February 2005 - cypherpunks-legacy

Ireland faces �50m e-voting write-off
by R.A. Hettinga 07 Feb '05

07 Feb '05

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/04/ireland_evoting_bill/print.html> The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register » Internet and Law » eGovernment » Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/04/ireland_evoting_bill/ Ireland faces ¤50m e-voting write-off By electricnews.net (feedback at theregister.co.uk) Published Friday 4th February 2005 12:16 GMT A lack of public confidence in e-voting means that Ireland may be forced into writing off its ¤50m investment in electronic ballot systems. Michael Noonan, chairman of the Dail Public Accounts Committee, expressed doubts that the current system will ever be introduced, after last year's debacle where plans to initiate e-voting were scrapped over security concerns, the Irish Times reports. Even if the system is found to be safe, few ministers would give it the go-ahead because the public would have little trust in it, he told the newspaper. Noonan made his comments ahead of an inquiry into expenditure on the e-voting initiative. Officials from the Department of Environment are due before the committee today to answer criticisms over the the scheme. The civil servants are likely to be subjected to a serious grilling on why security concerns were not addressed before ¤50m was spent on e-voting systems. The storage of the unused e-voting machines is estimated to cost Irish taxpayers up to ¤2m per annum. Fine Gael, Ireland's biggest opposition party, has attacked the Government over the fiasco. "The criticisms contained in the report of the Independent Commission on Electronic Voting make it clear that this was a fiasco of the highest order," Fergus O'Dowd TD, Fine Gael spokesman on the Environment, said. "Considering all the information that is available to him, Minister Roche needs to fully explain the findings of these inquiries." "Is it now the case, as feared, that the government will have to write-off the ¤50m spend on electronic voting because of the botched handling of the project? I will be raising the issue through Fine Gael's priority questions in the Dail early next week. The Minister must give some definite answers." The Irish government had planned to introduce e-voting at local and European elections on 11 June 2004. But it abandoned the idea, following a report of the Independent Commission on Electronic Voting (ICEV) which raised doubts over the accuracy of the software used in the system. According to the Irish Citizens for Trustworthy Evoting (ICTE) submission to the commission, the Nedap/Powervote electronic voting system had a fundamental design flaw because it had no mechanism to verify that votes would be recorded accurately in an actual election. Consequently, results obtained from the system could not be said to be accurate, ICTE said. Other flaws identified included possible software errors and the use of the graphical user interface programming language Object Pascal for a safety-critical system. Although ICEV's remit was advisory, the government accepted its recommendation that the system should not be used until further testing had established the effectiveness of its security. -- ----------------- 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' --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com

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Searching for a true friend
by Jessie Garcia 07 Feb '05

07 Feb '05

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FBI Computers: You Don't Have Mail
by R.A. Hettinga 07 Feb '05

07 Feb '05

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6919621/site/newsweek/print/1/displaymode/1098/> MSNBC.com FBI Computers: You Don't Have Mail By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball Newsweek Feb. 14 issue - The FBI's computer woes got even worse last week when bureau officials were forced to shut down a commercial e-mail network used by supervisors, agents and others to communicate with the public. The reason, sources tell NEWSWEEK, was an apparent "cyberintrusion" by an outside hacker who officials fear had been tapping into supposedly secure e-mail messages since late last year. FBI spokesmen publicly sought to downplay the damage, saying the compromised commercial server-maintained by AT&T-was used exclusively for unclassified and "nonsensitive" communications that did not involve ongoing investigations. One example, they said, was notices from public-affairs offices' fbi.gov addresses to members of the press. But privately, officials were highly concerned-and recently notified the White House. One top FBI official says he regularly used his shut-down fbi.gov e-mail account to send messages to state and local police chiefs. Another source tells news-week that more than 3,000 old and current e-mail accounts were shut down. Others say the same apparently compromised server also provided accounts to other government agencies. Justice Department officials, who launched their own cybercrime investigation into the apparent intrusion, noted that there was no telling the potential damage at this point, given the common tendency for everybody to say too much-including making references to law-enforcement "sensitive" cases-even in theoretically routine e-mails. "This is an eye-opener for all of us," says one FBI official. The bigger question, sources say, was how the hackers penetrated the bureau's e-mails-and why it took the FBI so long to notify the rest of the government. The FBI e-mail system was erected with firewalls that were supposed to prevent even sophisticated hackers from penetrating. But while officials stressed there was no evidence that the apparent intruder or intruders were part of any terrorist or foreign intelligence organization, the authorities were still baffled as to how they got into the system. According to sources familiar with the investigation, one suspicion is that hackers either used sophisticated "password cracking" software that tries out millions of password combinations or somehow eavesdropped on Internet transmissions. Over the weekend, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Department of Homeland Security posted a computer-security alert to agencies throughout the federal government urging e-mail users to be more careful about choosing their passwords by avoiding obvious clues-like nicknames, initials, children's names, birth dates, pet names or brands of car. "Such information can be easily obtained and used to crack your password," the bulletin states. The e-mail compromise couldn't have come at a worse time for the bureau. Just last week, the Justice Department inspector-general released a report sharply criticizing the FBI's management of its new Virtual Case File computer system-a $170 million software upgrade that bureau officials now concede they may have to -scrap. The VCF system was supposed to make it much easier for agents to electronically access vital information relating to ongoing cases in different FBI offices. But the I.G. found that poor planning and ineffective management have resulted in a system that is nearly unworkable. FBI chief Robert Mueller, who sources say has personally briefed President George W. Bush on the matter, took responsibility "at least in part" for the fiasco before a Senate subcommittee. "No one is more frustrated and disappointed than I," 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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Interview with Ward Churchill
by R.A. Hettinga 07 Feb '05

