March 2005 - cypherpunks-legacy

'Perfect storm' for new privacy laws?
by R.A. Hettinga 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

<http://news.com.com/2102-1029_3-5593225.html?tag=st.util.print> CNET News http://www.news.com/ 'Perfect storm' for new privacy laws? By Robert Lemos http://news.com.com/Perfect+storm+for+new+privacy+laws/2100-1029_3-5593225.… Story last modified Tue Mar 01 04:00:00 PST 2005 A series of security break-ins is kick-starting a political drive to reshape federal laws that dictate how companies protect personal information--and what they have to do if that data leaks out. What began with the leak of tens of thousands of records from data broker ChoicePoint earlier this month was quickly compounded by a series of rapid-fire incidents involving Bank of America, Science Applications International Corp., an online payroll services company and the T-Mobile Sidekick of hotel heiress Paris Hilton. That avalanche of high-profile breaches in the last month has captured the attention of a growing number of U.S. senators, mainly Democrats, who have called for new laws as a response. Sen. Arlen Specter has pledged to convene hearings in his Judiciary committee, often an initial step in the legislative process. An aide to the Pennsylvania Republican said Monday that a hearing is being scheduled and is expected to be held soon. News.context What's new: An avalanche of high-profile breaches in the last month has captured the attention of a growing number of U.S. lawmakers. Bottom line:Advocates hope it will spur greater regulation of the shadowy industry that creates digital dossiers on Americans. More stories on data theft "Ten days after the ChoicePoint breach of personal data involving between 145,000 and 500,000 people was revealed, today another breach of data was revealed, this time by loss," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said in response to Bank of America's admission that it had misplaced backup tapes containing 1.2 million customer records. "These two instances dramatize the need to take steps for the protection of an individual's personal data. The Congress needs to address it." At the federal level, privacy laws tend to be created erratically, spurred by one well-publicized emotional anecdote after another. Congress approved the Video Privacy Protection Act in 1988 after a newspaper published Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental records. The murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer, whose killer found her address through DMV records, led to the Drivers Privacy Protection Act. Advocates of greater regulation are hoping the latest security breaches will be just as politically potent. "I don't think Congress can ignore what's happened," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, D.C. "This may be the first mass disclosure of personal information that triggers congressional action." For ChoicePoint and similar data aggregators, including Acxiom and Westlaw (a research service operated by Thomson West), the recent breaches could hardly come at a worse time. The start of a new congressional session often leaves politicians casting about for new issues, and a pair of recent books has cast a critical light on the typically shadowy industry that creates digital dossiers on Americans. The price of ChoicePoint shares have plummeted about 15 percent, from a high of nearly $48 to around $40, since the scandal became public. Rival Acxiom's shares also have suffered, and a Westlaw "People-Find" service came under attack last week from Sen. Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York. An "Exxon Valdez of privacy"? "I don't think it's right to wait until there's an Exxon Valdez of privacy," Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, said nearly five years ago, back when Congress was more concerned with Web companies than data brokers. Now that kind of privacy disaster finally has arrived, at least according to congressional Democrats. One possible response from Congress would be an attempt to extend an existing federal law, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which deals with credit-reporting agencies such as Equifax, to cover data- aggregators like ChoicePoint and Acxiom. "Records that look a lot like credit reports--which is the basis of ChoicePoint and Acxiom's business model--have escaped regulation," EPIC's Rotenberg said. Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida is readying legislation to revise the FCRA, which Congress already altered last year. Earlier this month, Nelson wrote to the Federal Trade Commission to ask for its help in revising the FCRA "to reflect the modern information age, where consumer information can be transmitted and assembled electronically and cheaply" (PDF here). Data breaks High-profile breaches are finally waking lawmakers up to the need to make sure personal data is securely protected on computers. ChoicePoint Date: February 2005 Incident: Data collection company confirms that information from its consumer database has been stolen. At risk: Names, addresses and Social Security numbers of more than 150,000 Americans. Bank of America Date: February 2005 Incident: Bank loses backup tapes detailing the financial records of credit cards held by federal employees. At risk: More than 1.2 million records in SmartPay charge card program, which has annual transactions totaling more than $21 billion. PayMaxx Date: February 2005 Incident: Flaws in the online W-2 service of PayMaxx expose customers' payroll records. At risk: Discoverer of the flaws claims they affect more than 25,000 people. PayMaxx says only a small number of companies is involved. T-Mobile: Paris Hilton Date: February 2005 Incident: Information from heiress Paris Hilton's Sidekick is posted online. Breach comes amid reports that a flaw opens up T-Mobile voice mail. At risk: Phone numbers and e-mail addresses of celebrities such as Eminem and Lindsay Lohan. SAIC Date: February 2005 Incident: Desktop computers are stolen from the offices of Science Applications International Corp. At risk: Personal information of current and past stockholders in the government contractor. T-Mobile Date: January 2005 Incident: The carrier admitted that a hacker had gained access to customers' personal information. At risk: Names and Social Security numbers of 400 T-Mobile subscribers. George Mason University Date: January 2005 Incident: Attackers broke into a server that held details used on identity cards at the Virginia school. At risk: Names, photos and Social Security numbers of more than 30,000 students, faculty and staff. California Department of Social Services Date: October 2004 Incident: Breach of a researcher's computer at the University of California at Berkeley exposed personal data related to the state's In Home Support Services. At risk: Contact information and Social Security numbers of up to 1.4 million providers and clients. Another approach would be to borrow from the principles underlying a current California law. The Security Breach Information Act requires companies to disclose incidents in which a California resident's confidential information has been jeopardized. Feinstein introduced such a bill in Congress in June 2003, but without any luck so far. The bill's backers now hope that it will enjoy a wider appeal. Called the Notification of Risk to Personal Data Act, Feinstein's measure says that any corporation, government agency or person generally must provide a written or e-mailed notice if "unencrypted personal information was, or is reasonably believed to have been, acquired by an unauthorized person." State attorneys general would be authorized to file lawsuits against suspected violators. "The consumer data industry has been in the sights of proregulatory activists for some time now," said Jim Harper, director of information policy at the free-market Cato Institute. "And the ChoicePoint debacle could not have been a fatter, slower pitch across the plate." Harper is skeptical of federal proposals to create more regulations, saying that state laws tend to be more effective and have fewer loopholes. Instead, Harper advocates the use of tort law, under which private citizens can sue alleged wrongdoers for damages, to provide an incentive for data-marts to strengthen security. A California woman, Eileen Goldberg, did just that earlier this month in a suit she filed against ChoicePoint, with her claim that the company was negligent in protecting consumers from scam artists who purchased data from it. Not all privacy disasters result in federal legislation. In the case of Amy Boyer, a woman shot by a stalker who obtained her work address from an online investigation service, Sen. Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, responded by introducing a proposal called "Amy Boyer's Law." Gregg's legislation, which would have restricted the disclosure of Social Security numbers, eventually was attacked by both industry groups and by privacy advocates who said it didn't go far enough. It did not become law. Business lobbyists already are preparing for a defensive battle. "We're all concerned about data security, especially when you're talking about sensitive information getting out," said Michael Zaneis, director of congressional and public affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "We want to make sure that we don't have any knee-jerk reactions leading to the passage of quick legislation with unintended consequences." Another wrinkle in the political landscape is the growing reliance of federal watchdogs, such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, on identity-verification services purchased from companies like ChoicePoint and Acxiom. That reliance may make the Bush administration less willing to embrace aggressive regulation in the area. ChoicePoint declined to comment for this article, citing pending litigation. However, in a statement posted to its site, the database company stressed that it has entered discussions with other members of its industry on how to minimize fraud, and has started re-verifying its customers' credentials to weed out potentially fraudulent applicants. "We have already begun sharing our experiences, observations and ideas with several of the other major corporations in our