Howard Schmidt, the new cybersecurity czar for the Obama administration, has a short answer for the drumbeat of rhetoric claiming the United States is caught up in a cyberwar that it is losing.

“There is no cyberwar,” Schmidt told Wired.com in a sit-down interview Wednesday at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco.

“I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept,” Schmidt said. “There are no winners in that environment.”

Instead, Schmidt said the government needs to focus its cybersecurity efforts to fight online crime and espionage.

His stance contradicts Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence who made headlines last week when he testified to Congress that the country was already in the midst of a cyberwar — and was losing it.

Threat Level: White House Cyber Czar: ‘There Is No Cyberwar’

See also:

Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet

Cyber warfare: don’t inflate it, don’t underestimate it

Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative

The evidence presented here powerfully refutes the widespread popular belief that America’s Hispanics have high crime rates. Instead, their criminality seems to fall near the center of the white national distribution, being somewhat higher than white New Englanders but somewhat lower than white Southerners. Taken as a whole, the mass of statistical evidence constitutes strong support for the “null hypothesis,” namely that Hispanics have approximately the same crime rates as whites of the same age.

We must bear in mind that most Hispanics are still of very recent immigrant origins and thus are considerably poorer than the average American. There actually does exist a connection between poverty and crime, even if liberals make such a claim, and since today’s Hispanic population has roughly the same crime rate as far more affluent whites, there is every reason to expect that this crime rate will drop further as Hispanics continue to move up the economic ladder. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Douglas Besharov pointed out in an important but insufficiently noticed October 2007 New York Times column, the last decade or two have seen an extremely rapid economic advance for most of America’s Hispanic population. 10 This rise may be connected with the simultaneous and unexpectedly rapid drop in urban crime rates throughout the country.

Read More – American Conservative: His-Panic

Via Radley Balko who notes:

For a magazine co-founded by anti-immigration paleocons Pat Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos, the story risks alienating a hell of a lot of the magazine’s readers.

See also Balko’s article “The El Paso Miracle.”

Applecart-bothering Pentagon boffinry bureau DARPA is at it again. This time, the military scientists want to establish a “Cyber Genome” project which will allow any digital artifact – a document, a piece of malware – to be probed to its very origins. [...]

Or in other words, any code you write, perhaps even any document you create, might one day be traceable back to you – just as your DNA could be if found at a crime scene, and just as it used to be possible to identify radio operators even on encrypted channels by the distinctive “fist” with which they operated their Morse keys. Or something like that, anyway.

The Register: ‘Cyber Genome Project’ kicked off by DARPA

(via William Gibson)

Hard to see this working out well.

For most people over most of man’s time, however, history is more like a mob movie than a courtroom drama: The Vikings burn the village, the Huns or Mongols ride through with swords, child soldiers arrive in pickup trucks. Violence is the only argument. That is history, too chaotic and reactive for any organized telling.

The mayhem Menn portrays is not that stark, but it seems closer to that than to a world of rules and order. Cybergangs rise and fall in varying degrees of anonymity and alliances with Russian, Chinese and other governments that are more ad hoc than understood. Norms of behavior among individuals and governments are a moving target. Crimes are not solved as much as controlled, through informal alliances of small agencies within and outside the state, or when there is publicity of the crimes that embarrasses higher ups in government. It is crime and crime fighting within a massive, illicit social network, fueled on greed, speed and reputation.

Forbes: The Web’s Return To Chaos

(via Bruce Sterling)

This sounds partially right, except that it overlooks the amount of thuggish violence governments have continued to be involved in – wars, strikes, proxy wars, assassinations, etc. If we’re moving into a world of cyberwarfare instead of physical warfare: great. I’d rather people get their “identities stolen” than end up dead. I’d like to think that’s happening, rather than a mere expansion of aggression. Whatever the case, there’s never been a time when governments didn’t act like gangs.

