"Purpose of counterintelligence action is to disrupt BPP [Black Panther Party] and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge. If facts are present, it aids in the success of the proposal but the Bureau feels that the skimming of money is such a sensitive issue that disruption can be accomplished without facts to back it up." -J. Edgar Hoover --
The "immaterial whether facts exist" directive is found in a secret memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, about a money-skimming allegation against Black Panther activist David Hilliard. Hoover's candid order was a month after Hoover had also ordered the FBI Crime Laboratory to not issue a formal report in an operation against Panther activists Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (formerly David Rice) in Omaha, Nebraska.
The directives against Hilliard and the two Omaha men were part of a massive but clandestine operation of the FBI devised by Hoover that was code-named COINTELPRO. Illegally directed against domestic political targets, COINTELPRO agents conducted a wide array of dirty tricks including both planting and withholding evidence.
Hoover's directive in the Omaha case, compromising the investigation into the murder of police officer Larry Minard killed in an August 17, 1970 ambush bombing, was documented by FBI Crime Laboratory director Ivan Willard Conrad. A tape recording of the killer's voice luring police to a vacant house with a report of a woman screaming was rushed to the crime lab for vocal analysis but Omaha Police Assistant Chief of Police Glen W. Gates did not want a formal report. Conrad spoke with Hoover over the phone and confirmed that he was to withhold a lab report in the case noting that Hoover said it was "OK to do" on his copy of the secret memo.
The plot against Hilliard was ordered in a secret COINTELPRO memo dated September 16, 1970 from Hoover. That confidential memo also addressed a proposal by the Los Angeles FBI office to send a false anonymous letter to Hilliard alleging an assassination plot against Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton. Hoover recognized the potential outcome of such a letter might result in violence against the purported assassins but he was only concerned with the possibility the Bureau might draw some liability. Hoover ordered the letter to be rewritten to avoid Bureau exposure to complicity in violence against innocent targets.
"With respect to two anonymous letters proposed by Los Angeles, Bureau concurs with San Francisco that to include the card of a member of a rival black extremist group in a letter to Hilliard indicating Newton is marked for assassination could place the Bureau in the position of aiding or initiating a murder by the BPP."
Hoover ordered: "Los Angeles should reword this letter to convey the same thought without directly indicating that it is from a specific member of a rival group. The letter could imply that the writer would soon get in touch with Hilliard to see what he would pay to have Newton eliminated."
Hoover's goal was to "disrupt" the Black Panthers by targeting the party leadership for removal by either violent means or prosecution and imprisonment. Although the blunt language of the Hilliard memo "it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge" spells out Hoover's disregard for the truth, his order to Conrad "OK to do" shares an equal disregard for actual facts.
In the Omaha case, the tape recording of the killer's voice was not that of either COINTELPRO target, Ed Poindexter or Mondo we Langa. Nor did the deep gruff voice of an older man match that of 15-year old Duane Peak, the confessed bomber. A FBI lab report indicating an unknown murderer would unravel the case being put together against the two Panther leaders and would have to be disclosed to defense attorneys.
Conrad followed orders and withheld a formal report on the tape recording. The jury that convicted Poindexter and Langa for Minard's death never got to hear the tape recording of the fatal caller. Authorities later destroyed the tape only to have a duplicate emerge years later. Finally, after many more long years the tape was submitted for sophisticated testing in 2006. In May 2007, expert witness Tom Owen, an internationally recognized vocal analyst, testified in an Omaha courtroom that the voice on the tape was not that of Peak leaving an unidentified accomplice on the loose.
Poindexter now has a new trial request pending before the Nebraska Supreme Court over the new information about the tape recording, which J. Edgar Hoover had tried to bury back in 1970. Sworn conflicting police testimony about dynamite used in the bomb has since emerged that is also under review by the state high court. No date for a decision has been announced.
