November 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Blunkett faces new visa questions
by R.A. Hettinga 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

Oh, the irony... Cheers, RAH ------- <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/uk_news/politics/4056987.stm> The BBC Tuesday, 30 November, 2004, 22:57 GMT Blunkett faces new visa questions David Blunkett is facing new questions about whether he "fast-tracked" a visa application for his ex-lover's nanny. The Daily Mail is publishing what it says are two Home Office letters to Leoncia Casalme, Kimberly Quinn's nanny The first tells her it could take up to a year to process her visa claim, but another letter 19 days later says she can now stay in the UK indefinitely. But Mr Blunkett's spokesman says he has done nothing wrong and the reported letters change nothing. Letters shift Ex-civil servant Sir Alan Budd has been appointed by the government to review the handling of the visa application and examine all the papers. Mr Blunkett has said he checked Ms Casalme's application for permanent residence was filled in correctly but did not intervene to get it approved. The letters published in the Daily Mail do not mention Mr Blunkett or indicate that he interfered in the process. " There will now be many unanswered questions hanging over the home secretary's head " David Davis BBC political editor Andrew Marr said the letters were only circumstantial evidence but on the face of it were "potentially very damaging". A letter to Miss Casalme on 23 April 2003 says her application cannot be decided immediately. It says: "The waiting period for these cases is about 12 months at the moment... "On current performance, we estimate that your application will be decided by January 2004." But a second letter dated the 12 May tells Miss Casalme: "You can now remain indefinitely in the United Kingdom." Apology Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis said: "If the Daily Mail story is correct, it is very difficult to understand how this can be the normal length of procedure for an application to remain. "Mr Blunkett will have to explain precisely how this rapid processing of the application came about. If he influenced this matter, his position is untenable." The reports emerged after Mr Blunkett said he was repaying #180 to Parliament for the first class train ticket he gave to then lover Mrs Quinn. He apologised for his "genuine mistake". The rail warrants are intended for MPs' spouses and Mr Blunkett's spokesman said he had now realised his error. Mark Leech, editor of the Prison's Handbook, complained about the rail ticket to Parliament's standards watchdog, Sir Philip Mawer. Despite Mr Blunkett's admission, Mr Leech said he still wants an inquiry, saying: "I have come across many cases where prison officers have been made to resign over falsified expense claims. This is no different." Sir Philip says he will look at the evidence behind the complaint before deciding whether to investigate. Mrs Quinn, who is seven months pregnant, was admitted to hospital on Monday night amid the stress caused by the controversy. Her husband, Stephen, said the problems were not serious but he did not know when she would be discharged. Downing Street denies Tory suggestions the scope of that inquiry is too narrow, saying the Home Office would look at less serious issues. Tony Blair's official spokesman also rejected suggestions that the prime minister had prejudged the review when he predicted it would exonerate Mr Blunkett. The spokesman said that by giving Mr Blunkett his public backing, Mr Blair had just been expressing trust and confidence in his home secretary. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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China 'blocks Google news site'
by R.A. Hettinga 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