industry, and we will seek to lead an industrywide initiative to develop, adopt and deploy new measures that will identify and halt identity theft and fraud," ChoicePoint said in the statement. In addition, ChoicePoint offered support for a broader national debate that could include legislation to allow independent oversight and increased accountability of entities that handle data, increased penalties for the intentional misuse of personal information, and mandatory notification by government and business of any unauthorized access to personal data. California as precedent? The current atmosphere at a national level is similar to the state of affairs in California that led to the passage of the Security Breach Information Act (S.B. 1386)--the law that recently forced ChoicePoint to disclose the October breach. The ChoicePoint debacle could not have been a fatter, slower pitch across the plate. --Jim Harper, director of information policy, the Cato Institute In April 2002, a hacker gained access to the state's Stephen P. Teale Data Center, stealing the payroll information of California's more than 225,000 state employees, including legislators and their staff. The State Controller's office discovered the breach in early May, but didn't notify workers until May 25, leaving their financial identities open to misuse. Within four months, a bill authored by former state Sen. Stephen Peace and then-Assemblyman Joseph Simitian had been signed by Gov. Gray Davis. The bill took effect on July 1, 2003. Bank of America's recent admission that the company lost backup tapes with as many as 1.2 million records could have similar scope as the Teale breach, even though there is no evidence so far that the financial data has been misused. The tapes contained information on the customers and accounts of the U.S. government's SmartPay credit card program, which has more than a 2.1 million cardholders and annual transactions totaling more than $21 billion, according to the General Services Administration. "There is a good chance we'll see some new regulations, especially because the Bank of America incident hits closer to home--their (lawmakers') information was included on the tapes that were lost," said Jordana Beebe, communications director for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit consumer group. If the industry does not lock down people's data, whether by legislative mandate or by responding to customer concerns, business could suffer, said Chris Voice, chief technology officer at security company Entrust. "It is becoming a matter of survival from a business perspective that if your customers lose trust, they will go to someone who will guard their information better," Voice 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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[FoRK] X.509 certificate collision via MD5 collisions (fwd from jeff@k2.com)
by Eugen Leitl 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

----- Forwarded message from Jeffrey Kay <jeff(a)k2.com> -----

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Electronic Anklets Track Asylum Seekers in U.S.
by R.A. Hettinga 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4519090> NPR : Legal Affairs Electronic Anklets Track Asylum Seekers in U.S. by Daniel Zwerdling Audio for this story will be available at approx. 10:00 a.m. ET Morning Edition, March 2, 2005 7 The Department of Homeland Security is experimenting with a controversial new method to keep better track of immigrants awaiting appeals on their applications to remain in the United States. It is requiring aliens in eight cities to wear electronic monitors 24 hours a day. The ankle bracelets are the same monitors that some rapists and other convicted criminals have to wear on parole. But the government's pilot project is putting monitors on aliens who have never been accused of a crime. So far, the Department of Homeland Security has put electronic monitors on more than 1,700 immigrants. Victor Cerda, director of Detention and Removal Operations at Homeland Security, says the anklets will help prevent tens of thousands of immigrants who are ordered to leave the country each year from "absconding" -- going into hiding to avoid deportation. But critics say Cerda and other Homeland Security officials have exaggerated the extent of the problem. They point to a Justice Department study that put much of the blame on immigration officials, saying they'd failed to keep adequate records to track illegal aliens. Another Take on Ankle Monitors Sarah Barry fled Liberia's civil war in the early 1990s. She's now awaiting a decision on her appeal of a government deportation order. Barry says she's glad to be able to wear an ankle monitor. Hear why: Hear Sarah Barry Alternatives to Anklets A three-year pilot program in New York City tested how supervision affected immigrants' rates of appearance in court and compliance with court rulings. The program found that supervision -- regular phone calls from program workers, reminders about court dates, referrals to legal representatives and other such measures -- is more cost effective than detention and almost