January 2006 - cypherpunks-legacy

[dave@farber.net: [IP] more on Search queries *can* contain personal information]
by Eugen Leitl 21 Jan '06

21 Jan '06

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

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Medical Journal: Fountain of Youth
by bo williamson 21 Jan '06

21 Jan '06

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Fwd: [Clips] Re: The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat?
by coderman 20 Jan '06

20 Jan '06

there are other easy ways to obtain outage information, especially when the fiber affected handles significant amounts of traffic. they have stemmed the tide of outage information but more than enough gets by to be useful for this type of analysis. (although it was much easier to just hit up the FCC for history when they kept track of it. the telcos are just as glad to keep this data secret - they pushed as hard as uncle sam to hide this data) and as mentioned below, it doesn't take a backhoe either. highly capable portable power tools, post hole diggers, a myriad of other construction equipment, could wreak havoc just as easily. (Milwaukee V28 portable saws are a good example - some disgruntled telco employee(s?) in canada used a portable saw to cut two long distance cables into the US causing over 280,000 circuits to go dead) the tricky part is identifying redundant paths/rings as both must usually be interrupted to create significant outage. (graph theory applied to directed high degree node/link attacks) there is a reason they are pursuing security through obscurity so heavily. sometimes it's all you've got... :) --- begin forwarded text ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: R. A. Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Date: Jan 19, 2006 10:06 AM Subject: [Clips] Re: The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat? To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> --- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: nanog-outgoing(a)trapdoor.merit.edu Delivered-To: nanog(a)trapdoor.merit.edu Delivered-To: nanog(a)segue.merit.edu Delivered-To: nanog(a)nanog.org Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 13:00:43 -0500 From: sgorman1(a)gmu.edu Subject: Re: The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat? Cc: nanog(a)nanog.org Sender: owner-nanog(a)merit.edu While it is always fun to call the government stupid, or anyone else for that matter, there is a little more to the story. - For one you do not need a backhoe to cut fiber - Two, fiber carries a lot more than Internet traffic - cell phone, 911, financial tranactions, etc. etc. - Three, while it is very unlikely terrorists would only attack telecom infrastructure, a case can be made for a telecom attack that amplifies a primary conventional attack. The loss of communications would complicate things quite a bit. I'll agree it is very far fethced you could hatch an attack plan from FCC outage reports, but I would not call worrying about attacks on telecommunications infrastructure stupid. Enough sobriety though, please return to the flaming. ----- Original Message ----- From: Joe Maimon <jmaimon(a)ttec.com> Date: Thursday, January 19, 2006 12:01 pm Subject: Re: The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat? > > > > Dennis Dayman wrote: > > > "In 2004, Department of Homeland Security officials became > fearful that > > terrorists might start using accidental dig-ups as a road map > for deliberate > > attacks, and convinced the FCC to begin locking up previously > public data on > > outages. In a commission filing, DHS argued successfully that > revealing the > > details..." > > > > --MORE-- > > > > http://wired.com/news/technology/0,70040-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_1 > > > > -Dennis > > > > > > > > This is really stupid. Assuming the terrorist actually have the > dozens > of backhoes needed to completely erase meaningfull internet > connectivity > in north america, they would probably prefer to use them to smash > cars > and kill people on the interstate highways or something. > > Terrorist inflict terror by killing people, not by forcing > internet > explorer to display "page cannot be displayed". > > Let us not assume that murderous terrorist are as dumb as people > in DHS. > --- 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' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips

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[Clips] NSA Data Mining Is Legal, Necessary, Sec. Chertoff Says
by R. A. Hettinga 20 Jan '06

