CSIA 459

You might have heard about the "kill list." You've certainly heard about drones. But the details of the U.S. campaign against militants in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia -- a centerpiece of the Obama administration's national security approach - remain shrouded in secrecy. Here's our guide to what we know-and what we don't know.

(TomDispatch) Here's the essence of it: you can trust America's creme de la creme, the most elevated, responsible people, no matter what weapons, what powers, you put in their hands. No need to constantly look over their shoulders.

Great article Samuel, I had wondered about this topic for a while but did not have the chance to actual research the in's and out's. This article has definitely informed me of the issue. Great find!

Sam, Great article. Sometimes people don't always think about the negative side of things. I know about unmanned drones I had not. Thank you for informing us of this.

I don't know how fancy we are supposed to be with sharing these web resources, but I enjoy twitter because of how fast and easy current events are presented.

"Flame: Trying to Unravel the Mystery of Spying Malware"

We will see more of this type of modification of Stuxnet and Flame. The bad thing about finding stuff like this, is others who could not have made malware as technically advanced as this, will be able to modify it much easier than if they would have had to design it from scratch.

focused on the comment made by the analyst on the differentiation of cyber "war" vs. cyber "espionage" as it appears that Flame is more on cuber espionage since it is desgined to collect infor from specific targets.

For your cloud computing assignment

I liked this article very much and understand his concerns. It is very hard to trust something that you can't examine. How do cloud computing agencies validate their systems, with there be a GOP security report that tells us what agencies are legitimate. I have to read that top 10 cloud reporting article to see exactly how that was determined.

SCORE (System, Component and Operationally Relevant Evaluations) is a unified set of criteria and software tools for defining a performance evaluation approach for complex intelligent systems. It provides a comprehensive evaluation blueprint that assesses the technical performance of a system and its components through isolating and changing variables as well as capturing end-user utility of the system in realistic use-case environments. The SCORE framework has proven to be widely-applicable in nature and equally relevant to technologies ranging from manufacturing to military systems. It has been applied to the evaluation of technologies in DARPA programs that range from soldier-worn sensor on patrol to speech-to-speech translation systems. It is also currently being applied to the assessing the control of autonomous vehicles on a shop floor.

From NIST Tech Beat: June 21, 2011 Most industry executives, military planners, research managers or venture capitalists charged with assessing the potential of an R&D project probably are familiar with the wry twist on Arthur C. Clarke's third law*: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."

Article supports drones as being an emerging technology. ASSignment1, Part1 Support

Interesting article, It seems to me that this is just another one of those cases about flexing the "muscle" of the Freedom of Information Act. In my opinion it is pretty common knowledge that targeted drone strikes are being used to eliminate enemies; so why is it so important here that the C.I.A. has to acknowledge these attacks? What would that accomplish? The media outlets already report on successful drone strikes and now there are even military medals to recognize drone pilots. http://www.fsunews.com/article/20130318/FSVIEW0303/130317001/New-military-medal-stirs-controversy-?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|frontpage|s

I just wonder how long it's going to take before something comes out of these attacks. Using these drones to fly into other countries like Pakistan, and "take out" suspected enemies is pretty borderline in my opinion. If this were to happen in America, we would certainly not stand for it, and would declare war on the country that carried out the action. Pushing the button from California on a drone missle is alot like conducting cyber warfare from one country to another. The damage that can be done is becoming greater and greater every day as technology is starting to tie together national infrastructures. In my opinion, drones are the some of the first of the cyber warfare machines.

While society is looking to use technology for it's benefits, there are many pitfalls, and adverse uses for this same technology. This article discusses how the use of CCTV systems for ensuring that players do not cheat was used against the same system, to do the very thing it was protecting against. We as technology professionals should be very congnizant of the security risks that the technology we recommend or put in place, may have alternate uses, which may be used against us, and thereby causing more damage than it helped to protect.

Phil, This is very interesting. You would have thought the casino would have better security than that on their system. It also suprises me that if you were in a game with that much money why did they not see the receiver the person had. A simple pat down could have reveiled it. It is scary what technology can do in the wrong hands. Lee

Winning is one thing, but stacking the deck is another. I would have thought that a casino would have a better way of securing their systems. Ben

I can't see this being used much for single factor authentication, but I could certainly see it being used on top of a username/password setup to bolster the security of that password. Another useful application for this would be to augment an anomaly based IDS running on the user's system. If keystroke patterns/dynamics exceed standard deviation, an alert could be sent to the help desk or security, who could then verify the identity of the user.

I could see some companies implementing keystroke and typing dynamics depending on their sector and security posture. However, depending on the sensitivity of the software, they could receive a lot of false positives. I've personally noticed my typing speed fluctuates drastically depending on the time of day. Nevertheless, I could see more companies deploying the software depending of their budget.

It seems that there are way to many variables for this technology to really take off. I agree with trevor that there is potential for a high volume of false positives. I also see potential for a high volume of false negatives. This technology seems as though it could end up being extremely frustrating for the end user.

Recently uncovered government documents reveal that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) unmanned Predator B drone fleet has been custom designed to identify civilians carrying guns and track cell phone signals. "I am very concerned that this technology will be used against law-abiding American firearms owners," said founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, Alan Gottlieb.

The power these drones represent is incredible. I can easily see how the can (and will be) abused. As Jammes pointed out, the Primary purpose of DHS is securing our nations borders, yet I have read of DHS rading peoples homes because of an "improperly" imported car! Not to sound like I am about to put a tinfoil hat on, but I do see the distinct possibility of the banning of firearms in this country as happened in England in 1997. These tools will be in place well before that day.

The use of Drones in the field as a tool to fight the fight on the borders is one thing, using them as a tool to fight terrorism is still another, but using them as tool to spy on the people of the United States is another. I think this is one that the United States Supreme Court will be deciding soon.

This article is based on a study conducted to observe and document human collaborative interaction using mobile devices and interactive surfaces.

Article 4 from UMUC library

This is 2 of 4 of my sources for annotated bibliography.

This is 3 of 4 of my sources for annotated bibliography.