The problem for that is the origin. Other nations and their fellow travellers, cult members, dual citizens, deep cover agents or useful groups can stage any kind of network event with internal or expected external IP address, time zones and other code hints all pointing to the expected 'country' or group.
Contractors, the politically connected all then feed from the event with digital products, services, clean ups, changes, new expensive training and long term monitoring.
All that is found is a legal working company legend, cut out or site used. How would a country find where the bad code entered the internet?
The neutral country with great hosting and low bandwidth costs that all was traced back to? The country who has on average produced expert coders over generations of very gifted academics? The code used kind of looks like something from that part of the world? Something was left to be found days later in the code in that language, it fits the time zone, ip and with international politics?
It could all be a distraction, false flag or just average code re used by an unexpected nation for their own national interest with the skills to have a great cover story.
The only good method is to air gap a nations vital infrastructure and clear all on site local staff.
The problem with networks is they face the wider world or strangers can build trust with cleared staff who then allow code to move along a trusted internal network.
All a nation gets in the end is a local staff members account was the origin or easy found, expected code fragments 100% that 'that' country.
International partners then have to be 100% told it was that 'that' country.
Then what? Other nations share the same code and other their different country of origin findings that they where 100% sure of?
Think of it in Cold War terms.
Communist using the under the cover of workers rights, trying law reform, Vietnam war protests or other national or State issues.
That would need a close working relationship between national and state gov staff, local police. To find the foreign aspect and have real locals watching every public meeting or protest and befriend the group or person.
The operational capability of hardware and software once in the hands of the mil or national gov due to buying and running costs is now at a much lower level.
Consumer culture also allows for people to be much for relaxed around computers and other cellular devices. The cell phone is on, mic is active and stays on as two people meet face to face.
No more plain old telephone service recording, tracking beacon in the car and hope to have enough local staff to be in position for that face to face meeting if the car is not used.
The only change is the total cost of tracking below the federal level and quality of audio or images.
It depends on how the product was crafted per person.
On some consumer OS versions all you have to do is get under the consumer grade antivirus by not having to use in the wild malware thats been found.
That product has to avoid consumer grade antivirus behavior analysis, cosumer software firewalls over days and get the data out.
The 'out' part can be just as fun. A waiting consumer computer that looks like any other home computer in an empty home at the end of a city street with rental phone company records to match.
As for Linux http://www.theguardian.com/tec... (16 September 2014) http://www.theguardian.com/tec...
has the line " can infect Apple OS X, Windows and Linux computers as well as Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Phone devices."
The issue is consumer grade antivirus has to have something to find and report back on. If the software is crafted per person and then removed in a short time that consumer grade antivirus option will never be a factor.
The other option is just to go for the keyboard or other cell phone input layer on the active cell device. A user can then encrypt, hide ip all they want at a software or higher hardware level but every keystroke is collected.
With a correct password any later software alterations would be part of the next expected, correct Linux checksums. The keyboard logger would not even have to use any internet network, it could just go very short range wireless avoiding all software/hardware packet sniffers efforts.
Re sunglasses
Fashion that will hide you from face-recognition technology ( 1/06/14) http://io9.com/how-fashion-can...
"For example, if you are wearing sunglasses, the system will recognize the sunglasses and then ignore that part of your face. The program will then simply analyze whatever is left behind. "... "that it's possible to recognize faces with 30% and in some cases 50% occlusion."
Re "It's probably also worth nothing that it's an investigation tool and can't be used as a source of positive identification."
Just like phone call parallel construction? Just like the use of lower cost cellular phone surveillance devices at a city and State level?
CCTV from city, state, federal and other sites will be joined in public private partnerships to ensure every face in some areas gets a good probability of been compared to existing databases or new faces saved for years.
Add in cell phone information at the same time, tracking license plates, getting the passengers face, over time builds up years of positive identification.
Add in tame partnerships between the private sector and the federal gov, very tame social media, very tame web 2.0 providers and helpful telcos.
The cpu costs per face and time per face is low, storage costs are low. Side on images and the physics of the lens distance is really the only difficult part left.
Funding for more CCTV can help with that. Social media can also be used to induce the wider public to upload many pictures of staff, friends, random faces in public for national "promote awareness" events. With gps, camera details kept in the uploaded file, good lighting, more resolution and lots of faces facing in the right direction for facial recognition.
