December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

IP: Cell phone tapping stirs debate
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Cell phone tapping stirs debate Date: Sun, 25 Oct 1998 08:49:06 -0600 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/ctd698.htm 10/22/98- Updated 12:08 PM ET The Nation's Homepage Cell phone tapping stirs debate WASHINGTON -- Law enforcement officials say they need to know where a suspected criminal is when he makes a cellular telephone call. Federal regulators are proposing to give them the capability to find out. The Federal Communications Commission without dissent proposed Thursday that cellular phone companies make technical changes so the FBI, police and other law enforcers -- as long as a court approves -- can locate a person talking on a mobile phone. This and other additional wiretapping capabilities being proposed aim to help law enforcers keep pace with technology. With some 66 million cellular phone customers, police want the authority to legally tap cell phones to track down drug dealers, terrorists and kidnappers. But some groups worry that such a practice could violate privacy. The location proposal is part of a larger plan to implement a 1994 law that requires telecommunications companies to make changes in their networks so police can carry out court-ordered wiretaps in a world of digital technology. The proposal is based on a plan from the telecommunications industry. ''We think this is a positive step forward,'' said Stephen Colgate, the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for administration. ''In many kidnapping cases, it would have been very helpful to have location information.'' But James Dempsey, counsel to the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy group, said: ''We're prepared to fight this one every step of the way.'' FCC Chairman Bill Kennard stressed that police would have no access to locations without a court order. ''A lot of people are saying the FCC will turn mobile phones into tracking devices for the FBI and invade Americans' privacy. I don't believe that will be the case,'' Kennard said. With a court order, police already can legally listen in to cell phone conversations, and, in some instances, get information on the caller's location. But not every company has the technical ability to provide a caller's location. This proposal, if adopted, would set up a nationwide requirement for companies to follow. The legal standard for obtaining a location is lower than the standard for a wiretap order in which police must show a judge there is probable cause of criminal activity. Under the proposal, police would only need to show the location is relevant to an investigation. Privacy groups say that means the government could easily track the movements not only of a suspect, but also of associates, friends or relatives. It would give police the ability to obtain the cellular phone user's location at the beginning and end of a wiretapped call. The proposal would provide police with that information based on the cellular tower, or ''cell'' site, where a call originated and ended. That would give information on the caller's location within several city blocks in an urban area to hundreds of square miles in a rural area. The FBI had been seeking more exact location information. The FCC also is expected to tentatively conclude that companies must give police, as long as a court approves, additional capabilities -- beyond minimum technical standards already proposed by the industry -- so their ability to conduct wiretaps won't be thwarted. The additional capabilities being sought by the FBI that were advanced by the FCC include: Letting police listen in on the conversations of all people on a conference call, even if some are put on hold and no longer are talking to the target of a wiretap. Letting police get information when the wiretap target has put someone on hold or dropped someone from a conference call, and letting them find out if the wiretap target has used dialing features -- such as call waiting or call forwarding. Giving police the number dialed by a wiretap target when the suspect, for instance, uses a credit or calling card at a pay phone. Privacy groups and the telephone industry contend the additional capabilities sought by the FBI go beyond the 1994 law and are an attempt to broaden wiretapping powers. The FBI says it merely wants to preserve the ability to conduct legal wiretaps in a world of constantly changing technology. The FCC is involved because the Justice Department, FBI and the telecommunications industry, after three years of negotiations, were unable to reach agreement on the larger plan for implementing the 1994 law. All interested parties will get a chance to offer opinions on the proposal, which could be revised. Kennard wants a final plan adopted by the end of the year. ©COPYRIGHT 1998 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. ----------------------- 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 or (un)subscribe ignition-point-digest email@address **************************************************** www.telepath.com/believer ****************************************************

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IP: [FP] Microsoft puts smart card on table
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

