December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Virtual Casinos booming in Antigua
by Damaged Justice 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[1]Los Angeles Times [News..............] ______________ [Site Index.......] ______________ [2][ISMAP]-[3]FRONT PAGE [4]Leading Ladies Sunday, September 21, 1997 'Virtual Casinos' Cash In on Lax Rules in Antigua By [5]MARK FINEMAN, Times Staff Writer [6]PREV STORY [7]NEXT STORY S T. JOHN'S, Antigua and Barbuda--None of the 64,000 residents of this small, three-island Caribbean nation have complained about the latest international gambling boom to sweep their secretive little piece of paradise. In the past few months, more than a dozen casinos have opened here--though most Antiguans haven't seen them and don't know they exist. Packed with games of roulette, blackjack, poker and craps, each gambling house is small enough to fit into the corner of a tiny room. Yet their owners say they are taking in millions of dollars a month from thousands of bettors, from Los Angeles to New York and beyond. It's Internet gambling--a wave of hot new Web sites set up as "virtual casinos" that allow you to win or lose real money from the comfort of your own home. And most of these sites originate in small villas or obscure offices on 108-square-mile Antigua, which is as famous for its secrecy and scandals as it is for its freewheeling tax laws and banking policies. There are no taxes on capital gains or income in Antigua and Barbuda. The government shuns outside scrutiny, even from its own citizens. During the past decade, it has licensed at least 57 offshore banks and at least two major sports betting operations, and only it knows the names and assets of their owners. And under legislation passed earlier this year, Antigua has been charging just $100,000 a year for an Internet casino license that offers a similar promise of minimum regulation, maximum anonymity and tax-free profit. But all that may soon change. The "Interbet" boom comes amid a series of recent corruption and fraud scandals here, the biggest involving the collapse of the world's first Internet bank. From a base in Antigua and with the promise of "utmost privacy," two Russians allegedly used the Web to bilk wealthy customers in the United States and elsewhere out of tens of millions of dollars before closing the bank and fleeing last month. The virtual casino boom also comes at a time when off-island critics, among them U.S. law enforcement agencies and the State Department, say Antigua's loose regulatory track record and its secrecy laws have amounted to a recipe for disaster. Together, they offer organized crime rings and international drug cartels a haven to "wash" billions in illicit profits through Antiguan offshore businesses. "Antigua's offshore banking sector--established in the mid-1980s with only limited regulation--expanded rapidly in recent years. . . . Unfortunately, inadequate regulation and vetting led to a surge in questionable banking operations--a number with alleged links to Russian criminal elements," declared the State Department's most recent report on the international narcotics and money-laundering trades, issued in March. "The growing potential for money laundering has been an increasing concern of both the U.S. and Antiguan governments," the report added. The advent of Internet casino gambling here merely ups the ante for international agencies attempting to prevent global money laundering and computer fraud in an era when criminal technology is fast eclipsing the tools of law enforcement. The State Department specifically cited Antigua's Internet banking and casino industries--"all with a similar lack of effective regulation"--as cause for concern. The U.S. report carefully praised Antiguan Prime Minister Lester Bird for tough new laws against money laundering passed in December and for his personal vow to crack down on the island's booming drug-transshipment trade. His government also is introducing tougher regulation of all offshore operations, the State Department noted. The few owners of virtual casinos in Antigua who agreed to be interviewed by The Times asserted that they welcome the new regulations, insisting that their operations are not only legal and honest but also state of the art. American Bill Scott, who moved his offshore sports betting operation to Antigua from the nearby island of St. Martin two years ago, said his Intercasino Web site was a natural next step for his parent company, World Wide Tele Sports. Located in the heart of St. John's, the nation's capital--atop a modern five-story, glass-and-marble building that most Antiguans think houses a computer school--Scott's operation handles millions of dollars in U.S. sports bets via 800 numbers under a separate Antiguan gaming license, he says. Scott says he was drawn to Antigua by the efficient phone system and, of course, the fact that gambling is legal here in a tax haven where confidentiality