Megaupload.com seized

John Young jya at pipeline.com
Fri Jan 20 06:21:11 PST 2012


Harking back to the Echelon era, it is worth noting that those
five countries - US, UK, AU, CA, NZ - are in the forefront of 
mega-managing the security of the Internet, no doubt refining 
and expanding the technological tools and sneaky extra-legal 
practices to work their combined will on global communications.

Gaining access to MegaUpload's emails, business records and
financial affairs likely required several multi-jurisdictional actions 
not only by the Echelon partners by also by allies such as those 
in NATO.

As often discussed here, the use of military capabilities developed
for national security for civilian criminal affairs matters is amply 
indicated in the MegaUpload indictment.

Indicting in the US, in particular in the Eastern District of Virginia,
the pre-eminent national security court, also indicates a bias
toward national security undergirding arguments for economic
security threat. That too was often debated here in the crypto
wars of the 1990s.

Recent defense funding authorization of holding alleged
terrorists indefinitely, keeping Gitmo alive, SOPA, PIPA, 
MegaUpload, Bradley Manning, WikiLeaks, huge funding
increases for openly hiring hackers and paying those 
undecover to rat on cohorts, also reminds of the extra-legalities
and betrayals of the early public crypto era.

>From those crypto lessons -- aspirations to use technology
to beat government, then gradual co-optation by legal
threats, bribes, scholarships, contracts, stigma, isolation,
betrayals, call that the After Echelon Option -- it should be 
expected that the same means and methods will be used 
in cyber wars, offense and defense mutually aggrandizing
one another.

Note that there have been a slew of seeming public interest
comsec initiatives in recent years to address cyber threats 
combined with threats to privacy. Observing the particpants 
in these there are quite a few recognizable warriors from the 
crypto-comsec-privacy wars. 

Fine minds and good hearts still proposing technological 
solutions to the issues, warning of legal if not military oppostion. 
Ginning up more technical fixes to comsec and privacy, 
reminding of past errors and promises gone awry, sniping 
at one another, admitting NDA withholdings, parading an 
impressive list of corporate domains after the nyms.

Optimistically, using the wind down of the Cold War as
a precedent, when crypto wizards came of out of classified
realms due to decline of nat sec jobs, the wind down of GWOT 
could lead to comsec wizards coming out of similarly classified 
realms to aid civilians against those remaining in the world
of secrecy worldwide.

It would be a swell outcome of classified research to heed
its inherent dual use once again on the dual use Internet:
between those who want to control it with an iron hand
of government and commerce and those who want to free it from
that hand. That will depend upon who gets paid to betray
the public and those who defend the public.

It is not easy to tell who is who since both copy one another's
language, behavior and promises -- most of the charges
against MegaUpload could be applied to government and
commerce. Call that Mega Echelon Option.


At 02:12 PM 1/20/2012 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 01:52:01AM +1300, Peter Gutmann wrote:
>
>> Kim Schmitz (or whatever he's calling himself this week) is a survivor.
>> He'll be back, even if Megaupload isn't.
>
>If the charges stick he'll be out of circulation for a while.





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