October 2000 - cypherpunks-legacy

ip: "Bush is a mixed bag. But I think Al Gore is the devil."
by VMontgo32＠aol.com 26 Oct '00

26 Oct '00

Ironic Processing By Virginia Postrel http://www.reason.com/0011/co.vp.ironic.html When I give a speech about the big-picture political and cultural ideas in my book <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0684862697/reasonmagazineA/">The Future and Its Enemies</A>, the question and answer period almost always starts with a down-to-earth query: "What do you think of George W. Bush and Al Gore?" "Well," I say, "Bush is a mixed bag. But I think Al Gore is the devil." This line always gets a laugh, but itâ*s not really a joke. Donâ*t get me wrong: Unlike some Clinton haters, who have the same opinion of his boss, I donâ*t mean Gore is literally the Prince of Darkness. I simply mean that he operates according to core principles that work to erode the freedoms of individuals and the progress of the open society. This is true whether you examine the "real Gore"â*the intellectual wannabe who seems like heâ*d rather have my job than Bill Clintonâ*sâ*or the political Gore, who speaks in poll-tested phrases. Both versions share the patronizing world view perfectly expressed in the vice presidentâ*s tendency to address his audiences as though they were dim second-graders. Both want to tell everyone else how to live, to subordinate our diverse, individualized purposes to their own goals. Back before his populist peroration at the Democratic National Convention, the intellectual Gore gave a remarkable interview to Nicholas Lemann of The New Yorker. Lemann was smart enough not to ask routine, soundbite-inducing questions. Instead, he asked Gore about his favorite ideas, and he ran long quotations from their conversations. Goreâ*s responses elicited scorn, derision, and dismay in Washingtonâ*s political-intellectual circles. He was way, way, way too interested in obscure notions about complexity and fractals. He drew strange diagrams. He talked a lot about metaphor. He dropped names of philosophers and physicists. Gore sounded like a New Age version of Newt Gingrich. The pundits were so flabbergasted by his strangeness that they paid little attention to the content of what he said. But Lemannâ*s article revealed more than Goreâ*s interest in odd ideas; it gave readers a peek at his political philosophy. And the substance of Goreâ*s world view is troubling. Gore believes society needs to take ideas from science and apply them to politics and economics, and heâ*s frustrated that scientific ideas are too unfamiliar to the general publicâ*and his political colleaguesâ*to be used that way. He wants to replace the old metaphors of a clockwork universe and machine-age government with something more up-to-date. His favorite metaphor is "distributed intelligence." That sounds promising. The insight that knowledge is scattered through society, and that itâ*s impossible to collect all relevant information (including the knowledge of individualsâ* purposes and preferences) in a single place, is fundamental to understanding why central planning does not work, and why it is incompatible with individual freedom. But Goreâ*s idea of distributed intelligence does not in any way endorse the significance of dispersed, local knowledge. To the contrary, Gore imagines society as a giant computer system, using massively parallel processing to attack a single problem. In such a system, he explained in a 1996 speech to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, "When a problem was presented, all the processors would begin working simultaneously, each performing its small part of the task, and sending its portion of the answer to be collated with the rest of the work that was going on. It turns out that for most problems, this approach is more effective." (Actually, massively parallel processing isnâ*t good for most problems, but thatâ*s a messy real-world detail.) As a metaphor for society, this analogy suggests that someone in charge decides what the problem is and parcels out tasks to individuals. Individuals do not choose their own problems and purposes or respond to the needs and desires of other dispersed individuals. Asked by Lemann to apply this idea to government, Gore imagined members of Congress bringing information from their districts to "assemble it at the center, in the Capitol building." So "distributed intelligence," a phrase that appears to honor decentralized knowledge, turns out to enshrine centralized decision making. This vision is in keeping with Goreâ*s desire, in Earth in the Balance, for a "central organizing principle for civilization," a goal to which all other goals are subordinated. Gore also rebels against the dispersed knowledge that makes an advanced civilization possibleâ*the specialization that lets people do what theyâ*re good at and enables us to benefit from the knowledge of others, the specialization that acknowledges that each of us is