5 ms·

The truth is far outside the Overton window. Yes, privacy is a question of civil defense in the drone age. But the existing crop of states will never acknowle

by kragen 1y ago

The truth is far outside the Overton window. Yes, privacy is a question of civil defense in the drone age. But the existing crop of states will never acknowledge that; their structure and institutions presume precisely the kind of mass databases of PII that create this vulnerability, as well as institutional transparency for public accountability. This makes them structurally vulnerable to insurgencies that expropriate those databases for targeting. The existing states will continue to clutch at their fantasies of adequately secured taxpayer databases until their territorial control (itself an anachronism in the drone age; boots on the ground can no longer provide security against things like Operation Spiderweb) has been reduced to a few fortified clandestine facilities. Things are going to be very unpredictable and, I suspect, extremely violent.

fpoling 1y ago
This has been going on in Russia on massive scale. For bribes officials sells anything including highly sensitive databases. Those were used to uncover various Kremlin-run assassins targeting oppositions. Then Ukrainian special services used those to target high-ranking Russian military officers. Russia tried to crack down on that but it just increased the database price tag.
- kragen 1y ago
  Do you have sources for that? No problem if they're not in English.
  - ponector 1y ago
    Here is an example of such investigation into russian general: https://youtu.be/alUPgLLIxeM?si=0x1QtJrJf2yfPCZi https://youtu.be/alUPgLLIxeM?si=0x1QtJrJf2yfPCZi Or investigation into some russian topics: https://theins.ru/en/inv https://theins.ru/en/inv
  - dredmorbius 1y ago
    This is sufficiently-well established presently that it's almost hard to find specific documentation as it's largely accepted fact. I'm finding few hits post-2019, so it's possible that data practices have improved. WNYC's On the Media carried several interviews with a documentarian filming Alexy Navalny as Navalny and the documentarian team identified Navalny's (initial) would-be assassins, including various FSB agents. They specifically targeted a person they'd think might have weak opsec, a scientist directly engaged in producing nerve agents (novichok IIRC). His core competence was chemistry rather than spycraft. The documentary team included a former Bellingcat investigator: Brooke Gladstone: In the months following Navalny's poisoning, Christo Grozev, former lead Russia investigator at Bellingcat, was stuck in Vienna with filmmaker Daniel Roher. The two had just been booted from Ukraine where they had been trying to film an investigation. Now Grozev had lots of time on his hands and a laptop and a fresh stack of data from the Russian black market.... Christo Grozev: When we were looking at the Navalny poisoning, we thought, "Well, they must have used the same scientists. They can't have hundreds of scientists who do this. This has to be kept top secret. These people have to take the risk to manufacture this toxin." I started looking at the phone records of these scientists, and we bought them on the Russian markets where you can buy absolutely any kind of data.... [Navalny's people] provided the data of how Navalny had traveled to what locations. I matched it to the known travel data of the poisoners and spies. We saw this pattern, essentially a group of six to eight FSB poisoners had been tailing him for more than four years to a total of 66 different towns and cities. <https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/revisiting-documentary-navalny?tab=transcript https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/revisiting...