December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: What it's like to get a subpoena (re Toto)
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I haven't. >I don't see why they're bothering you, I wonder if the other majordomo >operators have received, or shortly will receive similar visits.

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IRS wants cypherpunks archives
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jeff, and fellow agents seem to be interested in cypherpunks archives (as evidenced by asking Jim Choate who operates one of the mailing list nodes, but who does _not_ offer archived list traffic). Jeff is Cc'd on this post to be helpful (who says cypherpunks aren't helpful -- you only have to ask). This archive seems to be operational: http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/ And looks to cover the last year or so at least. The one at minder.net says 0 items available: http://www.minder.net/cgi-bin/lwgate.cgi/CYPHERPUNKS/archives/ so something appears wrong with that one (Brian?) and Ryan's sof.mit.edu archive is down still since the disk crash. Are there any others? I do have a reasonable set of archives going back to May '96 in RMAIL format, but am not too keen on mailing them due to bandwidth -- would take a few hours at 28.8k baud. (Also there seem to be some older archives on Remo Pini's crypto CD, but I think they are too old to be of interest to IRS). Adam -- print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

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IP: Tracking: F.B.I.'s new national DNA database
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Tracking: F.B.I.'s new national DNA database Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 02:05:53 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: WorldNetDaily http://www.WorldNetDaily.com/exclusiv/981012_fbis_new_national_d.html F.B.I.'s new national DNA database Secret computer set to open for business The FBI is set open a new national DNA data base tomorrow, The New York Times reports. The data base, with a new generation of forensic DNA techniques, is designed to catch repeat offenders, but civil libertarians fear it will be expanded from people convicted of crimes to include almost everyone, giving the government inordinate investigative powers over citizens. The national DNA data base, housed in a secret location, actually consists of 50 data bases run by the states but unified by common test procedures and software designed by the FBI. As of tomorrow, the Times reports, it will be possible to compare a DNA sample from a suspect or crime scene in one state with all others in the system. © 1998 Western Journalism Center ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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RE: DNA
by Michael Motyka 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> If we had a DNA sample of all world citizens, then the pesky problem > of the whole "it was either O.J. that was the killer or there's a one > in five billion chance it was someone else" would simply disappear. I'm not a biochemist but I don't think that this is accurate right now. I think modern DNA analysis yields data that bear more resemblance to a spectrum than anything else. In this case there is always a good possibility for error. Remember how large a project the Human Genome thing is? That is an actual sequencing project. ***** Rather than use this technology for law enforcement why not really try to make a Tyrannosaurus? That would seem to be a higher use. ***** When this new FBI project gets established just watch how wide a net they cast when defining who will be compelled to submit a sample! Then we'll have some crooked fuck selling info to the insurance companies. Or it will be legislated by the other crooked fucks. And pattern analysis will identify the guilty before they even think about committing an offense. Hell, they'll probably be able to ID the bad ones from samples coerced/stolen at birth and then all future opportunity and resource allocation will be effectively decided by the government, inc. Compromise? If this thing is not implemented with strict controls defining the type of offenses included then it is as offensive a totalitarian tool as anything else discussed on this list Mike Is there perhaps a good point to getting everybody in the country on this DNA database? Could it be that a single sample of DNA can be used to produce a large supply of that DNA which could then be used to fabricate evidence? You might say that the existence of the fabrication technology and the availability of seed material invalidates the evidence.

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IP: ISPI Clips 5.32: FBI & Privacy Advocates Battling Over Wiretapping
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "ama-gi ISPI" <offshore(a)email.msn.com> Subject: IP: ISPI Clips 5.32: FBI & Privacy Advocates Battling Over Wiretapping Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 00:10:29 -0700 To: <Undisclosed.Recipients(a)majordomo.pobox.com> ISPI Clips 5.32: FBI & Privacy Advocates Battling Over Wiretapping News & Info from the Institute for the Study of Privacy Issues (ISPI) Monday October 12, 1998 ISPI4Privacy(a)ama-gi.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This From: ABCNews.com, October 8, 1998 http://www.abcnews.com Privacy on the Line http://www.abcnews.com/sections/tech/DailyNews/wiretap981006.html Law enforcement and privacy advocates are battling over wiretapping boundaries in the digital age. By Michael Martinez ABCNEWS.com The FBI wants to be able to tap your cell phone. And it wants your phone company to pay for the privilege of allowing the FBI to tap your cell phone. That, at least, is the contention of privacy advocates and of the telephone industry, which is under federal mandate to open all new telecommunications technologies to wiretap access. Under the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, telecommunications companies are required provide wiretap capabilities for all of their new systems. Passed by Congress in 1994, CALEA mandated that telecommunications companies comply with access requirements by Oct. 25 of this year. That deadline, however, has been pushed back until June 2000 by the Federal Communications Commission as it tries to sort out just what the FBI is entitled to, and how much reimbursement telecom companies should get. Originally, CALEA set aside $500 million to pay for infrastructure upgrades on systems installed prior to Jan. 1, 1995. The United States Telephone Association and other industry groups want that cutoff point extended until 2000 as well, so that current systems are covered. Voice Mail for Dope Dealers? The telecommunications industry has introduced a wide range of popular and profitable services in recent years, everything from prepaid calling cards to Internet telephony to three-way calling. Cellular phones have become nearly ubiquitous, and newer models are almost entirely digital. Many customers have turned to third party voice-mail systems for message services. When most of these systems were designed and implemented, no thought was given to allowing federal or local law enforcement agencies access. The FBI says its entitled to access these services under current wiretap laws. Privacy advocates disagree. The FBI has been trying to use CALEA to greatly expand its surveillance capabilities in ways never anticipated by Congress when it passed the law, contends Barry Steinhardt, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The telephone companies also disagree, at least in principle. More important, if forced by the government to comply, they want the federal government to pay for the technology necessary to make it happen. The FBI claims that a compromise proposal by the USTA, which represents local telephone companies, was too narrow, and excluded many of the technological advances that have made law enforcements job more difficult. There have been situations in which weve obtained permission to wiretap, and weve been frustrated by the technology, says Stephen Colgate, assistant U.S. attorney general for administration. And the criminals know it. Things like voice mail and prepaid calling cards, these are the things used by the dope dealer or the bomb maker. The Communications Haystack The USTA, however, says the FBI is overreaching by including services not covered by the original law. The rules the FBI put forth in CALEA dont follow the intent of Congress, says Michelle Tober, communications manager for the USTA. If the FBI wants this capability, it has to be granted to them by the FCC or under a new law by Congress. