December 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Horseman #3, "Inky": Money Laundering in America
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Dec '04

09 Dec '04

<http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/k/kouri/2004/kouri120704.htm> MND COMMENTARY - Jim Kouri - MensNewsDaily.com Money Laundering in America December 7, 2004 by Jim Kouri Federal law enforcement officials estimate that between $100 billion and $300 billion is laundered in this country each year. While illegal drug trafficking accounts for much of the funds being laundered, other criminal activities, including terrorism and tax evasion, also account for an extensive amount. In the past two decades, federal law enforcement efforts to combat money laundering have focused on requiring financial institutions to report currency transactions that exceed $10,000. Beginning in 1988, these reports have been supplemented by reports of suspicious transactions. Many of the transactions reported as suspicious involve individuals who appear to be attempting to avoid the $10,000 reporting requirement. However, any activity that deviates from the norm for a particular account can be considered suspicious. The Right to Financial Privacy Act, enacted in 1978, raised questions as to whether financial institutions were authorized to report suspicious transactions. To address these concerns, legislation has been enacted to provide protection against civil liability for institutions reporting suspicious transactions. Banks and other financial institutions report tens of thousands of suspicious transactions each year. The reports have led to the initiation of major investigations into various types of criminal activity. However, because there is no overall control or coordination of the reports, there is no way of ensuring that the information is being used to its full potential. Financial institutions report suspicious transactions on a variety of different forms that provide different types of information and that are filed with different law enforcement and regulatory agencies. The form that is filed most frequently is filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and kept on a centralized database. However, the form does not contain any information describing the suspicious activity that would allow law enforcement agencies to evaluate the usefulness of the information on the basis of the form alone. Moreover, some institutions have been filing these forms erroneously. IRS and other federal and state law enforcement agencies use the database on a reactive basis; that is, to provide additional information on an investigation that has already been initiated. Other forms used to report suspicious transactions do describe the activity so that the information can be evaluated. However, these forms are filed with six different federal financial regulatory agencies. Because the forms are not maintained on a centralized database, they are not used on a reactive basis. Financial institutions filing this form are required to send a copy of it to the nearest district office of IRS' Criminal Investigation Division. However, IRS has not developed any guidance or directives as to how the information is to be managed as an intelligence resource. Use of the reports to initiate investigations varies among the 35 district offices. The Government Accounting Office identified 15 states that receive copies of suspicious transaction reports filed on one or both of these two-forms. Nine of these states told GAO that they use the information to initiate criminal investigations. The Department of the Treasury, the financial regulatory agencies, and IRS have recently agreed to substantial changes regarding how suspicious transactions are to be reported and how the information is to be used. These proposals, which were made with input from the financial community, have the potential for significantly improving the contribution that suspicious transaction reports make to law enforcement at both the federal and state levels. The IRS does not have agencywide policies or procedures for managing suspicious transaction reports. Consequently, the extent to which special agents in the 35 CID district offices solicit, process, and evaluate the reports is up to the discretion of the district CID chief and varies significantly among districts. The percentage of investigations initiated on the basis of suspicious transaction reports also varies significantly among districts. >From October 1990 to June 1994 CID initiated 21,507 investigations nationwide. About 4 percent of the cases were initiated as a result of a suspicious transaction report. Among the district offices, however, the percentage varied from 0 to over 18 percent. GAO believes that the varying rates are an indication that use of the reports may not be emphasized to the same extent among the districts. Sources: US Department of Justice, US Department of the Treasury and National Security Institute Jim Kouri DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE IN THE FORUM! Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police. He's former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. He's also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. He writes for many police and crime magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer, Campus Law Enforcement Journal, and others. He's appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc. His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com, Booksamillion.com, and can be ordered at local bookstores. -- ----------------- 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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SEC Probes Firms That Gather Data on Who Owns What Shares
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Dec '04