From: "ScanThisNews" <mcdonalds(a)airnet.net> Subject: IP: [FP] Microsoft puts smart card on table Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 19:56:43 -0600 To: ignition-point(a)majordomo.pobox.com SCAN THIS NEWS 10/26/98 Microsoft puts smart card on table http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C27923%2C00.html?dd.ne.tx.fs6.1026 By Tim Clark Staff Writer, CNET News.com October 26, 1998 Update: Microsoft tomorrow will announce an extension of its Windows operating system for smart cards, a company spokesman said today. Smart cards, which have very limited memory and processing power, are about the size of a credit card and embedded with a computer chip. The technology is used for storing data on mobile phones, banking online, and paying for phone calls and public transit fares. Microsoft vice president Paul Maritz is scheduled to announce the operating system initiative tomorrow at Cartes 98, a conference on smart card technology in Paris. A new system from Microsoft could bring more acceptance of smart cards in the United States. Smart cards have been used in Europe, which holds more than 80 percent of the market, but have been slow to progress in America, at least in part beacuse of the lack of a standard operating system. Microsoft is bidding to enter that arena, but Sun Microsystems is already active in that space with its JavaCard specification. In addition, Mondex, an e-cash company controlled by MasterCard has its MultOS system designed so cards with different operating systems can work together. The company's interest in smart cards parallels its strategy with Windows CE, a stripped-down version of its PC operating system for consumer electronics devices. In April, Microsoft announced a version of Windows CE for automobiles, gas pumps, industrial controllers, and other uses. The smart-card initiative seeks to go after even smaller, cheaper devices--particularly when rival Sun is targeting the same business. The Microsoft spokesman said card developers could use existing Windows tools to work with their software. The annual Paris show is a major showcase for the smart card industry. Schlumberger, a major French manufacturer of smart cards, today unveiled new software for its cards that transforms a smart card into a security device to identify its holder. Many PC makers have said they will produce machines with smart-card readers built in, a capability that Microsoft has provided in its desktop PC operating systems. Microsoft has a certification and logo program that indicates smart card systems work with Windows NT. ======================================================================= Don't believe anything you read on the Net unless: 1) you can confirm it with another source, and/or 2) it is consistent with what you already know to be true. ======================================================================= Reply to: <fingerprint(a)networkusa.org> ======================================================================= To subscribe to the free Scan This News newsletter, send a message to <majordomo(a)efga.org> and type "subscribe scan" in the BODY. Or, to be removed type "unsubscribe scan" in the message BODY. For additional instructions see www.efga.org/about/maillist.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------- "Scan This News" is Sponsored by S.C.A.N. Host of the "FIGHT THE FINGERPRINT!" web page: www.networkusa.org/fingerprint.shtml ======================================================================= **************************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: (un)subscribe ignition-point email@address or (un)subscribe ignition-point-digest email@address **************************************************** www.telepath.com/believer ****************************************************