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, along with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, have petitioned the FCC to limit law enforcements ability to gain access to new telecommunications services. The problem with a wiretap is that its a general search, Steinhardt says. Only one in six conversations that are recorded are criminal in nature. Increasing law enforcements powers will mean more conversations recorded that have no bearing on investigations. Were giving them the power to find a needle in a haystack. The FBI defends its proposed rules, saying that they still fall under the original law allowing wiretaps, and that privacy will still be protected by the judiciary system. We still have to go before the judge. We still have to justify the invasion of privacy in the courts, Colgate says. Were not lowering the bar by any means. This industry has been investing significant amounts of capital into the infrastructure, and weve been losing (wiretap) capability steadily. Copyright (c)1998 ABCNEWS and Starwave Corporation. --------------------------------NOTICE:------------------------------ ISPI Clips are news & opinion articles on privacy issues from all points of view; they are clipped from local, national and international newspapers, journals and magazines, etc. Inclusion as an ISPI Clip does not necessarily reflect an endorsement of the content or opinion by ISPI. In compliance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed free without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ISPI Clips is a FREE e-mail service from the "Institute for the Study of Privacy Issues" (ISPI). To receive "ISPI Clips" on a regular bases (up to 3 - 8 clips per day) send the following message "Please enter [Your Name] into the ISPI Clips list: [Your e-mail address]" to: ISPIClips(a)ama-gi.com . The Institute for the Study of Privacy Issues (ISPI) is a small contributor-funded organization based in Victoria, British Columbia (Canada). ISPI operates on a not-for-profit basis, accepts no government funding and takes a global perspective. ISPI's mandate is to conduct & promote interdisciplinary research into electronic, personal and financial privacy with a view toward helping ordinary people understand the degree of privacy they have with respect to government, industry and each other and to likewise inform them about techniques to enhance their privacy. But, none of this can be accomplished without your kind and generous financial support. If you value in the ISPI Clips service or if you are concerned about the erosion of your privacy in general, won't you please help us continue this important work by becoming an "ISPI Clips Supporter" or by taking out an institute Membership? We gratefully accept all contributions: Less than $60 ISPI Clips Supporter $60 - $99 Primary ISPI Membership (1 year) $100 - $300 Senior ISPI Membership (2 years) More than $300 Executive Council Membership (life) Your ISPI "membership" contribution entitles you to receive "The ISPI Privacy Reporter" (our bi-monthly 12 page hard-copy newsletter in multi-contributor format) for the duration of your membership. For a contribution form with postal instructions please send the following message "ISPI Contribution Form" to ISPI4Privacy(a)ama-gi.com . We maintain a strict privacy policy. Any information you divulge to ISPI is kept in strict confidence. It will not be sold, lent or given away to any third party. ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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IP: Tracking: NYT on FBI's Nat'l DNA Database
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Tracking: NYT on FBI's Nat'l DNA Database Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 03:10:00 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/dna-data-base.html October 12, 1998 F.B.I. Set to Begin Using National DNA Database By NICHOLAS WADE In a computer at a secret location, the FBI will open a national DNA database on Tuesday that advocates say could significantly reduce rape and other crimes by helping to catch repeat offenders earlier. The data base, with a new generation of forensic DNA techniques, promises to be so efficient that some civil libertarians fear it will be expanded from people convicted of crimes to include almost everyone, giving the government inordinate investigative powers over citizens. The national DNA data base consists of 50 data bases run by the states but unified by common test procedures and software designed by the FBI. As of Tuesday, it will be possible to compare a DNA sample from a suspect or crime scene in one state with all others in the system. The national data base has been nearly a decade in the making. The final pieces fell into place in June when Rhode Island became the last state to set up a DNA data base. But the system still faces many unresolved issues, which are likely to play out according to the reaction from the public and the courts. One such issue is what types of offenders should be included. Another is whether the mass screening of suspects' DNA will prove constitutional. DNA, the chemical that embodies a person's genetic programming, can be found almost everywhere. People shed a constant torrent of dead skin cells. Criminals leave blood when breaking and entering; they shed hair and skin cells in fights, deposit saliva on glasses and leave sweat stains in head bands. From only a few cells in such sources, enough DNA can be extracted to identify the owner. A DNA database of sufficient size could presumably help solve many crimes. The crime-fighting potential of DNA data bases is becoming evident from the experiences of Britain, which started earlier and has had fewer administrative and constitutional hurdles to overcome. The data base there initially focused on sex offenses but has spread to include burglaries and car theft because of the high number of DNA matches that police forces were obtaining. Moreover, there was considerable crossover at least in Britain, among different kinds of offenses. "People who commit serious crime very often have convictions for petty crime in their history, so if you could get them on the data base early you may prevent serious crime," said David Werrett, manager of the DNA data base for England and Wales. The English DNA data base includes entries from crime scenes and from everyone convicted of a crime, as well as from suspects in unresolved cases. Since the system's debut in 1995, it has matched 28,000 people to crime scenes and has made 6,000 links between crime scenes. The data base now holds 360,000 entries and Werrett said he expected it would eventually include one third of all English men between 16 and 30, the principal ages for committing crimes. Werrett said that the data base has grown because police forces in England, which pay $55 for a DNA analysis, are finding it cost effective. Recently the Police Superintendents Association called for the entire population to be DNA tested. Forensic use of DNA in the United States is unlikely to go as fast or as far as in Britain. "Their system makes a tremendous amount of sense the way they approach it, but in the United States we have a different perspective on privacy and on the extent to which we would be willing to depend on a data base," said Christopher Asplen, executive director of the national Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. One major privacy safeguard in the FBI's system is that only a minute fraction of a person's genetic endowment becomes part of the data base. Under a new DNA profiling system known as STR's, for short tandem repeats, a person's DNA is tested at 13 specific sites at which a short length of DNA is repeated in a kind of stutter. The number of repeats is highly variable from one person to another, so that measuring the number of repeats at the 13 designated sites gives a way of identifying each individual with a probability of one in several billion. The blood or other samples donated by individuals are retained by the states in collections known as DNA banks. All that goes into the computerized DNA data bases is the set of 13 numbers from the STR measurements. Only identifying information, and nothing about a person's health or appearance, can be divined from the STR's. Access to the DNA data base is permitted only for law enforcement purposes, with a $100,000 fine for unauthorized disclosures. No known breaches of the system have occurred. One major unresolved issue is that of the types of offenders from whom DNA profiles should be taken. All states require people convicted of serious sexual offenses to donate blood samples, but differ on requiring samples from other groups such as people convicted of violent felonies, juvenile offenders and parolees. Four states -- Virginia, Wyoming, New Mexico and Alabama -- require all people convicted of a felony to provide samples for DNA profiling. Louisiana allows DNA to be taken from people merely arrested in a crime, a practice that has not been tested in the courts. State laws establishing DNA data bases have been challenged in 13 jurisdictions and have been upheld in all but one, in Massachusetts. Some states have revised their original legislation to add offenses. "I think the trend is that 10 years from now all felonies will be covered," said M. Dawn Herkenham, chief of the FBI's Forensic Science Systems Unit in Washington. "We recommend that all violent felonies, burglaries, juveniles and retroactivity for people on parole be included." >From his office in Birmingham, England, last week, Werrett