July 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

We werent doing anything wrong
by Nostra2004＠SAFe-mail.net 16 Jul '04

16 Jul '04

http://www.wvgazettemail.com/static/stories/2004071346.html Couple in anti-Bush T-shirts were arrested at presidents speech By Tara Tuckwiller tara(a)wvgazette.com A husband and wife who wore anti-Bush T-shirts to the presidents Fourth of July appearance arent going down without a fight: They will be represented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union as they contest the trespassing charges against them Thursday morning in Charleston Municipal Court. Police took Nicole and Jeff Rank away in handcuffs from the event, which was billed as a presidential appearance, not a campaign rally. They were wearing T-shirts that read, Love America, Hate Bush. Spectators who wore pro-Bush T-shirts and Bush-Cheney campaign buttons were allowed to stay. We werent doing anything wrong, said Jeff Rank. The couple, who said they had tickets just like everybody else, said they simply stood around the Capitol steps with the rest of the spectators. We sang the national anthem, Rank said. The Ranks hardly fit the image of rabble-rousers. Jeff Rank, 29, has a masters degree in oceanography. Nicole Rank, 30, has degrees in biological science and marine biology. They have been married for seven years. Nicole Rank arrived in Charleston soon after the Memorial Day floods. She was working as deputy environmental liaison officer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, making sure cities and counties obeyed federal environmental laws as they repaired roads and bridges. After police arrested the Ranks, fingerprinted them and took their mug shots, FEMA told Nicole Rank she was no longer needed in West Virginia. I have not been fired per se, she said. But I was released from this job. And when they release you from a job, you no longer get paid. The Ranks started to go home to Corpus Christi, Texas, but they only got as far as Roanoke, Va., when it occurred to them that they might not be able to contest their arrest if they werent in Charleston on their court date. A phone call confirmed their suspicions. So they turned around. Weve been living in motels ever since, said Jeff Rank, who spent Tuesday evening in his motel room with his wife, their cocker spaniel Feinman, and their marmalade cat Rowr. Its extremely difficult [financially]. We can only afford to do this for so long. But they had to stay and fight the charges, he said, because we didnt think we were guilty. Since Bush took office in early 2001, people have been banned from displaying anti-Bush messages at dozens of Bush appearances across the country. In September, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit against the Secret Service, seeking an injunction against the Bush administration for segregating protesters at his public appearances. The Secret Service agreed that such censorship was wrong, said Witold Walczak, one of the lawyers that filed the lawsuit. They had an internal memo dated September 2002, saying they couldnt treat protesters differently or worse than anyone else at a presidential appearance, Walczak said. The judge said any agent responsible for doing so could be held liable for damages. The Secret Service had been telling local police to sequester anyone displaying an anti-administration message, usually in areas completely out of sight and earshot of Bush. Because the Secret Service agreed with the ACLU that it shouldnt be doing that, the judge dismissed the case. Prior to filing our suit in September, wed get a couple of confirmed protest zone complaints every month, Walczak said. After we filed, there were practically none. We had two documented incidents between September and March: one in Little Rock, Ark., and one in Knoxville, Tenn. But now, lawyers like Walczak are carefully monitoring cases like the Ranks and two similar incidents recently in Pennsylvania. Were trying to assess what is going on at these appearances ... whether these protest zones are resuming, he said. We are continuing to monitor all campaign events by both Republican and Democratic candidates. Were prepared to go back into court if we see discrimination occurring. Because Bushs Fourth of July stop in Charleston was billed as an official presidential visit, not a campaign rally, That makes it an even more glaring violation of the First Amendment, said Andrew Schneider, executive director of the ACLU of West Virginia. Its an Orwellian way to keep speech out of sight of those the speech is intended to critique ... We want to nip this in the bud before it becomes a habit of future administrations. A Bush spokesman did not return a telephone call seeking comment on the necessity of the free speech zone. To contact staff writer Tara Tuckwiller, use e-mail or call 348-5189.

