Even when the press works out its trusted US insiders walking out the data, the tech press and sock puppets still try and push an all powerful Russia or China cyber fantasy.
That other nations can get into networks, stay in, get all kinds of plain text data in bulk, get the data out without been detected. Hours later contractors find all the ip ranges, logs, fully understood and expected code fragments are found intact. The media is full aware of methods, ip's hours later...
Later the insider aspect is finally hinted at.
Strange that for decades no other admins, system workers, network designers, skilled top academics, telco staff, the private sector or other gov's ever noticed and published details about staging servers and methods found.
Now its all in the open? What went wrong with decades of never really been noticed? All that easy access, bulk data moved globally and no trace by the smart people with total access to the networks lost.
Has commercial and consumer cloud AV really gotten that good and responsive that staff can track a mil/gov staging server to its origin and just look around?
The internal NSA networks are open to staff, other agencies, random contractors for a reason. So many had projects to run that securing it all would have slowed down. It was sold as a new decade of searches, help, access by contractors.
Other agencies wanted domestic or staff information on topics the NSA had no need to question.
So most US internal gov networks are open, plain text for rapid searching. The security thinking is any search on the inside is legal, valid and secure.
The 'couldn't keep their own staff from access to everything" was the warning from history. Letting private contractors into gov secrets is always an error from a security perspective. The CIA, GCHQ warned the NSA. NSA gov staff warned the NSA. But the political drive for profits and the lobbying by the private sector was too strong. Decades of good gov security was lost to private sector contractors in years self signing their own access for profit.
The contractors don't get much funding after suggesting correctly everyday police work will uncover the insider.
With experts pushing Russia, China in the press, contractors can request huge new software support rentals and hardware investments, bid for ongoing gov staff training.
Then upgrades and a new generation of security related software and hardware will keep that ubiquitous Skilled Bear v 3.0 out of any gov network.
Academic grants to study other nations educational structures, write reports on the kind of code patterns their best university graduates will be unable to hide.
Having a real nation as the origin to show political leaders is a corporate and academic funding dream. Suggesting a local police effort to find an insider will get a real result but no big contracts or grants.
So expect a lot of people online with a mil, gov background to be pushing early and wild stories about traces of code, other nations ip ranges, time zones, logs been found.
Why let a cyber crisis to go to waste and not cash in on decades of no bid federal cyber funding by suggest police interview a few staff members?
How Covert Agents Infiltrate The Internet To Manipulate, Deceive, And Destroy Reputations (Feb. 25 2014) https://theintercept.com/2014/...
The funny part about people with an agenda is they can only fake been normal for so long until they are induced to rush to the aid of their nation, faith, cult, big gov, mil, agency or corporate backer.
Usually undoing months of careful account usage over months in a few lines or with one rushed link:)
The problem with that is city growth, access for smart staff to nice, safe neighbourhoods usually takes over from a sealed off, remote site.
Most nations try to counter that with a 1980's version of the East German boarder in depth around a site.
Everyone allowed near the area is passed as been loyal. Any new faces, cars, passengers get databased. With photographic records of all tourists, students, academics, diplomats, sympathisers, strangers around sensitive sites kept, interesting people are quickly tracked and tasked for investigation.
Nations might even expand roads, rail or bus links to avoid an area. No reason for many people just to be passing.
A random police event far from a site for speeding, been too slow, poor etiquette will usually give an ID on approach.
Chat downs of any strange new people with a camera, on a bike, walking the area.
The other trick is for a uniformed security guard or other undercover security posing as staff to lure the interesting person onto a a private, gov or mil site. Many rights and legal protections while on public land are then replaced with complex mil/gov trespassing issues.
Foreign governments just buy, bribe or are contacted by ex, former staff and get all the real details.
The risk with blurring is a region then becomes a forum or social media event for locals, tourists and the tech press. Inducing having a new drone and/or 600mm camera taken away with a deportation story becomes a rite of passage for the media. Or a local version of a first amendment audit area that just keeps giving the best encounters and chat downs for social media.
Re Question 2: Why is this worse than lobbyists who actually screw us over and make our lives miserable?
Lets say a wealthy person wants free speech but has no real free time in the day to engage in a long online conversation. They hire one person to be that online persona putting in say five hours a day.
