September 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

Saxotoxin sprinkled pretzels.
by Matthew X 09 Sep '02

09 Sep '02

Who will risk experimenting with SAXITOXIN? It is 1000 times more toxic >than a typical synthetic nerve gas such as sarin. It was used by CIA in >1950's as a suicide capsule. President Nixon ordered entire stock of of >SAXOTOXIN to be destroyed. > There are plus point to SAXOTOXIN, it has been used in medical research. > Checking on the structure of Saxitoxin in the Merck Index reveals that it >> has a most interesting architecture. Three terminal NH2 groups, an ether >> linkage and a ketone. Its stable in acid solution but decomposes rapidly in >> alkaline media. It looks like very good food for anaerobic bacteria and I >> suspect would decompose rapidly in the presence of acetogens and >> methanogens. Try a sample of digested sewage sludge (anaerobic) culture with >> some milk for a few days at 35 Celsius until gas is produced. Then add the >> Saxitoxin at known dilution, sample and analyse for Saxitoxin every hour. >> Within 12 hours I'll bet its all gone. Not sure of the specific test used to >> confirm saxitoxin but I guess its capable of parts per billion. Source in nature... http://www.scuba-doc.com/ingest.htm

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GREEN CARD CEK�L�S� KACIRMAYIN
by GREENCARDCEK�L�S�N� KACIRMAYIN 08 Sep '02

08 Sep '02

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by wangqing＠sina.com 08 Sep '02

08 Sep '02

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opsec hint: don't give classified into to Moussaoui
by Optimizzin Al-gorithym 08 Sep '02

08 Sep '02

US accidentally gave Moussaoui classified information on al-Qaeda: report September 07, 2002, 11:09 PM WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US government accidentally gave Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the September 11 attacks, classified information about al-Qaeda, ABC News reported. The documents and computer disks were mistakenly handed over to Moussaoui along with materials the government is required to furnish for his legal defense, several legal sources, including one at the Justice Department, told the network Friday. Moussaoui is serving as his own counsel. <snip> http://www.arabia.com/afp/news/int/article/english/0,10846,283377,00.html

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research & homeland insecurity
by Optimizzin Al-gorithym 08 Sep '02

08 Sep '02

(sent to AAAS members) Dear AAAS Member: As the anniversary of September 11th approaches, AAAS continues to be engaged in issues that relate to national security and the role of science and technology. One such issue is the safe and responsible conduct of research involving biological agents and toxins. AAAS was recently asked by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to assist in alerting our members to the federal mandate (Public Law 107-188) requiring all facilities and persons that possess, use, or transfer agents or toxins considered a threat to animals, plants, animal and plant products and/or public health (called "select agents") to notify the CDC and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Approximately 200,000 facilities were sent a copy of the notification form by the CDC. The deadline for submitting a completed form to the CDC is September 10, 2002. All entities that receive a copy of the form must comply, even if they do not possess a select agent or toxin. If you are in possession of a select agent or toxin and did not receive a form, you should call CDC's toll-free number: 1-866-567-4232. Further information on the select agent list, procedures for notification, and exemptions can be found at the following websites: CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/od/ohs/lrsat.htm USDA: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/ncie AAAS is initiating an effort to monitor the effects of new national security initiatives on the research community. In that regard, we'd be pleased to hear about your experience, whether positive or negative, in complying with this new federal mandate. You can forward such information to Dr. Mark Frankel, director of the AAAS Program on Scientific Freedom, Responsibility and Law at mfrankel(a)aaas.org Sincerely, Alan I. Leshner Chief Executive Officer

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Re: seeking information for Tired News article
by Optimizzin Al-gorithym 08 Sep '02

