April 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Real-world quantum cryptography
by Steve Furlong 22 Apr '04

22 Apr '04

http://www.quantenkryptographie.at/ Click on the News: April 21 link, which goes to http://www.quantenkryptographie.at/rathaus_press.html World Premiere: Bank Transfer via Quantum Cryptography Based on Entangled Photons Press conference and demonstration of the ground-breaking experiment: 21 April 2004, 11:30, Vienna City Hall Steinsaal

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Bank Transfer via Quantum Cryptography Based on Entangled Photons
by R. A. Hettinga 22 Apr '04

22 Apr '04

Sigh... The old hype-meter pegs so much the needle's bent... Cheers, RAH -------- <http://www.quantenkryptographie.at/rathaus_press.html> Quantum Cryptography "live" World Premiere: Bank Transfer via Quantum Cryptography Based on Entangled Photons Press conference and demonstration of the ground-breaking experiment: 21 April 2004, 11:30, Vienna City Hall q Steinsaal A collaboration of: group of Professor Anton Zeilinger, Vienna University; ARC Seibersdorf research GmbH; City of Vienna; Wien Kanal Abwassertechnologien GmbH and Bank Austria q Creditanstalt Downloads: Einladung (pdf-file, german) Invitation (pdf-file, english) Presse-Information (pdf-file, german) Press release (pdf-file, english) Where to get Pictures of the Event :: Fotoinformation (pdf-file) Poster 1 (pdf-file, german) Poster 2 (pdf-file, german) Poster 3 (pdf-file, german) Poster 4 (pdf-file, german) Poster 5 (pdf-file, german) For further Information please contact: Julia Petschinka ARC Seibersdorf research; Information Technologies e-mail: Julia.Petschinka(a)arcs.ac.at Phone: +43-(0)50550-4161 Fax: +43-(0)50550-4150 Mobile: +43-(0)664-8251064 or: Andrea Aglibut Institut fuer Experimentalphysik, University of Vienna e-mail: Andrea.Aglibut(a)univie.ac.at Phone: +43-(1)4277-51166 Fax: +43-(1)4277-9512 Mobile: +43-(0)664-60277-51166 -- ----------------- 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: voting
by John Kelsey 21 Apr '04

21 Apr '04

At 11:05 AM 4/9/04 -0400, Trei, Peter wrote: ... >1. The use of receipts which a voter takes from the voting place to 'verify' >that their vote was correctly included in the total opens the way for voter >coercion. I think the VoteHere scheme and David Chaum's scheme both claim to solve this problem. The voting machine gives you a receipt that convinces you (based on other information you get) that your vote was counted as cast, but which doesn't leak any information at all about who you voted for to anyone else. Anyone can take that receipt, and prove to themselves that your vote was counted (if it was) or was not counted (if it wasn't). (This is based on attending a presentation of David's scheme at George Washington a few months ago, a conversation I had with a VoteHere guy, and some conversations and documents given to me by each. I haven't tried to verify the protocols or proofs, but I'm convinced that all this is possible, modulo various assumptions. There may be a dozen other people doing similar things, that I've simply not heard of.) ... >1. How does this system prevent voter coercion, while still allowing receipt >based recounts? Or do you have some mechanism by which I can >personally verify every vote which went into the total, to make sure they >are correct? The way I understood these schemes, you can see the initial encrypted ballots (they're published), and then there are several rounds of publically verifiable shuffling and decryption by different TTPs. After the last round of shuffling and decryption, you have raw votes. So anyone can verify the count, assuming the set of initial encrypted ballots are legitimate. And anyone can produce a receipt that can be shown to be one of those encrypted ballots, if it was counted. That doesn't keep someone from stuffing the ballot box, but it does mean that anyone who throws away unfavorable votes is going to leave behind evidence, which can potentially call the whole vote into question. The way I saw these schemes described, there was no recount capability, but the count was done in a completely public way. It seems to me that this kind of scheme has a lot of potential for disruption attacks, since one compromised voting machine can be used to call any election into question. But I could be missing something, as this is really not something I've spent a lot of time on.... >2. On what basis do you think the average voter should trust this system, >seeing as it's based on mechanisms he or she cant personally verify? I see your point, but there's an awful lot of any voting system that isn't being closely observed by the voters, or that isn't really well-understood by most of them. It's not so clear to me that the average voter is going to walk away convinced that a voter-verified paper ballot, or a mark-sense ballot, or whatever other thing isn't going to somehow be subject to attack. Or that if they do walk away convinced, that this has much to do with whether they *should* walk away convinced. >3. What chain of events do I have to beleive to trust that the code which >is running in the machine is actually and correctly derived from the >source code I've audited? I refer you to Ken Thompsons classic paper >"Reflections on trusting trust", as well as the recent Diebold debacle >with uncertified patches being loaded into the machine at the >last moment. Yep, this is a big issue. Which is why I think everyone with any sense agrees that we need some kind of independent audit trail, regardless of whether we're doing voting with computers, or with pens for punching out holes. There are a bunch of ways to do this, one obvious and pretty easy-to-field choice being voter-verified paper ballots. >This last is an important point - there is no way you can eliminate the >requirement of election officials to behave legitimately. Since that >requirement can't be done away with by technology, adding technology >only adds more places the system can be compromised. Huh? Do you think the same is true of payment systems? Those also ultimately require some humans to play by the rules, but it sure seems like a well-designed payment system can remove a lot of the ambiguity about who has violated the rules, and can outright prevent other kinds of rule violations. And it seems to me that this is very similar to the situation with voting. Touch screen voting (with the audio extensions) has at least one huge advantage over pen-and-paper schemes, because blind people can vote with them. The VoteHere and Chaum schemes provide other benefits (a lot of kinds of misbehavior by the authorities are prevented by the design, though of course, not *all* possible misbehavior), at various costs in system complexity, dependence on lots of interacting systems that might not be all that reliable, ability to recover from some low level of fraud, etc. Paper ballots printed behind glass provide a different set of tradeoffs. And you could design twenty other sets of tradeoffs. I'm not at all convinced that the way we optimize for best security is to minimize technology. I agree that it's easy to get carried away by the elegance of your mathematics, or by the really spiffy blinking lights on the computer, and forget the essentials. But technology and math aren't somehow inherently bad things to introduce to voting systems. It just has to be done in a way that makes sense, right? ... >I do think electronic voting machines are coming, and a good >thing. But they should be promoted on the basis that they >are easier to use, and fairer in presentation, then are manual >methods. Promoting them on the basis that they are more >secure, and less subject to vote tampering is simply false. Less subject to vote tampering than the old machines with mechanical counters and levers? That's not too hard. Less subject to vote tampering than paper ballots marked by hand, that may be a little more of a challenge. I think it's more fair to say that the attacks and threats will be different, and that the risk of a class break (work out the details of the attack once, then change votes all over the country) is seriously scary. But it's sure not clear to me that adding computers to the mix must decrease security, or even must leave it unchanged. >Peter Trei --John Kelsey, kelsey.j(a)ix.netcom.com, who is definitely speaking only for himself. PGP: FA48 3237 9AD5 30AC EEDD BBC8 2A80 6948 4CAA F259

