Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet: Via Threat Level.

The biggest threat to the open internet is not Chinese government hackers or greedy anti-net neutrality ISPs, it’s Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence.

McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering:  McConnell is the nice-seeming guy who is willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, while coming off like a straight shooter to those not in the know.

When he was head of the country’s national intelligence, he scared President Bush with visions of e-doom, prompting the president to sign a comprehensive secret order that unleashed tens of billions of dollars into the military’s black budget so they can start making firewalls and malware into military equipment. And now McConnell, back safely in civilian life as a vice president at the secretive defense contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton, is out in front of Congress and the media, peddling the same Cybaremaggedon! gloom.

And now he says we need to re-engineer the internet. [ Read more ... ]

Body Scanners Might Violate U.K. Child-Protection Laws: Via Threat Level.

The deployment of body-scanning X-ray machines could violate child-protection laws in Britain and prevent their implementation, according to The Guardian.

British officials were forced to exempt the scanning of anyone under 18 during a yearlong test of the machines at Manchester airport until legal questions could be worked out, the newspaper said.

There are also concerns that images of nude celebrities could be posted online or sold to tabloids.

Body scanning machines have been touted as a solution for catching hidden explosives and other dangerous items after a would-be bomber attempted to blow up a Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, using explosives concealed in his underwear. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has 15 of the scanners, but none were used to scan the would-be bomber before he boarded the flight, according to the Associated Press. [ Read more ... ]

Ethics Committee Staffer Leaks Secrets On File-Sharing Network: Via Threat Level.

A staff member of the House Ethics Committee is being blamed for accidentally leaking a sensitive document over a peer-to-peer network from her home computer.

The 22-page, confidential document, listing the names of more than 30 lawmakers who are under investigation by the Ethics Committee and the Office of Congressional Ethics, found its way to the Washington Post after a now ex-employee inadvertently placed it in a file-sharing folder on her home computer, according to Politico.com.

Some of the probes involve congressional representatives linked to a now-defunct lobbying firm that was under criminal investigation by the Justice Department for issues related to defense spending and influence peddling. For example, seven lawmakers on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee are being looked at for steering federal money to the lobbying firm’s clients. [ Read more ... ]

Day Trading For Hackers - Via StopBadware Blog:

Brian Krebs at the Washington Post has this nifty piece about a website that appears to be set up to allow malicious hackers to buy and sell traffic to/from particular websites. As the post explains:

Set up a free account at Robotraff and you’re ready to buy or sell Web traffic. Got 30,000 hacked personal computers under your thumb? Super! Now you can use those systems to generate a steady income just by pointing them at Web sites requested by a buyer. [ Read more ... ]

New Legislation to Combat Identity Theft: "coondoggie writes to tell us the Washington Post is reporting that new legislation in a numbers of states and the District of Columbia allows consumers to place a 'security freeze' on their credit files. [ Read more ... ]