What if the message is always been drowned out by facts and reality? Hire 10 people to each be 10 or 100 accounts each with their own story and time zone, ip?
In the end you just go big and go with what a gov enjoys:
"Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media " (18 March 2011) https://www.theguardian.com/te...
British army creates team of Facebook warriors (31 January 2015) https://www.theguardian.com/uk...
Re 'Really. I honestly want to know."
The "tell" is usually one person with a lot of accounts cleaning up after bad news about a nation, their faith or their side of politics, gov, mil or agency, having a few hours to get their spin over, before going full AC again.
Posting initial news reports or early opinion hoping to sway readers, hoping nobody will actually read the links and follow up with real news.
Virtue signalling is the big slip up most of the accounts just cannot avoid. Eg. a party political personality trait, pushing a "security clearances" past to add validity, patriotism, nationalism, jingoism, the same sob story again and again usually gets past the smart hearts and minds effort. i.e. the person befuddles their role due to their own gov work or some mil experience.
The better way is to set up a left or right think tank and have them hire based on life experience. The jargon, slang, life stories are then indistinguishable from actual account users, the spin can be perfected over years of account use. No needing tens of fake accounts, fake ip's, no fear of linguistic analysis, just perfected astroturfing for hire. The staff are happy and on message and if suited can be rolled out on book tours, public speaking, for comedy.
The better lobbyists are using well funded authors, comedians, public speakers rather than vast amounts of easily detectable online accounts.
If the security services never demanded an end to onion routing politically it was always trackable.
The public US court cases with an ip been tracked finally showed the per case budget and skills needed to trace any onion routing network user.
It depends on the domestic, gov and legal media spin needed.
Blame one or two distant nations seems to play well to the domestic press.
Nations that can get in, stay in, move data but are so easy to detect just after an event...
The insider threat just seems to be in the too hard basket for most to even think to ask about.
Recall some of the past news events surrounding security and later findings.
New Research Blames Insiders, Not North Korea, for Sony Hack (Dec. 30, 2014) http://time.com/3649394/sony-h...
More Data on Attributing the Sony Attack https://www.schneier.com/blog/...
For an outsider to get in, stay in, have free movement inside a network, get out with some amount of usable data? Not been detected?
Or a walk out?
AC nobody expects a secret US grand jury investigation.
"EPIC Partially Prevails in FOIA Case, Wikileaks Investigation Ongoing" https://epic.org/foia/doj/wiki...
US government still hunting WikiLeaks as Obama targets whistleblowers (6 March 2015) https://www.theguardian.com/me...
more at http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj...
"The FBI's "still active and ongoing" probe of WikiLeaks" (March 06, 2015) http://www.courthousenews.com/...
from https://epic.org/foia/doj/wiki...
i.e. "... the Department of Justice and FBI’s multi-subject investigation into the unauthorised disclosure of classified information published on WikiLeaks, which is “still active and ongoing” and remains in the investigative stage."
Re Why aren't geeks doing more to improve the world?
Could that lack of ability start before ever entering the private sector?
Study hard, pay up or a full scholarship still based on academic results. Get guided to a getting a security clearance just to have access to very advanced crypto, maths? Trips to conferences, talks, corporate funding, gov projects. Any good job later will need clearance, get it early, see the world while still in academia? That security clearance that opened academic doors is now a generational NDA.
All the big brands offering full access to their networks to the NSA and a few other nations.
The tech leadership, brands, admins, contractors, academics, lawyers, outside security experts never really understood what was been done on their own networks? Commented on strange data flows or encryption?
Wifi and OVERHEAD?
Real problems are not fixed for decades and a brand works so hard to get their perfect photo on social media.
It would not seem to be an investment risk issue but experts not risking the security clearance club membership.
Re technology workers are making the world a better place?
Other nations will just build around such junk exports and weak standards.
Thats why projects like the Lemote Yeeloong laptop got interest. Been understood down to the hardware level was very important e.g. building on a a free software boot loader.
Free software laptops (Dec 18, 2009) https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2...
Re Government doesn't attract top-tier talent. Never has, never will.
So the NSA and NRO are all built on the efforts of private sector contractors?
All we have is what the FBI said in public and wanted to be seen paying for or commenting on and big brand consumer grade encryption.
The same global consumer grade product lines the NSA has been tracking and reading without effort globally for a while.