08 Sep '02

At 02:33 PM 9/7/02 -0500, J.A. Terranson wrote: >> What kinds of people are involved? > >Doctors, Lawyers, Mathematecians, Felons, Druggies, Anti-druggies, >Anarchists, Libertarians, Right-Wing-Fanatics, Left-Wing-Fanatics, >Teachers, Housewives, Househusbands, students, cops, criminals... We're all just voices in TM's head.. >> Who (socially, i mean, not names!) exactly are the members of the group? > >Agains, there IS NO GROUP. I'm not trying to be cute here - THERE IS >NO GROUP. The whole concept of "group" is flawed in this context. Dogthinker seeks Alpha Cat. >> WN has had a very familiar relationship with the cypherpunks - has it been >> viewed as a positive thing? Which? WN is widely considered lame ('tired' to you) esp. since Declan left. On the other hand, publicity can attract contentful participants. Also trolling feds and folks looking for help with homework. >> With whom else are the cypherpunks allied? > >[I actually had to take a moment to wipe the tears of laughter from >the question] > >Nobody. Well a few authors have gotten free plane trips & bed & board at the Feds' expense.. some even came back after it was over. Any such "alliance" would require a Group Consensus - >something which is just patently impossible. If you ever find two >CP's who can agree on enough to come to a broad Consensus, you let me >know so I can mark it on my calendar. True 'nuff. Now ask us about protocols which let you determine a consensus... well, that's tasty. >> Thanks for your time. I am hoping to get the story done before the end of >> next week (i.e. before the actual party.) Of course, I would never publish >> the location of the party or any other information that you don't feel >> comfortable about. And 'we' should 'trust' "you" *why* ?? (Ho-ho, list relevence! Explain/define the scare-quotes! For extra credit, explain how protocols might avoid spoofing.)

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police video surveillance of public schools; facerecog too
by Optimizzin Al-gorithym 08 Sep '02

