Who is the enemy? Us or them?

[GTaudiophile]

According to the federal government, American citizens are the enemy:

Details of “Einstein” Cyber Shield Disclosed by White House

The Obama administration lifted the veil Tuesday on a highly-secretive set of policies to defend the U.S. from cyber attacks.

It was an open secret that the National Security Agency was bolstering a Homeland Security program to detect and respond to cyber attacks on government systems, but a summary of that program declassified Tuesday provides more details of NSA’s role in a Homeland program known as Einstein.

The current version of the program is widely seen as providing meager protection against attack, but a new version being built will be more robust–largely because it’s rooted in NSA technology. The program is designed to look for indicators of cyber attacks by digging into all Internet communications, including the contents of emails, according to the declassified summary.

Homeland Security will then strip out identifying information and pass along data on new threats to NSA. It will also use threat information from NSA to better identify emerging cyber attacks.

NSA’s role is a careful balance because of the political battles that ensued over the agency’s role in domestic surveillance in the George W. Bush administration. Declassifying details of the NSA’s role, in a program initially developed during the Bush administration and continued in the Obama administration, will likely ignite new debates over privacy.

The White House’s new cyber-security chief, Howard Schmidt, announced the move to declassify the program in a speech at the RSA conference in San Francisco–his first major public address since assuming the post in January. He said addressing potential privacy concerns was one of the ten initial steps he planned to take. “We’re really paying attention, and we get it,” he said.

 

[MotF Bane]

Great, let's name it Einstein because everyone knows the name and it's generally a positive reputation, and then say "fuck you" to privacy.

Really, what political battles over NSA? Both parties are demonstrating they don't give a fuck about privacy.

 

[thraashman]

Well, this is a program that will have to walk a fine line. The problem at hand is figuring out a way to do the monitoring while capturing no private or personal information. I do think it's a good idea for the government to put some resources towards stopping cyber attacks. They're getting a bit more common than I would have expected.

 

[Jaskalas]

According to the federal government, American citizens are the enemy

Some day we will all be North Koreans.

 

[HeXen]

The REAL confidential information you know darn well is not on a computer hooked to internet. Probably stored on encrypted hard drives put up on vaults every night and only hooked to custom computers with hardware decryption not connected to anything else.

Wouldnt suprise me if govt doesnt put false confidential information and emails out there for it to be stolen.

If not, then the govt is f'ing retarded, what moron would keep sensitive files on networked computers? I mean i understand some types of sensitive info via emails...etc need to be exchanged, but i'm talking like information that could seriously hurt the country or govt officials if stolen. ya know like secret weapons or names of undercover officers, spies...etc. That stuff doesnt even belong on a computer imo.

 

[spittledip]

As long as it doesn't cause too much latency.

 

[werepossum]

Meh. A program will look over your email. If it looks suspicious, another, more sophisticated program will look it over. Eventually, an actual person will look at it, but only if it really, really sets off bells and whistles. I can't get too concerned about this.

System Mechanic, if history is any guide the REAL confidential material is on a laptop inadvertently left on the train or about to be stolen from an unlocked car. It's only SUPPOSED to be on a computer not hooked to the Internet.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

According to the federal government, American citizens are the enemy

This isn't really new.

 

[Craig234]

Meh. A program will look over your email. If it looks suspicious, another, more sophisticated program will look it over. Eventually, an actual person will look at it, but only if it really, really sets off bells and whistles. I can't get too concerned about this.

System Mechanic, if history is any guide the REAL confidential material is on a laptop inadvertently left on the train or about to be stolen from an unlocked car. It's only SUPPOSED to be on a computer not hooked to the Internet.

Isn't anyone who is actually doing this going to be able to easliy have innocuous sounding e-mails not setting off 'really big alarms'?

Doesn't that leave the only real function of the system the infrastructure for violating privacy, making it much easier to cross lines, especially on a 'secret' basis?