If the FBI lets slip that they have an easy way in, or the NSA helped them, any interesting people still using Apple after PRISM will stop trusting Apple products domestically. FBI inside is not the best branding.
The other consideration is what will stand up in court for lawyers and the public to see as the origin go a case considering all the other devices waiting at a state, state task force and federal level. That discovery has to be legal and the lawyers might have their own experts ask questions in public. Some defendants will still have some funding to hire experts and a few request a public court trial. The NSA would not way a repeat of some of the IMSI-catcher like questions on their role in big brand decryption during an open domestic court setting.
The FBI was seeking a USA ready solution that could allow any state or task force get all devices open and such methods be court friendly.
How that method is working will be seen in future open court cases and the media attention other cases get. If the states start tasking case loads based more on phone related product that will be the confirmation that any such method is public court friendly and ready.
If the states still ask for more technical assistance in public, the methods are still at the parallel construction level as they always have been.
Some sort of gif Venn diagram or a new look MONIAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... using fluidic logic and a series of tubes to model the intentions of captive consumers.
Actions like data caps, loss of usenet, deep packet inspection, slowing p2p, a la carte television, the costs of just profiting from expensive new fast internet could all be explored for shareholder profits.
Why is big government doing the job of the private sector?
Who invested in vans, trucks, equipment and had to tender, bid for rat control work.
Governments that set standards are using cheap science to alter the natural balance of capitalism.
Think of the chemical sales, support jobs, local businesses that are all working to keep trucks stocked and chemicals flowing with the long term aim to stabilise rat populations. A large self supporting rat population can provide decades of control work, with very few of the larger rats noticed out during the day.
If the rat populations are allowed to drop so dramatically in one generation thanks to big gov meddling, think of the local jobs lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Think back to past UK and US efforts globally and "United States involvement in regime change" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Someone has to print all the stickers, t shirts, protest banners, create a logo, bus in the opposition supporters, support all the articulate, photogenic english speakers for the 24 hour news cycle.
That takes more than any locals can afford or can do without local police noticing.
Follow the funding, expatriate civil society efforts, decades of foreign gov and private grants to pro democracy NGO's.
The internet is just a new tool in the very old game of funding and shaping the results of seemingly local and "spontaneous" calls for regime change.
The next gen will not drop the telco generation or need to swamp an area with different power settings to be the new cell tower.
Its getting hard to map out. Unless all telco towers are visible/distant and a van/truck/car is also a very powerful new telco tower.
Gov and mil sites usually mask it with their very own "real" big normal looking cell tower or some very normal looking telco extender or standard contractor decorative private sector cell network.
The Greek wiretapping case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...–05 showed at the mil and gov level its all done via any telco network:)
also (Sep. 29 2015) https://theintercept.com/2015/...
SISMI-Telecom scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
From the UK (09 June 2015)
http://news.sky.com/story/fake...
If the local press is quick a local walk in FOIA request at a state, city, town, parish level for costs related to a federal state task force hardware can be very productive.
Show any needed local "police issued press ID" to be granted your full existing constitutional rights again, access and get reading, ask for a copy while waiting, right to photograph. Offers to post out, collect later in person, need to find the only staff with access will just result in full redactions or nothing been found later.
This will often need to take place during a very small window of time before material is quickly placed under full sealed federal control or the city/state requests full federal cover.
Funding for state task force hardware is often hidden from any and all state, national digital FOIA search attempts by default but a local paper record might just still exist until full federal protection is enacted.
Try the paper trail and use locals as fronts who have the accents, local photo ID's, still needed local police press passes, can quote any state legal findings, know contractor and city bureaucracies.
Be aware of attempts by contractors or local gov efforts to hide local paper access with helpful or "new" rules only supporting a digital search at a distant central city or state/federal level. Ask to see the local requested local paper work.
Slashdot Mirror
Even when the press works out its trusted US insiders walking out the data, the tech press and sock puppets still try and push an all powerful Russia or China cyber fantasy.
That other nations can get into networks, stay in, get all kinds of plain text data in bulk, get the data out without been detected. Hours later contractors find all the ip ranges, logs, fully understood and expected code fragments are found intact. The media is full aware of methods, ip's hours later...
Later the insider aspect is finally hinted at.
