Ft. Meade is, as we all know, home of the super-secret National Security Agency (NSA), the huge techno-spy organization that listens to every cell phone and reads every email in the world.

Do you really have solid evidence of an NSA origin of this attack?  Seems like they would have ways of disguising any such interference, but I’m not a techie.  Just wondering.

1) “The trail, we were told, led all the way to the U.S. Army installation at Ft. Meade, Md.”

Who told you? Could they possibly be able to trace such communications to the NSA? If so, are you aware of how valuable such an ability would be to hostile foreign powers or terrorist groups? And you have revealed that? Have you no sense of responsibility regarding US national security?

2) IP numbers can’t be traced - legally, that is - to any individual.

3) I’ve worked with the NSA. If members of that organization wanted to carry out an attack on AIM, believe me, you wouldn’t know where it came from. This is another example of AIM paranoia.

4) “...to equip and employ the best computer experts in the business, stick them in a uniform and put them to work in the underground rooms at Meade.” What kind of baloney is this? More paranoid conspiracy-think. Get real!

Sullivan—Wrong on all four points. As MacDonald has mentioned in the story, there is always someone with a “conscience” in one of these organizations. Whether you call that whistle-blowing, treason or heroics depends on your point of view.

On Point #4, if you worked with NSA you would recognize the name “Carnivore,” which after its details were leaked to the public was not discontinued, but simply re-named.

“Of course, that is assuming that they are the real perps.”

Yep. It could always be a couple of 14-year olds in Amsterdam.

I’m reading a lot of so-called “expert” opinion replying to this article, doubting the content of this AIM column and a lot of it sounds like personal opinion, not expertise.  For instance,PUNNDITT says someone in the NSA is reading every e-mail and listening to every cell phone call in the world.  Do you work for the NYTimes?  Only they know this type of stuff!  How could anyone or group of anyone’s in NSA be able to listen to every cell phone call and read every e-mail in the world?  That would be physically impossible.  Yet, this is put on this post as an actual fact.  No one could be that naive or ignorant to believe that.  I hardly think AIM is being paranoid when their website was shut down.  Does anyone think that was done by some teenager in Podunk, Iowa?  Who is paranoid here?  Considering what happened to Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail account, I would suspect the Democrat Party or NOW in all of this.

Jack, thanks, words of wisdom!  I do believe more people are recognizing the intentions of the left so maybe the future things will turn out OK this November.

Charlie

Re: Post #10;

Your statement ...

“We should fear our government and the leftists/Democrats that have the power and control of its agencies.”

Have you forgotten that the rightists/Republicans have controlled the Presidency for the last eight years, the Supreme Court for the last five years, and the Congress (both houses) from 1994 through 2006?  And do you doubt even one small little bit that Bush II and Cheney, upon rising to the Presidency and Vice-Presidency, respectively, replaced all the top personnel who held the power and control of those ‘agencies’ you mention?

Bush II has circumvented more checks-and-balances and usurped more power in favor of the Executive Branch than any other President before him (including Nixon).

I fear the government alright ... the government of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wall Street and the Neocon GOPs ... including their potential influence on and control over the current GOP candidate for President.

Brian for all your rants about liberals and conservatives not fitting into convenient molds (ie Liberals=wrong & Conservatives=right) your attitude and rants to these Conservatives are exactly opposite what you postilate - as you see that Conservatives are all wrong.

And I am not as naive as you think.  I do understand the difference between legal and illegal, and what I stated in the earlier post is correct.  The government DOES NOT have any rights to commit illegal acts.  Under law they should be treated as any citizen doing so and prosecuted.  You are talking - reality.  Yes, the reality is that government commits felony crimes all the time, and the law that was made to protect Americans from that crime is not enforced because the people that are charged with enforcing those laws work for the same government as the criminals - the government law breakers.  So yes, they are in cahoots - and in fact, under the RICO statues - could be prosecuted just as the mob was prosecuted.  Unfortunately our government is so corrupt from top to bottom that they are never brought to justice.  Liberals like you want it to remain the way it is and that government take even more power and commit even more crimes against the people - and that makes you a traitor to the American people and an aider and abettor to the criminals - especially since you indicate that you are savvy to exactly what is going on - and therefore are complicent and shouls also be prosecuted under RICO.

Just because the government routinely breaks the law and is not brough to justice, does not make what they are doing legal.  It is still illegal.