inevitably ignorant about most things. To the AAAS, he <A HREF="http://www.aaas.org/meetings/gore.htm"> bemoaned</A> "the increasing segmentation of society," blaming it for the failure of his favorite metaphor to capture the public imagination. The problem of specialization, he told Lemann, was what Earth in the Balance was all about. The book was an attempt, he said, "to understand the origins of our modern world view, and its curious reliance on specialization and ever-narrower slices of the world around us into categories that are then themselves dissected, in an ongoing process of separation, into parts and subpartsâ*a process that sometimes obliterates the connection to the whole and the appreciation for context and the deeper meanings that canâ*t really be found in the atomized parts of the whole." No wonder the pundits scoffed. That Gore doesnâ*t sound like much of a politician. His views can nonetheless be translated into a campaign document. You just have to push the metaphor: The "atomized parts" are citizens, or voters, or taxpayers, or just plain individuals. Theyâ*re the little pieces that donâ*t count for much until theyâ*re brought into the grand scheme, connected to the whole. You connect them to those deeper meanings by deciding what goals they should pursueâ*programming them to solve the right problems. Follow this analogy, and you wind up with a platform that reads something like Goreâ*s campaign document, <A HREF="http://www.algore2000.com/pdf/gore_prosperity.pdf">Prosperity for Americaâ*s Families</A>.Â Filled with grandiose promises and constant repetition, this 191-page "plan" consists largely of prescriptions to add more headache-inducing complexity to the tax code, all in the name of rewarding good behavior. Take retirement savings. Gore wants people to save, but he wants the savings to cost people the same regardless of how much money they make. Todayâ*s IRAs donâ*t do that. A family making $25,000 pays no income taxes, so putting away $2,000 in retirement savings costs the full two grand. A family that makes $75,000 is in the 28 percent bracket, so sticking $2,000 in a tax-deductible IRA costs just $1,440. Thatâ*s not fair, suggests the Gore document. You could, of course, solve the unfairness problem by flattening tax rates, so that everyone faced the same tax hit. You could even eliminate special treatment of retirement savings and let taxpayers decide, in an unbiased way, how to spend their money. But that even-handed approach would let the atomized parts decide on their own purposes. It would offer no deeper meanings. Instead, the current progressivity of the tax code becomes an argument for even greater progressivity. Gore proposes a new Retirement Savings Plus program in which people who save but donâ*t pay taxes will receive matching funds and people who save and do pay taxes will get credits that go down as their tax rate goes up. Having centrally decided that the nationâ*s little processors should all attack the problem of retirement savings, he has to rig the pieces of the problem assigned to each household. Saving for retirement is important to Gore, but the true central organizing principle of his plan is that everyone should be raising children and sending them to college. His plan thus offers a tax deduction for college tuition, establishes tax-sheltered accounts to save for educational expenses, and gives a tax credit for after-school programs. It hikes the child-care tax credit (including a credit for parents who stay home with very young kids) and promises full-time moms who havenâ*t paid Social Security taxes the same benefits as employed women who have. Parents whose kids arenâ*t either in college or young enough for day care are pretty much out of luck when it comes to tax cuts as, of course, are people who make too much money. Prosperity for Americaâ*s Families goes on and on in this vein. To keep the nationâ*s "atomized parts" from pursuing their own, unapproved goals, Gore creates so many new specialized categories that he winds up contradicting his own goals. His plan "corrects" the marriage penalty by doubling the standard deduction, for instance, but that penalizes any couple who itemizes to take advantage of any of its other creditsâ*or of the old mortgage deduction. The overall effect is an irony worthy of any machine-age, old-paradigm manager: In pursuit of deeper meanings and centralized purposes, Gore winds up slicing Americans into ever-narrower interest groups, favoring some and punishing others. Editor-at-Large Virginia Postrel (<A HREF="mailto:vpostrel@reason.com"> vpostrel(a)reason.com</A>) is the author of <A HREF="http://www.futureand.com/"> The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress</A>, recently published in paperback by Touchstone. --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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CDR: CA gun registration, Canada, and civil disobedience
by Nomen Nescio 26 Oct '00