Convicted for the bombing murder, Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa received life sentences and are imprisoned at the maximum-security Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln. Both men deny any involvement in Minard's death.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
FACTS
I.T. Security
The article notes that FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) may be used to "sell the need for security" to home users or even in some organizations. FUD means that exaggerated claims are used to alarm folks into making security decisions. However, I believe most corporate security professionals (as least those I've worked with) thoroughly research options and present as much factual information as possible to IT management. Corporate security is a business requirement. Granted, it's sometimes difficult to ascertain and quantify in real dollar terms. It entails risk management to address potential losses in a cost effective manner. The potential consequences of not acting to address true exposures should be shared in a professional manner without the use of FUD. In some respects, it's important to occasionally "cry wolf" when major exposures surface. However, as the article notes, It's important to be factual and "to keep the powder dry" in over-alerting folks to maintain credibility. If there's a strong potential of attacks for a highly vulnerable exposure, IT Security needs to be alert all affected areas to work pro-actively in preventing it. You always want to "patch the roof before it rains", which could be immediately or several weeks away. I agree with some of the constructive criticism noted in the article. Security professionals need to apply due diligence in properly researching solutions. The use of facts rather than FUD over time will improve management's perception of IT security as the critical business resource it has become. Security Reference Guide - Three Reasons Why Users Won't Buy Into Security http://www.informit.com/guides/content.aspx?g=security&seqNum=332 QUOTE: As if to bolster the viewpoint that the security community only has fear to offer their users, when was the last time you every heard anything good about a security solution or process. For example, have you ever seen the headline "XYZ Firewall Prevent Hackers from Blowing Up a Power Plant!?" Unlikely. Instead, security related news that does make it to the general community deals with viruses, malicious hackers, and scary scenarios that paint a really bad picture of the digital world. Ultimately, it is fairly obvious that FUD tactics are the primary method by which the security industry obtains and maintains their consumers.
September 15, 2008 — Network World — A new report warns that the cost from lost productivity at work related to the new NFL season could add up to US$10.5 billion. And there we were, thinking the biggest waste of time at work came from fielding an endless stream of IT industry reports?
In an effort to do something productive with these sometimes insightful, sometimes scary, sometimes silly and frequently self-serving studies, we've boiled down each of about 20 that we've received over the past couple of months into one digestible story. Without further ado and in no particular order:
The average fantasy sports player earns about $38 per hour and based on an average of nearly 1.19 hours per week dealing with their team during work hours, companies lose about $45.22 in wages per worker each week, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas http://www.challengergray.com/, the global outplacement and business coaching consultancy, which came up with its numbers by crunching those from a couple of fantasy sports groups.Perhaps playing fantasy football at work can be included in an Internet users' Bill of Rights. Two-thirds of about 200 people attending the second Internet Governance Forum in Brazil last November agreed with this statement: "A global internet users' Bill of Rights should be adopted." Only 6 percent disagreed. Such a Bill of Rights would include things such as freedom of information, freedom of expression, and the right of people to have affordable access, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. —Not that everyone is going to log on even if they are offered affordable access. Only 44 percent of Kentucky households subscribe to broadband even though most do have access to it, according to Connected Nation, which issued a report that all full-time adult students in Kentucky with broadband at home use the 'Net for educational purposes. So clever.
Well, more clever than a lot of organizations anyway. Just over half of organizations require only passwords for employees to access critical data, according to a survey of 150 companies by Quest Software and the Aberdeen Group. Companies play fast and loose with their password rules, too, according to the survey, with almost half allowing standard dictionary terms and more than two-thirds not specifying password length.
Not that that sort of thing has anything to do with the number of confirmed data breaches reported through mid-August blowing by the number reported for all of last year. According to the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center, last year a total of 446 breaches were reported, and as of Aug. 22 this year 449 got reported. Of course, there are many more breaches than those reported, and the ITRC says it is thankful that at least a few states are starting to make info available through their Attorney General offices.
You could just blame Japan for your network security troubles. Japan proved to be the Godzilla of attack traffic-generation in the second quarter as the country of origin for 30 percent of such traffic worldwide, according to content delivery network provider Akamai. The study, which was conducted by monitoring Akamai's global network of more than 30,000 servers, measured distributed denial-of-service attacks, Web site hacking attempts and DNS hijackings for 139 countries. The United States had the second-highest percentage of attack traffic for the second quarter, at 21.5 percent, while China came in third at 16.8 percent.
Not that top executives don't have even bigger worries. The top hurdle faced by 300 top executives (such as CEOs and CIOs) surveyed by the Society for Information Management is IT-business alignment. Building business skills in IT, IT strategic planning, attracting new IT professionals and making better use of information rounded out the top 5 concerns.
