August 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

Corporate welfare.
by Matthew X 03 Aug '02

03 Aug '02

Uncle Sam the sole institutional investor behind a dedicated national security fund, run by a dream team of VC heavyweights recruited from venture capitals epicenter, Sand Hill Road. (Bush White House Science adviser Floyd Kvamme, a senior partner at legendary Kleiner, Perkins would be an obvious choice for coach.) The CIA has already in effect done this with In-Q-Tel, the Silicon Valley venture shop it opened last year. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/inqtel/ Keeping the web safe http://www.safeweb.com/pr_inqtel.html . Really out-there work often stays in-house, at Sandia or Livermore or one of the other industrial-strength National Laboratories left over from the Cold War. But more typically, a complex set of specs gets jobbed out to one of the remaining handful of defense megacontractors, who undertake delivery of a very tightly specified black box or aircraft or weapons system, for some version of cost-plus. If all this sounds vaguely Industrial Age and socialist, it isR&D by Five-Year Plan. But virtually all the high-tech weaponry now being tossed at Afghanistan was developed this way. This is also the system that gives you the $400 toilet seat.

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Attack of the cretins.
by Matthew X 03 Aug '02

03 Aug '02

[Oracle Corp Chairman and CEO] Larry Ellison wants to sell databases, correct? So maybe now we can have everybody's fingerprints and retinal scans put into computers. And Big Brother can be efficient with Oracle software. Siebel [Systems] has purchased the world's largest American flag and attached it to the side of their building, supposedly to symbolize growth. Of course, that might imply their company's growth. That is, if you want to invest now, it's a good chance to get in at a low price. On the political side, you see Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and talking about God punishing us. The cretins are coming out of the woodwork, The "Office of Homeland Security" does sound a little over the top It sounds like a phrase out of Orwell's 1984. It's scary as hell. One of the things I don't think Bush gets is that the terrorists win if they take away our freedoms, directly or indirectly. Yesterdays Technology Tomorrowthe phrase has been thrown around the FBI for decades. It might be funny if it werent so true. The agents have encrypted radio; theyve got night vision; theyve got the surveillance stuff, says a former agent, one of several interviewed for this piece. They have top of the line everythingeverything except information technology. Not to dwell too much on Suns Scott McNealy, but he did popularize the phrase The network is the computer. This idea, which the Fortune 500 started grasping five years ago, is as anti-stovepipe as you can get. It sees individual computers as communication devices, whose ability to link up with the rest of the worlds computers is more important than the processing power they possess on their own. It sees the network as a platform on which knowledge can be shared, amplified and re-created in new innovative forms, the networked pieces adding up to far more than the sum of their parts. Victory in the information war depends on the ability to use that informationto understand it, to react to it quickly. September 11 was all based on controlling information, says Carver Mead, the CalTech physicist, one of the fathers of the microprocessor and a pioneer in neural networking, an approach to artificial intelligence based on replicating the connective miracles of the human brain. The fact is the hijackers controlled all the information. They had all the information on the first three planesthey were the only ones who knew what was going to happen. On the fourth plane, there was a tiny amount of information available to the passengers; they were able to use it to thwart the plan. We actually knew a lot about some of these people, says Mead. We actually did know a lot, but we didnt put it together. Putting it together requires acceptance of the idea that the network is the computerand that the bigger and broader it is, the better. a fit-for-the-1990s computer system will be in place at the agency by the end of 2003 I PROMIS you.The FBIs controversial Carnivore system, which can read e-mail and track suspects Web activity, reportedly has a data mining component called Coolmine to help it analyze the information. But for most of Uncle Sams security-related data, mining is something done by keyboard- and hunch-wielding humans, by hand.

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Electro-magnetic radiation as a weapon.
by Matthew X 03 Aug '02

03 Aug '02

Confirmed by 'spycatcher',peter wright.Mi5.Used against the greenham common wimmin anti-cruise protestors. From Green Anarchist, issue 10, February March 1986, page 4. Strong signals of up to one hundred times the normal background level of electro-magnetic radiations have been detected on a number of occasions. They are almost certainly capable of producing harmful effects on human beings. Although high signal levels are to be expected near a military base, the highest signals found are some ten times above anything we have recorded on the same instruments at other sites. We have also found that the strongest signals generally appear at those places where the women say they have suffered ill effects, and they followed a well defined path. Strong signals recorded on one occasion near the green gate were found to cover the womens' encampment but stop abruptly at the edge of the road leading up to the gate. The signals were also absent in the area around the nearby house. The strength of the signals has also been found on occasion to reflect the activity of the women. Signals at scarcely more than the background level have been found to increase rapidly when the women start a demonstration. http://www.greenanarchist.org.uk/Zapp.htm