Reminds me of Imperial Russia's railroad gauge, which was different from the rest of Europe's, maybe the whole world's, on purpose, to prevent attacks. Common trick, lots of countries did it, though it impedes lots of progress at the border besides military progress toward your capital. You have to offload *all* the freight, both ways, and put it onto new trains, for instance. Way worse than going from diesel to electric, like they did at New Haven, for instance, where you used to just change engines. More of a symptom than a cause, of course. Anyone want to take bets on China, though? I think the "Great Firewall" will choke, or more be likely ignored, long before China will block all truth at its border, instead of mere efficient transit prices for foreign trade. But then I was a "Polly" during the Y2K thing, too. Oh. Wait... (Yeah, I know, I was *dead* wrong about Jim Bell getting a guilty verdict. Surest way to be wrong is to make a prediction, and all that...) Cheers, RAH Oddly enough, the Aussies had exactly this railroad gauge problem about half way across their southern coast. I think they've fixed it since, though I'm not sure. -------- <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/technology/4056255.stm> The BBC Tuesday, 30 November, 2004, 16:39 GMT China 'blocks Google news site' China has been accused of blocking access to Google News by the media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders. The Paris-based pressure group said the English-language news site had been unavailable for the past 10 days. It said the aim was to force people to use a Chinese edition of the site which, according to the watchdog, does not include critical reports. Google told the BBC News website it was aware of the problems and was investigating the causes. Chinese firewall China is believed to extend greater censorship over the net than any other country in the world. " China is censuring Google News to force internet users to use the Chinese version of the site which has been purged of the most critical news reports " Reporters Without Borders A net police force monitors websites and e-mails, and controls on gateways connecting the country to the global internet are designed to prevent access to critical information. Popular Chinese portals such as Sina.com and Sohu.com maintain a close eye on content and delete politically sensitive comments. And all 110,000 net cafes in the country have to use software to control access to websites considered harmful or subversive. Local versions "China is censuring Google News to force internet users to use the Chinese version of the site which has been purged of the most critical news reports," said the group in a statement. "By agreeing to launch a news service that excludes publications disliked by the government, Google has let itself be used by Beijing," it said. For its part, the search giant said it was looking into the issue. "It appears that many users in China are having difficulty accessing Google News sites in China and we are working to understand and resolve the issue," said a Google spokesperson. Google News gathers information from some 4,500 news sources. Headlines are selected for display entirely by a computer algorithm, with no human editorial intervention. It offers 15 editions of the service, including one tailored for China and one for Hong Kong. Google launched a version in simplified Chinese in September. The site does not filter news results to remove politically sensitive information. But Google does not link to news sources which are inaccessible from within China as this would result in broken links. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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It's "America" Not "Amerika"
by R.A. Hettinga 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

<http://www.techcentralstation.com/113004G.html> Tech Central Station It's "America" Not "Amerika" By Pejman Yousefzadeh Published 11/30/2004 Let's put a silly myth to bed, shall we? Contrary to what some believe, American politics is not devolving into a state of fascism. We read and hear warning cries alerting us to the supposed incipient fascist threat quite often nowadays. Many of these "alerts" inform us that our freedoms and liberties are at risk, that the American democratic-republic is gradually giving way to an authoritarian or totalitarian establishment, and that our leaders are reminiscent of Nazis. Thus we have Internet threads comparing George W. Bush with Hitler, or at the very least, with Mussolini or Leonid Brezhnev. By extension of the Hitler analogy, America may be like Germany in 1939 -- on the cusp of embracing fascism if it hasn't completely done so yet. You might shrug off this kind of rhetoric by saying that it is confined to crank quarters of the punditocracy, and to be sure, those who argue that America is sliding into fascism are ripe for ridicule. But the argument -- while wrong -- has the virtue of being simple and simplistic, meaning that it has the potential to be spread rather easily. (This is most interesting -- usually it is the fascists who have the simplistic arguments on their side. In this debate, however, it is the supposed anti-fascists who are trying to win converts to their argument with simplistic cries about fascism being in the ascendant in the United States.) Because the argument of "America as the Fascist State" can be so easily spread through simplistic arguments, it is high time to fight the demagoguery with a little perspective. A key component of the fascist state is the presence of authoritarian or totalitarian laws that clamp down on civil liberties. Those who decry the supposed onset of fascism in the United States like to claim that the Patriot Act is the instrument by which our rights and liberties is being curtailed. Putting aside the fact that many of the Patriot Act's critics haven't even carefully read the Act and its provisions, many of the arguments made against the Act are just plain wrong. Myth-busting articles and blog posts on the Internet setting the record straight regarding the Patriot Act -- like this one, for example -- are quite plentiful because there is a market for them thanks to blatant misreadings of the Patriot Act that are all too common in news and punditry circles. Many of the supposed totalitarian aspects of the Patriot Act were already in existence when the Act was passed, and as of July of this year, out of the nearly 1300 alleged abuses of the Patriot Act that were forwarded to the Inspector General of the Justice Department, the Inspector General found that none of those complaints had any merit whatsoever. (Surely, we will be told that the Inspector General is simply covering up the abuses of the crypto-fascist state, but there does come a point where such circular arguments are no longer worthy of any attention whatsoever.) The supposed loss of civil liberties and the onset of fascism were key components of the argument made to elect John Kerry as President. Kerry himself spoke to this issue when he promised in his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention that he would "appoint an attorney general who will uphold the Constitution of the United States." Of course, anyone who has been paying attention to political rhetoric over the past four years knows that John Ashcroft is closely connected with the supposed rise of American fascism, and politically, it was quite convenient for Kerry to pose as the remedy to the fascist Ashcroftian annihilation of American civil liberties. But when one compares the civil liberties voting records of Senator Kerry and former Senator Ashcroft, Ashcroft plainly comes out ahead as the more capable and ardent defender of civil liberties. And Ashcroft is not alone as the miscast Republican fascist. When the Clinton Justice Department was working on the development of "Carnivore" -- a cyber-surveillance tool -- it was former Republican congressman and House Majority Leader Dick Armey who campaigned against Carnivore as a threat against civil rights and civil liberties. Indeed, Armey pressed both Attorney General Janet Reno and Ashcroft on the issue of Carnivore -- strange behavior, to be sure, from the former leader of the House contingent of America's supposed fascist party. Strangely enough, those loudest in denouncing the incipient rise of American fascism ignored and ignore all of this. Of course, it isn't just Americans who are claiming the onset of fascism in the United States. In Europe, comparisons between the Bush Administration and fascist elements like the Nazis have also been plentiful. This is peculiar because the state of civil liberties in Europe is far more parlous than it is in America, and if the state of civil liberties in America actually descended to the European level, warnings regarding the incipient rise of fascism might actually have some merit. In his recent Thanksgiving holiday blog post, law professor Orin Kerr gave thanks for the fact that we live in a country that respects civil liberties a great deal more than they are respected in Europe. His remarks are well taken, but I wonder why we haven't heard alarm bells ringing regarding the rise of European fascism from the same quarters that like to claim American fascism is a threat to be taken seriously. None of this is to say that when it comes to fascism, "It Can't Happen Here." But those who make the claim that America is becoming a fascist state have an obligation to be responsible with the facts, lest others stop taking them seriously. Ironically enough, fascism has its best chance when those who line up to denounce it discredit themselves with one too many false alarms. The next time they sound the alarm, they may have reason to. But few people will be inclined to listen if those who make the claims have proven themselves to be untrustworthy demagogues in the past. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: Tin Foil Passports, Al foil diplomas
by Major Variola (ret) 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