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IP: 'Grass-Roots' Lobbyists Unrobed as AT&T
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: 'Grass-Roots' Lobbyists Unrobed as AT&T Date: Sat, 24 Oct 1998 07:46:23 -0500 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/digest/wtech002.htm 'Grass-Roots' Lobbyists Unrobed as AT&T By Jackie Spinner Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, October 24, 1998; Page A1 The Prince George's Coalition Against Hidden Taxes billed itself as a "grass-roots" organization when it formed 10 days ago to fight proposed legislation that would charge telecommunications companies seeking to provide new telephone, Internet or other services. In those two weeks, the coalition, which has a paid spokesman and a professional public relations firm at its disposal, has spent $50,000 on radio, newspaper and television ads suggesting that the law would create a "hidden tax" on telephone use for all residential and business customers in Prince George's County. In fact, it is not clear what the legislation would mean for consumers. But this much is certain: There is very little that is "grass roots" about the Prince George's Coalition Against Hidden Taxes, which is a massive lobbying effort by AT&T to quash efforts by Prince George's County to cash in on the emergence of new communications technologies. The media campaign, which Prince George's County Executive Wayne K. Curry (D) called a "disgraceful fraud," demonstrates how much is at stake for a rapidly changing telecommunications industry and for a local government that stands to collect about $6 million a year by taxing providers of new services. Under the proposed legislation, the county would collect 3 percent of gross revenue generated by companies that seek to use public rights of way to lay cable, string wire or plant cellular towers to provide new services. Prince George's County Council members are scheduled to vote on the legislation Wednesday. Prince George's County is the first local jurisdiction in the Washington region to consider a broad telecommunications fee for using public rights of way. Governments across the country are struggling with similar efforts, trying to get fair compensation while encouraging companies to come in and provide services after the 1996 Telecommunications Act opened the doors to competition. AT&T officials said the legislation is unfair and singles out telecommunications firms from other users of public land, such as the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, Washington Gas Light Co. and Potomac Electric Power Co. "It's a money grab," said Ross Baker, director of governmental affairs for AT&T in Maryland. "We pay handsomely right now for the occupancy of the right of way." AT&T now pays permit fees and personal property taxes on equipment located on public rights of way in Prince George's. The company estimated those costs to be about $218,000 a year. According to AT&T, all phone customers' monthly bills could increase 3 percent to 15 percent if the legislation is passed because the cost would have to be passed on to consumers. The company said it would indicate on the bill what portion was the result of a "Prince George's County" surcharge. "Telephone bills are going to go up," said Steve Novak, spokesman for the AT&T-led coalition. County officials and the communications lawyer the county hired to draft the legislation dispute that contention. They said the legislation specifically exempts from the fee basic telephone services such as those provided by Bell Atlantic. But telecommunications companies, including Bell Atlantic, would pay a fee for running new Internet lines or providing telephone service over cable wires, something AT&T is exploring in some markets. Companies also would be charged for offering new call waiting and call forwarding features. "This legislation will not cause an increase in the prices of traditional telephone service," said Nicholas P. Miller, the D.C.-based communications lawyer advising the county. "On the other hand, because billing is largely deregulated, we have no control over how the companies may misrepresent the effect of this local rental charge." John Dillon, Bell Atlantic's vice president of external affairs, said the company is opposed to legislation that taxes revenue for any of its activities, traditional or otherwise. "If the county wants to sit down and talk about what costs are not being covered, we will do that," he said. Thomas Haller, president of the Prince George's Chamber of Commerce, which held what it called an emergency meeting yesterday to discuss the legislation, said the bill could deter telecommunications companies from doing business in the county. "If companies are dissuaded from providing telecommunications services here because they can't compete, we're not going to have much competition," Haller said. Novak said AT&T formed the coalition to warn the public about the county's proposal. People calling the coalition to express their concern about the legislation are quickly transferred to the office of their County Council member. "We are trying to educate the public," Novak said. Council member M.H. Jim Estepp (D-Upper Marlboro), who sponsored the legislation, said he received calls from residents at a rate of about 16 an hour during one day this week. Often, he said, callers were disconnected when he started to explain his position. (Novak said the disconnections are not intentional.) "These are big-time tactics, and when big money tries to crush local government, not only are they doing a disservice to the county, that becomes the issue," Estepp said. Curry agreed. "This isn't any citizens coalition. This is a bunch of giant companies trying to profit off the public for free," he said. But AT&T spokesman Stephen H. Clawson said consumers are the ones who will be hurt. "We found out that there was considerable confusion and concern about the legislation," he said. "We have an obligation to our customers." © Copyright 1998 The Washington Post 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 or (un)subscribe ignition-point-digest email@address **************************************************** www.telepath.com/believer ****************************************************

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IP: Bioterrorism: America's Newest War Game
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

