Bullshit Alert!! AUSTIN, TX – The anti-campus carry professors behind Gun Free UT love to cite statistics suggesting that a concealed handgun license (CHL) holder is more likely to commit a mass shooting than to stop one; however; Gun Free UT’s statistics—which are never offered with any type of context—are at best misleading and…
Category: Information Warfare
TOR Browser Compromised by Feds?
Say it ain’t so! EVER SINCE A Carnegie Mellon talk on cracking the anonymity software Tor was abruptly pulled from the schedule of the Black Hat hacker conference last year, the security community has been left to wonder whether the research was silently handed over to law enforcement agencies seeking to uncloak the internet’s anonymous…
Tradecraft: Geo-Locating by Photos
They say photos say a 1,000 words; well in the 21st Century they can also tell your exact location. -SF Russian soldiers geolocated by photos in multiple Syria locations, bloggers say By Maria Tsvetkova MOSCOW (Reuters) – Three serving or former Russian soldiers have been geolocated by photographs in Syria, including locations near Hama, Aleppo…
Islam Invasion: Islamic State hackers post phone numbers of heads of the CIA and FBI
ISIS is now in the same league as North Korea, China and Russia when it comes to cyber-threats. Welcome to the Fifth Dimension of Warfare folks.-SF “ISIS ‘cyber caliphate’ hacks 54,000 Twitter accounts and posts phone numbers of heads of the CIA and FBI in revenge for the drone attack that killed a British extremist,”…
Technology and Privacy: Signal, the Crypto App Comes to Android
SINCE IT FIRST appeared in Apple’s App Store last year, the free encrypted calling and texting app Signal has become the darling of the privacy community, recommended—and apparently used daily—by no less than Edward Snowden himself. Now its creator is bringing that same form of ultra-simple smartphone encryption to Android. On Monday the privacy-focused non-profit…
“Hamland” Security: Amateur Radio’s Place in Securing the Homeland
During times of disaster, homeland security resources at all levels of government are often stretched to capacity. The whole-of-government approach involving local, county, state and federal agencies is sometimes not enough, especially in the realm of communications. That is where a dedicated group of private hobbyists, known as amateur radio operators, or “hams” as they…
The Social Science of Online Radicalization
As Charlie Winter noted recently at War on the Rocks, the Islamic State’s robust social media apparatus has been propagating a remarkably effective, multi-faceted communications strategy that incorporates narratives of statehood, military success, and religious legitimacy. The Islamic State’s success in using social media to disseminateits extremist ideas and mobilize tens of thousands of foreign…
It is Time for the U.S. Military to Innovate like Insurgents
These three Army captains built a gun that kills drones. It took them ten hours and cost $150. What can the Army learn from them? The recently concluded meeting of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) has become a yearly tradition for senior military leaders, congressional staff, and members of foreign armies to…
Facebook Friend or Terrorist: Who’s in Your Online Social Network?
As a law enforcement officer in Northeast Florida, the arrest of a 19-year-old local man named Shelton Thomas Bell got my attention. In January of this year, Bell was sentenced to twenty years in federal prison for conspiring and attempting to provide material support to terrorists. He burned American flags, recruited support locally, conducted “training…
The ISIS Corner #2: The War for Control of the Narrative Rages
To change the minds of more than 16 million Muslims who could support the Islamic State, almost entirely via social media, the U.S. State Department has a counter propaganda team of just about 20 people, according to a senior Pentagon official. Translation: the U.S. is not doing enough to out-tweet ISIS. Michael Lumpkin, assistant secretary of…