At 08:02 PM 11/29/04 +0000, Justin wrote: >On 2004-11-27T06:36:24-0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >> At 09:13 AM 11/27/04 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> >Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/27/0026222 >> >Posted by: michael, on 2004-11-27 05:05:00 >> > low-cost solution: '[I]incorporate a layer of metal foil into the >> > cover of the passport so it could be read only when opened.' Don't >> > they know that the whole tinfoil hat thing is supposed to be a >> > joke?" >> >> What is most poignant about this post is the lack of education of /. >> authors. Don't they teach Maxwell any more? Is Faraday just the guy >> who said ... > >Standardized education. We can't have anyone teaching to the 50th >percentile, even assuming the median teen-citizen can handle basic >calculus and E&M. Teachers must teach one or two sigmas below that >level, and anyone who gets hyperactive in such an inane educational >environment is malfunctioning and requires medication. Today I heard a guy at work describe the Turkish empire to another. Their plan was to eliminate foreign schools for ca. 300 years so the conquered would be lame. No Canticle For Liebowitz for the conquered. I refrained from expressing the parallels I perceived, camoflage is best some times. Got IED?

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Re: geographically removed?
by Major Variola (ret) 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

At 06:44 PM 11/28/04 -0800, James A. Donald wrote: > -- >On 27 Nov 2004 at 6:43, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >> Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always >> be defeated by cranking up the police state a notch. > >You assume the police state is competent, technically skilled, >determined, disciplined, and united. Observed police states >are incompetent, indecisive, and quarrelsome. > >> This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems. > >The problem is that any genuinely irrevocable payment system >gets swarmed by conmen and fraudsters. We have a long way to >go before police states are the problem. Call me pessimistic, but you seem optimistic to me. At least we're moderately back on topic :-)

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"Spooks", Root Beer, and My Keyboard...
by R.A. Hettinga 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