From: believer(a)telepath.com Subject: IP: Bioterrorism: America's Newest War Game Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 06:07:57 -0600 To: believer(a)telepath.com Source: The Nation http://www.thenation.com/issue/981109/1109PRIN.HTM BIOTERRORISM AMERICA'S NEWEST WAR GAME BY PETER PRINGLE "Catastrophic Terrorism" roars the headline over an article in the current Foreign Affairs. The three distinguished authors--John Deutch, a former director of Central Intelligence; Ashton Carter, an ex-Pentagon assistant secretary; and Philip Zelikow, a former member of the National Security Council--declare with unswerving certainty that "the danger of weapons of mass destruction being used against America and its allies is greater now than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962." Any act of "catastrophic terrorism," they say, could have the effect of Pearl Harbor; it could divide America into a "before and after." This is no shot across the bow of a sleeping ship. America is now spending $7 billion a year defending itself against backpack nuclear bombs, canisters of nerve gas and petri dishes of germ weapons planted in crowded cities by an as-yet-unknown adversary. So many different agencies are shoring up the nation's defenses against mega-terrorism, says the government auditor, that it's hard to keep track of where all the money is going, let alone whether it is being spent wisely. Any new government project tagged with the word "terrorism" goes to the top of the pile in Congress. The Pentagon is ordering devices to sniff out nerve gases and deadly germs. National Guard units that normally deal with floods and hurricanes are being trained as chemical and biological SWAT teams. Under the threat of another war with Iraq, all 2.4 million American troops are being vaccinated against anthrax, and companies are scrambling to provide the vaccines--including, notably, a company founded by Adm. William Crowe Jr., a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The FBI wants to send more agents into embassies abroad and is demanding its own planes to shuttle investigative teams around the world. Local and state governments used to dealing with flu epidemics are preparing for the nightmare gas or microbe attack. And one can only imagine what antiterrorist projects the CIA has been dreaming up with its "black" budget of covert ops. Now the players in this new war game have got a new title for their grim pursuit. The thrust of "Catastrophic Terrorism" is a grand reorganization of the Pentagon, CIA and FBI bureaucracies to eliminate the perennial agency overlaps and gaps between "foreign" and "domestic" terrorism. The authors want to pool intelligence at the FBI, create new Catastrophic Terrorism Response Offices, already dubbed CTROs, and cut the two dozen agencies with shopping lists for vaccines, gas sniffers and protective clothing down to one--the Defense Department--because, they say, the Pentagon has the expertise when it comes to rapid acquisition. The operation sounds like it's a few steps short of war mobilization. All but the new title, perhaps, could have been predicted (the original choice, "Grand Terrorism," was rejected on the grounds that there is nothing grand about this method of warfare). Beached by the fall of Communism and the end of the cold war, planners in the Pentagon and military think tanks have been circling a number of new threats: First it was drug wars and then "rogue" states; but international terrorism has an enduring quality in the annals of "threat politics." By dividing the phenomenon into two distinct parts--conventional and catastrophic--Deutch, the quintessential academic/consultant to the Pentagon and the defense industry, and his co-authors have mirrored the old cold war categories of conventional and nuclear weapons. Conventional terrorist weapons are truck bombs filled with fertilizer explosive. Catastrophic terrorist weapons are nuclear, chemical and especially biological--the very weapons President Nixon renounced three decades ago in an effort to prevent their spread to other countries. The sixties US arsenal of biological weapons--then the world's largest and most sophisticated--has come back to haunt those now charged with the defense of the nation. Chemical weapons of mass destruction have been used in state-sponsored warfare--by Iraq against Iran and its own Kurdish population--and fragments of Saddam Hussein's dismantled Scud missiles were alleged by US investigators to have traces of VX, the deadliest of all nerve gases. The worry is that such weapons could also be used by Islamic fundamentalist groups such as the one that President Clinton said he was concerned about when he recently authorized the firing of cruise missiles at a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan--or by groups such as the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo, or by homegrown US adherents to survivalism. No one denies the threat of catastrophic terrorism, but the pace at which it has taken center stage as the prime threat to US security is almost as unnerving as the threat itself. In the media, Russian