“She’s a criminal genius,” says Jon Campbell, the South Carolina police detective who eventually exposed her trail of deceit. “She was manipulative, controlling, brilliant. We didn’t know what to make of her.” With so many unanswered questions, authorities treated Esther Reed’s disappearance as an all-out emergency, suspecting her not only of fraud but of murder and international espionage. The tabloids had a field day with this brazen girl who had conned her way into the Ivy League; front-page headlines worried over her whereabouts and wondered what dangerous secrets she might be keeping.

No one guessed the truth, which was simpler, and therefore stranger, than their wildest theories: that the scared young woman so hotly pursued by South Carolina police, the Secret Service, federal marshals and even the U.S. Army was actually on a bizarre and misguided journey of self-discovery. A 28-year-old high school dropout from Montana, Esther Reed just wanted to stop being Esther Reed and to embark on a new, better life of her own design. She was pursuing the American Dream, with a twist: Rather than forge a new identity from scratch, she would steal someone else’s and remake it to suit her own needs. Reed never imagined that her ill-conceived self-help program would land her on America’s Most Wanted and brand her as a threat to national security — or that for one brokenhearted family in South Carolina, the fulfillment of her hopes and dreams would mean the end of their own.

Rolling Stone: The Girl Who Conned The Ivy League

(via mthing)

A prisoner who updated his Facebook profile while on the run from an open prison in Suffolk has been captured.

Suffolk Police said burglar Craig Lynch, 28, who absconded from Hollesley Bay Prison on 23 September, was arrested in Kent on Tuesday night.

He has been charged with escaping from lawful custody and was remanded in custody at Bexleyheath magistrates.

BBC: Facebook fugitive back in custody

Previously: Escaped prisoner taunts police on Facebook

Georgia State University Criminal Justice experts Timothy Brezina, Volkan Topalli and economist Erdal Tekin, have released a unique study that indicates that although young criminals are aware of the risks of violent injury, death or punishment, the possibility of a shorter life span encourages them to focus more on the “here and now.”

“It turns out that if you boil it all down the more you think you are going to die young the more likely it is that you are going to engage in criminality and violence,” Topalli said. “This is the opposite of what most people think, because most people think that if you think you’re going to die soon you become depressed and you wouldn’t commit crimes.”

The research “Might not be a Tomorrow,” is among the first Criminal Justice studies to simultaneously include one-on-one offender interviews with an econometric analysis of nation-wide adolescent data to provide a better understanding of why young people tend to pursue high-risk behaviors associated with immediate rewards, which include crime and violence.

Science Daily: Might Not Be a Tomorrow: Youth Anticipate Early Death

“Most people think that if you think you’re going to die soon you become depressed and you wouldn’t commit crimes.”

What? Does anyone actually believe that? How are these results the least bit surprising?

More than a thousand African workers were put aboard buses and trains in the southern Italian region of Calabria over the weekend and shipped out to immigrant detention centers, following some of the country’s worst riots in years.

The clashes began Thursday night in Rosarno, a working-class city amid citrus groves in Calabria, the toe of Italy’s boot, after a legal immigrant from Togo was lightly wounded in a pellet-gun attack in a nearby city. It is not clear who pulled the trigger — the authorities said they were investigating whether organized crime had provoked the riots — but the consequences were severe.

Blaming racism for the attack, dozens of immigrants burned cars and smashed shop windows in Rosarno in two days of riots, throwing rocks at local residents and fighting with the police. More than 50 immigrants and police officers were wounded, none seriously, and 10 immigrants and locals were arrested before the authorities began sending the immigrants to detention centers elsewhere in southern Italy on Saturday.

New York Times: Race Riots Grip Italian Town, and Mafia Is Suspected

(via Cryptogon)

In April 2008, after being sent to a juvenile detention centre, he complained that the beds were too short for his lanky frame and went on the run.