doubles the rate of compliance. Read the Vera Institute of Justice Report on Community Supervision Related NPR Stories Feb. 9, 2005 Panel: U.S. Mistreats Asylum Seekers Nov. 23, 2004 Special Report: Jailed Immigrants Allege Abuse E-mail this Page archives transcripts stations shop about help Copyright 2005 NPR Terms of Use Permissions Privacy Policy More Legal Affairs Supreme Court Ends Death Penalty for Juveniles Federal Judge's Husband, Mother Murdered More ; More Politics & Society Supreme Court Ends Death Penalty for Juveniles Vermont State Official Asks Tough Questions on Iraq More ; More By Daniel Zwerdling Hudson Jail Disciplines Guards in Detainee Abuse Case Letters: Detainee Abuses, Cronkite on the Mike Todd Party More ; find your local member station: (or enter zip code) News Politics & Society Business People & Places Health & Science Books Music Arts & Culture Diversions Opinion Morning Edition All Things Considered Day to Day Talk of the Nation Fresh Air News & Notes with Ed Gordon Weekend Edition Saturday Weekend Edition Sunday Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Performance Today Motley Fool Radio More Programs Hourly Newscast Program Stream24-Hour schedule Audio Help Contact NPR Sponsor NPR Press Room Submit Ideas Corrections Ombudsman Get NPR Headlines via RSS Text-only -- ----------------- 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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William F. Buckley: Death of a comic
by R.A. Hettinga 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

<http://www.townhall.com/columnists/wfbuckley/printwfb20050301.shtml> Townhall.com Death of a comic William F. Buckley (back to web version) | Send March 1, 2005 If what was before the house was just the formal news bulletin, a famous person who had left Earth for other bournes, then OK, let him go with conventional solemnities. I once attended funeral services at which the rabbi didn't remember the name of the deceased, so that he mourned the passage of Priscilla, remarking the good she had left behind in her lifetime -- never mind that the lady who lay in the coffin was called Jane; never mind, the incantations were generic. But Hunter Thompson would never be confused with anyone else, and when his wife was led through the police cordon to his room, she reported to the press that "he did it (fired the .45-caliber pistol) in his mouth," leaving "his face beautiful. It was not grisly or gruesome by any means. He lived a beautiful life." He didn't. What he did do was inspire devotional encomiums from people who included blood relatives (my son), and superstar mentors (Tom Wolfe). Wolfe spoke first of his stylistic achievements. He wrote "in a style and a voice no one had ever heard before." And Wolfe found in Hunter's life an originality perversely appealing. It was "one long barbaric yawp, to use Whitman's term, of the drug-fueled freedom from and mockery of all conventional proprieties." What he wrote was "'gonzo.' He was sui generis." "In the l9th century Mark Twain was king of all the gonzo-writers. In the 20th century it was Hunter Thompson, whom I would nominate as the century's greatest comic writer in the English language." Writing in The New York Sun, John Avlon spoke of Thompson's determination "to puncture the pretenses of the powerful with ruthless humor, a loyalty to deeper truth, and a hatred of hypocrisy. Beneath what could be called amoral behavior there was in fact an inflexible moral code. The intensity of his writing unsentimentally highlighted the real stakes of this life." What deeper truths? Henry Allen of the Washington Post wrote that "People will forgive almost anything of writers who can astonish them and make them laugh." What was it, in Thompson, that we were forgiving? Is that question answered in Allen's sentence that "despite his rants about the onanistic squalor of journalism, (Thompson) had the bearing of an adventurer striding out to the very edges of madness and menace"? Laughable stuff? Thompson had a gift for vitriol. All -- everything -- was subsumed in his exercise of that art. Consider one entire paragraph on Richard Nixon. "For years I've regarded (Nixon's) very existence as a monument to all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that corrupt the possibilities of the American Dream; he was a foul caricature of himself, a man with no soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a hyena and the style of a poison toad. I couldn't imagine him laughing at anything except maybe a paraplegic who wanted to vote Democratic but couldn't quite reach the lever on the voting machine." We were asked to believe (by the San Francisco Chronicle) that in reading Thompson we are reading the work of a hero of an entire generation of American students. Concerning that claim a little skepticism is surely in order. After all, an exhibitionist can be spectacular, and even lionized, in the Animal Houses. Hunter Thompson elicited the same kind of admiration one would feel for a streaker at Queen Victoria's funeral. Here is a passage from Thompson, in which he seeks amusement by recounting the end of a long day with a