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[ISN] Britons go 'toothing' for sex with strangers
by InfoSec News 21 Apr '04

21 Apr '04

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/21/1082395891416.html [Who would have thought a security vulnerability would lead to wild anonymous sex? :) - WK] London April 21, 2004 British commuters take note - the respectable person sitting next to you on the train fumbling with his or her cell phone may be a "toother" looking for sex with a stranger. "Toothing" is a new craze where strangers on trains, buses, in bars and even supermarkets hook up for illicit meetings using messages sent via the latest in phone technology. "Toothing is a form of anonymous sex with strangers -- usually on some form of transport or enclosed area such as a conference or training seminar," says the Beginner's Guide To Toothing on a website dedicated to the pursuit. It is made possible by Bluetooth technology which allows users to send phone contacts, pictures and messages to other Bluetooth-enabled equipment over a range of about 10 metres. Users discovered they could send anonymous messages to people they didn't know with Bluetooth equipment, spawning a craze dubbed "bluejacking". Jon, aka "Toothy Toothing" and the guide's author, explained toothing was born after he was "bluejacked" by an unknown girl while commuting to work in London. After a few days of flirting, she suggested a brief encounter in a station lavatory. "The meeting wasn't a romantic thing - it was purely sexual. Barely anything was said," he said via e-mail. He said potential toothers begin by sending out a random greeting -- usually "Toothing?". "If the other party is interested, messages are exchanged until a suitable location is agreed -- usually a public toilet, although there are tales of more adventurous spots such as deserted carriages or staff areas," his guide adds. Jon, who's in his 20s and works in finance, estimates there could be tens of thousands of toothers from all sorts of professions and lifestyles. Certainly the website's message board is busy. "Any toothing on these trains?" asks one message about services between Cambridge and London, prompting positive responses from "Dannyboy" and "Zeke". "I'll be around London Bridge mainline station around 9.45 - 10am tomorrow if anyone's interested...," another messager called "Boi" wrote hopefully. While some happily recount their successful encounters, others suggest there are a few teething problems with toothing. "I tried toothing in Tooting (south London) last night... not a device to be found," a frustrated "Snowdog" posted sadly. Although clearly not what the industry had in mind, toothing may lead operators towards similar, more mainstream projects. Last month it was reported that a team in Boston had created a service for cell phones called Serendipity, an wireless alternative to online dating. It allows subscribers to store their personal details and what they want from a partner. When there are enough similarities between two people and they happen to be in the same area, it tells their phones to communicate with each other. Dario Betti, of the British-based consultancy Ovum, said bluejacking had really taken off, helped by the fact the service was free. "The element of the unknown, that you are connecting to someone around you that you might not know, it's a novelty factor that is helping it to start," he said. If Jon and those who use his forum are right, toothing is certainly livening up life for some bored commuters. "A lot of my day's taken up with a soul-aching commute into the city, and that just feels like dead time," Jon said. "Flirting is fun, sex is fun. We're just employing expensive, complex toys to find the most basic form of entertainment." _________________________________________ ISN mailing list Sponsored by: OSVDB.org --- 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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[ISN] Britons go 'toothing' for sex with strangers
by InfoSec News 21 Apr '04

21 Apr '04

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/21/1082395891416.html [Who would have thought a security vulnerability would lead to wild anonymous sex? :) - WK] London April 21, 2004 British commuters take note - the respectable person sitting next to you on the train fumbling with his or her cell phone may be a "toother" looking for sex with a stranger. "Toothing" is a new craze where strangers on trains, buses, in bars and even supermarkets hook up for illicit meetings using messages sent via the latest in phone technology. "Toothing is a form of anonymous sex with strangers -- usually on some form of transport or enclosed area such as a conference or training seminar," says the Beginner's Guide To Toothing on a website dedicated to the pursuit. It is made possible by Bluetooth technology which allows users to send phone contacts, pictures and messages to other Bluetooth-enabled equipment over a range of about 10 metres. Users discovered they could send anonymous messages to people they didn't know with Bluetooth equipment, spawning a craze dubbed "bluejacking". Jon, aka "Toothy Toothing" and the guide's author, explained toothing was born after he was "bluejacked" by an unknown girl while commuting to work in London. After a few days of flirting, she suggested a brief encounter in a station lavatory. "The meeting wasn't a romantic thing - it was purely sexual. Barely anything was said," he said via e-mail. He said potential toothers begin by sending out a random greeting -- usually "Toothing?". "If the other party is interested, messages are exchanged until a suitable location is agreed -- usually a public toilet, although there are tales of more adventurous spots such as deserted carriages or staff areas," his guide adds. Jon, who's in his 20s and works in finance, estimates there could be tens of thousands of toothers from all sorts of professions and lifestyles. Certainly the website's message board is busy. "Any toothing on these trains?" asks one message about services between Cambridge and London, prompting positive responses from "Dannyboy" and "Zeke". "I'll be around London Bridge mainline station around 9.45 - 10am tomorrow if anyone's interested...," another messager called "Boi" wrote hopefully. While some happily recount their successful encounters, others suggest there are a few teething problems with toothing. "I tried toothing in Tooting (south London) last night... not a device to be found," a frustrated "Snowdog" posted sadly. Although clearly not what the industry had in mind, toothing may lead operators towards similar, more mainstream projects. Last month it was reported that a team in Boston had created a service for cell phones called Serendipity, an wireless alternative to online dating. It allows subscribers to store their personal details and what they want from a partner. When there are enough similarities between two people and they happen to be in the same area, it tells their phones to communicate with each other. Dario Betti, of the British-based consultancy Ovum, said bluejacking had really taken off, helped by the fact the service was free. "The element of the unknown, that you are connecting to someone around you that you might not know, it's a novelty factor that is helping it to start," he said. If Jon and those who use his forum are right, toothing is certainly livening up life for some bored commuters. "A lot of my day's taken up with a soul-aching commute into the city, and that just feels like dead time," Jon said. "Flirting is fun, sex is fun. We're just employing expensive, complex toys to find the most basic form of entertainment." _________________________________________ ISN mailing list Sponsored by: OSVDB.org --- 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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[ISN] Britons go 'toothing' for sex with strangers
by R. A. Hettinga 21 Apr '04

21 Apr '04

--- begin forwarded text

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Five Reasons You Don't Owe Income Tax, Dammit!
by R. A. Hettinga 21 Apr '04