Recall the "NSA Releases Snowden Email, Says He Raised No Concerns About Spying" (05.29.14) http://www.wired.com/2014/05/s...
".... the NSA released a statement and a copy of the only email it says it found from Snowden.
That email, the agency says, asked a question about legal authority and hierarchy but did not raise any concerns."
Now its just about FIOA requests finding more or wondering what was held back as as the gov felt it "did not raise any concerns"....
From no emails to one email found back to none under a definition of what "identify" is going to find?
The other option is to only look for a few narrow legal terms that would constitute a formal complaint and not find one.
Depends on the phone used, telco and gov. Just pressing off might be the only option with some tame telco products. Removing a battery might be an option with other telco products.
A gov or mil may wish to map out the path taken by a member of the press A person turns their phone off in the same area and then both phones are turned on again moving away from each other later?
Kind of easy to track the members of the press still covering gov and mil stories in person per city.
If one person left their phone battery in thats a live malware or telco activated mic in real time. Treasure Map would be fun for the office computer, home computer, any devices on the move.
The content can be sorted, saved once a person is found to be interesting. The ip, MAC and other data around all network use is the Treasure Map prize.
What network data a business, university or household sends can be looked at in real time for keywords, voice prints or people been tracked.
Treasure Map provides a much better/deeper understanding of the local network than just ending at an.edu or.com with a lot of users per day on different networks.
Tame software, tame hardware, junk weak crypto, the tame admin staff member "invited" into a gov public private security partnership could open a lot of the networks expected to be difficult.
That laptop might drift from a dorm room to free wifi to a home to friends house. A lot of different networks but thanks to public private partnerships not every network is difficult anymore.
Average nations internet service providers can keep ip, time and user name for a few years at a low cost?
Average phone companies can keep all details on all calls connected over many years.
Nations have the data split in real time, the ip, get help from the tame telcos and fully understand the internet crypto as used.
Collect everything surrounding all message, keywords and usage, save and sort. Find people been tracked connecting to new people, trace the hops and then add in all the new people to trace.
Storage is now cheap, cpu speed is cheap to sort hops, compression keeps pace over years.
Voice prints, keywords, phone numbers called all worked well in the past but no need to be so selective with the data around a call, message, fax, email, chat, web 2.0 use.
eg voice print information will will ensure any call connected with that person globally is kept.
A new person or people already in the system? Keyword use look into every message so all network users can be sorted, added.
1960's tech for calls made, numbers used. Voice prints are not new. Massive domestic surveillance exposed in 1970's has been in news a lot.
Nations can just use their number stations. One time pads and decades of very safe trusted sleeper agents are promoted.
Signals gathering expects the world to be using this generations ww2 ENIGMA like network over decades - tame telco crypto networks and internet will bring back lots of useful data as all other nations are not careful.
The interview with whistleblower William Binney: 'The NSA's main motives: power and money' (19.08.2014) http://www.dw.de/binney-the-ns...
"Money. It takes a lot of money, you have to build up Bluffdale [the location of the NSA's data storage center, in Utah] to store all the data. If you collect all the data, you've got to store it, you have to hire more people to analyze it, you have to hire more contractors, managers to manage the flow. You have to start a big data initiative. It's an empire. Look at what they've built!"
Face to face, holidays, dual citizens, smart people invited in by rushed digital clearances. Clearances issued for a contractor to bring in expert staff.
Other nations have no need for their own to use the "Treasure Mapped" internet in any interesting ways.
The good news is people meeting the press are more aware of having their cell phone on or powered and with them.
The press can now understand that turning off a phone can be seen as getting ready to meet a contact.
Anyone in the same area at the same time who turns off their phone might be that contact. Kind of a short list:)
The press is more aware of been under constant surveillance.
Treasure Map just adds to the collect it all idea and that digital entry or exit points can be fully reconstructed or are always been tracked.
Thats a lot of expensive effort to put into signals intelligence considering what most skilled nations fully understood about global telephone and computer networks going back over decades.
Looking at where all data enters and exits the internet (www or the World Wide Wiretap)
Wifi, VPN, implanted OS or hardware devices, pubic, private, down to MAC address as expected.
