Month: April 2012

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DefDog: Deja Vu on Cyber-Security, 25 Years After Terminal Compromise

IO Impotency
DefDog

Deja vu!  Seem to recall Winn Schwartau saying all of this in 1990-1991.

The Looming Specter of Cyber Warfare: Deprivations and Social Breakdowns

Keeping your finger on the pulse of evolving cyber threats is very difficult as they change so frequently and abruptly. In the following interview, IDGA’s @DefenseInsider explores the current and future landscape of cyber warfare with Scott Borg, CEO of the Cyber Consequences Unit. Chris Archer asks how cyber warfare will affect defense in the future and what’s being done to ensure the military and government remain ahead of the evolving threats. Scott Borg also reveals the current aims and priorities within the US Cyber Consequences Unit.

Scott, in your opinion how will cyber warfare affect defense in the future?

Cyber warfare will require us to rethink every aspect of defense. Our current weapons and defense systems will still be needed, but the way we use them will become very different. A major cyber assault could completely bypass our military forces. It would not require incoming airplanes, missiles, ships, or troops. The attack could suddenly appear inside the computerized equipment of our major industries. The identity of the country or organization that was responsible could be impossible to determine quickly or with complete confidence. The cyber assault could cause almost any kind of damage that could be produced by the human operators of computerized equipment. In fact, a cyber attack could cause many kinds of damage that the human operators of industrial equipment could only achieve by reprogramming their controls.  A major cyber assault could physically destroy or sabotage electrical generation stations, refineries, pipelines, banking systems, railroad switches, flight control centers, chemical plants, hospital equipment, and water and sanitation facilities. Thousands of people could be killed immediately by explosions, leaks of toxic chemicals, airplane crashes, train crashes, and wrong medical treatments. Hundreds of thousands could be caused to die over the months to come as a result of famine, disease, loss of heating or cooling, and the general deprivations and social breakdowns resulting from people no longer being supplied with the necessities of life. The total economic damage and fatalities could surpass any other kind of assault, except for a nuclear one.

Our current defense strategy ‐‐ having the government defend our boarders, being ready to annihilate adversary military forces or countries, and letting domestic industries completely ignore defense issues ‐‐ is clearly no longer appropriate in a world where this sort of attack is possible. The entire relationship between our military and our society will need to be redefined.

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Berto Jongman: From the Daily Star, Perspective on the Arab Spring and USA

Cultural Intelligence
Berto Jongman

Being read in Europe.

By Rami G. Khouri
The Daily Star Lebanon, 11 April 2012

It is common for analysts in the Middle East and abroad to view most of the conflicts and tensions in our region through the lens of (take your pick) the Iranian-Saudi Arabian regional cold war, the Shiite-Sunni confrontation, conservative Arab monarchies versus Arab populist revolutionary and democratic movements, or pro-American hegemony or anti-American resistance movements. There is some truth in all four conflict frameworks above, but I suspect we are dealing with something much more profound and historical than one basic conflict that hosts many smaller battlefields.

The diversity, intensity and longevity of armed conflicts and political upheaval across the entire Middle East these days are extraordinary and unprecedented. Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Bahrain, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon and Sudan are all in the midst of either chronic political tension or active warfare and violence.

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Owl: City of Roswell Tortures, Hounds, and Finally Executes Citizen with Chickens

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government
Who? Who?

There are seemingly too many articles to count about federal or state abuses of  power, but this does not mean there is any lack of vicious, sadistic, utterly cruel, and maniacally vindictive abuse by local government, as is evident is this well-researched, detailed article about a harmless and decent man who legally raised chickens on his 1 acre property. The illegal actions done to this man, and how it was done, by a local government, including the highly active participation of its police, should become well-known national news and the perpetrators  (“authorities”) of it prosecuted and tossed/kept in jail for a long time. This article shows severe government oppression can occur not only on a federal or national level in the US, but also within the confines of a small town, and be no less pathological and crime-ridden than any national government entity:

“Wordes had long raised his small poultry friends in the backyard of his one-acre property at 335 Alpine Drive in Roswell, Georgia, sharing eggs, chicks, and friendly words of wisdom and encouragement with his neighbors and with local schoolchildren all along the way. Wordes was very active in his local community, having organized a North Georgia Pet Chicken “Meetup” group, and founded a chicken breeding club. His friends and neighbors described him as a generous, kind, and loving man who was always willing to lend a hand, and who would have given you the shirt off his back if you needed it. But Wordes met his unjust fate on March 26, 2012, after roughly four years of enduring illicit and seemingly-endless abuse, bullying, threats, and unsubstantiated legal action taken against him by Roswell city officials with an apparent axe to grind. And after losing his birds, his freedom, his entire life savings, his property, and his livelihood as a result of the City of Roswell's sadistic war against him, Wordes ended up losing his life as a result of an explosion that occurred during the final eviction raid carried out by Fulton County marshals.”

City of Roswell, GA, bullies Andrew Wordes to death over his backyard chickens

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Penguin: Why Obama’s Jobs Act Is a Scam Legalizing More Crime

Commerce, Corruption, Government
Who, Me?

