November 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Mark Shuttleworth Interview: Open source is the business
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

<http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=Insight-TenQuestions&ao=125244> Mail and Guardian Online: Wednesday, November 10, 2004, 2:39 Africa's first online newspaper est. 1994 TEN QUESTIONS Open source is the business 09 November 2004 14:33 Mark Shuttleworth gives a thumbs up for Africa and open source software. (Photograph: Mikhail Grachyev, AFP) Open-source software: what difference will it make to my life? If you're new to computers, then open source is a whole new universe waiting to be discovered, at no real cost. Almost every kind of application is freely available as open-source software -- from business applications such as word processors, presentation software and spreadsheets to specialist tools such as programming languages and databases. Open source is the best way for a student or child to discover the world of the computer, because there is no limit or restriction on your ability to learn how the software works, since it comes with full source code. So, for new computer users, open source is "the business". If you're in the software industry, then open source is interesting because all indications are that it will come to be the default on the desktop, just as it has come to dominate the server software scene. Why should I change from Windows, Microsoft Word or Internet Explorer to open-source products such as Linux and the likes? If what you have works for you, then I would not recommend changing. If, however, you are considering an upgrade or buying new computers, then open source is certainly worth considering. If you need to run Windows, then there is a lot of open-source software for Windows too -- you don't have to switch to a Linux-based operating system such as Ubuntu to get the benefits of open source. For example, on my Windows PC I don't have Microsoft Office, I use OpenOffice from www.openoffice.org, which is freely available and has a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation package that are compatible with Microsoft Office. I also use the Firefox web browser and Thunderbird e-mail software, from www.mozilla.org, which have had very few, if any, virus attacks against them. In general, open-source software is cheaper to acquire and manage, improves faster, has better support for internationalisation and is more secure than the older proprietary alternatives. If open source takes hold, what will our desktops/computers look like in 10 years' time? Hopefully they'll look pretty familiar! Open-source software looks just like older proprietary software, it's just produced and licensed freely. Also, it tends to be easier to get different pieces of open-source software to talk to one another, because the people who produce it have an interest in making collaboration happen and using open standards rather than locking you into their software. A big area of innovation in open source is collaborative work, allowing you to work on a document simultaneously with other people, and I think this sort of open-source innovation will be the main driver of new products and concepts in the information technology industry over the next 10 years. As much as people moan about Microsoft, aren't Microsoft products superior and easier to use than many open-source programmes available today? Certainly not. Of course, it depends on the application. For example, the open-source Apache web server is generally considered to be much better than any web-server software from Microsoft, and as a result, Apache is the most widely used web-server software on the internet. In desktop office applications, I think Microsoft still has an edge, but the gap is narrowing so fast and innovation in the open-source environment is so rapid that I am confident any gap will have disappeared in two or three years. That's why I'm advocating that South Africans embrace open source now, ahead of the curve. Is Bill Gates enemy number one? Not at all -- few people in the world have been effective at managing a small business and a large business, and Gates has been brilliant throughout Microsoft's history. In the 1980s, we didn't have the internet, so a single company was probably the most efficient way to produce software that worked well together. Nowadays, the internet allows collaboration between companies and volunteers, which has resulted in the rise of open-source software. You just couldn't make open source work in the 1980s because too few people were connected, but today it's proving to be the best way to produce software. You are a capitalist, yet you preach open-source software? How do you reconcile that? The emergence of open source isn't the end of the software industry by any means, it's just yet another big change in an industry that thrives on change. I think open source is the way of the future, so I put that into practice as much through my non-profit foundation work in education as through my business investments. I believe the business model in the software industry will have to evolve, so I'm investing in companies like Canonical that have newer business models that might (or might not) work in a world without software licensing fees. Only time will tell which ideas will prosper. Was your very successful business that made you billions based on open-source software? Yes, entirely. The web server and database software that held the business together was all open source (in those days I used the Apache web server and the MySQL database, though now I prefer the PostgreSQL database). A lot of the core cryptography at Thawte was also handled by open-source tools. How have you come to terms with your wealth? It's a struggle, but... :-) I can't seriously pretend that it's a hardship, but it is a sword with several sharp edges and no real handle. Certainly, it's changed my material life, but I'm constantly reminded that the things which make me happiest are only complicated by wealth, particularly new personal relationships. Being able to do whatever I want, in many ways, creates the responsibility to try to do the right thing for me and for the people I care about. And what's really interesting is the extent to which time is a great leveller. No matter how wealthy you are, you get exactly the same amount of time in your teens, twenties, thirties and so on. Instead of being locked into a specific job, I have to choose very carefully what I do with every single day -- there are more projects that I can dream about than I have time to do properly, or even funds to do, oddly enough. So it's a great privilege and at the same time a great responsibility. Are you the Bill Gates of Africa? No, I'm one of a few Mark Shuttleworths of Africa, and apologies to the other guys who had the name first, I hope I'm not wearing it out! As to comparisons with Bill Gates, I think he's achieved far more than me in the way he has steered a large and ultimately huge company through several decades of change, and I admire that skill greatly. It's something I don't think I'd have been able to achieve; I don't have the same stamina. Even if open source is now going to dominate the industry, it doesn't detract at all from the accomplishments of Gates and the Microsoft team in the past. When are you going to the moon? Have you been in touch with Richard Branson about more space travel? For the next space mission, which I hope one day to have the opportunity to fly, the moon wouldn't be out of the question. But I think it would involve more "Nazdarovya" than "Virgin". -- ----------------- 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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A hard case resists a makeover for the new age
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