visiting British friend, identifying himself as "the journalist": The journalist is driving, ignoring his passenger (the visiting Brit), who is now nearly naked after taking off most of his clothing, which he holds out the window, trying to wind-wash the Mace out of it. His eyes are bright red and his face and chest are soaked with the beer he's been using to rinse the awful chemical off his flesh. The front of his woolen trousers is soaked with vomit; his body is racked with fits of coughing and wild choking sobs. The journalist rams the big car through traffic and into a spot in front of the terminal, then he reaches over to open the door on the passenger's side and shoves the Englishman out, snarling: 'Bug off, you worthless faggot! You twisted pig-(expletive deleted), all the way to Bowling Green, you scum-sucking foreign geek.' One can be sorry that Hunter Thompson died as he did, but not sorry, surely, that he stopped writing. William F. Buckley, Jr. is editor-at-large of National Review. -- ----------------- 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: OS X in a Classified Environment... (fwd from bryan.jones@m.cc.utah.edu)
by Eugen Leitl 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

----- Forwarded message from Bryan Jones <bryan.jones(a)m.cc.utah.edu> -----

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Revenge of the Son of HERF: Microwave 'Gun' Could End High-Speed Police Chases
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

<http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/print?id=538452> ABC News: Microwave 'Gun' Could End High-Speed Police Chases Company Develops Technology to Zap Fleeing Cars With Invisible Energy Beams By PAUL ENG Mar. 1, 2005 - The idea of a powerful ray gun has been a staple of science-fiction writing for decades. But a "weapon" that shoots invisible beams of energy could be making its way into law-enforcement hands soon. The technology isn't exactly something that would replace a police officer's handgun. In fact, the system being developed by Eureka Aerospace in Pasadena, Calif., couldn't even be crammed into a standard pistol holster. But the developers say their device, which uses technology more closely related to flash cooking than Flash Gordon, may help stop criminals and terrorists in their tracks. James Tatoian, chief executive of Eureka, says the High Power Electromagnetic System is designed to disable cars -- say, those fleeing from police officers -- using bursts of microwave energy. "Basically, since the 1970s, every car is built with some sort of microprocessor-controlled system -- like the ignition control and fuel pump control a lot of vital car systems," says Tatoian. "If you introduce a parasitic current into their wires, it leads to a power surge which in turn burns out those microprocessors." Once the car's chips are disabled, the vehicle will gradually slow to a halt, allowing police or other security forces to safely approach and apprehend the driver. A New Type of Nuker Tatoian is quick to admit that the company's experimental device isn't the first or only directed energy system designed to attack cars. Others have developed similar concepts and prototypes before. And some, like Eureka, are continuing their work using partial funding from a U.S. military research project that seeks to study the feasibility of "less than lethal" weapons. But Tatoian believes his designers and researchers have come a lot further in terms of power, portability and usability than other alternative solutions. "It's still in development stages, but the system is about 200 pounds in total weight. It will fit in a car with the [microwave] antenna mounted on the roof," says Tatoian. "It's also worthwhile to say that produces about 10 to 15 kilovolts per meter." During tests of the early unit, that was enough power to burn out chips in cars up to 100 meters distant. More importantly, the Eureka system is "tunable" "What's interesting is that every car has its own set of vulnerable frequencies -- in the range of 350 megahertz to 1,300 megahertz," says Tatoian. "The most ideal case [for our system] is where police officers pursuing a vehicle know the make and model of the car, they then can dial in the right frequencies that that car is vulnerable to in order to stop it." Better Than Busted Tires? Such capabilities have caught the interest of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, which has helped Eureka study the High Power Electromagnetic System. "Everything works on paper and in the lab," says Cmdr. Charles "Sid" Heal, who is in charge of studying new technology for the sheriff's department. "If this thing works [in the field] as well as described, it would tremendously help reduce risky high-speed pursuits." As seen in recent news video coverage, police typically try to end high-speed chases with a so-called "spike strip" designed to puncture and deflate the tires of a fleeing vehicle. While spike stripes can be effective in stopping suspects' cars, Heal points out they can be difficult to deploy properly and safely. "With spike strips, you have to lay them down before the suspect gets