09 Dec '04

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110247556985994158,00.html> The Wall Street Journal December 8, 2004 PAGE ONE Tracking Stocks SEC Probes Firms That Gather Data on Who Owns What Shares Its Question: Have They Paid Custodian Banks' Staffers To Give Up Information? Free Steaks and Game Tickets By SUSAN PULLIAM Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL December 8, 2004; Page A1 A back-office clerk at CIBC Mellon Trust Co. was filling in for a colleague this summer when she got an unusual e-mail. The sender wanted data about which of the big investors the company dealt with owned a particular stock -- information the clerk knew was supposed to be top secret. The employee refused to provide the data. An internal probe concluded that the clerk she was filling in for had for years been giving out data on stockholdings, according to people close to the situation. They say the probe found that in return, this clerk got baseball and hockey tickets and cash payments of $50 to $100 per tip. The people add that a separate internal probe found that four employees of Mellon Financial Corp. had received Pittsburgh Pirates tickets, $50 American Express gift certificates and boxes of steaks for such data. The incident offers a window into a secret Wall Street world of gathering and selling real-time data about big investors' stock trading. This information, which is generally confidential, is so valuable that a whole industry has sprung up around finding it out. Businesses known as stock-surveillance firms gather trading data as best they can and market it to corporations that are curious about who is buying and selling their shares. Because small bits of trading data can be gleaned through legitimate sources, the business model is perfectly legal. But there's the potential for stock-surveillance firms to veer off the legal track if they use improper means to find out who is buying or selling what. There's also the potential for illegal insider trading if the information falls into the hands of investors who use it in their trading. Now the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the stock-surveillance business, sending out subpoenas to several data firms, according to people close to the situation. Among issues the SEC is looking into: Whether, at banks that act as custodians of stock during the trading process, some back-office workers systematically received gratuities for leaking data. The SEC also wants to know whether any trading data may have been turned over to investors and led to insider trading. SEC enforcement chief Stephen Cutler said, "As a general matter, we are interested in whether confidential portfolio information has been leaked at any point along the chain." A person close to the situation said the SEC probe focuses on possible data leaks as far back as 2000. The CIBC Mellon Trust case helped spur the SEC's enforcement division to action, people familiar with the matter say. The trust, based in Toronto, is a joint venture of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Pittsburgh's Mellon Financial. A spokeswoman for CIBC Mellon said it has taken steps to correct the problem uncovered by the joint venture's internal investigation. A spokesman for Mellon Financial said that regulators were notified quickly after the problem emerged, adding that Mellon "regrets the unauthorized disclosure of custodial information" and was "very proactive" in informing clients. A spokesman for CIBC said it doesn't carry out custodial activities in the U.S. but declined to comment further. The joint-venture employee who the probe concluded had been giving out data for years was Yvonne Williams, say people close to the situation. She was fired in July after the venture's internal investigation. Ms. Williams couldn't be reached for comment. Three of the four Mellon Financial employees cited in a Mellon probe also have been dismissed. No employees have been charged with anything. Among firms subpoenaed in the SEC's investigation, say people familiar with the matter, is Thomson Financial, a unit of Thomson Corp. of Toronto. Thomson Financial's Capital Markets Intelligence unit is one of the largest stock-surveillance firms. The unit told its employees this week that one CMI executive had left after an internal probe found business practices conflicting with its code of conduct, say people close to the situation. They add that at least two other employees are expected to depart. Thomson wouldn't comment on the probe but said it has taken steps to correct problems. "We take any allegation of impropriety or wrongdoing seriously and will not tolerate any such behavior," said a spokesman. He added that Thomson provides the trading data it gathers only to its corporate clients and their agents. Also receiving subpoenas, according to people familiar with the SEC probe, are Ilios Partners; the Georgeson Shareholder Communications Inc. unit of Computershare