Cybersecurity, cyberhackers, extortion, and probably a new assault on civil liberties

when you read something like "rare public warning" issued by a "CIA analyst" who knew it would be written up for public consumption, you can be DAMN sure SOMETHING is being telegraphed here... this shit isn't just tossed out there for the hell of it... we're very likely being prepped for something... any guesses...?

In a rare public warning to the power and utility industry, a CIA analyst this week said cyber attackers have hacked into the computer systems of utility companies outside the United States and made demands, in at least one case causing a power outage that affected multiple cities.

"We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet," Tom Donahue, the CIA's top cybersecurity analyst, said Wednesday at a trade conference in New Orleans.

Donahue's comments were "designed to highlight to the audience the challenges posed by potential cyber intrusions," CIA spokesman George Little said. The audience was made up of 300 U.S. and international security officials from the government and from electric, water, oil and gas companies, including BP, Chevron and the Southern Co.

"We suspect, but cannot confirm, that some of the attackers had the benefit of inside knowledge," Donahue said. He did not specify where or when the attacks took place, their duration or the amount of money demanded. Little said the agency would not comment further.

The remarks come as cyber attackers have made increasingly sophisticated intrusions into corporate computer systems, costing companies worldwide more than $20 billion each year, according to some estimates.

Cyber extortion is a growing threat in the United States, and attackers have radically increased their take from online gambling sites, e-commerce sites and banks, which pay the money to prevent sites from being shut down and to keep the public from knowing their sites have been penetrated, said Alan Paller, research director at the SANS Institute, the cybersecurity education group that sponsored the meeting.

if this isn't prelude to yet another move to justify internet surveillance and further reduce the goddam little that's left of individual privacy, i'd be mighty surprised...

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The infrastructure to tap into Americans' email and web search history MAY already be in place?

i don't think there's any MAY about it... it IS in place and has been for much longer than any of us would like to believe, easily dating back to the mid-90s or even earlier...

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker's print edition today.

Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “will be a walk in the park compared to this,” McConnell said. “this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.”

The article, which profiles the 65-year-old former admiral appointed by President George W. Bush in January 2007 to oversee all of America's intelligence agencies, was not published on the New Yorker's Web site [PDF].

McConnell is developing a Cyber-Security Policy, still in the draft stage, which will closely police Internet activity.

"Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the autority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search," author Lawrence Wright pens.

“Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation, he said," Wright adds. "Giorgio warned me, 'We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"

A zero-sum game is one in which gains by one side come at the expense of the other. In other words -- McConnell's aide believes greater security can only come at privacy's expense.

[...]

The infrastructure to tap into Americans' email and web search history may already be in place.

In November, a former technician at AT&T alleged that the telecom forwarded virtually all of its Internet traffic into a "secret room" to facilitate government spying.

Whistleblower Mark Klein said that a copy of all Internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office -- to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access -- via a cable splitting device.

i know there's a lot of folks out there that, when this stuff registers on their radar screen, somehow manage to shrug and just let it roll off their backs... others are easily distracted by the bells and whistles of the election campaign, somehow believing that the "right" choice for our next president will somehow magically insure salvation... then there are those like me and a few others who see the broader pattern of what's happening and have heart palpitations over every fresh revelation... but, putting all those folks together still doesn't add up to more than a few, single-digit percentage points of the citizenry... how many out there actually bother to inform themselves to the extent that they even READ articles like this...? how many actually UNDERSTAND that our precious constitution is being systematically shredded, that the rule of law has gone out the window, and that accountability is at the top of the endangered species list...? or do they know and just not care as long as there is no significant impact on their daily lives...?

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