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Re: USA PATRIOT Act Survives Amendment Attempt
by Nostra2004＠SAFe-mail.net 16 Jul '04

16 Jul '04

> > Actually, frequent prosecutions could work to the advantage of a select > > few who choose to become martyrs. Since it would make it much more > > likely supplicants would be called upon. > > Please explain this thought? If people are intentionally trying to set up the jackbooted thugs to break down your door then the more often the thugs take the bait the more likely the baitors will get to spring their traps. > > > I posted a few months back offering an alternative to religion in > > recruitment: the terminally ill. > > That's not good for this purpose; their lifetime is too short. Do you have evidence to support this (e.g., average survivial times of the TI from their first learning about their condition)?

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US Seeks Bobby Fischer Extradition
by Eric Cordian 16 Jul '04

16 Jul '04

Now that AmeriKKKa has successfully invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq in violation of international law, tortured with impunity, and mocked the rest of the world with its arrogance, what will it do for an encore? Settle old political scores, of course. So it comes as no surprise that the US has had former world chess champion Bobby FIscher arrested in Japan, and is seeking his extradition to the United States. Seems in 1992, Mr. Fischer played in the world chess championship in Yugoslavia which was under UN sanctions prohibiting people from engaging in a "business enterprise" there. The US, which has a long history of creatively interpreting UN resolutions to suit its own ends, decided unilaterally that this prohibition applied to sporting events, a view held by no other nation in the world. After Fischer won the match, a federal grand jury indicted him, and he was magically transformed from world chess champion into a fugutive facing 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Unable to protect his business and personal interests in the United States as a fugitive, his belongings in the US were stolen, and his chess books were freely reproduced in violation of his copyright, depriving him of the rightful income from his intellectual property. Another reason Mr. Fischer's life was magically transformed to shit. He's openly critical, as any sane person would be, of Israel and the Jews. And as we know, you can't do that and be a public figure in AmeriKKKa without being attacked, although to even suggest that this is the case instantly gets one accused of "hate speech." So it should be interesting to see how this case unfolds, in a country where Martha Stewart can go to prison for lying, but Colin Powell can't. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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RE: vacuum-safe laptops ?
by Trei, Peter 16 Jul '04

16 Jul '04

> -----Original Message----- > From: owner-cypherpunks(a)minder.net > [mailto:owner-cypherpunks@minder.net]On Behalf Of An Metet > Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 6:35 AM > To: cypherpunks(a)minder.net > Subject: vacuum-safe laptops ? > > > > Does anyone *know* (first or second hand, I can speculate > myself) which laptops, if any, can safely go to zero air > pressure (dropping from 1 atm to 0 in, say, 1 minute.) What's your application, exactly? A rocket? I don't know about rapid decompression, but one problem is with the disk drives - the heads rely on entrained air to maintain separation from the disk surface. Most drives are not hermetically sealed, and have a (filtered) port to the outside to equalize air pressure. Some drives *are* sealed, and will operate at low pressure. I've seen this issue disscussed in the context of computers and laptops at high-altitude astronomical observatories: most machines will suffer head crashes if you try to use them at > 10,000 feet (jets maintain an internal pressure altitude of about 5,000 feet). Some applications use solid state drives to get around this: http://www.globalspec.com/featuredproducts/detail?exhibitId=10540&fromSpotl… Some displays may also be a problem. This is more an issue for big plasma displays. Sony makes a special plasma TV for high altitude use: http://www.superwarehouse.com/Sony_PlasmaPro_PFM-42V1A_S_Silver_42_Plasma_D… A useful article is at http://www.iht.com/IHT/SUP/031999/digi-08.html You might want to look at the Itronix GoBook Max. http://www.gobookmax.com/ This device supposedly meets MILSPEC: http://www.dtc.army.mil/pdf/810.pdf which is a USG survivability spec. It includes an explosive decompression test, but not to high vacuum. ...and of course, all this gets pricy. Peter Trei

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[IP] Government Is 'Reshaping' Airport Screening System (fwd from dave@farber.net)
by Eugen Leitl 16 Jul '04

16 Jul '04

----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave(a)farber.net> -----

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Re: vacuum-safe laptops ?
by Eugen Leitl 16 Jul '04

