(s) in that's best of all. Who can blame you then?
The 'abnormal' incidents where an internal employee is blamed are probably instances where there was absolutely no way for that employee to escape responsibility (ie the syslog entry shows that user logged in, using a one time password token in his possession so that there's no chance of "the vendor has my username and password bullshit", and entering the command 'reboot').
I'm not saying that vendors, contractors and manufacturers don't make mistakes - they're human and from the manufacturer standpoint there are always bugs that are going to cause problems. I'm just saying that the employee / external aspect should be taken into account and thus these statistics taken with a very large grain of salt.
Every category listed has agencies at every level of US govt that would report upwards in the event of. I find it very hard to believe that a subcontractor (possibly multiple levels of subcontractors) scanning social media for these keywords and then calling DHS if necessary (per TFA) would be more efficient.
This strikes me as someone creatively using up some DHS funding that had to be spent somewhere.
Sorry but I find your thinking to be more like rationalizing what possibility might exist for them to be scanning for these words rather than anything a realistic statement of why they would be scanning social media networks.
If there's any kind of an emergency I am quite sure that local, state, regional, etc authorities (ie your local 911 hotline people) have procedures they should be following to be CLEARLY stating to the feds that there is a crisis, what the situation is, etc. that would be much more efficient than scanning the chaos of twitter (etc). There is NO need for such agencies (or in this case YET ANOTHER private subcontractor) to be scanning public social networks for such information.
I think it more likely there's a subset of these terms that is really of interest to the agencies and the rest of it is fluff to make it look more reasonable. I can't even begin to imagine how many 'hits' they would get if they actually cared about all of the keywords listed.
Also, it's easier to capture a bunch of script kiddie front line 'cyber-solders' (I doubt they caught anyone of significance but maybe, who knows) than to stop the real threats like those coming from certain other countries that have organized crime funded teams or who have no boundary between commercial and government applications and thus use military tech to industrially invade the rest of the world.
The real problem, of course, being that the western agencies are neither competent enough to go after the real threats nor would our lame ass governments do anything about it if they did actually track anything significant back to said countries.
Get your management to buy into you sharing your time between networking and systems for perhaps two or three weeks (you decide based on volume and complexity of what needs to be handed over) and spend as much time as needed to (a) evaluate the skills of the new 'guy' and (b) get them up to speed on whatever they need to know. If you don't do it in the beginning you'll be doing it for months.
During this 'handover' period, track questions, answers, issues and concerns in one document that you and the new admin review at least once a week (again I don't know the scale of your environment). If any questions come up later and you've documented the entire handover period this way you're covered.
You really should think thing through before hitting submit...you aren't making sense here. You said..."A private intelligence/security company working at this level and unhindered by governmental limitations makes me very nervous." Where does that come from? Absolutely everything that goes on in the US has government limitations, why should Stratfor be any different?
You also said..."same justification was used re the hiring of mercenary companies as they could do things outside the laws that restricted the normal armed forces."
You might want to re-read what I wrote before pressing submit ;-)
Stratfor is not 'in the US' as you write, but is a private multinational company that would not be regulated like Federal intelligence agencies are. There would be fewer restrictions overall and probably none that couldn't be got round by going offshore. When a US federal agency operates outside of the US it still has to follow US laws restricting its behavior and there are checks and balances in place to minimize abuse (granted the US govt hasn't done a great job of keeping the checks and balances in place but that's another discussion).
You seem to think the military is the answer to everything.
I can't even begin to guess how you got that out of what I wrote. I was making a reference to private 'security contractors' such as Blackwater, a mercenary company hired by the US government that was responsible for killing civilians in Iraq but who was never correctly prosecuted.
You seem to think the military is the answer to everything. So for internal matters, should we eliminate police forces and rely solely on the military? And for external matter we should eliminate the state department?
No, each job has it's own requirements so use whatever tool works best for the job.