<http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/columnists/10116684.htm> The Philadelphia Inquirer Posted on Sun, Nov. 07, 2004 Center Square | A hard case resists a makeover for the new age By Chris Satullo Guantanamo Bay Nov. 7 My dear wife, They are letting me write one letter to let you know that I am alive. I am at the new Liberal Media Re-Education Camp here at Gitmo; I am not allowed to see a lawyer or make phone calls. They are afraid that if I talk to a lawyer, I'll pass a coded message to my old colleagues on the Editorial Board, telling them to oppose the flat tax or support Arlen for Judiciary Committee chairman or something. This letter will be censored, so I have to be careful. First thing: I am OK. I am not harmed. There has been no torture. Yet. We're not in those steel cages in the sun or anything. It's a simple barracks, Spartan but not filthy. We get three squares a day, though the fare isn't doing much for my South Beach diet. It's all takeout from Cracker Barrel, Hardees, Bojangles. They say we've got to learn to eat like real Americans. You must have been worried sick. I don't know what they told you, but here's what happened: Wednesday afternoon, the gang and I were on our way to a mourning lunch at that French/Arab/gay fusion bistro where we like to go and plot our liberal propaganda. Suddenly, guys in dark glasses swooped up in black vans and snatched us. They didn't take the black hoods off our heads until we got to Gitmo. I haven't seen Trudy Rubin since we got here. I hear she's being treated as a "high-value" prisoner. The high values are in a cell block across the compound. Rumor has it she's in a cell with Molly Ivins and Maureen Dowd. Word is some torture goes on over there. Bill Moyers supposedly was gagged and forced to listen to Chris Matthews talk for two hours straight. Today, the guy next to me at mess, used to be a columnist at the Fresno Bee, told me they flew Paul Krugman and Michael Moore out of here by chopper last night. To Pakistan, is what I hear. Some good news: Bob Shrum, Kerry's campaign consultant, is being held somewhere in the compound, too. May he rot in his cell, the idiot. I'm not considered high value, thank God. Just a run-of-the-mill lib-symp. They chuckle when I explain I'm really a centrist. My "trainer" says nobody wants to hurt me; as soon as I show I've seen The Light and can cover the news "objectively," "without bias" and "with proper appreciation for all the President has done for the nation," I can come home to you. I'm working on it, my love. But you know those character traits that made me spend most of high school in detention? They keep coming back. Like, I'm in this seminar today called "Christian Nation: How the Bible and the Constitution Are Really One and the Same." And I raise my hand and ask: "If one candidate is a practicing Catholic who carries a rosary in his pocket, and the other one is some vague evangelical who doesn't even freaking go to church on Sunday, why did the Catholic bishops order the flock to vote for the non-Catholic?" My trainer was upset with me. So tonight I have to read three Tim LaHaye novels and write an essay on why George W. Bush is the doorway to the Rapture. Have to say, these LaHaye books are crisply plotted. Got in trouble yesterday, too, during a lecture class, "Living in Fear, and Loving It." Right after the Cheney video, I asked, "How come the states where terror attacks have actually happened or been planned went big for Kerry, while the states that Osama bin Laden's never heard of, the ones with more sheep than people, went for Bush?" For that, I had to sit through a double session of Remedial NASCAR 101. Did you know, that, of the 249,982 laps possible in 781 career starts, Terry Labonte has completed more than 90 percent (226,729)? I think of you all the time, and the kids. I know I should submit and scour my brain of the horrible addiction to facts and reality-based analysis that landed me in this hellhole. If I can do that, maybe I can come home. I'll have to get a job writing obituaries or jingles or something. They've made it quite clear my days as a pundit are over. But they tell me that if I sign the Bush loyalty pledge, my pension is safe. As safe as anybody's, anyway. But, hon, there's this guerrilla voice inside my head that just won't shut up. The Boss keeps singing in my mind: No retreat, no surrender. Even &%$!#@ Kerry couldn't spoil that song for me. Sorry, babe. Vive la Resistance! When not immersed in paranoid fantasy, Chris Satullo is still (he thinks) editorial page editor of The Inquirer. -- ----------------- 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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No mandate for e-voting, computer scientist says
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