said, "Today we have issued matches on three murders, five rapes, nine serious robberies, two abductions and two violent burglaries." No state DNA data base has acquired the critical mass to furnish such a hit rate. Many state laboratories are understaffed and have large backlogs of DNA samples to analyze. The backlogs are particularly worrisome in the case of rapes where specimens may lie unanalyzed while the rapist assaults more victims. "People may be appalled to know how many rape suspect kits are out there untouched," Ms. Herkenham of the FBI said. "The hit ratio depends on whether we can go back and examine all the evidence that comes in the door," said Dr. Barry Duceman, director of biological science in the New York State Police Forensic Investigation Center in Albany. "We are trying to address a crushing case backlog and to get the technology on line -- you'd be hard pressed to say we are overstaffed." The case backlog problem is compounded because state laboratories are switching to the STR method of DNA profiling from an older method of analysis called RFLP (for restriction fragment length polymorphism). All the samples analyzed by RFLP must be redone by STR if they are to be searchable in the new data base. When these teething problems are overcome, many experts believe that the state and national DNA data base systems may have a significant effect, particularly in reducing crimes like rape that often involve repeat offenders. By scoring a "cold hit" between crime scene data and a person, DNA data bases can be particularly effective in solving cases with no suspects. "Once we get that infrastructure in place and start getting those hits, the benefits will lead to higher utilization," Asplen said. But like other experts involved with DNA testing, he expressed concern that DNA profiling be developed in a publicly acceptable way. "The public does need to have a trust level with this and be assured that law enforcement is not going to abuse this powerful tool," he said. One practice likely to raise eyebrows, if not hackles, is mass screening, which is widely used in the United Kingdom but not yet commonplace here. In high profile crime cases, police in Britain often ask, and can require, all members of a town or building to give DNA samples so as to prove themselves guiltless and help narrow the search for the culprit. The National Commission on the Future of DNA Testing is examining under what circumstances the donation of samples can be considered voluntary. In an office, where employees who declined to donate a sample might be fired, a police request for DNA might be coercive. A future use of DNA testing is that of phenotypic analysis. It will soon be technically possible to infer from the genes in a person's DNA many probable aspects of their appearance, such as hair, skin and eye color. Werrett said the main problem with such predictions would lie in training police to understand their probabilistic nature: told there is a 90 percent chance that the suspect has red hair, investigators should not ignore the 10 percent chance that he does not. DNA reveals so much about a person that behavioral geneticists might wish to search through state data banks for genetic variants linked to criminal behavior. Most states say their DNA data banks can be accessed only for law enforcement purposes, like the data bases. But Alabama authorizes the use of its samples for "educational research or medical research or development," an apparent invitation to genetic inquiry. An impending issue is whether states should retain their DNA samples once the information has been entered into the DNA data base. Forensic managers like to retain samples as a hedge against changing technology. Others say the DNA sample banks create an opportunity for abuse, and that if there is another change in technology the government should just rebuild its data base from scratch. Because DNA can be found at so many crime scenes, DNA data bases promise to be powerful aids in catching criminals. But what thrills forensic experts tends to chill civil libertarians. "The DNA data base started out with pariahs -- the sex offenders -- but has already been enlarged to include other felons and will probably be extended to include everyone, giving elites the power to control 'unruly' citizens," said Philip Bereano a professor of technology and public policy at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Eric Juengst, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and a member of the FBI's DNA Advisory Board, said the original policy in setting up the DNA data base was that it was "suitable only for our most serious category of criminals," and that it would be a breach of that policy to expand its scope. The risks raised by Bereano are worth watching, Juengst said, "but as a society we have to learn how to control powerful tools of all kinds, like nuclear power. I don't see it as an endless slippery slope." Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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IP: "The Billion Dollar Terror Rumor"
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: "The Billion Dollar Terror Rumor" Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 06:31:30 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: Salon Magazine http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/1998/10/08newsa.html The billion-dollar rumor How unsubstantiated reports that the World Trade bombers may have included nerve gas in their arsenal led to some pretty pricey public policy. BY JEFF STEIN It began as rumor, then became fact. Fact became alarm. And alarm led to a rallying cry for a multimillion-dollar federal program that has now itself ricocheted out of control. Kenneth Starr's investigation of President Clinton? No, it's the federal budget for countering a doomsday attack by terrorists armed with chemical and biological weapons. The rumor in this case was that terrorists had put deadly sodium cyanide into the monstrous February 1993 World Trade Center bomb that killed six people, injured more than 1,000, blasted a seven-story hole underneath the twin towers and created panic in the streets of lower Manhattan. The blast should have turned any sodium cyanide present into hydrogen cyanide, unleashing a poisonous cloud that could have instantly killed hundreds or thousands more people. That is, had any sodium cyanide been there. According to a thorough, as yet unpublished study of the incident by an arms-control think tank at the Monterey Institute for International Studies, there is no evidence to support the long-swirling assertion, which first surfaced in the solemn pronouncement of a respected federal judge in 1994. The rumor then made its way into scores of newspaper articles and was cited by leading U.S. senators to support anti-terrorist initiatives that have amounted to billions of dollars, many of them unaccounted for, according to a recent investigation by congressional auditors. John Parachini, a senior associate at the Monterey Institute, made a draft of the study available after being contacted by Salon. Word of his findings has been circulating in the community of Washington terrorism experts. "I'm not against spending money for defending against chemical and biological weapons," Parachini said in an interview, "but we ought to know why we're spending for it, and to get the facts straight." In his study, Parachini noted that the World Trade Center bombers considered using chemical weapons, but did not -- an important fact for government terrorism specialists to ponder. "Examining the motivations and behaviors of terrorists who would have used a chemical weapon if it was available, but did not, may offer important lessons about how to thwart such attacks in the future," he writes. Parachini traced the origins of the cyanide gas story to the first trial of World Trade Center bombers in 1994, when federal prosecutors raised the specter of a chemical bomb, no doubt to darken the jury's view of the defendants. The theme was picked up by presiding federal Judge Kevin Duffy in his sentencing statement to the stone-faced defendants. "You had sodium cyanide around, and I'm sure it was in the bomb," the judge intoned. "Thank God the sodium cyanide burned instead of vaporizing. If the sodium cyanide had vaporized, it is clear what would have happened is the cyanide gas would have been sucked into the north tower and everybody in the north tower would have been killed. That to my mind is exactly what was intended." The judge may have been "sure it was in the bomb," but the defendants were never even charged under anti-terrorism statutes that make mere possession of potential chemical and biological weapons a federal crime, Parachini noted. The rumor's origins date back to an earlier raid by the FBI of a New Jersey storage shed rented by the suspects. The agents found one sealed bottle of sodium cyanide in aqueous form. Aqueous sodium cyanide is used for photographic purposes and can cost less than $3 per pound, Parachini noted in his study, after consulting chemical experts. But it is sodium cyanide