Ltd.; and Miller Tabak & Co., an institutional trading firm that has a unit called Strategic Stock Surveillance. Corporations pay fees to stock-surveillance firms in order to know who is buying and selling their shares. They have various motives for wanting to know, such as to gauge the effectiveness of their investor-relations efforts and, in rare cases, to find out if a potential hostile bidder is accumulating their shares. Some stock traders covet information about big investors' buying and selling for a different reason: It gives a sense of which way a stock is likely to move. For just that reason, those big investors like to keep their moves secret. When a mutual-fund family has a large chunk of stock it wants to buy or sell, it often does the trading in pieces over several days. A key reason is to disguise its intentions, so others can't jump in and buy or sell the stock first -- driving up the fund's cost of buying or reducing what it gets from selling. But if a trader knew a big fund had begun buying, he could assume there was more buying to come, and that the stock would tend to rise. "If speculators know in real time what you were doing they can jump aboard and piggyback you or work against you," says Samuel Hayes, a Harvard Business School professor. If a mutual fund's performance suffered as a result, among those hurt would be fund shareholders, he adds. Mutual funds typically disclose changes in their holdings only four times a year, after the end of each quarter. The business of ferreting out data about big investors' holdings has its roots in takeover battles. There, warring camps want to know the identities of shareholders so they can appeal to them for their votes. The camps hire proxy-solicitation firms, whose job includes identifying shareholders and lobbying them. The business shifted when hostile takeovers started to wane in the early 1990s. Some proxy-solicitation firms began building a business in stock surveillance, hoping to make customers of corporations that simply want to know who their shareholders are. Stock-surveillance firms developed an ability to tap into the arcane processing world that exists behind the scenes as investors buy and sell. For instance, when a pension or mutual fund buys shares, it places the order with a broker, who goes to a stock marketplace to have the order matched with a seller. After the order is filled, the fund sends instructions to the broker about where to deliver the shares and which "custodian bank" will make payment for them. The fund also sends instructions to that custodian bank, telling it to receive the shares and pay the broker. Both the broker and the custodian bank send instructions about the trade to the Depository Trust & Clearing, or "the DTC." It is part of a private organization set up in the 1970s to formally process and make final the trades -- steps known as "settlement" and "clearing," respectively -- for the bulk of the U.S. stock trading. The DTC formally moves ownership of the shares to the buyer and sends payment for the trade through one of the Federal Reserve banks. This is the final step in a process that can take up to three days to complete. Stock-surveillance firms rely partly on their access to reports from the DTC. This access is legitimate, explains Larry Thompson, senior deputy counsel of DTCC, holding company for the DTC. That's because SEC rules require the DTC to provide, at a company's request, daily reports of where its shares are held in custody once settlement is completed. And with a company's permission, the DTC can also turn over such reports to "agents" -- such as proxy solicitors and stock-surveillance firms. Mr. Thompson says that the DTC lists give only the total number of a company's shares held at each custodian bank. They don't provide data about specific investors' holdings or other sensitive trading information. But stock-surveillance firms combine these DTC listings with their own database of information about where big investors keep their shares -- such as what banks they use as custodians. Sometimes, these two bits of data -- combined with regulatory filings and information about the investment strategies of mutual funds -- are enough to get to the bottom of who is buying or selling shares, says Kevin Marcus, head of the part of Thomson that includes Capital Markets Intelligence. "It is to some extent a process of deduction," he says. Since DTC listings don't provide the up-to-the-minute information that some corporations want about who is buying and selling their shares, stock-surveillance firms turn to various market contacts to try to provide this. Among them are stock-exchange "specialists" -- the traders on the New York Stock Exchange floor whose job is to match buy orders with sell orders. Employees of stock-surveillance firms say they sometimes even turn to employees at the mutual funds themselves in hopes of getting such information. And they sometimes ask employees