January 2006 - cypherpunks-legacy

/. [China Declares War on Internet Pornography]
by Eugen Leitl 01 Jan '06

01 Jan '06

Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/01/0237245 Posted by: Zonk, on 2006-01-01 13:37:00 [1]segphault writes "The [2]Chinese government has shut down nearly 600 pornographic web sites, and arrested over 200 people for distributing "obscene" content. The Chinese government has also started performing covert surveillance of mobile phone text messages in order to crack down on banking fraud and prostitution organized and perpetrated with text messages. Ars Technica has the story: 'With more than 100 million Internet users, China has the second largest population of web content consumers after the United States. Although the Chinese government promotes web use for business, education, and government activity, the communist regime has committed its resources to crushing web sites that challenge government authority, or distribute content that the government considers to be detrimental to society'" References 1. mailto:segphault@sbcglobal.net 2. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051231-5873.html ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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by Gerald Carrier 01 Jan '06

01 Jan '06

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[Clips] NSA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From Surveillance
by R. A. Hettinga 01 Jan '06

01 Jan '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 14:07:04 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] NSA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From Surveillance Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/31/AR200512310…> The Washington Post NSA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From Surveillance Fruit of Eavesdropping Was Processed and Cross-Checked With Databases By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 1, 2006; A08 Information captured by the National Security Agency's secret eavesdropping on communications between the United States and overseas has been passed on to other government agencies, which cross-check the information with tips and information collected in other databases, current and former administration officials said. The NSA has turned such information over to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and to other government entities, said three current and former senior administration officials, although it could not be determined which agencies received what types of information. Information from intercepts -- which typically includes records of telephone or e-mail communications -- would be made available by request to agencies that are allowed to have it, including the FBI, DIA, CIA and Department of Homeland Security, one former official said. At least one of those organizations, the DIA, has used NSA information as the basis for carrying out surveillance of people in the country suspected of posing a threat, according to two sources. A DIA spokesman said the agency does not conduct such domestic surveillance but would not comment further. Spokesmen for the FBI, the CIA and the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, declined to comment on the use of NSA data. Since the revelation last month that President Bush had authorized the NSA to intercept communications inside the United States, public concern has focused primarily on the legality of the NSA eavesdropping. Less attention has been paid to, and little is known about, how the NSA's information may have been used by other government agencies to investigate American citizens or to cross-check with other databases. In the 1960s and 1970s, the military used NSA intercepts to maintain files on U.S. peace activists, revelations of which prompted Congress to restrict the NSA from intercepting communications of Americans. Today's NSA intercepts yield two broad categories of information, said a former administration official familiar with the program: "content," which would include transcripts of a phone call or e-mail, and "non-content," which would be records showing, for example, who in the United States was called by, or was calling, a number in another country thought to have a connection to a terrorist group. At the same time, NSA tries to limit identifying the names of Americans involved. "NSA can make either type of information available to other [intelligence] agencies where relevant, but with appropriate masking of its origin," meaning that the source of the information and method of getting it would be concealed, the former official said. Agencies that get the information can use it to conduct "data mining," or looking for patterns or matches with other databases that they maintain, which may or may not be specifically geared toward detecting terrorism threats, he said. "They are seeking to separate the known from the unknown, relationships or associations," he added. The NSA would sometimes monitor telephones, e-mails or fax communications in cases where individuals in the United States -- and sometimes people they contacted -- were linked to an alleged foreign terrorist group, officials have said. The NSA, officials said, limited its decisions to follow-up with more electronic surveillance on an individual to those cases where there was some apparent link to terrorist sources. But other agencies, one former official said, have used phone numbers or other records obtained from NSA in combination with wide-ranging databases to look for links and associations. "What data sets are included is a policy decision [made by individual agencies] when they involve other than terrorist links," he said. DIA personnel stationed inside the United States went further on occasion, conducting physical surveillance of people or vehicles identified as a result of NSA intercepts, said two sources familiar with the operations, although the DIA said it does not conduct such activities. The military personnel -- some of whose findings were reported to the Northern Command in Colorado -- were employed as part of the Pentagon's growing post-Sept. 11, 2001, domestic intelligence activity based on the need to protect Defense Department facilities and personnel from terrorist attacks, the sources said. Northcom was set up in October 2002 to conduct operations to deter, prevent and defeat terrorist threats in the United States and its territories. The command runs two fusion centers that receive and analyze intelligence gathered by other government agencies. Those Northcom centers conduct data mining, where information received from the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, state and local police, and the Pentagon's Talon system are cross-checked to see if patterns develop that could indicate terrorist activities. Talon is a system that civilian and military personnel use to report suspicious activities around military installations. Information from these reports is fed into a database known as the Joint Protection Enterprise Network, which is managed, as is the Talon system, by the Counterintelligence Field Activity, the newest Defense Department intelligence agency to focus primarily on counterterrorism. The database is shared with intelligence and law enforcement agencies and was found last month to have contained information about peace activists and others protesting the Iraq war that appeared to have no bearing on terrorism. Military officials acknowledged that such information should have been purged after 90 days and that the Talon system was being reviewed. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, deputy director for national intelligence and former head of NSA, told reporters last month that the interception of communications to the United States allegedly connected to terrorists was, in almost every case, of short duration. He also said that when the NSA creates intelligence reports based on information it collects, it minimizes the number of Americans whose identities are disclosed, doing so only when necessary. "The same minimalizationist standards apply across the board, including for this program," he said of the domestic eavesdropping effort. "To make this very clear -- U.S. identities are minimized in all of NSA's activities, unless, of course, the U.S. identity is essential to understand the inherent intelligence value of the intelligence report." Hayden did not address the question of how long government agencies would archive or handle information from the NSA. Today's controversy over the domestic NSA intercepts echoes events of more than three decades ago. Beginning in the late 1960s, the NSA was asked initially by the Johnson White House and later by the Army, the Secret Service, and the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs to intercept messages to or from the United States. Members of Congress were not informed of the program, code-named Minaret in one phase. The initial purpose was to "help determine the existence of foreign influence" on "civil disturbances occurring throughout the nation," threats to the president and other issues, Gen. Lew Allen Jr., then director of NSA, told a Select Senate Committee headed by then-Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) in 1975. Allen, in comments similar to recent Bush administration statements, said collecting communications involving American citizens was approved legally, by two attorneys general. He also said that the Minaret intercepts discovered "a major foreign terrorist act planned in a large city" and prevented "an assassination attempt on a prominent U.S. figure abroad." Overall, Allen said that 1,200 Americans citizens' calls were intercepted over six years, and that about 1,900 reports were issued in three areas of terrorism. As the Church hearings later showed, the Army expanded the NSA collection and had units around the country gather names and license plates of those attending antiwar rallies and demonstrations. That, in turn, led to creation of files on these individuals within Army intelligence units. At one point a Senate Judiciary subcommittee showed the Army had amassed about 18,000 names. In response, Congress in 1978 passed the Foreign Intelligence Security Act, which limited NSA interception of calls from overseas to U.S. citizens or those involving American citizens traveling abroad. -- ----------------- 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' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Detect Spying on YOU
by Tyler Durden 01 Jan '06