in solid form, usually briquettes costing many hundreds of dollars more, that can be effective as a chemical weapon when it's converted to hydrogen cyanide gas by a blast. Nevertheless, the federal prosecutor in the initial World Trade Center trial raised the idea of a chemical bomb when questioning a senior FBI official, Steven Burmeister, about the consequences of mixing sodium cyanide with other chemicals present in the bomb. Burmeister testified that "if you breathe that gas I'm afraid you've breathed your last breath." Despite this "chilling testimony," however, "Burmeister never suggested during the trial that his investigation had led him to believe that the bomb actually contained sodium cyanide," Parachini writes -- and the trial transcript proves. In addition, an FBI chemist who participated in the case told Parachini flatly, "There is no forensic evidence indicating the presence of sodium cyanide at the bomb site." Judge Duffy's statement to the contrary, however, gave legs to the notion that the defendants had made -- or tried to make -- a chemical bomb. No less an authority than Maj. Gen. George Friel, the former head of the U.S. Army's Chemical and Biological Defense Command, told Gannett News Service that the World Trade Center bombers may have attempted to mix a toxic agent -- most likely arsenic -- with the bomb they planted in the garage of the building. That was a new one to federal investigators. Neither FBI agents nor prosecutors mentioned arsenic as a bomb ingredient in the trial. Despite the nonexistent evidence, however, Judge Duffy's charge was taken up by two influential senators, Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Sam Nunn, D-Ga., who called it "a warning bell." "The trial judge at the sentencing of those responsible for the World Trade Center bombing pointed out that the killers in that case had access to chemicals to make lethal cyanide gas ... and probably put those chemicals into that bomb that exploded," Nunn said during a 1996 floor debate on a multibillion-dollar bill aimed at bolstering U.S. defenses against weapons of mass destruction. Lugar also cited Judge Duffy's statement as evidence of "how close we have come to witnessing acts of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction directed toward the United States." He urged his Senate colleagues to "listen to Judge Duffy," and compared the World Trade Center bomb to both the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway by Japanese cultists and the placement of a radioactive package in a Moscow park. The media were next to pick up Duffy's theme. One typical story, in the Los Angeles Times in July 1996, stated, "The World Trade Center bombers had sodium cyanide, which if used ... would have released poison gas, vastly increasing the fatalities in New York, intelligence officials said." Syndicated columnist Trudy Rubin cited Judge Duffy in the course of applauding "some farsighted lawmakers trying to confront the unthinkable." The Nunn-Lugar bill, which included $235 million for training local "first responders" to a chemical or biological attack, passed 100-0. But that was merely the gateway to a mushrooming federal anti-terrorism crusade that now costs upwards of $1 billion a year -- and perhaps twice that, according to some experts -- and that last week led to the creation of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which will "spend hundreds of millions of dollars in research for better sensors and technology to detect biological and chemical weapons," according to the Associated Press. Counter-terrorism may be the magic word for funding programs in Washington today, but a withering audit by the General Accounting Office has raised questions about where the money is going: "More money is being spent to combat terrorism without any assurance of whether it is focused in the right programs or in the right amounts,'' said Richard Davis, a GAO auditor specializing in weapons of mass destruction. "Billions of dollars are being spent by numerous agencies with roles or potential roles in combating terrorism, but because no federal entity has been tasked to collect such information across the government, the specific amount is unknown,'' the GAO said in its most recent report on terrorism. "Further, no government-wide spending priorities for the various aspects of combating terrorism have been set.'' Meanwhile, past studies have cautioned that while chemical or biological weapons may be cheaper and easier to make than nuclear bombs, terrorists have shied away from using them. Despite past allegations, neither the Red Army Faction, the Beider-Meinhof Gang nor the Weather Underground ever used them, Parachini concluded. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the World Trade Center blast, made the point himself while flying back in custody from Pakistan, where he was captured in 1996, the Monterey Institute study notes. "Yousef ... revealed to U.S. Secret Service agent Brian Parr that the WTC bomb did not contain sodium cyanide or any other poison, but that he had planned to use 'hydrogen cyanide in some other form of a bomb, not as large a bomb, but a different type of bomb to disperse that [poison] in the Trade Center,'" the study says. "Yousef told Parr that he had decided not to take this approach because 'it was going to be too expensive to implement.'" The judge may have been "sure it was in the bomb," but the defendants were never even charged under anti-terrorism statutes that make mere possession of potential chemical and biological weapons a federal crime, Parachini noted. The rumor's origins date back to an earlier raid by the FBI of a New Jersey storage shed rented by the suspects. The agents found one sealed bottle of sodium cyanide in aqueous form. Aqueous sodium cyanide is used for photographic purposes and can cost less than $3 per pound, Parachini noted in his study, after consulting chemical experts. But it is sodium cyanide in solid form, usually briquettes costing many hundreds of dollars more, that can be effective as a chemical weapon when it's converted to hydrogen cyanide gas by a blast. Nevertheless, the federal prosecutor in the initial World Trade Center trial raised the idea of a chemical bomb when questioning a senior FBI official, Steven Burmeister, about the consequences of mixing sodium cyanide with other chemicals present in the bomb. Burmeister testified that "if you breathe that gas I'm afraid you've breathed your last breath." Despite this "chilling testimony," however, "Burmeister never suggested during the trial that his investigation had led him to believe that the bomb actually contained sodium cyanide," Parachini writes -- and the trial transcript proves. In addition, an FBI chemist who participated in the case told Parachini flatly, "There is no forensic evidence indicating the presence of sodium cyanide at the bomb site." Judge Duffy's statement to the contrary, however, gave legs to the notion that the defendants had made -- or tried to make -- a chemical bomb. No less an authority than Maj. Gen. George Friel, the former head of the U.S. Army's Chemical and Biological Defense Command, told Gannett News Service that the World Trade Center bombers may have attempted to mix a toxic agent -- most likely arsenic -- with the bomb they planted in the garage of the building. That was a new one to federal investigators. Neither FBI agents nor prosecutors mentioned arsenic as a bomb ingredient in the trial. Despite the nonexistent evidence, however, Judge Duffy's charge was taken up by two influential senators, Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Sam Nunn, D-Ga., who called it "a warning bell." "The trial judge at the sentencing of those responsible for the World Trade Center bombing pointed out that the killers in that case had access to chemicals to make lethal cyanide gas ... and probably put those chemicals into that bomb that exploded," Nunn said during a 1996 floor debate on a multibillion-dollar bill aimed at bolstering U.S. defenses against weapons of mass destruction. Lugar also cited Judge Duffy's statement as evidence of "how close we have come to witnessing acts of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction directed toward the United States." He urged his Senate colleagues to "listen to Judge Duffy," and compared the World Trade Center bomb to both the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway by Japanese cultists and the placement of a radioactive package in a Moscow park. The media were next to pick up Duffy's theme. One typical story, in the Los Angeles Times in July 1996, stated, "The World Trade Center bombers had sodium cyanide, which if used ... would have released poison gas, vastly increasing the fatalities in New York, intelligence officials said." Syndicated columnist Trudy Rubin cited Judge Duffy in the course of applauding "some farsighted lawmakers trying to confront the unthinkable." The Nunn-Lugar bill, which included $235 million for training local "first responders" to a chemical or biological attack, passed 100-0. But that was merely the gateway to a mushrooming