And in answer to your earlier questions?  Conservatives are the people that want to bring the government to justice and prosecute people like yourself that aid, abet, and/or commit felonies against the people.  You, as a liberal, do not want that to happen, and want to subjugate us even more.  We are those that want to restore our Republic to its lawful status and like it was meant to be and the way it mostly functioned until you criminals got your greedy felon fingers on it.  You want to end our Republic and control everyone and grab them by the balls and squeeze.

And TK (Brian):  Just because the Bushites have sat in a chair in the White House as the so-called Executive of the government does NOT mean they have ever really controlled the Executive branch.  The various executive departments and agencies have for a long long time been controlled by the leftists.  Yes, they can have a bit of control depending upon the department and level of leftist control and depending upon strength of the Secretary of the Dept, or the person supposedly operating the agency.  But big corrupt leftist government mostly has control.  Now that is not to say that Bush is not part of the problem - he has no balls and his political philosophy is to far to the left of the Republican party.

The supreme court - that has just recently in the past year started to look up a bit, before that it was completely controlled by the left and has been going back to almost the FDR years.  Replacing Remquist and O’Connor with Roberts and Alitto, gave the right one more seat - POSSIBLY!  But the result is still 4 to 4 and Kennedy making most of the decisions, and he leans a bit further to the left side in my belief, so no the right does not yet control the Supreme Court.  And after the many years of Republican Presidents placing screaming liberals on the court either through conning us or themselves being conned into the nomination, the jury is still out on whether Roberts and Alitto will remain tot he right and actually rule in that way.

In the House and Senate, yes, the Republicans did have control most of the time from 1994 to 2006, and started out reasonably.  But like all those before them they also got corrupted and ended up spending like drunken sailors as the Democrats before them had done for decades.  While the left screamed that Gingrich was a rightest criminal, the fact he recently sat down on a couch in a commercial with the despicable Pelosi and caved to the global warming scam of the blaoted algorry is telling on just how he was not as much to the right as the left made him sound.  In reality, the Republicans did not have huge margins of power over the two houses, and the left of the Republican Party was actually in control just as they have remained in control of the Republican Party, and the partisan behavior of the Congress over the past ten years, and the left leaning of some of the Republican leadership, the right of the Republican Party - the real Conservatives, have never had the power to actually really accomplish anything.

And TK, the record of the two years of Democrat control is certainly nothing to hold up as a comparison of what the difference between the two really is.  Talk about worthless Republican control years, the 9% Approval Rating of the Democrat Controlled Congress is the real joke.  And Pelosi, Reid and the other Soros useful-idiot puppets actually think they should make fun of Bush’s approval rating that sits between 30 and 40%.  The joke is that those that have only a quarter of the President’s approval rating think they should be able to gloat.  Now, that’s leftist arrogance.

Did I miss anything?

Re: Post #15;

First thing, I am NOT “Brian”!

It sounds like you think anyone even slightly to the left of Attila The Hun is a “leftist” - - and all the problems you perceive as existent in the world today are the fault of “leftists”?  So, obviously, a Republican like Chuck Hagel, to you, is a “leftist” - - and is part of the problem - - regardless of his political affiliation?  I guess that’s OK - - except that the only people accdeptable to you are then the most extreme rightists?  For me, right or left, I have a lifelong distaste for extremists - - and believe that extremists in government, left of right, are bad, bad news.

I beleive all expert observers and political scientists of all stripes would agree that Bush II has expanded the power of the Executive Branch of the federal government moreso than any other single President in history.

I’m pretty conservative when it comes to the Supreme Court - - but my conservatism certainly is not defined soley by have Roe vs. Wade overturned.  Rather than “conservative”, I’d probably refer to myself as a more-or-less “strict constructionist” - - and an anti-ACLU’er.  I don’t think Thomas (and maybe Alito) has sufficient intellectual capacity to be on the court - - and I do think Ginsberg was a very poor selection because of her personal agenda before she was appointed.

As far as “spending like drunken sailors” goes:  At the end of Carter’s term, the national debt (the TOTAL balance due from 1790 to 1979) was about $850 million - - less than a trillion.  By the end of Reagan’s two terms, it went up to about $3.5-$4.0 trillion - - a more than 300% increase.  It went up another $1.5 trillion under Bush I.  Then, it went up just under $1 trillion more under Clinton (who, along with Carter, had the only balanced budgets in the last 30 years).  And, in the last 8 years, Bush II has increased it almost $5 trillion more - - to over $10 trillion (not counting the interest and the GI medical and other future costs related to Iraq).
So - - “the drunken sailors” signing on the budgetary dotted line, to some $8.2 trillion of the current $10+ trillion national debt, were actually Reagan, Bush I and Bush II.  Since 1980, 28 years, there’s only been a Democratic President for 8 of them!  And, most of that debt came via Reagan tax cuts, Bush I’s Gulf War, and Bush IIs expansion of government, tax cuts and, of course, his Iraq adventure.