Sorting by Infected hosts or Tor router?
All part of collect it all:)
Slashdot users may recall news from 2008 "Let’s Monitor All P2P" (April 17, 2008) http://www.dailytech.com/Senat...
"Agents then track the offender on a “daily” basis, identifying them by their IP address and, in some cases, a “unique serial number” sourced from offender’s computer."
"Investigators have recorded almost 1.3 million of the unique serial numbers thus far, with about half of them residing in the United States – and that number is steadily increasing each month due to “extensive capturing” conducted since October 2005."
That has been going on for many, many years. Every file of interest to law enforcement globally is logged and tracked over many different kinds of networks, p2p like networks in real time.
All users moving any known file have unique data about their network and computers used (beyond MAC, ip) recorded as the file is networked.
The US gov could have looked at all networks and then sorted for gov and mil workers legally. Or had the mil sort for on base networking connections on a base or mil network.
Or looked at gov/mil issued computer hardware, software and for network misuse on mil sites.
Instead the US mil collected all and then tried to sort out all people not part of any mil base.... or gov....
Re 'change in our freedoms?"
"It takes a lot of money, you have to build up Bluffdale [the location of the NSA's data storage center, in Utah] to store all the data. If you collect all the data, you've got to store it, you have to hire more people to analyze it, you have to hire more contractors, managers to manage the flow. You have to start a big data initiative. It's an empire. Look at what they've built!"
Binney: 'The NSA's main motives: power and money' http://www.dw.de/binney-the-ns... (9.08.2014)
Signals intelligence was to "collect it all" and then sort. The next step was some lock box law for phone records to get around parallel construction in open US courts.
The UK understood if people know about signals intelligence they can move away from telco products.
The US seems to hope that all people will enjoy the freedom of buying and using that next tame consumer grade telco product.
re "How can you fine someone for not cooperating in activities that the government refused to even admit existed?"
The 'The One Telco Exec Who Resisted The NSA Has Been Released From 4+ Years In Jail" (2013/09/27) https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
Re: the generations of embargo and The Bay of Pigs.
Something really interesting must have happened in the past with events surrounding the Bay of Pigs invasion and its CIA backers.
"CIA SUCCESSFULLY CONCEALS BAY OF PIGS HISTORY
D.C. CIRCUIT SPLIT DECISION RULES CIA DRAFT HISTORY CAN BE KEPT SECRET INDEFINITELY" http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/... (May 21, 2014)
""expose an agency's decision making process in such a way as to discourage candid discussion within the agency and thereby undermine the agency's ability to perform its functions.""
So if that is kind of passion a CIA draft can invoke years later, the need for an endless embargo seems to still hold sway.
Its just part of a long list of Covert United States foreign regime change actions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... but there seems to be something special about Cuba for the US political elite.
Yes it would seem new background investigations are getting access to larger all digital databases by skilled staff or real people are been interviewed about a persons past again.
This would show a change from the mostly digital state and federal search to a more intensive look at schooling, friends, family, teachers, reading material, net use, local court paper files and other local non digital investigations.
This would show a lot more funding is now been pushed into rebuilding peoples entire life story.
Why the sudden change? The US was very happy to rapidly expand its gov staff, contractors with needed skills and trust in digital databases.
If the US gets too interested in the pasts of needed staff it will fail to hire the best or fail to find the perfect penetration agent.
A penetration agent would have the perfect gov cleared parents, good schooling, good grades, no issues but deep inside be a dual citizen, cult member, faith based person reporting to another country over decades. If they past that new real world intensive look what would stop them?
That would need teams that where not just looking at signals intelligence or file handling. The US would have to fully track all its staff over years.
The UK faced down that issue by offering great pay, better conditions and keeping its trusted staff happy and only seeking the best per generation.
The US has a vast structure of contractors, gov workers and public private aspects that would all need looking at considering the rapid growth of new cleared staff in the past years.
The homeless with limited ID, shared ID, created ID that is sold and in use for years, untraceable people with some form of random usable ID all interacting with local free health services.
Other countries may offer some form of free health care only after ensuring a person is eligible.