at the custodian banks -- a particular focus of the SEC probe. These employees are continually receiving up-to-the-minute information from mutual funds, pension funds and other institutional investors about what they're buying and selling. Companies use stock-surveillance services for a variety of legitimate business purposes. Ralph Poltermann, treasurer of AptarGroup Inc., a maker of packages such as flip-tops for ketchup bottles, says his company hired Thomson to help it track trading in its own shares after meetings with investors. For instance, AptarGroup met with big investors at a Credit Suisse First Boston conference in San Francisco on Sept. 28. Within a week, Mr. Poltermann says, an analyst at Thomson told him that at least one of those big investors was trading in AptarGroup shares. "It's magic to me," Mr. Poltermann says. "They have insights and contacts we don't have." Big investors, on the other hand, are annoyed that a business has sprung up to try to find out about their trading. John Wheeler, head trader at the American Century mutual-fund family, recalls having an eerie feeling a few years back when he was told that Sprint Corp.'s chief executive had called his firm. American Century had bought Sprint shares just the day before. But William Esrey, then Sprint's CEO, already had called to thank the fund family for its purchase. "Appreciate your support," Mr. Wheeler recalls Mr. Esrey telling an American Century executive. Mr. Esrey says through a Sprint spokesman that he doesn't recall the conversation but that it wasn't unusual for him to make such a call to investors. The trade hadn't even "settled" yet. The fund hadn't paid for the Sprint stock. So normally only American Century, its broker, custodian bank and others in the custody chain would have known who was buying the shares. Sprint, it turned out, had legitimately gotten its information from Thomson's stock-surveillance unit, a Sprint spokesman says. Many large companies use such services, getting daily updates and glossy monthly and quarterly summaries about activity in their shares. Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, once used stock-surveillance services but no longer does. Thomson says its CMI unit has about 800 corporate clients, which pay $40,000 to $60,000 a year each for the service. The stock-surveillance unit had about $33 million in revenue last year, a tiny sliver of Thomson Corp.'s $7.44 billion revenue. Andrew Brooks, head trader at mutual-fund giant T. Rowe Price, says his trading desk often receives mysterious calls asking about changes in its holdings. Often, he says, the callers say they are "just checking your ownership on behalf of the company." He says callers typically hang up when pressed for more information on why they're calling. Mr. Brooks and a few other mutual-fund managers, including American Century officials, discussed their concerns about trading leaks 18 months ago with Lori Richards, head of the SEC's office of compliance and inspection, after she contacted them. In the case of CIBC Mellon Trust, the joint venture notified regulators of the incident involving Ms. Williams, the back-office clerk, this summer. Officials of the trust learned of the problem after Ms. Williams's fill-in told a supervisor of a surveillance firm's request for data, say people close to the matter. Ms. Williams's knowledge of stockholdings was broad. It wasn't limited to the names of shareholders who had permitted the custodian bank to release data about their holdings -- so-called Non-Objecting Beneficial Owners, or "nobos." Her knowledge would have included all shareholders of companies. Mellon Financial scoured e-mails, faxes and phone records to find out whether others might have accepted payments for data. It determined that the leaks had occurred in the area of the bank that handles communications with shareholders on matters like stock splits and dividends, the people familiar with the matter say. They say Mellon concluded that four employees had provided data about specific stockholdings of big investors, including Fidelity Investments. A spokeswoman for Fidelity says it has "always been concerned about disclosure of this information outside of required regulatory filings." The Mellon employees had access to a full list of investors for each stock. The bank's probe concluded, according to people close to the situation, that they released data about the holdings of shareholders who hadn't given the custodian bank such permission. In return, it concluded, they got sports tickets, steaks and gift certificates. Mellon Financial and its joint venture with CIBC notified hundreds of customers of the problem this summer through calls and e-mails. -- ----------------- 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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[p2p-hackers] Automatic reputation systems for P2P security? (fwd from paul@nmedia.net)
by Eugen Leitl 09 Dec '04

