December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

IP: ISPI Clips 6.05: U. of T. Students Question Smartcard Technology & Privacy
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "ama-gi ISPI" <offshore(a)email.msn.com> Subject: IP: ISPI Clips 6.05: U. of T. Students Question Smartcard Technology & Privacy Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 00:19:58 -0800 To: <Undisclosed.Recipients(a)majordomo.pobox.com> ISPI Clips 6.05: U. of T. Students Question Smartcard Technology & Privacy News & Info from the Institute for the Study of Privacy Issues (ISPI) Tuesday November 3, 1998 ISPI4Privacy(a)ama-gi.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This From: WIRED News, November 2, 1998 http://www.wired.com Students Wonder: How Smart? http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/15978.html by Marlene Blanshay, blanshay(a)total.net TORONTO -- A coalition of University of Toronto students is leading an open forum on smartcard technology Monday to discuss concerns that a new campus card program may be compromising their privacy. The T-card pilot project began last year when the university distributed 45,000 smartcards to students, staff, and faculty. Like many students across the US, where such programs are common, the 39,000 Toronto volunteers were sold on the convenience of having all their ID combined on a single piece of plastic. "[Students] don't have to carry around so many cards," said University of Toronto registrar Karel Swift, the chairwoman of the school's T-card implementation committee. Not everybody feels that way. The university says it has been open about the new program, but some students feel that the school has not been up front with them about what is being done with information on purchases made with the card. "We just want some answers," said James Hooch of the Identity Technology Working Group, the coalition of students and faculty that will host Monday's forum. "We feel we are being used as a captive market." Andrew Clement, a professor of information studies at the University of Toronto, said the university has an obligation to be more open about the project. "We don't think they are up to some nefarious scheme," said Clement, moderator of Monday's forum. "But they are implementing the new technology, which is going to be used in a wider setting, and should be setting a good example." Nevertheless, Swift said that students have not been left out of the process. "We consulted with student reps when the project was under consideration," Swift said. She added that the university has privacy policy and that their records are protected by a rigorous access to information policy. Some still worry that the university, in the interest of efficiency, is introducing a new technology without looking at the potential uses or misuses. "There is a lot of concern among the students about collection of information for purposes they are not aware of," says Jack Dimond, the university's commissioner for freedom of information and privacy. "My concern is that as smartcards are used more, there is a procedure of review of information it collects. When you begin using the new applications, you have to look at them closely." One freedom and privacy advocate encourages students to boycott the cards. "[Students] should just say, 'I refuse to use this card for any cash purchases until you tell me where this info is going and what you're doing with it,'" said David Jones, president of Electronic Frontier Canada. Copyright © 1994-98 Wired Digital Inc. --------------------------------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 are concerned about the erosion of your privacy in general, won't you please help us continue this important work by becoming an "ISPI Supporter" or by taking out an institute Membership? We gratefully accept all contributions: Less than $60 ISPI 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 or (un)subscribe ignition-point-digest email@address **************************************************** www.telepath.com/believer ****************************************************

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IP: [FP] L.A. DMV Tries to Stem the Tide of Fake Licenses
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "ScanThisNews" <mcdonalds(a)airnet.net> Subject: IP: [FP] L.A. DMV Tries to Stem the Tide of Fake Licenses Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 22:30:13 -0600 To: ignition-point(a)majordomo.pobox.com SCAN THIS NEWS [This is a little dated, but well worth reading] -------------------------------------------- Sunday, April 5, 1998 DMV Tries to Stem the Tide of Fake Licenses Crime: Demand for IDs fuels counterfeiting rings and corruption inside the agency. Officials respond with anti-tampering features, more monitoring of workers. By VIRGINIA ELLIS, Times Staff Writer SACRAMENTO - The California driver's license's preeminence as a form of identification has spawned a thriving black market for fraudulent licenses and a major corruption scandal in the state's motor vehicle department, records and interviews show. In recent years, as the lowly driver's license has been redesigned to make it more tamper-resistant, the card has increasingly become the dominant piece of identification for cashing