there," says Heal. "And that raises the basic question, if you know where they're going, then why chase [the suspects] at all?" But if police cruisers and helicopters were equipped with a working version of Eureka's system, the nature of "hot pursuits" could change dramatically. "It changes the strategy of how to safely end car chases," says Heal. "We can pick and choose where and when to disable the car where it would put the least amount of risk to the safety of our officers, the suspects and the public." The Bumps in the Road Still, Tatoian and Heal admit that there are quite a few questions and concerns that will need to be addressed before police can stop fleeing suspects with a push of a power button. For one, Tatoian still needs to figure out whether the system will work in "real world" conditions. And there are plenty of factors that Eureka engineers will have to consider in further research and design. For example, while Tatoian is confident that every car has particular "vulnerable frequencies," so far they've only been able to test the theory on about 13 cars. And with thousands of different makes and models of vehicles on the road today, it may be impossible to identify and isolate the right combination for each car. And for the energy beam to be effective, researchers will have to deal with factors that are beyond their control. "The difficult part of the technology is in 'coupling' -- getting the microwave energy into the chips so they overload," says Heal. "A vast majority of cars today are coated with rust coatings, thick paint or have bodies made of plastic -- all not good conductors of energy." Tatoian believes that these concerns can be answered -- especially with the help of Heal and the officers in the L.A. sheriff's department. One possible theory that Eureka and Heal's department would like to test is whether there are specific spots on cars that are particularly vulnerable to microwave energy. Smokey and the Zapper? Both Tatoian and Heal expect that by the end of this year, Eureka Aerospace will be able to field a prototype that will test these theories and other concerns. "When Dr. Tatoian is ready, we'll take this out to our chase test facility," says Heal. "Our officers are all jazzed on it." But even if all the technical bugs get worked out, Heal says it still might take quite a while before the system becomes another high-tech, non-lethal tool for police officers on highway patrol. Heal pointed to a recent university study which documents that police departments used less-than-lethal weapons -- Tasers, bean bags, batons, pepper spray -- more than 60,000 times in the last 10 years. "One of the things we found out -- which we're often accused of by detractors of less-than-lethal weapons -- is that when we get a new device, we tend to overuse it," says Heal. "We'll have to go through fairly rigorous steps before we implement new technology -- including involving our legal department." In other words, lawyers ultimately will have the final say if highway police really do live up to their "smokey" nickname. -- ----------------- 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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I.R.S. Accuses Man of Hiding $450 Million
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/business/01tax.html?th=&pagewanted=print&…> The New York Times March 1, 2005 I.R.S. Accuses Man of Hiding $450 Million By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON ASHINGTON, Feb. 28 - A prominent telecommunications entrepreneur who once tried to mount a rescue of a Russian space station has been arrested and charged with evading taxes by hiding at least $450 million of income through offshore corporations. According to a 12-count indictment released on Monday that federal prosecutors called the largest criminal case of individual tax evasion, the entrepreneur, Walter Anderson, 51, did not pay over $210 million in federal and local income taxes he owed for the years 1995 through 1999 alone. "Mr. Anderson ran the table when it came to violating the tax laws," Mark W. Everson, the Internal Revenue Service commissioner, told a news conference Monday. "Because of his dishonest dealings, Mr. Anderson's lavish lifestyle was subsidized by honest, hard-working Americans." In 1998 Mr. Anderson, who lives in Washington, reported a total income of $67,939 and paid a tax of just $494. Mr. Everson said Mr. Anderson actually made at least $126 million that year that he never reported. From 1987 through 1993, officials said, Mr. Anderson failed to file a tax return. Mr. Anderson is the chief executive of Orbital Recovery, a company trying to extend the life of telecommunications satellites. He was arrested Saturday at Dulles Airport outside Washington as he stepped off a plane from London, according to Kenneth L. Wainstein, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia. In court on Monday, Mr. Anderson pleaded not guilty to the charges. His lawyer, John Moustakas, told Magistrate Judge Alan Kay that the government's case was based on "innuendo and rumor." If convicted, Mr. Anderson faces as much as 24 years in prison. Judge Kay ordered