Category: News You Need to Know

Hello Mr. or Mrs. DHS Agent

Hello Mr. or Mrs. Department of Motherland Homeland Security Agent,

I see that you’ve come to my site due to one or more of the keywords I’ve printed in the following list:

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Coast Guard (USCG)
Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
Border Patrol
Secret Service (USSS)
National Operations Center (NOC)
Homeland Defense
Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE)
Agent
Task Force
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Fusion Center
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
Secure Border Initiative (SBI)
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS)
Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS)
Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
Air Marshal
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
National Guard
Red Cross
United Nations (UN)
Assassination
Attack
Domestic security
Drill
Exercise
Cops
Law enforcement
Authorities
Disaster assistance
Disaster management
DNDO (Domestic Nuclear Detection Office)
National preparedness
Mitigation
Prevention
Response
Recovery
Dirty bomb
Domestic nuclear detection
Emergency management
Emergency response
First responder
Homeland security
Maritime domain awareness (MDA)
National preparedness
initiative
Militia
Shooting
Shots fired
Evacuation
Deaths
Hostage
Explosion (explosive)
Police
Disaster medical assistance
team (DMAT)
Organized crime
Gangs
National security
State of emergency
Security
Breach
Threat
Standoff
SWAT
Screening
Lockdown
Bomb (squad or threat)
Crash
Looting
Riot
Emergency Landing
Pipe bomb
Incident
Facility
Hazmat
Nuclear
Chemical spill
Suspicious package/device
Toxic
National laboratory
Nuclear facility
Nuclear threat
Cloud
Plume
Radiation
Radioactive
Leak
Biological infection (or event)
Chemical
Chemical burn
Biological
Epidemic
Hazardous
Hazardous material incident
Industrial spill
Infection
Powder (white)
Gas
Spillover
Anthrax
Blister agent
Chemical agent
Exposure
Burn
Nerve agent
Ricin
Sarin
North Korea
Outbreak
Contamination
Exposure
Virus
Evacuation
Bacteria
Recall
Ebola
Food Poisoning
Foot and Mouth (FMD)
H5N1
Avian
Flu
Salmonella
Small Pox
Plague
Human to human
Human to Animal
Influenza
Center for Disease Control
(CDC)
Drug Administration (FDA)
Public Health
Toxic
Agro Terror
Tuberculosis (TB)
Agriculture
Listeria
Symptoms
Mutation
Resistant
Antiviral
Wave
Pandemic
Infection
Water/air borne
Sick
Swine
Pork
Strain
Quarantine
H1N1
Vaccine
Tamiflu
Norvo Virus
Epidemic
World Health Organization
(WHO) (and components)
Viral Hemorrhagic Fever
E. Coli
Infrastructure security
Airport
Airplane (and derivatives)
Chemical fire
CIKR (Critical Infrastructure & Key Resources)
AMTRAK
Collapse
Computer infrastructure
Communications
infrastructure
Telecommunications
Critical infrastructure
National infrastructure
Metro
WMATA
Subway
BART
MARTA
Port Authority
NBIC (National Biosurveillance Integration Center)
Transportation security
Grid
Power
Smart
Body scanner
Electric
Failure or outage
Black out
Brown out
Port
Dock
Bridge
Cancelled
Delays
Service disruption
Power lines
Drug cartel
Violence
Gang
Drug
Narcotics
Cocaine
Marijuana
Heroin
Border
Mexico
Cartel
Southwest
Juarez
Sinaloa
Tijuana
Torreon
Yuma
Tucson
Decapitated
U.S. Consulate
Consular
El Paso
Fort Hancock
San Diego
Ciudad Juarez
Nogales
Sonora
Colombia
Mara salvatrucha
MS13 or MS-13
Drug war
Mexican army
Methamphetamine
Cartel de Golfo
Gulf Cartel
La Familia
Reynosa
Nuevo Leon
Narcos
Narco banners (Spanish equivalents)
Los Zetas
Shootout
Execution
Gunfight
Trafficking
Kidnap
Calderon
Reyosa
Bust
Tamaulipas
Meth Lab
Drug trade
Illegal immigrants
Smuggling (smugglers)
Matamoros
Michoacana
Guzman
Arellano-Felix
Beltran-Leyva
Barrio Azteca
Artistic Assassins
Mexicles
New Federation
Terrorism
Al Qaeda (all spellings)
Terror
Attack
Iraq
Afghanistan
Iran
Pakistan
Agro
Environmental terrorist
Eco terrorism
Conventional weapon
Target
Weapons grade
Dirty bomb
Enriched
Nuclear
Chemical weapon
Biological weapon
Ammonium nitrate
Improvised explosive device
IED (Improvised Explosive Device)
Abu Sayyaf
Hamas
FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces Colombia)
IRA (Irish Republican Army)
ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna)
Basque Separatists
Hezbollah
Tamil Tigers
PLF (Palestine Liberation Front)
PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization
Car bomb
Jihad
Taliban
Weapons cache
Suicide bomber
Suicide attack
Suspicious substance
AQAP (AL Qaeda Arabian
Peninsula)
AQIM (Al Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb)
TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan)
Yemen
Pirates
Extremism
Somalia
Nigeria
Radicals
Al-Shabaab
Home grown
Plot
Nationalist
Recruitment
Fundamentalism
Islamist
Emergency
Hurricane
Tornado
Twister
Tsunami
Earthquake
Tremor
Flood
Storm
Crest
Temblor
Extreme weather
Forest fire
Brush fire
Ice
Stranded/Stuck
Help
Hail
Wildfire
Tsunami Warning Center
Magnitude
Avalanche
Typhoon
Shelter-in-place
Disaster
Snow
Blizzard
Sleet
Mud slide or Mudslide
Erosion
Power outage
Brown out
Warning
Watch
Lightening
Aid
Relief
Closure
Interstate
Burst
Emergency Broadcast System
Cyber security
Botnet
DDOS (dedicated denial of
service)
Denial of service
Malware
Virus
Trojan
Keylogger
Cyber Command
2600
Spammer
Phishing
Rootkit
Phreaking
Cain and abel
Brute forcing
Mysql injection
Cyber attack
Cyber terror
Hacker
China
Conficker
Worm
Scammers
Social media