Frankly my belief is that we already have national intelligence agencies and I'd prefer they do their job rather than farming it out to private companies of dubious loyalty to the best interests of the citizens of the US (or any other country for that matter). We also have a (more than) fully funded and functional military and should have no need to resort to mercenaries, either military or intelligence, to avoid the laws and treaties that our government(s) signed up to.
Nothing immoral about it by the way, any more then you would have second thoughts about crossing to another company for a higher salary which might be displacing someone who's already there.
And there are people who never get a flat tire (I'm one - haven't had one since I was in high school a very long time ago) but that doesn't mean I shouldn't carry a spare tire.
People like you don't need it, ok. You're the exception rather than the rule and people like you in France would have to shell out two Euros, not more, as they never drink they never use up the two one Euro products we're discussing.
A lot of people do drink. In France it's perfectly normal to have a glass or two at lunch, for example, even for business. No one would think anything of it.
With regard to passing the breath test, if people pass the breathalyzer test then they're they're at a level of alcohol in their blood that won't cause a problem driving. In countries with zero tolerance this will be equal to what you're stating.
On the other hand, people who think that they can drink three glasses of wine and still be legally able to drive will find out otherwise.
I've got a genuine Apple bridge if you're interested...
I think people are missing the point. The police won't use these to check the driver. These are a self check that people can use after going for a drink or to dinner. The police will use devices that are accepted by the tribunal (court) as proof.
As I said in another post here, I live in France and I can see this working very well. I certainly have no problems with it and expect to use it when I go out.
I live in France. I doubt that the idea is to get money to companies but simply that if someone is drinking and goes to drive, if they have such a thing in the car they're more likely to use it to check if they should drive or not then if they don't have something to check with them.
I know I will.
Well...I wish this were true but the reality is that we lose our jobs to bright young Indians all the time. They don't do it as well, they make more mistakes...but they can do it.
And if local people refuse to work then that opens the door for international people to get work visas to do the same.
Other people will pop up and take over their paychecks to keep things running. I know we like to think we're not replaceable but the sad fact is that we are. Things might stutter a bit but realistically speaking they'll keep right on keeping on.
"...government internal intelligence seems hampered by ideological slant and internal politics"
Not to mention national and international law, some level of oversight and what passes for morals and ethics. The same justification was used re the hiring of mercenary companies as they could do things outside the laws that restricted the normal armed forces.
A private intelligence/security company working at this level and unhindered by governmental limitations makes me very nervous.
It also makes me nervous that national security information is being passed to a private non-governmental entity in the hope of a job after leaving 'public service'. Such people should be prosecuted as traitors.
From what I read in TFA the ASBOs have been applied for but not (yet) granted. Think we have to wait and see what the UK legal system says about this before we can comment intelligently.
Agreed - You CAN log out of the store which stops this from happening but there should be an auto-logout capability.
Encrypt everything and protect your keys locally.
It's not possible to have bandwidth in the core equal to or exceeding (in order to guarantee no congestion) bandwidth at the edge - especially if we started talking about FTTH with speeds of 10, 100 or conceivably 1000Mbps at some near point in the future.
Business realities aside, you still have to allow for peer to peer which will consume any available bandwidth if you don't choke it down at the access layer.
I recently built an ISP core in a western European country who is trying to have enough bandwidth in the core to avoid having to use QoS. They're using RBFRs (Really Big Fucking Routers) in the core with 16x10G links between them (extended to various POPs around the country) and you know what? They still need QoS in a failure scenario in the core and they still need QoS at the edge so that parts of the country that don't have 16x10G core links aren't completely choked.
I'm sorry but what in the world are you talking about (pun intended)?
This should be a subsidized and open (ie not locked to one provider) solution countrywide just to help America try and keep up with the infrastructure in developing countries.
I'll vote for you!!
"We don't have it anymore, anywhere, and if we do we could be put in jail for a very long time."
FTFY
Corporations would be willing to take the risk if it's only a financial penalty that they need to worry about.