Connecting more dots. Why does the 9/6 date on the transcripts mean the WHITE HOUSE had the video before SITE gave it to them? Rita Katz, said she personally provided the video on September 7 to the deputy director of……

Or was it a “Bad Leak”? So hard to tell, these days: A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m…….

…

Maybe the court will say that AQ owns the copyright.

Maybe that will sucker AQ into a DC courtroom to sue for damages, and we can….

Oh wait, this would be a DC court, and AQ is already using the liberal DC courts as a weapon against the US…

No admin ever wants to power down unscheduled…but anybody worth their IT salt can do so in a heartbeat if their network is threatened by virii, malware, etc.

Ever seen someone in IT get fired from a huge corporation? That’s when systems really get tested.

The Race Card on October 9, 2007 at 3:21 PM

Yep, its a hell of a lot harder to get a network up and running than it is to take it down.

Well, their shopping cart has been offline since taking a pounding from all the HA and boingboing traffic. It seems that the server load was too high and their database(s) started spitting out garbage data. Apparently someone found a way to exploit this because there was more than one report of security exploits directly resulting from the overload.

So what? Just offering a realtime example of how much easier it is to go offline than it is to bring a server back up.

No admin ever wants to power down unscheduled…but anybody worth their IT salt can do so in a heartbeat if their network is threatened by virii, malware, etc.

Ever seen someone in IT get fired from a huge corporation? That’s when systems really get tested.

You are so wrong… Read the book Terrorist Hunter written by Rita Katz. It will make your blood boil over the ineptness of our Federal employees vs. a private, small firm with smart and competant people. Rita Katz is right up there with Ayan Hersi Allie as far as brains and balls are concerned. You just never heard of her before…

[pedestrian on October 9, 2007 at 1:14 PM]

I think the point is the transcript, not the video.

Dusty on October 9, 2007 at 1:25 PM

You can’t sue someone for republishing your translation of the latest Harry Potter book.

doriangrey on October 9, 2007 at 12:37 PM

A former fortune 40 employer (who shall not be named), and who, at the time, had a number of classified military contracts, invited the National Security Agency to discuss with us I. T. people the issue of network security. This person said, as part of the presentation, that the only secure computer on a network is one with AT LEAST 6 INCHES OF AIR between the NIC card and the network cable. Plus all the Spafford jazz mentioned above.

In other words, there is no way to absolutely secure a system, especially a system on a network. There will always be “exploits” or bug-based bits of code that can defeat whatever security paradigm imposed. Or there will always be someone who decides to use a password that can be determined by societal means or personal knowledge. OR there will always be the risk of an internal, disloyal employee.

Or there will always be people who write their login passwords on a stickynote and place it on their monitor or on the underside of their keyboard. A perennial favorite of security administrators, everywhere!

OR, as was the case with Motorola and Kevin Mitnick a decade or so back, someone using “social engineering” obtain access. For those who don’t remember, Mitnick sweet-talked his way past a security administrator by calling in and claiming he was a contractor who lost his security token and had a multi-million dollar contract on the line that was “due tomorrow.” Said administrator overrode the security server, granted him access, and Mitnick pwn3d Motorola’s network.

The point is there is NO SUCH THING as a secure network or computer, especially one that is the target of a powerful national government with all its resources available. The best one can hope is to make it difficult enough that “red flag” warnings are raised in time to take the machines off line and off network.

The problem with this incident, is that now that they know they had a vulnerability, Al Qaeda will close it — if they have to behead somebody.

I think the point is the transcript, not the video.

What is SITE’s standing to sue over a video they stole from AQ’s internal network?

pedestrian on October 9, 2007 at 1:14 PM

Well I’m betting that the video wasn’t copyrighted, whereas SITE’s translation of it was. Pretty strong case.

SITE will now have the ability to start discovery proceedings in a COPYRIGHT infringment case… somthing which the courts have been pretty adamant over the years about NOT allowing the Reporter privelege of not naming sources on, as it is now essentialy a case of theft of intellectual property.

Romeo13 on October 9, 2007 at 12:31 PM

What is SITE’s standing to sue over a video they stole from AQ’s internal network?

I agree, but I also agree with AP with his “some moron who wanted to impress his media contacts with how in-the-loop he was.”

I couldn’t sleep last night so where was I? On HA and clicking out the below. But I wanted to sleep on it and then on waking this morning it was already off Headlines, so I’ll put it here.