<http://gcn.com/cgi-bin/udt/im.display.printable?client.id=gcndaily2&story.i…> No mandate for e-voting, computer scientist says 11/09/04 By William Jackson, GCN Staff Despite wide use in last week's presidential election, direct-recording electronic voting still is a faulty method of casting ballots, one computer scientist says. "Paperless electronic-voting systems are completely unacceptable," said Dan Wallach, assistant professor of computer science at Rice University. Assurances about the machines' accuracy and reliability are not based on verifiable data, Wallach said today at the Computer Security Institute's annual conference in Washington. Wallach was one of a team of computer scientists who in 2003 examined source code for voting machines from Diebold Election Systems Inc. of North Canton, Ohio, and reported numerous security flaws. Cryptography implementation and access controls showed an "astonishingly naive design," he said. "As far as we know, these flaws are still there today." Diebold has defended its technology and said the computer scientists examined an outdated version of the code. Wallach countered that without access to current code for any voting machines, it's impossible to verify manufacturers' claims. The proprietary nature of the code and a lack of government standards for voting technology also make certification of the hardware and software meaningless, he said. The IT Association of America hailed the Nov. 2 election as a validation of direct-recording technology. But Wallach said sporadic problems with the systems have been reported, and a thorough analysis of Election Day procedures and results is under way. Plus, a paper ballot that can be recounted is essential to a reliable system, he said. "Probably the best voting system we have today is the optical scan system, with a precinct-based scanner," Wallach said. "It is very simple, it is accurate, and it is auditable." He suggested that a hybrid voting system that produces a verifiable paper ballot would be as reliable as optical systems and would offer convenience and accessibility for disabled voters. A number of states, including California and Nevada, have laws or legislation pending to require that voting machines produce paper ballots. Wallach said technical standards that demand transparent certification processes would go a long way toward increasing voting reliability. "I think the Common Criteria would be a good place to start," he said, referring to the set of internationally recognized standards for evaluating security technology, either against vendor claims or against a set of needs specified by a user. -- ----------------- 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's wealthy bypass the banks
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