...so, courtesy of BitTorrent and http://www.tvtorrents.net, I started to download and watch "Spooks" something that looked like a British knock-off of the really-better-off-dead "The Agency" from a few years back over here. Fine. First episode I see (Year 3 episode 6, episode titles forgotten), seemed okay, mostly, though she was *awfully* scrawny the old honey trap, um trick. Second one (episode 7), though, starts off with an almost plausible hacking-for-jihad storyline with only the odd bit of "Star-Trek science", admittedly I'm a sucker for hand-waving, but then, but then... ...but then they got to the crypto. Hence the subject line of this message. Sigh. I'll never learn. Root beer, keyboards, and "Spooks" don't mix. But we knew that already, right? :-) Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Growing Number Of Hackers Attack Web Sites for Cash
by R.A. Hettinga 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110176932097886077,00.html?mod=hom…> The Wall Street Journal November 30, 2004 PAGE ONE Virus for Hire Growing Number Of Hackers Attack Web Sites for Cash Entrepreneur Asked a Team To Mastermind Strikes Against Rivals, U.S. Says WeaKnees on Its Knees By CASSELL BRYAN-LOW Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL November 30, 2004; Page A1 On Oct. 6, 2003, an electronic attack overwhelmed the Web site of WeaKnees.com, an online seller of digital video recorders. As the attacks escalated over several weeks, the e-mail system was knocked out, customers couldn't access the Web site, and the Los Angeles retailer says it suffered about $200,000 in lost sales and costs for fixing the system. U.S. law-enforcement officials who later investigated the electronic assault came to a disturbing conclusion: It wasn't masterminded by a typical hacker, motivated by the thrill of the crime. Instead, the attack on WeaKnees appeared to be the work of a new breed of cyber-mercenaries who are paid to unleash viruses. The man who allegedly made that payment is Jay R. Echouafni, a 37-year-old entrepreneur from Sudbury, Mass. Rebuffed by WeaKnees over a proposed business deal, Mr. Echouafni attacked the company's Web site, according to law-enforcement authorities. In August 2004, Mr. Echouafni was indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on charges of criminal conspiracy and launching destructive computer attacks against WeaKnees and two other firms. Mr. Echouafni has since fled, a prosecutor says. Five other defendants are named in a criminal complaint for their alleged role in the attacks, but haven't yet been indicted. Traditionally, computer hackers have invented viruses primarily for the sake of the bragging rights. But now hackers are mixing with fraudsters and organized-crime rings, law-enforcement officials say. Increasingly viruses are being used illegally for financial gain, and they are becoming part of the modern criminal's toolbox. "The things that used to be just nuisances have been picked up by financial criminals," says Alan Paller, director of research at the SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security Institute, known as SANS, an organization for computer-security professionals in Bethesda, Md. The Internet's growth has led to a surge in cyber-crime, including identity theft and online fraud. The Federal Bureau of Investigation ranks cyber-criminals as its third-biggest priority after terrorists and spies. The United Kingdom's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit has made more than 100 arrests related to major computer crimes since it was set up three years ago. The U.S. Department of Justice employs about 38 attorneys in its computer-crime section, up from three a decade ago. About half focus on viruses and other computer intrusions. The toll of viruses on business, in terms of lost revenue and repair costs, could hit $17.5 billion this year, up from an estimated $13 billion in 2003, according to Computer Economics Inc., a research firm in Aliso Viejo, Calif. It isn't known how much of that stems from financially motivated attacks, but law-enforcement officials say that their frequency is rising sharply. The growth in such attacks is driven by a new family of viruses that lets a person control large numbers of computers in order to, say, attack a corporate Web site. About a year ago, a Russian gang started using a network of virus-infected computers to shut down legitimate British gambling sites and blackmail the operators into paying hundreds of thousands of pounds, according to the U.K.'s high-tech crime unit. Computer viruses are notoriously hard to track. Mr. Echouafni's trail, for example, runs from Massachusetts and California to Germany and Britain. In a phone call made recently from an unknown location, Mr. Echouafni denied the federal charges. "I had nothing to do with the attacks," he said. He said that he had been the target of Web attacks himself, and that he had reported them to the FBI. Mr. Echouafni declined to comment further on the allegations. A prosecutor confirmed that the FBI had received Mr. Echouafni's report. Jay Echouafni, who also goes by the first name Saad, is of Moroccan origin, according to a U.S. prosecutor. A heavy-set man with green eyes, he came to the U.S. as a teenager and became an American citizen, the prosecutor says. Until recently, he lived in Sudbury, an affluent suburb of Boston, with his wife and their three children. They occasionally returned to Morocco where Mr. Echouafni maintained business interests, added the prosecutor. Mr. Echouafni's company, Orbit Communications Corp., sold gear such as set-top boxes that receive signals for satellite-TV systems, according to court filings. He also dabbled in software development, the prosecutor says. Former business acquaintances describe him as bright, hard-working and computer-savvy. He could also be tough. "We had lots of problems with him," says Lee Taylor, chief executive of Perfect 10 Satellite Distributing Inc., a company in North Little Rock, Ark., that sold millions of dollars of equipment to Mr. Echouafni over the past few years. Mr. Echouafni often would badger the distributor's employees to lower their prices, according to Mr. Taylor. The case against Mr. Echouafni and his co-defendants is in its early stages and not all the facts are known. Some alleged participants couldn't be reached. But the case provides an early glimpse into the burgeoning world of viruses-for-hire. Business Proposal In early 2003, Mr. Echouafni approached