federal anti-terrorism crusade that now costs upwards of $1 billion a year -- and perhaps twice that, according to some experts -- and that last week led to the creation of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which will "spend hundreds of millions of dollars in research for better sensors and technology to detect biological and chemical weapons," according to the Associated Press. Counter-terrorism may be the magic word for funding programs in Washington today, but a withering audit by the General Accounting Office has raised questions about where the money is going: "More money is being spent to combat terrorism without any assurance of whether it is focused in the right programs or in the right amounts,'' said Richard Davis, a GAO auditor specializing in weapons of mass destruction. "Billions of dollars are being spent by numerous agencies with roles or potential roles in combating terrorism, but because no federal entity has been tasked to collect such information across the government, the specific amount is unknown,'' the GAO said in its most recent report on terrorism. "Further, no government-wide spending priorities for the various aspects of combating terrorism have been set.'' Meanwhile, past studies have cautioned that while chemical or biological weapons may be cheaper and easier to make than nuclear bombs, terrorists have shied away from using them. Despite past allegations, neither the Red Army Faction, the Beider-Meinhof Gang nor the Weather Underground ever used them, Parachini concluded. Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the World Trade Center blast, made the point himself while flying back in custody from Pakistan, where he was captured in 1996, the Monterey Institute study notes. "Yousef ... revealed to U.S. Secret Service agent Brian Parr that the WTC bomb did not contain sodium cyanide or any other poison, but that he had planned to use 'hydrogen cyanide in some other form of a bomb, not as large a bomb, but a different type of bomb to disperse that [poison] in the Trade Center,'" the study says. "Yousef told Parr that he had decided not to take this approach because 'it was going to be too expensive to implement.'" SALON | Oct. 8, 1998 Jeff Stein covers national security issues for Salon. ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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IP: Fw: Every word on the Internet is recorded for ALL time
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Jon Roland <jon.roland(a)constitution.org> Subject: IP: Fw: Every word on the Internet is recorded for ALL time Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 17:09:43 -0800 To: "C.Bryson Hull" <cbryson(a)hotmail.com>, misc-activism-militia(a)moderators.uu.net ------------------------ From: "Adolph V. Stankus" <Adolph(a)Stankus.com> Subject: Every word on the Internet is recorded for ALL time Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 15:13:34 -0700 To: A Message For You <Adolph(a)Stankus.com> http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-10/11/129l-101198-idx.ht ml Washington Post, Sunday, October 11, 1998; Page C01 Your Past Is Your Future, Web-Wise By Joseph D. Lasica SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.-Our past now follows us as never before. For centuries, refugees sailed the Atlantic to start new lives. Easterners pulled up stakes and went west to California. Today, however, reinvention comes less easily and second chances seem more remote. You may leave town, but your electronic shadow stays behind, as anyone who has ventured onto the Internet well knows. We often view the Internet as a communication medium or an information-retrieval tool, but it's also a powerful archiving medium that takes snapshots of our digital lives--which can be stored forever. It's not just official documents or consumer profiles about us that are being collected, but the very essence of our daily online existence: Our political opinions, prejudices, religious beliefs, sexual tastes and personal quirks are all becoming part of an immense media goop that is congealing into a permanent public record. What is different about the digital archiving phenomenon is that our beliefs, habits and indiscretions are being preserved for anyone to see--friends, relatives, rivals, lovers, neighbors, bosses, landlords, and even obsessed stalkers. Take all those ordinary Web pages that many of us have created in a burst of enthusiasm with the new medium. People assume that their home pages disappear once they pull the plug. Not necessarily. Sure, browsers and search engines give you a "404: File Not Found" message when you call up outdated Web pages. But those pages live on in other electronic nooks and crannies. Since 1986, the Internet Archive, a kind of digital warehouse, has been trolling the Web and hoarding everything it comes across--text, images, sound clips. Every two months, it scoops up the entire Web and stores the results on its virtual shelves. It has preserved my expired site, and it may well have yours. Similarly, postings to the Internet's 33,000 news groups may fall off the edge of Usenet after a week or so, but they live on in databases such as Deja News and the Internet Archive. Marie Coady, a freelance writer in Woburn, Mass., was appalled to discover that her posts to online-news, a small, cozy listserv of 1,350 news professionals, was available to anyone through dozens of search engines on the Web. "I consider it an invasion of privacy to have words typed in response to a query chiseled in stone," she said. "In light of our litigious society, it could be dangerous to post any message at all." Many moderators post occasional notices about a list's public archiving policy. But not all do, and few users read the fine print, anyway. "The odd thing is, we perceive the Net as a conversation and not as public record, and it turns out to be public record to a larger extent than people are aware of," said Bruce Schneier, a cryptography consultant and co-editor of "The Electronic Privacy Papers," a 1997 book. "You can easily imagine in 20 years a candidate being asked about a conversation he had in a chat room while he was in college. We're becoming a world where everything is recorded." Beyond the question of informed consent lie larger questions: Should all of this electronic flotsam and jetsam be archived in the first place? What are the consequences for us if our digital footprints survive indefinitely? Who should decide whether they do survive? The answers are hardly comforting, especially for those given to strong displays of emotion or opinion online. "We're now entering an era where tens of millions of people are speaking on the record without any understanding of what it means to speak on the record, and that's certainly unprecedented," says David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. "It is suddenly becoming impossible to escape your past." Your children and grandchildren not yet born will be able to reconstruct a record of your digital life--not just the good stuff but also the best-forgotten postings to alt.sex.fish or rec.nude. The Web shrine you once erected to an old flame, with its hyperventilating vows of eternal devotion, may give pause to a new lover in your life. The union solidarity page you put up at your first job--years before you were bucking for senior management--may come back to haunt your efforts to get a promotion. And who would have predicted that your Senate candidacy would go down in flames when your political opponent uncovered the image-rich homage to porn star Ashlyn Gere you posted in college? Most people don't have posterity in mind when they fire off notes or post Web pages. Observes Schneier: "When you're in college and posting things online, you're young and immortal and you don't think about the impact your words will have five minutes from now, much less five, 10 or 20 years down the road." We can already see the outlines of this new world. When you apply for a job in the high-tech sector, there's a fair chance your prospective employer will use a search engine to scout out your online postings, from late-night musings to intemperate rants fired off to a political news group. Would an employer's decision be colored by information that has nothing to do with a candidate's job qualifications, such as your out-of-the-mainstream religious beliefs, sexual orientation, HIV status or personal habits? Absolutely, and without apology. After all, "character" counts, too. Federal law makes it a crime for agencies to compare most digital information about U.S. citizens, points out Fred Cate, a law professor at Indiana University and author of "Privacy in the Information Age." But nothing prevents private companies or individuals from doing so. Criminal convictions, driving records, property records and voter registration records might be available with a few keystrokes. Should employers, neighbors and descendants not yet born be able to poke around in the digital attic for information about you? Cate believes there are good reasons why we shouldn't be so concerned. "It's the democratizing