20 Jan '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 19:34:41 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] NSA Data Mining Is Legal, Necessary, Sec. Chertoff Says Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-1_20_06_MK_pf.html> January 20, 2006 NSA Data Mining Is Legal, Necessary, Sec. Chertoff Says By Mort Kondracke "I think it's important to point out," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told me in an interview, "that there's no evidence that this is a program designed to achieve political ends or do something nefarious." He was talking about the National Security Agency's warrantless "domestic spying" program, and I couldn't agree with him more. Despite the alarms sounded by the American Civil Liberties Union, former Vice President Al Gore and various Members of Congress, "there hasn't even been a hint" that the program is targeted at domestic dissidents or innocent bystanders, Chertoff said. It's designed to find and stop terrorists. "If you go back to the post-Sept. 11 analyses and the 9/11 commission, the whole message was that we were inadequately sensitive to the need to identify the dots and connect them," he said. "Now, what we're trying to do is gather as many dots as we can, figure out which are the ones that have to be connected and we're getting them connected," he said. While refusing to discuss how the highly classified program works, Chertoff made it pretty clear that it involves "data mining" -collecting vast amounts of international communications data, running it through computers to spot key words and honing in on potential terrorists. A former prosecutor, federal judge and head of the Justice Department's criminal division, he convincingly defended the program's legal basis and intelligence value. I asked him why the Bush administration can't comply with the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the government to conduct "emergency" wiretaps for 72 hours. "It's hard to talk about classified stuff," he said, "but suffice it to say that if you have a large volume of data, a large number of [phone] numbers you're intercepting, the typical model for any kind of warrant requires you to establish probable cause [that one party is a foreign agent] on an individual number." FISA warrant applications are inches thick, he said, and "if you're trying to sift through an enormous amount of data very quickly, I think it would be impractical." He said that getting an ordinary FISA warrant is "a voluminous, time-consuming process" and "if you're culling through literally thousands of phone numbers ... you could wind up with a huge problem managing the amount of paper you'd have to generate." What I understood Chertoff to be saying is that when data mining produces evidence of a terrorist contact, the government will then seek a FISA warrant to actually tap the person's phones or "undertake other kinds of activity in order to disrupt something." As legal authority for the program, Chertoff cited a 2002 decision of the FISA Court of Review, which is one level down from the U.S. Supreme Court, holding that a president has "inherent [constitutional] authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." "We take it for granted that the president does have that authority," the court said, "and, assuming it is so, FISA could not encroach on the president's constitutional powers." Chertoff also said that the courts have given wide latitude to the government in controlling and monitoring activity across international borders. All reports on the NSA activity assert that it's limited to international communications. What about the assertion in The New York Times on Tuesday that virtually all of the thousands of NSA leads sent to the FBI in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks led to dead ends or innocent persons? Chertoff said, "You're going to bat well below .100 any time you do intelligence gathering. That's true even in conventional law enforcement. If you get even a small percentage of things to pan out, you've succeeded to a significant degree. "What I can tell you is this," Chertoff said. "The technique of electronic surveillance, which is gathering information about who calls whom or intercepting actual conversation, is the most significant tool in the war against terrorism. "If we didn't have it, I'm quite sure we'd have disrupted fewer attacks and identified fewer [terrorists]." Buried at the bottom of the Times story were a number of cases where actual terrorist operations had been disrupted, apparently as a result of NSA eavesdropping, including efforts to smuggle a missile launcher into the United States, to cut Brooklyn Bridge cables with a blowtorch and an attempt to blow up a fertilizer bomb in London. "I would rather move quickly and remove somebody when we've got a legal basis to do so, charge them with a lesser offense [than terrorism] or deport them, than wait till I have a big case with a big press conference. If we wait until people get operational, it's a failure. Somebody could get killed." The idea that someone could bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch has been ridiculed, but Chertoff said, "People kid about the shoe bomber, but had the bomb gone off and 150 people were killed, I don't think a lot of families would be laughing about it." Civil libertarians seem to fear that the government is collecting huge quantities of data that it can later use politically, but Chertoff said, "I don't think anybody has an interest in accumulating a lot of information. We can barely manage the stuff we care about for avoiding terrorism. "I can actually make the case that the more intelligence we've got, the more we actually protect civil liberties. In a world without intelligence, where we don't have a good idea where the threats are, it means searching people, screening names, barriers and checkpoints, questioning people when they get on an airplane." To me, the bottom line of the NSA spying case is this: Congress should investigate whether President Bush has authority to conduct anti-terrorist data mining. And, if he doesn't, Congress should give it to him - with legislative oversight. As Chertoff told me, "the name of the game here is trying to figure out, with all the billions of pieces of data that float around the world, what data do you need to focus on? What is the stuff you need to worry about? "If you don't use all the tools of gathering these kinds of leads, then you're leaving very valuable tools on the table." And, if and when another 9/11 occurs, the first question that will be asked is: Why? Mort Kondracke is the Executive Editor of Roll Call. -- ----------------- 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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Don't be left behing- the enlargement revolution!
by Rolland Glass 20 Jan '06

