[ISN] Secretive group expands role in cybermonitoring

http://www.examiner.com/article/secretive-group-expands-role-cybermonitoring

By Mark Albertson
Examiner.com
August 21, 2012

Two years ago, this column published what became the first comprehensive 
stories ever written about a then secret group of computer professionals 
who volunteered their time to monitor domestic and international 
cybercrime. The group – Project Vigilant – subsequently received a great 
deal of publicity in the aftermath of those columns. Some of the media 
attention shed additional light on the group, resulting in an avalanche 
of coverage. After several months, the group ceased granting press 
interviews and has remained largely out of the spotlight. Until now.

For the past several weeks, this column was granted unprecedented access 
to the organization, involving multiple, lengthy interviews with key 
members of the group. A great deal of what was discussed was off the 
record and could not be described here. However, information the group 
was willing to allow for publication sheds new light not just on Project 
Vigilant, but how the technology tools they use play an increasingly 
significant role in support of the U.S. government’s efforts to combat 
cybercrime and protect the free flow of information over the Internet 
around the world.

The new picture of Project Vigilant that emerges is of a fiercely 
dedicated group of highly skilled volunteers who specialize in online 
attribution, an increasingly complicated field that is designed to 
breakdown the anonymity of the Internet by identifying its bad actors. 
And they are enormously sensitive to criticism that they are spying on 
U.S. citizens or are secret agents of the U.S. government. “We are not 
the U.S. government,” says Chet Uber, Project Vigilant’s Director. “We 
are not agents of the U.S. government. We do not take orders from the 
U.S. government. We are vigilants, not vigilantes.”

Uber says his group’s role has changed significantly since 2010, through 
a greater focus on a suite of technology tools that, for example, can 
assess whether a specific nation state might launch a malware attack in 
the next week. “We always ask: does this present a threat to national 
security?” Uber explains. “If the answer is yes, we turn the information 
over to the U.S. government.”

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