Strange that for decades no other admins, system workers, network designers, skilled top academics, telco staff, the private sector or other gov's ever noticed and published details about staging servers and methods found.
Now its all in the open? What went wrong with decades of never really been noticed? All that easy access, bulk data moved globally and no trace by the smart people with total access to the networks lost.
Has commercial and consumer cloud AV really gotten that good and responsive that staff can track a mil/gov staging server to its origin and just look around?
The internal NSA networks are open to staff, other agencies, random contractors for a reason. So many had projects to run that securing it all would have slowed down. It was sold as a new decade of searches, help, access by contractors.
Other agencies wanted domestic or staff information on topics the NSA had no need to question.
So most US internal gov networks are open, plain text for rapid searching. The security thinking is any search on the inside is legal, valid and secure.
The 'couldn't keep their own staff from access to everything" was the warning from history. Letting private contractors into gov secrets is always an error from a security perspective. The CIA, GCHQ warned the NSA. NSA gov staff warned the NSA. But the political drive for profits and the lobbying by the private sector was too strong. Decades of good gov security was lost to private sector contractors in years self signing their own access for profit.
The contractors don't get much funding after suggesting correctly everyday police work will uncover the insider.
With experts pushing Russia, China in the press, contractors can request huge new software support rentals and hardware investments, bid for ongoing gov staff training.
Then upgrades and a new generation of security related software and hardware will keep that ubiquitous Skilled Bear v 3.0 out of any gov network.
Academic grants to study other nations educational structures, write reports on the kind of code patterns their best university graduates will be unable to hide.
Having a real nation as the origin to show political leaders is a corporate and academic funding dream. Suggesting a local police effort to find an insider will get a real result but no big contracts or grants.
So expect a lot of people online with a mil, gov background to be pushing early and wild stories about traces of code, other nations ip ranges, time zones, logs been found.
Why let a cyber crisis to go to waste and not cash in on decades of no bid federal cyber funding by suggest police interview a few staff members?
How Covert Agents Infiltrate The Internet To Manipulate, Deceive, And Destroy Reputations (Feb. 25 2014) :)
https://theintercept.com/2014/...
The funny part about people with an agenda is they can only fake been normal for so long until they are induced to rush to the aid of their nation, faith, cult, big gov, mil, agency or corporate backer.
Usually undoing months of careful account usage over months in a few lines or with one rushed link
The problem with that is city growth, access for smart staff to nice, safe neighbourhoods usually takes over from a sealed off, remote site.
Most nations try to counter that with a 1980's version of the East German boarder in depth around a site.
Everyone allowed near the area is passed as been loyal. Any new faces, cars, passengers get databased. With photographic records of all tourists, students, academics, diplomats, sympathisers, strangers around sensitive sites kept, interesting people are quickly tracked and tasked for investigation.
Nations might even expand roads, rail or bus links to avoid an area. No reason for many people just to be passing.
A random police event far from a site for speeding, been too slow, poor etiquette will usually give an ID on approach.
Chat downs of any strange new people with a camera, on a bike, walking the area.
The other trick is for a uniformed security guard or other undercover security posing as staff to lure the interesting person onto a a private, gov or mil site. Many rights and legal protections while on public land are then replaced with complex mil/gov trespassing issues.
Foreign governments just buy, bribe or are contacted by ex, former staff and get all the real details.
The risk with blurring is a region then becomes a forum or social media event for locals, tourists and the tech press. Inducing having a new drone and/or 600mm camera taken away with a deportation story becomes a rite of passage for the media. Or a local version of a first amendment audit area that just keeps giving the best encounters and chat downs for social media.
Re Question 2: Why is this worse than lobbyists who actually screw us over and make our lives miserable?
Lets say a wealthy person wants free speech but has no real free time in the day to engage in a long online conversation. They hire one person to be that online persona putting in say five hours a day.
What if the message is always been drowned out by facts and reality? Hire 10 people to each be 10 or 100 accounts each with their own story and time zone, ip?
In the end you just go big and go with what a gov enjoys:
"Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media " (18 March 2011)
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
British army creates team of Facebook warriors (31 January 2015)
https://www.theguardian.com/uk...
Re 'Really. I honestly want to know."
The "tell" is usually one person with a lot of accounts cleaning up after bad news about a nation, their faith or their side of politics, gov, mil or agency, having a few hours to get their spin over, before going full AC again.