20 Jan '06

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[Clips] White House refuses to talk about Al Gore's plan to Wiretap every electronic device in the world
by R. A. Hettinga 20 Jan '06

20 Jan '06

...From the "No matter who you vote for, the government gets elected", department... Cheers, RAH --- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 18:54:15 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] White House refuses to talk about Al Gore's plan to Wiretap every electronic device in the world Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://www.leftwinghate.com/?p=72> Left Wing Hate What the Left is all about White House refuses to talk about Al Gore's plan to Wiretap every electronic device in the world 20th January 2006 >From today's WhiteHouse press Briefing: quote: Q Scott, I have a two-part question. Apparently, no one in the White House will challenge Al Gore with now public information that he led the Clinton administration's Clipper Chip Project back in the 1990s to effectively tap every phone, fax machine and computer in the country. And my question: Isn't that worth pointing out to the American people, after he accused President Bush of breaking the law and violating the Constitution by - MR. McCLELLAN: I think you just did. This is an administration that is forward-looking, Les. We're focused on the priorities of the American people. Q Well, how about Gore? You mean you're going to say nothing about Gore and the clipper chip project? MR. McCLELLAN: I think you already have. No, I'm not going to get into that. :unquote More reading about the Clinton's Administrations Treason: Wikipedia Clipper Chip 2001: Clinton Administration Considered Sharing National Security Secrets With China, Syria, Pakistan 2000: Out-sourcing Big Brother 1997-2000 Alamo-Girl's Archives of Clinton's "Rogues Gallery" Clipper Chip info from the Electronic Privacy Information Center Editorial: Brian Mosely: Gore's criticism strikes a sour note This entry was posted on Friday, January 20th, 2006 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Main. -- ----------------- 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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Commercial Key Escrow?
by ericm＠lne.com 20 Jan '06

20 Jan '06

Does anyone know of a company that provides a commercial key escrow service? Eric

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[Clips] Department of Computer Security? It's a Joke
by R. A. Hettinga 20 Jan '06

