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http://www.amazon.com/The-Human-Factor-Dysfunctional-Intelli...
When Chelsea Manning leaked the documents, noone was put in danger. When Snowden leaked the documents, no one was endangered. This breach, and lots of people are endangered. But are you getting calls for criminal investigation? Are heads rolling (other than the head of OPM, who was hated anyways)?
Isn't that what this article is about? We are pretty certain that this was an act of espionage by another nation state. Criminal investigations are not how you respond in those cases (unless we found the agent on our soil, which AFAIK we did not). What is curious is that we aren't sure what the norms are for how to respond to cyber espionage, unlike with in person espionage which had a whole set of responses we could…
Certainly, negligence that should incur public disgrace.
Also arguably demonstrating one of the points made by the whistleblowers: You can't trust the government to properly manage all the information they collecting.
One can envision a time in the very near future (if not already), when a random foreigner is stopped on the streets of Beijing and asked to press his finger to a reader attached to an Android phone. The device would then display his picture, official position, address, salary, clearance level, etc. Or else, just walk into the restaurant he just left and take the fingerprint off a used glass.
If he's there in some intelligence gathering capacity, the Chinese could then have him followed, or send him packing, or maybe even detain him for a day as a form of harassment, knowing that the U.S. government is powerless to do anything about it. They have us over a barrel.
[1]http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/what-could-...
When Chelsea Manning leaked the documents, noone was put in danger. When Snowden leaked the documents, no one was endangered. This breach, and lots of people are endangered. But are you getting calls for criminal investigation? Are heads rolling (other than the head of OPM, who was hated anyways)?
That's why I really like the NTSB's style of investigation (they're the people who investigate air crashes). Instead of going in and trying to pin it on one person, they look at procedures, organisational communications, chains of command, the whole works.
Most of their reports don't come out and say "engineer John Smith caused the accident by forgetting to tighten this bolt!" They say, we looked at John Smith, we found the mistake, then we looked at how John Smith's work is monitored, the procedures for this repair, the training given, what their manager did, their working conditions, etc.
Then finally they come up with some recommendations so it cannot happen again. These are normally procedural, training, and organisational changes, rather than simply saying "nobody should make mistakes ever again or jail!"
This is what we need for information security leaks like this. We need an NTSB-style org to come in, pull apart the organisation and how they operate, give everyone criminal immunity so they talk openly, and then generate concrete changes so this never happens again (and ideally send these changes to other departments).
... Or just jail everyone, whatever...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that what this article is about? We are pretty certain that this was an act of espionage by another nation state. Criminal investigations are not how you respond in those cases (unless we found the agent on our soil, which AFAIK we did not). What is curious is that we aren't sure what the norms are for how to respond to cyber espionage, unlike with in person espionage which had a whole set of responses we could…
Criminal negligence? Certainly, negligence that should incur public disgrace. Also arguably demonstrating one of the points made by the whistleblowers: You can't trust the government to properly manage all the information they collecting.
We can't blame the OPM for the security issues. They were a victim of a bad national strategy.
If you "see something, say something" unless its about cyber security.
I don't know why these hacking incidents are not considered acts of war.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anti-submarine vessels have to do one thing really well to have any chances; be quiet. Fishing vessels can happily plough the ocean wave pinging to their heart's content. An anti-submarine vessel that did that quickly becomes a target, or if the submarine is feeling generous, something to go around - thanks for telling us where you are. There's a time and a place for active sonar in finding and killing submarines, bu…
Then part of your navy is hacked fishing boat sonar kits and an uplink to the anti-submarine vessel. :)
I don't know why these hacking incidents are not considered acts of war.
"We, too, practice cyberespionage and . . . we’re not bad at it" - James Clapper Ironic, for the intelligence leader of a country that had their defensive systems completely penetrated (with the federal personnel records), and their offensive systems fully outed in the most humiliating way possible (by Snowden) It seems to me that yeah... you kind are bad at it. At the very least, a little less self-certainty might b…
For what it's worth, the CIA is the only federal agency that keeps their own employee records. Everyone else goes through OPM. They (rightfully) assumed that OPM couldn't keep secrets and that's where we find ourselves today. It's probable that these records are printed, locked in a vault. James Clapper, the DNI, heads 16 intelligence agencies under him, one of which (CIA) didn't have their records stolen. Though the…