checks, obtaining credit and securing government services. This, in turn, has caused the black market value for licenses to soar, providing a catalyst for counterfeiting and bribery of Department of Motor Vehicles employees. Scores of DMV workers in offices from San Diego to Sacramento already have been caught illegally issuing driver's licenses, and officials say many more are under investigation. "We have, in effect, created a cottage industry," said Steve Solem, a DMV deputy director. "A lot of different changes have been evolving over the years that have made...people feel the need to get a driver's license at any cost." As a result, officials report that: * Counterfeiting rings operate in every large city in the state, serving up fake licenses of varying quality for sale on the streets. In Los Angeles, business is so competitive that state investigators say a prospective customer can bargain for the best price. A counterfeit identification package, including a license, usually sells for $100, but state agents have paid as little as $35. * At many of the DMV's busiest offices, scam artists make use of loopholes in procedures to get legitimate licenses, which are then peddled to undocumented immigrants or suspended drivers. In Santa Clara County, a four-month surveillance of DMV offices recently led to 26 felony and 16 misdemeanor arrests for using false documents to obtain driver's licenses. * In the past two years, 144 DMV employees were fired or otherwise disciplined for illegal activity, primarily driver's license fraud. Most cases were referred for prosecution. The corruption affected more than a third of the DMV offices. "It's by far the biggest scandal and case of severe corruption in my 16 years here," said state Sen. Steve Peace (D-El Cajon), who heads a legislative task force on personal privacy. "It's not a single organized entity. It's a number of entrepreneurial criminal activities." Late this year, officials plan to begin issuing new licenses with even more sophisticated anti-tampering features to help stem the tide of license-related crime. Among the features will be a tiny ghost image designed to make it harder to substitute one person's photo for another. "You've got to be as technologically alert as the criminals out there," said DMV Director Sally Reed. "You've got to keep changing the license. You've got to keep changing your practices." Complicating the task is an overwhelming DMV workload. The department licenses more than 20 million California drivers, issues more than 6 million new licenses and identification cards a year, and operates 172 licensing centers around the state. How many fake and fraudulent licenses may be in circulation is impossible to calculate. But state officials say the problem is rampant, its impact on society insidious. A fraudulent driver's license that is used to steal someone's identity can cause years of frustration as the victim suddenly finds his or her credit destroyed. Or the fake license can put a convicted drunk driver back on the highway, where the next accident may cause someone's death. The role of the driver's license in criminal activity was heightened not only by the technological changes that made it so widely accepted, but by governmental decisions to use it as a tool for punishment. New laws have made a larger and larger pool of people susceptible to losing their license for activities unrelated to driving. The license can be suspended for spraying graffiti, failure to pay child support, truancy and certain kinds of prostitution. And immigrants who lack proper proof of residency cannot be issued one. "If you're a drunk driver, you want a fake ID," said Alison Koch, a senior special investigator for the DMV in Sacramento. "If you're in a gang, you want a fake ID. If you're a deadbeat dad, you want a fake ID. If you're an illegal alien, you want a fake ID. If you want to commit check or credit card fraud, you want a fake ID. "There is hardly a crime out there that doesn't demand some kind of fraudulent identification." For many minor crimes, she said, a bogus license - even a poor one - is all the fraud artist needs. The quick glance that many business people give the license before cashing a check or accepting a credit card is not enough to discern that it's fake. For more sophisticated crimes, said Vito Scattaglia, an area commander for DMV investigators in Los Angeles, criminals want the real thing - and this demand for legitimate licenses has put heavy pressure on low-level state employees to commit fraud. "When you have a technician who is making $2,000 to $2,400 a month and you have an individual who is willing to pay $1,000 to process one driver's license, you don't have to be a genius to figure out how tempting that is," he said. But Peace, the state senator, said high-level officials did not recognize how extensively their department had been infiltrated by criminals until an embarrassing KCBS-TV Channel 2 report last year caught a DMV employee on camera processing illegal licenses. Until the Los Angeles broadcast, only a handful of DMV investigators had been monitoring employee fraud, and they were struggling with a huge backlog. Then Reed temporarily assigned 213 DMV investigators to employee fraud and announced that it would be the agency's