You will want to read this if you read my last post on Trapwire and the government spy network. It all sounds good, but what those in power end up doing with it against everyday people is what worries those of us who don’t really trust our government.
Paul Wagenseil, SecurityNewsDaily Managing Editor
WikiLeaks is under attack again, and many Internet users speculate it may be related to information the site has recently published about a wide-spanning American surveillance system called TrapWire.
“What is TrapWire and why is WikiLeaks under a sophisticated DDOS attack after posting docs about TrapWire?” tweeted journalist, professor and media critic Dan Gillmor Friday.
“What does it mean when WikiLeaks publishes a trove of documents hacked by Anonymous from the strategic intelligence firm Stratfor — a trove that apparently details a massive electronic spying system run by the U.S. government — and is then hit by a massive and sustained distributed denial of service attack that prevents journalists and people at large from examining the documents in question?” wondered blogger J.D Tuccille on the libertarian Reason.com website. “I can’t be the only person that finds that just a tad … suggestive.”
TrapWire itself is being touted as Big Brother, a hidden means to keep track of every citizen in once-free countries. There are allegations that it uses facial-recognition technology to identify suspects, and that it’s been installed in most cities in North America.
“surveillance cameras Around The Country Are Being Used In A Huge Spy Network” read a headline on the Business Insider website Friday. “Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system,” said Russia Today.
“The government has created a piece of technology, called TrapWire, that siphons data from surveillance cameras in stores, casinos and other businesses around the country,” wrote Annalee Newitz on the science-fiction blog io9. “Are we living in a total surveillance state without even realizing it?”
Sunday, Anonymous got into the act by announcing “Operation Trapwire,” urging followers to “shut this system down and render it useless.”
“A giant AI electronic brain able to monitor us through a combination of access to all the CCTV cameras as well as all the online social media feeds is monstrous and Orwellian in its implications and possibilities,” read the Anonymous press release.
And Monday, the London Daily Mail told the world that the “U.S. government is secretly spying on EVERYONE using civilian security cameras.”
Emails to TrapWire, Inc., and Strategic Forecasting, Inc., aka Stratfor, were not immediately returned.
[ 10 Ways the Government Watches You ]
Hold on, everyone
There are just two problems with this scenario. First, the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on WikiLeaks began more than a week ago, on Aug. 3, before WikiLeaks and other sites first posted information regarding TrapWire on Aug. 8.
“We are not doing this to call attention to ourselves,” wrote AntiLeaks, a hacker group claiming responsibility for the DDoS attack. “We are young adults, citizens of the United States of America and are deeply concerned about the recent developments with [WikiLeaks leader] Julian Assange and his attempt at asylum in Ecuador. Assange is the head of a new breed of terrorist. We are doing this as a protest against his attempt to escape justice into Ecuador.”
Could it be that someone outside WikiLeaks was tipped off that the TrapWire information would be coming out?
“It’s possible that [former TrapWire owner] Abraxas et al. got word that Wikileaks was to be publishing info on TrapWire,” former Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown told SecurityNewsDaily. “It’s impossible for anyone to say what methods of surveillance or even HUMINT [human intelligence] WikiLeaks and its people are subjected to. But I’ll remain agnostic on the issue until I see any evidence of this, as coincidence is always possible.” Read more now…More on the story.
We want people to tell us how they feel about this. Please weigh in and share your thoughts on what we believe to be an important issue concerning how our government may abuse the info they collect and use it against our own good people whose ways they just don’t like.
