March 21, 2023

March 21, 2023

A very sad day. Kelly was a wonderful person who was always good to talk to. We met over a decade ago at Ekoparty, we had a great time. Over the years we spoke many times. I will miss her.

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This is a very interesting development. Detecting authorship is a very interesting problem.

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Banning software that is a necessary part of every modern intelligence agency’s toolkit will produce either outlaw agencies or ineffective ones. Neither is desirable.

This story is being framed as the result of “mercenary spyware,” which I believe is a huge mistake. A lawful government agency conducted (what appears to be)1 unethical surveillance. Framing this as a problem of the tools available to spy agencies is actually beneficial to the bad actors here. “Honest guv’, I’m innocent, it was the spyware what made me do it.”

Spy agencies have agency. They aren’t lured into spying by the devious come-hither looks of some software. The decision to conduct an operation targeting this person was made at the agency; and it was either lawful or it was not.

  1. If it was a lawful operation, then the problem is with the law that allows this to happen without sufficient oversight to prevent it.

  2. If it was an unlawful operation, then the problem is with the agency that allows this to happen without sufficient oversight to prevent it.

In either case the problem to be addressed is the system that enabled this to happen, and that system is not the software.

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Wonderful OPSEC on display here. James Craig arrested for poisoning his wife. He searched for “undetectable poison,” though to make sure it was secret he used a work computer. After hours. In the dark. While being watched by an office manager. Then:

James Craig texted that office manager to say he would soon receive a personal package in the mail and she should not open it, according to the affidavit. That package arrived on March 13 and had been opened by another employee. When the office manager looked inside, she saw “a biohazard sticker and what said ‘potassium cyanide’ on a circular canister,” the document reads. She sealed it back up and gave it to James Craig.

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