Police believe he fled to Canada and then, a few weeks ago, came back across the border to Idaho where he stole a Cessna 182 and flew to Seattle. He crash-landed in a forest clearing and walked away with cuts and bruises.

Since then he has been accused of stealing other planes for hops around the islands in the Puget Sound, including another Cessna belonging to a disc jockey who vented his frustration on radio, saying: “He still doesn’t know how to land a plane in one piece.”

He evaded a police pursuit by crashing a Mercedes-Benz into a roadside gas storage tank, using the explosion as a diversion to escape back into the woods where, he says, he feels like a Native American.

Times: Colton Harris-Moore, the barefoot boy bandit, outfoxes sheriffs

(via Chris Stumph)

The global recession isn’t just making jobs scarce and tightening spending — it’s also turning more people into thieves. According to an annual survey released on Tuesday, incidents of shoplifting rose nearly 6% over the past year, representing nearly $115 billion in losses for businesses. One of the more surprising findings: a growing number of new shoplifters are outwardly reputable, middle-class people who are walking off with French cheeses, quality meats, cosmetics, mobile phones, clothing and other goodies that they feel they need to maintain a quality of life they can no longer afford. [...]

Though Bamfield says theft by organized criminals for the purpose of resale remains the biggest segment of shoplifting, there’s been a noticeable increase in the number of middle-class people stuffing their pockets — people who are not “stealing necessities to keep themselves and their families alive,” he adds. Worse still, more than a few of these individuals regard this kind of stealing in the economic crisis as fully justified, as the researchers discovered through interviews with shoplifters and police.

“Though most thieves rationalize their acts, the current situation has many people feeling the entire system is broken, that politicians are too corrupt or inept to fix it, and that there’s nothing wrong with stealing from these big companies and fancy stores that — the thinking goes — are themselves making out like thieves,” Bamfield explains. “There’s a real perception among many new shoplifters that if you work hard, put money away and play the game, you’re asking for someone to come along and rip you off.”

Time: Recession Sparks Global Shoplifting Spree

(via Global Guerrillas)

This should come as no surprise. Brandishing a gun is a good way to get yourself shot.

Results. After adjustment, individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 (P < .05) times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Among gun assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, this adjusted odds ratio increased to 5.45 (P < .05).

Conclusions. On average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. Although successful defensive gun uses occur each year, the probability of success may be low for civilian gun users in urban areas. Such users should reconsider their possession of guns or, at least, understand that regular possession necessitates careful safety countermeasures.

American Public Health Association:
Investigating the Link Between Gun Possession and Gun Assault

(via Disinfo)

The Laramie Project 10 Years Later is an expanded version of the stage play about the murder of Matthew Shepard, and includes an epilogue based on interviews with one of Shepard’s killers, Aaron McKinney.

Pierotti logged more than 10 hours of interviews with McKinney, but failed to get the killer to express any remorse.

“As far as Matt is concerned, I don’t have any remorse,” McKinney is quoted as saying in the script.

When pressed again on the question of regret, McKinney said he was sorry for Shepard’s family and that his life had taken such a bad turn.

“Yeah, I got remorse. But probably not the way people want me to,” McKinney said. “I got remorse that I didn’t live the way my dad taught me to live.”

CBC: Laramie Project adds killer’s words as epilogue

I don’t think that hate crimes should be punished any more or less harshly than other murders. But this should put an end to the discussion over whether Shepard’s murder was a hate crime.

(Thanks Josh)

Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases.

The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.

“You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”

New York Times: DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show

(via Disinfo)

Compiled below, in hopes that it may be of some assistance to Eric Holder, John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, active citizens, foreign courts, the International Criminal Court, law firms preparing civil suits, and local or state prosecutors with decency and nerve is a list of 50 top living U.S. war criminals. These are men and women who helped to launch wars of aggression or who have been complicit in lesser war crimes. These are not the lowest-ranking employees or troops who managed to stray from official criminal policies. These are the makers of those policies.

