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.

For a site called Accuracy in Media, this article has a lot of conjecture and no proof.  I wouldn’t print articles until I had something concrete to turn over to the law.  You back up none of your “facts”.  I am sorely dissappointed and no longer will take what’s on this site at it’s word.

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!

Disgusted Patriot…. It takes a fool to take anything at it’s word, at frist site. Most useful idiots (Democrats) do stupid stuff like
that. Read it… then go check it out for your self. There’s more than one place to get info. I do know there is a big cover up with this female and she has no right to any of these benefits. I have wondered if perhaps while she was “kidnapped”… was she also resting on an abortion table!

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.

The article stated that they had traced it to Fort George G Meade, it did not say they had traced it to the NSA.  The NSA was suggested in a posters comment because they state that is also the home of the NSA.  It seems to me that Ft Meade is also the home of the Army’s Intelligence Branch – and would certainly have a computer or two around there and maybe a few computer specialists who could hack into a civilian site such as MilitaryCorruption.com and shut them down?

As for the comment that tracing to the NSA had compromised the nations national security?  IO would suggest that if a civilian agency did trace it to a military site, whether Army or NSA, then they brought it upon themselves, and compromised their own security.  The military has no right under American law to hack into a civilian site and shut it down because they do not like a story that has or will be posted there – it is still a federal crime, and the Army personnel should be then arrested by the FBI and prosecuted along with the officers that ordered the cyber attack.  And that is whether it is Army crimes or NSA crimes.  Of course, that is assuming that they are the real perps.

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

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

Great pun and apt, except they traced it to Ft Meade, and that is a long ways from Amsterdam. lol

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.

Charlie, the left’s job is to pull the wool over others eyes, and keep them from figuring out what is really going on, while they take all your rights away and do what they want.  And then you have some that have perhaps become a little to paranoid so that they fear their government so much that they attribute to it things they can not even actually do – but I can understand that as fear of government controlling everything in a person’s life is reasonable and is what the left has as its ultimate goal.  We should fear our government and the leftists/Democrats that have the power and control of its agencies.

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

Some of you are not only ignorant but extremely foolish if you accept this nonsensical story.

Blogger1947: There is ALWAYS someone with a “conscience”? That’s a mixture of wishful thinking and conjecture on your part. In fact, except for the fact it would constitute a felony, I could cite numerous examples to the contrary.
As for “Carnivore,” you know far less than the full story.

Master Hansen: I’m still waiting for your definition of conservative and liberal. As for your quaint notions about what is legal or illegal, as well as the consequences of government violation of same, I could cite chapter and verse to the contrary. But again, for legal and moral reasons, I can’t. But I can state that the operating rule is: salus rei pubblicae supremus lex est. Finally, you’ve obviously never been inside Ft. Meade, have you? Certainly you’ve never been inside NSA HQ. What you suggest about one and the other is ignorant blather.

Mr. Seng; You obviously don’t know how the NSa conducts electronic monitoring. I can’t go into details for the reasons previously mentioned. But I am free to write this: NSA has an enormous, almost inconceivable capacity. to record transmissions of all kinds. These records are fed into unbelievably powerful computers programmed to identify key words or phrases. When such are picked up, a signal is passed to alert human monitors. Now everything human is subject to mistakes. But at NSA those are very, very rare and – to the best of my knowledge – have always been caught by back-up systems and their operators.

Mr. Seng & Master Hansen: You both indicate you are fools. Human nature is universal among our species. Do you really think that left = bad and right = good? Evil is in each of our souls. There were even good Nazis and Communists, although not many. Likewise, there were and are evils conservatives and liberals. To equate the political philosophies that operate within a democracy as either good or evil is to reveal a form of mental disorder.

Mr. Seng; Whether or not it it will be for the better or worse, whether or not you applaud or condemn it, the outcome of the presidential election has been decided by the events of the past week. Unless you have been living in a cave, you must be aware of majority public reaction to recent economic and financial events, as well as McCain’s hoplessly incompetent fumbling in regard to same. If you fear an Obama presidency as you appear to do, why don’t you prepare to flee?

In your case, Master Hansen, you display that almost every time you make a comment. How about answering my questions in such regards? Or, as I strongly suspect, are you a frivolous child, not a serious man?

