August 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

Kuwait fairy tales.
by Matthew X 18 Aug '02

18 Aug '02

From babies thrown from incubators to this... CIA Recruiting Iranian Spies in Kuwait: Website TEHRAN TIMES POLITICAL DESK TEHRAN -- The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has set up a branch in Kuwait to recruit 50,000 Iranians for espionage purposes against the Islamic Republic, announced the Persian-language ****Daricheh**** website Friday. The site reported that CIA in its advertisement had allocated a monthly wage of 250 to 350 dollars with the annual salary of 3,000 to 4,000 dollars for the applicants. The advertisement is a repetition of similar notices circulated in the Persian Gulf countries before, the website announced. http://www.tehrantimes.com/News.asp?Da=8/17/02&Cat=2&Num=0#0015

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Socialism or Barbaraism.
by Matthew X 18 Aug '02

18 Aug '02

http://www2.caller.com/ccct/politics/article/0,1641,CCCT_813_1323552,00.html Potential $1 million award to a former woman spy By BILL STRAUB August 13, 2002 It was June 1971. The war in Vietnam was raging and, as Bob Dylan noted, "there was revolution in the air." Barbara Makuch was just 18, the daughter of a Nazi concentration camp survivor devoted to the ideals of the United States. She was in northwest New York, riding in a car with "a crazy Maoist" who told her about his plans to bomb a local NBC-TV affiliate and the student union at the University of Buffalo. "Kids were going to die," recalled Makuch from the kitchen of her home in East Amherst, N.Y. She alerted the authorities, the bomb plot was thwarted and a career as a spook for the FBI was successfully launched. Over the next two decades, during the intense Cold War years, Makuch infiltrated several domestic operations fronting for the Russian government. Known only by her mother and husband, she was recruited by the KGB "who needed someone who looked regular" for their own clandestine efforts in the United States. She traveled regularly between Buffalo and Moscow as a double agent while consistently maintaining her allegiance to her adopted home in America. Information she obtained served as the basis for a meeting in October 1987 between then-Secretary of State George Shultz and then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The meeting led to the historic summit between Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan. By the mid-1980s, Makuch was the key to understanding the secret funding channels and methods used to funnel U.S. currency - more than $21 million in the 1980s alone - from the Soviet Union to communist front sources operating in America. "I became an agent of influence for the Soviets," she said. "I basically passed information between the KGB and front organizations here in this country." All, she stressed, under the direction of the FBI. It cost her a marriage and probably the health of her second husband, Eugene Makuch, who worked with her in the trenches of the American spy community. Since leaving the service in 1992, she has experienced problems finding work. She earned no more than $300 a week for her efforts and, despite promises from FBI officials, neither she nor her husband have been provided with disability, Social Security, health care or pension benefits. But that may be changing. The House has passed special legislation sponsored by Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., which would award Makuch $1 million for her service as a foreign counterintelligence agent. Eugene Makuch, who has undergone two kidney transplants and a brain aneurysm that left him in a coma for two months, would also receive $1 million for his efforts under separate legislation. Both proposals are pending in the Senate. Assistant Attorney General Daniel Bryant said of Makuch, "With her husband, she provided critical information that allowed the FBI to offset espionage activities planned by the Soviet Union against the United States and our allies. Without doubt, their long-term assistance and service demonstrated an admirable commitment to safeguarding the security of our nation." Makuch, 49, said her family history and a well-defined sense of