defectors talk alarmingly of new strains of untreatable anthrax and deadly cocktails of smallpox and Ebola; teenage hackers invade super-secret Pentagon computers; Aum Shinrikyo is said to be back in force, if not in action, after the Tokyo subway nerve gas incident; and three Texans are charged with plotting to assassinate President Clinton with a cactus needle coated with botulin flicked from a cigarette lighter. Outside the calm of the international affairs departments of MIT and Harvard (where Deutch and Carter work), or the offices of the Washington Beltway "bandits" bulging with profits from new contracts related to terrorism, or indeed in the Pentagon itself, where new acronyms bloom, a sense of panic is in the air. Expert after expert says it's not a question of if but when this doomsday will occur. The media cast around for bogymen and find Russia with its rusting biological weapons labs and penniless scientists who could aid and abet the new bioterrorists. Actually, in most years since 1980 the number of Americans killed by terrorists has been fewer than ten, but the toll can suddenly jump. In 1983, 271 Americans were killed by terrorist attacks, most of them in the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon. Then came bombs at the World Trade Center in 1993 (six dead, 1,000 injured), the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 (168 dead, 500 injured) and the Khobar Towers Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia in 1996 (nineteen dead, 500 injured). The World Trade Center in New York is often taken as a starting point for the new concern. What if the World Trade Center bomb had been nuclear, or had dispersed a deadly pathogen? In the rush to play a new war game there is always a tendency to hype the threat. Last November Defense Secretary William Cohen appeared on TV holding a bag of sugar claiming the equivalent amount of anthrax spores would be enough to kill half the population of Washington, DC, an illustration that would only be valid if the dispersal were perfect and the wind were always blowing in the right direction. Republican Senator Fred Thompson, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, asked meekly of the terrorist threat, "Is it being overblown?" (The pun was apparently unintended.) There is, after all, no 100 percent protection against chemical or biological weapons--as there was no 100 percent protection against nuclear weapons. That doesn't prevent the rise of a new threat industry, of course, but one must ask whether there is a way of averting catastrophe other than building Fortress America. One of the true believers in the need for elaborate defenses against germ weapons is none other than President Clinton. He became a convert, and started pushing for stockpiles of vaccines, after reading--among all the intelligence reports on terrorism and the Iraq crisis--a novel titled The Cobra Event, about a fictitious germ attack on Manhattan using a mixture of smallpox and cold viruses. Chemical and biological warfare is great fiction material, of course, but are we in danger of being unable to separate fact from fiction? The author of the novel, Richard Preston, also wrote a non-fiction account of the rise of "bioterrorism" in a March issue of The New Yorker. The article quoted a Russian who was involved in the Soviet biological weapons program named Kanatjan Alibekov, who had been the Number Two in charge of the weapons section of the archipelago of Soviet biological plants known as Biopreparat. He "defected" in 1992, a year after the fall of Communism, and changed his name to Ken Alibek. In The New Yorker he said the Soviets had built huge plants for the production of biological weapons. In the 1972 Nixon-negotiated Biological Weapons Convention, which prohibited the development, production and stockpiling of these weapons, there was a loophole; the treaty did not prevent countries from building a production line for such weapons and keeping it in reserve. This is what the Soviets did--something US intelligence had known about for some time. But Alibek claims that the Russians had actually used these facilities to produce tons of deadly anthrax, some of which had been genetically engineered so that available vaccines were useless, and some of which may have been put into the warheads of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Alibek also asserted that the Russians had experimented with deadly cocktails of smallpox spiked with the Ebola virus, which causes internal hemorrhaging, and with Venezuelan equine encephalitis, a brain virus. For almost a dozen breathless pages, The New Yorker treated its readers to gruesome details of the power of these pathogens, pausing only when the author, himself out of puff, asked the key question: Does anyone believe Alibek? Or is he, as a defector who has apparently outlived his usefulness to the CIA's covert intelligence world, trying to make a buck in civvy street by exaggerating the importance of his information? Preston consulted an old cold warrior, Bill Patrick, the retired US biological warfare expert who was chief of product development