[LINK] US Hacking

[Frank O'Connor]

Gutsy bloke ...

Of course the government (ours and the US and the UK and the ... ) will, as always, seek to blame the messenger but we really need to re-assess the security we've taken on board since 9/11.

Essentially, Al Qaeda won 'The War'. 

They won because the Western World decided to characterise it as a war rather than as a crime. They won because our intelligence community nowadays sees nothing wrong (and indeed acts with impunity) in creating breaches of our privacy and affairs. They won because with every annual budget the funds available to the various intelligence Empires rise stratospherically, until they now dwarf what they were getting pre-2001 - hundreds of times more - despite a lack of any measures that indicate the intelligence community is any more effective that it was pre-9/11. They won because the intelligence infrastructure now oversees everything, pries into everything, burrows into all aspects of our lives, and takes on itself capabilities that make the old Gestapo, NKVD, the CIA and other traditional oppressive instruments of oppression seem like benign amateurs ... and they/we no longer see anything wrong with that.

Osama Bin Laden and his various cohorts must be laughing in their respective graves. For a minimal investment (of probably less than a couple of a million dollars) they have transformed Western society into a series of police states, seen any number of Western states bankrupt themselves of treasure and blood in 'Wars' against third rate secular states that had nothing to do with 9/11 (despite, ironically, intelligence debacles that said they did) as governments blindly hit out at anyone, and have seen the quality of the various Western democracies, that were so failed by their intelligence communities, that Al Qaeda were so opposed to, diminish until they would be unrecognisable to observer pre-9/11.

And still our politicians and government infrastructure cater to these anti-democratic incompetents.

It's amazing that none of our supposed political 'representatives' see the irony of this (listening to Carr's reassurances the other night was a bit like watching an episode of Monty Python) ... which simply reinforces my intention to vote for a true independent who represents my interests, and the interests of their electorate, in September ... rather than the member of any traditional party (Labour, Liberal, National Party, Greens or whatever). I mean ... they've shown us how they vote on party lines, and that none of the has a conscience worth mentioning ... so this time I'll go for something resembling a real person.

Just my 2 cents worth ...

On 10/06/2013, at 9:32 AM, Kim Holburn <kim at holburn.net> wrote:

> http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why
> 
>> NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I do not expect to see home again'
>> 
>> Source for the Guardian's NSA files on why he carried out the biggest intelligence leak in a generation – and what comes next
> 
>> Q: Why did you decide to become a whistleblower?
>> 
>> A: "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.
>> 
>> "I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under."
>> 
>> Q: But isn't there a need for surveillance to try to reduce the chances of terrorist attacks such as Boston?
>> 
>> A: "We have to decide why terrorism is a new threat. There has always been terrorism. Boston was a criminal act. It was not about surveillance but good, old-fashioned police work. The police are very good at what they do."
> 
> ....
> 
>> Q: What about the Obama administration's protests about hacking by China?
>> 
>> A: "We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world. We are not at war with these countries."
> 
> 
> -- 
> Kim Holburn
> IT Network & Security Consultant
> T: +61 2 61402408  M: +61 404072753
> mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
> skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link