Entries by emptywheel

Robert Mueller: Anna Chapman and Mohamed Mohamud Are Bigger Threats than Lloyd Blankfein

As part of Robert Mueller’s reconfirmation hearing, he stated–and then was repeatedly asked–what threats face our country. Here’s how he described these threats in his hearing statement: The FBI has never faced a more complex threat environment than it does today. Over the past year, we have seen an extraordinary array of national security and […]

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Tom Coburn Suggests Problems with Use of PATRIOT Act Section 215 Will Be Big Court Battle

I’m watching the SJC’s 51 minutes of almost entirely pathetic questioning of Robert Mueller to remain Director of FBI for two more years (the only real challenge came from Al Franken on civil liberties issues). And while by far the most telling aspect of the questioning came in Mueller’s repeated assertion that aspirational internet terrorists […]

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Have WSJ and Al Jazeera Already Ceded the Espionage Debate?

EFF has a report on the terms of service WSJ and AJ offer leakers using their WikiLeaks competitor sites. I had already heard that WSJ offered almost no technical security (which EFF describes), but it turns out neither offer much in the way of confidentiality guarantees. Despite promising anonymity, security and confidentiality, [Al Jazeera Transparency […]

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The Crux of the Cisco-US Government Collaboration

As I said in this comment, we’re going to have to wait until the Canadian court releases more details on the failed extradition of Peter Alfred Adekeye to get a better sense of what the government did to piss off the court so badly. But this is my attempt to  the crux of the matter. […]

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Is Apparent US Conspiracy with Cisco about Wiretapping?

Canada has just discovered how much corporations own our legal system, how our legal system criminalizes whistleblowers, and our utter and total disdain for the rule of law. At issue is the apparent conspiracy between Cisco and the US government to respond to an anti-trust lawsuit launched by Peter Alfred Adekeye, a former Cisco employee. […]

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FBI’s Hacker-Informants

The Guardian uses an eye-popping stat from a hacker journalist–that a quarter of all hackers are FBI moles–to cement a a story about the FBI infiltrating hacker groups. The underground world of computer hackers has been so thoroughly infiltrated in the US by the FBI and secret service that it is now riddled with paranoia […]

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Thomas Drake: The Government Hides Its Toys

As Josh Gerstein just reported, the government has decided to withdraw some evidence against Thomas Drake rather than come up with CIPA substitutions that would give Drake the ability to defend himself. At issue is “NSA’s targeting of a particular telecommunications technology,” which the government wants to hide. To avoid mentioning it, they are now […]

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