thebitterguy

The American Federal Bureau of Investigation has an online Reading Room where you can look on some old files (I suppose to cut down on Freedom of Information Act requests).

Among the options are "Unusual Phenomena", Violent Crime, Famous People (come on, you wanna see Talulah Bankhead's file!), and the Gangster Era.

Interesting stuff; I haven't had a chance to go too deep (I'd need a definite purpose for going into Malcolm X's 4000 pages of files) but it looks neat.

There's also info n major information systems (like the NICS, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System).

Qusay will agree with me that bradhicks is an interesting read, but sometimes I just go "gah?" Like the past few days. He’s been doing a three part series about Script Kiddie Botnets and Gangster Supercomputers. Now, I’m no expert in the technology, but reading it just comes across as a wee bit hysterical.

He makes it seem as if every PC in the world is a zombie drone that will be turned upon its owner at any second, spilling his (OR HER!) credit and password information to an international conglomerate of cyber-thieves. And there’s NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO PROTECT YOURSELF.

I’m normally one to listen up when someone is offering a warning. But the sheer fear mongering aspect of this reminds me of the “child abduction hysteria” you get when you log into the website for a missing children’s charity. XX THOUSAND CHILDREN GO MISSING EVERY YEAR! and then you do some poking and find out the vast, vast majority of them are either parental abductions or runaways.

So, does anyone have any more level headed pieces on spam bots and related topics?