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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

I'm knowingly paying an organization to openly wage cyber warfare and espionage operations on me?

Splendid. At least we may get a few good HPC and IR publications out of it.

Actually, it will probably be outsourced to contractors who will squander it away without producing anything.

Unless, that is, the next 9/11 gets planned using twitter hashtags. Actually, since the Sandy Hook shooter openly talked about his plans on 4chan, I'm guessing that even a twitter campaign would still "pass under the radar".

I bet the only real consequence is that someone will lose a laptop with like, everybody's social security number and financial history on it. It's going to be so awesome.

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> Actually, given that the Sandy Hook shooter openly talked about his plans on 4chan, I'm guessing that even that would still "pass under the radar".

Hoax?

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/415935/20121217/sandy-hook...

ok fine. Gabriel Giffords shooter posted pictures and details on his MySpace profile prior to the assassination attempt.

And for people like Colleen LaRose or the Underwear bomber, just a web browser and plain-old internet led to the apprehension. With Michael Reynolds, traditional "law enforcement officers posing as honeypots" style did the trick.

These classical methods seem to be working quite alright.

What is the use-case here? Some dastardly secret terrorist conspiracy where they collaboratively make detailed plans, over the internet, in clear text, like this:

-----

From: evilbomber@yahoo.com

Subject: Re: RE: re: re: Re: Secret plans

To: confidant@not-the-fbi.com

CC: coconspirator@gmail.com, evildoer2213@excite.com, bombmaker@msn.com

Attachments: annotated-map.pdf

----

Hey all,

After reviewing the bombing plans of the terrorist attack next Tuesday, set for Washington DC, when the Secretary of State, Jon Carey, is set to arrive by motorcade at 4:15 PM, I've decided that our assassination attempt (where we plan to Kill Jon Carey) would be best suited for a different intersection.

As you can see here, there is a better place to bomb the motorcade.

Also, I've gotten all the parts for the IED. This includes the incendiary, a timer, and all the wiring necessary. I carefully asked a bunch of questions on various open forums and posted pictures to confirm I made everything right. I also disclosed my intended use of the bombs along with my radical political leanings.

Anyway, Down with the USA, and I hope to meet all of you to make this death of a US diplomat a reality, next Tuesday, at 4:15 PM.

Patiently Awaiting Martyrdom,

evilbomber.

P.S.: What's encryption?

>ok fine. Gabriel Giffords shooter posted pictures and details on his myspace profile prior to the assassination attempt.

Not exactly.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/01/08/20110108ar...

>What is the use-case here? Some dastardly secret terrorist conspiracy where they collaboratively make detailed plans, over the internet, in cleartext?

Well of course.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/ba_jihadist_trial_se...

I highly doubt that the NSA's current surveillance program is worth it's potential collateral damage.

I'm just amazed that someone would go through all the effort to plan an attack of terror and not do a single web search to see if their inventive cryptography system has any notable issues.

I think people can do their own crypto as long as they are exceptionally prudent in doing their own homework.[1] He clearly wasn't.

el oh el.

----

[1] The authors of RSA and AES aren't demigods that descended from mount Olympus; they are people that did their own crypto, but with the right amount of focus and caution. It's clearly possible for a competent person to invent their own. Just like someone could invent their own operating system or programming language. It's just rarely appropriate to do so for a single task.

Speaking from personal experience, I'd recommend not using real names in a fake plot like this.

Alright, swapped out.

> And for people like Colleen LaRose or the Underwear bomber, just a web browser and plain-old internet led to the apprehension.

The underwear bomber was apprehended because a passenger on the plane tackled the bomber and put out the fire he'd started. The incident was acknowledged by the government (eventually) as a failure of the security apparatus to catch the guy ahead of time.

Alright I was mistaken, apologies. Reviewing the wikipedia page, it looks like a large number of people raised red flags on the guy. I guess my overall concern is that I fail to see how this exotic spying tool will address such human failing.

First, thanks for your willingness to admit a mistake - it's unfortunately rare. Second, you're right, all the same - plain old detective work is still effective without the privacy concerns (or, fewer concerns, at least).

I laughed out loud at your letter, but I'm sure you'll still get some attention from DSS.

Clarify acronyms please?

From what Wikipedia can tell me, the two most relevant terms those acronyms refer too are "High-performance computing" and "Information retrieval".

That makes sense. I was thinking maybe "Incident Response" :-)

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