20 Jan '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 15:59:27 -0500 To: "Philodox Clips List" <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Department of Computer Security? It's a Joke Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com --- begin forwarded text From: "Mises Daily Article" <article(a)mises.org> To: <article(a)mises.biglist.com> Subject: Department of Computer Security? It's a Joke Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 10:20:02 -0500 Organization: Mises Institute Mailing-List: contact article-help(a)mises.biglist.com Rothbard's Masterpiece, available again: <http://www.mises.org/store/Austrian-Perspective-on-the-History-of-Economic-…>The History of Economic Thought ($45). Department of Computer Security? It's a Joke by Jeffrey Tucker <http://www.mises.org/story/2017>[Posted on Friday, January 20, 2006] To receive the Daily Article in your inbox, go to <http://www.mises.org/content/elist.asp>email services, and <http://www.mises.org/invitation.aspx>tell others too! If you want to make a geek laugh derisively, suggest that responsibility for computer security be turned over to the government. This reaction is guaranteed, regardless of ideology. Everyone knows that this is not possible, but rarely are the implications for political economy noted. Now, keep in mind that geeks know that producing fabulous looking and acting things for the web is only part of the job. These are people who spend a fantastic amount of time dealing with security issues, which change every season, day, hour, and even minute. People know about viruses. Spyware and adware, meanwhile, is an incredible threat to people's home computers. A new computer can be slowed to a crawl in a few days of quick browsing without good security against hijackings. And a huge industry has sprung up promising solutions, some good and some almost as dangerous as the thing they allegedly stop. Some of these are free, and some quite expensive, and the typical geek must work to discover what's what. Other threats are less well known, such as the possibility that your own computer can be hijacked and controlled by other people who want to use it to store files or scan for other hijackable ports. This is mainly a threat faced by servers running large websiteshuge magnets for hijackings and hacksbut it even affects home computers. For example: I was recently talking to a technical administrator of a prestigious host of thousands of servers. He was amazed by the number of root-level compromises that had been taking place in recent months. The possible holes in people's systems are without limit. Software must be constantly upgraded. Even one small mistake can lead to data loss and disaster. He tried a little experiment. He installed a new operating system on a new laptop, and disabled the firewall. He then hooked it up to a non-secure wireless network in an urban area. The first attack came in 6 minutes. In 12 minutes, the computer had already been hacked and was under the control of somebody or something else. All data on the computer was rendered vulnerable, available for looting or selling. In a few minutes more, it would have become a work station for more port scanning, denial-of-service attacks, or some other menacing behavior, and been added to the empire of servers being controlled by some of the world's smartest criminal minds. Not that a good firewall and secure connection are infallible solutions. There is always a way in for someone with high-level skills and the will to take the risk. To keep threats away involves the technical equivalent of street fights between hackers and security professionals. The fighters have similar skills; it's just that one group wears the blacks hats and one wears white hats. Some are criminals, some are saviors. The battle never stops. And yes, some of them change hats depending on their career prospects. The fight involves deploying skills that are far beyond what most any normal person could conceive of possessing. They can run circles around most computer science professors and even run-of-the-mill webmasters. Some will rant and rave against the security holes in proprietary products such as those offered by Microsoft. And users of Internet Explorer would be likely to agree. The thing hasn't been properly updated in many years. It has not kept pace with the times, and so attracts web-based evil like a landfill attracts flies. Other products, however, are different. Server-level software is constantly monitored for holes, with updates sent out automatically and often (though not always as often as the people might like). Still, open-source advocates say that this proprietary stuff is expensive and dangerous. The companies don't respond soon enough to threats, and no one but company employees can view the underlying code. That means that improvements come more slowly. With open source, the world community of programmers have access and work constantly to improve the product. To be sure, hackers too have access to the same code. So here too you have a battle between good and evil. Among the good guys, there is a debate: should software holes be announced publicly (full disclosure) in the hope that the firms that work on open source will fix it before the hackers find out? But between the announcement and the fix, there is a gap that hackers can exploit. Perhaps then the hole should only be revealed to the firm or individuals who manage the open-source product (limited disclosure). The downside here is that the people responsible will lack the frantic sense of urgency that generates a quick hot-fix. Geeks thrive in emergencies, while non-emergencies fail to inspire. So the debate over security rages furiously: open source or proprietary code, public security