21 Apr '04

<http://www.reason.com/0405/fe.bd.five.shtml> Reason: May 2004 Five Reasons You Don't Owe Income Tax, Dammit! The most heartfelt beliefs of the "tax honesty" movement Brian Doherty Here are some of the core arguments against the legality of the income tax one finds in the tax honesty movement. Devotees probably would regard them as oversimplifications. This is certainly not an all-inclusive list. 1) The IRS declares in various documents that the income tax is "voluntary." And in Flora v. U.S. (1960), the Supreme Court announced, "Our system of taxation is based upon voluntary assessment and payment." 2) In Brushaber v. Union Pacific (1916), the Supreme Court declared that "the conclusion that the 16th Amendment provides for a hitherto unknown power of taxation" is "erroneous," and thus the 16th Amendment did not give Congress any taxing powers it did not already have. Hence, an unapportioned direct tax such as the income tax still cannot be legal. (Most mainstream readings of this extremely hard-to-follow decision say the Court meant Congress always had the power to levy an income tax, and that it was merely the question whether it should have to be apportioned that was at issue.) 3) Income, for the purposes of the tax code, should not be understood in any "common sense" way but only as defined by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, in Merchant's Loan and Trust Company v. Smietanka (1921), defined it as having the same meaning as in the Corporation Excise Tax of 1909-and as Irwin Schiff has written, "nothing that was received by private persons was taxable as 'income' under that Act." Income is defined as "gain derivedVfrom labor" in a previous Supreme Court decision, Stratton's Independence v. Howbert (1913). 4) Title 26 of the U.S. Code, in which tax-related statutes are found, is inherently "void for vagueness" because it lacks precise definitions of such terms as state, United States, employee, and person. Again, "common sense" definitions aren't good enough. (Many tax honesty types interpret the use of the word includes in the tax code as properly meaning, "is limited to.") 5) According to the tax-honesty reading of U.S. Code 26, Section 861, only income from foreigners or from overseas activity appears to actually be subject to the income tax. Senior Editor Brian Doherty is the author of This Is Burning Man, to be published this summer by Little, Brown. -- ----------------- 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 So Simple, It�s Ridiculous": Taxing times for 16th Amendment rebels
by R. A. Hettinga 21 Apr '04