of Big Brother, and that's not such a bad thing," he says. "You can find out as much about your boss as he can about you. I'm not really happy that someone down the hall can follow me and make a database about me, but that's the way it is in the digital age. If your feelings get bruised, tough. If the information's true and not distorted, then you're stuck with the things you said online years ago. I don't see this as a privacy issue." Perhaps not in the narrowest sense. But if every online expression becomes fodder for somebody's professional, personal or political agenda, clearly we lose certain freedoms of expression in the bargain. Do you really want to live next door to Big Brother, even a more democratic one? Sobel says, "If you define privacy as the right of individuals to control information about themselves--as we do--then mega-archiving systems clearly raise significant privacy issues. These systems convert every passing thought and contemporaneous musing into a permanent, retrievable record--without, in many cases, the knowledge or consent of the creator." Even Brewster Kahle, who founded the nonprofit Internet Archive (www.archive.org) and its commercial offshoot, Alexa Internet (www.aorg) says, "There are some tricky issues here. A lot of this material is public, but is it really meant to endure?" What Kahle is doing is nothing less than astonishing. Alexa's 32 employees, working in a century-old building in San Francisco's Presidio, sends out "spiders" to crawl the Web and Usenet and store the text, video and audio on a digital jukebox tape drive. It takes about two months to capture all 300 million publicly accessible Web pages. So far they've scooped up 10 terabytes of content, or 10 trillion bytes. Kahle says he launched his project because "we need to preserve our digital heritage. Unless we start saving it, every passing day we're losing the record of one of the great turning points in human history." His Internet Archive and Alexa have drawn widespread praise from academics, historians and Net luminaries concerned that the Web's pioneer days may soon become irretrievably lost. For researchers and scholars, it's a field day. For the rest of us, it's a mixed blessing. Sobel points out that individuals can't even prevent private indiscretions from winding up as part of the Internet's global voyeurism machine. "I just got a phone call from a distraught mother whose 16-year-old daughter's ex-boyfriend posted nude photos of her on the Web. The photos were consensual when they were taken. So suddenly it's part of the public domain, and even if the mother persuades him to take them down, he may no longer have control over how long this stuff is out there. This teenage girl may have to live with that for the rest of her life." Kahle offers another example: "The president's personal home page is probably in our archives now--the person who'll become president in 20 or 30 years. You know that he or she is the kind of person who already has a Web page up in college." Are we condemned, then, to a future where journalists will pore over every online college-age musing of a prospective president? It appears that way. "I'm still struggling with the issues raised by this," Sobel says. "We need a public debate to redefine the concepts of what should be private and public. Should anyone be able to type your name into a search engine and come up with public records about your private life? What good are laws that expunge a crime from your record if the old records remain accessible to anyone on the Net? What about information that's misleading, inaccurate, or that you had no idea was out there in cyberspace?" Kahle is well aware of the debate, and he's working with legal experts, historians and privacy advocates to determine the best way to make archived material available. "I used to be very oriented toward privacy, trying to keep track of who knows what about me," he said. "I've become less fanatical about it, because I find that it's more valuable to be found than for me to be obscure. For those who don't want to be found, we should let them be." One may well ask: Do we have that option anymore? As the Net becomes ubiquitous, its underlying essence of interconnectedness and community come with a price: the loss of anonymity. We are being drawn forcibly, inexorably, into the global town square. That is no reason to avoid the Internet (as if we could!). It is becoming inextricably woven into the fabric of our everyday lives. As it should be, for the Net is a gift, connecting us with like-minded individuals around the world and allowing us to interact in soul-stirring ways. But we need to be aware that our digital footprints are permanent ones. Once, words were spoken and vanished like vapor in the air. No longer. Our pasts are etched like a tattoo into our digital skins. For better or worse, we're no longer a people who can reinvent ourselves. Joseph Lasica writes frequently about new media. (c) Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company ---------------End of Original Message----------------- =================================================================== Constitution Society, 1731 Howe Av #370, Sacramento, CA 95825 916/568-1022, 916/450-7941VM Date: 10/12/98 Time: 17:09:43 http://www.constitution.org/ mailto:jon.roland@constitution.org =================================================================== ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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IP: ISPI Clips 5.35: F.B.I. Set to Begin Using National DNA Database
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "ama-gi ISPI" <offshore(a)email.msn.com> Subject: IP: ISPI Clips 5.35: F.B.I. Set to Begin Using National DNA Database Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 00:39:34 -0700 To: <Undisclosed.Recipients(a)majordomo.pobox.com> ISPI Clips 5.35: F.B.I. Set to Begin Using National DNA Database News & Info from the Institute for the Study of Privacy Issues (ISPI) Tuesday October 13, 1998 ISPI4Privacy(a)ama-gi.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This From: The New York Times, October 12, 1998 http://www.nytimes.com F.B.I. Set to Begin Using National DNA Database http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/dna-data-base.html "The DNA data base started out with pariahs -- the sex offenders -- but has already been enlarged to include other felons and will probably be extended to include everyone, giving elites the power to control 'unruly' citizens." By NICHOLAS WADE n a computer at a secret location, the FBI will open a national DNA database on Tuesday that advocates say could significantly reduce rape and other crimes by helping to catch repeat offenders earlier. The data base, with a new generation of forensic DNA techniques, promises to be so efficient that some civil libertarians fear it will be expanded from people convicted of crimes to include almost everyone, giving the government inordinate investigative powers over citizens. The national DNA data base consists of 50 data bases run by the states but unified by common test procedures and software designed by the FBI. As of Tuesday, it will be possible to compare a DNA sample from a suspect or crime scene in one state with all others in the system. The national data base has been nearly a decade in the making. The final pieces fell into place in June when Rhode Island became the last state to set up a DNA data base. But the system still faces many unresolved issues, which are likely to play out according to the reaction from the public and the courts. One such issue is what types of offenders should be included. Another is whether the mass screening of suspects' DNA will prove constitutional. DNA, the chemical that embodies a person's genetic programming, can be found almost everywhere. People shed a constant torrent of dead skin cells. Criminals leave blood when breaking and entering; they shed hair and skin cells in fights, deposit saliva on glasses and leave sweat stains in head bands. From only a few cells in such sources, enough DNA can be extracted to identify the owner. A DNA database of sufficient size could presumably help solve many crimes. The crime-fighting potential of DNA data bases is becoming evident from the experiences of Britain, which started earlier and has had fewer administrative and constitutional hurdles to overcome. The data base there initially focused on sex offenses but has spread to include burglaries and car theft because of the high number of DNA matches that police forces were obtaining. Moreover, there was considerable crossover at least in Britain, among different kinds of offenses. "People who commit serious crime very often have convictions for petty crime in their history, so if you could get them on the data base early you may prevent serious crime," said David Werrett, manager of the DNA data base for England and Wales. The English DNA data base includes entries from crime scenes and from everyone convicted of a crime, as well as from suspects in unresolved cases. Since the system's debut in 1995, it has matched 28,000 people to