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Foreign regimes use spyware against journalists, even in U.S.
- gmuslera 13y ago“To invade the privacy of American citizens and legal residents, violating the sovereignty of the United States and European countries, is mind-boggling,” Do what i say, not what i do, said the elephant in the room.
- anologwintermut 13y agoTo be fair, the NSA mass surveillance probably did not violate various european countries' sovereignties since they all appeared to be in on it. It probably being illegal in those countries is a different story (and certainly being illegal when applied domestically).
- wavefunction 13y agoMan, if only there were a national agency in the US that had infiltrated absolutely every aspect of every networked computer system anywhere and worked to provide security and investigate netcrimes against its citizens and others rather than commit its own crimes. Wishful thinking, I guess...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago"The trade in spyware itself is almost entirely unregulated, to the great frustration of critics." Not for long! "Cyber war technology to be controlled in same way as arms" http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2903d504-5c18-11e3-931e-00144feabdc0.html http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2903d504-5c18-11e3-931e-00144fe... http://www.exportlawblog.com/archives/5599 http://www.exportlawblog.com/archives/5599 It's so thoughtful of the WaPo to stir up moral panic to push this all forward. Because major powers want to rewrite software law, in a military arms-control framework, in undemocratic and secretive treaty institutions: and yes, the purpose of this is to "protect journalists"; why do you ask?
- sehugg 13y agoI kind of figured where this story was going when I saw the word "regimes" in the headline.
- joe_the_user 13y agoOddly enough, I'm much happier to have nukes confined to a "club" of a few superstates than would be to have "spyware" similarly confined. But the scary thing is how plausible that kind of reasoning sounds.
- joe_the_user 13y ago"All regimes" ... "do whatever they can do" ... "against whoever they find significant" ... "anywhere they can" News at eleven
- mpyne 13y agoApparently it actually is news though. "NSA spies overseas on whatever they can grab. Develops advanced capabilities to complete its assigned SIGINT mission. Also tries to semantically understand data." has taken over 2013 after all.
- zimbatm 13y agoI wonder what the NSA could do to protect the US public and companies from hacking. Public safety is a role the government is supposed to participate in after all. Instead of obsessing over secrets people might have, what sort of counter-measure could they deploy to help in that effort ?
- dragontamer 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard You forget, part of the NSA's mission is defense of the nation. They have actually contributed major portions of defense to the cyberworld, including SELinux and verification of AES. NSA expertise was called in on the recent Nasdaq and Google hacks as well. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/nsa-investigates-nasdaq-hack/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/nsa-investigates-na...
- zimbatm 13y agoTrue but that's a rather passive approach (no to dismiss their efforts!). I was thinking what kind of active role they could play for example to help fend of DDoS attacks or intercept ongoing hacking attempt. After all they seem to have the infrastructure in place :p
- dragontamer 13y agoI would presume that those actions would be secret. When you are countering the efforts of hackers, the last thing you want to do is tell them that you're doing it. Its easier for them to be public about certain information.
- mpyne 13y agoThis is related to something I'm researching. To be blunt the intersection of government and civilian infrastructure is all muddled up. The theory is that DHS helps defend the civilian Internet (where "helps" seems to be as directive as it gets, since so much of the affected infrastructure is in private hands). In the meantime NSA and DoD are looking at cyber security very seriously, but through the military-tinted lens. It is a lot easier to differentiate a law enforcement problem from a military problem domestically when in the meatspace, especially without the attribution and jurisdictional issues that pop up with cybersecurity. It doesn't help when laws intended to clarify the process by which private and government entities cooperate for the security of the Internet get muddled with RIAA IP protection laws and subsequently get angrily tossed out of Congress. As it stands it all seems to be still quite foggy.
- microcolonel 13y agoIn the U.S. at least they threaten and spy on journalists more directly. Curse those foreign regimes and their easily-avoidable spyware.