Mr. Anderson held without bail until a bond hearing on Thursday. Susan Menzer, a prosecutor in the case, called Mr. Anderson "a flight risk" who "can't be trusted." "He hasn't been listening to judges for years," she added. Since a search warrant was executed in 2002, Mr. Anderson has moved artwork and cash to Switzerland to defeat both tax collectors and creditors who have civil court orders, the Justice Department said in court papers. Mr. Moustakas did not return a phone call seeking comment. Mr. Anderson has long attracted a certain level of public attention, especially when he tried to arrange a rescue of the Mir space station five years ago. He frequently flew in a private jet and made deals involving millions of dollars. At conferences on space travel he often spoke of his hatred of government. But he came under scrutiny, law enforcement officials suggested, only because of a tip from a disgruntled business associate. Mr. Anderson, according to the indictment, formed an offshore corporation, Gold and Appeal Transfer, in the British Virgin Islands in 1992 to hide his profits from deals involving a telecommunications company he started in the 1980's. Over the next three years, the indictment charged, Mr. Anderson set up a network of offshore corporations, including one in Panama under the alias Mark Roth, that were used to hide his ownership of three telecommunications companies and allow him to earn hundreds of millions of dollars without paying taxes. While Mr. Anderson at times insisted publicly that he was worth no more than $4 million, he serves as a senior business adviser to Constellation Services International, a fledgling satellite rescue company that disclosed his ownership of several companies, including Gold and Appeal. Its Web site said Gold and Appeal was worth at least $100 million and described Mr. Anderson as selling the Esprit Telecom Group in 1998 for $900 million. In extensive filings with the I.R.S. and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the indictment charged, Mr. Anderson claimed that he was merely an employee of Gold and Appeal, the offshore bank that the indictment says was central to his tax-evasion effort. "The I.R.S. holds all Americans, even the very wealthy, to the same standard," Mr. Everson said. "This indictment sends a strong signal that we will not tolerate abuse of the tax laws." But later, questioned by reporters, Mr. Everson noted that the I.R.S. law enforcement staff has been cut by at least a quarter in recent years. Mr. Wainstein, the United States attorney, said one of his prosecutors had spent a year developing the case. Prosecutors noted that it was difficult to catch determined tax cheats but said that some countries known as tax havens had been cooperating with American investigators more often since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The government has stepped up investigations but managed to recommend only 1,400 tax prosecutions out of the 130 million tax returns filed annually. For budgetary reasons, the I.R.S. relies almost entirely on data reported to it on computer files, not on traditional detective work, to help identify tax evaders. Gary Hudson of Redwood City, Calif., said that Mr. Anderson invested $30 million in his Rotary Rocket, the primary backing for a private rocket launching and recovery firm that ultimately failed. "One condition of his investment was that we could not take any government money," Mr. Hudson said in a telephone interview on Monday. Besides avoiding federal taxes, the indictment charges, Mr. Anderson also evaded at least $40 million in income taxes owed the District of Columbia and $254,000 in local sales taxes he should have paid on jewelry, wine and art, including a painting by Salvador Dalm and several by Reni Magritte. Copyright 2 -- ----------------- 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' -- ----------------- 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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[i2p] weekly status notes [mar 1] (fwd from jrandom@i2p.net)
by Eugen Leitl 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

----- Forwarded message from jrandom <jrandom(a)i2p.net> -----

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Invisibility Shields Planned by Engineers
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/02/0228_050228_invisibility.ht…> Invisibility Shields Planned by Engineers James Owen in London for National Geographic News February 28, 2005 In popular science fiction, the power of invisibility is readily apparent. Star Trek fans, for example, know that the devious Romulans could make their spaceships suddenly disappear. But is the idea really so implausible? Not according to new findings by scientists who say they have come up with a way to create cloaking device. Electronic engineers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia are researching a device they say could make objects "nearly invisible to an observer." The contrivance works by preventing light from bouncing off the surface of an object, causing the object to appear so small it all but disappears. The concept was reported today