So… we built our current social media applications to enable social manipulation by Surveillance Capitalist forces. IMO that makes this sort of nonsense easier and ultimately inevitable. Yes… social meets technical, but does the technical side have to make it that easy? The externalized costs are adding up…
just like the two player game in Microsoft Decathalon
Back doors for sale.
According to the indictment, Onur Aksoy, aka Ron Aksoy, aka Dave Durden, 38, of Miami, allegedly ran at least 19 companies formed in New Jersey and Florida as well as at least 15 Amazon storefronts, at least 10 eBay storefronts, and multiple other entities (collectively, the “Pro Network Entities”) that imported tens of thousands of fraudulent and counterfeit Cisco networking devices from China and Hong Kong and resold them to customers in the United States and overseas, falsely representing the products as new and genuine. The operation allegedly generated over $100 million in revenue, and Aksoy received millions of dollars for his personal gain.
CNN Exclusive: FBI investigation determined Chinese-made Huawei equipment could disrupt US nuclear arsenal communications
But when US counterintelligence officials began digging into the details, they found numerous red flags. The pagoda, they noted, would have been strategically placed on one of the highest points in Washington DC, just two miles from the US Capitol, a perfect spot for signals intelligence collection, multiple sources familiar with the episode told CNN.
Also alarming was that Chinese officials wanted to build the pagoda with materials shipped to the US in diplomatic pouches, which US Customs officials are barred from examining, the sources said.
“We feel we’ve got a pretty good idea if there’s anything going on that’s inappropriate.”
It’s so easy to embed covert signals in otherwise innocuous looking communications, even if those signals are where you are looking.
You can do endless little tricks with the right access, which the firmware, maybe microcode of those routers gives the manufacturers, regardless of whether (as the UK thinks it can do) you’ve vetted the top level code. Sorry, unless you’ve built it yourself, you don’t really know what it’s doing. I’m with the FBI on this one: outsource at your peril.
I actually approve of Ca. leaving this so-called Union.
Hell, I’d move there if I could.
The so-called US Union no longer exists. On paper maybe. What If NATO goes to war with Russia but the red states say no, what then? What if the red states turn on the rest of us?
It’s coming.
CIA accused of illegally spying on Americans visiting Assange in embassy
The CIA illegally spied on US citizens while they visited WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, a lawsuit filed today has claimed.
[…]
A legal complaint [PDF], filed in New York City on behalf of four attorneys and journalists, accuses the spy agency of spying on the American citizens without their knowledge or consent in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights while they met Assange at the embassy. It seeks damages from the CIA, then-CIA boss Mike Pompeo who went on to become Trump’s Secretary of State, a Spanish firm Undercover (UC) Global that provided security services for the embassy, and the biz’s former CEO David Morales Guillen.
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The trade ban that wasn’t: US allows 94% of restricted tech exports to China anyway
US Commerce Department can make all the noise it wants about limiting tech exports to China, but it is reportedly doing little to actual stem the flow of components and equipment.
The Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday that efforts by Uncle Sam to prevent key technologies from falling into the hands of rogue foreign powers — China in particular – may not be having the intended effect. In all, 2,652 export licenses for restricted tech to China were granted by the Commerce Dept in 2020, 94 percent of the total requested.
The newspaper reported that of the $125 billion in exports to China in 2020, less than half a percent were subject to licensing requirements, and of those that did, the Commerce Dept approved the overwhelming majority of requests.
The WSJ alleges that US policy intended to limit the export of technologies deemed a national security risk aren’t being effectively enforced, and America continues to ship a wide array of semiconductor, aerospace, and AI/ML tech to China.
[…]