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, putting aside the article itself, I feel I must fill in the gaps of your knowledge on what internet administrators are capable of doing.  My husband can and does track down IP addresses to the location and the owner in a matter of minutes every day of his life.  Sometimes for his job and sometimes just for fun or need at home.  If it comes from a government site, be it ours or the Chinese/Russian/French governments, he can tell that also.  The only factor here would be that our government could deny and divert any investigations and never have to deal with this publicly if they didn’t want to.  And no, that’s not paranoid, that’s reality.  That’s why it’s so difficult to fight big government whether it be city hall or the IRS.  Tenacity can get you somewhere but you’d better be willing to get bruised and battered along the way. 

So, while you are certainly allowed your opinions, however arrogantly you project them here, please be more careful about actual facts.  What you feel is one thing, what you know is quite another, apparently.

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?

HEY – given that the BUSH ADMINISTRATION FLUNKEE covered up Rep Brown’s burning the forest and NOT paying the fine, I wouldn’t put anything past the AF at all!! 

Here is the Brown Article – and I am going to check out this on METZGER –

Exclusive: Feds cut fine for congressman with clout
By JAMES ROSEN – (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

File photograph/The State
U.S. Rep. Henry Brown, R-S.C.

WASHINGTON — A senior federal official, fearful of incurring a congressman’s wrath, sent subordinates on a mad dash earlier this year to retrieve a certified letter demanding payment of $5,773 for starting a fire that burned 20 acres of a national forest.

Mark Rey, undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources, said he didn’t want U.S. Rep. Henry Brown to receive the March 12 letter before he testified before a U.S. House committee on which the South Carolina Republican sits.

“I’d just as soon have him not take a chunk of hide out of me,” Rey said Wednesday.

Rey confirmed the actions of Forest Service collections agents as outlined in internal agency documents McClatchy obtained.

The disclosures flesh out Brown’s four-year protest of a criminal citation and civil damages collection for a controlled burn he started March 4, 2004, on his Berkeley County property that spread to the adjoining Francis Marion National Forest.

Rey defended his decision to intercept the letter as “a reasonable precaution” to prevent Brown from “stewing on it while he’s sitting up there on the dais” of the U.S. House Natural Resources subcommittee, which oversees management of national parks and forests.

As a result of Brown’s case, the Forest Service in June rewrote a criminal code to make it more difficult to prosecute people who negligently set fires on federal land — about 80 fires a year in the South alone.

“It will be much harder for us to go after people who allow fires to escape from their property onto the national forests,” said Jack Gregory, who was the Forest Service’s top law enforcement agent in the 13 Southern states at the time of Brown’s 2004 fire.

A separate law governs arsonists who intentionally start fires in national forests.

Public land wardens and private property owners do controlled burns to remove underbrush, dead trees and other tinder that makes forests more vulnerable to fires.

Rey, a former timber lobbyist and a political appointee of President Bush, is responsible for running 156 national forests and 34 other federal lands on 191 million acres in 44 states.

AN ISSUE OF FAIRNESS?

Brown paid a reduced fine of $4,747 in April, but only after ensnaring dozens of federal employees in a conflict that cost the government an estimated $100,000 to resolve.

Forest Service officials agreed to remove accrued interest and late-payment penalties, reducing Brown’s bill by more than $1,000.

The Brown saga shows the power of a single congressman, especially one going up against an agency over which he has oversight responsibility.

“This is ticket-fixing at the highest levels,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a Washington legal group that defends government whistleblowers. The group filed a Freedom of Information Act request that produced the Forest Service documents related to the Brown case.

Brown believes he was treated more harshly than others to set an example.

“I was so taken aback that I’d be treated so impersonal — like I was some kind of crook,” Brown said Wednesday. “Those were criminal charges that were filed against me. I felt like I was the victim.”

Brown said many people who start fires on public lands face no charges.

“I know for a fact that on Highway 17 (in South Carolina), there was a lady burning trash and the fire got away. It burned several thousand acres of national forest, but she didn’t pay a fine.,” he said.

Brown added, “Because I’m a congressman, you don’t have any sympathy for me, but you could have sympathy for the little old lady that set a trash fire.”

After Brown was cited for negligence in a federal misdemeanor charge, he hired a lawyer and billed the federal government $9,040 for alleged damage to his land from a controlled burn he said Forest Service rangers set in 1989 — 15 years earlier.

Government lawyers rejected the claim, saying it had exceeded the federal statute of limitations.