07 Feb '05

>I want the state gone: transform the situation to U.S. out of North >America. U.S. off the planet. Out of existence altogether. Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.satyamag.com/apr04/churchill.html> Satya April 04 Dismantling the Politics of Comfort The Satya Interview with Ward Churchill Photo ) AK Press Ward Churchill is perhaps one of the most provocative thinkers around. A Creek and enrolled Keetoowah Band Cherokee, Churchill is a longtime Native rights activist. He has been heavily involved in the American Indian Movement and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. He is Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado and has served as a delegate to the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations. One of Churchill's areas of expertise is the history of the U.S. government's genocide of Native Americans-the chronic violation of treaties and systematic extermination of North American indigenous populations. His many books include A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas: 1492 to Present (1998) and The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the U.S. (2nd edition, 2002). His new book, On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality, was just published by AK Press (www.akpress.org) As a member of a people who have been on the receiving end of violence, Churchill has a rather distinct perspective of the U.S. and the effectiveness of political dissent and social change. Ward Churchill recently shared some of his views with Catherine Clyne. This issue of Satya is trying to push the debate about whether or not violence is an appropriate means for a desired end. With animal activists, there's a growing gap between people who feel it's not and others who feel that, for example, breaking into laboratories to liberate animals or burning down property is an effective way to stop abuse. Well, that's an absurd framing in my view. Defining violence in terms of property-that basically nullifies the whole notion that life is sacred. People who want to elevate property to the same level of importance as life are so absurd as to be self-nullifying. Some people feel that those who abuse animals or people negate their right to consideration and open themselves up to physical violence. What's your response to this? The individuals who are perpetrators in one way or another, the "little Eichmanns"* in the background-the technocrats, bureaucrats, technicians-who make the matrix of atrocity that we are opposing possible are used to operating with impunity. If you're designing thermonuclear weapons, you're subject to neutralization, in the same sense that somebody who is engaged in homicide would be, in terms of their capacity to perpetrate that offense. One or two steps removed should not have the effect of immunizing. Otherwise, only those who are in the frontline-usually the most expendable in the systemic sense-are subject to intervention. None of the decision-makers, the people who make it possible, would be subject to intervention that would prevent their action in any way at all. That brings me to one question, which is, in general, people like to think they're pretty decent. They don't like to think of themselves as violent or complying with a system that is oppressive... Heinrich Himmler viewed himself in exactly that way. He was a family man, he had high moral values, he'd met his responsibilities, blah, blah, blah-a good and decent man in his own mind. Do you think that applies to most American people? In the sense that it applied to most Germans [during the Third Reich]. Your recent works detail the documentable history of the consequences of U.S. imperialism. After reading On the Justice of Roosting Chickens and listening to your two CDs, what do you want your audience to walk away with? A fundamental understanding of the nature of their obligation to intervene to bring the kind of atrocities that I've described to a halt by whatever means are necessary. The predominating absurdity in American oppositional circles for the past 30 years is the notion that if one intervenes to halt a rape or a murder in progress, if you actually use physical force as necessary to prevent that act, somehow or other you've become morally the same as the perpetrator. What do you think those oppositional circles need to do to really effect change? Stop being preoccupied with the sanctity of their own personal security, on the one hand, and start figuring out what would be necessary. That might require experimentation with tactics and techniques. Not how, like an alchemist, you repeat the performance often enough to make yourself feel good in the face of an undisturbed continuation of the horror you're opposing. If your candlelit vigil doesn't bring the process you're opposing to a halt, what do you do next, presuming you actually desired to have an effect. Let's just presume that, in this case. That's not a safe presumption. There's a whole feel-good ethic out there. It's not [to] effect any substantive change. It's to bear moral witness to make the person feel good, to assuage their conscience in exactly the fashion you were talking about: they can then posture as good and decent people, while engaged in active complicity in the crimes they purportedly oppose. Complicity of acquiescence: that's the "Good German Syndrome." You move on. Rather than a vigil, you hold a rally. When that doesn't do it either, you march around, do petitions, letters, you hold alternative educational fora, you try to build bridges with people; you do whatever. None of that works. The obligation is not to be personally pure. The obligation is to effect a measurable change. Some argue that the ten million people who gathered last year on February 15th to stop a U.S. invasion of Iraq didn't really amount to