The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have seen the United States target civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, use antipersonnel weapons including cluster bombs in densely settled urban areas, use white phosphorous as a weapon, use depleted uranium weapons, employ a new version of napalm found in Mark 77 firebombs, engage in collective punishment of Iraqi civilian populations — including by blocking roads, cutting electricity and water, destroying fuel stations, planting bombs in farm fields, demolishing houses, and plowing down orchards — detain people without charge or legal process without the rights of prisoners of war, imprison children, torture, and murder.

The Fifty Top U.S. War Criminals Who Need To Be Prosecuted

Goes on to list the names and probable whereabouts for 50 war criminals.

(via Cryptogon)

An innovative national program to help fight crime in American cities and towns will be unveiled Monday, July 13th at the NAACP Centennial Convention in New York City.

The initiative includes a bold new online effort, the NAACP Rapid Report System (RRS), a quick, effective way for citizens to report instances of police misconduct, and to help public safety officials move beyond the “tough on crime” policies that have lost their effectiveness.

The Rapid Report System will be available starting July 6, through the NAACP website (www.naacp.org). The user-friendly online RRS form will allow residents to send instant texts, emails, or video reports of police abuse to the association via cell phone.

NAACP: NAACP Harnesses Cell Phone Power to Launch New High Tech “Rapid Report System” to Help Citizens Report Police Misconduct — Part of Sweeping New Civil Rights Initiative on Crime and Safety

Jackson et al. very clearly made some serious mistakes in how they ran (or didn’t run) their business. But compare the history of PayPal with that of E-Gold. Did E-Gold deserve to fall so hard?

Timberlake, the economics professor, is convinced that Jackson’s radical dream, his goal of upsetting the economic status quo and overturning the government’s monopoly on money, is what really got E-Gold targeted.

“No matter how innocent a person is you can always find a law that government agents can use to convict him of something,” Timberlake says, “And this is a perfect example of it. Any time anybody tries to produce money, the federal government is going to be on their tail.”

Threat Level: Bullion and Bandits

Meanwhile: Head of Asheville Liberty Dollar operation arrested.

Wendy McElroy notes “The Dollars do not resemble fed-issued coins except for in being round and flat;moreover the website made it very clear that the Dollars were a means of exchange among like-minded individuals who rejected Federal Reserve Notes as monopoly money” and suggests that the indictment is worded in such a way that the government could conceivably be planning on seizing all Liberty Dollars in circulation: “They seem to be giving themselves the legal muscle to steal caches of precious metal from individuals/businesses.”

See The New Currency War for more background.

Good conversation on today’s Democracy Now:

FREDERICK CLARKSON: Well, yeah. There’s been a big controversy about whether any of the anti-abortion groups should be called domestic terror organizations. There is one called the Army of God that’s an above-ground organization of largely veterans of anti-abortion violence or proponents of anti-abortion violence. And the Justice Department has decided that it’s not a terrorist organization, even though it publicly espouses crimes that could be called terrorism by any reasonable definition and has many convicted felons. [...]

CHIP BERLET: Well, I think in the current context of the PATRIOT Act and other repressive legislation, we have to be very careful about the use of the term “terrorism.” Arguably, if you look at the Federal Criminal Code, many active anti-abortion violence would not be classified as terrorism in some interpretations. I don’t think the issue here is urging the government to expand its repressive powers. I think that’s a mistake. I think what we have here are groups of criminals and criminal individuals who need to be pursued and prosecuted, as appropriate.

And I think it’s important to understand that, for many years, clinic violence was not treated with the same aggressive attention by the federal government and state governments as other forms of vandalism and violence. And I think that that’s because the anti-abortion movement has a very large political and religious constituency that makes it very difficult for state and federal officials to try and actually enforce the existing laws that they should be doing. [...]

Democracy Now: Tiller Killing Spurs Renewed Calls for US to Reverse Longstanding Passivity on Anti-Abortion Extremists

See also: My partner’s experience as a patient of Tiller’s.