Of course, there's also the little matter of IT spending. The outlook is still pretty grim, with growth expected to be just 4 percent for the year (down from 6 percent last year), but not all signs are bad, according to the latest Goldman Sachs survey of 100 managers with strategic decision-making authority at Fortune 1,000 companies. On the bright side is that spending intentions on network gear is rebounding (for the next 12 months, 54 percent of respondents said they expect their network spending to grow, and that's up from 42 percent the last time they were asked). However, Goldman describes plans for discretionary IT projects as "anemic."
As for the other type of "green," a third of 75 organizations asked by Cutter Consortium if they have a long-term plan/strategy targeted at reducing the environmental footprint of their IT infrastructure said no, 38 percent said yes and 29 percent said they didn't know. Broken down further, 57 percent of European organizations said they had one vs. 37 percent in the United States.
Regardless of the tough economy, companies are having to fork over big salaries to enterprise applications experts due to a shortage of people with SAP skills, according to new research from Foote Partners. The value of some SAP skills rose between 25 percent and 30 percent over the first six months of 2008 and nearly twice that over the past 12 months. "If you're looking for SAP Web Application Server, Production Planning, Business Objects, Quality Management, Strategic Enterprise Management, Product Lifecycle Management, HCM and MDM module and skills experience, you're suddenly paying a lot more," says David Foote, CEO of the research group.
It might not hurt to brush up on your Ethernet skills, too. Business Ethernet services boomed in the United States during the first half of the year, with the number of installed ports rising 16 percent. AT&T led the way with 21 percent of total ports, with Verizon, TW Telecom and Cox in pursuit, according to Vertical Systems Group.
Who knows, maybe all that new Business Ethernet capacity is helping to stave off a massive Internet outage. Despite prognostications that the Internet is about to collapse from the weight of traffic growth—especially video—international Internet traffic grew 53 percent between mid-2007 and mid-2008, down from 61 percent the preceding year, according to a market research firm. For the second consecutive year, total international Internet capacity grew faster than total Internet traffic, leading to lower utilization levels on many Internet backbones, according to market tracker TeleGeography.
Nevertheless, there are at least 5 trillion reasons to stay in telecom: global telecom revenue is estimated to hit about $5 trillion by 2011, according to the latest Telecommunications Industry Association. High-volume business and consumer data applications are driving demand, according to the report.
Yes, Cisco rules enterprise networking, but it also is no pushover in the carrier market. Infonetics' quarterly service provider routers and switches report shows Cisco gained 15 percent in IP edge and core router revenue in the second quarter and now owns more than half the worldwide market. Though it was Fujitsu that made the biggest gain during the quarter, jumping from No. 9 to No. 6 worldwide.
Cisco also talks a good game in software these days, though its muckety-mucks might want to note this: Software-as-a-service has a way to go, according to a survey of 417 IT decision makers at companies with less than 500 employees. The survey by the Technology Practice of Chadwick Martin Bailey found that just 14 percent of those surveyed say they are more likely to subscribe to software-as-a-service than they are to purchase software-as-a-license and manage it internally.
And now, for a few words about ERM. Are you among the 8 percent who have no clue what ERM is? A survey commissioned in part by a company that sells e-mail security and content protection software, and conducted by Gilbane Group and University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, found that the number of people who don't know what enterprise rights management is had fallen from 26 percent in 2005. The vendor promoting this survey pats itself on the back too many times in its news release to earn mention here. (Here's one company's explanation of ERM:)
Don't go looking to your 4th and 8th graders for any explanations of ERM, by the way. Their math and science proficiency "remains unacceptably low," according to AeA, a high-tech trade industry that recently issued a report analyzing the latest math and science scores based on Department of Education figures. Among the ugly numbers: 39 percent of 4th graders and 31 percent of 8th graders tested at or above the proficiency level in math last year, and the number of 4th graders at or above proficiency in science rose only one percentage point between 1996 and 2005.
Here are some numbers that almost anyone can understand, though. Investors are still putting their money into new wireless network companies even though the prospects of big IPO payoffs are not at all obvious. In the latest Rutberg & Co. wireless industry report (for August), the research outfit found $313.2 million in wireless investments vs. $233.9 a year ago, though not a single IPO (not that that's unusual in IT these days). The biggest chunks of that investment went into carrier infrastructure and technologies, though enterprise applications also earned attention. While the IPO market has dried up, the mergers&acqusitions market has not, and there was plenty of action in the wireless market in August, including HP buying Colubris and Nortel snapping up Bluesocket's Pingtel assets. —Guess who's atop the U.S. smartphone market? (It doesn't begin with "A") Research in Motion captured almost 54 percent of the market in the second quarter, according to IDC. That was a big jump—almost 10 percentage points -- from the first quarter, and the gain came at the expense of Apple, maker of the iPhone, and Palm, both of which lost share.
