From James Bamford’s “Big Brother Is Listening” (The Atlantic: April 2006):
This legislation, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, established the FISA court—made up of eleven judges handpicked by the chief justice of the United States—as a secret part of the federal judiciary. The court’s job is to decide whether to grant warrants requested by [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, history, law, politics, security, technology | No Comments »
From Vassilis Prevelakis and Diomidis Spinellis’ “The Athens Affair” (IEEE Spectrum: July 2007):
On 9 March 2005, a 38-year-old Greek electrical engineer named Costas Tsalikidis was found hanged in his Athens loft apartment, an apparent suicide. It would prove to be merely the first public news of a scandal that would roil Greece for months.
The next [...]
Posted on November 22nd, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From Shane Harris’ “China’s Cyber-Militia” (National Journal: 31 May 2008):
Computer hackers in China, including those working on behalf of the Chinese government and military, have penetrated deeply into the information systems of U.S. companies and government agencies, stolen proprietary information from American executives in advance of their business meetings in China, and, in a few [...]
Posted on November 22nd, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, business, history, politics, security | No Comments »
From BBC News’ “Council admits spying on family” (10 April 2008):
A council has admitted spying on a family using laws to track criminals and terrorists to find out if they were really living in a school catchment.
A couple and their three children were put under surveillance without their knowledge by Poole Borough Council [...]
Posted on November 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Webster U: infosec management, security, technology | No Comments »
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (I: 4):
Master Gunner:
The prince’s espials have informed me
How the English, in the suburbs close intrench’d,
Wont, through a secret grate of iron bars
In yonder tower, to overpeer the city,
And thence discover how with most advantage
They may vex us with shot, or with assault.
espials: spies; the act of noting, observing, [...]
Posted on January 13th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: language & literature, word of the day | Comments Off
From Tom Reiss’s “Imagining the Worst: How a literary genre anticipated the modern world” (The New Yorker [28 November 2005]: 112):
The [British] army was given responsibility for domestic intelligence, which became MI5; the Navy was put in charge of a new foreign espionage service, which became MI6.
Related posts
The NSA and threats to privacy
The Chinese Internet [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics | Comments Off
From Kim Zetter’s “The NSA is on the line — all of them” (Salon: 15 May 2006):
As fireworks showered New York Harbor [in 1976], the country was debating a three-decades-long agreement between Western Union and other telecommunications companies to surreptitiously supply the NSA, on a daily basis, with all telegrams sent to and from the [...]
Posted on July 18th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, history, politics, security, technology | Comments Off
From Bo Elkjaer and Kenan Seeberg’s “Echelon’S Architect” (Cryptome: 21 May 2002):
After that, [Bruce McIndoe] started to design Echelon II, an enlargement of the original system.
Bruce McIndoe left the inner circle of the enormous espionage network in 1998, a network run by the National Security Agency, the world’s most powerful intelligence agency, in cooperation with [...]
Posted on July 18th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security, technology | Comments Off
From Melissa Meagher’s “State Worker Spies on Boss, Loses His Job“:
For 22 years, [Vernon] Blake was a System Administrator for the Alabama Department of Transportation. It was a job he loved, with the exception of his supervisor. …
The running joke around the office? The boss blew off meetings and projects to play games on his [...]
Posted on July 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Zachary Slobig’s “Police launch eye-in-the-sky technology above Los Angeles” (AFP: 17 June 2006):
Police launched the future of law enforcement into the smoggy Los Angeles sky in the form of a drone aircraft, bringing technology most commonly associated with combat zones to urban policing.
The unmanned aerial vehicle, which looks like a child’s remote control toy [...]
Posted on June 19th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, law, politics, security, technology | Comments Off
From John Diamond and Leslie Cauley’s “Pre-9/11 records help flag suspicious calling” (USA TODAY: 22 May 2006):
Armed with details of billions of telephone calls, the National Security Agency used phone records linked to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to create a template of how phone activity among terrorists looks, say current and former intelligence officials [...]
Posted on June 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, law, politics, technology | Comments Off