crime scenes and has made 6,000 links between crime scenes. The data base now holds 360,000 entries and Werrett said he expected it would eventually include one third of all English men between 16 and 30, the principal ages for committing crimes. Werrett said that the data base has grown because police forces in England, which pay $55 for a DNA analysis, are finding it cost effective. Recently the Police Superintendents Association called for the entire population to be DNA tested. Forensic use of DNA in the United States is unlikely to go as fast or as far as in Britain. "Their system makes a tremendous amount of sense the way they approach it, but in the United States we have a different perspective on privacy and on the extent to which we would be willing to depend on a data base," said Christopher Asplen, executive director of the national Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. One major privacy safeguard in the FBI's system is that only a minute fraction of a person's genetic endowment becomes part of the data base. Under a new DNA profiling system known as STR's, for short tandem repeats, a person's DNA is tested at 13 specific sites at which a short length of DNA is repeated in a kind of stutter. The number of repeats is highly variable from one person to another, so that measuring the number of repeats at the 13 designated sites gives a way of identifying each individual with a probability of one in several billion. The blood or other samples donated by individuals are retained by the states in collections known as DNA banks. All that goes into the computerized DNA data bases is the set of 13 numbers from the STR measurements. Only identifying information, and nothing about a person's health or appearance, can be divined from the STR's. Access to the DNA data base is permitted only for law enforcement purposes, with a $100,000 fine for unauthorized disclosures. No known breaches of the system have occurred. One major unresolved issue is that of the types of offenders from whom DNA profiles should be taken. All states require people convicted of serious sexual offenses to donate blood samples, but differ on requiring samples from other groups such as people convicted of violent felonies, juvenile offenders and parolees. Four states -- Virginia, Wyoming, New Mexico and Alabama -- require all people convicted of a felony to provide samples for DNA profiling. Louisiana allows DNA to be taken from people merely arrested in a crime, a practice that has not been tested in the courts. State laws establishing DNA data bases have been challenged in 13 jurisdictions and have been upheld in all but one, in Massachusetts. Some states have revised their original legislation to add offenses. "I think the trend is that 10 years from now all felonies will be covered," said M. Dawn Herkenham, chief of the FBI's Forensic Science Systems Unit in Washington. "We recommend that all violent felonies, burglaries, juveniles and retroactivity for people on parole be included." >From his office in Birmingham, England, last week, Werrett said, "Today we have issued matches on three murders, five rapes, nine serious robberies, two abductions and two violent burglaries." No state DNA data base has acquired the critical mass to furnish such a hit rate. Many state laboratories are understaffed and have large backlogs of DNA samples to analyze. The backlogs are particularly worrisome in the case of rapes where specimens may lie unanalyzed while the rapist assaults more victims. "People may be appalled to know how many rape suspect kits are out there untouched," Ms. Herkenham of the FBI said. "The hit ratio depends on whether we can go back and examine all the evidence that comes in the door," said Dr. Barry Duceman, director of biological science in the New York State Police Forensic Investigation Center in Albany. "We are trying to address a crushing case backlog and to get the technology on line -- you'd be hard pressed to say we are overstaffed." The case backlog problem is compounded because state laboratories are switching to the STR method of DNA profiling from an older method of analysis called RFLP (for restriction fragment length polymorphism). All the samples analyzed by RFLP must be redone by STR if they are to be searchable in the new data base. When these teething problems are overcome, many experts believe that the state and national DNA data base systems may have a significant effect, particularly in reducing crimes like rape that often involve repeat offenders. By scoring a "cold hit" between crime scene data and a person, DNA data bases can be particularly effective in solving cases with no suspects. "Once we get that infrastructure in place and start getting those hits, the benefits will lead to higher utilization," Asplen said. But like other experts involved with DNA testing, he expressed concern that DNA profiling be developed in a publicly acceptable way. "The public does need to have a trust level with this and be assured that law enforcement is not going to abuse this powerful tool," he said. One practice likely to raise eyebrows, if not hackles, is mass screening, which is widely used in the United Kingdom but not yet commonplace here. In high profile crime cases, police in Britain often ask, and can require, all members of a town or building to give DNA samples so as to prove themselves guiltless and help narrow the search for the culprit. The National Commission on the Future of DNA Testing is examining under what circumstances the donation of samples can be considered voluntary. In an office, where employees who declined to donate a sample might be fired, a police request for DNA might be coercive. A future use of DNA testing is that of phenotypic analysis. It will soon be technically possible to infer from the genes in a person's DNA many probable aspects of their appearance, such as hair, skin and eye color. Werrett said the main problem with such predictions would lie in training police to understand their probabilistic nature: told there is a 90 percent chance that the suspect has red hair, investigators should not ignore the 10 percent chance that he does not. DNA reveals so much about a person that behavioral geneticists might wish to search through state data banks for genetic variants linked to criminal behavior. Most states say their DNA data banks can be accessed only for law enforcement purposes, like the data bases. But Alabama authorizes the use of its samples for "educational research or medical research or development," an apparent invitation to genetic inquiry. An impending issue is whether states should retain their DNA samples once the information has been entered into the DNA data base. Forensic managers like to retain samples as a hedge against changing technology. Others say the DNA sample banks create an opportunity for abuse, and that if there is another change in technology the government should just rebuild its data base from scratch. Because DNA can be found at so many crime scenes, DNA data bases promise to be powerful aids in catching criminals. But what thrills forensic experts tends to chill civil libertarians. "The DNA data base started out with pariahs -- the sex offenders -- but has already been enlarged to include other felons and will probably be extended to include everyone, giving elites the power to control 'unruly' citizens," said Philip Bereano a professor of technology and public policy at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Eric Juengst, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and a member of the FBI's DNA Advisory Board, said the original policy in setting up the DNA data base was that it was "suitable only for our most serious category of criminals," and that it would be a breach of that policy to expand its scope. The risks raised by Bereano are worth watching, Juengst said, "but as a society we have to learn how to control powerful tools of all kinds, like nuclear power. I don't see it as an endless slippery slope." Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company --------------------------------NOTICE:------------------------------ ISPI Clips are news & opinion articles on privacy issues from all points of view; they are clipped from local, national and international newspapers, journals and magazines, etc. Inclusion as an ISPI Clip does not necessarily reflect an endorsement of the content or opinion by ISPI. In compliance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed free without profit or payment for non-profit research and educational purposes only. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ISPI Clips is a FREE e-mail service from the "Institute for the Study of Privacy Issues" (ISPI). To receive "ISPI Clips" on a regular bases (up to 3 - 8 clips per day) send the following message "Please enter [Your Name] into the ISPI Clips list: [Your e-mail address]" to: ISPIClips(a)ama-gi.com . The Institute for the Study of Privacy Issues (ISPI) is a small contributor-funded organization based in Victoria, British Columbia (Canada). ISPI operates on a not-for-profit basis, accepts no government funding and takes a global perspective. ISPI's mandate is to conduct & promote interdisciplinary research into electronic, personal and financial privacy with a view toward helping ordinary people understand the degree of privacy they have with respect to government, industry and each other and to likewise inform them about techniques to enhance their privacy. But, none of this can be accomplished without your kind and generous financial support. If you value in the ISPI Clips service or if you are concerned about the erosion of your privacy in general, won't you please help us continue this important work by becoming an "ISPI Clips Supporter" or by taking out an institute Membership? We gratefully accept all contributions: Less than $60 ISPI Clips Supporter $60 - $99 Primary ISPI Membership (1 year) $100 - $300 Senior ISPI Membership (2 years) More than $300 Executive Council Membership (life) Your ISPI "membership" contribution entitles you to receive "The ISPI Privacy Reporter" (our bi-monthly 12 page hard-copy newsletter in multi-contributor format) for the duration of your membership. For a contribution form with postal instructions please send the following message "ISPI Contribution Form" to ISPI4Privacy(a)ama-gi.com . We maintain a strict privacy policy. Any information you divulge to ISPI is kept in strict confidence. It will not be sold, lent or given away to any third party. ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

3 2

IP: Privacy Fears: FBI's DNA Database
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Privacy Fears: FBI's DNA Database Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 08:54:57 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: San Jose Mercury News http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/front/docs/dnadata12.htm Published Monday, October 12, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News DNA database offers promise -- and privacy fears BY NICHOLAS WADE New York Times In a computer at a secret location, the FBI will open a national DNA database Tuesday that advocates say could significantly reduce rape and other crimes by helping to catch repeat offenders earlier. The database, with a new generation of forensic DNA techniques, promises to be so efficient that some civil libertarians fear it will be expanded from people convicted of crimes to include almost everyone, giving the government inordinate investigative powers over citizens. The national DNA database consists of 50 databases run by the states but unified by common test procedures and software designed by the FBI. As of Tuesday, it will be possible to compare a DNA sample from a suspect or crime scene in one state with all others in the system. The national database has been nearly a decade in the making. The final pieces fell into place in June when Rhode Island became the last state to set up a DNA database. But the system still faces many unresolved issues, which are likely to play out according to the reaction from the public and the courts. One such issue is what types of offenders should be included. Another is whether the mass screening of suspects' DNA will prove constitutional. DNA, the chemical that embodies a person's genetic programming, can be found almost everywhere. People shed a constant torrent of dead skin cells. Criminals leave blood when breaking and entering; they shed hair and skin cells in fights, deposit saliva on glasses and leave sweat stains in head bands. >From only a few cells in such sources, enough DNA can be extracted to identify the owner. A DNA database of sufficient size could presumably help solve many crimes. Britain's experience The crime-fighting potential of DNA databases is becoming evident from the experiences of Britain, which started earlier and has had fewer administrative and constitutional hurdles to overcome. The database there initially focused on sex offenses but has spread to include burglaries and car theft because of the high number of DNA matches that police forces were obtaining. Moreover, there was considerable crossover, at least in Britain, among different kinds of offenses. ``People who commit serious crime very often have convictions for petty crime in their history, so if you could get them on the database early you may prevent serious crime,'' said David Werrett, manager of the DNA database for England and Wales. The English DNA database includes entries from crime scenes and from everyone convicted of a crime, as well as from suspects in unresolved cases. Since the system's debut in 1995, it has matched 28,000 people to crime scenes and has made 6,000 links between crime scenes. The database now holds 360,000 entries and Werrett said he expected it would eventually include one-third of all English males between 16 and 30, the principal ages for committing crimes. Werrett said the database has grown because police forces in England, which pay $55 for a DNA analysis, are finding it cost-effective. Recently the Police Superintendents Association called for the entire population to be DNA-tested. Forensic use of DNA in the United States is unlikely to go as fast or as far as in Britain. ``Their system makes a tremendous amount of sense the way they approach it, but in the United States we have a different perspective on privacy and on the extent to which we would be willing to depend on a database,'' said Christopher Asplen, executive director of the national Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. One privacy safeguard One major privacy safeguard in the FBI's system is that only a minute fraction of a person's genetic endowment becomes part of the database. Under a new DNA profiling system known as STRs, for short tandem repeats, a person's DNA is tested at 13 specific sites at which a short length of DNA is repeated in a kind of stutter. The number of repeats is highly variable from one person to another, so that measuring the number of repeats at the 13 designated sites gives a way of identifying each individual with a probability of one in several billion. The blood or other samples donated by individuals are retained by the states in collections known as DNA banks. All that goes into the computerized DNA databases is the set of 13 numbers from the STR measurements. Only identifying information, and nothing about a person's health or appearance, can be divined from the STRs. Access to the DNA database is permitted only for law enforcement purposes, with a $100,000 fine for unauthorized disclosures. No known breaches of the system have occurred. One major unresolved issue is that of the types of offenders from whom DNA profiles should be taken. All states require people convicted of serious sexual offenses to donate blood samples, but states differ on requiring samples from other groups such as people convicted of violent felonies, juvenile offenders and parolees. Four states -- Virginia, Wyoming, New Mexico and Alabama -- require all people convicted of a felony to provide samples for DNA profiling. Louisiana allows DNA to be taken from people merely arrested in a crime, a practice that has not been tested in the courts. Databases upheld State laws establishing DNA databases have been challenged in 13 jurisdictions and have been upheld in all but one, in Massachusetts. Some states have revised their original legislation to add offenses. ``I think the trend is that 10 years from now all felonies will be covered,'' said M. Dawn Herkenham, chief of the FBI's Forensic Science Systems Unit in Washington. ``We recommend that all violent felonies, burglaries, juveniles and retroactivity for people on parole be included.'' >From his office in Birmingham, England, last week, Werrett said, ``Today, we have issued matches on three murders, five rapes, nine serious robberies, two abductions and two violent burglaries.'' No state DNA database has acquired the critical mass to furnish such a hit rate. Many state laboratories are understaffed and have large backlogs of DNA samples to analyze. The backlogs are particularly worrisome in the case of rapes where specimens may lie unanalyzed while the rapist assaults more victims. The case backlog problem is compounded because state laboratories are switching to the STR method of DNA profiling from an older method of analysis called RFLP, for restriction fragment length polymorphism. All the samples analyzed by RFLP must be redone by STR if they are to be searchable in the new database. When these teething problems are overcome, many experts believe that the state and national DNA database systems may have a significant effect, particularly in reducing crimes such as rape that often involve repeat offenders. But like other experts involved with DNA testing, Asplen expressed concern that DNA profiling be developed in a publicly acceptable way. ``The public does need to have a trust level with this and be assured that law enforcement is not going to abuse this powerful tool,'' he said. ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** www.telepath.com/believer **********************************************

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