And finally....you'd think we could find a few interesting tidbits in a study about "findability," the art of being able to locate your content. Sure enough, trade group AIIM issued a report this summer (funded by a couple of content management companies) that dished up this fact: Only 10 percent of the 500 business users surveyed said as much as 76 percent to 100 percent of its company's information is searchable online. More than a third of those surveyed said 25 percent or less of the information is searchable online.
In an effort to do something productive with these sometimes insightful, sometimes scary, sometimes silly and frequently self-serving studies, we've boiled down each of about 20 that we've received over the past couple of months into one digestible story. Without further ado and in no particular order:
The average fantasy sports player earns about $38 per hour and based on an average of nearly 1.19 hours per week dealing with their team during work hours, companies lose about $45.22 in wages per worker each week, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas http://www.challengergray.com/, the global outplacement and business coaching consultancy, which came up with its numbers by crunching those from a couple of fantasy sports groups.Perhaps playing fantasy football at work can be included in an Internet users' Bill of Rights. Two-thirds of about 200 people attending the second Internet Governance Forum in Brazil last November agreed with this statement: "A global internet users' Bill of Rights should be adopted." Only 6 percent disagreed. Such a Bill of Rights would include things such as freedom of information, freedom of expression, and the right of people to have affordable access, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. —Not that everyone is going to log on even if they are offered affordable access. Only 44 percent of Kentucky households subscribe to broadband even though most do have access to it, according to Connected Nation, which issued a report that all full-time adult students in Kentucky with broadband at home use the 'Net for educational purposes. So clever.
Well, more clever than a lot of organizations anyway. Just over half of organizations require only passwords for employees to access critical data, according to a survey of 150 companies by Quest Software and the Aberdeen Group. Companies play fast and loose with their password rules, too, according to the survey, with almost half allowing standard dictionary terms and more than two-thirds not specifying password length.
Not that that sort of thing has anything to do with the number of confirmed data breaches reported through mid-August blowing by the number reported for all of last year. According to the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center, last year a total of 446 breaches were reported, and as of Aug. 22 this year 449 got reported. Of course, there are many more breaches than those reported, and the ITRC says it is thankful that at least a few states are starting to make info available through their Attorney General offices.
You could just blame Japan for your network security troubles. Japan proved to be the Godzilla of attack traffic-generation in the second quarter as the country of origin for 30 percent of such traffic worldwide, according to content delivery network provider Akamai. The study, which was conducted by monitoring Akamai's global network of more than 30,000 servers, measured distributed denial-of-service attacks, Web site hacking attempts and DNS hijackings for 139 countries. The United States had the second-highest percentage of attack traffic for the second quarter, at 21.5 percent, while China came in third at 16.8 percent.
Not that top executives don't have even bigger worries. The top hurdle faced by 300 top executives (such as CEOs and CIOs) surveyed by the Society for Information Management is IT-business alignment. Building business skills in IT, IT strategic planning, attracting new IT professionals and making better use of information rounded out the top 5 concerns.
Of course, there's also the little matter of IT spending. The outlook is still pretty grim, with growth expected to be just 4 percent for the year (down from 6 percent last year), but not all signs are bad, according to the latest Goldman Sachs survey of 100 managers with strategic decision-making authority at Fortune 1,000 companies. On the bright side is that spending intentions on network gear is rebounding (for the next 12 months, 54 percent of respondents said they expect their network spending to grow, and that's up from 42 percent the last time they were asked). However, Goldman describes plans for discretionary IT projects as "anemic."
As for the other type of "green," a third of 75 organizations asked by Cutter Consortium if they have a long-term plan/strategy targeted at reducing the environmental footprint of their IT infrastructure said no, 38 percent said yes and 29 percent said they didn't know. Broken down further, 57 percent of European organizations said they had one vs. 37 percent in the United States.