patriotism led her to become a spy. Her Polish father had been imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp and she was born in a refugee camp in post-war Germany. An uncle was shot by Russian communists for refusing to destroy a cross on the wall of his home in the Ukraine. A grandfather was "an active fighter against the Soviets." "The things you're told as a child stay with you," she said. "It sort of gives you intestinal fortitude. My life was formed by those events and this is a wonderful country." The family moved to Great Britain when Makuch was 8 but ended up in the United States, settling around Buffalo when she was 14. Just four years later she was an FBI "asset." "The fact that I am not dead today is by the grace of God and my own gut," she said. "I knew I could die. Yet - and believe me, this is not heroic talk - I think about what my family had gone through and I think about World War II." There were dangerous moments. She was "an undercover activist," involving herself in New Left organizations receiving surreptitious - and illegal - funding from the Soviet bloc and reporting the activities to the FBI. Her work as an activist was brought to the attention of the KGB, which recruited her to pass information to the front organizations and serve "as a cover for drops when they came to Niagara Falls." She recruited students, anti-war and peace activists "who didn't know what they were doing" for the KGB. At all times she kept the FBI fully informed. Had they know about her activities, Makuch quoted one agent as saying, "they would have rolled up off the sidewalk and put a bullet in your head." In her role as a double agent, Makuch traveled to the Soviet Union about a half-dozen times to meet with her KGB handlers - never knowing whether Soviet spies in the United States had passed on information that could betray her. She was friends with Yevgeni Primakov, the head of the notorious KGB, as well as Gennady Yaniev, vice president under Gorbachev, always making sure to bring him a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label Scotch when she visited. "It was probably the most dangerous around '85," she said. "We began the dance of death. I was being tested by the Soviets on a very regular basis. If I had been caught, I would have been shot. I had nowhere to turn when I was over there - no names of anyone. The testing was in order to instill fear in me. I was in situations where people told me they killed people with their bare hands. One time in Chautauqua (N.Y.) I didn't think I was going to get out of a room." In 1992, after years of "living on adrenaline most of the time," and with her husband in deteriorating health, Makuch told the FBI she wanted out. "It had become far more dangerous and far more frightening than I wanted to deal with," she said. But there was one final case involving the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, a Soviet front organization receiving funding from Moscow. Makuch had risen up the ranks to obtain an executive position in the group and on Feb. 6, 1987, met with Rev. Alan Thomson, the council's executive director in her room at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, D.C. There he handed her $17,000, obtained from the KGB, and explained how to deposit the money without attracting the attention of federal regulators. Unbeknownst to Thomson, the transaction was being recorded by the FBI in an adjacent room. Thomson subsequently was indicted on federal money laundering charges but it wasn't until May 21, 1992, that he pleaded guilty. For her work, Barbara Makuch won the Louis E. Peters Memorial Award, the highest civilian award presented by the FBI, in 1992. Now, with her husband in ill health and the bills mounting, Makuch is hoping for some assistance. And with Sept. 11 still clear in the nation's rear view mirror, she hopes her experiences will convince others to get involved. "At this horrible time in our country, I want people to come forward and serve their country," she said. "Yes, it was dangerous. Yes, death was just around the corner. But I would go back in a heartbeat." On the Net: www.members.aol.com/barbarajmakuch (Reach Bill Straub at straubb(at)shns.com) or jya cryptome.