Payments then follow to the dr, hospital and health care can be fully tracked by a national gov. From the patient to the costly over use, billing of medical services by staff.
Yes why would a fully funded gov or mil need to spread any *new* issue around? Just use existing methods by tame turned informants as cover or get to watch the server or provider by legal methods for all logs with parallel construction or just watch the servers of interest. Get to their hardware, software, friend the staff or break the crypto with no real outside traces.
Cash is not an issues, skills is not an issue, informants hide methods or orders, telcos and OS providers are "happy" to help or their hardware and software is fully understood.
If something was done with this kind of tech, what would be left to find or leak out? Nothing: Staff turned or site left running with data leaking. No other sites, people, staff, tracking, logging would have to know or need to know.
Any random very skilled admin speaking out could be called in for a chat about ongoing legal police work and had an offer made after they exposed an ongoing court approved operation... the methods targeted at a few sites, crypto go under reported, un noticed and are then cleaned up.
A fully funded gov or mil and their contractors get the material, the wider happy admin community just keeps patching.
Re "Any evidence of when this started?"
Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the CIA. By this time, Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies."...
"The organization recruited leading American journalists into a network to help present the CIA's views, and funded some student and cultural organizations, and magazines as fronts. As it developed, it also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns, in addition to activities by other operating units of the CIA." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Modern art was CIA 'weapon'" (22 October 1995) http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
"...The next key step came in 1950, when the International Organisations Division (IOD) was set up"
"... the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years."
I would suggest over decades with older press staff and now the next web 2.0 generations too.
Beyond that is the useful sockpuppet and other personas to push out policy or distract.
Or Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The mystery of flight 870 (22 July 2006) http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
It seems strange this story was just 'found' now... with a mention of the "Kola Peninsula or a submarine in the Barents Sea"...
Re: 'Why authorities allowed that drug house to operate in plain sight I do not know but if they arrested everyone that purchased drugs in that drive through it might have bankrupted the city. What will happen when the slumbering public becomes aware that society gives some criminals a free pass?"
Options: see where the cash goes and follow it up to the 'top' by offering all the lower people found "informant" status.
This builds insiders and providers open court parallel construction cover to hide mention of the telco 'tech' - eg an insider was used to bring a case to court vs the tame US phone system, tame OS and junk encryption software tracked people of interest 24/7 for years.
Add in voice prints, gps, tracking, new calls connecting to known cell numbers... its just waiting for the press friendly raid to get another federal grant.
The other aspect is the funding for the mil/gov bureaucrats and their private sector contractor friends. The conditions allow for huge buy ins of telco tech, training, support and upgrades via ex gov staff who entered the private sector.
Everybody is winning via the gov spending on gov telco signals systems. The gov may not even need to pay the telcos for some tech and might just go tap direct into the private sector telco networks as the encryption is so poor and needed hardware so cheap. That also cuts out the private staff talking to the press risk.
As for the drug deals tracked by signals intelligence: the producers just want to ship product, the shipment networks are tracked, the sellers move/launder/divert their massive cash profits via friendly Western banks, the Western banks look after their long term shareholders... the police get federal budgets/grants to raid low end users.... everybody of importance is winning.
The gov tells itself it does not want to endanger "parallel construction". The private sector just wants to keep the gov upgrading and in need of complex generational maintenance contracts.
Re 'Or were all of these in unlicensed spectrum ?"
"Phone Firewall Identifies Rogue Cell Towers Trying to Intercept Your Calls" (09.03.14) http://www.wired.com/2014/09/c...
Seems to offer a hint via "But the [FCC] task force will only examine the use of the devices by hackers and criminals—and possibly foreign intelligence agencies—not their warrantless use by law enforcement agencies bent on deceiving judges about their deployment of the powerful surveillance technology."
Seems to hint at a few known/listed devices getting a free gov/telco pass re frequency allocations when discovered in the wild.
The good news is a "... envision a consumer-level app in the future that could be installed on phones by individuals.":)
Cell towers are usually owned or shared by telco firms, brands, providers that try to encrypt their users and are kind of easy to spot with hardware.
The "Phony" cell towers do not respond or act in the same way. They are fake but still fool a users phone into making a network connection.