Brown then went on a personal crusade in which he complained about his penalty in numerous e-mails, letters and phone exchanges with U.S. Forest Service employees in Washington, South Carolina, New Mexico and elsewhere.

Rey said he met with Brown “at least two times” after the congressman summoned him to his Capitol Hill office to discuss the dispute.

Gregory, the former top Forest Service law enforcement agent in the South who retired in December 2006, said he notified Strom Thurmond Jr., the U.S. attorney for South Carolina, of the pending charge against the congressman in March 2004.

“Whenever we encountered people who were important political types, we had to go to the U.S. attorney’s office before we entered a criminal case,” Gregory said. “I did that (with Brown). They said go ahead and charge the congressman criminally.”

Gregory and John “Andy” Sadler, based in the U.S. Forest Service’s Columbia office as a patrol captain in the agency’s uniformed agent corps, said Brown and a helper used buckets and trash cans filled with water to try to contain the controlled burn.

“Congressman Brown didn’t intend to burn National Forest land, but he was careless and lazy that day,” Gregory said.

FIGHTING BACK

Brown didn’t take the charge lying down.

Sadler said Brown spoke by phone with him and Jerome Thomas, supervisor of the Francis Marion and Sumter National Forests.

During the March 26, 2004, phone conversation, Brown made “an implied threat” of increased congressional scrutiny of U.S. Forest Service programs if the criminal charge and fines against him were pursued, Sadler said.

Rey, though, said Sadler and Thomas might have misunderstood Brown.

“Some of our folks assume when they’re dealing with an angry member of Congress that repercussions will follow,” Rey said.

Sadler and Gregory filed a federal whistleblowers complaint that accused Brown, Rey and other Forest Service employees of obstruction of justice, extortion and other crimes.

A review by the Inspector General’s Office in the Agriculture Department, the Forest Service’s parent agency, did not find sufficient evidence to support the allegations.

Rey said he oversaw the recent stiffening of the criminal negligence code for fires that spread to national forests after Brown’s case helped him realize there was a double standard.

The Forest Service, Rey said, had never admitted criminal liability in any controlled burns its rangers set that spread to private property.

“I just didn’t feel it was equitable for us to be holding private landowners to a standard that we were unwilling to be held to,” Rey said.

Whatever the explanation, Sadler said, fewer people will be held to account for starting fires in the national forests.

“As a result of all this stuff, the agency’s pretty well changed its prohibitions on what is actually a crime anymore,” he said. “It’s kind of within their authority to do that, it just doesn’t look too swift.”

Rosen covers Washington for McClatchy newspapers in South Carolina.

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 Mrs. McCant-Dickey,
I’m sorry but you are very misinformed. Cyber warfare as conducted by the best operators with the most advanced equipment is currently based on capabilities of which you can’t even imagine. Without going any farther on those lines, let me cite an example of relatively primitive attacks, the origins of which can be inferred from the political context but cannot be traced: those recently conducted against Estonian and Georgian government sites.
Going back nearly twenty years – a virtual eternity in information warfare – you don’t even seem aware of what the US did to the Iraqis back in 1990-91. I doubt very much if your husband has ever attended the Information Warfare College inside National Defense University. (Of course, if he had, he would be prohibited from discussing what he would have learned, even with you.) But if he thinks he knows what can be done today, he’s only fooling himself – and you.

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?
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.

Brian, you are an idiot who needs to stop making it so apparent to everyone by speaking aloud.  The FBI has used my husband to find pedophiles and others for years.  It was his job.  I don’t care what you say or think you know.  The more you speak, the more obvious it is how little you understand.  Perhaps you should leave internet information to the experts.  Political information, as well.

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!

Brian, if you want more information please go to owasp.org and join and educate yourself, courtesy of my husband. That would be the security community on the web. You might learn something. 

As for your list of questions, they are just that.  They don’t prove that you know the answers either.  They are simply basic information for any Poli. Sci. student with a passing grade.  Also, some of them are subjective (so, not sure exactly how these are an impressive list to anyone).  The true test of a conservative or a liberal (as any Poli. Sci. student who excels can tell you) is the amount of government involvement they believe should exist.  The full conservative is the true libertarian who believes in no government control while the other end of the spectrum is the socialist and more extreme belief systems (dictatorships, etc.) which argue that the government should decide every aspect of our lives.  Religion, all the other fluff you mention, just gets jumbled in there. 

