IO Impotency – Page 204 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/01/112013/01/11

Rickard Falkvinge: Nokia (Microsoft) Wire Tapped All of Its Own Encrypted Cell Phones Including Bank Transfer Information

03 Economy, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, IO Impotency, Officers Call

Death Twitches: Nokia Caught Wiretapping Encrypted Traffic from Its Handsets

Nokia, the cellphone manufacturer, has been listening in to all encrypted communications from its handsets. Every connection advertised as secure – banking, social networks, dating, corporate secrets – has been covertly wiretapped by Nokia themselves and decrypted for analysis.

Security researcher Gaurang posted an article on January 5 about some unexpected behavior with their Nokia handset. It would appear that the browser traffic from the handset would get diverted through Nokia’s servers.

Then, a followup article on January 9 dropped the bomb, and the article goes into quite technical detail: It wasn’t enough that Nokia diverted all traffic from its handsets through its own servers, it also decrypted the encrypted traffic, re-encrypting it before passing it on, issuing HTTPS certificates on the fly that the Nokia phone has been instructed to trust as secure.

This means that Nokia has deliberately been wiretapping all traffic that has been advertised as encrypted on Nokia handsets – including but not limited to banking, dating, credit card numbers, and corporate secrets – and looking at your secrets in cleartext.

This means that Nokia puts itself between your bank and you, and presents itself as YourBank, Inc. to your phone. This wouldn’t normally be possible, if it weren’t for the fact that the phone had been specifically designed for this deceptive behavior, by installing a Nokia signing certificate on the phone.

Nokia has confirmed this behavior in correspondence with TechWeek Europe (my highlights):

Read full article.

2013/01/082013/05/18

Marcus Aurelius: Fact-Checking CIA Fact-Checking 0 Dark 30 [with Robert Steele Fact-Checking Both] 1.2

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency

Fact-Checking the CIA's Fact-Check on ‘Zero Dark Thirty

By J.K. Trotter | The Atlantic Wire – Fri, Dec 28, 2012

“The CIA is a lot different than Hollywood portrays it to be,” reads an official explainer issued today by the Central Intelligence Agency — a thinly veiled attempt to continue debunking Zero Dark Thirty, the controversial Oscar favorite that its director admittedly hates. Referring to James Bond, the fictional MI6 agent, depictions of “shootouts and high speed chases,” and scenes of “CIA officers chasing terrorists through the American heartland,” the memo goes on to try and dispel an array of “myths” pertaining to the agency's operations, from its impact on foreign policy to its ability to spy on Americans. The effort follows a December 21 letter addressed to CIA employees from the agency's acting director, Michael Morrell, concerning the “artistic license” of Zero Dark Thirty. Today's release touches on the same themes: whether the CIA of our popular imagination corresponds to the CIA of reality, and how movies like Zero Dark Thirty (which isn't name-checked directly) blur the distinction between fact and fantasy. Should you believe the CIA's interpretation of Hollywood? We break down each agency claim with actual details from the movies — and Homeland, obviously.

Below the line: each of the five “myths” and Robert Steele's “best truth” answer, Steve Coll's negative review of film.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Fact-Checking CIA Fact-Checking 0 Dark 30 [with Robert Steele Fact-Checking Both] 1.2”

2013/01/072013/01/07

Moises Naim: Mafia States Robert Steele Graphic

Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Key Players, Offbeat Fun, Policies, Strategy, Threats

Mafia States:Organized Crime Takes Office

By Moisés Naím

Foreign Affairs, May/June 2012

SUMMARY: Around the world, criminal organizations and governments are fusing to an unprecedented degree, blurring the distinction between national interests and what suits the gangsters. Mafia states enjoy the unhealthy advantages of their hybrid status: they're as nimble as gangs and as well protected as governments, and thus more dangerous than either.

MOISES NAIM is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy.