08 Sep '02

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-fi-campus8sep08.story SANTEE, Calif. -- As Mike Brooder pulls into the student parking lot outside West Hills High School, wireless cameras record his face and license plate--doing the same to every car that follows. The cameras then track the 17-year-old senior as he walks up a concrete path, studies his schedule, scratches his chin, waves to friends and then wanders to class. Nearly every move Brooder makes--and every move of his 2,300 classmates--is captured and stored in the campus' database. Following last September's terrorist attacks and years of school shootings, West Hills High sits on the cutting edge of the emerging surveillance society. Each bathroom door is monitored. Sensors that detect the smoke of a single match send alerts to campus security. By Christmas, four more cameras will be installed, and hall monitors will carry wireless computers that can pull up a student's school picture, class schedule and attendance record. School officials are considering whether to expand the SkyWitness surveillance system by adding facial recognition software that will allow a computer to filter out who should--and who should not--be on campus. Technology, once viewed primarily as a learning tool, is building a wall of electronic security on campus. "People are saying they expected this to happen after the shootings and the terrorists last year," said Brooder, an honor student who plays on the school baseball team. "Still, it seems a little overwhelming and extreme." And perhaps likely to become far more common--not just in schools, but everywhere. Schools are among the first to embrace new technology, often because companies view campuses as perfect testing grounds before rolling products out to corporate America. For instance, one of the companies behind West Hills' system, PacketVideo Corp., predicts that demand for products like SkyWitness will grow, as people are tracked at factories, office parks, stadiums--even places such as the Third Street Promenade shopping district in Santa Monica. Companies like the fact that students enjoy fewer constitutional protections than adults and have lower expectations of privacy than their parents. For many students, such surveillance is standard, with cameras at every bank ATM and many fast-food drive-throughs. But the desire to protect has led to an erosion of individual privacy, civil liberties advocates argue. "Once privacy is gone, you can't get it back," said Dale Kelly Bankhead, a spokeswoman for the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial counties. "This is not just about schools, but about a broader social attitude." Relying on such high-tech systems is an unusual move for high schools, but is expected to become a more popular trend in the post-Sept, 11 world, said Kenneth S. Trump, president and chief executive of National School Safety and Security Services, a Cleveland-based consulting firm. At Tewksbury Memorial High School, about an hour outside Boston, the push for security has gone so far as to result in a video-surveillance system that lets both educators--and local police--watch the hallways. "Cameras are everywhere someone wants to watch over," Trump said. The technology at West Hills relies on advanced hardware, but basic, off-the-shelf technology is already used by both parents and educators to watch kids. Software programs can take snapshots of every Web page they visit and every e-mail they send. Devices such as AutoWatch can be popped into an automobile and programmed to record a car's speed, as well as times, dates and the lengths of time it is driven. Cell-phone bills list the calls a student makes and receives. "You might call it control," said Joe Schramm, head of security at West Hills. "We call it keeping the kids safe." Tucked into the scrub-brush valley of Santee, West Hills High appears to be nothing but safe. The average SAT score is nearly 1100, and 70% of last year's seniors are attending either a community college or a four-year institution this fall. But West Hills High has not gone untouched by fear. Less than three miles away, Charles "Andy" Williams went on a shooting rampage last year, killing two students and wounding 13 others at Santana High School. The community was stunned when nearly two weeks later another student launched a shooting spree at a different school in the Grossmont Union High School District. Jason Hoffman, 18, wounded five people at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon. Hoffman committed suicide while awaiting trial. Last month Williams was sentenced to prison for 50 years to life. Despite the violence, the school district was forced to cut its budget across the board; the security group lost three of its 10 employees, including two of the staff members who helped patrol the 76-acre West Hills campus. Hoping to offset the pain of the staff cuts, the district started to look at technology it already had in place on its campuses and explore how the tools could be used for security purposes, said Sue Mangiapane, education global account manager for Cisco Systems Inc. The San Jose computer giant had been hired to install the core routers, switches and servers that formed the computer brain to link campuses with the district's offices and, in turn, to the Internet. Initially, the technology had been designed for instructional use, such as creating digital lockers where students could store their electronic art projects. Then, the focus shifted toward security. At a technology conference this spring, executives from Cisco and San Diego-based PacketVideo began discussing the school shootings and tossing around ideas of how the tragedies could have been avoided. "Schools aren't a key security market for us," said James Carol, chairman and co-founder of PacketVideo, a privately owned software company that creates wireless video networks. The company, along with Cisco and Sony, donated the equipment and handled the installation of the $50,000 SkyWitness system. "This was the right thing to do for a school that's essentially in our backyard," Carol said. The project at West Hills also provided the technology companies with a test lab in which to develop and try out a security system that the firms will ultimately market to corporate America and government agencies. Already, PacketVideo's software is used by cell phone and technology firms such as NTT DoCoMo in Japan and Siemens AG in Germany, and tapped for private security projects. Tech firms such as Microsoft Corp. and Apple Computer Co. have a long history of donating software and hardware to schools. The motivation is partly the push to be a corporate good citizen and partly the desire to influence the consumer habits of future shoppers. "If you want to stress-test a technology, particularly a security system, a school is a good place," said Trump of National School Safety and Security Services. "Most often, the biggest obstacle a company must overcome is the issue of cost. If [the technology] is free, many schools will be open to it." Aiding the decision is the fact that minors have fewer rights than adults, said John Pescatore, research director for security at the industry-consulting firm Gartner. "If the system gets too intrusive, the school and the technology companies are likely to get fewer complaints and fewer legal actions filed over it" than they would elsewhere, Pescatore said. "You can do things on a school campus that you could never do in an office building." Few of the students at West Hills or their parents knew about the new surveillance system when classes began in late August. The school's football team, the Wolf Pack, and the campus cheerleaders had practiced on campus this summer and saw the cameras being installed. Rumors flew, as word of the new technology became campus gossip. Some students, carrying their bar-coded photo identification cards, grumbled about the digital devices that tracked their every step. But most wandered nonchalantly by the wireless cameras, ignoring the monitoring. "We're observed all the time," said senior Kimberly Schmidtke, 17. "It's just that they're now taping us." That such surveillance would not only be accepted but also embraced by some teenagers marks a subtle cultural shift over public monitoring. A few decades ago, students rallied against having their actions recorded by authority figures. But as camera technologies became cheaper and easier to use, they became far more widely used, said Bankhead of the ACLU. Digital cameras sit on top of home computers, peek out of mall ceilings and take snapshots at gas station pumps. Cities such as Simi Valley have approved grants to pay for cameras to catch graffiti vandals, and dozens of towns nationwide use cameras to capture drivers who speed through red lights. "It's been so incremental, we almost didn't notice such monitoring of our lives was happening," Bankhead said. "We don't even know it's there. The more it's there, the more it seems to make sense to people." In the first few days of school, only a few parents voiced complaints--not about the technology itself, but that the district had not informed them that the system would be put into use. "For something so significant, it's the district's responsibility to disclose what they're doing," said Patty Everts, 50, while waiting Monday to pick up her daughter at West Hills. "We knew there was new technology on the campus that was being upgraded. Most people assumed it was for educational purposes, not security." School officials plan to send a letter out to parents next month "as soon as we know the full potential of how we are going to use this technology," said Principal Jim Peabody. "The technology will help us keep kids safe and keep out people who shouldn't be on this campus." But the security system could not have prevented last year's school rampages, because the shooters were not people who didn't belong on campus. Reliance on such technology to attempt the creation of a protective wall horrifies privacy proponents, who insist that the West Hills system is not only invasive, but also gives parents and school officials a false sense of security. "No one's even asking the question: Is this truly going to make my child safer?" Bankhead said. To 66-year-old grandfather Jerry Parli, the answer is moot. Lingering at the entrance of West Hills, he sat patiently in the hot August afternoon, waiting to pick up his two granddaughters. "It's about time they do something like this," he said. "It's a terrible thing, but it's time to embrace Big Brother." ---- "Well, as long as everyone's videotaping everyone else, I guess justice will be done" Marge Simpson