We now know the NSA has routinely done such things, back to when Western Union would secretly give the government a copy of the telegrams each day to peruse for leads.

Followed later by most telephone companies (credit to Qwest for saying no) giving access.

There's incremental, 'boiling the frog' progress here as each step seems like an innocuous baby step worth the tradeoff.

Paint a picture for people of the electronic heroes finding the clue for the big terror attack they prevent, and they cheer the program. But is that a realistic descipriotn, or a cover for selling the violations?

 

[Zebo]

Terrorists would have to be retard to use web. Total OPSEC violation and they know that too. Good ole fashioned FTF, small anonymous cells to one another, and having nothing but solitaire on their computers is how they operate. Course that's a hard nut to crack so government takes the easy and unconstitutional way to "protect" us.

 

[Craig234]

Terrorists would have to be retard to use web. Total OPSEC violation and they know that too. Good ole fashioned FTF, small anonymous cells to one another, and having nothing but solitaire on their computers is how they operate. Course that's a hard nut to crack so government takes the easy and unconstitutional way to "protect" us.

There's a certain CYA value to it - if an attack happened and this WOULD have caught it, they're very vulnerable politically; and they'rre vulnerable to opponents CLAIMING it would catch attacks.

 

[werepossum]

Isn't anyone who is actually doing this going to be able to easliy have innocuous sounding e-mails not setting off 'really big alarms'?

Doesn't that leave the only real function of the system the infrastructure for violating privacy, making it much easier to cross lines, especially on a 'secret' basis?

We now know the NSA has routinely done such things, back to when Western Union would secretly give the government a copy of the telegrams each day to peruse for leads.

Followed later by most telephone companies (credit to Qwest for saying no) giving access.

There's incremental, 'boiling the frog' progress here as each step seems like an innocuous baby step worth the tradeoff.

Paint a picture for people of the electronic heroes finding the clue for the big terror attack they prevent, and they cheer the program. But is that a realistic descipriotn, or a cover for selling the violations?

Probably, but one thing we remain fairly good at is deciphering code. Practically all military intelligence involves intercepting traffic with actions, locations, and often dates encoded beyond the primary coding method. The Japanese for example did not just encode a message saying "On the fourth of next month we're going to attack Midway with Task Force Toyoda", but rather something on the order of "On Julius + 7 we implement Phased Lighting with Elusive." Breaking the code is therefore almost always only half the problem. Correctly detecting intent involves not only intercepting the messages, but also putting together the pieces to correctly identify the true meaning of the code words.

This will be a similar effort. A terrorism suspect mentions going to Disneyland for Lent. Who else mentions Disneyland and Lent? This produces pool #1, which is obviously going to be vast majority of false positives as by far most people mentioning Disneyland are actually talking about Disneyland and have no intention of killing anyone. What else does this suspect mention - locations, proper names, dates? Filtering for this produces a second, smaller pool. Have any of these people exchanged any emails with anyone on the list of the suspect's emails? This produces a third and smaller pool. Eventually there is a manageable list of people who need to be checked out by an actual person. Most of those people too will be dropped, but perhaps connections can be formed that would otherwise be missed.

This is of course a gross oversimplification as the actual linkage will almost certainly be a combination of standard hit words and a sophisticated relational database. And of course anything government does is subject to abuse. But I see no reason to automatically assume that the government has any great interest in my own rather boring correspondence, or in those of my three hundred million brothers and sisters.

 

[Danube]

Obama and Holder dropped charges vs a Cole bomber and Panthers with clubs at polling place in Philly. They also look out for terrorists while intimidating CIA and throwing Navy Seals in prison. It's pretty obvious where the sympathies of these people resides.

 

[werepossum]

Terrorists would have to be retard to use web. Total OPSEC violation and they know that too. Good ole fashioned FTF, small anonymous cells to one another, and having nothing but solitaire on their computers is how they operate. Course that's a hard nut to crack so government takes the easy and unconstitutional way to "protect" us.

