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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFBI monitored anti-war website in error for six years, documents show
Internal documents show that the FBIs monitoring of antiwar.com, a news and commentary website critical of US foreign policy, was sparked in significant measure by a judgment that it had threatened to hack the FBI website and involved a formal assessment of the threat the site posed to US national security.
But antiwar.com never threatened to hack the FBI website. Heavily redacted FBI documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and shared with the Guardian, show that Eric Garris, the sites managing editor, passed along to the bureau a threat he received against his own website.
Months later, the bureau characterized antiwar.com as a potential perpetrator of a cyberattack against the bureaus website a rudimentary error that persisted for years in an FBI file on the website. The mistake appears to have been a pillar of the FBIs reasoning for monitoring a site that is protected by the first amendments free-speech guarantees.
The improper investigation led to Garris and Raimondo being flagged in other documents, and is based on inappropriate targeting and sloppy intelligence work the FBI relied on in its initial memo, said Julia Mass, an attorney with the ACLU of northern California, which filed the Freedom of Information Act request, and shared the documents with the Guardian.
FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said the bureau could not comment, as the ACLUs litigation of the antiwar.com case is ongoing.
On 12 September 2001, Garris received an email with the subject line YOUR SITE IS GOING DOWN.
Be warned assholes, ill be posting your site address to all the hack boards tonight, telling them about the little article at the moscowtimes and all. YOUR SITE IS HISTORY, the unredacted parts of the email read.
Concerned, Garris forwarded the threatening email to the FBI field office in San Francisco, where he lives. (It is contained in the disclosed FBI documents.) It was a threat and I wanted to report it, Garris said.
But by 7 January 2002, someone in the field office characterized the message as A THREAT BY GARRIS TO HACK FBI WEBSITE.
According to unredacted portions of the documents, that apparent mix-up was the first time antiwar.com came onto the FBIs radar a purview that would last at least six years.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/fbi-monitored-anti-war-website-in-error-documents?CMP=twt_fd&CMP=SOCxx2I2
idwiyo
(5,113 posts)Jesus Malverde
(10,274 posts)idwiyo
(5,113 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)seem to be 'fighting' are such failures. Expensive failures as far as the people are concerned, but definitely profitable for a select few.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)sakabatou
(42,186 posts)The Straight Story
(48,121 posts)HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Capability blends into probabilities, and "we all know" that given enough time, every probability is realized...
This follows from the Cheney doctrine...if there is a fraction of one-tenth of one percent of a chance, there must be capacity to make an overwhelming response to that risk.
That of course mandates intensive universal surveillance and detection based on aggressive profiling techniques.
False positives be damned! There is a nano-risk and it must be contained. Strip grandma of her cost of living adjustment, and her medicare there are communications companies that must be paid big to co-operate!
boston bean
(36,224 posts)anti-choice..
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)but I suspect the security forces still take notice.