As Republicans and Democrats, we can say that political platforms define our feelings about some of the points you mentioned; I will concede that.  But you’ve truly missed the point of ideology if you think our parties are exactly the same as the ideals they are supposed to purport.  I’m a conservative with my party being Republican for the sake of it being the best party for my ideals and the likelihood of election possibilities.  But some of my social views (gay marriage, for example) are quite “liberal” by some standards.  But truly, I just think that government shouldn’t be involved in it which truly makes me conservative, just not in line with the Republican party platform.

I’m hoping you can understand this.

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.

Dear Ms. McCant-Dickey,
I have gained the impression that you don’t read with care. Helping the FBI to catch internet pedophiles is praiseworthy. But it has little to do with cyber warfare between governments. Nor does it approach the complexity of such operations. Do you actually think an individual pedophile or a “Nigerian Scam” artist has the resources at his disposal that government electronic warfare operators do? That’s not just comparing apples and oranges, it’s like comparing raisins to water melons.
Has your husband attended the Information Warfare College at National Defense University. Has he ever worked at NSA HQ? Did he ever possess a TS/SCI clearance of any kind? I rather think not. You claim that I don’t know about such matters? The truth is that you have little or no idea about how governmental intelligence and electronic warfare agencies operate. Such knowledge is hardly openly available on public-access websites.

As for the questions I posed, they were not aimed at you but at Master Hansen. I am trying to get him to think about his usually ignorant and absurd statements about who falls into one category or another. As a conservative, I find it amazing that Master Hansen describes me as a liberal. Master Hansen – who is an adult (at least in years)and claims to hold a Ph.D. in American history – has avoided acquiring the most basic, high-school level, understanding of common political terms. (If you want to learn more about his nonsensical statements, scroll back through old AIM comments. Or, I can send you a complete set of his hilariously misstatements made over the past several months.)

Your statement that there is only “one true test”
of what differentiates a liberal from a conservative is breath-taking in its simple mindedness. The question is far more complex than positions on acceptable government interference. How do you place Lincoln on the political scale, given his unprecedented use government authority during the Civil War? Consider too that Nazis and Communists were in close agreement about what they considered the proper amount of government interference in society. Did that make them the same? As for your equating of a “true” conservative with a libertarian, the terms represent very different notions. (And if there are “true” conservatives, are there also “false” ones? How do you distinguish?) You consider religion and “all the other fluff” irrelevant to such definitions? That is truly astonishing. You seem to have no idea how modern conservatism and liberalism were largely shaped by such questions in the two centuries between the end of the Thirty Years War and the Revolutions of 1848. And have you been asleep for the past forty years? What other issue has burned so hot in the liberal vs. conservative arguments in the US than the role of religion in society? Has that not heavily influenced ideas about abortion, education, the acceptable limits to religious beliefs in shaping politics, etc., etc.?

Finally, where did you get the idea that I confound Republicans and Democrats with strictly defined ideological liberal or a conservative positions? How could I, given the events of the past week? Bush, a Republican, has just presided over the imposition of full Socialism on the American financial system. He has accepted his advisers arguments that international Capitalism will collapse if the Treasury Dept. and the Federal Reserve are not given the power the Kremlin once exercised over the Soviet economy. So, to what political philosophy does our chief executive now subscribe? Is he a Republican? If so, just what does that mean? This is just one reason why I presented my questions to Master Hansen. They were meant for none other.

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.

Oh, and I’m done with this.  Thank you Brian for allowing me to talk back to someone like you.  Too often in my daily life I have to bite my tongue when people speak nonsense about politics and life.  You have allowed me to let out a little of that.  For that I am grateful.  I’m sure you will say something wrong again (as I’ve seen many times before) but for now, I’m done. You just go in circles.

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!

Dear Ms. McCant-Dickey,
I suppose it’s my fault for having overestimated your knowledge. The formal names of the schools at NDU are rarely if ever used by the students, faculty and administration. “Information Resources Management College” is the official name of the school. It was so designated when it was created in the mid-1990s both as a (rather transparent) cover and to avoid offending those with PC attitudes. We had our own names for various institutions within NDU and I inadvertently used one of them. There are many other examples of such euphemism and subterfuge throughout the national security organizations of our government: the Defense Department (not the War Dept.), the National Reconnaissance Office (not the Spy Satellite office), the National Security Agency (not the Listening to Others’ Messages Agency) and so forth. So forgive me for overestimating your understanding.
If your husband does what you claim, he still doesn’t know about the kind of operations I have been describing. He seems to be doing good work. But it doesn’t seem to involve work requiring TS/SCI or COSMIC clearances, does it?