much in terms of tangible results. Is there a precedent of experimentation you think people are not looking at? If you conduct your protest activities in a manner which is sanctioned by the state, the state understands that the protest will have no effect on anything. You can gauge the effectiveness-real or potential at least-of any line of activity by the degree of severity of repression visited upon it by the state. It responds harshly to those things it sees as, at least incipiently, destabilizing. So you look where they are visiting repression: that's exactly what you need to be doing. People engaged in the activity that is engendering the repression are the first people who need to be supported-not have discussion groups to endlessly consider the masturbatory implications of the efficacy of their actions or whether or not they are pure enough to be worthy of support. They are by definition worthy. Ultimately, the people debating continuously are unworthy. They are apologists for the state structure; [and] in [effect], try to convince people to be ineffectual. Nonviolent action can be effectual when harnessed in a way that is absolutely unacceptable to the state: if you actually clog the freeways or occupy sites or whatever to disrupt state functioning with the idea of ultimately making it impossible for the state to function at all, and are willing to incur the consequences of that. That's very different from people standing with little signs, making a statement. Statements don't do it. If [they] did, we would have transformed society in this country more than a century ago. What do you think holds people back? For all the rhetoric, there is no nonviolent context operating here-not at all. The more you become in any sense effectual, you're going to be confronted with the violence of the state to maintain order of a sort that perpetuates its functioning. So nonviolence renders one vulnerable to the lethal counter-force of the state. So there's tangible fear. It's basically, politically a consecration or concession of physical force to the state by those who purport to oppose the state. Even if there is a sort of inchoate understanding of a position of privilege in society, coming from an economically affluent background, if you're not going to face physical violence, ultimately, you are subject to consequences which are not physical: an erosion of your privilege, a making of your life more uncomfortable. Basically, nonviolence as it is practiced, espoused in the U.S., is not Gandhian. Gandhi never articulated anything that precluded personal sacrifice. This is a non-Gandhian appropriation of his principles for the purpose of confirming personal comfort. So it's a politics of the comfort zone. What are some of the solutions? Extreme events, like 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, have mobilized people out of such complacency, albeit temporarily. I don't have a ready answer for that. One of the things I've suggested is that it may be that more 9/11s are necessary. This seems like such a no-brainer that I hate to frame it in terms of actual transformation of consciousness. 'Hey those brown-skinned folks dying in the millions in order to maintain this way of life, they can wait forever for those who purport to be the opposition here to find some personally comfortable and pure manner of affecting the kind of transformation that brings not just lethal but genocidal processes to a halt.' They have no obligation-moral, ethical, legal or otherwise-to sit on their thumbs while the opposition here dithers about doing anything to change the system. So it's removing the sense of-and right to-impunity from the American opposition. In the case of the Germans during the Third Reich, outside influence could have altered their course. Do you think there's any place for that in terms of the U.S.? From Europe or Canada, to kind of kick things along? I'm thinking of systems that have power and leverage with the U.S. administration. That's looking for a painless fix again. Power and leverage in the traditional sense are not going to bring fundamental change into being. Each of those entities is a projector of the same kind of violence, but on a quantitatively lesser scale than the U.S. However, the nature of their intervention, based upon their perception of self-interest, is convincing the U.S. to [change] in a way that will not visit undue consequences upon them. You'd get cosmetic alterations-policy adjustments and so forth-a refinement of the system, thus the continuation of the status quo. It would ultimately create illusions of change and keep people confused. Third world opposition on the other hand understands this dynamic much more clearly. You have to have an eradication of the beast, not a retraining of the beast's performance. I can give a talk to a university in North America, to students and professors, and they are fundamentally confused about things that are automatically self-evident to people when you go to a village in Latin America, where the average educational attainment is third grade. Now why can these "peasants" automatically grasp concepts that are just beyond the reach altogether of your average university audience in North America? Why do you think? Partly because it's this fostering of illusion-and it's self-imposed-that repeating the same process yet again will somehow lead to a fundamentally different result. We can go through the charade of 'let's elect John Kerry instead of George Bush,' do things which are essentially painless to us, and the outcome is going to be different. You don't have politics, you have alchemy. That's delusional behavior. It's a state of denial in a social maybe even cultural sense. And that's what's masquerading as progressive politics. Is there a historical example of what could happen here? There