26 Oct '00

The upcoming deadline for CA's "Assault Weapon Registration" has weighed heavily upon my thoughts for some time. The blank registration form sits on my desk, staring back at me every time my eyes wander away from the screen. Registrant Last Name, Registrant First Name, Registrant Middle Name, DOB, Sex, Height, Weight, Eyes, Hair, Physical Residence Address, Mailing Address, CA Driver License or ID Number, Telephone Number, and, of course, Right Thumbprint. ("The registrant's right thumbprint impression of fingerprint identification quality must be provided in the space indicated. If DOJ identification specialists determine the impression quality is unacceptable, the application will be returned unprocessed. Local police and sheriffs' departments provide quality fingerprint impression services.") The Fall 2000 issue of the JPFO's Bill of Rights Sentinel contained the following article on Canada's C-68. Balancing my own cynicism against the authors' bit of Pollyannaish rhetoric, it seems there are at least a few brave Canadians willing to openly thumb their noses at their Firearms Act on January 1, 2001. What will happen when January 1, 2001 hits CA? Probably not much. I strongly doubt that even a single individual will be bold enough to present himself, unarmed, in public (much less his local police station) and exclaim, "Hear that, CA DOJ? I tore up your little card and I didn't turn in my gun!" Refusal to cooperate with the census seemed almost fashionable this year. My census form met its untimely demise in my paper shredder. No doubt many other forms, both Cypherpunk and Sheeple alike met more creative ends. How many Californians have publicly announced their refusal to cooperate with the fascist Assault Weapon Registration? How many op-ed pieces have been written encouraging citizens to "Just Say No" to this precursor to confiscation? How many outside the state are wringing their hands in dismay that their legislatures will soon follow suit? What sane person would engage in civil disobedience in this climate of trendy gun-grabbing? Likewise, what *fool* would actually register his "assault weapons"? What to do, what to do... "Peace where freedom is compromised isn't peace - it's surrender. In a compromise between poison and food, the only winner is death." ------------------------------------- [Bill Of Rights Sentinel, Fall 2000, JPFO, Inc. www.jpfo.org] Civil Disobedience in Canada: It Just Happened to Be Guns by Dr. Paul Gallant and Dr. Joanne Eisen "One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust...is in reality expressing the highest respect for law... We will not obey your evil laws..." -- Martin Luther King, Jr. In a representative government, and in an ideal world, those elected to public office are expected to act selflessly, and always in the best interests of their constituents. And they are trusted to do so, until the evidence of betrayal is undeniable. Sometimes, that betrayal takes the form of an unjust law, one which is both dangerous and costly to society. That's exactly what befell Canadians in 1995 with the passage of C-68, the Act Respecting Firearms and Other Weapons (generally referred to as simply the "Firearms Act"). As of January 1, 2001, Canadians who currently own a firearm, or who wish to own one are required to obtain a license from a Chief Firearms Officer. And although the Canadian government has required registration of handguns since 1934, as of January 1, 2001 all other firearms lawfully owned must be accounted for by a registration certificate. By that date, the Canadian Justice Department will thus possess a registry of all gun-owners and their guns, if all goes according to plan. But the result of the Firearms Act has been massive civil disobedience. R. Bruce Hutton, formerly of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP, Canada's national police force), formed the Law-Abiding Unregistered Firearms Association (LUFA) in November 1998. Since then, Hutton has been traveling throughout Canada urging non-compliance with the Firearms Act, and exhorting fellow gun-owners, "Come to jail with me." More than twenty thousand Canadian gun-owners had taken Hutton up on his challenge as of July 15, 2000, openly declaring their intent to disobey the law by not complying with registration. When gun-owner populations are compared, that translates to the U.S. equivalent of almost 400,000 American gun-owners, conservatively stated. Hutton's anger has clearly resonated among fellow Canadians, proving that an ordinary man can make an extraordinary difference. When January 1, 2001 rolls around, LUFA's members are prepared to stand unarmed in front of RCMP offices and submit, as felons, to their 5-year prison terms. LUFA's projected membership that time will be enough to overwhelm an already strained Canadian criminal justice system. An equivalent action by American gun-owners would probably have the same effect. Hundreds of thousands of other Canadian gun-owners have made known their intent to delay registration until the last possible moment. Their forms will arrive all together in the last few weeks, throwing the entire bureaucracy into disarray. On June 15, 2000, Canada's Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Firearms Act and finally pushed some Canadians over the brink. The provincial governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have dumped both the administration and the enforcement of all federal gun-control laws -- including the 66-year