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Cruise Knockoff's worry Dagwood.
by Matthew X 18 Aug '02

18 Aug '02

The Taipei Times Online: 2001-10-21 Bin Laden may have sold cruise missiles to Beijing. THE GUARDIAN, MILAN, ITALY. China paid Osama bin Laden several million dollars for access to unexploded ... taipeitimes.com/news/2001/10/21/print/0000108045 - 6k - Cached - Similar pages [ More results from taipeitimes.com ] Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Claims that China paid Bin ... ... million dollars for access to unexploded American cruise missiles ... sources as saying that 40 were found unexploded. ... who were dying of hunger, passed missiles to ... www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,577544,00.html - 33k - Cached - Similar pages CHINA NOT YET AN ALLY China Brief, September 27, 2001 : China. ... ... China has sold Iran both nuclear-reactor and nuclear-fuel ... to some reports, after it gave Beijing some unexploded US Tomahawk cruise missiles, the ... china.jamestown.org/pubs/view/cwe_001_006_002.htm - 13k - Cached - Similar pages Pravda.RU Mozambique: children sold for organs ... The same source reveals that Bin Laden has cruise missiles. ... before their vital organs are removed and sold ... of Ohorum show a powerful American bomb, unexploded, ... english.pravda.ru/main/2001/10/15/18033.html - 64k - Cached - Similar pages Dumble on Afghan Women ... One in every ten cruise missiles fails to hit its ... of being defended from the US-led alliance's missiles ... the exact same shade of luminous yellow as unexploded ... www.rtis.com/touchstone/nov01/02.HTM - 12k - Cached - Similar pages Think Tank Dumble ... one in every ten, supposedly target specific, cruise missiles ... 200 Kosovas were killed or injured by unexploded ... defended from the US-led alliance's missiles by ... cyounkin.web.wesleyan.edu/ttdumble.htm - 16k - Cached - Similar pages In the Name of Freedom ... one in every ten, supposedly target specific, cruise missiles ... 200 Kosovas were killed or injured by unexploded ... defended from the US-led alliance's missiles by ... www.ou.edu/student/ucurrent/archives/ volVno6/articles/NameOfFreedom.html - 9k - Cached - Similar pages FAPA ... China has sold Iran nuclear-reactor and nuclear-fuel ... according to some reports, after they gave Beijing some unexploded US Tomahawk cruise missiles, ... www.fapa.org/20010911disaster/fisher1021.html - 9k - Cached - Similar pages Rum bum dum dum. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31153-2002Aug17.html

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TIVOlutionary.
by Matthew X 18 Aug '02

18 Aug '02

Co-opting the Underground On the TiVo Community Forum (see Online Resources), people literally obsess about TiVo, the personal video recorder. The site carries discussions on everything from tech support, to general chit chat, to the TiVo Underground, where hackers post about what they've learned by opening up their TiVo boxes and mucking with the insides. When the folks at TiVo discovered this forum (it started independently), they could have called in the lawyers. Instead, they sponsored the site, offered TiVo branding elements, and linked to it from the official TiVo site. Richard Bullwinkle was the Webmaster for the TiVo corporate site at the time, and he saw the site's power. He worked closely with the forum's creator, David Bott, to make it better, and answer questions from the official TiVo perspective. Is TiVo happy with everything that goes on there? Of course not. "Every now and then some executive says, what is this?" says Bullwinkle. "My response is: What part of the Internet don't you understand?" Postings may be hard to take sometimes, but TiVo is gaining incredible insight into its users. When users have a problem, TiVo is the first to know. In time, the forum will help TiVo make a better product. And when forum users begin to see that their suggestions make it into future product versions, they'll feel intimately connected with TiVoa bond that won't be easily broken. Things have worked out well for Bullwinkle, too. After the TiVo community's success, he was promoted to Chief Evangelist. Everyone in the forums still knows him simply by his login: "TiVolutionary." Interesting thread at... http://www.newarchitectmag.com/documents/s=4190/new1013635642/index.html My fave? Infoshop.

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GateScam Foundation
by Matthew X 18 Aug '02

