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Comment by pvnick | Hacker News Reader

I just had an intriguing thought. Wouldn't it be interesting/ironic to see BAH made a target of anon hacking, successfully penetrated, and publicly embarrassed further than the Snowden fiasco? I think Feinstein might pop a blood vessel.

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I think it would be sad. I wouldn't laugh, even though I find Booz Allen distasteful. Intrusions of this sort are criminal for good reason. In the most likely case, the net effect would be more 18-28 year olds being prosecuted for felonies, while a chorus of message board ghouls cheers more people like them on.

Why? This isn't a case of some shadowy organization actively trying to spy on americans, a la HBGary. BAH had a contract to support netops and hired Snowden. Not exactly the same thing Barr did as CEO.

I'm not advocating or encouraging the hacking (I'd like to think I'm smarter than that). I'm saying for the case of the national discussion happening at the moment regarding government contractors carrying out national security jobs, I would be interested to see the response of folks like Feinstein, who publicly discussed limiting contractor access [1]. If contractors aren't trusted with secrets, the outcome plays right into Assange's theory of the locking down of information and subsequent paralysis of an authoritarian conspiracy [2].

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/feinstein-eyes-limi...

[2] http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf

I agree that it would likely yield an interesting discussion. The fact is federal contractors are responsible for almost all cases of espionage in the past 10 years.

Good links too.

BAH had a contract to support netops and hired Snowden.

Ah, the modern version of the Nuremberg defense. "It was in the contract."

Given how misguided Anonymous has proven to be at times in selecting their targets (a drawback of such a loose conglomeration of an organization), so I'd say that this is definitely in the realm of possibility.

That happened a while ago http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/07/11/anonymo...

BAH has a team of security experts that would shut down Anonymous attacks faster than you can say, "lulz".

That's funny.

Anonymous doesn't work the way you think they work. They hit easy targets, and lack the sophistication to hit anything else. BAH is, I assure you, not an easy target for any hacktivist group.

Heh, you mean like this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/07/11/anonymo...

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