No. 1 priority. The results were staggering. Using everything from surveillance to informants, investigators caught dozens of DMV employees around the state processing illegal licenses. Many were teamed up with grifters on the outside, who usually worked the DMV parking lots, preying mostly on immigrants who would be guaranteed a license for about $1,000 to $2,000. Typical was the case of an 18-year Torrance employee who was targeted after a DMV computer in Sacramento showed irregularities in licenses he had issued. After investigators interviewed dozens of his customers, the employee was charged with computer fraud and altering public records. "The first person I interviewed, I knew I was on the right trail," recalled Ken Erickson, a senior DMV special investigator. "The customer was honest. He said, 'Yeah, I'm here illegally and I can't read or write either English or Spanish.'" But, Erickson said, data the Torrance employee had entered into the DMV computer stated that the man was a legal resident of California who had passed the written driver's test in English. Investigators searched the employee's car and found $14,280 in cash stashed behind the front seat, Erickson said. They estimated that over a 15-month period he had improperly issued at least 70 licenses. After pleading no contest to two felony counts, he was fined $14,280 and placed on three years probation. He also was fired and barred from future government employment. The employee fraud, Peace said, is "not some sort of single grand conspiracy with a godfather sitting on top pulling levers." "What it has been is a culture within the department that has allowed for a whole variety of entrepreneurial criminal behavior. It was a culture which says, 'I've got my little deal and you've got yours. Don't mess with mine and I won't mess with yours.'" Although the problem predated Reed's appointment as director, Peace faulted her for initially disbelieving it and being "slow to react" until the television report. Reed acknowledged the bad publicity was a wake-up call but disputed Peace's contention the DMV has a culture of corruption, saying the vast majority of the DMV's 8,600 workers are law-abiding. A spokesman for the California State Employees Assn., which represents DMV employees, accused the department of overreacting. He said the crackdown has destroyed worker morale and become so broad that "it could very likely be called a witch hunt." Investigators concede that corruption within the DMV probably pales compared to that on the outside. Richard Steffen, chief consultant for a legislative task force investigating state government, said crime rings are able to get legitimate licenses simply by knowing how to work the system. He said they know, for example, that photos and thumbprints are not taken until the end of the licensing procedure, a process tailor-made for the use of ringers. The ringer takes the driver's test, then the customer comes in the next day and completes the process. "There is a pattern here that is known on the street," said Steffen, who is preparing to release a report on the DMV. "It's not like masterminds come up with this." Birth certificates, which the DMV requires, are easily counterfeited, and phony ones are hard to spot, officials said. The appearance of birth certificates varies from state to state and sometimes, as in California, from county to county. Adding to the problem is California's open birth certificate procedure, which allows virtually anyone to get a certified copy of anyone else's birth record. One team of ringers arrested by the California Highway Patrol was found with counterfeit birth certificates from Oklahoma, Utah, New York and Texas, according to Bruce Wong, a senior DMV investigator in San Jose. "They were driving up the state from Southern California, stopping at different DMV offices and submitting license applications under different names," he said. "In one day of driving, they had accumulated eight different instructional permits, which they could then sell along with the counterfeit birth certificate." Solem said some loopholes in licensing procedures will be closed when the department begins issuing the new licenses and taking photos and thumbprints at the beginning of the process. "But this is a problem that's going to be with us," he added. "Government does something and the crooks figure a way around it and then government catches up. It goes on and on." Scattaglia said much of the counterfeiting may have its roots south of the border, but no one knows for sure because investigators have only been able to arrest the sellers, not the suppliers. "We have gone into places and recovered sheets and sheets of holograms and state seals - literally a setup [for] putting a license together," he said. "But we've never found the commercial facility that has the printing presses and all the orders. The informants we have all indicated that that place is somewhere in Mexico." Beth Givens, director of the San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a consumer information and advocacy program, predicted that driver's license fraud will always be difficult to control because it's not a violent crime and punishment is light. "If these criminals happened to break and enter or use a gun, it would be one thing," she said. "But because they're using paper and documents, they're not seen as a threat to society." Banking officials are starting to rethink their heavy reliance on the driver's license. "That's certainly a trend that's underway because they are increasingly fake," said Gregory Wilhelm, lobbyist for the California Bankers Assn. Los Angeles Times ======================================================================= 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. 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SETI@home Project Update