Judging by the extremely long list [PDF] of keywords DHS uses to monitor social networking sites you have your work cut out for you. In fact judging by the frequently used words like spammer, China, storm, flood, and pirates you’re forced to scour almost the entire Internet. Hell being the agency you work for is one of the listed keywords you’re likely also forced to scour your entire intranet as well.

I would like to thank Bruce Schneier for bringing this list to my attention so that I could get your attention. Now that I have your attention I have a message for you and your fellow government agents: fuck you. Feel free to forward my message to your boss.

Even though your list is quite extensive I’ve noticed several words missing that you may wish to add: sovereign, anarchist, freedom, liberty, founding fathers, rights, and ponies. Why ponies? Because of this guy.

Anyways you should get back to work. Feel free to nose around my sight for a bit, I’m sure you’ll find something in need of additional DHS attention. If you have any questions feel free to submit them to the e-mail address listed on the right-hand side of this page, I’ll get back to you at my earliest convenience (do be warned though that any reply sent from my will contain an attached image of some pornographic image so vulgar that the strongest eye bleach won’t be capable of removing it).

Sincerely,

Christopher Burg

You Can’t Trust Anybody Anymore

Remember Lulz Security? They were the hacker group that was traveling around the Internet and breaking into site for shits and giggles? While they were in full swing I mentioned that they, along with Anonymous, were good testers of Internet anonymity:

I often talk about the importance of anonymity and groups like Lulz Security and Anonymous make great testers of the ability to remain anonymous on the Internet. People likely to be prosecuted by law enforcement would do well to watch the actions of these groups and determine how they are able to avoid law enforcement. If the tactics used by these groups allows them to avoid those who are seeking them out then the same tactics can be used by political dissidents in oppressive countries. Those wishing to release dirt on private or government entities would also be well served by such information.

It appears as though some work is still needed in the field of Internet anonymity:

Law enforcement agents on two continents swooped in on top members of the infamous computer hacking group LulzSec early this morning, and acting largely on evidence gathered by the organization’s brazen leader — who sources say has been secretly working for the government for months — arrested three and charged two more with conspiracy.

Law enforcement was finally able to close in on several members of Lulz Security by gleaming information from the group’s leader, who provided evidence in, what I’m guessing was, exchange for either a reduced sentence or no sentence at all:

The offshoot of the loose network of hackers, Anonymous, believed to have caused billions of dollars in damage to governments, international banks and corporations, was allegedly led by a shadowy figure FoxNews.com has identified as Hector Xavier Monsegur. Working under the Internet alias “Sabu,” the unemployed, 28-year-old father of two allegedly commanded a loosely organized, international team of perhaps thousands of hackers from his nerve center in a public housing project on New York’s Lower East Side. After the FBI unmasked Monsegur last June, he became a cooperating witness, sources told FoxNews.com.