old handgun registry -- right back into Ottawa's lap, throwing the Canadian government into civil war, one fought on paper for the time being. Interesting times lie ahead to the North of us. Why are our usually obedient neighbors to the North acting out of character? C-68: FALSE PROMISE AND LIES Various rationales have been articulated to explain civil disobedience in response to the Firearms Act. A good deal of discussion has focused on the skyrocketing costs of administration. But none of these explanations account for why Canadian gun-owners are increasingly willing to disobey their government, and suffer hefty fines and serious jail-time. The real answer seems to lie in the fact that, although the Firearms Act mandates firearm registration, it is not "just another" gun-control law, and the defiance it has elicited is not just about guns. When it was enacted into law, the Firearms Act did far more than implement firearm registration. It provided for the confiscation of more than half of all registered, legally-owned handguns in Canada -- without compensation -- an action which Canadian gun-owners rightly interpreted as a blatant disregard for traditional property rights. The Firearms Act also empowered the government to profoundly infringe upon rights that all Canadians cherish. According to Canadian Researcher Dr. Gary Mauser, "these infringements should frighten any civil libertarian. The Firearms Act expands the grounds for warrantless searches, reduces restraints on issuing warrants, and requires people to testify against themselves." In fact, Dr. Mauser noted, the Firearms Act "vastly extends police powers" in Canada, and that "such sweeping police powers...authorize police procedures that [would] violate the US Fourth Amendment's protection against warrantless searches and the Fifth Amendment's protection [of] due process." During the debate on C-68, and upon its implementation, the Canadian government made a number of promises and claims. In discussing some of these (see sidebar [see end]), Canadian journalist Lorne Gunter observed, "perhaps the Liberals do not have as their ultimate goal the disarming of the civilian population. But registration would make confiscation easier by telling the government where all the guns are." Why all the lies, both to facilitate the passage of C-68, and to perpetuate the government's false promises? Addressing the 11th Annual Community Legal Education Associations conference in January 1996, Senator Sharon Carstairs made a telling admission when she thought no one else was listening: the Firearms Act was intended, from the outset, to be integral to her party's plans to "socially re-engineer Canada", something the Liberal party of Canada has set about doing for the past 30 years. Disarming the citizenry and creating a utopian pacifist society is integral to this "social re-engineering". Wrote Lorne Gunter in a March 14, 1996 column: "...the Liberals knew that when they promised C-68 would reduce crime, Canadians would naturally assume the government meant rounding up criminals and throwing them in jail, preventing murders and holdups... when all along, what the Liberals really meant was that they believed C-68 would re-engineer Canada (and especially male gun owners) making its citizens more docile... [But] when lawmakers trample centuries-old liberties without offering an overwhelming social good in return...then respect for the law dies and the rule of law along with it." SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN OTTAWA Garry Breitkreuz is a Member of Parliament from the province of Saskatchewan. He was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1993, and re-elected in 1997. Columnist Peter Worthington of the Sun chain of newspapers referred to Breitkreuz as "the one-man wrecking crew when it comes to federal gun registration". Recounting his earlier experience with the Justice Department concerning a secret research project designed to evaluate the effects of a restrictive gun law enacted in 1997, Breitkreuz commented: "This statistical analysis was supposed to evaluate the effectiveness of [previous] firearms legislation. After a thirteen month investigation, the Information Commissioner has confirmed that the government knowingly and without any authority whatsoever withheld information from Members of Parliament. The information concerned public safety and was vital to the debate of the federal gun control legislation (Bill C-68) and yet the Justice Minister and his officials effectively hid it from the public and Parliament... If a Member of Parliament can't get information from the government what hope does the average citizen have?" Why would the Canadian government keep this information secret? Could it be that the 1977 law did not work, as advertised, to reduce violent crime in Canada? And could it be that this information might jeopardize its agenda now? Who stands to gain when a government deliberately withholds information from its own citizens? In an attempt to understand the practical implementation of C-68, we went to its actual text. Despite our own familiarity with a wealth of U.S. gun laws, we found C-68 to be an almost undecipherable maze of words. One of the documents we received from Breitkreuz's office shed light on our difficulty. Prepared by the Research Branch of the Library of Parliament, and dated April 18, 1997, it stated the following: "...the sheer volume of regulatory authority can make it extremely difficult for Parliamentary