is absolutely no historical precedent that I could name. We're [within] the belly of the beast. When you destabilize, when there is genuinely significant fracturing, the actual disintegration of the social and political order. Everybody goes on about the end of the 60s, but there nonetheless were conditions indicating substantial instability. The ability of the U.S. to project power didn't exactly evaporate but it was very sharply curtailed. But a complete curtailment of the U.S. ability to project power on a global basis has no historical precedent. So if it takes eradication of the beast from within, how would you see that happening? Well, first the withdrawal of consent, people imbued with consciousness to withdraw altogether from an embrace of the state. If I defined the state as being the problem, just what happens to the state? I've never fashioned myself to be a revolutionary, but it's part and parcel of what I'm talking about. You can create through consciousness a situation of flux, perhaps, in which something better can replace it. In instability there's potential. That's about as far as I go with revolutionary consciousness. I'm actually a de-evolutionary. I don't want other people in charge of the apparatus of the state as the outcome of a socially transformative process that replicates oppression. I want the state gone: transform the situation to U.S. out of North America. U.S. off the planet. Out of existence altogether. So what does that look like? There's no U.S. in America anymore. What's on the map instead? Well let's just start with territoralities often delineated in treaties of fact-territoralities of 500 indigenous nations imbued with an inalienable right to self-determination, definable territoralities which are jurisdictionally separate. Then you've got things like the internal diasporic population of African Americans in internal colonies that have been established by the imposition of labor patterns upon them. You've got Appalachian whites. Since the U.S. unilaterally violated its treaty obligations, it forfeits its rights-or presumption of rights-under international law. Basically, you've got a dismantlement and devolution of the U.S. territorial and jurisdictional corpus into something that would be more akin to diasporic self-governing entities and a multiplicity of geographical locations. A-ha, chew on that one for awhile. There's no overarching authority other than consensus or agreement between each of these. There has to be a collaborative and cooperative arrangement rather than something that's centrally organized and arbitrarily imposed. Is there any precedence for that in human history? Well, partial precedence at least. It's not worked out. My ancestors did, in fact, generate their agreements voluntarily, serving their own interests to do so; they did cede territory. Not the territory that's been taken, but the territory that's been ceded is legitimately in the ownership of someone else. So there is, in that sense, a place for different populations, and accommodation arrangement can be made for others. It's not a case of returning to things as they were in 1619 or 1606 or whatever you want to pick from history as being the "pre-here." It's a matter of reasserting or sustaining the values and understandings that came with the disposition of things that applied at that time, and reapplying it or continuing to apply it in a contemporary context. It's a reordering of relations both between people in the singular, and the rest of the natural order in a way that is coherent now. It's not everybody who's not in some sense discernibly native needs to leave in a physical sense. It's that everybody who is not in some sense native needs to figure out how to accommodate themselves to life in either a native jurisdiction (as natives have been accommodating themselves) and existing under somebody else's jurisdiction. Or, living in a jurisdiction of their own, but one that is constrained to that legitimate jurisdiction. In other words, not having arbitrary authority over anybody else's lives, land or resources. To exist on the basis of the resources available to them in this constricted land base. A whole reordering of consciousness goes into that. A self-defined spirit group in other words cannot assign itself a superior right to benefit from somebody else's property. That property, I'm using in the broadest sense, includes their very lives. What gives you hope? What gives me hope is that people are imbued innately with consciousness and you can potentially reorder that to arrive at an understanding of what needs to be done. Once the understanding is there, the capacity to do what necessary is obviously present. So despite the fact that my experience tells me that it is unlikely (because of the vast preference of the bulk of the people to indulge themselves personally, rather than engage in something that might be effective but personally uncomfortable), the possibility of an alteration in that consciousness, remains always present. There's where I find hope. That was a somewhat muddled response. What would I do in the alternative if I were completely divested of hope? Collect stamps. The reason to go on with the struggle is why it's work. It's not an event; it's a process. And if one understands one's place in the world properly one is obligated to struggle. Struggling, you've got to have hope that you can succeed. If not in the immediacy of my lifetime, then to plant the seeds that can reach maturation at some point. Now I have an obligation to my children and my children's children and generations out into the future, as do we all, whether we understand it or not. -- ----------------- 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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Jim Bell WMD Threat
by John Young 07 Feb '05