Posting initial news reports or early opinion hoping to sway readers, hoping nobody will actually read the links and follow up with real news.
Virtue signalling is the big slip up most of the accounts just cannot avoid. Eg. a party political personality trait, pushing a "security clearances" past to add validity, patriotism, nationalism, jingoism, the same sob story again and again usually gets past the smart hearts and minds effort. i.e. the person befuddles their role due to their own gov work or some mil experience.
The better way is to set up a left or right think tank and have them hire based on life experience. The jargon, slang, life stories are then indistinguishable from actual account users, the spin can be perfected over years of account use. No needing tens of fake accounts, fake ip's, no fear of linguistic analysis, just perfected astroturfing for hire. The staff are happy and on message and if suited can be rolled out on book tours, public speaking, for comedy.
The better lobbyists are using well funded authors, comedians, public speakers rather than vast amounts of easily detectable online accounts.
The other issue is developers trusting installers only to find extra apps get added :) :)
A free ride deep into any OS
If the security services never demanded an end to onion routing politically it was always trackable.
The public US court cases with an ip been tracked finally showed the per case budget and skills needed to trace any onion routing network user.
It depends on the domestic, gov and legal media spin needed.
Blame one or two distant nations seems to play well to the domestic press.
Nations that can get in, stay in, move data but are so easy to detect just after an event...
The insider threat just seems to be in the too hard basket for most to even think to ask about.
Recall some of the past news events surrounding security and later findings.
New Research Blames Insiders, Not North Korea, for Sony Hack (Dec. 30, 2014)
http://time.com/3649394/sony-h...
More Data on Attributing the Sony Attack
https://www.schneier.com/blog/...
For an outsider to get in, stay in, have free movement inside a network, get out with some amount of usable data? Not been detected?
Or a walk out?
The ability to create an account was as simple as thinking of a name and pw.
Thats more about getting a mobile number :)
Wonder how long the ability just to click pass that request will last?
Recall early HD hardware and the way prices globally stayed up for a while.
The list of ready content is growing. http://www.blu-ray.com/4k/
AC nobody expects a secret US grand jury investigation.
"EPIC Partially Prevails in FOIA Case, Wikileaks Investigation Ongoing"
https://epic.org/foia/doj/wiki...
US government still hunting WikiLeaks as Obama targets whistleblowers (6 March 2015)
https://www.theguardian.com/me...
more at http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj...
"The FBI's "still active and ongoing" probe of WikiLeaks" (March 06, 2015)
http://www.courthousenews.com/...
from https://epic.org/foia/doj/wiki...
i.e. "... the Department of Justice and FBI’s multi-subject investigation into the unauthorised disclosure of classified information published on WikiLeaks, which is “still active and ongoing” and remains in the investigative stage."
Its not about durability, its better accuracy now. Something under each satellite will need better accuracy. Even better embassy crypto globally?
Re Why aren't geeks doing more to improve the world?
Could that lack of ability start before ever entering the private sector?
Study hard, pay up or a full scholarship still based on academic results. Get guided to a getting a security clearance just to have access to very advanced crypto, maths? Trips to conferences, talks, corporate funding, gov projects. Any good job later will need clearance, get it early, see the world while still in academia? That security clearance that opened academic doors is now a generational NDA.
All the big brands offering full access to their networks to the NSA and a few other nations.
The tech leadership, brands, admins, contractors, academics, lawyers, outside security experts never really understood what was been done on their own networks? Commented on strange data flows or encryption?
Wifi and OVERHEAD?
Real problems are not fixed for decades and a brand works so hard to get their perfect photo on social media.
It would not seem to be an investment risk issue but experts not risking the security clearance club membership.
Re technology workers are making the world a better place?
Other nations will just build around such junk exports and weak standards.
Thats why projects like the Lemote Yeeloong laptop got interest. Been understood down to the hardware level was very important e.g. building on a a free software boot loader.
Free software laptops (Dec 18, 2009)
https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2...
No more FBI aircraft to track over any US city.
https://www.theguardian.com/us... (Tuesday 2 June 2015)
24/7 aerostats looking down. Tracking cell phones, computer use. With the NSA and OVERHEAD like options even wifi.
https://theintercept.com/2016/...