bodies to envisage the final scope of the Act. OR FOR MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC TO UNDERSTAND HOW THE LEGISLATION MAY IMPACT ON THEM. [emphasis ours]. Bill C-68, the Firearms Act, might well be described as an example of such legislation... The combined effect [of its provisions] is to invest the Chief Firearms Officer with an extremely large, if not unprecedented, degree of discretion." In fact, according to Dave Tomlinson, President of Canada's National Firearms Association, C-68 allows the government to "legally confiscate all guns at any time." Now we also know the answer to the question of why Canadians are acting out of character: THEY AREN'T! They are beginning to read the "fine print" of the Firearms Act, and are expressing -- according to Martin Luther King, Jr. -- the "highest respect for the law", in their own way. NICS: A BETTER MOUSETRAP? Contrast the Firearms Act with NICS, our own National Instant Check System. While Canadians refer to th Firearms Act as outright registration, American proponents of NICS have painstakingly avoided any reference to the term, or characterization of NICS as a system of gun or gun-owner registration. Yet NICS may more effectively accomplish what the Firearms Act has openly set out to do -- register law-abiding gun-owners and their guns. The machinery for registration was set in place by the very design of NICS: Americans, and the guns they buy, are automatically -- and illegally -- entered into a Department of Justice database, as an immediate consequence of the instant check provision required for purchases from licensed dealers. Unlike Canada's Firearms Act, however, registration via NICS is essentially passive on the part of gun-owners. Its architects have cleverly removed registration as an option from American gun purchasers. Except for one small detail, that is. The Brady Law's provisions apply only to sales from licensed dealers, and private gun sales are therefore currently exempt from "instant-check"-style registration. But private gun sales account for approximately a third of all gun acquisitions in this country, which leaves a huge chunk of firearm transfers unaccounted for by a government paper trail. The reason then becomes perfectly clear why Bill Clinton and the rest of America's anti-self-defense politicians have relentlessly pushed for a background check on ALL private gun transfers, even at gun shows. Witness the so-called "gun-show loophole" mantra which drones on incessantly from a biased, firearm-hostile mainstream media. Now we know exactly what Bill Clinton had in mind when he announced during his weekly Saturday radio address on February 3, 1999, "No background check, no gun. No exceptions." While registration in the U.S. will take longer with NICS than the published timetable for Canada's Firearm Act, if the "gun-show loophole" is closed, a more complete listing of gun-owners and their guns will likely result. The Canadian experience amounts to a crash-course on registration and confiscation. And it should serve as a wake-up call for gun-owners here in the States." ---- ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Dr. Paul Gallant practices optometry in Wesley Hills, N.Y. Dr. Joanne Eisen practices dentistry in Old Bethpage, N.Y. Lorne Gunter is a columnist for the _Edmonton Journal_, one of Canada's largest daily newspapers. His columns on politics, society, government, the environment, the law, and economics appear three times a week. [References omitted] SIDEBAR: LIES MY GOVERNMENT TOLD ME by Lorne Gunter Mark Twain said "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." The Canadian government used all three to ram through its latest gun controls, which came into effect on December 1, 1998. Among the lies: federal politicians promised that point-of-sale registrations, which must now be completed before a buyer may take his firearm home, would take "only" 10 to 15 minutes over the telephone. Some have taken weeks, many other three months or more. Those of less than an hour are exceedingly rare. The mail-in registration of previously unregistered shotguns and rifles was to be accomplished on a postcard. The form actually contains 135 Questions and is as complicated as a tax return. there were the damned lies -- lies the government still refuses to admit are false. The registry was to cost no more than $85 million over five years. to date, the government will admit it has registered fewer than one-in-five gun owners with just five months remaining to the December 31 deadline. And instead of 200 employees, it has over 1,400, including hundreds of frontline police officers who have been rerouted from crime-busting to gun registration. Canadians were assured the registry would not divert funds from other Police operations. But the Mounties have all but lost their organized crime and white collar crime divisions, while the registry grows and grows. Then there were the statistics. The Department of Justice overestimated (likely knowingly) the number of gun crimes in the country by nearly 10-fold and exaggerated the cost of treating gunshot wounds by nearly 100-fold to create the appearance of a national emergency. Even the nation's police chiefs tried to help justify over half of all guns recovered at cime scenes were long guns. What the chiefs' failed to mention was that most had been stolen from their lawful owners before being used in a crime or had not been involved in a crime, merely recovered at the scene.