07 Feb '05

The FBI continues to claim Jim Bell is a WMD threat despite having no case against him except in the media, but that conforms to current FBI/DHS policy of fictionalizing homeland threats. http://www.edgewood.army.mil/downloads/bwirp/mdc_appendix_b02.pdf See page 16. This document was initially prepared in June 2002, updated in June 2003.

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Tory party set to withdraw ID scheme support
by R.A. Hettinga 06 Feb '05

06 Feb '05

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/06/tories_id_flip/print.html> The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register ; Internet and Law ; Digital Rights/Digital Wrongs ; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/06/tories_id_flip/ Tory party set to withdraw ID scheme support By John Lettice (john.lettice at theregister.co.uk) Published Sunday 6th February 2005 12:10 GMT The Tory Party is to withdraw support for the UK's identity card scheme, following the Government's failure to deal with the 'five tests' (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/14/tory_id_support/) the Tories put forward as a condition of their support. Tory leader Michael Howard personally favours ID cards, but substantial sections of his party are either sceptical or totally opposed to them. According to a report (http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/02/06/nid06.xml) in today's Sunday Telegraph, short of a face-about by the Government when the House of Commons votes on the bill on Thursday, the Tories will now abstain. This may induce more Tory refuseniks to vote against the scheme, but even if the party line was to oppose rather than abstain, it would still be approved because of Labour's large majority. The Liberal Democrats have opposed the scheme throughout the bill's passage, and Richard Allan MP, who has been arguing the party's case through the Bill's brief committee stage, has moved a number of amendments which he expects to be ignored. Allan predicts that the report stage of the Bill (where the Standing Committee's report back is considered) will take approximately three to four hours, leaving as little as 30 minutes for the Commons to consider the Bill prior to the curtain being brought down (Allan's comments and amendments here (http://www.richardallan.org.uk/index.php?p=311)) The Bill will however be likely to run into stiffer opposition in the House of Lords, where the LibDems have a number of highly competent opponents, and where Tory opponents may view their party's tiptoeing away from support as carte blanche to cause mayhem. . Related Stories: Tory group report attacks ID scheme as a con trick (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/03/peter_lilley_id_report/) Parliamentary report flags ID scheme human rights issues (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/03/id_scheme_echr_concern/) UK gov ready to u-turn on passport-ID card link? (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/19/browne_biometric_passports/) ) Copyright 2005 -- ----------------- 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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Polish spies list leaked
by R.A. Hettinga 06 Feb '05

06 Feb '05

<http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/print/0,1478,3179078a12,00.html> Fairfax New Zealand Limited Polish spies list leaked SUNDAY , 06 FEBRUARY 2005 WARSAW: Polish spies may be in danger after a list of names from communist-era files was leaked onto the internet earlier in the week, Prime Minister Marek Belka says. The directory of 240,000 names includes informers, spies and people questioned by the secret police under communist rule. The archives are held by the National Remembrance Institute (IPN) but the names were copied by a journalist and published. Speaking after meeting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Belka said yesterday it was possible that names of working agents were on the list. "I don't want to be alarmist. On the other hand, I would like to treat with the utmost gravity the possibility of a safety threat to a few or even just one active security agent, especially abroad," Belka told reporters. Poles have flooded the internet trying to find family members on the list. But daily paper Trybuna earlier yesterday scolded the journalist, former anti-communist activist Bronislaw Wildstein, pointing out the potential threat to spies. "The fun has ended. Polish intelligence officers are in danger... Operations have been suspended, people withdrawn," it wrote in a front page article headlined "Catastrophe". Belka said there would be a meeting between the secret services and the IPN to establish the precise threat posed. -- ----------------- 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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Poles clamor to see secret police file index
by R.A. Hettinga 06 Feb '05