16 Jul '04

Hard drives won't be able to, you'd need solid state flash disks. Sustainable operation will dry out lubricant in bearings, so any fans won't last very long. Any cooling requiring convection won't work, radiative cooling only. I suppose backlighting should be able to do, don't see how LCDs will get damaged. If high voltage is sufficiently good insulated, otherwise it will arc. It all depends on how hard your vacuum is, of course. And how long you want to operate the device. You'd need an old laptop, passively cooled (if it won't foul up your vacuum, immerse it in silicon oil), outfitted with flash sticks or flash drives. All of this is an educated guess, of course. On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 06:35:02AM -0400, An Metet wrote: > Does anyone *know* (first or second hand, I can speculate myself) which laptops, if any, can safely go to zero air pressure (dropping from 1 atm to 0 in, say, 1 minute.) -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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vacuum-safe laptops ?
by An Metet 16 Jul '04

16 Jul '04

Does anyone *know* (first or second hand, I can speculate myself) which laptops, if any, can safely go to zero air pressure (dropping from 1 atm to 0 in, say, 1 minute.)

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New trend: dropping trou at the TSA
by Sunder 15 Jul '04

15 Jul '04

BoingBoing calls this "The Freedom Flash" http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/14/man_flashes_authorit.html ---- http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040714/ap_on_fe_st/airport_fl… Man Exposes Self During Airport Screening Wed Jul 14, 9:07 AM ET Add Strange News - AP to My Yahoo! By The Associated Press MINNEAPOLIS - Daryl Miller didn't make it through airport security because he couldn't keep his pants on. Airport police said a security screener was waving a metal-detecting wand over Miller's pants area on Friday when Miller pulled his shorts down to his ankles. He wasn't wearing any underwear. Miller then said, "There, how do you like your job," thus ending the screening, according to the police report. He was charged with indecent exposure and released on $300 bail. ... "This person exposed themself in a public area, a clear violation of the law, and we needed to take some action on that, otherwise everybody would be dropping their pants," Christenson said. ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :"I find it ironic that, on an amendment designed to protect /|\ \|/ :American democracy and our constitutional rights, the /\|/\ <--*-->:Republican leadership in the House had to rig the vote and \/|\/ /|\ :subvert the democratic process in order to prevail" \|/ + v + : -- Rep. Sanders re vote to ammend the US PATRIOT ACT. -------------------------------------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

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Mexico Atty. General gets microchipped (fwd)
by J.A. Terranson 14 Jul '04

14 Jul '04

Forwarded for amusement -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin(a)mfn.org "...justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do not. And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out about them." Osama Bin Laden - - - "There aught to be limits to freedom!" George Bush - - - Which one scares you more? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/07/13/mexico.chip.reut/index.html Mexico attorney general gets microchip implant Tuesday, July 13, 2004 Posted: 5:34 PM EDT (2134 GMT) MEXICO CITY, Mexico (Reuters) -- Mexico's attorney general said on Monday he had had a microchip inserted under the skin of one of his arms to give him access to a new crime database and also enable him to be traced if he is ever abducted. Attorney General Rafael Macedo said a number of his staff had also been fitted with chips which will give them exclusive and secure access to a national, computerized database for crime investigators that went live on Monday. "It's an area of high security, it's necessary that we have access to this, through a chip, which what's more is unremovable," Macedo told reporters. "The system is here and I already have it. It's solely for access, for safety and so that I can be located at any moment wherever I am," he said, admitting the chip hurt "a little." The chips would enable the wearer to be found anywhere inside Mexico, in the event of an assault or kidnapping, said Macedo. And kidnapping is a huge problem here. From 1992 to 2002, Mexico saw some 15,000 kidnappings, second only to war-torn Colombia, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. Crime-fighting is a dangerous business in Mexico, where police are notoriously corrupt and where political figures and investigative journalists sometimes risk assassination. Mexico has seen a surge in violent crime recently, with an onslaught of headlines about murders and kidnappings prompting Fox to pledge in a national broadcast to crack down on crime. In June a quarter of a million people protested the government's failure to combat crime.

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Re: Mexico Atty. General gets microchipped (fwd)
by Major Variola (ret) 14 Jul '04

14 Jul '04

At 06:30 AM 7/14/04 +0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote: >Politicians getting RFIDs. > >Will it spur a new generation of smart roadside bombs, landmines, and >perhaps homing missiles? Do you think UBL tossed his $10K satphone for yucks? It tended to attract cruise missiles launched by distant cowards. You think the DARPA micro-UAV program is for fun? Don't let Mossad repair your cell phone, baby.

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