9 ms·

Trove of Stolen Data Is Said to Include Top-Secret U.S. Hacking Tools

159 points by tucif 10y ago

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Would be cute if a foreign country passed an analogue to JASTA [1] making the United States responsible for damages resulting from its developing, and keeping secret, tools for the exploitation of security vulnerabilities in civilian software. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Against_Sponsors_of_Terrorism_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Against_Sponsors_of_Te...
- R_haterade 10y ago
  Stop. Stop. I can only take so much excitement!
  - plandis 10y ago
    What is the point of this comment? It provides nothing to the conversation. Try to be constructive in the future. For instance elaboration on why you like this idea, etc would at least give people something to discuss.
    - cortesoft 10y ago
      This comment provides even less to the conversation.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - plandis 10y ago
        Sorry, I was trying to offer constructive feedback in case the person I was responding to was actually not trolling. His comment is valid, I suppose, but only with added context. Hence why I suggested: "For instance elaboration on why you like this idea, etc would at least give people something to discuss."
- linkregister 10y ago
  What would those damages consist of? The only material impact I can think of is the apparently U.S.-developed Stuxnet program.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Cost of the incident response and remediation can easily be millions for a large corporation. The malware on that belgacom server has probably required them to scrub all of their email servers and more that can't be cheap.
  - Zigurd 10y ago
    Look at how US prosecutors pile on the cost estimates in hacking cases.
    - closeparen 10y ago
      Indeed. "We had no idea security was a thing until you broke in, so now we're counting the cost of giving a shit going forward as damage you inflicted."
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mindcrime 10y ago
As far as I'm concerned, the NSA are the enemy - so props to anybody who can poke a stick in their eye. I just hope this guy doesn't wind up in Guantanamo for the rest of his life.
- spydum 10y ago
  What is interesting to me is that even super security gurus at NSA can't contain their most sensitive data (well, maybe tools aren't highest level?). At some point I think we need a better security strategy than trying to stop data from leaving, and more about how to make sure data is useless outside of its domain. edit: I say that now in retrospect that security and freedoms of data seem always at odds. DRM being a keen example. Just wish we had better options..
  - antocv 10y ago
    > and more about how to make sure data is useless outside of its domain. This explains why most enterprise applications and platforms are a nightmare to work with. This class is called "UserView" oh but you see comrade it actually does not have any view or user, in fact its sole purpose is to be compiled and thrown away - nevermind the JIRA issues for bugs in it. Everything is "business logic" "business specific", noone who hasnt been at the place for 3-5 years can understand that this is not actulaly what it says it is. This kind of feature was called before JCR, "Just for Curious Russians".
  - catnaroek 10y ago
    DRM is about neither security nor freedom.
    - mintplant 10y ago
      But the more secure we make our devices, the more opportunities we create for them to be locked down. One person's security update is another's anti-jailbreak patch. Trusted computing can be used to protect against malware and to block users from saving Netflix streams.
bsder 10y ago
So, basically, it looks like there's a reasonable probability that this guy isn't the leaker. I know that if I wanted to actually blow the whistle on somebody like the NSA, I would make sure to plant the evidence on somebody else to give them a juicy target to latch onto.
- thingexplainer 10y ago
  How principled of you to ruin someone's career and let them spend the rest of their life in prison.
  - bsder 10y ago
    I turned down working for the NSA so I wouldn't even be in the position to have to worry about things like that, thanks. We should be talking about the fact whistleblowers need legal protection. The current treatment of whistleblowers leaves those who wish to defend the principles of the country no good options. We should also be talking about how easy it is to frame someone and have them found guilty. The fact that we both have zero problem believing that it's that easy to set someone up should be terrifying.
- abelM 10y ago
  With all sorts of current issues, I wouldn't be surprised if the poor guy was the fall guy. Heck, the guy was part of an elite team for NSA and at some point you have take your work home so you could finish it after dinner or over the weekend. Given the circumstances the story doesn't add up looking at it from software perspective to the least. If he was the one (with full proof) trying to sell secrets then I won't blink twice.
ryanlol 10y ago
The Shadow Brokers are still active online. https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/57le5u/theshadowbrokers_leaks_bill_clinton_lorretta/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/57le5u/thes... However nothing in the message proves that it was written recently.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- thingexplainer 10y ago
  Active publishing contemporary historical smut fiction, it would seem.
- KMag 10y ago
  Have any of you checked if the same secret key was used to sign the original and this message?
thingexplainer 10y ago
It seems like contractors are a massive attack surface for the DoD. I do wonder why they gave a clearance to someone who was apparently a hoarder. If collecting things that interest you in a compulsory manner doesn't suggest to you that this person might be abused by foreign powers, but marijuana use does, your secrets will flow like water.