18 Aug '02

GATES FOUNDATION BOMBSHELL! (sorry if reprinted) Subject: GateScam Foundation [WAS: Window To The Duplicitous So ul] [WAS!WAS: Windows - These Colors Don't Run] Im Stranger Here, Myself Part VI of The True Story Of The InterNet Chapter 02C6: GateScam Foundation [WAS: Window To The Duplicitous Soul] [WAS!WAS: Windows These Colors Dont Run] Anyone visiting the Gates Foundation Homepage (http://www.gatesfoundation.org) should be aware that all of the empathetic, high-sounding claims made by the foundation are belied by the actual facts surrounding the high-handed criminal misconduct participated in by the henchmen of Gates Money Cow, Microsoftincluding the misrepresentation of evidence and perjuryin order to convict and imprison a disabled individual who was tried and convicted despite having been found incompetent in the only competency hearing held during the course of his trial. While the defendant was suffering unconstitutional detention and torture, the Ninth Federal Circuit Court Judge, Federal Prosecutors, and the Public Defender forced upon the defendant against his will all had a good belly-laugh over the suggestion that the Richest Man In The World might be expected to stoop so low as to make an appearance in a trial where he was the purported victim. The disabled defendant, forced to attend the farcical judicial proceedings under the threat of violence and being dragged to court in chains if he refused to appear, was not as amused as the officers of the court at the pointed message that status and privilege take precedence over the rule of law in the American InJu$tice $y$tem. Anyone wanting to take a cold, hard look at the motives behind the spectacle of supposed humanity being portrayed by the Gates Foundation might begin by familiarizing themselves with the terms, Eugenics and Manipulation of the Masses. As a disabled person who came close to dying at the hands of those I was delivered into by the unethical and criminal malfeasance participated in by Gates, Microsoft and the Ninth Circus Federal Court, I already understand Eugenics 'I "being the channeled spirit of fellow Cpunk and revolutionary APster martyr,CJ,If I take another deep breath of burning Yohimbe bark I can sense his addy... TruthMonger #05987-196 <sog(a)w-link.net> Something like that.Parental discretion advisary,ptrei discrecion heavily advisory.pr.PROMIS # 0417

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GATES FOUNDATION BOMBSHELL!
by Matthew X 18 Aug '02

18 Aug '02

Subject: GateScam Foundation [WAS: Window To The Duplicitous So ul] [WAS!WAS: Windows - These Colors Don't Run] Im Stranger Here, Myself Part VI of The True Story Of The InterNet Chapter 02C6: GateScam Foundation [WAS: Window To The Duplicitous Soul] [WAS!WAS: Windows These Colors Dont Run] Anyone visiting the Gates Foundation Homepage (http://www.gatesfoundation.org) should be aware that all of the empathetic, high-sounding claims made by the foundation are belied by the actual facts surrounding the high-handed criminal misconduct participated in by the henchmen of Gates Money Cow, Microsoftincluding the misrepresentation of evidence and perjuryin order to convict and imprison a disabled individual who was tried and convicted despite having been found incompetent in the only competency hearing held during the course of his trial. While the defendant was suffering unconstitutional detention and torture, the Ninth Federal Circuit Court Judge, Federal Prosecutors, and the Public Defender forced upon the defendant against his will all had a good belly-laugh over the suggestion that the Richest Man In The World might be expected to stoop so low as to make an appearance in a trial where he was the purported victim. The disabled defendant, forced to attend the farcical judicial proceedings under the threat of violence and being dragged to court in chains if he refused to appear, was not as amused as the officers of the court at the pointed message that status and privilege take precedence over the rule of law in the American InJu$tice $y$tem. Anyone wanting to take a cold, hard look at the motives behind the spectacle of supposed humanity being portrayed by the Gates Foundation might begin by familiarizing themselves with the terms, Eugenics and Manipulation of the Masses. As a disabled person who came close to dying at the hands of those I was delivered into by the unethical and criminal malfeasance participated in by Gates, Microsoft and the Ninth Circus Federal Court, I already understand Eugenics 'I "being the channeled spirit of fellow Cpunk and revolutionary APster martyr,CJ,If I take another deep breath of burning Yohimbe bark I can sense his addy... TruthMonger #05987-196 <sog(a)w-link.net> Something like that.Parental discretion advisary,ptrei discrecion heavily advisory.pr.PROMIS # 0417531548

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Continent-wide economic "state of emergency"
by Matthew X 18 Aug '02

