[liberationtech] [Dewayne-Net] Are Hackers the Next Bogeyman Used to Scare Americans Into Giving Up More Rights?

[Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb]

Haven't "hackers" always been portrayed in a way to scare people? * If it's not dDoSing script kiddies, its zombie network owning Latvian mafias..

If this *is* the case, how can General Alexander go to Blackhat 2013 and say (paraphrasing) "we (CIA) use the same tools as you do. Help us protect America by teaching us rad haxoring skills."?


*: I still have a problem with the incorrect use of the word hacker here..but it's already passed into common usage.



On 12 Aug 2013, at 22:55, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com> wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: dewayne-net at warpspeed.com [mailto:dewayne-net at warpspeed.com] On Behalf
> Of Dewayne Hendricks
> Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2013 4:32 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Are Hackers the Next Bogeyman Used to Scare Americans
> Into Giving Up More Rights?
> 
> Are Hackers the Next Bogeyman Used to Scare Americans Into Giving Up More
> Rights?
> Has "terrorism" grown a little stale as an all purpose boogeyman?
> By Digby
> Aug 12 2013
> <http://www.alternet.org/are-hackers-next-bogeyman-used-scare-americans-givi
> ng-more-rights>
> 
> Marcy Wheeler has been speculating for a very long time that the real
> purpose of all this NSA collection isn't terrorism, it's hacking. These
> comments last week from Michael Hayden lend a lot of credence to that theory
> in my eyes:
> 
> "If and when our government grabs Edward Snowden, and brings him back here
> to the United States for trial, what does this group do?" said retired air
> force general Michael Hayden, who from 1999 to 2009 ran the NSA and then the
> CIA, referring to "nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous,
> twentysomethings who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six
> years".
> "They may want to come after the US government, but frankly, you know, the
> dot-mil stuff is about the hardest target in the United States," Hayden
> said, using a shorthand for US military networks. "So if they can't create
> great harm to dot-mil, who are they going after? Who for them are the World
> Trade Centers? The World Trade Centers, as they were for al-Qaida."
> 
> That's just a tiny bit overwrought for an allegedly serious expert, don't
> you think? In fact, it sounds like the kind of thing we heard from various
> members of the Bush administration during the early days after 9/11. And it
> certainly indicates, as Wheeler has been speculating, that the government is
> stretching the terrorism laws to include hacking. They certainly are using
> the same histrionic language to describe it.
> 
> Under Hayden, the NSA began to collect, among other things, the phone
> records and internet data of Americans without warrants after 9/11, a
> drastic departure from its traditional mission of collecting foreign
> intelligence. A variety of technically sophisticated collection and analysis
> programs, codenamed Stellar Wind, were the genesis of several of the NSA
> efforts that Snowden disclosed to the Guardian and the Washington Post.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress>
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Liberationtech is a public list whose archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys at stanford.edu.

--------------------------------------
Bernard / bluboxthief / ei8fdb

IO91XM / www.ei8fdb.org