reigns and where even the Internet casinos are not viewed askance. Surrounded by dozens of computer stations where young Antiguans in headsets were taking sports bets on every conceivable contest one recent Sunday afternoon, Scott said business in his new Internet casino--located in a tiny corner of an adjacent office--is so good that he plans to open two more this week. "It's like Vegas. If you lose in one casino, you can go down the street to another," he said. To play at an Internet casino, gamblers access a casino site on the World Wide Web through their personal computers, establish an account with a credit card or money order and collect their virtual "chips." The computer program ushers them into a full-color, multidimensional casino that looks remarkably similar to those in Las Vegas, and they can gamble at the table of their choice. Given that it is an industry where only the customers' credit cards and money orders are real--risked against software and humans they never see--Scott acknowledged that Antigua's latest cyber-craze is ripe for fraud. But he said his casino uses the latest technology from two Canadian computer scientists, along with the older technology of random number generator chips, to ensure the fairest game around. Developed by the directors of Toronto-based Crytologic, which is publicly traded in Canada, Scott's casino software uses banking and encryption technology to, as he puts it, "convert real money into virtual cash" quickly and safely. And all winners, he said, are paid in a day. Although Scott said he welcomed the "big package of new regulations" that the Antiguan government recently sent him as key to protecting the image of the new industry, he added, "I don't think anybody has the knowledge of how to regulate this technology." And that, U.S. officials say, is especially true in Antigua, where the cash-strapped government has few resources and, critics say, little resolve to become more open. "This island is operated like a lodge. It's like a secret society," said Winston Derrick, who publishes Antigua's only independent newspaper. "You have to fight and fight for information." The government's annual expenditures, for example, are published, but years after the money is spent--a deliberate effort to minimize public interest and scrutiny, Derrick said. He added that police officials say even the most basic crime report is confidential. Although the government permits Derrick to publish his feisty Daily Observer, he and his brother were arrested when they started the island's first independent radio station last December. The case is still in court, and the station has not reopened. The prospect of prison also looms for Leonard Tim Hector if the opposition leader and publisher writes another word about the island's latest scandal--this one involving the prime minister and his family--in Hector's biweekly, the Outlet. Bird, whose family has controlled Antigua's power and politics for half a century, won an injunction against Hector after the opposition leader published stories attacking the premier for alleged corruption. One quoted a Venezuelan businessman, who was convicted of cocaine trafficking along with one of Bird's brothers two years ago, as saying that the premier took a $1-million bribe from Colombia's Cali cartel to permit drug transshipments through Antigua--a charge Bird flatly denies. Hector said he is undecided about whether to risk what would be his 12th prison term here by publishing more of the Venezuelan's accusations. But the injunction has not stopped him from sharply criticizing Bird's government for its policies toward offshore business and its lax regulation. He blamed those factors for the recent Internet bank debacle and said they invite similar abuse in the virtual casino industry. "They simply do not intend to regulate these new Internet casinos," Hector said in a recent interview. "The prime minister doesn't see that in his best interest." None of the few government officials who oversee the new cyber-casino trade along with all other offshore businesses on the island could be reached for comment. In the aftermath of the Internet bank collapse, however, the official Antigua & Barbuda Government Internet Web page has posted the new offshore rules and regulations for closer inspection. But a look at the rise and fall of the European Union Bank, which billed itself as the world's first full-service Internet bank, helps explain why U.S. officials are viewing Antigua's latest cyber-boom with concern. Privately, many of those officials said the Antiguan government should have been suspicious of the bank's operations long before it closed its only door in early August, leaving tens of millions of dollars in deposits missing. The Bank of England grew suspicious of the bank in October. It publicly warned investors that the bank was offering unrealistically high interest rates in an unsecured environment that is not policed. After a similar alert