<http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/11/09/business/yu…> China's wealthy bypass the banks By Keith Bradsher The New York Times Wednesday, November 10, 2004 WENZHOU, China The Wenzhou "stir-fry" is not a dish you eat. But it is giving indigestion to Chinese regulators and could prove troublesome to many investors worldwide, from New York money managers, Pennsylvania steelworkers and Midwestern farmers to Australian miners. Here in this freewheeling city at the forefront of capitalism in China, the dish is prepared when a group of wealthy friends pool millions of dollars' worth of Chinese yuan and put them into a hot investment like Shanghai real estate, where they are stirred and flipped for a hefty profit. The friends often lend each other large amounts on the strength of a handshake and a handwritten IOU. Both sides then go to an automated teller machine or bank branch to transfer the money, which is then withdrawn from the bank. Or sometimes they do it the old-fashioned way: exchanging burlap sacks stuffed with cash. The worry for Chinese regulators is that everyone in China will start cooking the Wenzhou stir-fry and do it outside the banking system. In the last few months, borrowing and lending across the rest of China is looking more and more like what is taking place in Wenzhou. The growth of this shadow banking system poses a stiff challenge to China's state-owned banks, already burdened with bad debt, and makes it harder for the nation's leaders to steer a fast-growing economy. The problem starts with China's low interest rates. More and more families with savings have been snubbing 2 percent interest on bank deposits for the double-digit returns from lending large amounts on their own. They lend to real estate speculators or to small businesses without the political connections to obtain loans from the banks. Not only is the informal lending rate higher, but the income from that lending, because it is semilegal at best, is not taxed. For fear of shame, ostracism and the occasional threat from thugs, borrowers are more likely to pay back these loans than those from the big banks. Tao Dong, chief China economist at Credit Suisse First Boston, calculates that Chinese citizens withdrew $12 billion to $17 billion from their bank deposits in August and September. The outflow turned into a flood last month, reaching an estimated $120 billion, or more than 3 percent of all deposits at the country's financial institutions. If the bank withdrawals are not stemmed in the months ahead, Tao warned, "this potentially could be a huge risk for financial stability and even social stability." And with China now accounting for more than a quarter of the world's steel production and nearly a fifth of soybean production, as well as some of the largest initial public offerings of stock, any shaking of financial confidence here could ripple quickly through markets in the United States and elsewhere. For instance, if the steel girders now being lifted into place by hundreds of tower cranes in big cities across China are no longer needed, that would produce a worldwide glut of steel and push down prices. On Oct. 28, when China's central bank raised interest rates for one-year loans and deposits by a little more than a quarter of a percentage point, it cited a need to keep money in the banking system. Higher official rates should "reduce external cycling of credit funds," the bank said in a statement. Eswar Prasad, the chief of the China division of the International Monetary Fund, expressed concern about bank withdrawals in a speech in Hong Kong three days before the central bank acted. The main Chinese banks have fairly substantial reserves, but they need those reserves to cover huge write-offs of bad debts some day. The hub of informal lending in China is here in Wenzhou, 370 kilometers, or 230 miles, south of Shanghai. Some of China's first experiments with the free market began here in the late 1970s, and the result has been a flourishing economy together with sometimes questionable business dealings. Depending on how raw they like their capitalism, people elsewhere in China describe Wenzhou as either a center of financial innovation or a den of loan sharks. But increasingly, Wenzhou is also a microcosm of the kind of large-scale yet informal financial dealings now going on across the country. The withdrawals by depositors and the informal money lending has spread so swiftly here that it is only in Wenzhou that the Chinese central bank releases monthly statistics on average rates for direct loans between individuals or companies. The rate hovered at 1 percent a month for years until April, when the authorities began limiting the volume of bank loans. Borrowers default on nearly half the loans issued by the state-owned banks, but seldom do so here on money that is usually borrowed from relatives, neighbors or people in the same industry. Residents insist that the risk of ostracism for failing to repay a loan is penalty enough to ensure repayment of most loans. Although judges have ruled that handwritten IOUs are legally binding, creditors seldom go to court to collect. "If it is a really good friend, I would lose face if I sued them in court," said Tu Shangyun, the owner of a local copper smelter and a part-time "silver bearer," a broker who puts lenders and borrowers in touch with each other, "and if it weren't a good friend, I wouldn't lend the money in the first place." Violence is extremely rare, but the threat of it does exist as the ultimate guarantor that people