Regardless of the tough economy, companies are having to fork over big salaries to enterprise applications experts due to a shortage of people with SAP skills, according to new research from Foote Partners. The value of some SAP skills rose between 25 percent and 30 percent over the first six months of 2008 and nearly twice that over the past 12 months. "If you're looking for SAP Web Application Server, Production Planning, Business Objects, Quality Management, Strategic Enterprise Management, Product Lifecycle Management, HCM and MDM module and skills experience, you're suddenly paying a lot more," says David Foote, CEO of the research group.
It might not hurt to brush up on your Ethernet skills, too. Business Ethernet services boomed in the United States during the first half of the year, with the number of installed ports rising 16 percent. AT&T led the way with 21 percent of total ports, with Verizon, TW Telecom and Cox in pursuit, according to Vertical Systems Group.
Who knows, maybe all that new Business Ethernet capacity is helping to stave off a massive Internet outage. Despite prognostications that the Internet is about to collapse from the weight of traffic growth—especially video—international Internet traffic grew 53 percent between mid-2007 and mid-2008, down from 61 percent the preceding year, according to a market research firm. For the second consecutive year, total international Internet capacity grew faster than total Internet traffic, leading to lower utilization levels on many Internet backbones, according to market tracker TeleGeography.
Nevertheless, there are at least 5 trillion reasons to stay in telecom: global telecom revenue is estimated to hit about $5 trillion by 2011, according to the latest Telecommunications Industry Association. High-volume business and consumer data applications are driving demand, according to the report.
Yes, Cisco rules enterprise networking, but it also is no pushover in the carrier market. Infonetics' quarterly service provider routers and switches report shows Cisco gained 15 percent in IP edge and core router revenue in the second quarter and now owns more than half the worldwide market. Though it was Fujitsu that made the biggest gain during the quarter, jumping from No. 9 to No. 6 worldwide.
Cisco also talks a good game in software these days, though its muckety-mucks might want to note this: Software-as-a-service has a way to go, according to a survey of 417 IT decision makers at companies with less than 500 employees. The survey by the Technology Practice of Chadwick Martin Bailey found that just 14 percent of those surveyed say they are more likely to subscribe to software-as-a-service than they are to purchase software-as-a-license and manage it internally.
And now, for a few words about ERM. Are you among the 8 percent who have no clue what ERM is? A survey commissioned in part by a company that sells e-mail security and content protection software, and conducted by Gilbane Group and University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, found that the number of people who don't know what enterprise rights management is had fallen from 26 percent in 2005. The vendor promoting this survey pats itself on the back too many times in its news release to earn mention here. (Here's one company's explanation of ERM:)
Don't go looking to your 4th and 8th graders for any explanations of ERM, by the way. Their math and science proficiency "remains unacceptably low," according to AeA, a high-tech trade industry that recently issued a report analyzing the latest math and science scores based on Department of Education figures. Among the ugly numbers: 39 percent of 4th graders and 31 percent of 8th graders tested at or above the proficiency level in math last year, and the number of 4th graders at or above proficiency in science rose only one percentage point between 1996 and 2005.
Here are some numbers that almost anyone can understand, though. Investors are still putting their money into new wireless network companies even though the prospects of big IPO payoffs are not at all obvious. In the latest Rutberg & Co. wireless industry report (for August), the research outfit found $313.2 million in wireless investments vs. $233.9 a year ago, though not a single IPO (not that that's unusual in IT these days). The biggest chunks of that investment went into carrier infrastructure and technologies, though enterprise applications also earned attention. While the IPO market has dried up, the mergers&acqusitions market has not, and there was plenty of action in the wireless market in August, including HP buying Colubris and Nortel snapping up Bluesocket's Pingtel assets. —Guess who's atop the U.S. smartphone market? (It doesn't begin with "A") Research in Motion captured almost 54 percent of the market in the second quarter, according to IDC. That was a big jump—almost 10 percentage points -- from the first quarter, and the gain came at the expense of Apple, maker of the iPhone, and Palm, both of which lost share.
And finally....you'd think we could find a few interesting tidbits in a study about "findability," the art of being able to locate your content. Sure enough, trade group AIIM issued a report this summer (funded by a couple of content management companies) that dished up this fact: Only 10 percent of the 500 business users surveyed said as much as 76 percent to 100 percent of its company's information is searchable online. More than a third of those surveyed said 25 percent or less of the information is searchable online.
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