from U.S. banking officials in April, the state of Idaho issued a cease-and-desist order against the bank, barring it from offering its services to Internet customers in the state. But it wasn't until the day the bank shut down that Antigua's new Office of National Drugs and Money Laundering Policy issued an official "fraud alert," which opposition publisher Hector called "closing the stable door after both thieves and horses have bolted." Jane Rodriguez, Bill Scott's systems administrator--who set up the Intercasino Web site--concluded: "If the government wants the revenue to continue to flow, they know they have got to make an effort to control it." [8]Search the archives of the Los Angeles Times for similar stories. You will not be charged to look for stories, only to retrieve one. Copyright Los Angeles Times [9]PREV STORY [10]NEXT STORY _________________________________________________________________ [News..............] ______________ [Site Index.......] ______________ References 1. http://www.latimes.com/ 2. http://www.latimes.com/GIFS/HEADERS/hfrontpg.map 3. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/FRONT/t000084367.html#secmap 4. http://www.latimes.com/cgi-bin/redir?SpaceID=73&AdID=404&URL=http://www.lea… 5. mailto:Mark.Fineman@latimes.com 6. http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/FRONT/t000084295.html 7. http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/FRONT/index.htm 8. http://www.latimes.com/HOME/ARCHIVES/simple.htm?bot 9. http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/FRONT/t000084295.html 10. http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/FRONT/index.htm

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Trac[k]ing the Successful Drug User
by Damaged Justice 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[1][Internet news from Wired News. Read the latest Internet news stories, scan technology news headlines. Wired News also provides cyber-culture and political news about the wired world] [] [2][Navigation bar] [3][Stocks] ___________ ______________ [4][Search] [5][WIRED magazine] [6]______________ ___________ ______________ Steve Silberman --> [] [7][Back] Tracking the 'Successful' Drug User by [8]Steve Silberman 6:05pm 19.Sep.97.PDT If you fired up a bowl of Humboldt's finest to unwind last night, and still made it to the PTA meeting and your Fortune 500 job this morning, there's a new survey of recreational drug use on the Web that is targeting you. The survey, called [9]Drugnet, aims to track patterns of drug consumption among what researcher Tom Nicholson calls "the largest population of drug users in America - people who use drugs in a controlled, limited way, whose central focus is not drugs, but their families, friends and communities." By deploying their questionnaire on the Web, the researchers are hoping to use the relative anonymity of the Net to access a "hidden population" of drug users who would be disinclined to give accurate reports of illegal use to face-to-face interviewers, Nicholson says. Drugnet researcher John White, who, like Nicholson, is a professor of public health at Western Kentucky University, adds that the study aims to fill a gap in the available research literature created by the fact that many published studies focus on drug users who are in rehab or are students. In an era when national drug policy is based on prohibition and interdiction, says White, "It's an open secret that successful people do these drugs, but no one talks about it... There's a myth that all drug use is abuse." The third co-author of the study, David Duncan, author of the textbook Drugs and the Whole Person, admits that the group is being "really experimental" by drawing its respondents from the Net. While some studies in the past have relied on newspaper ads or word of mouth to cast a net around their sample population, the authors of Drugnet are using a modern, if crude, way of marshaling eyeballs to their site: spamming mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups. (The group's post to rec.antiques launched a thread about collecting 19th century drug paraphernalia.) The advantage of tapping the Net as a sample, Duncan claims, is that the online world is skewed toward a well-educated, employed, higher-income population - the very stratum of "successful" users the study is intended to reach. Contrary to media stereotypes of drug users as dysfunctional misfits, when the researchers conducted a pilot study for two weeks last November, they found their sample of 276 users were "a little more socially involved than the average American," Duncan observes - "more likely to vote regularly, more likely to be politically active, and they read more." And the respondents were "a close match to population norms" on a scale of social functioning used by the National Center of Health Statistics called the General Well-Being Schedule, he says. About a quarter of the respondents said they used LSD, with several citing "spiritual exploration" as a reason for their consumption of the drug. "It's a well-known fact that hallucinogens can be used as a religious, life-changing experience," says White. "People do it, but they feel they can't really talk about it in an atmosphere of non-charged discourse." Contributing to the "charge" around that discourse is White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey "spreading the dogma" of the Just Say No approach to drug education "as thick as he can," Duncan says, adding that studies like Drugnet have been discouraged because "it doesn't help you to get grants to go against the mainstream of thought." Each year, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration releases a widely-referenced report called the [10]National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Joe Gfroerer of the agency's Office of Applied Studies says that the study uses "self-administered answer sheets," returned to the interviewers in sealed envelopes, for the sections of the survey concerned with illegal drug use. Though Gfroerer admits that the survey is prone to "underreporting" - especially of "hard-core use" of drugs like heroin - he disputes the researchers' claim that the Internet is the best way to get a representative sample and accurate reporting of drug use. "I'm not sure that people would feel more secure reporting sensitive data over the Internet," Gfroerer says. "The problem with the Net is, you're responding to people you can't see, and you have no idea if the study is legitimate. We send a representative to people's homes who show identification and explain the significance of the study." He did say, however, that if the study was "controlled properly," you could get a "very large sample" of valuable data. The researchers admit that some Web surfers have expressed reservations about answering queries about illegal activities over the Net. As an extra security measure, survey instructions urge respondents to access the questionnaire via [11]the Anonymizer. White says that the research team is presently applying for a grant to purchase a secure server, for an enlarged version of Drugnet that could extend for years. "This is just the beginning of this study," says Nicholson. "We're looking at the future." Related Wired Links: [12]Taking on the 'Culture of Prohibition' 3.Jun.97 Find more related stories from the Web's top news sites with [13]NewsBot [14][Back] [15][Navigation strip] [16]Rants & Raves: Send your rants and raves to Wired News. [17]Tips: Have a story or tip for Wired News? Send it. [18]Copyright © 1993-97 Wired Ventures Inc. and affiliated companies. All rights reserved. [19][HotWired and HotBot] [] [] [20]Click Here for SAP America [21]Tracking the 'Successful' Drug User [Culture] CULTURE Today's Headlines [22]Barney Doll Speaks, Takes Orders from TV [23]Tracking the 'Successful' Drug User [24]Dee Snider Plays Twisted Netster Onscreen [25]New Search Engine Makes Data Manageable [26]Purple Moon Finally Rises [27]Hit and Run [28]Street Cred: The Sponsored Life [29]Click Here for SAP America References 1. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/7055.html#masthead.… 2. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/7055.html#nav1.map 3. http://www.hotwired.com/cgi-bin/redirect/10010/http://stocks.wired.com/ 4. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/7055.html#nav2.map 5. http://www.hotwired.com/cgi-bin/redirect/10012/http://www.wired.com/wired/ 6. http://www.wired.com/news/download/email.cgi 7. http://www.wired.com/news/news/top_stories/ 8. mailto:digaman@wired.com 9. http://wkuweb1.wku.edu/~drugnet 10. http://www.samhsa.gov/oas/nhsda/pe1996/httoc.htm 11. http://www.anonymizer.com/ 12. http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/4936.html 13. http://www.hotwired.com/cgi-bin/redirect/10018/http://www.newsbot.com/ 14. http://www.wired.com/news/news/top_stories/ 15. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/7055.html#navstrip.… 16. http://www.wired.com/news/rantrave.html 17. mailto:tips@wired.com 18. http://www.wired.com/wired/full.copyright.html 19. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/7055.html#nav3.map 20. http://www.wired.com/event.ng?Type=click&ProfileID=6&RunID=147&AdID=763&Red… 21. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/7055.html 22. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/7023.html 23. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/7055.html 24. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/6998.html 25. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/6992.html 26. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/6986.html 27. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/7018.html 28. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/6775.html 29. http://www.wired.com/event.ng?Type=click&ProfileID=6&RunID=147&AdID=763&Red…

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FBI vs Silicon Valley: Guess Who's Winning?