make every effort to repay debts. "Someone can hire a killer who will chase you down, beat you up and maybe even kill you," said Ma Jinlong, who oversaw market-driven financial changes in the 1990s in Wenzhou as director of the municipal economic reform committee and is now an economics professor at Wenzhou University. An austerity policy was invoked, its goal to slow rapid economic growth in the hope of stopping a spiral in the inflation rate. With consumer prices rising at 5.2 percent a year despite price controls on many goods and services, and with less-regulated prices for goods traded between companies climbing nearly twice as fast, people lose buying power while their money is on deposit at a bank. The interest rate for informal loans jumped last spring to 1.2 percent a month, or 15.4 percent compounded over a year, and has stayed there ever since. According to the nation's central bank, total bank deposits in Wenzhou have been dropping by $250 million a month since April as companies and individuals withdraw money, either because they can no longer obtain bank loans for their investments or because they want to lend the money at higher rates to each other. For lenders, these interest rates are much more attractive than earning a meager 2.25 percent a year, even after the recent rate increase, on a deposit at a government-owned bank. And while Beijing assesses a 20 percent tax on all interest from bank deposits, nobody pays tax on the income they receive from lending money on their own, Ma said. Most informal loans have traditionally gone to relatives or neighbors to finance the starting of small local businesses. Wenzhou is now one of the world's largest producers of no-brand sunglasses; Dong Ganming, the owner of a 350-employee sunglasses factory here, said that his plant was just one of almost 1,000 here involved in making glasses. Fierce competition has prompted local residents to borrow money to exploit every possible niche in the industry, with some factories making nothing but bridges for sunglasses so that they will not slide down customers' noses, other factories making only the lenses, and so forth. Any government crackdown on informal loans would carry the risk of stifling highly efficient small and medium-size businesses that have little hope of obtaining loans from the state-owned banks, which still allocate credit based partly on political connections. Dong said that loans from friends and family allowed him to start his sunglasses company with 10 employees a decade ago; he quickly paid off the loans and has been reinvesting most of the profits ever since, putting very little into bank deposits. "The interest in the bank is very low," he said. "If you invest the money, you can get much more money." But more recently, residents here say, a lot of money has been flowing into real estate here and in other big cities, especially Shanghai, helping to fuel double-digit increases in interest rates. Deals increasingly involve people who have no family or neighborhood connection, raising the risk of disputes. Kellee Tsai, a specialist in Chinese informal banking at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, said that many overseas emigrants from Wenzhou had also been sending their savings back here to be lent at much higher rates than are available in the countries they have moved to. Some local investors have been able to pay for their investments with profits from businesses here, like Chen Shen, the owner of four shops that sell shoe-manufacturing equipment to the hundreds of shoe factories that have popped up in this area. She said she paid cash for an apartment near Shanghai's Bund, its riverfront district, that had appreciated as much as 60 percent in less than two years. Still, Chinese regulators do not like the practice, and officials have been trying to stamp out such operations with limited success. They have outlawed the practice of pooling savings into various kinds of informal banks that make loans for real estate and other investments: Organizers are subject to the death penalty but are rarely caught unless the informal banks collapse. Oriental Outlook, a Chinese current affairs magazine, reported late last month on the trial of a man accused of operating an illegal bank northeast of here that collapsed a year ago, leading to the filing of more than 200 civil lawsuits. Another man who lost money in the scheme and went bankrupt as a result assaulted the defendant outside the courtroom, the magazine said. The extent of such pooling is unclear. But it poses the greatest risks of damage to financial confidence if bank runs occur at these informal institutions, economists agree. Bank runs, with depositors lined up clamoring for their money back, have been an occasional problem around China for years, but are always quickly contained as the authorities rush to distribute as much cash as necessary. "The policy with bank runs, even with illegal banks in some cases, has been to flood the bank with liquidity and pay everyone off," said Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Beijing University, who criticized as ill advised the Chinese policy of bailing out even illegal banks. "One of the most salutary ways to let people know not to put money in these is to let two or three go bankrupt." -- ----------------- 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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[osint] Leftist, Islamic terrorist lawyer cites need for violence
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Nov '04