09 Dec '04

----- Forwarded message from paul(a)nmedia.net -----

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[p2p-hackers] Re: [trustcomp] Memory and reputation calculation (fwd from clausen@gnu.org)
by Eugen Leitl 09 Dec '04

09 Dec '04

----- Forwarded message from Andrew Clausen <clausen(a)gnu.org> -----

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Bugs in the belfry
by R.A. Hettinga 09 Dec '04

09 Dec '04

<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/11/28/bugs_in_the_belf…> The Boston Globe THE EXAMINED LIFE Bugs in the belfry By Joshua Glenn, Globe Staff | November 28, 2004 FOR OVER a century, philosophers and literary scholars have debated whether or not the apocalyptic, sometimes megalomaniacal qualities of the final books written by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche can be chalked up to the gradually unfolding delusions and personality disturbances of the author's paresis (tertiary syphilis). In the current issue of Daedalus, the journal of the Cambridge-based American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the distinguished UMass-Amherst geobiologist Lynn Margulis announces that the answer to this longstanding riddle has been discovered floating in a Cape Cod pond. To recap: In 1888, a sickly Nietzsche wrote the tracts "Twilight of the Idols," "The Antichrist," "Ecce Homo," and "The Case of Wagner" in a burst of productivity. But the following January in Turin, he flung his arms around the neck of a horse being flogged, collapsed in the piazza, and swiftly descended into a raving dementia brought on -- as records of a young Nietzsche's treatment for syphilis 30 years earlier would appear to indicate -- by paresis. So was Nietzsche suffering, as many have argued, from incipient paresis when he wrote "Twilight of the Idols," et al? If so, then (the argument goes) these late books, brilliant as they may appear to be, can't be taken as seriously as his earlier, saner writing. Or did the philosopher go mad from some other cause all of a sudden, in the space of a single day, as others prefer to believe? That's where Margulis, an expert in microorganisms who has no reputation as a Nietzsche scholar, comes in -- to say "neither." After explaining that syphilis is a syndrome caused by the ravages of the spirochete Treponema pallidum (the lively, corkscrew-shaped bacterium pictured at right), Margulis elaborates on her own recent research into spirochetes by weighing in on the long-running debate over Nietzsche's brain. Yes, Nietzsche's madness was undoubtedly caused by paresis, she writes -- but he most likely went crazy quite suddenly, as opposed to over the course of weeks and months. "Nietzsche's brain on January 3, 1889 experienced a transformation," she states -- which means that his books of 1888 weren't written by a delusional kook. But is it possible for paresis to appear overnight, instead of slowly? Margulis believes it is, and as evidence points to studies of microbial mat samples taken from Eel Pond in Woods Hole and kept in a jar in a UMass-Amherst lab. Although no typical spirochetes were found in these samples, Margulis recounts, when food and water known to support spirochete activity were added to some samples, spirochetes that could only have been been lying dormant suddenly awoke from their slumber. Extrapolating from these experiments, Margulis argues that inactive Treponema pallidum spirochetes had been hiding out in Nietzsche's tissues ever since his syphilis treatment some 30 years earlier." But on January 3, 1889 in Turin," Margulis concludes, channeling Vincent Price, "armies of revived spirochetes munched on his brain tissue. The consequence was the descent of Nietzsche the genius into Nietzsche the madman in less than one day." ? ) Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company -- ----------------- 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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ABC News: Some Say U.S. No Longer Feels Like Home - are leaving
by Steve Schear 08 Dec '04

08 Dec '04

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=235904&page=1 ...Sinicki, who has been job hunting in his wife's native France, doesn't blame Bush for what he believes is happening in America, but he doesn't believe Bush will change things for the better, either. "All these things were going on before Bush got elected," he said. "But I also think they got worse since Bush got elected. He's a symptom of the problem and he's making it worse."

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loosing mail..
by Nomen Nescio 08 Dec '04

08 Dec '04

I seem to have not received a few of the emails in the PROMIS thread. What is the best approach if one really wants to receive all emails? I'm currently only on minder and it seems from time to time mail doesn't get through? Should one simply subscribe to several nodes (and receive some redundant traffic)? I sent test messages (help command) to several of the listed mail servers a whort while back but only these responded: majordomo(a)ds.pro-ns.net majordomo(a)algebra.com majordomo(a)al-qaeda.net I did not receive an answer at all from minder even though I'm receiving my list mail through minder, so it cannot be all dead. Is there (still) an online archive somewhere being saved of the cypherpunks messages? Comments?