by SETI＠home 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear SETI@home volunteer: Thank you for signing up for SETI@home. We're on schedule to distribute the SETI@home screensaver program in April 1999, and we'll send you another email when that happens. On October 30 we began recording data at the world's largest radio telescope, located in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Preliminary versions of the screensaver program and the data distribution system have been completed. On November 20 we will begin testing the system with a group of 100 users analyzing real data (sorry - no more volunteers needed). Over the next few months we will complete the testing, making sure the system will handle large numbers of users. We are pleased to thank SETI@home's sponsors and technology partners: the Planetary Society (a 100,000 member organization founded by Carl Sagan), Paramount Studios (in conjunction with their new movie, Star Trek IX: Insurrection), Sun Microsystems, EDT, Fuji Film Computer Products, Informix, and individual donors like you. The screen saver will be free for everyone, but if you can consider making a tax-deductible donation to SETI@home, please visit http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/donor.html. We also invite you to become a member of The Planetary Society. You can visit their site at http://www.planetary.org. For further SETI@home information and news, please see http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu. Thank you again for offering to participate in SETI@home. Our work is enhanced and inspired by the enthusiasm of thoughtful, adventurous, and generous people like you. If you wish to remove your name from the SETI@home email list, please send an empty email message to this address with subject header "remove". Best wishes, The SETI@home project

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Programmer Needed for Privacy Tool Implementation Project Programmer Needed for Privacy Tool Implementation Project
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As the World Wide Web Consortium's Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P) specification is nearing completion, it's time to start working on P3P implementations. I have an immediate opening for a java programming contractor to implement a P3P user agent as a client-side proxy. For details on P3P see http://www.w3.org/p3p/ This is an excellent opportunity for a programmer who wants to help make it easier for people to maintain their privacy online. An outstanding candidate for this position would have: - several years of programming experience, including project design experience - experience with browser plugg-ins, Web proxy servers, or Web clients (or at least some familiarity with the HTTP protocol) - Windows GUI development experience - user interface design experience - familiarity with XML I'm looking for someone who can start ASAP, preferably in the next month. This project is expected to last 3 to 6 months, most likely 6 months. We would prefer someone who can work on site at the AT&T Labs-Research Shannon Laboratory in Florham Park, NJ, but will consider outstanding applicants who would prefer to work remotely. Florham Park is in a nice suburban area less than an hour from midtown Manhattan. Please email lorrie(a)research.att.com for more information or to apply. -- Lorrie Faith Cranor lorrie(a)research.att.com AT&T Labs-Research 973-360-8607 180 Park Ave. Room A241 FAX 973-360-8970 Florham Park, NJ 07932 http://www.research.att.com/~lorrie/

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FREE CD With Your Free Netcenter Membership
by netcenter-news1＠netscape.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone Alternative
by Matthew James Gering 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[dbts and e$ Cc: dropped] Petro wrote: > However, Privacy + Freedom == Anarchy, or close enough to be > indistinguishable. However much I may or may not agree with you, that is an entirely subjective judgement. In political context, anarchy = without rule of government -- nothing more, nothing less. That necessarily means you will have freedom from government, but does not imply you will have freedom from others. Ditto for privacy. In fact there is good claim that privacy will not exist in anarchy except by those that decide to use the tools and methods to achieve it -- cat and mouse game same as today, except the corporate cats are bound by economics (the value of data to them versus the cost to obtain it) whereas government cats are not. Matt

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SETI@home Project Update