for the US Army's biological warfare laboratories at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Patrick, quite reasonably for an old campaigner, takes the defector on trust; if Alibek doesn't know what the Soviets were doing, then who does? But other scientific experts, not given a hearing until page twelve of the thirteen-page New Yorker article, ranged from skeptical to dismissive. One was Dr. Peter Jahrling, the chief scientist at the US Army medical research Institute of Infectious Diseases. He was one of Alibek's original debriefers. Jahrling told The New Yorker, "His [Alibek's] talk about chimeras [mixtures] of Ebola is sheer fantasy, in my opinion." Preston also consulted Joshua Lederberg, the Nobel Prizewinning molecular biologist and a member of a working group at the National Academy of Sciences who advises the government on biological weapons and the potential for terrorism. Lederberg told Preston, "It's not even clear to me that adding Ebola genes to smallpox would make it more deadly." Putting these comments higher up in the article would have been more responsible journalism, clearly, but it would also have spoiled the story. The week before the New Yorker article ran, Alibek was given his first television exposure, on Diane Sawyer's PrimeTime Live show. "Biological weapons. They're real, they're here...smallpox, Ebola, anthrax," was how the hourlong show began. Alibek told Sawyer that the Russians had created a deadly genetic merger of smallpox and Ebola. "In this case, [the] mortality rate [is] about 90 percent, up to 100 percent. No treatment techniques," warned Alibek. "How many people could they have killed?" Sawyer asked him. "The entire population of Earth several times," he replied. ABC generously shared Alibek with the New York Times, which, in return, promoted Sawyer's show on its front page with an interview with the former Soviet scientist--including a warning (not mentioned by Sawyer) that Alibek was considered by US intelligence to be credible about the "subjects he knows firsthand...[but] less reliable on political and military issues." Sawyer's search for Soviet malfeasance took her to Ekaterinburg (formerly the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk), where, in 1979, an accidental release of anthrax spores from a Soviet military compound killed more than sixty people. After reports of the accident reached the West through Soviet émigrés, Moscow claimed the deaths were because of anthrax-tainted meat (anthrax is endemic in the region). Matthew Meselson, the Harvard molecular biologist and the scientist who was instrumental in persuading Nixon to outlaw biological weapons in 1969, led a team of investigators to Sverdlovsk. In 1994 Meselson proved in an article in Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that in fact there had been a release of anthrax spores from the military compound, and he confirmed nearly seventy deaths. But Sawyer, who spent four months researching the show, never interviewed Meselson or anyone from his team, including Jeanne Guillemin, a sociologist at Boston College who had cross-checked a Russian casualty list with hospital records, local interviews and grave sites. Instead, Sawyer referred to an unnamed director of a Sverdlovsk military hospital as saying there had been 259 victims--but not how many of the victims had died. Sawyer's staff called Professor Meselson the night before the program aired, but merely to ask his help with the pronunciation of a number of drugs used to treat the victims: penicillin, cephalosporin, chloramphenicol and corticosteroids. In a further effort to suggest that more spookiness was afoot, Sawyer recorded that at the end of 1997 Russian scientists had published a paper in the British medical journal Vaccine describing the creation of a genetically engineered anthrax strain that was resistant to standard Russian anthrax vaccine. "Might the Russians be creating germs that can resist vaccines?" asked Sawyer. But was there really anything sinister about the Russian work? Were the Russian experiments threatening a new kind of catastrophic terrorism, or were Russian scientists simply studying the lethality of anthrax, which is endemic in Russia? Sawyer didn't mention that Western intelligence had known about the new anthrax strains for almost two years--from an unclassified International Workshop on Anthrax held at Winchester, England, in September 1995. The Russian scientists had openly described their experiments at the meeting sponsored by a number of commercial, charitable and professional organizations independent of the US and British governments. Bioterrorism, biocriminals, bioweaponeers--all good buzzwords for novelists and movie makers who will continue to sound alarms and attract influential followers, no doubt; but the fact is, there have been only two serious uses of biological weapons in this century: one by the Japanese Imperial Army against China, and the other a failed attempt by Aum Shinrikyo to disperse anthrax spores. So if there are terrorists out there wanting to use biological or chemical or nuclear weapons, how good is our