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U.S. to Order Wire-Transfer Firms To Boost Their Vigilance Overseas
by R.A. Hettinga 08 Dec '04

08 Dec '04

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110246667558793883,00.html> The Wall Street Journal December 8, 2004 U.S. BUSINESS NEWS U.S. to Order Wire-Transfer Firms To Boost Their Vigilance Overseas By GLENN R. SIMPSON Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL December 8, 2004; Page A2 WASHINGTON -- The booming U.S. money-transfer industry must step up efforts to ensure that its overseas agents aren't engaging in corrupt activity, federal regulators say. Under rules expected to be issued today, the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is ordering First Data Corp.'s Western Union and other wire-transfer companies to closely monitor their foreign agents for suspicious activity and to make sure they have policies against money laundering and no affiliations with criminal enterprises. During the next 180 days companies are expected to come up with programs for conducting due diligence of foreign agents, monitoring them and terminating them when necessary. Firms will be audited for compliance by the Internal Revenue Service. "If they are going to take steps to help protect the gateways to the U.S. financial system, this is a rational thing for them to be doing," said FinCEN director William Fox. The global-remittance industry moves more than $70 billion across international borders annually, mostly for migrant workers and small businesses, and is growing. Regulators are concerned that foreign agents of U.S. fund-transfer companies are a vulnerable area in the struggle against money laundering and other criminal activity because weak regulations in many other nations make it hard to keep criminals out. A page-one article in The Wall Street Journal in October reported that at Western Union alone, the number of agents has mushroomed, to more than 200,000 today from 50,000 in 1998, with much of the growth overseas where it is difficult to vet local operators. In justifying its new "guidance," FinCEN officials said they uncovered "several instances" of suspected criminal activity by foreign agents of U.S. businesses. "There are a variety of ways in which a money-services business may be susceptible to the unwitting facilitation of money laundering through foreign agents or counterparties," the agency said. The cases depict an elaborate and largely successful strategy to launder money through the U.S. financial system. First, FinCEN said, transfer agents made bulk sales of sequentially numbered travelers checks and large blocks of money orders to suspected criminals. These financial instruments "usually had illegible signatures or failed to designate a beneficiary or payor," FinCEN said. " The instruments were then negotiated with one or more dealers in goods, such as diamonds, gems or precious metals, deposited in foreign banks, and cleared through U.S. banks." By the end of the process, "the clearing banks were so far removed from the transactions that they could not trace back or screen either the intervening transactions or the individuals involved in the transactions." Mr. Fox said the examples cited aren't from one specific region of the world, and declined to name the companies. "It is a generalized problem and one we need to address across the board," he said. He emphasized that companies will have discretion to determine the exact steps needed for individual foreign partners depending on their assessment of the risks involved, and that the government isn't trying to discourage firms from entering into such relationships. "Our notion is to make this safer and more transparent, so it does not go underground," he said. -- ----------------- 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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Anti-Syphilis TV Message Finds Few Takers
by R.A. Hettinga 08 Dec '04