09 Nov '04

--- begin forwarded text To: "Bruce Tefft" <btefft(a)community-research.com> Thread-Index: AcTGW926BrmmPrOpQHC2HrbnSiYYSw== From: "Bruce Tefft" <btefft(a)community-research.com> Mailing-List: list osint(a)yahoogroups.com; contact osint-owner(a)yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list osint(a)yahoogroups.com Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 07:58:54 -0500 Subject: [osint] Leftist, Islamic terrorist lawyer cites need for violence Reply-To: osint(a)yahoogroups.com http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35232-2004Nov8.html Lawyer Facing Terror Charge Cites Need for Violence By Michelle Garcia Special to The Washington Post Tuesday, November 9, 2004; Page A08 A New York lawyer facing charges of supporting terrorism told a federal jury that she viewed violence as essential to dismantling institutions that perpetuate "sexism and racism." As a federal prosecutor questioned her statements and support for a "people's revolution," Lynne Stewart, 65, testified that her lifelong philosophy included fighting "entrenched ferocious capitalism that is in this country today." Lynne Stewart emphasized that she does not support terrorism. "I believe that entrenched institutions will not be changed except by violence," Stewart said. "I believe in the politics that lead to violence being exerted by people on their own behalf to effectuate change." Stewart cited the American Revolution and the struggle to end slavery as such examples but emphasized that she did not support terrorism, saying, "I do not believe in civilian deaths or wanton massacres." Federal prosecutors presented Stewart's statements in an effort to show that Stewart sought to aid a militant group. If convicted, she could face a 40-year sentence. The case centers on her role in delivering a communique from her client, blind cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence after a jury convicted him in 1995 of seditious conspiracy in a plot to blow up New York bridges, tunnels and landmarks. That communication, expressing the sheik's disapproval of a cease-fire between the Islamic Group and the Egyptian government, is at the heart of the government's case. Prosecutors say that by conveying the message, Stewart violated her agreement to special prison rules that restricted the sheik's communication to the public and allowed him access to his followers in the Islamic Group, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Her attorney, Michael Tigar, objected to the prosecution's focus on her beliefs, saying "everyone of us is protected by the First Amendment." U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl said Stewart's view of violence was not "irrelevant" or "straying into an impermissible area." U.S. Attorney Andrew Dember methodically recounted the events that led up to Stewart reading a handwritten statement to a Reuters reporter. Dember pointed to excerpts from a transcript from taped conversations in which Stewart referred to Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney who prosecuted Rahman, as a "devil" and showed that Stewart viewed her relationship with the government as "adversarial." At times, Stewart sparred with Dember over terminology. She took issue with his suggestion that by signing an agreement to the prison rules she had agreed with their intent. She said she viewed it as necessary to gaining access to her client. When Dember showed the jury a copy of the agreement specifying restrictions over mail, she said she understood the term to mean envelopes delivered by the Postal Service. Dember asked Stewart to explain her motivation for continuing to visit Rahman in a Minnesota prison after he had exhausted his appeals. "I think that our legal system reacts differently to people who are paid attention to," she said. "I think the worst thing is the way it treats people who are nobody." ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-osint(a)yahoogroups.com. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor bisoldi(a)intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint(a)yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscribe(a)yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscribe(a)yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe(a)yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- 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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Kennedy School: Freedom, not wealth, squelches terrorist violence
by R.A. Hettinga 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

Nice to know Camelot High is good for *something*. Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/11.04/05-terror.html> Harvard Gazette: Current Issue: November 04, 2004 Alberto Abadie: 'In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty, but ... when you look at the data, it's not there. This is true not only for events of international terrorism ... but ... also for the overall level of terrorism, both of domestic and of foreign origin.' (Staff photo Jon Chase/Harvard News Office) Freedom squelches terrorist violence KSG associate professor researches freedom-terrorism link By Alvin Powell Harvard News Office A John F. Kennedy School of Government researcher has cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence is related to a nation's level of political freedom. Associate Professor of Public Policy Alberto Abadie examined data on terrorism and variables such as wealth, political freedom, geography, and ethnic fractionalization for nations that have been targets of terrorist attacks. Abadie, whose work was published in the Kennedy School's Faculty Research Working Paper Series, included both acts of international and domestic terrorism in his analysis. Though after the 9/11 attacks most of the work in this area has focused on international terrorism, Abadie said terrorism originating within the country where the attacks occur actually makes up the bulk of terrorist acts each year. According to statistics from the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base for 2003, which Abadie cites in his analysis, there were 1,536 reports of domestic terrorism worldwide, compared with just 240 incidents of international terrorism. Before analyzing the data, Abadie believed it was a reasonable assumption that terrorism has its roots in poverty, especially since studies have linked civil war to economic factors. However, once the data was corrected for the influence of other factors studied, Abadie said he found no significant relationship between a nation's wealth and the level of terrorism it experiences. "In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty, but in fact when you look at the data, it's not there. This is true not only for events of international terrorism, as previous studies have shown, but perhaps more surprisingly also for the overall level of terrorism, both of domestic and of foreign origin," Abadie said. Instead, Abadie detected a peculiar relationship between the levels of political freedom a nation affords and the severity of terrorism. Though terrorism declined among nations with high levels of political freedom, it was the intermediate nations that seemed most vulnerable. Like those with much political freedom, nations at the other extreme - with tightly controlled autocratic governments - also experienced low levels of terrorism. Though his study didn't explore the reasons behind the trends he researched, Abadie said it could be that autocratic nations' tight control and repressive practices keep terrorist activities in check, while nations making the transition to more open, democratic governments - such as currently taking place in Iraq and Russia - may be politically unstable, which makes them more vulnerable. "When you go from an autocratic regime and make the transition to democracy, you may expect a temporary increase in terrorism," Abadie said. Abadie's study also found a strong connection in the data between terrorism and geographic factors, such as elevation or tropical weather. "Failure to eradicate terrorism in some areas of the world has often been attributed to geographic barriers, like mountainous terrain in Afghanistan or tropical jungle in Colombia. This study provides empirical evidence of the link between terrorism and geography," Abadie said. In Abadie's opinion, the connection between geography and terrorism is hardly surprising. "Areas of difficult access offer safe haven to terrorist groups, facilitate training, and provide funding through other illegal activities like the production and trafficking of cocaine and opiates," Abadie wrote in the paper. A native of Spain's Basque region, Abadie said he has long been interested in terrorism and related issues. His past research has explored the effect of terrorism on economic activity, using the Basque country as a case study. Abadie is turning his attention to the effect of terrorism on international capital flows. Some analysts have argued that terrorist attacks wouldn't have much of an impact on the economy, since unlike a war's widespread damage, the damage from terrorist attacks tends to be relatively small or confined to a small area. In an era of open international capital markets, however, Abadie said terrorism may have a greater chilling effect than previously thought, since even a low risk of damage from a terrorist attack may be enough to send investors looking elsewhere. -- ----------------- 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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CIA Comic
by Major Variola (ret) 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