by the science news Web site news(a)nature.com. It says the proposed cloaking device would not require any peripheral attachments (such as antennas or computer networks) and would reduce visibility no matter what angle an object is viewed at. Sir John Pendry, a physicist at Imperial College, London, said the concept potentially holds several important applications "in stealth technology and camouflage." While types of invisibility shielding have been developed before, the phenomenon described by Andrea Alz and Nader Engheta sounds like something that might have been witnessed from the bridge of science fiction's starship Enterprise. The concept is based on a "plasmonic cover," which is a means to prevent light from scattering. (It is light bouncing off an object that makes it visible to an observer). The cover would stop light from scattering by resonating at the same frequency as the light striking it. If such a device could cope with different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (including visible light), in theory, the object would vanish into thin air. Plasmonic Covers Alz and Engheta investigated experimental plasmonic covers that incorporated metals, such as gold and silver, to hide visible light. When light strikes a metallic material, waves of electrons, called plasmons, are generated. The engineers found that when the frequency of the light striking the material matched the frequency of the plasmons, the two frequencies act to cancel each other out. Under such conditions, the metallic object scattered only negligible amounts of light. The researchers' studies show that spherical and cylindrical objects coated with plasmonic shielding material produce very little light scattering. These objects, when hit by the right wavelength of light, were seen to become so small that they were almost invisible. The study is supported by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which researches and develops cutting edge military technology. Some experts note, however, that cloaking devices that could enable military vehicles and aircraft, let alone spaceships, to become completely invisible to the enemy are likely to remain elusive for the foreseeable future. John Pendry, the Imperial College physicist, said that light-shielding covers would have to be customized to match the properties of each and every object they hide. It would be still more difficult to devise shields that could cope with all wavelengths of the visible spectrum-from red to violet light-and not just a single color. Types of invisibility shielding previously proposed by scientists depend on advanced camouflage systems, rather than objects being made to look undetectably tiny. Such systems involve light sensors that create a mirror image of the background scene on the concealed object. -- ----------------- 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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Federal Judge Orders 'Enemy Combatant' Jose Padilla Charged Or Released
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

<http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=401&u=/wews/20050228/lo_wyff/2605…> Yahoo! Federal Judge Orders 'Enemy Combatant' Jose Padilla Charged Or Released Mon Feb 28, 6:08 PM ET A federal judge in Spartanburg has ordered that an American citizen held as an enemy combatant in a Navy brig in Charleston should be released. U.S. District Judge Henry F. Floyd ruled Monday that the president of the United States does not have the authority to order Jose Padilla to be held. "If the law in its current state is found by the president to be insufficient to protect this country from terrorist plots, such as the one alleged here, then the president should prevail upon Congress to remedy the problem," he wrote. In the ruling, Floyd said that three court cases that the government used to make its claim did not sufficiently apply to Padilla's case. Floyd wrote that, in essence, "the detention of a United States citizen by the military is disallowed without explicit Congressional authorization." Floyd wrote that because the government had not provided any proof that the president has the power to hold Padilla, he must reject the government's claim of authority. "To do otherwise would not only offend the rule of law and violate this countrys constitutional tradition, but it would also be a betrayal of this nations commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic values and individual liberties," he wrote. "For the court to find for [the U.S. government] would also be to engage in judicial activism. This court sits to interpret the law as it is and not as the court might wish it to be. Pursuant to its interpretation, the court finds that the President has no power, neither express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to hold [Padilla] as an enemy combatant," Floyd wrote. As a result, Floyd ordered that Padilla be charged with a crime or released within 45 days. The government is expected to appeal the decision. -- ----------------- 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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