Adrian Lamo on the NSA

I have been meaning to comment on this remark that Adrian Lamo sent into Cryptome a few days ago, but life and ADHD have, until now, prevented it.

The most notable feature of the comment is the attention whoring. It is Lamo's defining characteristic. Nobody sought it out. Nobody asked for it. Yet, he felt necessary to comment on it. I know that he proffers the weak excuse that he needs to " is to clear the air in re. a part of a conversation to which I was a party being used to paint a picture that is not representative of its context," but McCullagh's use was clear and appropriate and Lamo does nothing to answer the pressing question which is "has the NSA suffered a loss of faith and status due to its failure to prevent WikiLeaks"

Second is the pretentiousness of it all. This was my favorite snippet:

"To be clear, I am in no way privy to any special knowledge or insight as to the NSA's capabilities, technology, tactics, or training. No aspect of my unavoidable past, present or immediate future involvement with the .gov or the .nsa.smil.mil/nsa.ic.gov influences this opinion. For purposes of this note, I am relying on open-source intelligence."

 Duh. You're not part of the team Lamo, therefor you would not have any special knowledge of what they do. You're just as well informed as the rest of us. Some of us. some of us actually go out and do real research before firing a missive, rather than just ejaculating forth ill-conceived beliefs. 

New NSA Document: An Overview of Cloud Computing

The National Security Agency recently released a new document titled, "An Overview of Cloud Computing," which, as its title suggests, is an overview of cloud computing. You can read here.

The 13-page paper is a rather easy to read introduction to the concept of cloud computing even if it does take some liberties with the expertise of its assumed- readersship. However, this is a not an insurmountable challenge. The main disappointment with the paper is that it is solely a product of open- source research and insight. There is nothing here that is NSA specific or NSA-unique. Anyone with the appropriate knowledge and willingness to create such a report could do so.

Pop Culture and the NSA #1 Robert Morris and Hackers

In order to be considered legit media for the purposes of FOIA, my blogs will now have features. Pop Culture and the NSA will use popular culture to discuss the National Security Agency and its history.

In Hackers, Dade "Zero Cool" is arrested in a dramatic scene and charged with crashing over 1,500 systems. Convicted, Dade's conviction includes the standard for computer hackers provision prohibiting him from owning or operating computers or touch-tone telephones.

The inspiration for the Zero Cool character was Robert Tappan Morris, son of the legendary Robert Morris who invented the UNIX operated system was the chief scientist at the NSA's National Computer Security Center.

Robert Tappan Morris was a Cornell graduate student when he unleashed the Morris worm in 1989. The worm, which infected 6,000 Unix-based system and whose undetermined costs estimates ranged into the millions resulted in Robert Tappan Morris becoming the first individual charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Not that the conviction, impacted Robert Tappan Morris too much. He became a professor at MIT and started a couple of internet companies.