21 Apr '04

<http://www.reason.com/0405/fe.bd.its.shtml> Reason: May 2004 "Itms So Simple, Itms Ridiculous" Taxing times for 16th Amendment rebels. Brian Doherty "I wonmt go to jail." Bob Schulz announces this in late January to a rapt crowd of 200 gathered in an auditorium in Crystal City, Virginia. Itms the first national conference of the We The People Foundation for Constitutional Education, a nonprofit advocacy group Schulz founded and runs. He delivers his declaration not with reckless bravado but with a dignified, quiet, middle-management-lifer assurance, in keeping with his general mien. Schulz is a serious white male in a nice conservative dark suit, a former environmental engineer for both General Electric and the Environmental Protection Agency. Hems been married for 38 years to the same woman, and he has four children of whom he is quite proud. Yet when his kids begged him to reconsider the path that requires him to declare publicly that he wonmt go to jail, his wife Judy told them, "Your father put his country before his family, and I support him." Schulz has stopped paying federal income tax, and he isnmt afraid to let anyone, including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), know it. Not only is he not paying, but hems also leading a national movement telling everyone else they shouldnmt pay either. When I talk to him after the conference, he doesnmt seem quite so confident he wonmt go to jail. But he doesnmt seem to care one way or the other. "Clearly [the government is] going to react," he says. "They may well sooner or later come at me in one way or another. You hear people say, kBob, theymre going to take you out. Dozens of armed agents will come turn your life upside down.m You hear all these things. I have to say I have no fears. I fear God and God alone." Americans have been protesting and avoiding taxes since before the U.S. officially existed. We are a nation born of tax protests. This tradition feeds the attitude that unites the serious, almost obsessed crowd here: the belief that they are the true patriots,staunch constitutionalists fiercely dedicated to the ideals that make America great. A radical transvaluation of values is going on right here in Crystal City. Far from being the very foundation of solid citizenry, acceding to the federal personal income tax is, among this crowd, an act of treason against what defines America: its Constitution and its "true laws." Schulzms We The People Foundation is transforming the often subterranean struggle to deny the legitimacy of the income tax. For decades this movement has been an inchoate collection of small congregations following varied gurus. Schulz and his crew, by contrast, offer a unified church with a canon of Right Arguments. The anti-income tax movement now has, through Schulz, a united, highly activist national membership organization claiming around 5,000 dues-paying members, a mailing list of 64,000, and local coordinators in 39 states and 600 counties. While in the past evangelists of the "income tax is a fraud" message have tended to sell books and seminars, the We The People Foundation has the advantage of being hard to blithely condemn as a scam. It is not a business selling advice but a nonprofit dedicated to spending money -- more than $1 million since taking up this fight -- to spread the word. Its founder claims Gandhi as his influence: From him Schulz learned that to fight an unjust tyranny, you need a proactive, nonviolent mass movement, and that is what he is trying to create. The movement against the income tax has lately adopted one of the tropes that define an on-the-rise minority in modern America: Its members want to be called what they call themselves -- the "tax honesty" movement -- and not be slapped with the pejoratives that most people have known them by (if aware of them at all). At the politest, their nemesis the IRS calls them "tax protesters." (Less politely, theymve been known as "income tax cranks.") A woman who runs a small business making and selling display boards in Massachusetts, who claims to have not paid personal income tax for a few years now with no practical repercussions, tells me that "when people say ktax protester movement,m it drives me nuts. I do not protest taxes. I think they are absolutely necessary. I protest illegal confiscation of assets, which is what the income tax is." She has no problem, she assures me, with sales taxes, property taxes, or corporate taxes. The partisans of the tax honesty movement go beyond complaining that the income tax is too high, or that out-of-control IRS agents enforce it in thuggish ways. They claim, for a dizzyingly complicated variety of reasons, that there is no legal obligation to pay it. The continued life -- and even flourishing -- of that notion, in the face of obloquy, fines, and jail sentences, says something fascinating about a peculiarly American spirit of defiance. It may even say something encouraging about what it means to live in a nation of laws, not of men. "I Used to Be Normal, But..." Bob Schulz has a long history of fighting the government in the name of constitutionally limited powers and proper procedure. His battles date back to 1979, when he successfully sued to halt a new sewage treatment system near Lake George in New York. (According to Schulz, the proposal ignored environmental impact requirements.) Since then hems been involved in more than 100 such lawsuits and won many. All that is small beer compared to his latest crusade. Since 1999 Schulz has presented his contentions regarding the income taxms illegality to the IRS, the president, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and every member of Congress. He has humbly beseeched them to answer a list of questions regarding whether he, or any American citizen, has an actual constitutional, statutory, legal obligation to pay the federal income tax. Hems led marches around IRS headquarters in D.C., and he went on a brief hunger strike in 2001. In July of that year his persistence prompted representatives of the IRS and DOJ to promise to show up at a public meeting Schulz was organizing. They promised to lay forth their official arguments as to why we do indeed have a legal obligation to pay income tax. That meeting was scheduled for September 25-26, 2001. The 9/11 attacks made Schulz reschedule, and the feds bowed out of appearing at the rescheduled event. Schulz feels he has pursued every proper step to find an answer to his questions. Now, he says, itms time to fight. When The New York Times asked IRS spokesman Terry Lemons why the Schulz petition was being ignored, Lemons "said that courts had upheld the validity of the tax laws and that the agency did not want to waste time and resources dealing with well-settled issues. Mr. Lemons added that the recent spate of enforcement actions taken by the IRS against promoters of abusive tax schemes...show other ways that government is answering the petition." Not the answer the movement wants, obviously. But itms one they should have expected. Never has any court anywhere -- much less the IRS -- accepted as valid any of the many arguments the movement offers for how and why there is no legal obligation for individuals to pay federal income tax. In fact, courts will fine you up to $25,000 for even raising them, insisting such arguments have been rejected so often by so many courts at so many levels that they are patently frivolous and time-wasting. Despite this, the dominant vibe at this conference, even among those whose pursuit of these curious doctrines has led them to conflicts with government or employers, is hopeful in a religious sense. They clasp valiantly to belief in their own righteousness and the certainty that through that righteousness they one day will be delivered. I eavesdrop on one smiling lady with a shock of short white hair telling a fellow attendee of her long fight over garnishment of her wages from a tax lien. It sounds like plenty of trouble came her way, and in the end the courts were taking her money anyway. But she was still cheerful, evincing no regret for the path shemd taken. Wrapping up her tale, she confided, with a smile and an only slightly wistful sigh, "I used to be normal, but...." No one at the conference -- from the man who tries to pay for his Au Bon Pain lunch with a privately minted silver coin to the airline employee whose union is getting tired of his fights over tax withholding -- strikes me as merely fumbling for some scam to avoid paying taxes. Their concerns are higher than that. The Constitution and a properly limited government are their guiding lights. Indeed, the conference isnmt only about the income tax: Panels about the Second Amendment, jury nullification, and the questionable pedigree of the Federal Reserve are also offered, and also well attended. Mel Gibsonms controversial father, Hutton Gibson, gives a rousing speech on the need to fight the New World Order to defend our traditional liberties and is cheered heartily. Most everyone here seems aware therems a good chance they will pay a price far higher than the mere cash of taxes for pursuing the movementms difficult truth. When a speaker announces that his listeners need to be prepared to go to jail, almost all clap. In one question-and-answer session, a woman airs her concerns about all the practical difficulties that accompany the tax honesty path. How, for example, can one get a mortgage loan without tax returns to show? She seems to be begging for some loophole in the loopholes -- some reason she doesnmt have to refrain from paying income taxes. But the crowd and Schulz are pitiless. After she offers up too many what-ifs and how-do-yous, Schulz acknowledges that this path of truth might not be for everyone -- only, by implication, for the bravest and staunchest of patriots. Reality does, however, toss the tax honesty movement the occasional sweet crumb of hope. A couple of the crumbs that materialized in the last year seemed substantial and nourishing at first nibble. Most significantly, a tax honesty true believer named Vernice Kuglin, a vivacious and attractive Federal Express pilot who has a crowd of admirers following her everywhere during the conference, was slammed with criminal charges for failure to file and for tax evasion. She beat the rap in August, acquitted of all charges by a federal jury in Memphis. Also last year, Texas plastics manufacturer Dick Simkanin was finally brought to trial for failure to withhold income taxes for his dozens of employees. Simkanin had been a poster child in We The People-sponsored ads in USA Today, featured as a businessman who honestly believes it is his right under law not to withhold. Two grand juries who had gotten to speak to Simkanin failed even to indict him. Finally a third grand jury, whom he didnmt get to speak to, did indict. But at the end of his first trial in November, the jurors could not reach a verdict. Both these events occasioned great rejoicing in the tax honesty community. But both had grimmer denouements. Kuglin stayed out of jail, but she was slapped with civil liens for past taxes due and penalties. These days shems only collecting around $290 per pay period from her FedEx job, with the rest snatched by the IRS. Simkanin was promptly retried and found guilty in January, and he now faces a potential 129 years in prison. How the Simkanin case played out should give the tax honesty movement pause. Judge John McBryde was not entirely fair to his client, says Simkaninms lawyer, Arch McColl, who spoke at the conference. Schulz and other movement heroes testified on Simkaninms behalf in vain. McBryde prevented McColl from mounting a real defense, the attorney complains, sustaining the prosecutorsm objections almost every time he tried to raise tax honesty arguments. The jury sent back a question to the judge asking to see the codes that directly stated Simkanin was required to withhold. (Some of the defendantms ideas clearly had gotten through.) The judge told them simply to trust him when he said the law required Simkanin to withhold -- essentially directing the verdict, since Simkanin never denied not withholding. (McColl has strong expectations that this response, among other things, will help guarantee a successful appeal.) Other aspects of how the system treated Simkanin should further discourage tax rebels. Despite being a 59-year-old heretofore-respectable small-business owner not yet convicted of anything, he has been in jail since June. (A federal plant claimed via hearsay, denied in court testimony by someone