The global economic crisis has been a boon for transnational criminals. Thanks to the weak economy, cash-rich criminal organizations can acquire financially distressed but potentially valuable companies at bargain prices. Fiscal austerity is forcing governments everywhere to cut the budgets of law enforcement agencies and court systems. Millions of people have been laid off and are thus more easily tempted to break the law. Large numbers of unemployed experts in finance, accounting, information technology, law, and logistics have boosted the supply of world-class talent available to criminal cartels. Meanwhile, philanthropists all over the world have curtailed their giving, creating funding shortfalls in the arts, education, health care, and other areas, which criminals are all too happy to fill in exchange for political access, social legitimacy, and popular support. International criminals could hardly ask for a more favorable business environment. Their activities are typically high margin and cash-based, which means they often enjoy a high degree of liquidity — not a bad position to be in during a global credit crunch.

But emboldened adversaries and dwindling resources are not the only problems confronting police departments, prosecutors, and judges. In recent years, a new threat has emerged: the mafia state. Across the globe, criminals have penetrated governments to an unprecedented degree. The reverse has also happened: rather than stamping out powerful gangs, some governments have instead taken over their illegal operations. In mafia states, government officials enrich themselves and their families and friends while exploiting the money, muscle, political influence, and global connections of criminal syndicates to cement and expand their own power. Indeed, top positions in some of the world's most profitable illicit enterprises are no longer filled only by professional criminals; they now include senior government officials, legislators, spy chiefs, heads of police departments, military officers, and, in some extreme cases, even heads of state or their family members.

Read full article (registration required).

Measuring the Mafia-State Menace: Are Government-Backed Gangs a Grave New Threat?

By Peter Andreas; Moisés Naím

Foreign Affairs,July/August 2012

Read rebuttal commentary (Peter Andreas) and response (Moises Naim) — no registration required.

Continue reading “Moises Naim: Mafia States Robert Steele Graphic”

2013/01/042013/01/04

Mini-Me: Hillary Injured in Secret Mission to Iran?

IO Deeds of Peace, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, IO Secrets

Huh?

Hillary Was Injured In Secret Iran Mission: Report

The real reason U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has not been seen for the last month is because she was injured during a secret mission to Iran, according to published intelligence sources.

Quoting sources around Tehran and the Gulf Emirates, DEBKAfile, a Middle East news service known as an outlet for Israeli and Western intelligence, says Secretary Clinton made the clandestine trip during the first week of December.

Although the objective of her mission remains unclear, the incident, which took place shortly after December 1, coincides with an earlier DEBKAfile report that Obama administration officials launched secret talks with senior representatives of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Iran’s nuclear program.

The DEBKAfile article speculates that Secretary Clinton was on her way to a secret meeting with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in regard to those negotiations.

The plane carrying Secretary Clinton and her entourage of advisers and security personnel left Bahrain for its logged destination of Baghdad, but changed direction in midair and headed for Ahvaz, capital of the south Iranian province of Khuzestan. The Iranian president was waiting there for her arrival.

According to DEBKAfile, the plane somehow ran into technical trouble during the flight and made an emergency landing. Secretary Clinton was injured in the crash, and several of her staff were either injured or killed.

The unexplained death of Navy SEAL Commander Job Price is tied by some to the Clinton incident. At the time, the Pentagon reported that his sudden death on December 22, in Uruzgan, Afghanistan, was under investigation. Sources have told the UK Guardian that the reason for Commander Price’s death was suicide. It is now suggested that he headed the security detail for Secretary Clinton’s Iran mission and was killed in the accident.

Officially, Secretary Clinton came down with a flu and stomach virus in early December. During the illness, she became dizzy and fainted, hitting her head and going into a concussion. Doctors who continued to treat her at home discovered a blood clot during a follow-up exam and admitted her to hospital last Sunday. She was released yesterday.

The vague details and fuzzy timeline of events have led to wild speculation about the real reason for her sudden illness. Several top-ranking Republicans, including former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, claimed Secretary Clinton came down with “diplomatic illness” to avoid testifying at a House Foreign Affairs Committee on the September 11 terrorist attack on the American embassy in Benghazi. Others have claimed she really had a stroke, or fell during a drunken stupor.