06 Feb '05

<http://www.suntimes.com/cgi-bin/print.cgi> www.suntimes.com Poles clamor to see secret police file index February 6, 2005 BY ELA KASPRZYCKA WARSAW, Poland -- Prosecutors said Friday they are investigating the leak of a government index of communist-era secret police files that has landed on the Internet, creating a frenzy among Poles scrambling to find out if their names are on the list. The uproar over the list, leaked from the institute that makes the files available to victims, historians and journalists, is all the louder because names of informers are mingled with those of victims, causing fear it will stain the innocent. Journalist Bronislaw Wildstein hasn't said how he obtained a copy of the nonpublic list on computer disc from the archives of the state-run National Remembrance Institute, where he was authorized to conduct research. He denies being behind the appearance of the 240,000 names on the Internet and says he gave it to only a few trusted journalists. He has since been fired from the Rzeczpospolita newspaper, which said he was getting involved in politics. Several right-wing parties have called for publishing secret police files on the Internet. The issue of secret police files touches a nerve in Poland, where having collaborated with the communist-era authorities is viewed as disgraceful by many. Nonetheless, when a democratic government took over in 1989-90, Poland's leaders declined to make a thorough purge of informers from public life. Candidates for public office now must simply declare whether they collaborated. There's no penalty for such an admission, but those who falsely deny it and are caught face a 10-year ban from holding office. Some are calling for a wider-ranging effort to expose former collaborators. The institute says theft of the list is illegal, and prosecutors say they are investigating. -- ----------------- 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: Auto-HERF: Car Chase Tech That's Really Hot
by Major Variola (ret) 06 Feb '05

06 Feb '05

At 06:41 PM 2/4/05 -0800, Steve Schear wrote: >At 10:15 AM 2/4/2005, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > >> "The beautiful part of using the (microwave) energy is that it leaves the >>suspect in control of the car," he said. "He can steer, he can brake, he >>just can't accelerate." > >Sorry Charlie, but I think newer vehicles are moving to fly-by-wire >steering, especially hybrids that don't have an internal combustion engine >running all the time so they can't easily use traditional hydraulic servo >steering. Also amusing will be the congealed lenses of bystanders, dead pacemaker wearers, fried business computers, in addition to the accidents caused by other disabled cars. But the cops will get their man, and the rest is collateral damage, put it on the perp's ticket. Besides, the ECU is shielded pretty well by the car metal and the unit itself is shielded from the electrical ignition noise. But someone needs to explain that to this "executive" who fancies himself an inventor and can't wait to suckle Caesar's teat, selling "cyber terrorist" gizmos to the man. Personally I only use the magnetron & horn (concealed in my rooftop fiberglass luggage holder) on inconsiderate cell-phone-using drivers. Better than jamming, because they get to kiss their RF front end goodbye, permenantly. So it helps everyone for several days, *and* sells new handsets, helping the economy. Works on pig radios too. Also works on the thumpa-thumpa drivers, and when I turn the power up I find that Chihauha's skulls are not meant to take internal pressure; a steam explosion is pretty messy, and fuzzy dice don't really clean the insides of windshields terribly well.

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RE: Dell to Add Security Chip to PCs
by Trei, Peter 06 Feb '05

06 Feb '05

Erwann ABALEA > On Wed, 2 Feb 2005, Trei, Peter wrote: > > > Seeing as it comes out of the TCG, this is almost certainly > > the enabling hardware for Palladium/NGSCB. Its a part of > > your computer which you may not have full control over. > > Please stop relaying FUD. You have full control > over your PC, even if this one is equiped with > a TCPA chip. See the TCPA chip as a hardware > security module integrated into your PC. An API > exists to use it, and one if the functions of > this API is 'take ownership', which has the effect of > erasing it and regenerating new internal keys. Congratulations on your new baby. Working in the security business, paranoia is pretty much a job requirement. "What's the worst that could happen?" is taken seriously. The best that can happen with TCPA is pretty good - it could stop a lot of viruses and malware, for one thing. But the worst that can happen with TCPA is pretty awful. It could easily be leveraged to make motherboards which will only run 'authorized' OSs, and OSs which will run only 'authorized' software. And you, the owner of the computer, will NOT neccesarily be the authority which gets to decide what OS and software the machine can run. If you 'take ownership' as you put it, the internal keys and certs change, and all of a sudden you might not have a bootable computer anymore. Goodbye Linux. Goodbye Freeware. Goodbye independent software development. It would be a very sad world if this comes to pass. Peter Trei

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