You don’t need me to fill you in on the details of the murder of George Tiller in Kansas. [...]

He’ll be charged with murder, but there’s no mention yet of any sort of terror charges. The FBI and others have been eager to use anti-terror provisions of the PATRIOT Act to go after ALF and ELF activists, some of whom have done nothing more than organize protests or post information to the web. Many of them have destroyed property, but no one has done any killing, or even wounded someone other than themselves.

Alternet quotes the National Abortion Federation for these statistics here:

“Not surprisingly, his killer is strongly suspected to be affiliated with the ‘pro-life’ movement. If that’s the case, it makes Tiller the 10th person in the United States to be murdered by anti-choice terrorists.”

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Since 1977, there have been at least 17 attempted murders, 383 death threats, 153 incidents of assault or battery and three kidnappings committed against abortion providers in North America. Tiller himself survived an assassination attempt in 1993.

Compare the anti-abortion movement’s record on violence with the environmental and animal rights movements, and see who you think should more properly be charged with terrorism.

Dynomia: Domestic Terror

The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.

During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.

Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said.

The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry’s research department expects to continue for some time.

NRC: Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals

(via Cryptogon)

Questions:

1. If certain politicians and pundits are to believed, The Netherlands has been experiencing a crime epidemic as the result of rampant immigration. Could it be that this was only xenophobic scare mongering?

2. What would happen in the US if prison populations were to decline? Also, since the US has been experiencing overall reductions in crime over time as well, why is our prison population not decreasing? What is the key difference between the US and the the Netherlands in this regard?

Update: I forgot to give link back to Cryptogon early. Many apologies.

I was recently going through my books when I found a signed copy of “Eros, Magic, and The Murder of Professor Culianu” by Ted Anton that was given to me by a friend. For those unfamiliar, Ioan P. Culianu (or Couliano) was a professor of divinity at The University of Chicago. He also taught Romanian history. His most famous work was “Eros and Magic in The Renaissance” which was a study on how magic in the Renaissance was “a scientifically plausible attempt to manipulate individuals and groups based on a knowledge of motivations, particularly erotic motivations. In addition, the magician relied on a profound knowledge of the art of memory to manipulate the imagination of his subjects. In these respects, Culiano suggests, magic is the precursor of the modern psychological and sociological sciences, and the magician is the distant ancestor of the of the psychoanalyst and the advertising and publicity agent.”

Besides being a scholar of ancient magic and the occult (he worked frequently with Mircea Eliade and many other notable minds), he was an outspoken activist against the government of Romania. Born and raised there, Culianu later defected to Italy and eventually put down roots in Chicago. After Ceausescu was ousted, Culianu was forthright in insisting the new government staged a coup, and that the Romanian people were duped into believing they were headed toward democracy when in reality they were not. Of the previous government he said ”Why did we accept so much suffering without saying anything? Why did we permit ourselves to be robbed more than other people in the world…? This stain is more difficult to remove than that of original sin.” In a piece he wrote for an Italian news magazine called Panorama, he noted Romania’s history with dictators and aptly titled the article “The King is Dead. Watch Out for an Heir.” In this article he states that “all events that happen in our poor country are the repetition of some archetypes embedded in our religious history”, and that “Umberto Eco says that everything depends on what use one makes of symbols. The case of Romania shows that he is right. No sooner had the people forced the bloody dictator to leave the presidential palace than the government that was formed took the name National Salvation Front. They couldn’t have chosen a less fortunate label: the name calls to mind the fascist National Renascence Front, which was the sole party created by King Carol II in 1938 after he dissolved parliament and proclaimed himself dictator”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Contrary to the often cited statistic that one out of five minors is sexually solicited online, a controversial report released this week indicates that cyberbullies are a more prevalent problem than predators on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and that in the case of predators, “the image presented by the media of an older male deceiving and preying on a young child does not paint an accurate picture of the nature of the majority of sexual solicitations.”