- gnarbarian 10y ago
  I contract for many large state and federal agencies. For better or worse, contractors are easier to hire and fire for the federal government. That gives them more budgetary flexibility. You can also hire people and companies that specialize in the specifics of the project quickly through established contracting channels with established reputations. Contractors are also able to legally bypass red tape and bureaucracy required of federal employees. For instance if I was directly employed by one of my clients i would be severely limited in the toolchain that I use and I wouldn't even be allowed admin access on my development machine (despite having it on multiple servers which are orders of magnitude more sensitive). If I was their employee, every time I needed to install a java update I'd have to call up IT sit on hold and explain to them exactly why I need to install this update etc.. I've had it literally take a week of futzing around with bizarre errors (from the crazy policy settings and restrictions on the laptop) on hold with some poor schmuck at a national level helpdesk four time zones away who has zero experience with programming trying to get a dev-enviornment set up on a government laptop which would have taken literally an hour on a computer I have local admin access on. I would rather be waterboarded than do that again. Contracting and having our own rules saves literally unending amounts of pointless bullshit. Many things would probably never get completed internally because of situations like this. Of course those contractor advantages cut both ways when considering security. In OP's situation I'm not sure him being a contractor makes any difference. Either kind of employee can take a usb stick home and transfer stuff to a compromised PC. A contractor or employee may have gotten their clearance a long time ago and unless they have some kind of regular unannounced random inspection of their home you'd never know if they were a hoarder. And if they never caused or were involved in a security incident in the past there would probably be very little desire to bother shaking them down. I'd say problems in this category may be worse internally. I've met many husks of people in government positions who have been there for decades and are completely unemployable. What's worse is they can't be fired easily like a contractor so as long as they show up sober 9-5 they never leave. Not saying it's a good situation. The contractor knowingly and clearly broke laws, policies, and rules. I annually have to take record keeping and security courses and quizzes to maintain access to the network. I am sure the contractor implicated here had much more stringent requirements than I have due to his clearance level. Thus this guy's screwed, his company is screwed too. legally too. Lord knows this guy can't pull strings at the DoJ to save his ass like some people from recent memory.
basicplus2 10y ago
The fundamental flaw is employing contractors.. Governments should be doing all things they are responsible for in house. Contracting anything out costs in terms of added security risk and in profits a contractor will want.
- KMag 10y ago
  Former DoD contractor here. Contracting is a description of legal contracts and payment flows, independent of security arrangements. I sat in the same SCIF as my directly employed colleagues, and the same security officer was in charge of our site and everything I did at the site. My employer's security officer had to handle getting my clearance and forwarding the paperwork to my site's security officer. It's not like DoD contractors are doing classified work from home in their sleepwear. They're still subject to the same security procedures, and in fact the same security people are overseeing the contractors and direct employees. I would still roll in before sunrise during what looked to be a beautiful day and work in a windowless chainsaw-resistant room with a steel door. I'd daydream of a nice sunny lunch break just like my direct employee colleagues, and be just as disappointed that it was raining when I exited isolation.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    Except they would get Columbus Day and MLK Day as paid holidays, while you had to sit at home and eat a PTO day, because the work site cannot be used with no government employees there, and your company doesn't coordinate its holiday schedule for on-site employees. And then they would have some morale event (read: party/picnic) on base, and they could go to it while on the clock, while you were nominally invited, but if you attended it would have to be off the clock. Then the funding for your project is interrupted. They get furloughed, and will probably be repaid later when the funding is restored, but you just get straight-up laid off, and have to find a new job with zero notice. But at least you got paid more. That almost makes the crap treatment worthwhile.
kordless 10y ago
The advantage gained by welding advanced technologies is driven by exponential sales cycles. If we allow the government to continue their "back room" rationalizations, there will be a point our demand for more faster will come back and haunt us from a cost standpoint. With exponential advances in technology come several orders of magnitude more oversight capacity by a government who continues to make serious errors in calculations when doing things in secret. The government isn't currently bad because people in it are bad. It's bad because our government has some bad ideas on what it means to govern successfully externally, in an age that is accelerating internal change in individuals. We want it better faster, too. If we're going to continue to have government, the government needs to immediately become 90% more transparent and start setting the vision for us to do what we need to do to manage these changes. And then I look at our current election and just shrug my shoulders.
