I actually really liked this project. At first I thought it was going to be a lot harder than it was, especially with all the frantic posts I was reading on the discussion board. But besides waiting for the emails back from Dr. Means, I think the hardest part was finding an article "about businesses that have used or should have used secure email or other security measures to protect data." Especially since many of the articles are from several years ago. The article I found (linked below) is about the FBI's private information being leaked, and how a man used encrypted emails to leak this information.
Article: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2001/tc20010829_039.htm
The aforementioned article, titled Digital Trail Leads to Accused Spy, is about Brian P. Regan giving out information that included pictures from the FBI's private informations to another country. The country, which was referred to as 'Country A' in the files, was identified as Libya by a Washington Post report. Regan was using a free email account through which he sent encrypted emails that were supposed to be unreadable by the US government. Naturally, the FBI was able to decrypt the messages and discovered that Regan had sent "a set of overhead satellite photos, as well as a CIA intelligence report, two pages from a classified CIA newsletter, and other documents" (Poulson, 1). The article then goes on to explain that Regan was accused of passing this private information through Intelink, which is "a classified global intranet that links the thirteen U.S. intelligence agencies to each other, and to their 'customers' in the White House, Congress, the Pentagon and other government agencies," according to the article. Since Intelink is only supposed allowed to be used by certain people, there was concern for the information that was available. People feared that there might be information available that others shouldn't know, which almost resulted in Intelink's shut down. Fortunately, those in charge were able to tweak people's access to Intelink, so that you would need a certain digital certificate, or have to be cleared in order to access certain things. Albeit the potential troubles that could be caused by having access to Intelink, as was seen in the case with Regan, the system is also what allowed FBI agents to investigate his case and to eventually catch him in the act.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
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