About half of minors who report receiving sexual solicitations online say the advances come from other minors, the report says.

Where sexual interactions do occur between adults and minors online, they rarely progress to physical encounters offline and, when they do, they usually involve post-pubescent minors between the ages of 14 and 17, who are aware before the encounter that the person they are planning to meet is an adult.

The researchers found that the minors who are most at risk of encountering inappropriate content and encounters online often engage in risky behaviors or come from environments that make them more susceptible to risks, such as environments where there is little adult supervision or where there is drug abuse or physical and mental abuse.

“Those who are most at risk often engage in risky behaviors and have difficulties in other parts of their lives. The psychosocial makeup of and family dynamics surrounding particular minors are better predictors of risk than the use of specific media or technologies,” the report says.

The report also says that although cyberbullying is a greater problem than predators, there is no evidence that bullying has increased because of social networking sites and that bullying still occurs more often offline than online, although social networking sites have created another avenue for expressing it.

Full Story: Threat Level

This spring, Webb (D-Va.) plans to introduce legislation on a long-standing passion of his: reforming the U.S. prison system. Jails teem with young black men who later struggle to rejoin society, he says. Drug addicts and the mentally ill take up cells that would be better used for violent criminals. And politicians have failed to address this costly problem for fear of being labeled “soft on crime.”

It is a gamble for Webb, a fiery and cerebral Democrat from a staunchly law-and-order state. Virginia abolished parole in 1995, and it trails only Texas in the number of people it has executed. Moreover, as the country struggles with two wars overseas and an ailing economy, overflowing prisons are the last thing on many lawmakers’ minds.

But Webb has never been one to rely on polls or political indicators to guide his way. He seems instead to charge ahead on projects that he has decided are worthy of his time, regardless of how they play – or even whether they represent the priorities of the state he represents.

Full Story: TruthOut

(via The Agitator)

Police departments across the country say that shoplifting arrests are 10 percent to 20 percent higher this year than last. The problem is probably even greater than arrest records indicate since shoplifters are often banned from stores rather than arrested.

Much of the increase has come from first-time offenders like Mr. Johnson making rash decisions in a pinch, the authorities say. But the ease with which stolen goods can be sold on the Internet has meant a bigger role for organized crime rings, which also engage in receipt fraud, fake price tagging and gift card schemes, the police and security experts say.

Full Story: New York Times

(via Cryptogon)

Copper thieves, sometimes acting as “organized groups,” are threatening what the FBI said is “critical” U.S. infrastructure, from electrical sub-stations, cellular towers, telephone land lines to railroads and crops, the agency said in an unclassified report unveiled Wednesday.

The report, Copper Thefts Threaten US Critical Infrastructure, said bandits are taking advantage of unprecedented high prices for copper, an almost 500 percent increase since 2001 as measured earlier this year.

Copper Thieves Threaten U.S. Infrastructure, FBI says | Threat Level from Wired.com.

Last week, Danish Computerworld awarded IT Factory, a provider of CRM, HRM and Business Intelligence add-on solutions based on a SaaS delivery model, with the prestigious “Denmark’s Best IT-company 2008?. This week, the company has been declared bankrupt and its managing director Stein Bagger went missing in Dubai while under scrutiny by the police.

The remarkable story is all over the Danish press but has remained largely unnoticed outside of the country so far.

Stein Bagger apparently got his hands really dirty: he’s wanted by the Danish police for financial fraud and a possible link to an assault on a business man (reportedly executed by members of the Hell’s Angels, a group he was connected to somehow), although charges haven’t been pressed so far. Nobody has seen Bagger since last Thursday, when he disappeared somewhere in Dubai, where he was attending a business conference in the company of his wife and child (his wife is also the one who reported his disappearance).

The Extraordinary Rise And Fall Of Denmark’s IT Factory