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Hillary Injured in Secret Mission to Iran?”

2013/01/032013/01/03

Tom Engelhardt: Tough Love Indictment of the US Intelligence Community — Global Trends 2030 as Poster Child for Expensive Idiocy

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, IO Impotency

BOTTOM LINE ON GLOBAL TRENDS 2030:

“As a portrait of American power gone remarkably blind, deaf, and dumb in a world roaring toward 2030, it provides the rest of us with the functional definition of the group of people least likely to offer long-term security to Americans.”

Part I: The Visible Government [Supersizing Secrecy]

How the U.S. Intelligence Community Came Out of the Shadows

Part II: The U.S. Intelligence Community’s New Year’s Wish

Megatrends, Game-Changers, Black Swans, Tectonic Shifts, and a World Not That Different From 2012

Think of it as a simple formula: if you’ve been hired (and paid handsomely) to protect what is, you’re going to be congenitally ill-equipped to imagine what might be. And yet the urge not just to know the contours of the future, but to plant the Stars and Stripes in that future has had the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) in its grip since the mid-1990s. That was the moment when it first occurred to some in Washington that U.S. power might be capable of controlling just about everything worth the bother globally for, if not an eternity, then long enough to make the future American property.

Ever since, every few years the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the IC’s “center for long-term strategic analysis,” has been intent on producing a document it calls serially Global Trends [fill in the future year]. The latest edition, out just in time for Barack Obama’s second term, is Global Trends 2030. Here’s one utterly predictable thing about it: it’s bigger and more elaborate than Global Trends 2025. And here’s a prediction that, hard as it is to get anything right about the future, has a 99.9% chance of being accurate: when Global Trends 2035 comes out, it’ll be bigger and more elaborate yet. It’ll cost more and still, like its predecessor, offer a hem for every haw, a hedge for every faintly bold possibility, a trap-door escape from any prediction that might not stick.

Continue reading “Tom Engelhardt: Tough Love Indictment of the US Intelligence Community — Global Trends 2030 as Poster Child for Expensive Idiocy”

2013/01/032013/01/03

Berto Jongman: Biases in Judgment and Decision-Making

IO Impotency

Worth a look.

Wikipedia / List of biases in judgment and decision making

Many biases in judgment and decision making have been demonstrated by research in psychology and behavioral economics. These are systematic deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgment.

. . . . . . . . .

Decision-making, belief and behavioral biases

Many of these biases affect belief formation, business and economic decisions, and human behavior in general. They arise as a replicable result to a specific condition: when confronted with a specific situation, the deviation from what is normatively expected can be characterized by:

Ambiguity effect – the tendency to avoid options for which missing information makes the probability seem “unknown.”^[8]
Anchoring or focalism – the tendency to rely too heavily, or “anchor,” on a past reference or on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.
Attentional bias – the tendency to pay attention to emotionally dominant stimuli in one's environment and to neglect relevant data, when making judgments of a correlation or association.
Availability heuristic – the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater “availability” in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are, or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be.
Availability cascade – a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or “repeat something long enough and it will become true”).
Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Biases in Judgment and Decision-Making”

2013/01/032013/01/03

Jon Lebkowsky: Bruce Sterling on Robots and Humanity

IO Impotency

Robots and Humanity

My favorite-so-far Bruce Sterling post in the State of the World conversation:

“Following on from John Payne’s comments in <76>, are the robots coming for our jobs? Is a certain amount of unemployment going to end
up as part of the system and, if so, what happens next?”

*It’s so interesting to see this perennial question coming into vogue once again. When I was a pre-teen first discovering “science fiction,”
that automation dystopia story was all over the place. Even on the cover of TIME magazine. See this Artzybasheff computer monster, all
busy stealing guy’s jobs? Looks oddly familiar, doesn’t it?

Read full commentary.