Tame consumer grade hardware is fooled into seeing just another cell tower.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem for that is the origin. Other nations and their fellow travellers, cult members, dual citizens, deep cover agents or useful groups can stage any kind of network event with internal or expected external IP address, time zones and other code hints all pointing to the expected 'country' or group.
Contractors, the politically connected all then feed from the event with digital products, services, clean ups, changes, new expensive training and long term monitoring.
All that is found is a legal working company legend, cut out or site used. How would a country find where the bad code entered the internet?
The neutral country with great hosting and low bandwidth costs that all was traced back to? The country who has on average produced expert coders over generations of very gifted academics? The code used kind of looks like something from that part of the world? Something was left to be found days later in the code in that language, it fits the time zone, ip and with international politics?
It could all be a distraction, false flag or just average code re used by an unexpected nation for their own national interest with the skills to have a great cover story.
The only good method is to air gap a nations vital infrastructure and clear all on site local staff.
The problem with networks is they face the wider world or strangers can build trust with cleared staff who then allow code to move along a trusted internal network.
All a nation gets in the end is a local staff members account was the origin or easy found, expected code fragments 100% that 'that' country.
International partners then have to be 100% told it was that 'that' country.
Then what? Other nations share the same code and other their different country of origin findings that they where 100% sure of?
Think of it in Cold War terms.
Communist using the under the cover of workers rights, trying law reform, Vietnam war protests or other national or State issues.
That would need a close working relationship between national and state gov staff, local police. To find the foreign aspect and have real locals watching every public meeting or protest and befriend the group or person.
The operational capability of hardware and software once in the hands of the mil or national gov due to buying and running costs is now at a much lower level.
Consumer culture also allows for people to be much for relaxed around computers and other cellular devices. The cell phone is on, mic is active and stays on as two people meet face to face.
No more plain old telephone service recording, tracking beacon in the car and hope to have enough local staff to be in position for that face to face meeting if the car is not used.
The only change is the total cost of tracking below the federal level and quality of audio or images.
It depends on how the product was crafted per person.
On some consumer OS versions all you have to do is get under the consumer grade antivirus by not having to use in the wild malware thats been found.
That product has to avoid consumer grade antivirus behavior analysis, cosumer software firewalls over days and get the data out.
The 'out' part can be just as fun. A waiting consumer computer that looks like any other home computer in an empty home at the end of a city street with rental phone company records to match.
As for Linux http://www.theguardian.com/tec... (16 September 2014)
http://www.theguardian.com/tec...
has the line " can infect Apple OS X, Windows and Linux computers as well as Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Phone devices."
The issue is consumer grade antivirus has to have something to find and report back on. If the software is crafted per person and then removed in a short time that consumer grade antivirus option will never be a factor.
The other option is just to go for the keyboard or other cell phone input layer on the active cell device. A user can then encrypt, hide ip all they want at a software or higher hardware level but every keystroke is collected.
With a correct password any later software alterations would be part of the next expected, correct Linux checksums. The keyboard logger would not even have to use any internet network, it could just go very short range wireless avoiding all software/hardware packet sniffers efforts.
Re sunglasses
Fashion that will hide you from face-recognition technology ( 1/06/14)
http://io9.com/how-fashion-can...
"For example, if you are wearing sunglasses, the system will recognize the sunglasses and then ignore that part of your face. The program will then simply analyze whatever is left behind. "... "that it's possible to recognize faces with 30% and in some cases 50% occlusion."
Re "It's probably also worth nothing that it's an investigation tool and can't be used as a source of positive identification."
Just like phone call parallel construction? Just like the use of lower cost cellular phone surveillance devices at a city and State level?
CCTV from city, state, federal and other sites will be joined in public private partnerships to ensure every face in some areas gets a good probability of been compared to existing databases or new faces saved for years.
Add in cell phone information at the same time, tracking license plates, getting the passengers face, over time builds up years of positive identification.
Add in tame partnerships between the private sector and the federal gov, very tame social media, very tame web 2.0 providers and helpful telcos.
The cpu costs per face and time per face is low, storage costs are low. Side on images and the physics of the lens distance is really the only difficult part left.
