'Project Vigilant' Recruits At Defcon To Track You

angry tapir writes "A secretive volunteer group that tries to track terrorists and criminals on the Internet went to the Defcon hacker conference in hopes of recruiting information security experts, but it will first have to overcome some skepticism. That's because most information security professionals have never heard of the group, called Project Vigilant."

Why not just call their company "NSAFront"?

[elrous0]

It would be no less obvious.

Pot, meet kettle

[esocid]

According to Uber, Project Vigilant also played a role in Iran's Green Uprising last year, operating five Internet proxy servers that helped dissidents circumvent government spying and move information out of Iran and into the hands of dissident groups.

So when does the US get some of this help to circumvent government^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H protective spying and allow the free transmission of information. Oh, wait. I see now.

On Sunday, Uber said he was the first person to call the federal government about the sensitive cache of documents allegedly leaked by U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst Bradley Manning, and which was ultimately published on Wikileaks. Manning leaked the documents to Adrian Lamo, who does "adversary characterization" for the group, Uber said.

Re:Really?

[maxwell demon]

Do you want to be the one doing the shafting, or the one getting shafted?

No.

Re:Manning/wikileaks connection

[AHuxley]

"akin to being evil" really depends on the decade? the Church report, Iran contra, Operation Ajax, Room 641A, Sibel Edmond, COINTELPRO ...
Do you really want unaccountable, hidden, profit driven - mercs, private corporations, individuals and cyber vigilante types doing what the FBI should?

Re:Manning/wikileaks connection

[betterunixthanunix]

Was it specifically bad to turn in Manning? No, things are no black and white. From where I sit, though, Wikileaks is doing a good thing by exposing government lies -- we cannot trust the government to be honest about classified documents, which is why we need Wikileaks. If these guys are fighting against Wikileaks, that means they are pitted against those of us who want a more open government.

What worries me is that these guys are not required to abide by the constitution; they voluntarily collect information, and then turn it over to the government, which allows the government to obtain evidence that it would not otherwise be able to collect. These "fourth party" arrangements have been discussed in the past, and just because they are not hot news items anymore does not mean they are less worrysome.

Terrorists?

[alfredos]

Given the abuse and buzz power that that word has seen in the last couple of years, I tend to treat anything that comes with 'terroris.+' in the subject with a grain of salt. Well, actually more than a grain: I start giving credit starting at the absolute bottom of the scale when that regex matches, and it usually doesn't get very far. There is just too many people out there trying to make a living, if not easy money, out of scaring people and leveraging the politicians with that fear. Take a look at "The power of nightmares", a BBC documentary readily available on YouTube, about the latter.

Re:Manning/wikileaks connection

[GooberToo]

You mean the CIA and NSA. The FBI is for domestic intelligence gathering and enforcement only. This is, in fact, why the FBI and CIA/NSA were purposely intended to never have open channels with each other. What everyone called broken following 9/11 was actually by design and for very, very, very good reasons. The reason is simply, its ripe for domestic abuse and violation of the Constitution.

The FBI was basically considered to be federal police. The CIA/NSA is considered quasi-military, which is exactly why they are frequently ex-military and work extremely closely with the military. They are a major source of intelligence for the military. As such, its actually illegal for them to be used domestically. That all changed with the creation of the homeland security, who's sole job is to view everyone as a criminal, treat them accordingly, while violating the Constitution as much as possible, without getting the public in an uproar.

Basically the creation of homeland security was a spit in the eye of all our forefathers, violation of pre-existing laws which were in place specifically to prevent this cluster fuck.

Re:Chet Uber?

[medv4380]

The guy is one of the Cyber War nuts 2002 [newscientist.com] he was running with the business name of Security Posture trying to cater to the conspiracy theory nuts. Everyone already knows that Game Boys [penny-arcade.com] emit pilot killing rays.

Wait, what???

[schwaang]

According to Uber, one of Project Vigilant's manifold methods for gathering intelligence includes collecting information from a dozen regional U.S. Internet service providers (ISPs). Uber declined to name those ISPs, but said that because the companies included a provision allowing them to share users' Internet activities with third parties in their end user license agreements (EULAs), Vigilant was able to legally gather data from those Internet carriers and use it to craft reports for federal agencies.

Wait, so a dozen large ISPs are handing private user data to Project Vigilant which in turn hands it to parts of the US gov't, and this is "legal" because the ISPs have EULAs which allow sharing with unspecified third parties???

Way to bury the lede, slashdot. Some mainstream journo needs to find out which ISPs are participating.