matt_wulfeck 10y ago
> He always thought of himself like a James Bond-type person, wanting to save the world from computer evil Maybe the NSA needs less James Bond characters and more engineers.
- walshemj 10y ago
  So? your not really making sense here "engineers" may well think that working for the good of the state is more ethical than working on an improved algo for google/facebook to monetize peoples private data.
  - pabloski 10y ago
    Good of the State or good of the oligarchs? That is the question!
heartsucker 10y ago
> F.B.I. agents on the case, advised by N.S.A. technical experts, do not believe Mr. Martin is fully cooperating, the officials say. He has spoken mainly through his lawyers, James Wyda and Deborah Boardman of the federal public defender’s office in Baltimore. It sounds like they're just mad that he didn't confess immediately, instead of doing the smart thing of having professional handle everything. Do they really expect someone to cooperate gladly when repercussions could be severe?
- StavrosK 10y ago
  Yes. They're the FBI. They're not used to people exercising their rights.
  - bayouborne 10y ago
    The 2 FBI people I've known, both had law degrees..
    - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      So does James Comey and he's a complete idiot.
      - metalliqaz 10y ago
        That extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. Can I assume you are also a lawyer?
        thingexplainer 10y ago
        Extraordinary claims don't require more evidence than other claims. A more accurate statement would be, "claims I'm skeptical of will require convincing evidence for me to be swayed." The "extraordinary" part makes this razor less useful, as if there were more than one category of evidence and one of them simply wasn't good enough for you. Comey continues to advocate for backdoors in order to stop ISIS from being able to radicalize marginalized people within the US without them being able to listen. However, there are two obvious problems with this. 1. Why don't you just reach out to the marginalized yourself? Spend that $1M you paid to break into an iPhone on combatting Islamphobia and ISIS will have a tougher job. 2. What is to stop ISIS from using software written outside the US, or software they write themselves, or versions of software older than the mandated backdoors, or open-source software, or... on and on and on. His plan transparently will not work. To quote Schneier, "His problem isn't encryption, it's general purpose computers and a global market for software." That is stupid.
deanCommie 10y ago
> "F.B.I. agents on the case, advised by N.S.A. technical experts, do not believe Mr. Martin is fully cooperating, the officials say. He has spoken mainly through his lawyers" As is his right and what every sensible entirely innocent individual in his position should be doing. If the government (at any level from civic to federal to international) arrests you for any crime with serious charges, it is ABSOLUTELY the most prudent thing to communicate solely through your lawyers. There is too great of a risk of being convicted due to doubt and natural human inconsistency otherwise. For anyone that doubts how even the most innocent person can be convicted for not heeding this advice, there is a hilarious and content-dense lecture on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGgKLgVNfAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGgKLgVNfAo
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  100 percent agree. If you're speaking through your lawyer, you are cooperating. Never ever speak to law enforcement without a lawyer there to explain the law to you if you've been charged, or sometimes even if you're being questioned, about a crime.
- bostonpete 10y ago
  It's not clear (to me) whether the "through his lawyers" comment is intending to convey the reason the FBI doesn't believe he's cooperating. It could just as likely be setting up the next sentence which says the lawyers declined to comment. If the "through his lawyers" comment was explaining the FBI's level of belief, it should have been stated more explicitly. I kind of doubt it though -- local law enforcement might be suspicious of someone who lawyers up, for the FBI, it must be pretty much standard (or at least not unusual).
joewee 10y ago
odd things about this story: 1) were the tools taken out of a secure environment? Or did he download it from the net when it was published? 2) how could he have taken such sensitive tools out? 3) why so many leaks of an ongoing investigation?
yk 10y ago
Question, did NYT break their website for noScript users or did I manage somehow to break the NYT website for myself? (I tested with chromium and no plugins and the website works there, but if I try to access it with FF and noScript, the articles only display a log-in form, even if I grant permissions to everything.)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Tammy5 10y ago
I don't know about hacking but when my ex was cheating on me, a friend of mine referred me to Mr Robert I thought it wasn't real but he later proved me wrong by helping me to spy on my ex-husband and got me all the necessary evidence I needed. He helped me to hack and spy on his emails, mobile , all his social media and his bank accounts, Robert did all this remotely without touching his devices. You can contact him with mastershield55@gmail.com if you are in the same shoe as I was..
Tammy5 10y ago
I don't know about hacking but when my ex was cheating on me, a friend of mine referred me to Mr Robert I thought it wasn't real but he later proved me wrong by helping me to spy on my ex-husband and got me all the necessary evidence I needed. He helped me to hack and spy on his emails, mobile , all his social media and his bank accounts, Robert did all this remotely without touching his devices. You can contact him with mastershield55@gmail.com if you are in the same shoe as I was..