who was present when the comment was allegedly made, that Simkanin had threatened to kill some judges. The prosecutors sure knew their audience.) During the trial Simkanin was dragged into court in leg irons. The IRS doesnmt resort to criminal prosecution very often, so when it does, it wants to make a vivid example. Itms Magic, You Know: Never Believe Itms Not So The We The People conference brought together many of the movementms leading lights. It also presents some new strategies. Schulz, with the help of superstar radical lawyer Mark Lane, is in the process of launching a class action lawsuit to call the governmentms cheating hand on this whole income tax matter. Lane has a mysterious tendency to be wherever the quirky action is in American politics and law. Hems famous for being one of the first Warren Commission revisionists with his 1966 book Rush to Judgment and for being the lawyer for Peoplems Temple death cultist Jim Jones. He has successfully defended some tax honesty clients, though he tells me: "I pay taxes and never advise any client not to. But I can tell you, Imve read all these cases, and I donmt see where it says you have to pay, and I donmt understand why the government doesnmt answer [Schulzms] questions." The planned suit relies on interestingly fresh grounds: Schulz is claiming that all these government officials who refuse to answer his questions about the income tax are violating his First Amendment right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Surely, after all, that right must include the ability not merely to send in such petitions but to get some sort of reasonable response. Schulz recruits plaintiffs at the conference for another planned class action, this one against employers who have refused to stop withholding income tax from their paychecks when employees request it. This is illegal according to Schulzms reading of U.S. Code Title 26, Subtitle C, Chapter 24, Section 3402(n), which does indeed seem to indicate, to quote that section, that "notwithstanding any other provision of this section, an employer shall not be required to deduct and withhold any tax under this chapter upon a payment of wages to an employee if there is in effect with respect to such payments a withholding exemption certificate...furnished to the employer by the employee certifying that the employee -- (1) incurred no liability for income tax imposed under subtitle A for his preceding taxable year, and (2) anticipates that he will incur no liability for income tax imposed under subtitle I for his current taxable year." This is an option on every W4 form. Schulz maintains that the language of the law clearly implies the employer canmt get in trouble with the IRS for not withholding as long as the employee thus certifies. As a matter of fact, if not law, the IRS will regularly question such W4s (or ones that claim "too many" exemptions) and lean on employers to start deducting as if a straight one-exemption W4 has been filed. Schulz thinks any employer doing that -- and some do so even without the IRSms prodding -- should be sued, and he intends to do so in the spring. To his mind, and those of the 200 gathered at the conference, they are doing everything an American citizen needs to do when faced with injustice: using every legal, reasonable means to seek a redress. The Constitution will not defend itself, Schulz tells me; it is just a piece of paper. Keeping it healthy requires bold action, often expensive and time-consuming action, from those who love it. After Lane gives his presentation about the redress of grievances suit, with its announcement that parties to the suit intend to withhold their cooperation with the income tax until the questions are answered, a sour-voiced, heavy-set woman toward the back is appalled. No one owes the tax, she exclaims, so what kind of weapon is that to hold over the governmentms head, withholding something that wasnmt even due in the first place? In his role as general MC for the conference, Schulz is clearly wearied by the obsessions of some of his audience members -- for example, the notion that hiring an attorney means abandoning personal sovereignty before the law, or that having a yellow-fringed flag in a room means you are under martial law. But he is generally polite about it, if in a pained way. He tries to explain to the woman that lots of people are paying, and that they were seeking to enjoin the IRS from enforcing any tax liabilities on them until the petition is answered. Sessions at the three-day conference often run late -- through lunch and into the evening, past the announced closing time -- and the crowds stay through it all. I meet computer industry workers, violin makers, and even ex-IRS agents, from all across the country; they are overwhelmingly white, about two-thirds male, and mostly between 30 and 60 years old. Their comportment and appearance are not kooky by any means. They dress in business casual mostly, evincing no untoward whooping or mania or anger. Gauging audience reaction to certain statements from the podium, Imd say the majority of them are serious Christians. They are serious people in general: rebels without cool, with no sense of humor or irony, armed merely with the conviction that they are right. Their devotion to their beliefs is certainly religious. Indeed, tax litigation consultant Daniel Pilla, author of The IRS Problem Solver, says theymre "like programmed cult members -- you canmt reason with them." More charitably, the tax honesty people are staunch exemplars of Americams glorious Protestant heritage. This observation is not merely a pun on their status as "tax protesters." Their attitude toward the Constitution and the statutes and legal decisions regarding the income tax are uniquely Protestant, relying on a laymanms ability -- indeed, obligation -- to read and study and parse the original documents himself, to come to his own personal relationship with the law and the cases, and to prefer his understanding to that of the priesthood of lawyers, judges, and accountants. "Case law" -- the kind that proves that you can and will be arrested or fined for not filing or paying income tax -- means nothing to them; they like to rely strictly on the statutes as written, or on Supreme Court cases and straight constitutional interpretation. Irwin Schiff, the godfather of the movement, is insistent that you shouldnmt just take his word for anything: You should check the statutes. He is, he declares, the biggest reseller of the published version of the U.S. tax code. He sells specially tabbed copies leading you straight to the pages in the multithousand-page behemoth you must see to understand his own interpretations. Not merely Protestant, the tax honesty people are strangely reminiscent of fandom -- of the comic book, fantasy, science fiction, role-playing-game variety. They have the same obsession with continuity and coherence within a created fantasy world of words. Itms just that, in this case, that world of words isnmt a multivolume fantasy epic or a long-running TV series -- itms U.S. law. When these people try to reconcile the definition of income in this subsection of Title 26 of the U.S. Code with the definition in a 1918 Supreme Court case, itms like hearing an argument over the inconsistencies between a supervillainms origin as first presented in a 1965 issue of The Amazing Spider-Man and the explanation given in a 1981 edition of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man. The tax honesty movementms vision of the world is fantastical in another way. It is not merely obsessed with continuity; it is magical in a traditional sense. Itms devoted to the belief that the secret forces of the universe can be bound by verbal formulas if delivered with the proper ritual. There are numerous formulae in the tax honesty spellbook, with rival mages defending them. Which spell is best: The summoning of the Sovereign Citizen? The incantation of the Constitutional Definition of Income? The banishing spell of No Proper Delegation? The tax honesty folks similarly believe that their foe the IRS must also be bound by these grimoires of magic: that without the properly sanctified OMB number an IRS form holds no power, that without uttering the mystic word liable no authority to tax can truly exist. And always, always, the ultimate incantation, The Question: Where does it say that I owe income taxes? Show me the law! "There Is Hereby Imposed on the Taxable Income of..." You hear this all the time. When presented with the simple request to "show me the law that unambiguously requires me to pay income tax," I was told, everyone from congressmen to tax lawyers to IRS agents is stymied, even when Schiff and others offer enormous rewards to anyone who can do so. It didnmt take me long to find what seemed to be an answer to that question. In U.S. Code Title 26, Subtitle A, Chapter 1, Subchapter A, Part I, Section 1, it says, "There is hereby imposed on the taxable income of...," followed by subcategories that seem to include most Americans, complete with tables showing the percentage owed for each income range. (Subchapter A even comes close to that magic word liable that many in the movement insist is nowhere applied to personal income taxes -- itms called "Determination of Tax Liability.") But "taxable income" is the rub. Tax honesty types claim the "constitutional" definition of income, as set forth in such Supreme Court cases as Doyle v. Mitchell Brothers (1918), is corporate profits, not individualsm wages. (Courts have knocked down this claim regularly during the last 30 years.) The movement has an argument against the income tax for every level of abstraction, from the highest (taxing the fruits of our labor is against our natural rights as sovereign individuals) to the lowest (the IRS canmt manage to get everyone, so it is reasonably safe just not to file). One California paralegal who speaks at the We The People conference relies on everything from the Magna Carta to the Treaty of Paris of 1765 to the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights to defend her contention that she doesnmt owe any income tax. Massed together, the chorus of tax honesty voices canmt help but remind you of the lawyer in the old joke who argued that his client was not even in town when the victim was killed; and if he was in town, he didnmt kill him; and if he did kill him, he was insane when he did it. At the conference you learn that taxing violates our natural rights; and anyway, the Constitution does not permit an unapportioned direct tax like an income tax; and if you think the 16th Amendment took care of that, well, it wasnmt properly ratified; and even if it was, it didnmt give any new taxing powers to Congress; and even if it did, the statutes and codes of the IRS as written arenmt officially U.S. law; and even if they were, they donmt define liability and income such that any normal working American owes taxes; and anyway, if you just donmt file they might never catch you. And there are plenty of complications on every step of this tangled path. (The claim that the 16th Amendment wasnmt properly ratified actually holds up pretty well. To judge from the pathbreaking research of Bill Benson -- a marvelous example of legal Protestantism -- there were enough procedural irregularities in its passage that it technically should not have been declared ratified in 1913. Still, it was thus certified, and the courts tend to respond to Bensonite arguments by saying itms too late to do anything about it now, and it isnmt the courtms problem.) This doesnmt mean anything goes in stabbing at the income tax. There are fringe beliefs even on this fringe. Larry Becraft is a lawyer who has actually won a handful of acquittals -- including one for Vernice Kuglin -- in defending people on trial for tax evasion. He gives a talk that is basically a warning to the movement to get its act straight and stop being absurd. Among the beliefs even others in the movement condemn as silly are the notions that by using a ZIP code or allowing a government document to spell your name in all capital letters, you surrender your sovereignty and make yourself a serf of the federal government, and that the income tax applies only to people who live in a federal territory or district, not to residents of the states. "Here I Am, IRS, and I Donmt Believe in You!" Far from that sort of futile reliance on concepts of personal sovereignty that U.S. law just does not recognize, I encounter a remarkably frank and refreshing approach from Peymon Mottahedeh