I agree that the so-called Democratic Congress of the last two years under Pelosi and Reid has been useless in all respects - - and I think Pelosi and Reid are the two farthest-left people ever elected to national office.  HOWEVER, note that the Senate has only had a “Democratic majority” for the last two years when Independent Lieberman and Republican Chaffee chose to vote Democratic.  The House Democratic majority has been a little larger - - but everything it approves has to then be approved by the Senate - - which has not happened often during the past 18 months.  And, of course, from 1994 through 2000, the Republican Congress of 1994-2006 DID NOTHING, either, except to spend all its time in an attempt to get Clinton and his wife.  It certainly rivals the do-nothing Congress of these last 20 months.

Congressional elections this year and in 2010 are probably more important than the Presidential election.  And, of course, as I’ve been expecting for the last 20 years - - the potential for another Great Depression is now upon us - - because of faulty economic policy since Reagan took office - - so, economic policy is the pivotal issue at hand - - NOT Roe vs. Wade, guns, gays, Iraq, Iran, Israel - - or even oil.  Without a working, vibrant, growing and stable economy that raises ALL of our citizens’ ships - - the rest is just falderol and bullshit.

Dear Master Hansen,
As I suspected you are neither a serious man nor do you seem to have the slightest idea about what defines a conservative or a liberal. Certainly, neither can be described correctly by your ignorant, simplistic and confused sense of moral indignation.
I will be specific: Your attempt to define liberal vs. conservative in terms of your ideas of right vs. wrong and legal vs. illegal are equally applicable to a Christian Crusader’s objection to Seljuk Turk control of Jerusalem, Jacobin criticism of Louis XVI, a Bolshevik condemnation of the Czarist regime or a Nazi attack on the Weimar Republic. What your definition of liberal comes down to is someone whose opinions you do not like. Have you so quickly forgotten your description of me as a Nazi? Do you think liberals and Nazis are identical? This is just one example of your inability to be serious.
I will try to help you. However, your mental confusion and your patent ignorance of history and political thought raise grave doubts in my mind about whether or not you can comprehend what follows.
1) How do conservatives and liberals differ on their concepts of the fundamentals of human nature?
2) How do views on the value of formal education separate conservative and liberal thought?
3) How do conservatives and liberals differ on the value of tradition, custom and common law?
4) What, according to each, is the proper role of a just government?
5) How do each define tyranny?
6) What post-1600 thinkers have had the major influence on current concepts of liberalism and conservatism?
7) How do liberals and conservatives differ on the social value and role of science? ...of the arts… of great music and literature?
8) How do they differ on the concept of a “just war”?
9) How do their views differ on the proper obligations of citizens under a just government?
10)How do they differ on the correct purpose of taxation…of import duties…of government expenditures?
11) What are their differences in terms of the place of religion in public life?
12) What are their different attitudes about the correct conduct of a country’s foreign policy?
13) What differentiates their views on the granting of suffrage in a properly constituted republic?
14) How does each view the obligations of elected representatives to their constituents? 
15) How do liberals and conservatives differ on the definition of war and of peace?
16)How do they differ on the extent of executive power in peace time? ...in war time?
17) How do they differ on the notion of the “state of nature”?
18) Do they agree or disagree on the purpose of human existence? If so, how?
19) What does each consider the proper response to ignorance?
20) How do their views on the purpose of penal punishment differ? ...on the allowable boundaries of a just government in imposing such punishment?
21) How would each react to the notion that “salus rei pubblicae supremus lex est”?
I doubt you can answer these questions because I doubt you have even a vague understanding of what diffentiates a liberal from a conservative. But perhaps you just might surprise me.

Re: Brian R. Sullivan, #19;

Wow!  Great listing of questions, the true and accurate answers to which will clearly delineate between and define the political terms “liberal” and “conservative”.

Unfortunately, this group will go on and on for the next 99 years arguing about the answers!

I get a kick out of how so many rightwinger extremists call themselves “conservatives” today - - while forgetting that Barry Goldwater, founder of modern American political conservatism - - totally rejected the politics and religion of the so-called Religious Right - - supported gay rights - - and accepted Roe vs. Wade!  In fact, 44 years later, old Barry doesn’t seem so bad - - except for having his twitchy finger on the Armegeddon trigger!

There’s not a lot of “moral” in that indignation of Hansen’s.  Fugeddaboudim!