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CDR: Imagine how many people in your downline would like to use this service to boost their online recruiting efforts. Now multiply that number by $10.00!
by gary＠gnetservices.com 26 Oct '00

26 Oct '00

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CDR: Re: Insurance: My Last Post
by Rev. Parker Bright 25 Oct '00

25 Oct '00

If you truly believe this why not take a hint from Camus and kill yourself. You could one, lose nothing due to inherent lack of value, two, exercise the one undeniable right, three, the secession of personal pain and four, free up resources to reduce the pain of others. Not taking shots, just offering options. Rev. PHB I like to hold the door open for people approaching the door behind me, especially when they're really far behind and they have to hustle so as not to leave me standing there. Then I get to hear those stupid polite bastards thank me, when all I did was make them run. - Jonathan Colan

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CDR: quick question
by john doe 25 Oct '00

25 Oct '00

was surfing the net and ran across an artile you posted that had a picture in it in and was wondering where to get the decoder for the picture... the website is http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.97.06.19-97.06.25/msg00323.html thanks _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.

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CDR: CIA in Oregon, Intelink
by John Young 25 Oct '00

25 Oct '00

Would anyone in the Oregon area know about a CIA organization acronymed ISTAC? Here's the NIC entry, which includes a CIA rep in Bend, OR. Note that the other CIA rep used only a last name initial. CIA (ISTAC-DOM) 1820 Electric Avenue Vienna, VA 21076 Domain Name: ISTAC.GOV Status: ACTIVE Domain Type: Federal Technical Contact, Administrative Contact: S, Dan (DS3) 703-281-8087 DAN(a)ISTAC.GOV Domain servers in listed order: MARS.ISTAC.GOV 199.99.221.33 NS1.SPRINTLINK.NET 204.117.214.10 NS2.SPRINTLINK.NET 199.2.252.10, 199.2.252.1 NS3.SPRINTLINK.NET 204.97.212.10 Record last updated on 31-Oct-97. cia (W19990412003631) Federal Government: Yes Unlisted Organization: Yes Status: Pending Designated Agency Rep, Requester, Sr. Registration Official: Mueller, Deforest X. (DXM2) (541) 385-6836 MUELLER(a)BENDNET.COM Record last updated on 13-Apr-99. ----- Mueller, Deforest X. (DXM2) cia 63350 majestic loop bend, OR 97701 (541) 385-6836 MUELLER(a)BENDNET.COM ------ Second inquiry on accessing Intelink, or IC.GOV While this is registered, it does not respond to a browser inquiry. Here is its NIC data: IC.GOV Central Intelligence Agency (IC-DOM) Global Network Enterprise Washington, DC 20505 Domain Name: IC.GOV Status: ACTIVE Domain Type: Federal Technical Contact: Networks, Public (PN2) (702) 874-7205 EDSN(a)UCIA.GOV Administrative Contact: Farnham, David B. (DBF) (703) 874-2871 DAVEF(a)UCIA.GOV Domain servers in listed order: NS.DIGEX.NET 164.109.1.3 NS2.DIGEX.NET 164.109.10.23 Record last updated on -Apr-10. ------------------------------------------------------------ Networks, Public (PN2) Central Intelligence Agency ATS/EDSN, 1U1332 NHB Washington, DC 20505 (702) 874-7205 EDSN(a)UCIA.GOV E-mail Host: UCIA.GOV Record last updated on 27-Jan-99. ------------------------------------------------------------ Farnham, David B. (DBF) ATS/NSG, 2W03 NHB ATS/NSG, 2W03 NHB Washington, DC 20505 (703) 874-2871 DAVEF(a)UCIA.GOV Record last updated on 27-Jan-99. ------------------------------------------------------------ Source: http://www.nic.gov/REFERENCE/rfc2146-2.txt CROSS-AGENCY COLLABORATIONS Q. An organization maintains a domain name that represents a cross-agency community, IC.GOV, which represents members of the intelligence community. As a cross-agency collaborative effort, does the domain have to be re-registered? A. The policy states that "Cross-agency collaborative organizations (e.g., "Federal Networking Council", "Information Infrastructure Task Force") are eligible for registration under .GOV upon presentation of the chartering document and are the only non-listed (in either FIPS 95-1 or the US Government Manual) organizations eligible for registration under .GOV." "IC.GOV" however, is grand-fathered since it is an existing domain. Nevertheless, it would be appropriate to provide a copy of the chartering document to the FNC for the record. This would ease future changes to the IC.GOV domain if necessary. -----------------------------------------------------------

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CDR: RE: CIA in Oregon, Intelink
by John Young 25 Oct '00