159 points by tucif 10y ago

Would be cute if a foreign country passed an analogue to JASTA [1] making the United States responsible for damages resulting from its developing, and keeping secret, tools for the exploitation of security vulnerabilities in civilian software. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Against_Sponsors_of_Terrorism_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_Against_Sponsors_of_Te...

R_haterade 10y ago
Stop. Stop. I can only take so much excitement!
- plandis 10y ago
  What is the point of this comment? It provides nothing to the conversation. Try to be constructive in the future. For instance elaboration on why you like this idea, etc would at least give people something to discuss.
  - cortesoft 10y ago
    This comment provides even less to the conversation.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - plandis 10y ago
      Sorry, I was trying to offer constructive feedback in case the person I was responding to was actually not trolling. His comment is valid, I suppose, but only with added context. Hence why I suggested: "For instance elaboration on why you like this idea, etc would at least give people something to discuss."
linkregister 10y ago
What would those damages consist of? The only material impact I can think of is the apparently U.S.-developed Stuxnet program.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Cost of the incident response and remediation can easily be millions for a large corporation. The malware on that belgacom server has probably required them to scrub all of their email servers and more that can't be cheap.
- Zigurd 10y ago
  Look at how US prosecutors pile on the cost estimates in hacking cases.
  - closeparen 10y ago
    Indeed. "We had no idea security was a thing until you broke in, so now we're counting the cost of giving a shit going forward as damage you inflicted."

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mindcrime 10y ago

As far as I'm concerned, the NSA are the enemy - so props to anybody who can poke a stick in their eye. I just hope this guy doesn't wind up in Guantanamo for the rest of his life.

spydum 10y ago
What is interesting to me is that even super security gurus at NSA can't contain their most sensitive data (well, maybe tools aren't highest level?). At some point I think we need a better security strategy than trying to stop data from leaving, and more about how to make sure data is useless outside of its domain. edit: I say that now in retrospect that security and freedoms of data seem always at odds. DRM being a keen example. Just wish we had better options..
- antocv 10y ago
  > and more about how to make sure data is useless outside of its domain. This explains why most enterprise applications and platforms are a nightmare to work with. This class is called "UserView" oh but you see comrade it actually does not have any view or user, in fact its sole purpose is to be compiled and thrown away - nevermind the JIRA issues for bugs in it. Everything is "business logic" "business specific", noone who hasnt been at the place for 3-5 years can understand that this is not actulaly what it says it is. This kind of feature was called before JCR, "Just for Curious Russians".
- catnaroek 10y ago
  DRM is about neither security nor freedom.
  - mintplant 10y ago
    But the more secure we make our devices, the more opportunities we create for them to be locked down. One person's security update is another's anti-jailbreak patch. Trusted computing can be used to protect against malware and to block users from saving Netflix streams.

bsder 10y ago

So, basically, it looks like there's a reasonable probability that this guy isn't the leaker. I know that if I wanted to actually blow the whistle on somebody like the NSA, I would make sure to plant the evidence on somebody else to give them a juicy target to latch onto.

thingexplainer 10y ago
How principled of you to ruin someone's career and let them spend the rest of their life in prison.
- bsder 10y ago
  I turned down working for the NSA so I wouldn't even be in the position to have to worry about things like that, thanks. We should be talking about the fact whistleblowers need legal protection. The current treatment of whistleblowers leaves those who wish to defend the principles of the country no good options. We should also be talking about how easy it is to frame someone and have them found guilty. The fact that we both have zero problem believing that it's that easy to set someone up should be terrifying.
abelM 10y ago
With all sorts of current issues, I wouldn't be surprised if the poor guy was the fall guy. Heck, the guy was part of an elite team for NSA and at some point you have take your work home so you could finish it after dinner or over the weekend. Given the circumstances the story doesn't add up looking at it from software perspective to the least. If he was the one (with full proof) trying to sell secrets then I won't blink twice.

ryanlol 10y ago

The Shadow Brokers are still active online. https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/57le5u/theshadowbrokers_leaks_bill_clinton_lorretta/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarkets/comments/57le5u/thes... However nothing in the message proves that it was written recently.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
thingexplainer 10y ago
Active publishing contemporary historical smut fiction, it would seem.
KMag 10y ago
Have any of you checked if the same secret key was used to sign the original and this message?