Why do you think I was referring to the “unchanging nature of an ideal” in regard to conservative vs. liberal? I was posing questions for Master Hansen in regard to comments going back and forth between us for weeks. Why you have inserted yourself into that escapes me.

Why do I mention Nazis? First, because in your attempt to distinguish between liberals and conservatives you stated that the degree of government interference each considers necessary makes the critical difference. I responded that your concept makes little sense. Nazis and Communists agreed on that issue. But that hardly made them identical political philosophies. Second, because in their own perverted way, both were idealists (in the strict sense of the word). The application of ideals to the sordid, grimy, compromise-ridden, day-to-day interactions among flawed, sinful human beings inevitably leads to tragedy. Consider the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Reformation and Counter Reformation, the French Revolution, the American Civil War, the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalinism, the Nazi Regime, Maoist rule over China, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, for example.
In contrast, arising out of Enlightenment thought, modern liberals and conservatives attempted to conceive of political systems that would function in the real world without causing the excesses from imposing ideals on very flawed, non-idealistic humans. But the two groups devised rather different systems based on their responses to the questions I posed to Master Hansen. Hence, my attempt to get him to consider those questions.

As for Lincoln, what do you think would have happened to the Union if he had not acted as he did? “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”

Your attempt to define my ideas and attitudes is absurd. I am astounded at how little of what I have written you seem to understand. Why not go back and read what I have written three or four more times? My meaning may begin to dawn on you.

Your follow-up comment makes nonsense of what you wrote previously. If that isn’t an expression of emotions overcoming reason, I don’t know what is.

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?

John Galt – Your lie in the previous post actually proves that you are also Brian, otherwise you would not know for sure whether Brian had aliases or not, and Brian, lying on this site after you have already fessed up to playing psychological games on us and posting under other names shows just how really sick in the head you are.  Besides you are now talking Brian Galt about what John Sullivan was saying earlier to LaDonna, and even an idiot knows that both of you do not have the same special ops experience with the NSA.  You could have got away with it Brian if you could keep your alias names straight.  And yes, I noticed in the post you are bullshitting about black hats and gray hats, and surprise surprise surprise, one of your other aliases is BlackHat.  You really are a despicable worthless human being.

And yes, AIM has told me many times they have traced your aliases to your IP, and they have also said they blocked your IP, but obviously they lied or you used all your knowledge (as you are the most educated man in all of the USA) to unblock yourself.  I really had hoped your worthless ass would be gone from here by now so we could get our site back but obviously that is not going to happen.

You destroy everything you touch, don’t you Brian John Galt Sullivan.  I am happy for you that you get so much satisfaction out of making other peoples lives a living hell – and you should feel extra happy that you have been particularly successful with me.  Now you can write another post and gloat over that, or of course, you can use one of your aliases or two, and that way many of you can gloat, even though it is just you gloating more than once.

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

If AIM is going to publish advertisements such as the one written by Major Macdonald, they should charge for them and label them as advertisements.  I would like to think that what I read on AIM is accurate and newsworthy.  If they keep publishing articles of the ilk of Major Macdonald’s, it may become difficult to distinguish between the ads and the real news—sort like the New York Times and the Washington Post.

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.

“John Galt – Your lie in the previous post actually proves that you are also Brian, …”

What lie? Prove anything I wrote is a lie. See that as an intellectual challenge rather than a smackdown. Prove you possess an intellect.

As to your “black hat” charge, look up black hat on wikipedia. In the computer hacking context, black hats are those who use their skills for nefarious, indeed criminal, purposes; grey hats are those who use black hat skills to discover and plug holes in their defenses or to audit compliance of systems with information security policies; and white hats are those who use their skills to develop defensive countermeasures.

“… otherwise you would not know for sure whether Brian had aliases or not …”

That’s one correct statement in your rant. I do not know for sure whether Major Sullivan has used other names to post here. Given what I know about him, it seems highly unlikely he has or does.

“… they have also said they blocked your [Sullivan’s] IP, but obviously they lied …”

Another correct statement! Congratulations!