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TECHNIQUES OF REPRESSION Lessons from Ireland.
by Matthew X 03 Aug '02

03 Aug '02

http://www.greenanarchist.org.uk/Nire.htm For 17 years now Northern Ireland has been the training ground for the British State's counter insurgency techniques. On a recent visit to Ireland Arthur Scargill told an audience of Irish people that the miners' strike of 1984 had shown Britain for what it really is, a vicious police state. Roars of laughter greeted the spectacle of an English person coming to Ireland to tell the Irish that they live in a police state. For 17 years now Northern Ireland has been the training ground and the Irish working class the guinea pigs for the British state's counter insurgency techniques. .... Since 1972 the British state has been able to erect the full apparatus of a totalitarian state here in Northern Ireland in the name of 'a war against terrorism', ie a war against the catholic working class. 'Totalitarian' is no exaggeration. The typical catholic housing estate here has an army barracks / fortress in the middle of it, keeping a close surveillance of everyone on the estate with close circuit TV cameras, infra red cameras for night vision and a radar system which can detect anyone moving out of sight of electronic eyes in cameras. Helicopters hover overhead for most of the day with zoom in cameras, and telephone of anyone 'discontented' is tapped and their mail opened. Now working class housing estates are built according to a British army architect's specification. They are designed to give minimum room for civil disobedience and maximum room for the British army to step in to crush any outbreaks. Housing estates are built with only one exit / entrance so anyone causing trouble can be easily trapped inside; each block is a different colour or shade, and army helicopters have a special colour code of the estate so that any block or single house can be quickly and easily pin pointed from the air. Etc.

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LAO TZU
by Matthew X 03 Aug '02

03 Aug '02

http://www.greenanarchist.org.uk/Laotzu.htm It is difficult to describe what anarchism is. It is a kind of political philosophy. But it has no founder, no standard texts, no political party associated with it. And it is hardly ever discussed by philosophers themselves. As a political movement it is seen by historians as primarily a radical response to industrial capitalism, which developed in Europe towards the middle of the last century. Yet as a social perspective anarchism has a much longer history. Kenneth Rexroth, for example, in his book 'Communalism' traces the history and development of the many attempts that have been made throughout recorded history to establish an organic community based on non-coercive relationships. For that is what is meant by anarchy, not chaos or disorder. The aims and ideas behind these attempts - like that of the Digger movement - were always expressed through published writings - sermons, analects, dialogues, political tracts, mystical writings and the like. These writings of course have historical interest; but they are also important to us in helping us to formulate alternatives to the ideologies of contemporary capitalism - whether of the liberal or statist kind. One of the earliest of such writings is the short mystical tract entitled 'Tao Te Ching'. It was written by a Chinese sage called Lao Tzu (the 'old philosopher') Etc.

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Re: Other uses of TCPA
by James A. Donald 03 Aug '02

03 Aug '02

-- On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, Nomen Nescio wrote: > As an exercise, try thinking of ways you could use TCPA to > promote "good guy" applications. What could you do in a P2P > network if you could trust that all participants were running > approved software? And if you I can only see one application for voluntary TCPA, and that is the application it was designed to perform: Make it possible run software or content which is encrypted so that it will only run on one computer for one time period. All the other proposed uses, both good and evil, seem improbably cumbersome, or easier to do in some other fashion. There are quite a few extremely evil uses it would be good for, but they would only be feasible if enforced by legislation -- otherwise people would turn the chip off, or tear it out. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Hzs0OpVc+bwQiFEZnMNE2zMLAXiYjMNrOWpH9WIb 2vvlvOjPeQH/ua0E9NnfeVaLvRGnxGuIvKZGcMZdN

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BERNing down the NSA.
by Matthew X 03 Aug '02