WeaKnees.com with a business proposal: In a move that would have broadened his company's product range, Mr. Echouafni wanted to distribute upgrade kits sold by WeaKnees, which extend the recording time of digital video recorders, says Michael Adberg, co-owner of WeaKnees. Mr. Adberg says he turned down the proposal in part because he worried it would give Mr. Echouafni significant control over WeaKnees's business. Apparently annoyed by the rejection, Mr. Echouafni contacted Paul G. Ashley, owner of a Powell, Ohio, company with whom he did business, according to the indictment. Mr. Ashley's company rented out large computers that run Web sites, the indictment says. Mr. Echouafni said that some competitors were bothering him and asked Mr. Ashley to attack their Web sites, according to the indictment and complaint. Three companies were targeted, including WeaKnees and Rapid Satellite, a Miami company that directly competed with Mr. Echouafni's business of selling home satellite-TV systems, according to the indictment. Mr. Ashley sent their Web addresses to Lee G. Walker, a business associate who lived in the U.K., according to the complaint. Mr. Walker's weapon of choice for the job was a piece of malicious computer code known as a bot virus, the complaint alleges. Richard Cline, a lawyer in Columbus, Ohio, for Mr. Ashley, said neither he nor his client had any comment. Mr. Walker couldn't be reached. With a bot virus, a single person can hijack the power of thousands of far-flung computers. Security experts believe that most spam is sent using bots. The approach makes it easy for cyber-criminals to cover their tracks since they act through other people's computers. The popularity of high-speed Internet connections that are always kept on has also promoted the spread of bots. In Internet chatrooms, access to bot-controlled computers can be purchased for anywhere from a few cents to $1 per machine. Of the 100,000 viruses and worms that exist in cyberspace, bots are among the fastest spreading. Two years ago only 200 bot-virus variations existed; today, there are about 4,000, according to F-Secure Corp., a Finnish antivirus software maker. Mr. Walker later confessed to law-enforcement officials that he used computers infected with a bot virus named "Agobot," according to the complaint. Its creator was Axel Gembe, an unemployed 22-year-old who named the virus after his own nickname "Ago." Mr. Gembe is a self-taught computer whiz from a modest background who lives near Germany's border with Switzerland. Mr. Gembe gained notoriety in the hacker world last fall for breaking into the systems of a U.S. videogame developer, Valve Corp., and stealing code for the sequel of a popular computer game called "Half-Life." Key parts of the game were leaked via the Internet, causing millions of dollars in damage, Valve says. German police arrested Mr. Gembe in May for his alleged role in the theft of the videogame code and for his involvement in the attacks that Mr. Echouafni allegedly instigated. Mr. Gembe hasn't been charged with any crime. Police say they are still investigating. In an e-mail response to questions, Mr. Gembe admits to taking the videogame code but denies leaking it. He also acknowledges writing Agobot, but says that he doesn't know how Mr. Walker obtained the virus. Mr. Walker used 5,000 to 10,000 hijacked computers to attack the WeaKnees and Rapid Satellite sites, according to the U.S. complaint. After initial assaults shut down the Web sites, Mr. Echouafni contacted Mr. Ashley by phone and praised him and others for doing "a good job," according to the indictment and a prosecutor. He also paid Mr. Ashley $1,000, the complaint says. Mr. Echouafni acquired Mr. Ashley's company and retained him as a systems administrator, for an annual salary of $120,000, according to the indictment and criminal complaint. Mr. Ashley transferred $900 to Mr. Walker in England, the prosecutor says. Around the same time, Mr. Ashley allegedly recruited another hacker, Joshua J. Schichtel from Chandler, Ariz., and asked him to launch his own attacks against the Web sites, according to the criminal complaint, which also names Mr. Schichtel as a defendant. Pressing the Attack "Destroy it...heheh," Mr. Ashley wrote Mr. Schichtel in an electronic message, according to the complaint. When Mr. Schichtel told him that one of the companies had changed network addresses six times, Mr. Ashley told him to keep attacking the site, the complaint says. Mr. Schichtel couldn't be reached for comment. The attacks against WeaKnees ran from early October until mid-November 2003, according to the complaint. During that time, the Web site was periodically shut down, making it difficult for customers to reach the company, says WeaKnees. In early October 2003, Rapid Satellite's site also was attacked. While Nick Molina, chief executive of Rapid Satellite's parent, WebClick Concepts Inc. of Miami, was struggling to get his systems running again, he says he received an unusual call. Mr. Echouafni offered to host Rapid Satellite's site for $5,000 a month. In an interview, Mr. Molina contends that Mr. Echouafni wanted "to see the pain I was going through" and "extort money from me." The three target companies, in total, suffered more than $2 million in lost revenue and costs, according to the complaint. The FBI, meanwhile, traced digital fingerprints left by the hackers to the company that Mr. Walker worked for, and then to Mr. Walker himself, according to the complaint. When U.S. and British law-enforcement agents interviewed Mr. Walker on Feb. 11, he admitted launching the attacks, according to the complaint. Three days later, FBI agents searched Mr. Ashley's home in Ohio, and he, too, confessed, according to the complaint. Mr. Ashley, Mr. Walker and Mr. Schichtel are among five defendants named in the criminal complaint. None of them has been indicted. The FBI eventually gathered enough evidence to go after Mr. Echouafni. When he learned about the Ohio search, Mr. Echouafni and his family flew to Morocco, the FBI says. He and his wife returned to Boston on an Air France flight on March 11, where he was arrested by waiting FBI officials, the agency says. Sometime after that, Mr. Echouafni jumped bail; prosecutors believe he has fled the country. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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[ISN] Desktop Google Finds Holes
by R.A. Hettinga 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