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Hershey Highway.
by Matthew X 08 Sep '02

08 Sep '02

Later this month, the General Services Administration will announce the first government agencies to be cross-certified with the federal public-key infrastructure bridge, making it easier for agency users to exchange data securely. The federal PKI bridge is designed as a way to link agencies' certificate authorities (CAs), which are the central component of a PKI. A CA is the server used to generate and manage digital certificates to identify users and secure their transactions. By cross-certifying CAs certificate policies through the bridge, which acts as a trusted third party, an agency that needs to accept a certificate from another federal agency, and ultimately other non-federal entities, to conduct an electronic transaction will know that the certificate can be trusted. On Sept. 18, GSA plans to hold a cross-signing ceremony that will show certificates from the Defense Department, the Agriculture Department's National Finance Center, NASA and the Treasury Department can interoperate, said David Temoshok, acting director for identity policy at GSA's office of governmentwide policy. Those agencies' PKI domains "will be able to cross-certify through the bridge" and will be recognized by each other, Temoshok said while attending the Interagency Resources Management Conference in Hershey, Pa., this week. He added that in 2003, GSA hopes to add Illinois and Canada to that list. http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/0902/web-bridge-09-06-02.asp Tech keeps track of parolees Florida county using VeriTracks system, which can plots a person's location relative to crimes committed Run pugsly RUN!

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Chop Chop
by Matthew X 08 Sep '02

08 Sep '02

CC is green tobacco with added saltpetre to assist burning,its sold under the counter in au to evade huge taxes on standard coffin nails and rolling sotweed. Cigarettes smuggling is huge world wide,a run between Turkey and southern Russia had nuclear materials as a backload to NJ.When the US customs found it the CIA got shirty.Enough to attack the twin Towers? maybe... http://organizedcrime.about.com/library/weekly/aa090402a.htm A Smoking Gun Cigarette smuggling is a billion dollar industry with links to organized crime and terrorism. In the film "Goodfellas," Henry Hill's first arrest comes about because he is selling a shipment of hijacked cigarettes to factory workers. The truth of cigarette smuggling is not nearly as innocent as that scene would lead us to believe. ETC.

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Call to repeal the PATRIOT act.
by Matthew X 08 Sep '02

08 Sep '02

http://workers.labor.net.au/151/c_historicalfeature_bush.html Washington has become the first State Labor Council in the U.S. to call on the AFL-CIO to seek repeal of the USA Patriot Act and oppose the Bush Administration, reports Fred Hyde. *********** The floor of the convention at the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC) in Spokane, Washington was hushed when Gil Veyna took the mike to support "A Resolution Against the War, Attacks on Civil Liberties and Cuts in Public Services. "As a Chicano and a unionist," Veyna said resoundingly "I resent Bush's war on terrorism which is a war on working people and immigrants." Veyna, a 22-year Veterans Administration hospital employee, was at the August 19-22, 2002 convention as a delegate for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3197. His union is one of several which has raised objections to the governments plan to remove civil service protections and collective bargaining rights from the 170,000 federal workers in the newly formed Department of Homeland Security. In his comments, Veyna criticized the national leadership of the AFL-CIO for its unstinting support of the military actions in Afghanistan. He noted that now the administration has turned its guns on dockworkers, referring to the threat to call out troops in the name of "national security" in the eventuality of a strike by the International Longshore Workers Union. Veyna was no less critical of what he termed "federally sanctioned racial profiling following 9/11" which put immigrants under the spotlight and led to many unfairly losing their jobs. When Veyna sat down, not a single delegate of the 500 unionists representing locals throughout the state rose to speak against the resolution, and it passed overwhelmingly. Thus Washington became the first State Labor Council in the country to call on the AFL-CIO to seek repeal of the USA Patriot Act and oppose the U.S. government's war without end. MORE ON http://workers.labor.net.au/151/c_historicalfeature_bush.html

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