08 Dec '04

<http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-syphilis2dec02,1,2275683,print.story> The Los Angeles Times Anti-Syphilis TV Message Finds Few Takers Many stations reject public service spot aimed at gay men as inappropriate. By Jia-Rui Chong Times Staff Writer December 2, 2004 A public service ad paid for by the Los Angeles County public health agency to raise awareness about the dangers of syphilis has been rejected by local television stations that consider the content inappropriate. County health officials had signed off on the admittedly adult-oriented spot aimed at reaching gay men who are at greatest risk of getting the disease. But they said they were frustrated by their inability to get the ads broadcast at a time when Los Angeles was struggling with a high number of syphilis cases. "It's distressing to hear that some important public health messages are not being aired," said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, county public health director. "My question would be, 'Is this content more "adult" than others that are being shown in the evening hours?' " "I don't find it objectionable," he said. "Would I show it to a 4- to 5-year-old? No. But do I think it's appropriate for an adult audience? Yes, I do." The debate comes as the Federal Communications Commission has increased its scrutiny of programming in recent months, following headline-grabbing incidents such as Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl half-time show. Last week, Viacom agreed to pay the federal government $3.5 million to settle complaints that it broadcast sexually explicit material on its radio and TV shows, though it is still fighting the $550,000 fine that resulted from the Super Bowl incident. The 30-second syphilis public service spot features "Phil the Sore," a lumpy, red cartoon character with an earring, who follows two men going home together. As the men later part, one of them, dressed in a bathrobe and underwear, says, "Let's do it again sometime." Phil then calls in his whole family, whose members carry boxes labeled "brain damage," "rash" and "blindness" - all potential results of syphilis. Public health officials said they worked with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation to develop a campaign to combat the sexually transmitted disease after a dramatic rise in cases beginning in 2000, mostly among gay men. The agency said countywide early syphilis cases reported for that group grew from 93 to 364 between 2000 and 2003. This year, the numbers have dipped slightly to 254. In the general population, reported cases rose from 256 to 535 between 2000 and 2003, then declined to 407 this year. Broadcasters, however, said they considered the ad in poor taste. KCBS-TV Channel 2 spokesman Mike Nelson said he was troubled that the ad took such a light-hearted tone about a serious disease. He denied that recent FCC actions had any effect on the station's evaluation of the ad. "We found it to be inappropriate for a broadcast audience," Nelson said. "We consider the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases to be a serious matter. It's an issue we have addressed and will continue to recognize through fair, accurate and balanced news reporting, as well as broadcasting public service announcements." Despite pleas from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, none of the five local television stations that were approached - including affiliates for NBC, Fox, UPN and the WB - have run the ad. Two, however, have said they would consider showing the spot between 11:30 p.m. and 5 a.m., an offer that health officials said was not satisfactory because so few people would see it. KNBC-TV Channel 4 spokeswoman Erin Dittman said her station rejected a request to run the spot during prime-time's "Will & Grace," a show that features gay characters. But Dittman said the ad could run much later - sometime after midnight. The groups were able to get several cable stations, whose content is not regulated by the FCC, to air the spot. When network TV and radio stations' licenses come up for review every seven years, the FCC takes into account public complaints, said Christie Nordhielm, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Michigan. As a result, television stations don't want to take any risks. "It's an easy decision," she said. "Between running the ad and getting money and the risk of losing their license or paying lawyers, they're going to reject the ad. It's a no-brainer." Officials at the American Family Assn., a Tupelo, Miss.-based organization that has pushed for the tightening of FCC standards on decency, expressed support for the stations' stance on the syphilis ads. But the organization's president, Tim Wildmon, said he was surprised that the ad had raised hackles in Los Angeles. "That's a pretty liberal, socially liberal place," he said. "We're not talking about the heartland or the South. It's good at least the station managers and operators are giving consideration to taste and appropriateness and seriousness. That's at least refreshing." Wildmon said he thought the ad did not take the disease seriously enough and seemed to embrace promiscuous sex. "I think if you're going to deal with something like this, you need to deal with it in a more serious manner," he said. Citing the part in the spot where one man says to another, "Let's do it again sometime," Wildmon said, "This doesn't address the root of the problem. The root of the problem is sexual activity." Les Pappas, creative director at the San Francisco ad agency that created the spot, said the anti-syphilis message had already been toned down. Two and a half years ago, Better World Advertising and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation presented both Los Angeles and San Francisco health departments with a "Healthy Penis" campaign featuring a smiling cartoon penis. San Francisco officials accepted the ads, calling them "fun." But Los Angeles wanted a more conservative version and went with "Stop the Sores." Pappas and officials of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation said they wanted the "Stop the Sores" campaign to grab attention and chose to give the message a playful tone. Karen Mall of the healthcare foundation said she believed the campaign had been a success with its billboards and public appearances by a 6-foot-tall "Phil the Sore" mascot. A survey in 2003 showed that gay men who had seen the campaign messages were three times more likely to get tested for syphilis. -- ----------------- 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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primes as far as the eye can see, discrete continua
by Major Variola (ret) 08 Dec '04

08 Dec '04

Saw in a recent _Science_ that Ben Green of Cambridge proved that for any N, there are an infinite number of evenly spaced progressions of primes that are N numbers long. He got a prize for that. Damn straight. Now back to the decline of the neo-roman empire...

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