Blowing yourself to nasty little bits is not traditionally a high intellect career path. Also, the Fort Hood shooter would have been caught easily using something like this. Personally I fear political correctness crippling any usage of the results more than government swooping down to arrest me for impure thoughts.

 

[blackangst1]

Probably, but one thing we remain fairly good at is deciphering code. Practically all military intelligence involves intercepting traffic with actions, locations, and often dates encoded beyond the primary coding method. The Japanese for example did not just encode a message saying "On the fourth of next month we're going to attack Midway with Task Force Toyoda", but rather something on the order of "On Julius + 7 we implement Phased Lighting with Elusive." Breaking the code is therefore almost always only half the problem. Correctly detecting intent involves not only intercepting the messages, but also putting together the pieces to correctly identify the true meaning of the code words.

This will be a similar effort. A terrorism suspect mentions going to Disneyland for Lent. Who else mentions Disneyland and Lent? This produces pool #1, which is obviously going to be vast majority of false positives as by far most people mentioning Disneyland are actually talking about Disneyland and have no intention of killing anyone. What else does this suspect mention - locations, proper names, dates? Filtering for this produces a second, smaller pool. Have any of these people exchanged any emails with anyone on the list of the suspect's emails? This produces a third and smaller pool. Eventually there is a manageable list of people who need to be checked out by an actual person. Most of those people too will be dropped, but perhaps connections can be formed that would otherwise be missed.

This is of course a gross oversimplification as the actual linkage will almost certainly be a combination of standard hit words and a sophisticated relational database. And of course anything government does is subject to abuse. But I see no reason to automatically assume that the government has any great interest in my own rather boring correspondence, or in those of my three hundred million brothers and sisters.

Although I agree with you, I think the comments about the probability of genuine threats not being on networked computers is valid. Also, there is the problem of encryption. PGP, for example, is now easy enough for a 5th grader to use, and if set up correctly, not crackable. So, in your example above, send the message encrypted in email, and its safe from prying eyes.

That said, Im not sure where I stand on this issue overall. On one hand I, like others who have also commented, see a need to have some kind of monitoring; however, on the other, the possibility of invasion of privacy greatly concerns me. It has always been my belief that if something is possible, it will be done. So, even though there are "safeguards" put into place to prevent lettered agencies from prying into random citizen's business, I believe that trust will be, and has been, breached.

 

[Jaskalas]

There's a certain CYA value to it - if an attack happened and this WOULD have caught it, they're very vulnerable politically; and they'rre vulnerable to opponents CLAIMING it would catch attacks.

How about we just round up a few Americans each week to meet the terrorist catching quota?

 

[cubeless]

just think of all the new jobs for people to read the emails this spits out!!! but they probably outsourced it to satyam... all the personal info has been stripped out, so why not? right?

 

[db]

Um guys, they've been filtering for years.

 

[Zebo]

Blowing yourself to nasty little bits is not traditionally a high intellect career path. Also, the Fort Hood shooter would have been caught easily using something like this. Personally I fear political correctness crippling any usage of the results more than government swooping down to arrest me for impure thoughts.

Fort Hood - Doctor
AFHG CIA suicide bomber - Doctor
Underwear Bomber - Senior at prestigious university
911 crew - some engineers all college grads..

Not low intellect folks. Regardless - Nowadays they don't screw with intraweb if part of an org. You gotta know this. Read the AQ manual. Maybe you shouldn't look for it though with these new laws.

 

[SlickSnake]

Maybe you shouldn't look for it though with these new laws.

see sig...

 

[drebo]

Best thing to do would be to just make sure every single one of everyone's emails has something like "Death to America" in the signature. That way, the program will be effectively useless. THere will be so many false positives that there is no way to weed them out. Beat the government eavesdroppers at their own game. Make everything so offensive that nothing will seem offensive.