LINKS: 10 NOV 09

Some items of interest:

• 60 Minutes on cyberwarfare.  Sensationalist.  Based on a comprehensive misunderstanding of the dynamics of warfare driving this.  The $17 billion that is slated to be spent on US "cyber security" will almost certainly be ineffectual.  The consultants in the show are so far behind the powercurve, they aren't even in the game.  They are only a small part of phalanx of contractors now pushing cyber security -- a process akin to the sale of the Maginot line....
• The intrepid reporter Michael Yon is twittering on warfare around world. 
• The first Thuraya war.  How the Thuraya satellite telephone is making desert warfare in the Sudan/Darfur, faster and more dynamic than ever before. "A commander with a handful of Landcruisers and a Thuraya is essentially autonomous at a tactical level. It is possible for commanders who formally belong to different factions to coordinate a joint operation at very short notice. Their superiors can do little about it. And it happens."
• Piercing the veil of anonymity.  Celebs now.  Wealth next.  The gray man defense has gone the way of the dodo.  
• Hacking workshops.  One approach to organic growth in hacking.  
• Another "Robbian" sighting.  LOL.
• O'Reilly.  Three offbeat paradoxes of the Internet Age.  Fragmentation rather than cooperation.  More choice = less choice (due to network dynamics).  More empowerment means a loss of control (the writer assumes empowerment is a myth, it's not, but the loss of control is true).

Comments

[Steve Austin]

I've seen a couple of references in the past few days to "gray man defense" and "gray man approach", but could not immediate locate the intended meaning via search. Someone kindly elucidate, please.

[Richard J. Medicus]

A commander can co-ordinate a tactical strike with a cell phone. He has nothing on the flash crowds. It's only a matter of the right mind set for a flash to turn deadly.

[MKORION]

The Grey Man hasn't gone the way of the Dodo just yet, however the Grey Man requires some modernization. Given the evolution and proliferation of various public intelligence gathering mechanisms, the Grey Man must now employ the same OPSEC and counter-intelligence principles in their every day life in order to stay hidden.

This requires knowledge of systems---for instance, how do marketing agencies gather intelligence?

Cover for Status, C-IMINT (vs space/airborne sensors) C-HUMINT vs informants and public databases are within the scope of the individual, but most persons are unaware of these methodologies and their application. Further, application of these methodologies requires it to become a hobby, so it's really not suited for everyone. If this paradigm becomes dominant, then you'll have the highly surveilled (public) and a social of highly anonymous practitioners.

In order that people remain free in an increasing information dense and unfree State (like the U.S.), people will have to receive education in those subjects formerly reserved for the State.

What this means is that if you're going to be a Grey Man, then you'll have to live like a clandestine intelligence officer would. Two worlds.

The FBI has said they WILL remove anonymity from everyone.(although they are not omnipotent despite their bragging)

"Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State"
-Mussolini

[JR]

There's two definitions. The one I'm using is the idea that if you remain boring/anonymous and hidden in the hierarchy, you can avoid repercussions for your actions.

[Duncan Kinder]

It seems to me that a celebrity seeking anonymity could do so by using the same techniques that money launderers have done to create a Fortress of Solitude.

He need not even be as careful as money launderers need to be - since presumably he is not seeking to conceal these assets from the IRS or the FBI but only from the National Enquirer or snoops on the Internet.

Do not hold assets in your own name; have a series of LLCs and shell corporations own them, funded by numbered bank accounts in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands.

Such security is relative, not absolute - but by using such techniques a second tier goof from Goldman Sachs should be able to purchase a nice house in Palm Beach or a decent yacht without anyone knowing that it is his.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=597307299]

strictly speaking, would a grey man approach even be appropriate if potential target status has aready been identified? For both the wealthy and celebrities, their characteristics are already available - you know *what* you're looking for, and attempting grey man seems akin to ostrich defense.

On the other hand, it can still work remarkably well if you are the offensive against an existing system.