Funding for more CCTV can help with that. Social media can also be used to induce the wider public to upload many pictures of staff, friends, random faces in public for national "promote awareness" events. With gps, camera details kept in the uploaded file, good lighting, more resolution and lots of faces facing in the right direction for facial recognition.
Recall the "NSA Releases Snowden Email, Says He Raised No Concerns About Spying" (05.29.14)
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/s...
".... the NSA released a statement and a copy of the only email it says it found from Snowden.
That email, the agency says, asked a question about legal authority and hierarchy but did not raise any concerns."
Now its just about FIOA requests finding more or wondering what was held back as as the gov felt it "did not raise any concerns"....
From no emails to one email found back to none under a definition of what "identify" is going to find?
The other option is to only look for a few narrow legal terms that would constitute a formal complaint and not find one.
Depends on the phone used, telco and gov. Just pressing off might be the only option with some tame telco products. Removing a battery might be an option with other telco products.
A gov or mil may wish to map out the path taken by a member of the press A person turns their phone off in the same area and then both phones are turned on again moving away from each other later?
Kind of easy to track the members of the press still covering gov and mil stories in person per city.
If one person left their phone battery in thats a live malware or telco activated mic in real time. Treasure Map would be fun for the office computer, home computer, any devices on the move.
The content can be sorted, saved once a person is found to be interesting. The ip, MAC and other data around all network use is the Treasure Map prize. .edu or .com with a lot of users per day on different networks.
What network data a business, university or household sends can be looked at in real time for keywords, voice prints or people been tracked.
Treasure Map provides a much better/deeper understanding of the local network than just ending at an
Tame software, tame hardware, junk weak crypto, the tame admin staff member "invited" into a gov public private security partnership could open a lot of the networks expected to be difficult.
That laptop might drift from a dorm room to free wifi to a home to friends house. A lot of different networks but thanks to public private partnerships not every network is difficult anymore.
Average nations internet service providers can keep ip, time and user name for a few years at a low cost?
Average phone companies can keep all details on all calls connected over many years.
Nations have the data split in real time, the ip, get help from the tame telcos and fully understand the internet crypto as used.
Collect everything surrounding all message, keywords and usage, save and sort. Find people been tracked connecting to new people, trace the hops and then add in all the new people to trace.
Storage is now cheap, cpu speed is cheap to sort hops, compression keeps pace over years.
Voice prints, keywords, phone numbers called all worked well in the past but no need to be so selective with the data around a call, message, fax, email, chat, web 2.0 use.
eg voice print information will will ensure any call connected with that person globally is kept.
A new person or people already in the system? Keyword use look into every message so all network users can be sorted, added.
1960's tech for calls made, numbers used. Voice prints are not new. Massive domestic surveillance exposed in 1970's has been in news a lot.
Nations can just use their number stations. One time pads and decades of very safe trusted sleeper agents are promoted.
Signals gathering expects the world to be using this generations ww2 ENIGMA like network over decades - tame telco crypto networks and internet will bring back lots of useful data as all other nations are not careful.
The interview with whistleblower William Binney: 'The NSA's main motives: power and money' (19.08.2014)
http://www.dw.de/binney-the-ns...
"Money. It takes a lot of money, you have to build up Bluffdale [the location of the NSA's data storage center, in Utah] to store all the data. If you collect all the data, you've got to store it, you have to hire more people to analyze it, you have to hire more contractors, managers to manage the flow. You have to start a big data initiative. It's an empire. Look at what they've built!"
Face to face, holidays, dual citizens, smart people invited in by rushed digital clearances. Clearances issued for a contractor to bring in expert staff.
Other nations have no need for their own to use the "Treasure Mapped" internet in any interesting ways.
The good news is people meeting the press are more aware of having their cell phone on or powered and with them. :)
The press can now understand that turning off a phone can be seen as getting ready to meet a contact.
Anyone in the same area at the same time who turns off their phone might be that contact. Kind of a short list
The press is more aware of been under constant surveillance.
Treasure Map just adds to the collect it all idea and that digital entry or exit points can be fully reconstructed or are always been tracked.
Thats a lot of expensive effort to put into signals intelligence considering what most skilled nations fully understood about global telephone and computer networks going back over decades.
Looking at where all data enters and exits the internet (www or the World Wide Wiretap) :)
Wifi, VPN, implanted OS or hardware devices, pubic, private, down to MAC address as expected.