25 Oct '00

Yes, the BXA ISTAC is familiar since I'm on its mailing list. The CIA ISTAC is a different dog. And it was the Oregon rep which surprised, not the Vienna, VA and DC addresses. Why Oregon? Intel, Microsoft, In-Q-tel, or another bedmate helping equip and run Intelink? Intelink is reportedly restricted to those with intelligence need to know, and is blocked to outsiders. However, IC.GOV has been around a while and I wondered if a wizard here might know a way to finagle access. Here are few specific URLs provided in the DoD Intelligence Information System Instructions 2000: Intelligence Community PKI activities: http://www.iccio.ic.gov/ DIA page: http://www.dia.ic.gov/proj/dodiis/dodiis.html JITF Intelink: http://web1.rome.ic.gov:82/vtf.cgi Here's the URL for the DoDIISI2000 doc: http://www.dia.mil/Graphics/Intel_community/dodiis_2000/0204_DoDIISInstr_Fin al.doc (The URL may wrap.) For the dark side of the Albright bearhug, the DIA FOIA site offers the "North Korea Country Handbook," May, 1997, prepared by the intel community, and published by the Marine Corps Intelligence Acitivity: http://www.dia.mil/Graphics/FOIA/nk/nkor.pdf (429 pages, 5.6MB) It could be useful to those intending to exchange URLs with the Chief of NOFOIA DPKR.

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CDR: Privacy: Dems criticize GOP, Calif, Australia, and Carnivore
by Declan McCullagh 25 Oct '00

25 Oct '00

********* More privacy stuff at: http://www.cluebot.com/search.pl?topic=privacy ********* http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/25/2351218&mode=nested Democrats Criticize Census Data Sharing posted by cicero on Wednesday October 25, @06:49PM from the hypocritcal-congresscritters-so-what-else-is-new dept. David Sobel of EPIC just sent us a letter that a pair of Democratic legislators are circulating on Capitol Hill. Turns out they want to stop a Republican plan to share some Census data with other government agencies. The opposition from Carolyn Maloney and John Dingell is certainly welcome, but it's important to realize that this is a simple partisan manuevering. While they piously bleat that "Congress should be protecting personal privacy," neither voted for privacy-protective measures when they had the chance, according to a Wired News scorecard. The letter, dated October 25: http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/25/2351218&mode=nested http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/24/226242&mode=nested CIX: E-mail Headers Aren't Legal Carnivore Fodder posted by protozoa on Tuesday October 24, @04:38PM from the slippery-slope-vs-vertical-slope dept. The Commercial Internet Exchange Association has published this white paper (PDF format) arguing that e-mail headers shouldn't legally be considered the same thing as telephone numbers dialed. Why is that important? Because according to the paper's introduction,"[t]hrough programs like "Carnivore," the government seeks real-time access to the e-mail addresses and other transactional elements of e-mail communications under the low "pen register" standard used to trace the digits dialed on a telephone,". It's a tricky legal distinction, but a very important one -- such a finding in court could cut the FBI's net surveillance plans off at the knees. I've included the paper's introduction below. The CIX introduction (in HTML): http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/24/226242&mode=nested http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/21/1517258&mode=nested California Creates State Privacy Office posted by protozoa on Saturday October 21, @09:58AM from the you-said-what-to-who? dept. According to this press release, California Governor Gray Davis signed twenty bills yesterday tailored to protect privacy and other consumer interests for state residents. Most noteworthy of these bills is SB 129, which creates the first-ever statewide Office of Privacy Protection under California's Department of Consumer Affairs. Other new laws include and procedural assistance for identity theft victims and new consumer "opt-out" reqirements for credit bureaus. Dan Gillmor wrote a column about identity theft and privacy protection in California back in March, expressing his support for two stronger and more far-reaching bills in this arena. Neither of them were among those passed. http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/21/1421235&mode=nested Australian Privacy Legislation Inches Forward posted by protozoa on Saturday October 21, @09:07AM from the privacy-privacy-oi-oi-oi dept. An Australian Senate committee has produced a set of recommendations (in PDF form) governing private corporations' data collection practices. The bill is scheduled to be considered during the coming session. The Privacy Amendment (Private Sector) Bill 2000 aims to update regulations in light of the "dramatic developments in information technology and data communication practices" since the passage of the Privacy Act in 1988. The recommendations include an exemption for small businesses (except in instances where medical information is involved) and a strategy for accordance with the European Data Directive. Electronic Frontiers Australia called the bill "complex, unwieldy, ineffective and an insult to the citizens of Australia" in its testimony in May, citing numerous loopholes and inadequate enforcement provisions. Many of their concerns appear to have been ignored. ABC (that's A for Australian) ran a brief piece on Federal Attorney-General Daryl Williams' support of the bill. As it says at the bottom of the box: Post your comments below. Can any privacy legislation better than none? Is ineffectual privacy legislation worse than none?