01 Jan '06

I read somewhere recently a nice little way to determine if someone is observing you. Haven't seen this mentioned here, but I might have missed it. Set up an overseas Email account. Send yourself Emails from hotmail/gmail, etc... In the email place, first of all, plenty of key words such as "Jihad", Bomb, meeting, Al Qaeda, etc... In the email have a link to a website you set up with a counter and that you have told no one about (I'll add that you should have a nice big GOATSE picture in there). Send yourself emails periodically and keep track of your counter. Any incremements not caused by you were caused by someone else. -TD

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[Clips] Broader Wiretap Rule Draws Resistance
by R. A. Hettinga 01 Jan '06

01 Jan '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 08:32:50 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Broader Wiretap Rule Draws Resistance Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB113581972188433505.html> The Wall Street Journal December 29, 2005 Broader Wiretap Rule Draws Resistance Companies and Universities Cite Costs if Surveillance Expands Beyond Phone, Cable to Web By YOCHI J. DREAZEN, AMY SCHATZ and ROBERT BLOCK Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL December 29, 2005; Page A4 WASHINGTON -- When the cable industry's research consortium's first attempt to make its systems more compatible with FBI eavesdropping failed to win government approval, it asked the FBI for suggestions. The industry not only got them but implemented them fully, winning unusual public thanks from the bureau along the way. Today, the industry faces the prospect of having to re-engineer itself again, due to a recent Federal Communications Commission decision extending the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or Calea, to Internet traffic as well as phone calls. The act, which became law in 1994, requires companies to make it easier for the government to listen to phone calls carried on their lines. The cable group's efforts to craft technical standards for the government show how U.S. corporations have helped with law enforcement. But companies are chafing both at the cost to comply with requests and increasing demands by government officials to have a seat at the table as engineers invent technologies. Susan Hackett of the Association of Corporate Counsel, which represents the legal departments of America's biggest corporations, says many rules and laws in place since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, such as the Patriot Act, have grown increasingly costly in terms of compliance. Earlier this month, 3Com Corp. told the FCC it should tightly define which Internet phone companies fall under the 1994 law in order to strike "an appropriate balance...between allowing innovation in the telecommunications industry and meeting the needs of law enforcement." Some of the loudest complaints about the expanded reach of the law have come from universities, who say that expanding the act to cover Internet traffic imposes a significant financial burden on them. In an FCC filing last year, a coalition of higher-education groups -- including the American Council on Education, a trade group for colleges and universities -- argued that such a decision would force them "substantially to replace existing network facilities well before their useful life has expired." The groups warned that replacing the equipment would cost billions of dollars, forcing an "increase in tuition (which may be as high as several hundred dollars per student), cancellation of some educational programs, and a delay in other network improvements necessary for educational and research objectives." One indication that business's patience is wearing thin is resistance to the Justice Department's push to expand the act to cover Internet phones and broadband services. Federal law-enforcement officials are concerned about terrorists switching to the new systems to bypass traditional phone networks that have wiretapping-friendly technology. In August the FCC agreed and said companies that provide Internet calling that looks and feels like traditional phone service must comply with the 1994 law in 18 months. Universities, libraries and municipalities that offer Internet service would also fall under the law, the FCC said. That decision prompted telecom companies and Internet-software companies to protest the rule and civil-liberties groups to file a challenge in federal court. Now, the political fight over the administration's secret program to eavesdrop on terrorism suspects is almost certain to heighten the dispute. "We already see the creep of Calea, and the Justice Department is making it crystal clear that they want to apply it to all Internet applications eventually," says John Morris, a staff attorney for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit civil-liberties group that is leading a challenge to the FCC's August ruling. Mr. Morris says his group accepts that Internet traffic can sometimes legally be tapped, but believes the act doesn't give the Federal Bureau of Investigation or