Total domestic drag net surveillance.
DHS Uses Wartime Mega-Camera to Watch Border (04.02.12)
https://www.wired.com/2012/04/...
Re Government doesn't attract top-tier talent. Never has, never will.
So the NSA and NRO are all built on the efforts of private sector contractors?
All we have is what the FBI said in public and wanted to be seen paying for or commenting on and big brand consumer grade encryption.
The same global consumer grade product lines the NSA has been tracking and reading without effort globally for a while.
If the FBI lets slip that they have an easy way in, or the NSA helped them, any interesting people still using Apple after PRISM will stop trusting Apple products domestically. FBI inside is not the best branding.
The other consideration is what will stand up in court for lawyers and the public to see as the origin go a case considering all the other devices waiting at a state, state task force and federal level. That discovery has to be legal and the lawyers might have their own experts ask questions in public. Some defendants will still have some funding to hire experts and a few request a public court trial. The NSA would not way a repeat of some of the IMSI-catcher like questions on their role in big brand decryption during an open domestic court setting.
The FBI was seeking a USA ready solution that could allow any state or task force get all devices open and such methods be court friendly.
How that method is working will be seen in future open court cases and the media attention other cases get. If the states start tasking case loads based more on phone related product that will be the confirmation that any such method is public court friendly and ready.
If the states still ask for more technical assistance in public, the methods are still at the parallel construction level as they always have been.
Some sort of gif Venn diagram or a new look MONIAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... using fluidic logic and a series of tubes to model the intentions of captive consumers.
Actions like data caps, loss of usenet, deep packet inspection, slowing p2p, a la carte television, the costs of just profiting from expensive new fast internet could all be explored for shareholder profits.
Why is big government doing the job of the private sector?
Who invested in vans, trucks, equipment and had to tender, bid for rat control work.
Governments that set standards are using cheap science to alter the natural balance of capitalism.
Think of the chemical sales, support jobs, local businesses that are all working to keep trucks stocked and chemicals flowing with the long term aim to stabilise rat populations.
A large self supporting rat population can provide decades of control work, with very few of the larger rats noticed out during the day.
If the rat populations are allowed to drop so dramatically in one generation thanks to big gov meddling, think of the local jobs lost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Think back to past UK and US efforts globally and "United States involvement in regime change"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Someone has to print all the stickers, t shirts, protest banners, create a logo, bus in the opposition supporters, support all the articulate, photogenic english speakers for the 24 hour news cycle.
That takes more than any locals can afford or can do without local police noticing.
Follow the funding, expatriate civil society efforts, decades of foreign gov and private grants to pro democracy NGO's.
The internet is just a new tool in the very old game of funding and shaping the results of seemingly local and "spontaneous" calls for regime change.
The next gen will not drop the telco generation or need to swamp an area with different power settings to be the new cell tower. :)
Its getting hard to map out. Unless all telco towers are visible/distant and a van/truck/car is also a very powerful new telco tower.
Gov and mil sites usually mask it with their very own "real" big normal looking cell tower or some very normal looking telco extender or standard contractor decorative private sector cell network.
The Greek wiretapping case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...–05 showed at the mil and gov level its all done via any telco network
also (Sep. 29 2015) https://theintercept.com/2015/...
SISMI-Telecom scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
From the UK (09 June 2015) http://news.sky.com/story/fake...
If the local press is quick a local walk in FOIA request at a state, city, town, parish level for costs related to a federal state task force hardware can be very productive.
Show any needed local "police issued press ID" to be granted your full existing constitutional rights again, access and get reading, ask for a copy while waiting, right to photograph. Offers to post out, collect later in person, need to find the only staff with access will just result in full redactions or nothing been found later.
This will often need to take place during a very small window of time before material is quickly placed under full sealed federal control or the city/state requests full federal cover.
Funding for state task force hardware is often hidden from any and all state, national digital FOIA search attempts by default but a local paper record might just still exist until full federal protection is enacted.
Try the paper trail and use locals as fronts who have the accents, local photo ID's, still needed local police press passes, can quote any state legal findings, know contractor and city bureaucracies.
Be aware of attempts by contractors or local gov efforts to hide local paper access with helpful or "new" rules only supporting a digital search at a distant central city or state/federal level. Ask to see the local requested local paper work.