18 Aug '02

Internal Commotion, Internal Disruption On August 13, the new president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, declared, a "state of internal commotion" seven days after his inauguration. The measure was invoked through the Colombian constitution, allows the government to bypass normal legislative procedures, restrict civil liberties, and put into place security measures. The measure lasts 90 days, but can be renewed twice, and has been implemented numerous times in Colombia's history. The device was implemented after a week of intense fighting amongst the Colombian military, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and right-wing paramilitaries, which ended whith more than 100 hundred people dead. This latest round of fighting began with a bombing at Uribe's inauguration, which killed thirteen people and was attributed to FARC. Uribe is justifyng these provisons which divert finances and resources to the military in order "to counter terrorists and narco trafficants," and claims that the paramilitaries will be pursued with the same vigour as FARC. For more infomation, consult the August 3 feature about continent-wide economic "state of emergency" South America has entered, the June 25 feature on attacks on unions in Colombia, and Narconews. in italian: emergenza di stato [ Colombia CMI | News Agency New Colombia | Voz ] http://www.indymedia.org/index.php3?newswire=open

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V*i*a*g*r*a - order now.... JUUZQGKFY
by Kayla 18 Aug '02

18 Aug '02

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employment market for applied cryptographers?
by Adam Back 18 Aug '02

18 Aug '02

On the employment situation... it seems that a lot of applied cryptographers are currently unemployed (Tim Dierks, Joseph, a few ex-colleagues, and friends who asked if I had any leads, the spate of recent "security consultant" .sigs, plus I heard that a straw poll of attenders at the codecon conference earlier this year showed close to 50% out of work). Are there any more definitive security industry stats? Are applied crypto people suffering higher rates of unemployment than general application programmers? (From my statistically too small sample of acquaintances it might appear so.) If this is so, why is it? - you might think the physical security push following the world political instability worries following Sep 11th would be accompanied by a corresponding information security push -- jittery companies improving their disaster recovery and to a lesser extent info sec plans. - governments are still harping on the info-war hype, national information infrastructure protection, and the US Information Security Czar Clarke making grandiose pronouncements about how industry ought to do various things (that the USG spent the last 10 years doing it's best to frustrate industry from doing with it's dumb export laws) - even Microsoft has decided to make a play of cleaning up it's security act (you'd wonder if this was in fact a cover for Palladium which I think is likely a big play for them in terms of future control points and (anti-)competitive strategy -- as well as obviously a play for the home entertainment system space with DRM) However these reasons are perhaps more than cancelled by: - dot-com bubble (though I saw some news reports earlier that though there is lots of churn in programmers in general, that long term unemployment rates were not that elevated in general) - perhaps security infrastructure and software upgrades are the first things to be canned when cash runs short? - software security related contract employees laid off ahead of full-timers? Certainly contracting seems to be flat in general, and especially in crypto software contracts look few and far between. At least in the UK some security people are employed in that way (not familiar with north america). - PKI seems to have fizzled compared to earlier exaggerated expectations, presumably lots of applied crypto jobs went at PKI companies downsizing. (If you ask me over use of ASN.1 and adoption of broken over complex and ill-defined ITU standards X.500, X.509 delayed deployment schedules by order of magnitude over what was strictly necessary and contributed to interoperability problems and I think significantly to the flop of PKI -- if it's that hard because of the broken tech, people will just do something else.) - custom crypto and security related software development is perhaps weighted towards dot-coms that just crashed. - big one probably: lack of measurability of security -- developers with no to limited crypto know-how are probably doing (and bodging) most of the crypto development that gets done in general, certainly contributing to the crappy state of crypto in software. So probably failure to realise this issue or perhaps just not caring, or lack of financial incentives to care on the part of software developers. Microsoft is really good at this one. The number of times they re-used RC4 keys in different protocols is amazing! Other explanations? Statistics? Sample-of-one stories? Adam -- yes, still employed in sofware security industry; and in addition have been doing crypto consulting since 97 (http://www.cypherspace.net/) if you have any interesting applied crypto projects; reference commissions paid.

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This Girl Is Definitely Too Young
by cypherpunks＠Algebra.COM 18 Aug '02

18 Aug '02

Snapping Tight Teens Best of All They're FREE http://81.29.4.12/u001s46/index.html

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