At 06:59 PM 11/7/04 -0800, John Young wrote: >Remember the CIA Comic from the late 90s? Told hilarious >inside the agency jokes that made everyone outside the >cocoon blanche and puke, sorry, Bob blew coke through >his nose. Cointelpro If you don't know what it was Then it's still happening Cointelpro http://www.covertcomic.com/CCSchool.htm

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Re: Your source code, for sale
by Tyler Durden 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

Well, I guess once you need a 3rd party for the e$, it's only going to make sense that the issuer offer a "value added" service like you're talking about. A 3rd party verifier is probably going to be too costly. But I'm not 100% convinced that you HAVE TO have a 3rd party verifier, but it's looking like that's what's going to make sense 99% of the time anyway. -TD >From: hal(a)finney.org ("Hal Finney") >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: Your source code, for sale >Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 10:51:24 -0800 (PST) > >Ben Laurie writes: > > How do you make the payment already "gone" without using a third party? > >Of course there has to be a third party in the form of the currency >issuer. If it is someone like e-gold, they could do as I suggested and >add a feature where the buyer could transfer funds irrevocably into >an escrow account which would be jointly controlled by the buyer and >the seller. This way the payment is already "gone" from the POV of the >buyer and if the seller completes the transaction, the buyer has less >incentive to cheat him. > >In the case of an ecash mint, a simple method would be for the seller to >give the buyer a proto-coin, that is, the value to be signed at the mint, >but in blinded form. The buyer could take this to the mint and pay to >get it signed. The resulting value is no good to the buyer because he >doesn't know the blinding factors, so from his POV the money (he paid >to get it signed) is already "gone". He can prove to the seller that >he did it by using the Guillou-Quisquater protocol to prove in ZK that >he knows the mint's signature on the value the seller gave him. > >The seller thereby knows that the buyer's costs are sunk, and so the >seller is motivated to complete the transaction. The buyer has nothing >to lose and might as well pay the seller by giving him the signed value >from the mint, which the seller can unblind and (provably, verifiably) >be able to deposit. > >Hal _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

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[p2p-hackers] Re: anon-layer comparison (fwd from Euseval@aol.com)
by Eugen Leitl 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

----- Forwarded message from Euseval(a)aol.com -----

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Re: [p2p-hackers] MixMinion vs. onion routing & GNUnet question (fwd from seberino@spawar.navy.mil)
by Eugen Leitl 08 Nov '04

08 Nov '04

----- Forwarded message from seberino(a)spawar.navy.mil -----

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