Sorting by Infected hosts or Tor router?
All part of collect it all
Slashdot users may recall news from 2008 "Let’s Monitor All P2P" (April 17, 2008)
http://www.dailytech.com/Senat...
"Agents then track the offender on a “daily” basis, identifying them by their IP address and, in some cases, a “unique serial number” sourced from offender’s computer."
"Investigators have recorded almost 1.3 million of the unique serial numbers thus far, with about half of them residing in the United States – and that number is steadily increasing each month due to “extensive capturing” conducted since October 2005."
That has been going on for many, many years. Every file of interest to law enforcement globally is logged and tracked over many different kinds of networks, p2p like networks in real time.
All users moving any known file have unique data about their network and computers used (beyond MAC, ip) recorded as the file is networked.
The US gov could have looked at all networks and then sorted for gov and mil workers legally. Or had the mil sort for on base networking connections on a base or mil network.
Or looked at gov/mil issued computer hardware, software and for network misuse on mil sites.
Instead the US mil collected all and then tried to sort out all people not part of any mil base.... or gov....
Re 'change in our freedoms?"
"It takes a lot of money, you have to build up Bluffdale [the location of the NSA's data storage center, in Utah] to store all the data. If you collect all the data, you've got to store it, you have to hire more people to analyze it, you have to hire more contractors, managers to manage the flow. You have to start a big data initiative. It's an empire. Look at what they've built!"
Binney: 'The NSA's main motives: power and money'
http://www.dw.de/binney-the-ns... (9.08.2014)
Signals intelligence was to "collect it all" and then sort. The next step was some lock box law for phone records to get around parallel construction in open US courts.
The UK understood if people know about signals intelligence they can move away from telco products.
The US seems to hope that all people will enjoy the freedom of buying and using that next tame consumer grade telco product.
re "How can you fine someone for not cooperating in activities that the government refused to even admit existed?"
The 'The One Telco Exec Who Resisted The NSA Has Been Released From 4+ Years In Jail" (2013/09/27)
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
Re: the generations of embargo and The Bay of Pigs.
Something really interesting must have happened in the past with events surrounding the Bay of Pigs invasion and its CIA backers.
"CIA SUCCESSFULLY CONCEALS BAY OF PIGS HISTORY
D.C. CIRCUIT SPLIT DECISION RULES CIA DRAFT HISTORY CAN BE KEPT SECRET INDEFINITELY"
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/... (May 21, 2014)
""expose an agency's decision making process in such a way as to discourage candid discussion within the agency and thereby undermine the agency's ability to perform its functions.""
So if that is kind of passion a CIA draft can invoke years later, the need for an endless embargo seems to still hold sway.
Its just part of a long list of Covert United States foreign regime change actions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... but there seems to be something special about Cuba for the US political elite.
Yes it would seem new background investigations are getting access to larger all digital databases by skilled staff or real people are been interviewed about a persons past again.
This would show a change from the mostly digital state and federal search to a more intensive look at schooling, friends, family, teachers, reading material, net use, local court paper files and other local non digital investigations.
This would show a lot more funding is now been pushed into rebuilding peoples entire life story.
Why the sudden change? The US was very happy to rapidly expand its gov staff, contractors with needed skills and trust in digital databases.
If the US gets too interested in the pasts of needed staff it will fail to hire the best or fail to find the perfect penetration agent.
A penetration agent would have the perfect gov cleared parents, good schooling, good grades, no issues but deep inside be a dual citizen, cult member, faith based person reporting to another country over decades. If they past that new real world intensive look what would stop them?
That would need teams that where not just looking at signals intelligence or file handling. The US would have to fully track all its staff over years.
The UK faced down that issue by offering great pay, better conditions and keeping its trusted staff happy and only seeking the best per generation.
The US has a vast structure of contractors, gov workers and public private aspects that would all need looking at considering the rapid growth of new cleared staff in the past years.
The homeless with limited ID, shared ID, created ID that is sold and in use for years, untraceable people with some form of random usable ID all interacting with local free health services.
Other countries may offer some form of free health care only after ensuring a person is eligible.