> Other general coverage (searching "russia black market data"): "Russian data theft: Shady world where all is for sale" (26 May 2019) According to cyber-security experts, vast quantities of supposedly private data - including from Russian state institutions - are bought and sold every day.... <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48348307 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48348307> And for a long time. From 2009: Goldmine of black market in Russian data Gorbushka Market, just outside central Moscow, does a thriving trade in any electronics good you could want: mobile phones, plasma television sets, the latest DVDs, and, if you ask to see them, software peddlers will show potential clients a list of “databases”. These consist of CDs with names such as “Ministry of Interior – Federal Road Safety Service”, “Tax Service” and “Federal Anti-Narcotics Service” and cost about $100 apiece. Each contains confidential information gathered by Russian law enforcement or government agencies: anything from arrest records, personal addresses, passport numbers, phone records or address books to bank account details, known associates, tax data and flight records are on offer... <https://www.ft.com/content/07dedd34-d921-11de-b2d5-00144feabdc0 https://www.ft.com/content/07dedd34-d921-11de-b2d5-00144feab...> Archive: <https://archive.is/UPPHK https://archive.is/UPPHK> And 2005: "In the stolen-data trade, Moscow is the Wild East" <https://web.archive.org/web/20050708015611/http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050705.gtrussia05/BNStory/Technology/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050708015611/http://www.globet...> Adjacent article on Bellingcat OSINT generally (2024), though nothing on black markets: "The forensic empire that is Bellingcat" <https://www.theprojectcounselgroup.com/2024/06/19/the-forensic-empire-that-is-bellingcat/ https://www.theprojectcounselgroup.com/2024/06/19/the-forens...>
- mattigames 1y ago
  If Putin didn't want bribery to go rampant he would set the example, and force other top leaders to do the same, but instead he flaunts his properties, yats, women that he enjoys; but it's probably a price too high for him to pay. I bet Xi Ping enjoys similar privileges but in much more private manner.
  - chrz 1y ago
    if you think you can stop bribery in communism regime then i have some news for you
    - solace_silence 1y ago
      Agreed, they should call it campaign contributions like the U.S.
    - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
      Russia is not a communist country (anymore).
drewbug 1y ago
I used to feel this way until I learned about counter-UAS tech.
- kragen 1y ago
  That's wishful thinking. Flying drones aren't the only threat, or the main threat, and there isn't such a thing as "counter-UAS tech", only counter-yesterday's-UAS tech. Radio jamming was "counter-UAS tech" until the mass production of fiber-optic-controlled FPV drones starting five months ago, for example. You can still find vendors marketing it as such. 30 milligrams of high explosive is enough to open your daughter's skull, or, more relevantly, your commanding officer's daughter's skull, and there are a thousand ways to deliver it to her if she can be tracked: in pager batteries, crawling, swimming, floating, waiting for ambush, hitchhiking on migratory birds, hitchhiking on car undercarriages, in her Amazon Prime deliveries, falling from a hydrogen balloon in the mesosphere, and so on. And if 30mg is too much, 2mg of ricin on a mechanical ovipositor will do just as well. All of this is technically possible today without any new discoveries. At this point it's a straightforward systems development exercise. And you can be sure that there are bad people working for multiple different countries' spy agencies who know this; they don't need me to tell them.
  - bostik 1y ago
    > 30 milligrams of high explosive is enough to open your daughter's skull, or, more relevantly, your commanding officer's daughter's skull, and there are a thousand ways to deliver it While we are talking about flying drones, we are not far off from Slaughterbots becoming reality.[0] Why bother with surgical assassinations if you can blanket entire regions with with swarms of autonomous seek-and-destroy explosives? After all, as last two years have so amply demonstrated: people are fine with genocide. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU
    - godelski 1y ago
      What's important to remember is that we get to Slaughterbots with "best intentions." Trying to feel safer. Trying to kill our enemies. Trying to protect our friends, families, children. Little by little is how it happens. The road to hell is paved, after all.

