Quote for the day

Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.

   John F. Kennedy

Active counter-intelligence

Bill Gertz writes in today's Washington times that the U.S. targets spy services abroad. All I can say is "Sheesh — it's about time!" From the article:

The new mission for counterintelligence is to identify foreign spies and terrorist threats, and then develop "a counterintelligence doctrine of attacking foreign intelligence services systematically via strategic counterintelligence operations," Miss Van Cleave said.

The offensive counterintelligence strategy is part of the Bush administration's policy of pre-empting strategic threats. It is also part of President Bush's announced plan to promote democracy and freedom and undermine global tyranny, she said.

In the past, counterintelligence often was limited to "catching spies." Previously captured spies, including CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, a Russian mole in the FBI, "caused stunning losses," Miss Van Cleave said.

In the battle against terrorists, new counterintelligence activities will target the intelligence services of state sponsors of terrorism, such as Syria and Iran.

"The intelligence services of state sponsors may represent the key links in the global terrorist-support network," Miss Van Cleave said. "Terrorist groups perform traditional intelligence activities in the way they gather information, recruit sources and use assets."

Under the new strategy, U.S. intelligence agencies will more aggressively work to disrupt terrorist operations by targeting their intelligence links.

The strategy was approved March 1 by the president, and formal guidance to the CIA, FBI and other security agencies involved in counterintelligence work will be issued in the next several weeks, a U.S. intelligence official said. A formal report on the strategy also will be made public and sent to Congress, perhaps as early as this month.

Google hacking

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for finding this. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's article 'Good guys' show just how easy it is... does exactly what the title says. And it is scary to think how some careless people who happen to be in possession of some of your personal information could do this to you. From the article:

It turns out that the powerful search engine, in the hands of a knowledgeable cybertrekker, can ferret out all kinds of sensitive information never meant to be made public. All it takes are sophisticated search terms. The terms go beyond specifying key words to include file types. The right terms can even find information deleted from corporate or government Web sites but temporarily cached in Google's massive warehouse of data.

Kirk Bailey, the city of Seattle's chief information-security officer, calls his Agora compatriots "the primary defenders of the virtual world in the Northwest." Before launching eight teams of hackers from companies such as Intel Corp. and computer-security consultants IOActive, Bailey declared that "our mission is to find answers on how to fix these problems."

This sends chills down my spine...because I use Google everyday in my work, using just such "sophisticated" search terms, and I know darned well how powerful it is. After reading this, I immediately set out to look for any personal information on myself...and found some! Yikes! I fired off three emails to try to get that taken care of...