TaoSecurity Blog

I am hopeful that President Trump will not block release of the remaining classified documents addressing the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I grew up a Roman Catholic in Massachusetts, so President Kennedy always fascinated me. The 1991 Oliver Stone movie JFK fueled several years of hobbyist research into the assassination. (It's unfortunate the movie was so loaded with fictional content!) On the 30th anniversary of JFK's death in 1993, I led a moment of silence from the balcony of the Air Force Academy chow hall during noon meal. While stationed at Goodfellow AFB in Texas, Mrs B and I visited Dealey Plaza in Dallas and the Sixth Floor Museum . Many years later, thanks to a 1992 law partially inspired by the Stone movie, the government has a chance to release the last classified assassination records. As a historian and former member of the intelligence community, I hope all of the documents become public. This would be a small but significant step towa...

Periodically I read about efforts by China, or Russia, or North Korea, or other countries to replace American software with indigenous or semi-indigenous alternatives. I then reply via Twitter that I love the idea, with a short reason why. This post will list the top five reasons why I want China and other likely targets of American foreign intelligence collection to run their own software. 1. Many (most?) non-US software companies write lousy code.  The US is by no means perfect, but our developers and processes generally appear to be superior to foreign indigenous efforts. Cisco vs Huawei is a good example. Cisco has plenty of problems, but it has processes in place to manage them, plus secure code development practices. Lousy indigenous code means it is easier for American intelligence agencies to penetrate foreign targets. (An example of a foreign country that excels in writing code is Israel, but thankfully it is not the same sort of priority target like China, Russia, or ...

Are you surprised to learn that the FBI is officially part of the United States Intelligence Community? Did you know there's actually a list? If you visit the Intelligence Community Web site at www.intelligence.gov , you can learn more about the IC. The member agencies page lists all 17 organizations. The FBI didn't always emphasize an intelligence role. The Directorate of Intelligence appeared in 2005 and was part of the National Security Branch, as described here . Now, as shown on the latest organizational chart , Intelligence is a peer with the National Security Branch. Each has its own Executive Assistant Director. NSB currently houses a division for Counterterrorism, a division for Counterintelligence, and directorate for Weapons of Mass Destruction. You may notice that there is a Cyber Divison within a separate branch for "Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services." If the Bureau continues to stay exceptionally engaged in investigating and countering ...

Daniel Miessler just wrote a post about his attitude toward attribution. I'm not going to comment about it, but I wanted to provide the source of the story he mentioned, along with the specific excerpt. It's from Secrets by Daniel Ellsberg. Kevin Drum posted the same excerpt  in 2010, but I'm going to print it here for my reference. As an intro, Ellsberg was working for RAND, and approached Henry Kissinger at a party in 1968. Ellsberg begins:     "Henry, there's something I would like to tell you, for what it's worth, something I wish I had been told years ago. You've been a consultant for a long time, and you've dealt a great deal with top secret information. But you're about to receive a whole slew of special clearances, maybe fifteen or twenty of them, that are higher than top secret.     "I've had a number of these myself, and I've known other people who have just acquired them, and I have a pretty good sense of what the...