Justice Department the authority to impose costly technical mandates on corporations and private organizations. Public opinion appears to be divided on what trade-offs are acceptable between national security and civil liberties. In a poll to be released today by Ponemon Institute, a privacy-focused research organization, 88% of respondents said they were concerned about domestic spying and 63% felt that obtaining court orders wouldn't hinder the government's pursuit of terrorists. At the same time, those polled were evenly divided about whether the Bush administration can be trusted to take reasonable steps to protect civil liberties. For the telecom industry, the choice has generally been clearer. The industry is heavily regulated, and its future can depend on FCC regulators and lawmakers. The 1994 law, for instance, was crafted to require companies to work with the government to design backdoors into their systems to help law-enforcement officials more easily set up surveillance systems. It was passed to address concerns that new technologies, like cellphones, made it more difficult to conduct surveillance, and companies weren't responding to those concerns. Phone calls carried on analog lines aren't difficult for the government to tap; the phrase "wiretapping" comes from the practice of placing metal clips on analog wires to listen in to conversations. But as analog lines began to be replaced with digital-switching systems, intercepting calls meant plucking packets of information out of a datastream and then reassembling them to learn who was making or receiving the call and what was being said. The legislation generally left the Internet alone and put the burden on industry to design systems that were wiretap-friendly. FBI officials objected to the first designs by CableLabs, a research-and-development consortium representing cable-TV operators, saying the proposed engineering guidelines didn't go far enough. CableLabs asked the FBI to detail its concerns and preferences, and then released new technical specifications throughout 2003 and 2004 that incorporated FBI suggestions on how to increase the bureau's ability to tap phone calls carried on cable lines. In January 2004 the most-recent version was released, and an FBI assistant director, Kerry Haynes, praised it at the time as "an extraordinary example of law enforcement and industry collaboration in the public interest," singling out large cable operators such as Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp. for "special recognition and appreciation." CableLabs officials say the government involvement forced them to balance consumer interests and law-enforcement demands. "You have to do both," says Richard Green, the president and chief executive of CableLabs. "Our obligation to our customers is very important, but the needs of law enforcement are very important to us, too. We tried to walk a line between the two." Mr. Green notes that the act left the industry little choice but to comply. "There is a law, and as service providers we have to abide by it," he says. The cable industry has been more willing than others to accept the government's attempt to expand the 1994 law into newer-generation technologies like Internet telephone and broadband services, mostly because cable operators had already adopted wiretap-friendly specifications under separate federal requirements. In August the FCC said most Internet phone and broadband Internet-service providers were covered under the act because they essentially replaced older services, like dial-up Internet, which were subject to the law. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said that while he believed "new technologies and services should operate free of economic regulation, I also believe that law-enforcement agencies must have the ability to conduct lawful electronic surveillance over these new technologies." The Justice Department wants the FCC to go further, saying the law should cover any Internet phone service, including companies such as Skype Technologies SA, which is being acquired by eBay Inc. and which offers computer-to-computer and computer-to-phone Internet calling. Internet companies, universities, libraries and other providers were given until spring of 2007 to reconfigure their networks to comply with the rule. But the FCC didn't give them any idea about what they would have to do to comply. Since then, dozens of universities, libraries and Internet companies have filed objections to the rules, asking for more time before the rules take effect, complaining about the potential cost and complexity of compliance and urging the FCC to adopt educational exemptions. Federal law-enforcement officials also want the FCC to give them expanded ability to monitor phone calls and data traffic when broadband Internet becomes available on U.S. commercial flights in the next few years. -- ----------------- 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' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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[Clips] White House Investigates Contractor's Web Tracking
by R. A. Hettinga 01 Jan '06