intelligence about them? In hearings before Congress in 1995 the CIA admitted that its terrorism intelligence desk somehow missed the 1994 sarin gas attack by Aum Shinrikyo in Matsumoto, which killed seven people--although the event had been reported in the Japanese and European press and even in the US-owned International Herald Tribune. Such revelations suggest that a new, multi-agency National Intelligence Center, as proposed by Deutch et al. in Foreign Affairs, might not only be a good idea but a necessity. But why a whole new bureaucracy? Why the Manhattan Project syndrome? The Aum Shinrikyo story suggests that a small band of well-trained researchers who tap into publicly available information could be as useful as national information centers, wiretaps and grand jury investigations. The risk in rushing to meet the new threat--any new threat--with new departments of counter-espionage and counter-weapons is that the old art of deterrence through international treaties will take a back seat. The United States already has a policy that criminalizes terrorist activity at home, including the postOklahoma City Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996. It also supports sanctions against countries promoting terrorism and corporations exporting material that could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction. In the article on catastrophic terrorism, Deutch et al. mention the proposal of Harvard professor Meselson and his law professor colleague, Philip Heymann, for an international convention making it a crime for individuals to engage in the production of biological or chemical weapons. The existing chemical and biological conventions apply only to states. The idea is to deter national leaders, such as Saddam Hussein, and groups such as Aum Shinrikyo, from seeking to develop chemical or biological weapons, and to discourage corporations from assisting them because the scientist or the CEO could be arrested. If such a treaty had existed and been supported by the United States in the eighties when Iraq was using poison gas and developing biological weapons, the suppliers and advisers on whom Saddam depended could have been brought to trial. The proposal is being co-promoted by Meselson's longtime ally in the fight to eliminate chemical and biological weapons, Julian Perry Robinson of the University of Sussex in England. The crimes are carefully defined in the precise language of the chemical and biological conventions, now ratified by 120 and 141 countries respectively. Under the proposed law any nation that is party to the existing conventions would be bound either to prosecute or to extradite a violator. Such treaties already in effect are aimed at piracy, genocide, airline hijacking and harming diplomats on active duty. If the proposal becomes law, terrorists would have their support group cut from under them; there is even the suggestion of a reward for anyone who provides information leading to a perpetrator's arrest. Maybe the fiction writers will pick up the idea too. Then, who knows whether the FBI or some adventurer from the plaintiff's bar--bringing, say, a class action on behalf of aggrieved shareholders of a company caught trading in anthrax--will be the first to be responsible for the arrest of the culprits? The next generation of terror novels should be filled with "biocriminals" and "chemothugs." For an alternative view, and relief from the drumbeat of the New Threat merchants, one can turn to this quarter's Foreign Policy, a rival of Foreign Affairs. In an article titled "The Great Superterrorism Scare," Ehud Sprinzak, a professor of political science at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, suggests that the voices of doom are mistaken. Their concept of postcold war chaos breeding terrorist fanatics is simply not supported by the evidence of three decades. "Despite the lurid rhetoric, a massive terrorist attack with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons is hardly inevitable. It is not even likely," he writes. "Terrorists wish to convince us that they are capable of striking from anywhere at any time, but there is really no chaos. In fact, terrorism involves predictable behavior, and the vast majority of terrorist organizations can be identified well in advance." Such views tend to go unheard by doomsayers. The Republicans added $9 billion to the military budget, including several additional millions for antiterrorism projects, by emphasizing unpreparedness--sure to be a big issue in Election 2000. --- Peter Pringle, a British journalist, reported on the end of the cold war from Washington and Moscow for The Independent of London. Join a discussion in the Digital Edition Forums. Or send your letter to the editor to letters(a)thenation.com. The Nation Digital Edition http://www.thenation.com Copyright (c) 1998, The Nation Company, L.P. ----------------------- 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 or (un)subscribe ignition-point-digest email@address **************************************************** www.telepath.com/believer ****************************************************