and his Freedom Law School. (Technically, he tells me, the school is a function of a church he runs.) Peymon has a table set up at the We The People conference seeking customers ("students," he prefers to call them) for the "tax defense funds" he sells (both "simple" and "royal" packages). Peymon and his crew do believe the basic catechism of the movement: that one technically does not have a legal obligation to pay the individual income tax. They also know these arguments never succeed in court. When we meet later at his U.S. Code-lined office, attached to his home on the rural outskirts east of Los Angeles, he tells me hems never seen much value in waving your hands in the air tauntingly and bellowing, "Here I am, IRS, and I donmt believe in you!" Thus Peymon advocates simply not filing and relying on the luck of the draw. Peymon claims more than 60 million Americans a year donmt file. (There is no official number for this, though some more recent estimates from the government have it that only around 10 million people a year who are supposed to be filing arenmt. The IRS admits that in the last three years fewer than 230 nonfilers a year have been convicted.) The next step is to ignore the threatening letters and audit re--quests you receive until you get an official Notice of Deficiency from the IRS. Then you go to Tax Court and stonewall like crazy, making the IRS prove you owe them something without the aid of the "tax confession form," as Peymon calls the 1040. (This all works better for you if you are self-employed and the IRS hasnmt already gotten its hands on your money through withholding.) Peymon is a natural-born salesman, a handsome Iranian man with thick black hair swept back. He says he doesnmt really fear retaliation from the IRS since, after escaping from the Shahms Iran, he feels hems living a second life now anyway. "If we lose our freedom here, where else are we going to go?" he asks. Since hems been selling this advice for only a couple of years, and tax court proceedings often stretch out that long, he says he doesnmt have solid stats on how well this approach is doing, and he shies from announcing his number of customers -- wouldnmt the IRS love to know? But he thinks his approach is the smartest one the movement has come up with. The IRS is a big bully; the smartest thing to do is stay out of the bullyms way and not call attention to yourself. Itms too late for that for the movementms biggest star, Irwin Schiff. At the We The People conference I witness a young fellow enthusiastically shake the hand of this compact 75-year-old man with a broad and squeaky voice and call him his hero; Schiff takes it in stride. He is the man, the granddaddy, in many ways the Founding Father of the modern tax honesty movement. Some of his signature ideas were floated by earlier figures, including Pete Soehnlen and Robert Golden, but he became the first mass phenomenon of tax honesty with his 1982 book How Anyone Can Stop Paying Income Taxes, originally self-published and later distributed by Simon & Schuster. He says hems sold nearly half a million copies of his various books. Schiff used to sell tax shelters, and he first came to prominence in anti-statist circles with a 1976 Arlington House hit called The Biggest Con -- which, despite the title, is a standard right-wing peroration against taxing, spending, and Social Security and does not take a radical anti-income tax stance. Even though he tells us anyone can stop paying income taxes, Schiff has spent a few years in prison as a result of criminal prosecutions on various charges stemming from his own failure to pay taxes. He has been out of jail since the early m90s and has avoided "failure to file" convictions since then by filing an innovation he popularized, the "zero return." That means you file a 1040 but claim to have had no taxable income -- which by Schiffms reading of the tax code and various Supreme Court cases, he does not (and neither do you). His latest book-length disquisition on these matters, The Federal Mafia, is a work of baroque complexity. Yet when Schiff hears Imm a reporter writing about the movement, he says the truth about taxes is easy to grasp. "Itms so simple, itms ridiculous," he tells me. Sometimes Schiffms arguments are not really about the law, just an appeal to a basic sense of fairness. For example, how can a country with a Fifth Amendment require us to file and sign 1040s under penalty of perjury when the information on them can be used against us in civil and criminal prosecutions? Mostly, though, his shtick is based on various sorts of word magic. While some sections of the excise tax code specifically list the circumstances under which one becomes liable for them, for example, there appears to be no such section for the income tax. Therefore, Schiff argues, no one is actually liable for it -- even though, as detailed above, the tax is "imposed." Similarly, he posits a terribly significant distinction between a "notice of levy" and a "levy." I get hit with a hilarious application of Schiffms verbal judo as he attempts to convince me and another apparently confused attendee that "compensation for services" could not mean the same thing as "wages" for tax liability purposes. (This all fits in with his argument that only corporate profits should be considered "income.") He shows us a place in the code that seems to define "compensation for services" as taxable while not mentioning "wages." The other guy objects that surely a wage falls into the category of a "compensation for services." "Itms not the same!" barks Schiff, the Socrates of the tax code. "And Imll prove it to you: Can a corporation receive compensation for services?" His interlocutor admits that yes, wise Schiff, it cannot be denied this is indeed so. "Can a corporation receive wages?" The guy pauses a moment, then grants that this proposition seems doubtful. "See!" Schiff is pleased. "Theymre not the same!" It all seems so sensible with the energetic Schiff yapping at you. Of course, to say that something falls into a category is not the same as saying it is identical to the category. Schiffms argument is ultimately as convincing as saying that if an apple is a fruit, and an apple is not an orange, then an orange canmt be a fruit. Still, he seems happy with it. How, one might ask (and many have), can Schiff continue to maintain there is no legal obligation to pay income taxes when he has spent time in jail for not paying income taxes? He addresses this question in the latest edition of The Federal Mafia: "Unfortunately, some people who were persuaded by [my books] that they could legally stop paying income tax (they could) went to jail. How many, I donmt know. But they and their families paid a terrible price because of what they learned....I must again warn you regarding the use of this information. There is no question that it is all correct. Paying and filing income taxes are, by law, voluntary. The law...also provides you with a means for stopping the withholding of that tax, which, by any legitimate standard, you have a perfect right to do. But, by doing so, you run the risk of going to jail!" "Liable, Liable, What Makes Me Liable?" The reason for that seeming paradox, Schiff says, is simple: The IRS and the judges it brings cases before are corrupt and donmt care what the law says. Which is why, since February 2003, Schiff has had his Las Vegas office raided and records of all his clients seized; the IRS has moved for judgment on $2.5 million in back taxes and penalties it claims he owes; and a federal judge has banned the sale and distribution of The Federal Mafia by Schiff and forbade him from publicly saying what he believes about the income tax. (That ban is under appeal now.) Schiff tells a group of well-wishers this latest wave of statist oppression swamped him momentarily -- he went into a depression and lost 20 pounds -- but "Imm back! Imm back! Imm going to kick their ass!" He proudly points out that all the back taxes in the $2.5 million judgment are from many years ago and that the IRS has done nothing to him for his more recent zero return filings. This proves to him that strategy must be foolproof. Vernice Kuglinms acquittal on criminal charges has made her one of the movementms new saints and heroes. I witness her taking aside a man troubled by the mess hems in because he advocated these beliefs as an accountant; she tells him kindly but firmly, "We know in our core thatms what we have to do." She was involved in Libertarian Party activities in the early m90s and through that was exposed to tax honesty ideas. By 1995 she was sending letters to the IRS asking what specific section of U.S. code or statutes made her liable for the federal income tax. Were she legally liable, she insisted, she would be more than happy to pay. Despite the liens on her income, Kuglin is optimistic. A juror in her case, she tells me, had a dream during deliberations in which he heard Kuglin repeating, "Liable, liable, what makes me liable?" This was apparently the crack in his mind that convinced him to lead the jury to acquittal. And then her son had a dream in which she and her lawyer were standing in front of the courthouse, and a ball of light spread around them and enveloped the world. She believes it is all fate, that the universe is taking care of her, that her victory is the beginning of the end of the whole evil lie of the income tax, and that "every setback is one more step to the win" in this battle. A sober assessment of the empirical evidence shows that the exact opposite is true -- that victories for the tax honesty movement (the occasional criminal acquittal or mistrial) lead inevitably to a later defeat (further convictions or civil seizures). But that realization doesnmt rely on contemplating the Constitution, statutes, codes, or rabbinical parsings of word definitions. Thus, it is not quick to occur to the devotees of tax honesty. They move, with heavenly grace, through an existential hell: In their minds and hearts they are absolutely certain that they are right, and even doing Godms work. (The contention that the Constitution was divinely inspired elicits a fair amount of clapping and no open unrest at the We The People conference.) But they are also fully aware that all the powers and dominions of the earth are arrayed against them and regularly torment them. They believe, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that their citizenms understanding of the written law should, and in some Platonic sense does, trump the realities of dealing with the government. This makes them uniquely American rebels -- more true, they maintain, to the nationms core values than those of us who follow the pragmatic advice an accountant once gave to one man at the conference. When the tax honesty devotee showed him a Schiff-marked copy of the tax code, the accountant replied: "You mess with that shit, you are going to jail." Well, not necessarily to jail. Tax honesty folks adore the Supreme Courtms 1991 decision Cheek v. U.S., which authoritatively ruled that a belief, however objectively unreasonable, that one was not liable to pay income tax could negate the element of willfulness necessary to establish criminal culpability for income tax crimes. In this area, in essence, ignorance of the law is an excuse. But as Daniel Pilla puts it, Cheek "might keep you out of jail, but it wonmt mean you donmt owe the tax." Still, the tax honesty folks believe, to their core, that a written Constitution and written laws truly can restrain the unbridled force of government. They push a naive Americanism, but an Americanism nonetheless. They are no more insane, in principle, then anyone else anywhere who has ever tried to fight city hall, sue the government, or halt congressional action by relying on, say, the Commerce Clause. Their facts are mostly wrong. But whether wrong or not, they are irrelevant -- and the tax honesty folks know it. Not a one seems unaware that jail and property confiscation are a likely result of acting on their ardently held conclusions. But they refuse to believe it. This makes them foolish, to be sure. But it doesnmt necessarily mean they arenmt heroic. As one conference attendee tells me, "I donmt care how many cowards there are. Therems one less on the planet, and thatms me. Everyone has to stand up for something in their lifetime." Senior Editor Brian Doherty is the author of This Is Burning Man, to be published this summer by Little, Brown. -- ----------------- 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'