thingexplainer 10y ago

It seems like contractors are a massive attack surface for the DoD. I do wonder why they gave a clearance to someone who was apparently a hoarder. If collecting things that interest you in a compulsory manner doesn't suggest to you that this person might be abused by foreign powers, but marijuana use does, your secrets will flow like water.

gnarbarian 10y ago
I contract for many large state and federal agencies. For better or worse, contractors are easier to hire and fire for the federal government. That gives them more budgetary flexibility. You can also hire people and companies that specialize in the specifics of the project quickly through established contracting channels with established reputations. Contractors are also able to legally bypass red tape and bureaucracy required of federal employees. For instance if I was directly employed by one of my clients i would be severely limited in the toolchain that I use and I wouldn't even be allowed admin access on my development machine (despite having it on multiple servers which are orders of magnitude more sensitive). If I was their employee, every time I needed to install a java update I'd have to call up IT sit on hold and explain to them exactly why I need to install this update etc.. I've had it literally take a week of futzing around with bizarre errors (from the crazy policy settings and restrictions on the laptop) on hold with some poor schmuck at a national level helpdesk four time zones away who has zero experience with programming trying to get a dev-enviornment set up on a government laptop which would have taken literally an hour on a computer I have local admin access on. I would rather be waterboarded than do that again. Contracting and having our own rules saves literally unending amounts of pointless bullshit. Many things would probably never get completed internally because of situations like this. Of course those contractor advantages cut both ways when considering security. In OP's situation I'm not sure him being a contractor makes any difference. Either kind of employee can take a usb stick home and transfer stuff to a compromised PC. A contractor or employee may have gotten their clearance a long time ago and unless they have some kind of regular unannounced random inspection of their home you'd never know if they were a hoarder. And if they never caused or were involved in a security incident in the past there would probably be very little desire to bother shaking them down. I'd say problems in this category may be worse internally. I've met many husks of people in government positions who have been there for decades and are completely unemployable. What's worse is they can't be fired easily like a contractor so as long as they show up sober 9-5 they never leave. Not saying it's a good situation. The contractor knowingly and clearly broke laws, policies, and rules. I annually have to take record keeping and security courses and quizzes to maintain access to the network. I am sure the contractor implicated here had much more stringent requirements than I have due to his clearance level. Thus this guy's screwed, his company is screwed too. legally too. Lord knows this guy can't pull strings at the DoJ to save his ass like some people from recent memory.

basicplus2 10y ago

The fundamental flaw is employing contractors.. Governments should be doing all things they are responsible for in house. Contracting anything out costs in terms of added security risk and in profits a contractor will want.

KMag 10y ago
Former DoD contractor here. Contracting is a description of legal contracts and payment flows, independent of security arrangements. I sat in the same SCIF as my directly employed colleagues, and the same security officer was in charge of our site and everything I did at the site. My employer's security officer had to handle getting my clearance and forwarding the paperwork to my site's security officer. It's not like DoD contractors are doing classified work from home in their sleepwear. They're still subject to the same security procedures, and in fact the same security people are overseeing the contractors and direct employees. I would still roll in before sunrise during what looked to be a beautiful day and work in a windowless chainsaw-resistant room with a steel door. I'd daydream of a nice sunny lunch break just like my direct employee colleagues, and be just as disappointed that it was raining when I exited isolation.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  Except they would get Columbus Day and MLK Day as paid holidays, while you had to sit at home and eat a PTO day, because the work site cannot be used with no government employees there, and your company doesn't coordinate its holiday schedule for on-site employees. And then they would have some morale event (read: party/picnic) on base, and they could go to it while on the clock, while you were nominally invited, but if you attended it would have to be off the clock. Then the funding for your project is interrupted. They get furloughed, and will probably be repaid later when the funding is restored, but you just get straight-up laid off, and have to find a new job with zero notice. But at least you got paid more. That almost makes the crap treatment worthwhile.

kordless 10y ago

The advantage gained by welding advanced technologies is driven by exponential sales cycles. If we allow the government to continue their "back room" rationalizations, there will be a point our demand for more faster will come back and haunt us from a cost standpoint. With exponential advances in technology come several orders of magnitude more oversight capacity by a government who continues to make serious errors in calculations when doing things in secret. The government isn't currently bad because people in it are bad. It's bad because our government has some bad ideas on what it means to govern successfully externally, in an age that is accelerating internal change in individuals. We want it better faster, too. If we're going to continue to have government, the government needs to immediately become 90% more transparent and start setting the vision for us to do what we need to do to manage these changes. And then I look at our current election and just shrug my shoulders.