—

Let me start by saying they really ought to fire someone. This is an egregious breach of trust which causes second thoughts on the sharing of information, not only in private-public relationships but in nation-nation intelligence relationships.

My preference for the culprit is Leiter and here’s my thinking. Fielding didn’t do anything. Bagnal’s group is probably small and probably only needed one download then make copies from the disk. There were probably three people involved, Bangal, his assistant, and the gofer who the assistant told to download it. In that short a time frame they would have to have a bunch of meetings before they could decide what to do.

Leiter, on the other hand, has a rather large bureaucracy with lots of departments specializing in different aspects that would be put to work on this. Leiter told his secretary to distribute a notice to the relevant departments that this was available and to get on it right away. It’s possible the memo had some classified rating, though, in the rush there may have been no classification instructions, or they were sketchy. Once that occurred the flood gates opened. Each department head gave it to however many they thought needed it, say two project heads. If the classification system was included, it could have been dropped by one or more of them. Anyway, each project head may have a team that needs it. All have their own computer. The website url has now been passed around like a standard office a rumor after the Christmas party.

Once people get it, the concentration is on their work, not on maintaining secrecy. After all, there are hardly any secrets in a bureaucracy that deals with secrets everyday. That, in conjunction with the likelihood many got the impression “Hey it’s on the internet”, and there you have it, secrecy went right out the window.

Benjamin Franklin once said “Three people can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” (John’s Bathroom Reader, 3rd Edition) Intelligence services can’t operate with office staffed by one worker and two corpses, so their mission statement ought to revise this to “A thousand people can keep a secret, if the last one who didn’t is in jail.”

—

The last is corny, but I’ve always like this Franklin quote and just had to work it in somehow.

And Valerie Plame is exactly why the leaks wont be pursued. Civil servants at all levels are good for nothing liberal rat bastards.

doriangrey on October 9, 2007 at 10:17 AM

Come on Dorian, you don’t really mean that do you. Couple of things to consider:
(1) Many civil servants are retired military enlisted and officer types. They choose the lower pay for a couple of reasons; familiar with the military way of doing business and job security.
(2) Twenty plus years of convictions and habits don’t dissipate between the retirement ceremony and being hired as a civil servant.
(3) Most non-prior military civil servants worked through the ranks legitimately, obeyed the non-disclosure agreements they are required to sign and genuinely feel they have an ownership in seeing the job done right. Many see the higher paid contractors and are extra diligent in ensuring the best interests of the country and government are represented.
(4) The number of liberals, Dems and Republicans is not that much different than the demographics of the general population

The other question is who leaked the AQ password,

pedestrian on October 9, 2007 at 12:15 PM

Password..chortal cough cough we don’t need no stinking password…There is no such thing as a secure network, nor are password required to exploit network security vulnerabilities.

The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards – and even then I have my doubts. ”
Eugene H. Spafford, director of the Purdue Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security.

Leak severed link to al-Qaeda’s secrets from the Washington Post reports that the SITE Institute Intelligence Group, which is a private intelligence monitoring company, said that they had given a heads up to the Bush administration about an upcoming O…

All of these news agencys used the Translation of the tape, which SITE, a commercial entity, created.

Now, this document was created by SITE, and thus was covered under the Copyright laws.

These other commercial entities then PUBLISHED it without SITEs permision… blatanty abuse of the Copyright laws.

SITE will now have the ability to start discovery proceedings in a COPYRIGHT infringment case… somthing which the courts have been pretty adamant over the years about NOT allowing the Reporter privelege of not naming sources on, as it is now essentialy a case of theft of intellectual property.

Dusty on October 9, 2007 at 12:18 PM

Good point.

the question still remains though, how did ABC get it…

Ewww… and even more interesting question just hit me…

If this was from a Commercial, non government source, does SITE, through litigation, have the right to find out from the Press how they got it. This now becomes a case of INDUSTRIAL not just governmental spying, thus copyright laws come into effect.

In reading Jawa, I’ll agree that more than just SITE had it and, maybe just as early, but the 9/6/07 he notes was for the transcript and that would be consistent with SITE providing the Feds with a transcript/translation completed on the 6th and provided on the 7th.

It’s also fun to think that not only were we downloading stuff from AQ, hopefully we were uploading changes to their documents also. And a little keylogging would go a long way to cutting off AQ funding.

We will never know…except one thing I am sure of, we are a lot further along in gathering information than AQ knows.

right2bright on October 9, 2007 at 12:12 PM

Of this likewise am I convinced.