1 0

[wearables] mobile phone exploits: bluejacking and remote monitoring
by Thad E. Starner 21 Apr '04

21 Apr '04

Folks- I'm getting interview requests on the (lack-of) privacy aspects on mobile phones and need some help formalizing my ideas. I've included an article on bluejacking (exploiting bluetooth to extract info from mobile phones) below, but what I'm really interested in is methods to turn on the microphone on a mobile phone without the owner's awareness. Has anyone done this or heard of an exploit to do this yet? I can see three methods off-hand: 1) Bluejacking the phone, sending over a Java app, turning on the mic, and either a) sending the audio over bluetooth b) actually calling back the cracker's phone directly (either immediately or in a time-delayed fashion) c) storing the audio on the owner's phone and then uploading the data at a later time (with PDA cell phones with 4G flash cards, you could store a full year's worth of speech) 2) Having a Java (J2ME) trojan horse app on a website that, when the owner clicks on it, does variants of 1 3) The "service provider" remote downloads software "updates" that do the same thing as #1. (Does anyone have specific knowledge of service providers uploading software updates remotely) a) because the service provider is being forced to do so by a government agency (e.g. in the US based on a subpoena using the FBI wiretap law, for example) b) because the service provider is actually a cracker who got the appropriate software update codes c) because the service provider just thinks this is a good idea for some reason (I can put together some pretty paranoid scenarios for this, but nothing that is really compelling yet) (Note with some of these scenarios, the phone could actually look "off" because almost all phones use soft switches instead of actually disconnecting the power) Other things I'm interested in are 1) When the mobile phone is off, exciting the phone at the carrier frequency, looking at the back scatter, characterizing the specific characteristics of the phone, and then using these as a unique signature that I can use the phone like a passive RFID. I have a pretty good source that says this is actually being done now, but I can't use this info publicly. Anyone have a source I can quote or point to? 2) Using clusters of phones as phased array microphones. Sumit Basu did a phased array microphone based on mics in clothing where the topology was changing. Does anyone know if the math works well enough to do this on a room full of cell phones in people's pockets? Thad ------------ Bluetooth May Put You At Risk of Getting 'Snarfed' By JEREMY WAGSTAFF Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL April 15, 2004; Page D3 If you spot someone tailgating you on the road or standing next to you wearing a backpack, then watch out: You may have been "snarfed." All the data on your cellphone, including addresses, calendars, whom you called and who called you, may now be in that person's computer. Many cellphones use Bluetooth technology, which allows them to communicate wirelessly with other Bluetooth-equipped devices -- computers, personal-digital assistants and other cellphones. This means you don't need a cable, for example, to synchronize the address books on your laptop and your cellphone. It is convenient, but that makes it possible for someone to steal your data, or even hijack your cellphone for their own purposes. Last year, London security consultant AL Digital spotted flaws in the way some Bluetooth cellphones swapped data with one another -- flaws that could be used to gain unauthorized access to everything stored on that phone without the user ever knowing. AL Digital's Adam Laurie, who discovered the problem, shared his findings with cellphone makers and with the public (leaving out the detail that might allow ne'er-do-wells to copy his experiments at street level). He termed the trick Bluesnarfing. Not a lot has happened since then. Nokia Corp., the market leader in the cellphone industry, acknowledges the flaw but says in an e-mail response to questions that it is "not aware of any attacks against Bluetooth-enabled phones." Sony Ericsson, a joint venture of Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson and Sony Corp., didn't reply to an e-mail. Even those highlighting the danger say they haven't heard of specific attacks. Still, these attacks -- also known as Bluejacking -- nevertheless are possible. Mr. Laurie cites a scenario in which paparazzi could steal celebrity data. He says he was able, with permission, to snarf from a friend's phone details of her company's shops, door codes and safe combinations. "There's any number of angles you can look at, and they are all bad as far as I can see," he says. Martin Herfurt, a 27-year-old German student at Salzburg's Research Forschungsgesellschaft, last month set up a laptop at a technology trade fair in Hannover, Germany, and ran a snarf attack. He found nearly 100 cellphones from which he could have stolen data, sent text messages or even made calls. He has published his findings to prove that this kind of thing can be done easily. How does it work? The attacker can use a Bluetooth-enabled laptop to discover other Bluetooth gadgets within range. Anything with Bluetooth activated and set to "discoverable" will show up, usually identified by its default device name. Being "discoverable" means your gadget is visible to anyone searching, but even if it isn't, an attacker still can find it, using software freely available on the Internet. The attacker then can use more software to take, delete, change or add data. So what is a consumer to do? Turn off Bluetooth on your phone unless you really need it to communicate with your other gadgets. In most cases, phones that have Bluetooth will have prominently displayed the fact on the box the phone came in, or you can expect to find "Bluetooth" in the index of your phone's manual. Otherwise, the Bluetooth settings can usually be found in the "Communications" or "Connections" menu on your phone. More importantly, there shouldn't be anything on your phone that you don't want someone else to have. Write to Jeremy Wagstaff at jeremy.wagstaff(a)feer.com4 --- 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'