announcements or quiet revelations, development or risk? At any one time, all solutions are being used, with bulletin boards filling up thousands and thousands of pages of debate based on experience. Ideology can play a part here but, in the end, it comes down to what works best. And all the while, the war continues, pushed onward by the relentless pace of development and progress towards better living standards. We haven't even touched on the war between the virus makers and the virus killers. The competition here is also intense. When a new virus is unleashed, the first firm to produce the fix wins new levels of consumer devotion and attention. A nothing company can become the next big thing by producing a fix for two or three viruses in a row, and doing it before the established firms get there. An established firm can lose its market edge in a month by failing to update its virus definitions in time. The difference between winners and losers in this struggle comes down to minutes, not days or weeks. In this never ending struggle, there are always tradeoffs between the pace of development and its security risks. No software is perfect. They all have bugs. But people demand development. The market never rests. We must all take some risk. How much is acceptable? Competition prevails here too. A bad choice in favor of security over development can leave a company eating other companies' dust. A bad choice in favor of development over security can lead to bankruptcy in the face of a high-stakes security compromise. Geek personalities reflect this trade-off: some develop on live servers and deploy every beta the hour it appears, while others test and test and prefer only the tried and true. All these fascinating details aside, keep in mind that the terrain on which these wars rage is wholly market based. The idea that any public bureaucracy could oversee the process is unthinkable. So let us ask the question again, so that the reader may join in the derisive laughter: in a world populated by black hats, should the government to be the sole wearer of the white hat? Actually, is there any point at all in giving a white hat to the state? It has no incentive to join the struggle. It lacks the calculational means to assess the trade-off between security and development. It lacks the entrepreneurial drive to produce either. The nature of the bureaucratic organization is to stay put, protect itself, and only move when kicked good and hard by political bosses. As for the power to do good, how can anyone guarantee that it won't quickly become the power to do evil? If experience is our guide, the government in a position of authority is more likely to be creating viruses and spyware rather than stop them. As for the impact of the law, I vaguely seem to recall some legislation passed a few years ago that made spam illegal. <http://www.mises.org/store/Mises-Institute-Pro-Cap-P276C0.aspx> <http://www.mises.org/store/Mises-Institute-Pro-Cap-P276C0.aspx>Wear the blue hat: $18 Government can't produce software that can outsmart every hacker. Not now, not ever. But the government can violate liberty and waste vast resources in the attempt. As important as computers have become, there are interesting implications here. On a day-by-day basis the security of these machines is a far bigger matter than the threat of terrorism. Whether we like it or not, and regardless of ideology, we all depend on market competition to bring us not only innovation but also to protect us in our dealings with information technology. It is not a perfect solution. It can be messy and fallible. But the market is strongest and best hope for security, and the alternative is unthinkable. How interesting that we have been told for, oh, some 400 years, that government is the agency we need to give us the security that markets cannot give us. There are a thousand rationales why intellectuals have believed this, but none of them seem very robust by comparison of the experience of our times. Jeffrey Tucker is editor of Mises.org. <mailto:tucker@mises.org>tucker(a)mises.org. Special thanks to some white hats who commented on this piece. You can comment on the <http://blog.mises.org/archives/004584.asp>blog. <http://www.mises.org/story/2017>[Print Friendly Page] <http://www.mises.org/store/> <http://www.mises.org/content/webcasts.aspx> <http://www.mises.org/elist.asp>Mises Email List Services <https://www.mises.org/donate.asp>Join the Mises Institute <http://www.mises.org/store>Mises.org Store <http://www.mises.org/>Home | <http://www.mises.org/about.asp>About | <http://www.mises.org/elist.asp>Email List | <http://www.google.com/u/Mises>Search | <http://www.mises.org/contact.asp>Contact Us | <http://www.mises.org/journals.asp>Periodicals | <http://www.mises.org/articles.asp>Articles | <http://www.mises.org/fun.asp>Games & Fun <http://www.mises.org/fun.asp>FAQ | <http://www.mises.org/StudyGuideDisplay.asp?SubjID=117>EBooks | <http://www.mises.org/scholar.asp>Resources | <http://www.mises.org/catalog.asp>Catalog | <https://www.mises.org/donate.asp>Contributions | <http://www.mises.org/calendar.asp>Freedom Calendar You are subscribed as: rah(a)ibuc.com Manage <http://mises.biglist.com/list/article/?p=prefs&pre=l&e=13958347&pw=1tyvx5to…>your account. Unsubscribe <http://mises.biglist.com/list/article/?m=571&p=unsub&pre=l&e=13958347&pw=1t…>here or send email to <mailto:article-unsub-13958347@mises.biglist.com>this address. Report abuse or Spam on the <http://mises.biglist.com/abuse/article/13958347/571>abuse page. --- 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' _______________________________________________ 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] Yahoo admits it let White House access its databases
by R. A. Hettinga 20 Jan '06