Why Obama's JOBS Act Couldn't Suck Worse

Sidebar: Steve Case is evil.

Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone, 9 April 2012

Boy, do I feel like an idiot. I've been out there on radio and TV in the last few months saying that I thought there was a chance Barack Obama was listening to the popular anger against Wall Street that drove the Occupy movement, that decisions like putting a for-real law enforcement guy like New York AG Eric Schneiderman in charge of a mortgage fraud task force meant he was at least willing to pay lip service to public outrage against the banks.

Then the JOBS Act happened.

The “Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act” (in addition to everything else, the Act has an annoying, redundant title) will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market.

In fact, one could say this law is not just a sweeping piece of deregulation that will have an increase in securities fraud as an accidental, ancillary consequence. No, this law actually appears to have been specifically written to encourage fraud in the stock markets.

Ostensibly, the law makes it easier for startup companies (particularly tech companies, whose lobbyists were a driving force behind its passage) to attract capital by, among other things, exempting them from independent accounting requirements for up to five years after they first begin selling shares in the stock market.

The law also rolls back rules designed to prevent bank analysts from talking up a stock just to win business, a practice that was so pervasive in the tech-boom years as to be almost industry standard.

Even worse, the JOBS Act, incredibly, will allow executives to give “pre-prospectus” presentations to investors using PowerPoint and other tools in which they will not be held liable for misrepresentations. These firms will still be obligated to submit prospectuses before their IPOs, and they'll still be held liable for what's in those. But it'll be up to the investor to check and make sure that the prospectus matches the “pre-presentation.”

The JOBS Act also loosens a whole range of other reporting requirements, and expands stock investment beyond “accredited investors,” giving official sanction to the internet-based fundraising activity known as “crowdfunding.”

But the big one, to me, is the bit about exempting firms from real independent tests of internal controls for five years.

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Owl: The DHS Cybersecurity Logjam [aka Goat-Fest Scam]

Corruption, Government, IO Impotency
Who? Who?

Global Insights: The DHS' Cybersecurity Logjam

By Richard Weitz

World Politics Review | 10 Apr 2012

When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established in March 2003, one of the new department’s primary goals was to enhance U.S. cybersecurity. But after several years passed without major DHS initiatives in this area, observers concluded that the department was insufficiently prepared or resourced to address cyber emergencies. Indeed, prior to the 2008 presidential election, the influential think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Commission on Cybersecurity recommended that the next occupant of the White House formally revoke DHS’ limited authority to coordinate cybersecurity because the department, having never had authority over the U.S. military, intelligence community and law enforcement agencies, could not perform this coordination role effectively.

When the Obama administration assumed office, it followed many of the commission’s recommendations, but it ignored this one. With White House encouragement, DHS has made it a higher priority to address the security of U.S. civilian cyber networks and has earned greater support in Congress for remaining the lead civilian agency in this area. For example, DHS made cybersecurity one of its five most important mission areas in the first-ever Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) released in 2010, 74 percent higher than in the 2012 budget.

DHS currently has the lead role in securing federal civilian network systems, sometimes described as the “dot.gov” domain. Through its National Infrastructure Protection Plan, DHS works with private- and public-sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure and key resources to bolster their cybersecurity preparedness, risk mitigation and incident-response capabilities. The fundamental problem the department faces is that, at present, it has responsibility to protect all nondefense public- and private-sector networks from cyberattack, but lacks sufficient authority to accomplish this mission.

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Paul Craig Roberts: ObamaCare — and TSA Searching Traffic on Easter Sunday

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, DHS, Government
Paul Craig Roberts

What is ObamaCare?

Growing up in the post-war era (after the Second World War), I never expected to live in the strange Kafkaesque world that exists today. The US government can assassinate any US citizen that the executive branch thinks could possibly be a “threat” to the US government, or throw the hapless citizen into a dungeon for the rest of his or her life without presenting any evidence to a court or obtaining a conviction of any crime, or send the “threat” to a puppet foreign state to be tortured until the “threat” confesses to a crime that never occurred or dies at the hands of “freedom and democracy” while professing innocence.

It has never been revealed how a single citizen, or any number thereof, could possibly comprise a threat to a government that has a trillion plus dollars to spend each year on security and weapons, the world’s largest navy and air force, 700 plus military bases across the world, large numbers of nuclear weapons, 16 intelligence agencies plus the intelligence agencies of its NATO puppet states and the intelligence service of Israel.

Nevertheless, air travelers are subjected to porno-scanning and sexual groping. Cars traveling on Interstate highways can expect to be stopped, with traffic backed up for miles, while Homeland Security and the federalized state or local police conduct searches.

I witnessed one such warrantless search on Easter Sunday. The south bound lanes of I-185 heading into Columbus, Georgia, were at a standstill while black SUV and police car lights flashed. US citizens were treated by “security” forces that they finance as if they were “terrorists” or “domestic extremists,” another undefined class of Americans devoid of constitutional protections.

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