1 0

[wearables] mobile phone exploits: bluejacking and remote monitoring
by Thad E. Starner 21 Apr '04

21 Apr '04

Folks- I'm getting interview requests on the (lack-of) privacy aspects on mobile phones and need some help formalizing my ideas. I've included an article on bluejacking (exploiting bluetooth to extract info from mobile phones) below, but what I'm really interested in is methods to turn on the microphone on a mobile phone without the owner's awareness. Has anyone done this or heard of an exploit to do this yet? I can see three methods off-hand: 1) Bluejacking the phone, sending over a Java app, turning on the mic, and either a) sending the audio over bluetooth b) actually calling back the cracker's phone directly (either immediately or in a time-delayed fashion) c) storing the audio on the owner's phone and then uploading the data at a later time (with PDA cell phones with 4G flash cards, you could store a full year's worth of speech) 2) Having a Java (J2ME) trojan horse app on a website that, when the owner clicks on it, does variants of 1 3) The "service provider" remote downloads software "updates" that do the same thing as #1. (Does anyone have specific knowledge of service providers uploading software updates remotely) a) because the service provider is being forced to do so by a government agency (e.g. in the US based on a subpoena using the FBI wiretap law, for example) b) because the service provider is actually a cracker who got the appropriate software update codes c) because the service provider just thinks this is a good idea for some reason (I can put together some pretty paranoid scenarios for this, but nothing that is really compelling yet) (Note with some of these scenarios, the phone could actually look "off" because almost all phones use soft switches instead of actually disconnecting the power) Other things I'm interested in are 1) When the mobile phone is off, exciting the phone at the carrier frequency, looking at the back scatter, characterizing the specific characteristics of the phone, and then using these as a unique signature that I can use the phone like a passive RFID. I have a pretty good source that says this is actually being done now, but I can't use this info publicly. Anyone have a source I can quote or point to? 2) Using clusters of phones as phased array microphones. Sumit Basu did a phased array microphone based on mics in clothing where the topology was changing. Does anyone know if the math works well enough to do this on a room full of cell phones in people's pockets? Thad ------------ Bluetooth May Put You At Risk of Getting 'Snarfed' By JEREMY WAGSTAFF Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL April 15, 2004; Page D3 If you spot someone tailgating you on the road or standing next to you wearing a backpack, then watch out: You may have been "snarfed." All the data on your cellphone, including addresses, calendars, whom you called and who called you, may now be in that person's computer. Many cellphones use Bluetooth technology, which allows them to communicate wirelessly with other Bluetooth-equipped devices -- computers, personal-digital assistants and other cellphones. This means you don't need a cable, for example, to synchronize the address books on your laptop and your cellphone. It is convenient, but that makes it possible for someone to steal your data, or even hijack your cellphone for their own purposes. Last year, London security consultant AL Digital spotted flaws in the way some Bluetooth cellphones swapped data with one another -- flaws that could be used to gain unauthorized access to everything stored on that phone without the user ever knowing. AL Digital's Adam Laurie, who discovered the problem, shared his findings with cellphone makers and with the public (leaving out the detail that might allow ne'er-do-wells to copy his experiments at street level). He termed the trick Bluesnarfing. Not a lot has happened since then. Nokia Corp., the market leader in the cellphone industry, acknowledges the flaw but says in an e-mail response to questions that it is "not aware of any attacks against Bluetooth-enabled phones." Sony Ericsson, a joint venture of Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson and Sony Corp., didn't reply to an e-mail. Even those highlighting the danger say they haven't heard of specific attacks. Still, these attacks -- also known as Bluejacking -- nevertheless are possible. Mr. Laurie cites a scenario in which paparazzi could steal celebrity data. He says he was able, with permission, to snarf from a friend's phone details of her company's shops, door codes and safe combinations. "There's any number of angles you can look at, and they are all bad as far as I can see," he says. Martin Herfurt, a 27-year-old German student at Salzburg's Research Forschungsgesellschaft, last month set up a laptop at a technology trade fair in Hannover, Germany, and ran a snarf attack. He found nearly 100 cellphones from which he could have stolen data, sent text messages or even made calls. He has published his findings to prove that this kind of thing can be done easily. How does it work? The attacker can use a Bluetooth-enabled laptop to discover other Bluetooth gadgets within range. Anything with Bluetooth activated and set to "discoverable" will show up, usually identified by its default device name. Being "discoverable" means your gadget is visible to anyone searching, but even if it isn't, an attacker still can find it, using software freely available on the Internet. The attacker then can use more software to take, delete, change or add data. So what is a consumer to do? Turn off Bluetooth on your phone unless you really need it to communicate with your other gadgets. In most cases, phones that have Bluetooth will have prominently displayed the fact on the box the phone came in, or you can expect to find "Bluetooth" in the index of your phone's manual. Otherwise, the Bluetooth settings can usually be found in the "Communications" or "Connections" menu on your phone. More importantly, there shouldn't be anything on your phone that you don't want someone else to have. Write to Jeremy Wagstaff at jeremy.wagstaff(a)feer.com4 --- 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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