matt_wulfeck 10y ago

> He always thought of himself like a James Bond-type person, wanting to save the world from computer evil Maybe the NSA needs less James Bond characters and more engineers.

walshemj 10y ago
So? your not really making sense here "engineers" may well think that working for the good of the state is more ethical than working on an improved algo for google/facebook to monetize peoples private data.
- pabloski 10y ago
  Good of the State or good of the oligarchs? That is the question!

heartsucker 10y ago

> F.B.I. agents on the case, advised by N.S.A. technical experts, do not believe Mr. Martin is fully cooperating, the officials say. He has spoken mainly through his lawyers, James Wyda and Deborah Boardman of the federal public defender’s office in Baltimore. It sounds like they're just mad that he didn't confess immediately, instead of doing the smart thing of having professional handle everything. Do they really expect someone to cooperate gladly when repercussions could be severe?

StavrosK 10y ago
Yes. They're the FBI. They're not used to people exercising their rights.
- bayouborne 10y ago
  The 2 FBI people I've known, both had law degrees..
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    So does James Comey and he's a complete idiot.
    - metalliqaz 10y ago
      That extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence. Can I assume you are also a lawyer?
      - thingexplainer 10y ago
        Extraordinary claims don't require more evidence than other claims. A more accurate statement would be, "claims I'm skeptical of will require convincing evidence for me to be swayed." The "extraordinary" part makes this razor less useful, as if there were more than one category of evidence and one of them simply wasn't good enough for you. Comey continues to advocate for backdoors in order to stop ISIS from being able to radicalize marginalized people within the US without them being able to listen. However, there are two obvious problems with this. 1. Why don't you just reach out to the marginalized yourself? Spend that $1M you paid to break into an iPhone on combatting Islamphobia and ISIS will have a tougher job. 2. What is to stop ISIS from using software written outside the US, or software they write themselves, or versions of software older than the mandated backdoors, or open-source software, or... on and on and on. His plan transparently will not work. To quote Schneier, "His problem isn't encryption, it's general purpose computers and a global market for software." That is stupid.

deanCommie 10y ago

> "F.B.I. agents on the case, advised by N.S.A. technical experts, do not believe Mr. Martin is fully cooperating, the officials say. He has spoken mainly through his lawyers" As is his right and what every sensible entirely innocent individual in his position should be doing. If the government (at any level from civic to federal to international) arrests you for any crime with serious charges, it is ABSOLUTELY the most prudent thing to communicate solely through your lawyers. There is too great of a risk of being convicted due to doubt and natural human inconsistency otherwise. For anyone that doubts how even the most innocent person can be convicted for not heeding this advice, there is a hilarious and content-dense lecture on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGgKLgVNfAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGgKLgVNfAo

JustSomeNobody 10y ago
100 percent agree. If you're speaking through your lawyer, you are cooperating. Never ever speak to law enforcement without a lawyer there to explain the law to you if you've been charged, or sometimes even if you're being questioned, about a crime.
bostonpete 10y ago
It's not clear (to me) whether the "through his lawyers" comment is intending to convey the reason the FBI doesn't believe he's cooperating. It could just as likely be setting up the next sentence which says the lawyers declined to comment. If the "through his lawyers" comment was explaining the FBI's level of belief, it should have been stated more explicitly. I kind of doubt it though -- local law enforcement might be suspicious of someone who lawyers up, for the FBI, it must be pretty much standard (or at least not unusual).

joewee 10y ago

odd things about this story: 1) were the tools taken out of a secure environment? Or did he download it from the net when it was published? 2) how could he have taken such sensitive tools out? 3) why so many leaks of an ongoing investigation?

yk 10y ago

Question, did NYT break their website for noScript users or did I manage somehow to break the NYT website for myself? (I tested with chromium and no plugins and the website works there, but if I try to access it with FF and noScript, the articles only display a log-in form, even if I grant permissions to everything.)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Tammy5 10y ago

I don't know about hacking but when my ex was cheating on me, a friend of mine referred me to Mr Robert I thought it wasn't real but he later proved me wrong by helping me to spy on my ex-husband and got me all the necessary evidence I needed. He helped me to hack and spy on his emails, mobile , all his social media and his bank accounts, Robert did all this remotely without touching his devices. You can contact him with mastershield55@gmail.com if you are in the same shoe as I was..

Tammy5 10y ago