Wow, I learn so much from liberals who say they are really moderate republicans.
I didn’t know that letting people keep the money they earned was causing so much debt. Thanks, TK
I guess if i send more money to the government i should be rich in about 10-15 years. What do you think TK?
I also learned that Carter and Clinton balanced the budget. Gosh how did they do that? Tell me more TK. I didn’t know that they were such great presidents. How much did they cut from the military? How much did Reagan and Bush and Bush have to spend to modernize the military after the two great C’s destroyed them? How much did Bush have to spend to get the CIA back in order after Clinton destroyed it and created the direct cause of 9/11?
Who wrote the no child left behind bill?
Who’s behind socialising medicine? Why did we end up with a prescription drug boondoggle?
Who wants to expand medicare and medicaid?
Who started Social security? Who refuses to reform all of the above?
Who created the lending mess we have that is ruining the economy?
Who makes people pay higher prices for gas because the environmental lobby has them by the short hairs?
Who refuses to allow refineries or nuclear power plants to be built?
The problems of this country are all caused by liberal programs. Social security and medicare/medicaid are the biggest debt obligations that we have and are only going to get bigger because of Democrats wanting to protect their power.

We are so very off topic here in some ways. But the National Defense University does not have a college by the name you give.  Here are your choices.
   
Industrial College of the Armed Forces
Information Resources Management College
Joint Forces Staff College
National War College
School for National Security Executive Education

My husband actually handles large cyber attacks and security for government and huge corporations these days and you are very much out of the loop, but thank you for continuing to play.

And as for liberal versus conservative, none of your arguments make any sense against what I said.  The thought patterns of the last years on religion, abortion and education don’t shape the unchanging nature of an ideal.  The names can change but not the facts.  Why are we bringing up Nazis again?  You love to mention them.  And Lincoln frankly over-stepped - what does that have to do with this article OR our discussion? 

You process things so emotionally, you react to current events as though they have the power to change what is right and wrong, what is true and false.  You rely on labels to tell you the true nature of things. 

As for our current president, my love for him has faded as he has failed to live up to my expectations of his ability to protect us from our own government.  Like too many in our party, he has succumbed to the belief that if we are just nice enough to the other side, they will compromise with us, too.  They won’t, and we shouldn’t be willing to give in when the price is so high.

All you people who have been talking and talking back and forth to each other, arguing over simple little points must be a little crazy.  I’ve been off this post more than 24 hours and you’re still at it.  Don’t you have lives?  There’s football on TV now, lives to lead, you can stop fighting all these stupid arguments now, turn off the PC’s and let it rest.  All these posts that go on and on, all this time wasted over who is right and who is wrong.  Get a life!

Tracking down a pedophile who knows zip about computer security would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

OWASP is the Open Web Application Security Project—a group dedicated to application development standards and methodologies. While there are specifications on securing applications from common attacks, their focus is on defense, not offense.

There are sites on the net which specialize in developing attack tools (both “black hat” and “grey hat”). I’m sure those interested in such things can find some without much effort, so I won’t post addresses. Suffice it to say basic functionality in those tools disguise the source of the attack.

Attacks on the military corruption site could have come from anywhere on the planet and still be crafted in such a way as to appear to come from Ft. Meade or the Vatican for that matter. There are millions of computers on the net that are “owned” by attackers. Collectively they’re known as botnets and allow the attacker to utilize thousands of individual computers (perhaps yours and Hansen’s too) all over the planet to focus attacks on a particular target.

As Sullivan implied, someone schooled and skilled in cyber warfare would never be stupid enough to not hide their tracks sufficiently to confound even the most experienced “webmaster.” They would be easily able to confound even the most experienced FBI cyber security experts.

Claims by AIM that they’ve traced either postings here (e.g., Hansen’s continual claim that Sullivan is posting here under multiple names) or attacks on the Military Corruption site are preposterous and hilarious.

By the way, one stunning recent example: the Israeli bombing attack on the Syrian nuclear facility. Why do you suppose the Syrian radar and early warning detection systems suddenly malfunctioned and recovered only after the attack?

ip spoofing is child’s play.
using a proxy is simpler child’s play.
the claim that this ‘haxor’ was traced is just more unfounded ‘scary story’ crap made up by the paranoid kook liars that run this site to fool the gullible and naive into seeing another ‘spooky threat’.
if someone wants to hide their ‘cyber tracks’ and has anything beyond an elementary knowledge of networking YOU WILL NOT TRACE THEM.
this article is beyond ludicrous.
the guys uses the word ‘zillions’ forchrisake!
what is he, 6 years old?

and ‘LaDonna Marie McCant-Dickey’:
finding some moron pedophile in an AOL chat room is far less than child’s play.
any idiot can find another idiot.
if somebody makes a tiny bit of effort they can obscure their tracks so nobody can find them. proxies, botnets, rudimentary ip spoofing… even with a subpoena you can’t find them [try delivering that to a hacked system owner in taiwan]. you know not waht you speak of.

|-|^x0|-X

Dear Master Hansen,
You still haven’t answered my questions distinguishing between a conservative and a liberal. I think it’s clear that you can’t. Thus, your ignorant attempt to label me only reveals you have no idea what the terms mean.