Payments then follow to the dr, hospital and health care can be fully tracked by a national gov. From the patient to the costly over use, billing of medical services by staff.
Yes why would a fully funded gov or mil need to spread any *new* issue around? Just use existing methods by tame turned informants as cover or get to watch the server or provider by legal methods for all logs with parallel construction or just watch the servers of interest. Get to their hardware, software, friend the staff or break the crypto with no real outside traces.
Cash is not an issues, skills is not an issue, informants hide methods or orders, telcos and OS providers are "happy" to help or their hardware and software is fully understood.
If something was done with this kind of tech, what would be left to find or leak out? Nothing: Staff turned or site left running with data leaking. No other sites, people, staff, tracking, logging would have to know or need to know.
Any random very skilled admin speaking out could be called in for a chat about ongoing legal police work and had an offer made after they exposed an ongoing court approved operation... the methods targeted at a few sites, crypto go under reported, un noticed and are then cleaned up.
A fully funded gov or mil and their contractors get the material, the wider happy admin community just keeps patching.
Re "Any evidence of when this started?"
Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the CIA. By this time, Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies."...
"The organization recruited leading American journalists into a network to help present the CIA's views, and funded some student and cultural organizations, and magazines as fronts. As it developed, it also worked to influence foreign media and political campaigns, in addition to activities by other operating units of the CIA."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Modern art was CIA 'weapon'" (22 October 1995)
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
"...The next key step came in 1950, when the International Organisations Division (IOD) was set up"
"... the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years."
I would suggest over decades with older press staff and now the next web 2.0 generations too.
Beyond that is the useful sockpuppet and other personas to push out policy or distract.
Or Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The mystery of flight 870 (22 July 2006)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
It seems strange this story was just 'found' now... with a mention of the "Kola Peninsula or a submarine in the Barents Sea"...
Re: 'Why authorities allowed that drug house to operate in plain sight I do not know but if they arrested everyone that purchased drugs in that drive through it might have bankrupted the city. What will happen when the slumbering public becomes aware that society gives some criminals a free pass?"
Options: see where the cash goes and follow it up to the 'top' by offering all the lower people found "informant" status.
This builds insiders and providers open court parallel construction cover to hide mention of the telco 'tech' - eg an insider was used to bring a case to court vs the tame US phone system, tame OS and junk encryption software tracked people of interest 24/7 for years.
Add in voice prints, gps, tracking, new calls connecting to known cell numbers... its just waiting for the press friendly raid to get another federal grant.
The other aspect is the funding for the mil/gov bureaucrats and their private sector contractor friends. The conditions allow for huge buy ins of telco tech, training, support and upgrades via ex gov staff who entered the private sector.
Everybody is winning via the gov spending on gov telco signals systems. The gov may not even need to pay the telcos for some tech and might just go tap direct into the private sector telco networks as the encryption is so poor and needed hardware so cheap. That also cuts out the private staff talking to the press risk.
As for the drug deals tracked by signals intelligence: the producers just want to ship product, the shipment networks are tracked, the sellers move/launder/divert their massive cash profits via friendly Western banks, the Western banks look after their long term shareholders... the police get federal budgets/grants to raid low end users.... everybody of importance is winning.
The gov tells itself it does not want to endanger "parallel construction". The private sector just wants to keep the gov upgrading and in need of complex generational maintenance contracts.
Re 'Or were all of these in unlicensed spectrum ?" :)
"Phone Firewall Identifies Rogue Cell Towers Trying to Intercept Your Calls" (09.03.14)
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/c...
Seems to offer a hint via "But the [FCC] task force will only examine the use of the devices by hackers and criminals—and possibly foreign intelligence agencies—not their warrantless use by law enforcement agencies bent on deceiving judges about their deployment of the powerful surveillance technology."
Seems to hint at a few known/listed devices getting a free gov/telco pass re frequency allocations when discovered in the wild.
The good news is a "... envision a consumer-level app in the future that could be installed on phones by individuals."
Cell towers are usually owned or shared by telco firms, brands, providers that try to encrypt their users and are kind of easy to spot with hardware.
The "Phony" cell towers do not respond or act in the same way. They are fake but still fool a users phone into making a network connection.
Tame consumer grade hardware is fooled into seeing just another cell tower.