03 Aug '02

http://www.charm.net/~marc/chronicle/nsa_jul02.shtml The Baltimore Emergency Response Network (BERN), a group that seeks to halt U.S. military intervention in other sovereign nations and promotes peaceful solutions to conflict, will gather this Fourth of July, as it done since 1996, for its annual In[ter]dependence Day demonstration at the 38,000-employee National Security Agency. At 10 a.m. at 9800 Savage Road in Fort Meade, BERN members will demonstrate for an end to the NSA's secret and overt operations that they charge lead to killing, destruction and domination. They plan to deploy "Star Wars" balloons as examples of what they believe would be a more cost-effective form of missile defense than the "star wars" National Missile Defense program now underway. "Justice is the only means of security," said BERN member Max Obuszewski in a prepared statement to the press. "It is an ethical imperative that money wasted on spying and warmaking be diverted to satisfy the basic needs of all people of the world. We are interdependent as one human family." Four BERN members--Ellen Barfield, Max Obuszewski, Sister Carol Gilbert, O.P. and Sister Ardeth Platte, O.P--were arrested in October 2001 at the time of another BERN protest at the NSA. They were charged with trespass, destruction of government property and conspiracy. These charges were dropped in April 2002, but they were warned by a prosecutor at Fort Meade that new charges would be filed. "The defendants welcome an opportunity to challenge the National Security Agency in court," said Obuszewski. The four intend to take part in the July 4 protest. BERN activists have been seeking to meet with the NSA's director to discuss the agency's involvement with Star Wars, Echelon (which intercepts communications worldwide), and the Space Command Vision for 2020, which calls for domination of the heavens.

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APster favours the brave."Take the shot!"
by Matthew X 03 Aug '02

03 Aug '02

"...He decentralized decision-making authority and created a flat management structure to quickly respond to changes in his operating environment. He overcame turf battles by creating an overarching sense of mission and doctrine. He used the Internet, the globalization of news and the revolution in telecommunications to advance his organization's goals worldwide. He developed a complex organizational network in which information gets only to the right people at the right times. In his network, connections between individuals and groups are activated at key times to get work done and severed when they are no longer necessary. To terrorize America, Osama bin Laden adopted many of the management and leadership strategies that U.S. corporate leaders have embraced over the past decade-strategies that are gaining ground among U.S. military reformers and among leaders in the government's civilian bureaucracies. The strategies stem from a theory-being validated by American corporations, social activist groups and international terrorists-that in the information age, successful organizations behave more like computer networks than assembly lines..' http://news.openflows.org/

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Al Quida's Cauc cadres
by Matthew X 03 Aug '02

03 Aug '02

Russian media reports say that a Japanese militant is part of a group of around 100 Muslim fighters who crossed from Georgia into the breakaway republic of Chechnya July 29. Two militants captured by Russian forces said there were several mercenaries in the group, including a Japanese convert to Islam who was trained by instructors of Chechen warlord Ruslan Gelayev, ITAR-Tass and the Kommersant daily reported. Although the existence of the Japanese militant is unconfirmed, it potentially could further complicate counterterrorism operations around the world. As the number of alleged al Qaeda operatives and other Muslim militants coming from places other than the Middle East or South Asia rises, a key tool used to identify potential terrorists -- racial profiling -- may become even less effective. Russia has long argued that Chechen separatist fighters are linked to al Qaeda, and the presence of a Japanese man among their ranks suggests there is a broader ethnic mix from which al Qaeda or related militant groups can recruit. From China's ethnic Uighurs to American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh to a British national on trial in Dagestan for alleged terrorism, Muslim militants are not limited to Arabs or South Asians. The arrest in June of Jose Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican accused of planning to set off a so-called "dirty bomb" in the United States, only underscored this reality. Interestingly, some Japanese militant organizations have a long history of ties to Islamic militants. The Japanese Red Army, a leftist group responsible for the 1972 attack on Tel Aviv's Lod airport as well as several airline hijackings and attacks on foreign embassies, worked closely with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Although the Japanese Red Army disbanded in 2001 on the 30th anniversary of the Lod attack, the precedent for such cooperation still remains. http://www.stratfor.com/fib/fib_view.php?ID=205544 Dont fergit downunder,boy wonder davy Hicks,we gonna get you SUCKA!

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Larry Ellisons Bhopals
by Matthew X 03 Aug '02

03 Aug '02

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?artid=17958976 Oracle plans aggressive growth in India PTI [ SATURDAY, AUGUST 03, 2002 2:14:24 PM ] NEW YORK: Impressed by India's record in software, California-based Oracle, the world's largest enterprise software company, has charted out an aggressive growth plan in the country and expects to double its professional workforce in four years to deliver the best products and services. "India is a jewel in Oracle's crown," its executive vice-president for Asia-Pacific Derek Williams said. "We have invested well in expanding our presence in India and plan to continue to do so." It has expanded development facilities in Bangalore and is in the process of acquiring over seven acres of land in Hyderabad for expansion of its India Development Centre (IDC). Religious fascist extremeists in Govt,swastika's everywhere in the South,Larry feels right at home,"Good business is where you find it."

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