01 Jan '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 08:19:48 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] White House Investigates Contractor's Web Tracking Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB113591186547934467.html> The Wall Street Journal White House Investigates Contractor's Web Tracking Associated Press December 29, 2005 10:27 p.m. NEW YORK -- Unbeknown to the Bush administration, an outside contractor has been using Internet tracking technologies that may be prohibited to analyze usage and traffic patterns at the White House's Web site, an official said Thursday. David Almacy, the White House's Internet director, promised an investigation into whether the practice is consistent with a 2003 policy from the White House's Office of Management and Budget banning the use of most such technologies at government sites. "No one even knew it was happening," Mr. Almacy said. "We're going to work with the contractor to ensure that it's consistent with the OMB policy." An official with the contractor, WebTrends Inc., said later Thursday, however, that although a cookie may be used, no data from it is actually sent back to the company. The development came a day after the National Security Agency admitted it had erred in using banned "cookies" at its Web site. Cookies are small data files that can be used to track Internet users. The acknowledgments followed inquiries by The Associated Press. The White House's Web site uses what's known as a Web bug to anonymously keep track of who's visiting and when. A Web bug is essentially a tiny graphic image -- a dot, really -- that's virtually invisible. In this case, the bug is pulled from a server maintained by WebTrends and lets the traffic analytic company know that another person has visited a specific page on the site. Web bugs themselves are not prohibited. But when these bugs are linked to a cookie -- so that a site can tell if the same person has visited again -- a federal agency using them must demonstrate a "compelling need," get a senior official's signoff and disclose such usage, said Peter Swire, a Clinton administration official who helped draft the original rules. The White House's privacy policy does not specifically mention cookies or Web bugs, and Mr. Almacy said the signoff was never sought because one was not thought to be required. He said his team was first informed of the cookie use by the AP. But Jason Palmer, vice president of product management for Portland, Ore.-based WebTrends, insisted the cookies are not used in such manner. Cookies from the White House site are not generated simply by visiting it, according to analyses by the AP and by Richard M. Smith, a security consultant in Cambridge, Mass., who first noticed the Web bug this week. Rather, WebTrends cookies are sometimes created when visiting other WebTrends clients. Mr. Smith said his analysis of network traffic shows such preexisting cookies have then been used to recognize visitors to the White House site. But WebTrends officials say they do not aggregate information about visitors across multiple sites. Mr. Almacy said it's possible the cookie resulted from the White House visit, adding he was awaiting further details from WebTrends. Mr. Palmer said the browsers are designed to pull pre-existing cookies automatically, and that the company has no choice in the matter. But he insisted the company doesn't use the information. In any case, Mr. Almacy said, no personal data are collected. In a statement, WebTrends added that the analysis performed at the White House site is typical among organizations for improving user experience. The Clinton administration first issued the strict rules on cookies in 2000 after its Office of National Drug Control Policy, through a contractor, had used the technology to track computer users viewing its online antidrug advertising. The rules were updated in 2003 by the Bush administration. Although no personal information was collected at the time, Mr. Swire said, concerns were raised that one site's data could be linked later with those from the contractor's other clients. "It all could be linked up after the fact, and that was enough to lead to the federal policy," Mr. Swire said. Nonetheless, agencies occasionally violate the rules inadvertently. The CIA did in 2002, and the NSA more recently. The NSA disabled the cookies this week and blamed a recent upgrade to software that shipped with cookie settings already on. -- ----------------- 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' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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