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CDR: RE: CIA in Oregon, Intelink
by Trei, Peter 25 Oct '00

25 Oct '00

> ---------- > From: John Young[SMTP:jya@pipeline.com] > Reply To: John Young > Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2000 6:34 PM > To: cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net > Subject: CIA in Oregon, Intelink > > Would anyone in the Oregon area know about > a CIA organization acronymed ISTAC? > > Here's the NIC entry, which includes a CIA rep > in Bend, OR. Note that the other CIA rep used > only a last name initial. > > CIA (ISTAC-DOM) > 1820 Electric Avenue > Vienna, VA 21076 > > > Domain Name: ISTAC.GOV > Status: ACTIVE > Domain Type: Federal > > Technical Contact, Administrative Contact: > S, Dan (DS3) > 703-281-8087 > DAN(a)ISTAC.GOV > [...] Well, you *could* call up Mr. Dan and ask (the worst he could do is lie), but that would be too easy, wouldn't it? The most likely suspect appears to be a BXA advisory body. Of course, acronyms can get overloaded :-) Since the duties of this ISTAC appear to include advising BXA on encryption, I think it's relevant to the list. Peter. google gives: -------------------------------- http://207.226.239.89/990126mo.htm and http://bxatac.doc.gov/ suggests ISTAC = Information Systems Technical Advisory Committee That page also has links to minutes from the public parts of meetings, (which are held in DC) The next ISTAC meeting is November 15 &16, and is partially open to the public. Here's some cut&paste text WHAT ARE TECHNICAL ADVISORY COMMITTEES? Technical Advisory Committees (TACs) advise the Department of Commerce on the technical parameters for export controls applicable to dual-use commodities and technology and on the administration of those controls. The TACs are composed of representatives from industry and Government representing diverse points of view on the concerns of the exporting community. Industry representatives are selected from firms producing a broad range of goods, technologies, and software presently controlled for national security, foreign policy, nonproliferation, and short supply reasons or that are proposed for such controls, balanced to the extent possible among large and small firms. HOW ARE MEMBERS CHOSEN? TAC members are appointed by the Secretary of Commerce and serve terms of not more than four consecutive years. The membership reflects the Department's commitment to attaining balance and diversity. TAC members must obtain secret-level clearances prior to appointment. These clearances are necessary so that members can be permitted access to relevant classified information needed in formulating recommendations to the Department of Commerce. Each TAC meets approximately 4 times per year. Members of the TACs will not be compensated for their services. HOW MANY TACS ARE THERE, AND WHAT DO THEY DO? The following is a list of TACs that currently advise BXA, along with a short summary of each TAC's issue areas. You can access the committee's charter by clicking on its name. 1.Information Systems - Articles, materials and supplies of computers electronics, and telecommunications equipment. 2.Materials - Articles, materials, and supplies for radar absorption, jet engine turbines blades, super- conductivity, fluids, lubricants, composites, and for nuclear, missile, chemical, and biological weapons, including technical data and other information. 3.Materials Processing Equipment - Articles, materials and supplies of metal-working equipment, numerically controlled machine tools and robots, including technical data on the integration of numerically controlled machine tools and robotics equipment to form manufacturing cells and flexible manufacturing systems and enterprise automation technologies, as well as other information. 4.Regulations and Procedures - The Export Administration Regulations (EARs) and procedures implementing these regulations. 5.Sensors and Instrumentation - Articles, materials and supplies of sensors and instrumentation, including technical data and other information. 6.Transportation and Related Equipment - Articles, materials and supplies of transportation and related equipment, including technical data and other information.

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CDR: Re: Re: Illicit words
by Bill Stewart 25 Oct '00

25 Oct '00

At 09:37 AM 10/25/00 -0400, Riad S. Wahby wrote: >There is also the 'spook.lines' file that has come in every Emacs >distribution at since 19.34 or earlier. On my machine it's >/usr/share/emacs/20.7/etc/spook.lines >You can use M-x spook to pull several random ones from a file and put >them in the current buffer, like the following: >CIA Legion of Doom Peking Noriega cracking Waco, Texas domestic >disruption bomb security Kennedy KGB $400 million in gold bullion >counter-intelligence colonel Semtex Makes a fine substrate for steganography as well :-) Pick 64 spookwords or spookphrases, which gets you six bits per word, or four bits with some duplications to level out distributions a lot. Heroin Intel Detonator DomIntel Echelon Noriega Semtex Terrorism Umber Feinstein Phreaking Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart(a)pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

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