[abprosper]

The problem of being a Gray man in todays world is it only takes one leak to destroy anonymity, one renegade employee at almost any level, one loose lip , a cellphone or one hacked database. If one "Gray Man's" kid pots a wrong phrase in the wrong place at the wrong time his her cover is blown for good.

Its hard to be a social animal like that or to enjoy ones ill gotten gains while living in fear

As for the F.B.I. they might manage to snoop everywhere.

It won't help as they will have a heck of time with the signal to noise ratio. And as people feel threatened the amount of noise will increase drastically.

You can force decryption all you like and watch all you like if all the chatter is "please pick up some milk at Fresh and Easy on the way home" and that means exactly what it says --

how much time and energy are you going to waste figuring out that "milk" means milk Fresh and Easy is in fact a grocer and on the way home is just that

Worse the same technology can take away their veil. It takes only one clever bad guy to make an "everything everyone cares about and where to find it list"

The next big war won't be "Wolverines Militia vs. the Feds" at least at first it will be a lot more like Rwanda than the American Revolution, tribal warfare and indirect attacks on peoples social networks.

I think and I am not sure the current system can be salvaged by the application of redistribution on a large scale, via social credit or a citizens wage but I well may wrong and in such a case we are doomed to a Robian future, a new Dark Age

[dagezhu]

'There's two definitions. The one I'm using is the idea that if you remain boring/anonymous and hidden in the hierarchy, you can avoid repercussions for your actions.'

The other defintion has 103 episodes.

http://www.animeseason.com/dgray-man/

'Do not hold assets in your own name; have a series of LLCs and shell corporations own them, funded by numbered bank accounts in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands.'

For some applications, numbered bank accounts are highly noticeable, but presumably celebrity-watchers and burglars aren't savvy enough to investigate the Cayman Islands.

'The next big war won't be "Wolverines Militia vs. the Feds" at least at first it will be a lot more like Rwanda than the American Revolution, tribal warfare and indirect attacks on peoples social networks.
... in such a case we are doomed to a Robian future, a new Dark Age'

A Robbian future isn't necessarily a Dark Age. Just because housewives are familiar with shooting crossbows from their dining room windows doesn't mean it's a Dark Age.

It does mean, however, that the next time the Greek cops go hunting for Vassilis Paleokostas And Alket Rizai, Vassilis will swing out on a vine, Douglas Fairbanks style, and say, "Welcome to Sherwood! I am a Robbian hood! In fact, all of us here are more-or-less Robbian."

[Steve Austin]

Thanks for clarifying. Would still like to hear about the origin/etymology of grey man, but I'm aware of the concept of - hidden in plain view. I can't accept that the grey man defense is dead, only that most people are not good at it. People who want to be anonymous pay for it, take care, and we're not able to include them in any statistics for successful grey man approaches. ;-)

[Duncan Kinder]

"For some applications, numbered bank accounts are highly noticeable, but presumably celebrity-watchers and burglars aren't savvy enough to investigate the Cayman Islands."

Explain.

I am presuming that all know your customer regulations are being complied with; that the IRS knows or can readily ascertain what you are doing; and that one is seeking secrecy only from other private parties.

Furthermore it would be possible for, say, the Russian mafiya or Chinese hackers, to track down your assets; but such tracking would be difficult and that you would not be sufficiently interesting to them to justify such effort.

I might further add that concealing one's assets for various reasons is very well known. Trust departments of banks and accounting firms and such provide these services. If you should win the lottery, you would definitely want to look into this sort of thing.

[abprosper]

One issue with the hidden bank issue is that I can guarantee that starving governments will come after those resources, one way or another. They have already wrangled Switzerland into line, I suspect the Caymans are next.

It is certainly possible to live a low profile off the grid life but that functionally puts you no better than anyone else unless just having (but spending) the money is the goal.

The government hasn't yet figured out how a lot of these technologies interact with each other but sooner or later even those slow-coaches will figure out technological convergence and they will use it to extract every last dollar (Yen, Pound, Euro whatever) they can.

They have to. The government like any entity wants to survive.

In a GG world thats not a given but as long as they can keep the money flowing they can hold off decay