Obviously Monsegur failed to anonymize himself property as did his cohorts. This failure could have been through bragging about his capers, having his machine compromised, or by failing to properly anonymize his traffic during the attacks. His cohorts failed to keep themselves anonymous from Monsegur. If you’re going to be committing illegal acts it is best that you divulge no information about yourself to you coconspirators as such information could lead to your arrest if any other member is arrested.

It’s a Good Thing the State Bailed General Motors Out

It’s a good thing the United States government bailout out General Motors otherwise we wouldn’t have the great Chevrolet Volt that nobody wants:

General Motors has temporarily suspended production of its Volt electric car, the company announced Friday.

GM, which is based in Detroit, announced to employees at one of its facilities that it was halting production of the beleaguered electric car for five weeks and temporarily laying off 1,300 employees.

A GM spokesman told The Hill on Friday that production of the Volt would resume April 23.

“We needed to maintain proper inventory and make sure that we continued to meet market demand,” GM spokesman Chris Lee said in a telephone interview.

Maintain property inventory is a friendlier way of saying that inventory isn’t reducing because nobody is buying our shitty electric cars. A basic economic lesson exists in this story, the state can’t simply make a market by dumping funding into a program it approves of. While the state keeps trying to create a market for electric cars nobody is willing to pay the Volt’s asking price, partially because most people aren’t setup to charge an electric car.

How the Patent System Works

Patents are a state granted monopoly on an idea and, as with any state institution, they protect the wealthy while preventing new innovators from entering the field. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) put together an excellent chart that explains how the patent system work:

Only the wealthy can afford to file for and defend a patent. This is even worse when it comes to software patents as they requires no physical invention. Instead software patents requires only an idea, something as simple as a double-tap on a screen.

Intellectual property is anything but intellectual.

If Only They Had Funding

I’m not sure Bill Gates realizes the sheer amount of idiocy he just spouted:

Bill Gates told an audience of energy entrepreneurs, scientists and investors at the ARPA-E energy conference on Tuesday that “It’s crazy how little we’re funding energy.” Energy research is underfunded by a factor of two, Gates said, referring to the amount of current U.S. government investment in energy research.

If only there was a source these energy companies could get funding from. What we really need is a multi-billionaire who is also an advocate of investing in energy companies. I wonder where we could find such a person?

Gates has expressed similar sentiments before. He is part of the American Energy Innovation Council, which about two years ago called for a government investment of $16 billion per year into basic research to deliver energy innovation. Since that foundation launched, he has said that he has been stunned that the government hasn’t been able to rise to the occasion.

$16 billion? It’s too bad we don’t know somebody who had an insane sum of money, say $59 billion, that could be invested into this market.

The United State’s Censorship Powers Extend Beyond Its Borders

After the failures of SOPA and PIPA I brought up the fact that both pieces of legislation were irrelevant because the government would just act as if the laws were passed. Merely taking down MegaUpload wasn’t enough to satisfy the United State government’s appetite for censorship and now they’ve started enlisting the help of private domain registrars to take down more “undesirable” websites:

Yesterday Forbes broke the news that Canadian Calvin Ayre and partners who operate the Bodog online gambling empire have been indicted in the U.S., and in a blog post Calvin Ayre confirmed that their bodog.com domain had been seized by homeland security.

[…]

But now, none of that matters, because in this case the State of Maryland simply issued a warrant to .com operator Verisign, (who is headquartered in California) who then duly updated the rootzone for .com with two new NS records for bodog.com which now redirect the domain to the takedown page.

Verisign is the ultimate authority in all .com domains. When you register a .com domain through other sites such as GoDaddy, eNom, or Hover they’re merely acting as resellers, middlemen, between you and Verisign. What this means is that Verisign can technically take down any .com domain, and the United States government used their authority to make Verisign take down a .com website even though the site was hosted outside of the government’s official reach.

This demonstrates quite succinctly that the government doesn’t actually need to pass any Internet censorship bills, such legislation would serve as a simple formality. What the government wants to do they do and anybody who attempts to stand in their way will find themselves crushed under the weight of the leviathan.

Does this mean everybody should rush out and register their sites with top-level domains controlled by organizations residing in foreign lands? You could attempt to do that although I highly doubt it would accomplish much. The United State’s government has a lot of pull and can likely get any domain they wish seized. It’s certainly a decent backup plan though, even if it is likely a temporary one. What we really need is a decentralized Dynamic Name System (DNS) that not central authority holds control over.

