Project Vigilant: One Nearly Homeless Guy Talking Big?
from the vigilant-indeed dept
So there was a lot of attention paid last week to a newly unveiled "Project Vigilant," which supposedly had a bunch of security experts secretly monitoring internet traffic privately for the US government. However, the more people looked at the details, the more sketchy the whole thing became, and some of us started wondering if the whole thing was a hoax to prove how gullible the media is on security issues (a popular pasttime at Defcon, where this all went down).Now, Declan McCullough, who has apparently known the guy supposedly "running" the operation, Chet Uber, for years, has an article suggesting that, while it might not be a hoax, it sure sounds like one guy making very little sound like it's a lot. And, not just one guy, but a nearly homeless guy, who couldn't afford a razor until his disability check came in the mail, the day that McCullough spoke to him.
Basically, it sounds like Uber talks big, but there's little, if anything, to back any of it up -- and, at times, doesn't much sense at all:
Uber has a habit of making pronouncements that manage to be both grand and incomprehensible. Two months ago, he sent me an e-mail about Project Vigilant that said, in part: "We do not look at attribution ever as a 100 percent solution. We do see offering a high level of confidence determined by showing correlation that are consistent with perceived events in this time-space model--causality is a bitch--and then based on how that correlation was done and our view of the reliability of the sources and methods used we have a confidence interval."As for the claims of various well-known folks involved with the project? Well, that seems to again be blown out of proportion. One of the "big names" involved is Mark Rasch, who apparently gave Uber free legal advice at some point. When asked about the project, Rasch told McCullough: "I don't know if he's done this or it's something he's looking to do."
In conversations over the last week, Uber dropped phrases like "we have dozens and dozens of things that are ready to go to patent pending," "we're running hundreds and hundreds of different experiments," "we've developed steganography and compression algorithms and the use of noise," and "we have the capability to monitor up to 250 million IP addresses per day."
Of course, now we can get the conspiracy theories going about how this story is also a hoax to lessen the concerns about this group's supposed monitoring of the internet (yes, please?). But, seriously, this sounds like one guy talking really big without much to back it up. Not quite a hoax, but not quite anything serious either.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: chet uber, project vigilant
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBvakgglAPM
In Asia news is so much funnier.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I love the shirtless hug near the end.
Ready to go patent pending???? Once you submit your application you can go patent pending.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I love the shirtless hug near the end.
Ready to go patent pending???? Once you submit your application you can go patent pending.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
I think that's the point. He has things he'd apply for, but he can't afford the application fees.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Gets more interesting the less is certain.
1) Uber.
2) Adrian Lamo is a member of Project Vigilant.
3) Lamo ratted out Manning of Wikileaks documents and helicopter video.
4) Mark Rasch is general counsel of PV.
5) PV has $40,000 income from unknown sources for unknown expenses.
6) Uber traveled to Las Vegas for "recruiting".
7) The story is being "rolled back", especially by the lawyer, Rasch. -- And it's done without actually disproving or denying anything, just mostly adding vagueness and noise.
Don't know if I previously made clear that one goal might simply be to accustom people to omnipresent spying. According to the "Top Secret America" report, there are 850,000 spooks and semi-spooks on gov't payroll, so it may be time to put out stories about "the spy next door".
We definitely have a group of *three* people, one having a direct link to whatever Wikileaks is, so there *is* a conspiracy of some sort.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sounds like BS
[ link to this | view in chronology ]