by SETI＠home 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear SETI@home volunteer: Thank you for signing up for SETI@home. We're on schedule to distribute the SETI@home screensaver program in April 1999, and we'll send you another email when that happens. On October 30 we began recording data at the world's largest radio telescope, located in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Preliminary versions of the screensaver program and the data distribution system have been completed. On November 20 we will begin testing the system with a group of 100 users analyzing real data (sorry - no more volunteers needed). Over the next few months we will complete the testing, making sure the system will handle large numbers of users. We are pleased to thank SETI@home's sponsors and technology partners: the Planetary Society (a 100,000 member organization founded by Carl Sagan), Paramount Studios (in conjunction with their new movie, Star Trek IX: Insurrection), Sun Microsystems, EDT, Fuji Film Computer Products, Informix, and individual donors like you. The screen saver will be free for everyone, but if you can consider making a tax-deductible donation to SETI@home, please visit http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/donor.html. We also invite you to become a member of The Planetary Society. You can visit their site at http://www.planetary.org. For further SETI@home information and news, please see http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu. Thank you again for offering to participate in SETI@home. Our work is enhanced and inspired by the enthusiasm of thoughtful, adventurous, and generous people like you. If you wish to remove your name from the SETI@home email list, please send an empty email message to this address with subject header "remove". Best wishes, The SETI@home project

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RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: Matthew James Gering <mgering(a)ecosystems.net> > Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone > Alternative > Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 14:29:47 -0800 > Petro wrote: > > However, Privacy + Freedom == Anarchy, or close enough to be > > indistinguishable. This is silly. > for privacy. In fact there is good claim that privacy will not exist in > anarchy except by those that decide to use the tools and methods to achieve > it -- cat and mouse game same as today, except the corporate cats are bound > by economics (the value of data to them versus the cost to obtain it) > whereas government cats are not. They're bound by economics and nothing else, not even the government cats. ____________________________________________________________________ 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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RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 18:29:20 -0500 > From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> > Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone > (fwd) > At 6:01 PM -0500 on 11/4/98, Jim Choate wrote, from the bowels of my killfile: > > > > They're bound by economics and nothing else, not even the government cats. > > Amen. Which is why it's a *BAD* idea. > A government is just another economic actor. A very large economic actor > with lots of guns and a monopoly on force, but an economic actor > nonetheless. You need to look around, the government has NO monopoly on force. > Reality is not optional. Absolutely, that's why any free-market/anarchy is doomed to fail. ____________________________________________________________________ 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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Re: TriSnakeoil questions
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I wrote: >I'm currently sitting in a booth at a Tandem user show directly opposite the >Atalla one. If there's anything in particular which someone wants to ask >them, let me know and I'll see how knowledgeable their salesdroids are. I had a talk to them, it turns out that of the two different Atalla's, Atalla the company and John Atalla the person, the snake oil is being pushed by Atalla the person rather than Atalla the company. The Atalla people knew as little about it as everyone else, and although they were careful with their replies I got the impression that they were about as impressed with TriStrata as others on this list are. OTOH perhaps they were just depressed that I asked them about TriStrata instead of their RSA/3DES card :-). [I have half a dozen brochures for this one, in every single brochure it's called something different (SET accelerator, SSL accelerator, e-commerce accelerator, <buzzword> accelerator) but once you get past the first few application-specific paragraphs the rest is identical. Covers all the bases I guess. Their white paper on why hardware crypto is better than software crypto is a hoot too - "Hardware is cheaper" (obviously some new definition of the word with which I wasn't previously familiar), "software crypto can't be shared" (as opposed to hardware, which can be shared with a simple copy command), etc. Their products look pretty good, but everyone I talked to complained about the price and was ready to jump on software alternatives] Peter.

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