You Can’t Even Renounce Your Citizen for Free

Everything is getting expensive today, even renouncing your citizenship:

Under new consular fees published Thursday in the Federal Register, the cost of processing a formal renunciation of U.S. citizenship skyrocketed from $0 to $450. The announcement locks in fee hikes that had been proposed in 2010 and instituted on an interim basis.

$450 to say you no longer want part of the so-called “social contract?” That’s a pretty nasty early termination fee, especially when you consider the supposed contract is for the entirely of your life and not the paltry two years cellular providers put you under.

Some may wonder why you wouldn’t just leave the country and “renounce” you citizenship by never coming back. The answer to that is simply: the government will charge you with the crime on not paying your taxes (which, according to them, you still owe since you’re a citizen) and attempt to have you extradited for trial. Until one has filled out the official paperwork the United States government believes they hold ownership over your physical person.

Besides renouncing your citizenship the cost of going to other countries in general has gone up:

It’s also getting more expensive if you want to keep your U.S. citizenship and need a passport to prove it. The application fee for a passport is jumping by 27 percent, from $55 to $70 with a 100 percent increase, from $20 to $40, in the passport security surcharge.

In addition to the increase in the application fee, the department will now charge $82 _ up from nothing _ to add new pages to a U.S. passport.

Perhaps only the wealthy will be allowed to leave the country some day, and only if they give the government some collateral to encourage their return. Preventing citizens from leaving is a common tactic used by tyrannical regimes and I wouldn’t be surprised, with the direction this country has been going, if such tactics are implemented here. Steps like increasing the cost of passports are baby steps in that direction.

Synthesizing Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine

We all know getting cold medications with the active ingredient pseudoephedrine, like Sudafed, is a huge pain in the ass today but fortune has shined upon us as it is actually an easy to synthesize from N-methylamphetamine [PDF]:

A quick search of several neighborhoods of the United States revealed that while pseudoephedrine is difficult to obtain, N-methylamphetamine can be procured at almost any time on short notice and in quantities sufficient for synthesis of useful amounts of the desired material. Moreover, according to government maintained statistics, Nmethylmphetamine is becoming an increasingly attractive starting material for pseudoephedrine, as the availability of Nmethylmphetamine has remained high while prices have dropped and purity has increased [2]. We present here a convenient series of transformations using reagents which can be found in most well stocked organic chemistry laboratories to produce psuedoephedrine from N-methylamphetamine.

I love irony. A hat tip goes to Uncle for this handy guide.

North Korea in Competition with the Federal Reserve

It looks like North Korea is getting into competition with the Federal Reserve:

U.S. negotiators are heading into a second day of what have been dubbed “serious and substantial” talks with North Korean officials. Yet amidst all the discussion of how the U.S. will attempt to work with Kim Jon-un, there has been little (open) speculation as to whether Dear Leader Junior might crank up production of $100 and $50 bills. No, not North Korean 100- or 50-won banknotes, worth about as much as old tissues. I’m talking about fake greenbacks — or, as the U.S. Secret Service has dubbed them, “superdollars.”

No matter how good North Korea gets at counterfeiting United States dollars they’ll never be as good as the Federal Reserve. While North Korea runs off physical $50 and $100 bills the Federal Reserve need only reduce the amount of reserve banks need to lend out nonexistent money. I must say I’ll give more credit to North Korea in this case than the Federal Reserve, at least North Korea has the common decency to actually print up physical notes.

FBI Forced to Turn Off 3,000 GPS Tracking Devices

Poor Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), they were forced to turn off all of the Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking devices they attached to peoples’ cars without so much as a warrant:

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling overturning the warrantless use of GPS tracking devices has caused a “sea change” inside the U.S. Justice Department, according to FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann.

Mr. Weissmann, speaking at a University of San Francisco conference called “Big Brother in the 21st Century” on Friday, said that the court ruling prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use.

That’s not even the best part though:

After the ruling, the FBI had a problem collecting the devices that it had turned off, Mr. Weissmann said. In some cases, he said, the FBI sought court orders to obtain permission to turn the devices on briefly – only in order to locate and retrieve them.

First they stick these devices on the cars of unsuspecting individuals, then they are forced to turn them off, and now they’re having a hard time recovering them because they can’t track them anymore. Irony is sweet. Since they can’t track these devices anymore I’d say it’s finders keepers.