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lotus notes id file
by John 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

Hello I'm using lotus notes and I have a big problem. I have a id file with no password. How can I get a password for it or reset it. Is there some type of utility or something someone knows of?I have been told that I'm out of luck unless I have the original. John...

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No Subject
by emergency＠yahoo.com 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

10/28/98 Y2K Solution! 8 Pine Circle Dr., Silicon Valley, Calif. OTC Company "TCFG" 21 st. Century Frontier Group has through several members of their administrative research department leaked vital information about their companies efforts... Everyone was tight lipped and interviews were refused, and through un-named sources we have learned that the technology and software solution are in the process of being patented! In over 1640 trials, using various data systems the use of the new technology and software solved the Y2K problem 100% of the time. This small publicly traded company "TCFG" which is just 3 years old is through various sources now negotiating with the "Big Boys"! "TCFG" the letters to look for!

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FWD: Judge does right thing - Rio goes to market
by Bill Stewart 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

This is forwarded from the cyberia-l list; looks like the judge has done the right thing (or at least for this phase) by allowing the Rio MP3 player to be shipped. Yeah! >Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 03:29:39 -0400 >Sender: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM> >From: Michael Sims <jellicle(a)INCH.COM> >Subject: Rio goes to market > >http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/10/cyber/articles/27rio.html >http://www.mp3.com/news/116.html >http://www.mp3.com/news/117.html > >The Judge in the Diamond Multimedia/RIAA lawsuit declines to extend >her earlier order barring the shipment of the Rio device. > >"However, in the 18 page ruling handed down today, Judge Collins >found that the plaintiff did not demonstrate a causal relationship >between the Rio and unauthorized copying. Furthermore, she found that >the Rio did not violate the AHRA in such a way as to warrant an >injunction." > >-- >Michael Sims The Censorware Project > http://censorware.org >He who breaks a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom. >Or is well on the way to becoming an engineer. > > Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart(a)pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

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Yet Another letter from Toto
by David E. Smith 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

This letter, pornmarked 23 October 1998 from Springfield Missouri, has some good requests and the usual style of Toto-esque humor that we've all grown accustomed to. I hope I got the drug names spelled right, or at least as close to it as he did, because I know about some of these drugs and it sounds serious. (begin letter) Dave, I need some medical info, and Attila has shared some excellent material in the past with me, so I was hoping he might be able to send me Information Sheets on a few medications. (e.g. # Uses/Side Effects/Precuations/Interactions/etc.) I'd like info on Zoloft, Zestril, Lithium, & Deprecote (?sp) - orange-ish liquid capsules - ... and Tegretol and Respiradahl (?sp) Also, if he could find any InterNet material on Dr. Ruth Braun's current Tourette/Rage work, or similar info, I would appreciate him sending it to me. If I get much more Government `Help,' I'm going to be Dead, soon... (I think if you tell the shrinks here that you feel suicidal they handcuff your hands behind your back, stand you on the toilet, and suspend you from the light fixture by a rope around your neck - so that you don't hurt yourself, eh?) I'm trying to produce as much CypherSpam as possible while in Prison, so that the CypherPunks computers don't get Dusty & Moldy from sitting around with nothing to do. (I figure my best chance at being released from Prison is if the Manufacturers of <Delete> Keys petition the GovernMint in order to restore falling sales. "If it saves the life of a single innocent KillFile...") I'm learning a Trade at #9... Cuckoo Clock! Later Dude, Toto (end letter) ...dave

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Forwarded mail...
by Jim Choate 18 Dec '03

18 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: Theodor.SCHLICKMANN(a)BXL.DG13.cec.be > Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 10:04:17 +0100 > Subject: Re: Right of privacy > It is important to set clear guidlines and codes of practice for such > technological innovations, well in advance of the digital revolution > making new and unforseen opportunities to collate, analyze, recognise > and store such visual images. How does one pass laws to regulate something that doesn't exist yet? > The attitude to CCTV camera networks varies greatly in the European Union, > from the position in Denmark where such cameras ar banned by law to the > position in the UK, where you can find one of the most advanced CCTV network > coverage in Europe and where the issue of regulation and control have been > perhaps more developed then anywhere else. Are there any discussions about this dichotomy and how it came to pass? Something that asks the question of why they chose such widely seperate approaches? I would personaly guess the British have gotten a little paranoid they're set for pay-back-time since their empire's been crumbling for 200 years. I'm much less familiar with Dannish history (post-WWII) and how they developed this respect for Big Brother and its potential. ____________________________________________________________________ To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice. Confucius The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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