by kragen 1y ago

fpoling 1y ago

This has been going on in Russia on massive scale. For bribes officials sells anything including highly sensitive databases. Those were used to uncover various Kremlin-run assassins targeting oppositions. Then Ukrainian special services used those to target high-ranking Russian military officers. Russia tried to crack down on that but it just increased the database price tag.

kragen 1y ago
Do you have sources for that? No problem if they're not in English.
- ponector 1y ago
  Here is an example of such investigation into russian general: https://youtu.be/alUPgLLIxeM?si=0x1QtJrJf2yfPCZi https://youtu.be/alUPgLLIxeM?si=0x1QtJrJf2yfPCZi Or investigation into some russian topics: https://theins.ru/en/inv https://theins.ru/en/inv
- dredmorbius 1y ago
  This is sufficiently-well established presently that it's almost hard to find specific documentation as it's largely accepted fact. I'm finding few hits post-2019, so it's possible that data practices have improved. WNYC's On the Media carried several interviews with a documentarian filming Alexy Navalny as Navalny and the documentarian team identified Navalny's (initial) would-be assassins, including various FSB agents. They specifically targeted a person they'd think might have weak opsec, a scientist directly engaged in producing nerve agents (novichok IIRC). His core competence was chemistry rather than spycraft. The documentary team included a former Bellingcat investigator: Brooke Gladstone: In the months following Navalny's poisoning, Christo Grozev, former lead Russia investigator at Bellingcat, was stuck in Vienna with filmmaker Daniel Roher. The two had just been booted from Ukraine where they had been trying to film an investigation. Now Grozev had lots of time on his hands and a laptop and a fresh stack of data from the Russian black market.... Christo Grozev: When we were looking at the Navalny poisoning, we thought, "Well, they must have used the same scientists. They can't have hundreds of scientists who do this. This has to be kept top secret. These people have to take the risk to manufacture this toxin." I started looking at the phone records of these scientists, and we bought them on the Russian markets where you can buy absolutely any kind of data.... [Navalny's people] provided the data of how Navalny had traveled to what locations. I matched it to the known travel data of the poisoners and spies. We saw this pattern, essentially a group of six to eight FSB poisoners had been tailing him for more than four years to a total of 66 different towns and cities. <https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/revisiting-documentary-navalny?tab=transcript https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/revisiting...> Other general coverage (searching "russia black market data"): "Russian data theft: Shady world where all is for sale" (26 May 2019) According to cyber-security experts, vast quantities of supposedly private data - including from Russian state institutions - are bought and sold every day.... <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48348307 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48348307> And for a long time. From 2009: Goldmine of black market in Russian data Gorbushka Market, just outside central Moscow, does a thriving trade in any electronics good you could want: mobile phones, plasma television sets, the latest DVDs, and, if you ask to see them, software peddlers will show potential clients a list of “databases”. These consist of CDs with names such as “Ministry of Interior – Federal Road Safety Service”, “Tax Service” and “Federal Anti-Narcotics Service” and cost about $100 apiece. Each contains confidential information gathered by Russian law enforcement or government agencies: anything from arrest records, personal addresses, passport numbers, phone records or address books to bank account details, known associates, tax data and flight records are on offer... <https://www.ft.com/content/07dedd34-d921-11de-b2d5-00144feabdc0 https://www.ft.com/content/07dedd34-d921-11de-b2d5-00144feab...> Archive: <https://archive.is/UPPHK https://archive.is/UPPHK> And 2005: "In the stolen-data trade, Moscow is the Wild East" <https://web.archive.org/web/20050708015611/http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050705.gtrussia05/BNStory/Technology/ https://web.archive.org/web/20050708015611/http://www.globet...> Adjacent article on Bellingcat OSINT generally (2024), though nothing on black markets: "The forensic empire that is Bellingcat" <https://www.theprojectcounselgroup.com/2024/06/19/the-forensic-empire-that-is-bellingcat/ https://www.theprojectcounselgroup.com/2024/06/19/the-forens...>
mattigames 1y ago
If Putin didn't want bribery to go rampant he would set the example, and force other top leaders to do the same, but instead he flaunts his properties, yats, women that he enjoys; but it's probably a price too high for him to pay. I bet Xi Ping enjoys similar privileges but in much more private manner.
- chrz 1y ago
  if you think you can stop bribery in communism regime then i have some news for you
  - solace_silence 1y ago
    Agreed, they should call it campaign contributions like the U.S.
  - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
    Russia is not a communist country (anymore).

drewbug 1y ago

I used to feel this way until I learned about counter-UAS tech.

kragen 1y ago
That's wishful thinking. Flying drones aren't the only threat, or the main threat, and there isn't such a thing as "counter-UAS tech", only counter-yesterday's-UAS tech. Radio jamming was "counter-UAS tech" until the mass production of fiber-optic-controlled FPV drones starting five months ago, for example. You can still find vendors marketing it as such. 30 milligrams of high explosive is enough to open your daughter's skull, or, more relevantly, your commanding officer's daughter's skull, and there are a thousand ways to deliver it to her if she can be tracked: in pager batteries, crawling, swimming, floating, waiting for ambush, hitchhiking on migratory birds, hitchhiking on car undercarriages, in her Amazon Prime deliveries, falling from a hydrogen balloon in the mesosphere, and so on. And if 30mg is too much, 2mg of ricin on a mechanical ovipositor will do just as well. All of this is technically possible today without any new discoveries. At this point it's a straightforward systems development exercise. And you can be sure that there are bad people working for multiple different countries' spy agencies who know this; they don't need me to tell them.
- bostik 1y ago
  > 30 milligrams of high explosive is enough to open your daughter's skull, or, more relevantly, your commanding officer's daughter's skull, and there are a thousand ways to deliver it While we are talking about flying drones, we are not far off from Slaughterbots becoming reality.[0] Why bother with surgical assassinations if you can blanket entire regions with with swarms of autonomous seek-and-destroy explosives? After all, as last two years have so amply demonstrated: people are fine with genocide. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU
  - godelski 1y ago
    What's important to remember is that we get to Slaughterbots with "best intentions." Trying to feel safer. Trying to kill our enemies. Trying to protect our friends, families, children. Little by little is how it happens. The road to hell is paved, after all.