by Damaged Justice 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[1]The most expandable handheld PC just got bigger. [2]Click here to find out how the S/390 server is now providing superb scalability for the hottest applications (ibm) [3][LINK] [4][LINK] [5][LINK] [6][LINK] [7]SIGNUP[8]ABOUT[9]BW_CONTENTS[10]BW_+![11]DAILY_BRIEFING[12]SEARCH[1 3]CONTACT_US THE FBI VS. SILICON VALLEY: GUESS WHO'S WINNING Just a few weeks ago, it looked as if High-Tech Land was near victory in a protracted war with Washington. Its objective: relax export controls on software and hardware that encrypt into unbreakable code everything from corporate secrets to personal diaries. An industry-backed bill to ease the curbs, pushed by Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), was sailing through key House committees. But with the doggedness of a gumshoe, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Louis J. Freeh has handed the techies a stunning setback. Raising the specter of pedophiles, drug dealers, and terrorists hiding their dirty secrets in electronic code, Freeh has been pressing Congress to go beyond export controls and impose unprecedented restraints on encrypted products in the U.S., as well. He's winning. On Sept. 9, the House National Security Committee gutted the Goodlatte bill's provisions liberalizing encryption exports. Two days later, the House Intelligence Committee added domestic controls that guarantee law enforcement officials access to coded information. Curbs are vital so ''we do not plow into the Information Age having weakened our ability to protect the national security,'' says Committee Chairman Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.). Capitol Hill's about-face has high-tech execs and civil libertarians aghast. The issue has united the likes of Microsoft, Intel, auto makers, and phone companies with the American Civil Liberties Union and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson. VIOLATING PRIVACY? They see Big Brother not only hampering commerce but also violating rights to privacy and free speech. Freeh's plan to guarantee police access to decoding ''keys'' would be technically impossible or hugely expensive, says Microsoft Corp. lobbyist Jack Krumholtz. ''We risk impeding the growth of electronic commerce,'' he warns. Adds Rhett Dawson, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, which represents computer producers and users: ''There is a sense on the Hill that this is a good time to run over Fourth Amendment'' limits on searches and seizures. Freeh's proposal would require everyone who encrypts data to use technology that permits law enforcers to break the code. In one approach, company or personal records would be encrypted in easily breakable code--or the decoding keys would be held by a designated party, such as a central repository in a company. Police could then get a court order and obtain the keys without the users' knowledge. ''Not only does the government have the right to break down your door, but your door can't be stronger than their battering ram--or you must leave a key at the police station,'' fumes Stephen D. Crocker, chief technology officer at Cybercash Inc. It's a dramatic expansion of police wiretap power, warns Donald Haines of the ACLU. ''It puts everyone at risk.'' Freeh counters that a world in which criminals have unbreakable codes poses a real threat to law enforcement. That argument has swayed many lawmakers, who fear appearing soft on crime. Just a few years ago, the campaign to curb encryption was waged largely by the super-secret National Security Agency. It aimed to keep state-of-the-art products out of the hands of foreign terrorists. Since the U.S. was the world leader in data-scrambling technology, that meant extending cold war export controls. ''It would have been very difficult for an agency no one ever heard of to fight Bill Gates and the entire software and hardware industry,'' says Washington attorney and former NSA official Stewart A. Baker. ''Freeh can.'' Stung by their sudden defeat, industry and civil liberties groups are holding emergency meetings to plan an all-court press. Their first goal: prevent the House Commerce Committee, next in line to take a crack at the Goodlatte bill, from also adding domestic controls. After Commerce votes in September, lobbying will shift to the Rules Committee, which must sort out several radically different versions of the legislation and send one along for a vote. The coalition is also fighting a strict encryption bill in the Senate. Meanwhile, the industry is trying to figure out where the White House stands. Vice-President Al Gore and Commerce Under Secretary William A. Reinsch, who oversees export policy, say the Administration still doesn't support mandatory domestic curbs--and the FBI chief is merely expressing his own views. Opponents don't completely buy that. Freeh may be out on his own, but he's clearly got the backing of the Administration, says Rebecca Gould of the Business Software Alliance. ''There's no doubt there's been a change in policy.'' The likely outcome: a tactical retreat by industry to avoid an all-out rout. The techies have long rejected a compromise, believing they would prevail. Now, pressure from the coalition of business and civil libertarians will probably prevent Congress from imposing domestic controls. But the price will be living with a modified version of export controls. ''For once, they are in a position where they may have to negotiate,'' says Reinsch. The electronic wizards seem to have met their match in a Washington cop named Louis Freeh. EDITED BY OWEN ULLMANN By John Carey Press __ for more information from Business Week's Archive*. *There's no charge to see this list of stories. A small payment is required only if you decide to view any specific article. [14]SIGNUP[15]ABOUT[16]BW_CONTENTS[17]BW_+![18]DAILY_BRIEFING[19]SEARC H[20]CONTACT_US [21][LINK] Updated Sept. 18, 1997 by bwwebmaster Copyright 1997, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved. 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Memory - 32Megs - $99
by Need More Memory? 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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irs_1.html
by root 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Reuters New Media [ Yahoo | Write Us | Search | Info ] [ Index | News | World | Biz | Tech | Politic | Sport | Scoreboard | Entertain | Health ] _________________________________________________________________ Previous Story: U.S., Japan Face Off on Trade at G7 Meeting Next Story: Clinton Warns He Will Veto Education Bills _________________________________________________________________ Sunday September 21 4:40 AM EDT Senate Panel to Examine IRS Inside Out By Tabassum Zakaria WASHINGTON (Reuter) - The Senate Finance Committee is set to present the results of a six-month probe into the Internal Revenue Service which found a quota system that rewarded agents who brought in the cash. The committee, chaired by Delaware Republican Sen. William Roth, will hold three days of hearings next week intended to take a look at the tax collection agency from the inside out. The atmosphere will have a touch of cloak-and-dagger with one panel of IRS agents testifying behind a screen to keep their identities secret, some using voice distorting equipment. Extra metal detectors will be set up outside the hearing room. The committee investigation began in February after being allotted $250,000 for a year to conduct the review. Investigators received about 1,000 telephone calls, letters and e-mails from taxpayers and IRS agents, and four cases will be presented at the hearings Sept. 23-25. "These people have horrendous power, granted by (Congress)...it's legitimate, but that's a big amount of power," a committee source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. "To be able to take a residence on nothing more than a couple of signatures," the source said, referring to the IRS's authority to confiscate cars, homes and other property from people who owe taxes. An IRS spokesman said the agency carried out the law as written by Congress and that if mistakes were made, it tried to correct them. "We hope that these hearings will constitute a fair and open review of how the IRS conducts itself in using the tools that the Congress has given us," the IRS spokesman said. "We deal with millions of taxpayers every year, and in the vast majority of cases taxpayers feel that they are treated courteously and professionally," he added. In contrast, the investigation found many taxpayers complained the IRS did not listen to them and assumed they were guilty and wanted to cheat on their tax returns. The investigation found an apparent quota system in which agents were asked to bring in a certain amount of dollars when they went out to collect taxes, which led to some stretching the truth on what people owed, the committee source said. Agents were rewarded in their careers if they closed a certain number of cases or filed a certain number of levies or liens. That offered incentives for agents to close out the easiest cases which tended to be people with fewer resources to defend themselves, the committee source said. Another "tip of the iceberg" finding was that some agents used falsified credentials so their real names would not be revealed in face-to-face situations. Those types of credentials are only supposed to be used by the Treasury Department's criminal division, the committee source said. "One of the things that Senator Roth has wanted to emphasize is that there are good employees at the IRS," Ginny Flynn, spokeswoman for Roth, said. In fiscal 1996, the IRS received almost 119 million individual tax returns and collected almost $1.4 trillion in taxes. At the end of last year, there were 15,153 revenue agents who conducted examinations and 7,472 revenue officers who did collections. Roth did not want the hearings to be used for political fodder -- "this is not a reflection of the administration, this is a cultural problem," Flynn said. However other Republican lawmakers have been using attention on the IRS to make political points. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee which raises funds, sent letters seeking contributions which said: "...consider this: your tax dollars are paying for seminars that teach IRS agents to treat you like a criminal!" _________________________________________________________________ Earlier Related Stories * Senate Panel to Examine IRS Inside Out - Sat Sep 20 11:36 pm _________________________________________________________________ ________________________ Search News Help _________________________________________________________________ Previous Story: U.S., Japan Face Off on Trade at G7 Meeting Next Story: Clinton Warns He Will Veto Education Bills _________________________________________________________________ [ Index | News | World | Biz | Tech | Politic | Sport | Scoreboard | Entertain | Health ] _________________________________________________________________ Reuters Limited Questions or Comments

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irs_1.html
by maria＠linux.nycmetro.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Reuters New Media [ Yahoo | Write Us | Search | Info ] [ Index | News | World | Biz | Tech | Politic | Sport | Scoreboard | Entertain | Health ] _________________________________________________________________ Previous Story: U.S., Japan Face Off on Trade at G7 Meeting Next Story: Clinton Warns He Will Veto Education Bills _________________________________________________________________ Sunday September 21 4:40 AM EDT Senate Panel to Examine IRS Inside Out By Tabassum Zakaria WASHINGTON (Reuter) - The Senate Finance Committee is set to present the results of a six-month probe into the Internal Revenue Service which found a quota system that rewarded agents who brought in the cash. The committee, chaired by Delaware Republican Sen. William Roth, will hold three days of hearings next week intended to take a look at the tax collection agency from the inside out. The atmosphere will have a touch of cloak-and-dagger with one panel of IRS agents testifying behind a screen to keep their identities secret, some using voice distorting equipment. Extra metal detectors will be set up outside the hearing room. The committee investigation began in February after being allotted $250,000 for a year to conduct the review. Investigators received about 1,000 telephone calls, letters and e-mails from taxpayers and IRS agents, and four cases will be presented at the hearings Sept. 23-25. "These people have horrendous power, granted by (Congress)...it's legitimate, but that's a big amount of power," a committee source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. "To be able to take a residence on nothing more than a couple of signatures," the source said, referring to the IRS's authority to confiscate cars, homes and other property from people who owe taxes. An IRS spokesman said the agency carried out the law as written by Congress and that if mistakes were made, it tried to correct them. "We hope that these hearings will constitute a fair and open review of how the IRS conducts itself in using the tools that the Congress has given us," the IRS spokesman said. "We deal with millions of taxpayers every year, and in the vast majority of cases taxpayers feel that they are treated courteously and professionally," he added. In contrast, the investigation found many taxpayers complained the IRS did not listen to them and assumed they were guilty and wanted to cheat on their tax returns. The investigation found an apparent quota system in which agents were asked to bring in a certain amount of dollars when they went out to collect taxes, which led to some stretching the truth on what people owed, the committee source said. Agents were rewarded in their careers if they closed a certain number of cases or filed a certain number of levies or liens. That offered incentives for agents to close out the easiest cases which tended to be people with fewer resources to defend themselves, the committee source said. Another "tip of the iceberg" finding was that some agents used falsified credentials so their real names would not be revealed in face-to-face situations. Those types of credentials are only supposed to be used by the Treasury Department's criminal division, the committee source said. "One of the things that Senator Roth has wanted to emphasize is that there are good employees at the IRS," Ginny Flynn, spokeswoman for Roth, said. In fiscal 1996, the IRS received almost 119 million individual tax returns and collected almost $1.4 trillion in taxes. At the end of last year, there were 15,153 revenue agents who conducted examinations and 7,472 revenue officers who did collections. Roth did not want the hearings to be used for political fodder -- "this is not a reflection of the administration, this is a cultural problem," Flynn said. However other Republican lawmakers have been using attention on the IRS to make political points. Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee which raises funds, sent letters seeking contributions which said: "...consider this: your tax dollars are paying for seminars that teach IRS agents to treat you like a criminal!" _________________________________________________________________ Earlier Related Stories * Senate Panel to Examine IRS Inside Out - Sat Sep 20 11:36 pm _________________________________________________________________ ________________________ ___________ Help _________________________________________________________________ Previous Story: U.S., Japan Face Off on Trade at G7 Meeting Next Story: Clinton Warns He Will Veto Education Bills _________________________________________________________________ [ Index | News | World | Biz | Tech | Politic | Sport | Scoreboard | Entertain | Health ] _________________________________________________________________ Reuters Limited Questions or Comments

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On the trail of David Aarons
by Peter F Cassidy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Fellas, Don't flame me for asking. It's just that in following this guy I cannot get very close to those who have met with the crypto czar - except in Japaan where sources have gotten me pretty close to the man's activities. . . I'm trying to finish up the research for a piece on Aaron who has been meeeting with Western Allies to get them on-board the key escrow program that the Clinton Administration has mindelessly pursued since the first week of its reign. Aaron has been all over, visiting UK, Japan and Germany and Australia - meeting different kinds of receptions, most visibly successful in Japan. All I am asking here is if anyone has contacts at important labs or government ministries where Aaron might have been received. I've got to have my ducks lined up before I interview him. Regards, Peter Cassidy for WIRED Magazine

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encouraging digital pseudonyms
by Wei Dai 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One of Tim's suggested cypherpunk projects is to encourage the use of digital pseudonyms (i.e. cryptographically persistent entities not linked with True Names). I think the main reason why pseudonyms are not used more widely is the lack of support on client software, especially on the receiver side. When I see a piece of email sent to the cypherpunks list from an anonymous remailer, I typically delete it without reading, because there is no easy way to tell between anynoymous email (which are typically junk) and pseudonymous email, and there is no easy way to filter by pseudonym. Of course the long-term solution is to get native pseudonym support on the client software, but in the mean time there is a fairly simple workaround if someone wants to volunteer a modest amount of resources. That person should set up a mailing list that simply resends cypherpunk traffic that are signed by pseudonyms. To help filtering, the pseudonym's key hash should be prepended to the subject. When this is done, those of us who want to can filter out everything sent by remailers to the cypherpunks mailing list and subscribe to the proposed service. If enough of us do this, it should motivate anonymous senders to set up persistent identities. If the trouble of generating new pseudonyms is not enough to discourage the anonymous junk, the proposed service can charge ecash or hashcash either per pseudonym or per email.

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[URGENT] Blowfish
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timmy C[rook] May's reheated, refurbished, and regurgitated cud is completely inappropriate for the mailing lists into which it is cross-ruminated. _______c___c / /_ _\ | ((6)(6)) Timmy C[rook] May ( )_ __\\ //__ o___n) (nn)\o/(nn)

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Flynt Daughter is pro CDA [fwd][news]
by Vipul Ved Prakash 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

*** Keep cyberporn from children, Flynt daughter says Anti-pornography activist Tonya Flynt-Vega said Friday she was "very disappointed" the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law meant to keep Internet smut away from children. Flynt-Vega, 32, daughter of Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt, said children tended to be much more computer-literate than adults and were especially prone to "unwelcome contacts" on the Internet. " ... I want there to be some laws regulating that stuff. Don't put it in my face or my child's face," she said. The Supreme Court ruled June 26 that Congress violated free-speech rights when it tried to curb smut on the Internet. For story http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=5031497-28e -- Powell lingered. "How's Earth?" It was a conventional enough question and Muller gave the conventional answer, "Still spinning." -- "Reason", Asimov. ================================================================== Vipul Ved Prakash | - Electronic Security & Crypto vipul(a)best.com | - Web Objects 91 11 2233328 | - PERL Development 198 Madhuban IP Extension | - Linux & Open Systems Delhi, INDIA 110 092 | - Networked Virtual Spaces

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