20 Jan '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 15:39:15 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Yahoo admits it let White House access its databases Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-10889-2002169-10889,00.html> The Times of London Times Online January 20, 2006 Yahoo admits it let White House access its databases By Jenny Booth and agencies Yahoo has admitted that it granted the US Government access to its search engine's databases this summer, as a battle develops over the right to privacy in cyberspace. Google, by contrast, promised last night to fight vigorously the Bush Administration's demand to know what millions of people have been looking up on the internet. It emerged this week that the White House issued subpoenas to a number of US-based search engines this summer, asking to see what information the public had accessed in a two-month period. It said that it needed the information in order to help create online child protection laws. But Google refused to comply with its subpoena - prompting the US Attorney General this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose for an order to hand over the requested records. Details of the confrontation emerged after the San Jose Mercury News reported seeing the court papers on Wednesday. At the heart of the battle is the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance. Yahoo has stressed that it didn't reveal any personal information. "We are rigorous defenders of our users' privacy," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said last night. "In our opinion, this is not a privacy issue." The Google court papers show that the US Government originally asked for a list of all requests entered into Google's search engine between June 1 and July 31 last year. When Google argued, the request was whittled down to a week's worth of search terms - a breakdown that could nonetheless span tens of millions of queries. In addition, the White House has asked for one million randomly selected Web addresses from various Google databases. Every other search engine company served similar subpoenas by the Bush administration has complied so far, according to the court documents. The co-operating search engines were not identified. Microsoft's MSN, the third-most used search engine, has declined to say whether it received a subpoena. "MSN works closely with law enforcement officials worldwide to assist them when requested," the company said in a statement. The US Government says that it is not seeking any data that would allow it to identify which individual made which search request. Experts say nonetheless that the subpoena raises serious privacy concerns, especially after recent revelations that the White House authorised civilian phone-taps after the September 11 attacks without obtaining court approval. Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse charity in California, called the subpoenas "the first shoe dropping" that online privacy advocates had long feared. "These search engines are a very tempting target for government and law enforcement," Givens said. "Look at the millions of people who use search engines without thinking of the potential to be drawn into a government drag net." The subpoenas were a "classic fishing trip" by federal prosecutors, she added. Thomas Burke, a San Francisco lawyer who has handled several prominent privacy cases, said that many people contacted Google more often than they spoke to their mother. "Just as most people would be upset if the government wanted to know how much you called your mother and what you talked about, they should be upset about this, too," he said. Pam Dixon, executive director for the World Privacy Forum, warned that the content of search requests sometimes contain information about the person making the query, such as names, medical profiles or Social Security information. "This is exactly the kind of thing we have been worrying about with search engines for some time," Dixon said. "Google should be commended for fighting this." She warned people to be careful what personal information they entered into search engines. The Department of Justice argues that Google's cooperation is essential in its effort to simulate how people navigate the web. In a separate case in Pennsylvania, the Bush Administration is trying to prove that internet filters do not do an adequate job of preventing children from accessing online pornography and other objectionable destinations. Obtaining the subpoenaed information from Google "would assist the government in its efforts to understand the behavior of current web users, (and) to estimate how often web users encounter harmful-to-minors material in the course of their searches," the Justice Department wrote in its court petition. Google issued a statement last night promising to fight the case. "Google is not a party to this lawsuit and their demand for information overreaches," wrote Nicole Wong, Google's associate general counsel. "We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this, but were not able to and we intend to resist their motion vigorously." But Google's vigorous defence of privacy rights in the face of demands from the US government is apparently at odds with the search engine's stance in China. There, human rights activists have complained that Google collaborates with the Chinese government, which controls the activities of its 111 million web surfers with one of the most stifling internet censorship policies in the world. Google is locked in competition for the lucrative Chinese market, along with Yahoo and MSN, and the homegrown Chinese search engine Baidu.com. All the US companies have been criticised for censoring news sites, search engines and weblogs that China's communist government considers subversive or obscene. For example, a web user in China who tried to search Google or Yahoo for subjects such as democracy and human rights would find nothing in his search results. There was outrage in September when it emerged that Yahoo had supplied details to the Chinese authorities of the personal e-mail account of Shi Tao, a 37-year-old journalist. He was found guilty of "spreading state secrets" and jailed for 10 years, for forwarding to a foreign website a Chinese government circular banning the media from reporting the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. -- ----------------- 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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Give her something to smile about
by kenyatta rice 20 Jan '06

20 Jan '06

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