Your paranoia appears to be increasing. Your insistence that I pose as different people supports that conclusion. Do you know what “textual analysis”? It is a method to determine if the author of one text is the author of another. It can be done without external aid. But it is more easily accomplished by using a computer program. If you subjected the various texts you think are coming from the same person to such analysis, your illusion would be shown to be nonsense. Why don’t you try that?

I didn’t state that I was “playing psychological games.” I stated that I had carried out a psyops experiment. Do you understand what psyops means? It seems not.
Psyops involves a wide range of methods, means, and objectives. All can involve nefarious, harmless or beneficial techniques and results. Back in the late summer of 1990, while I was working with Paul Wolfowitz, Adm Jeremiah and LIC, I proposed and was given the mission of developing a number of such operations against the Iraqi forces. As it turned out, my project saved a small number of Coalition forces lives (but remember that our casualties were low, so my project probably reduced friendly losses by 10 per cent, perhaps more). But I also helped reduce Iraqi deaths by the thousands, possibly tens of thousands, while simultaneously shortening the war. I’m very proud of that.
In the case of my intervention on the AIM website, my objective was simple: to get those persons, such as yourself, who seemed to actually believe the fairy tales put out by Mr. Kincaid and his associates, to reveal the ignorance, stupidity, gullibility, biases, rage, confusion, irrationality, etc. that underlies their thinking. My assumptions were: 1) that many more people were reading the comments I provoked than were actually making their own; 2) that I could entice others to make comments on this site, who had previously been only passive observers; 3) that by accomplishing these objectives, I could help educate the larger group of AIM readers to see what nonsense peope like you accept as true. I claim success.

NSA is not involved in what are commonly known as special ops. The former is located at Ft. Meade, MD, is largely civilian in make-up and includes a good number of non-Americans from allied countries. The latter has its HQ at McDill AFB outside Tampa, FL and is almost exclusively composed of US military personnel. I’ve worked with both but in very different capacities and for quite different purposes.

I fail to understnd what I have done that renders me “a despicable human being” or why part of my anatomy is a “worthless ass.” Your attitude toward me seems to spring from your dislike of my opinions. You appear outraged by my exercise of freedoms of speech and of the press. What does that reveal about you?

If I and others on these sites have made your life “a living hell” (which seems a gross exaggeration), the problem lies within your mind. You are suffering from various mental ills, including paranoia.
But do you understand what “a living hell” means? Consider the following passage from Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus.” Faust asks the demon Mephistophilis [sic] how M. can be both damned to hell and yet appear on earth, in this case in Faust’s study. M. replies:
“Why this is hell, nor am I out of it:
Think’st thou that I, that saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
O, Faustus, leave these frivolous demands,
Which strikes a terror to my fainting soul!”
That is what being in hell is like. In brief, it means eternal despair. I don’t think that I or Mr. Galt or the other persons you think are one and the same have done anything like that to you.

If you are a vet with a military-service related disability, please go to your local VA hospital and seek help for your mental problems.

I’m hardly “the most educated man in all of the USA.” There are hundreds of thousands, probably a few million people in this country with as good, if not a better, education than I possess. What distinguishes me from many of those others is that I’ve lived an adventurous life, as well as gotten an excellent formal education. Most who have done one, haven’t done the other. But from the time I was a boy, living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I was taken most weekends to the Museum of Natrual History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of the City of New York, the old American Indian Museum, the Central Park Zoo, the Bronx Zoo or the campus of Columbia University. Later, on my own, I visited the Museum of Modern Art frequently. From those experiences, combined with my own personality, I developed a thirst for knowledge but also for travel, adventure and the search for hidden things. Fortunately for me, I have been able to accomplish that, still live to tell the tale and do a fair amount of writing as a result.

I don’t think that I “destroy everything I touch,” quite the contrary. What I do seem to have wrecked are your paranoid fantasies and the bases for your deep prejudices. I hardly feel ashamed of that kind of demolition.