--- begin forwarded text

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5 years, $6,200, plus whipping: Amnesty encourgaes departure of Malaysia's illegal immigrants
by R.A. Hettinga 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

>If not, they face jail sentences of up to five years or fines of more than >$US2,600, or both, plus whipping. Kewl... Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.abc.net.au/ra/news/stories/s1231083.htm> Radio Australia - News - Amnesty encourgaes departure of Malaysia's illegal immigrants US warns of possible terror attacks in Indonesia during Ramadan > [17:10:10] Two quakes hit Indonesian city > [03:20:19] Bashir declares innocence as trial opens in Indonesian capital > [03:20:18] Last Updated 29/10/2004, 21:50:16 Malaysia has launched an amnesty for illegal immigrants. The Malaysian government hopes some 160,000 Indonesians, working illegally in the country, will head home during the 17 day amnesty program to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. If not, they face jail sentences of up to five years or fines of more than $US2,600, or both, plus whipping. Thousands of illegal immigrants have reportedly been whipped in Malaysian prisons since harsh new laws were introduced two years ago. Immigration officials say there's been little response so far, but they say they expect more people to leave in the coming days. Illegal immigrants can only depart if they have valid travel documents and a ferry ticket, and all those leaving are fingerprinted. Under the amnesty, 6,000 illegal immigrants held at detention centres in Malaysia will also be allowed to return to their countries, if they are not involved in court cases. There are about 1.2 million illegal immigrants in Malaysia, mainly from Indonesia and the Philippines. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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[i2p] weekly status notes [nov 30] (fwd from jrandom@i2p.net)
by Eugen Leitl 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

----- Forwarded message from jrandom <jrandom(a)i2p.net> -----

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