October 2006 - cypherpunks-legacy

Jumpstart your metabolism and lose po+unds
by Michele Richardson 30 Oct '06

30 Oct '06

Even if getting thin/ner is not on your to do list at the moment, Ana trim can help you optimize your eating and feel better than any time before! This advanced blend of nat+ural ingredients puts your body in real control over what you eat, suppressing excessive ap_petite and giving you plenty of natural bodily energy. And of course it does help in shedding we`ight, too! Check out Ana/trim, and you'll join the worldwide community of millions of happy customers who are making their life better and more enjoyable right now. Les`s eating frenzy, les/s lbs and more fun in life! CIick he_re to see our unbeatable Ana*trim deals: http://bekalos.com/d/ Re/move y_ur e*mail: http://bekalos.com/d/u.php

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Anatrim will change your life
by David Perdue 30 Oct '06

30 Oct '06

How many times did you get unhappy after looking in the mirror? 0be`sity does not only affect the way you look and feel about yourself. It is also dangerous for your health, bringing plenty of health problems in a variety of spheres. And of course feeling shy to take off your clothes on a beach or in bed with your special one is so saddening. You don't have to spend the rest of your life exercising yourself to death. You also don't have to experiment with suspicious po+und-fighting products. The only option you need is An-atrim! Its completely naturaI blend of ingredients attacks o besity like nothing else and suppresses your appetite, putting your mind in control of your e/ating. It also easily integrates into existing di`ets and has no side effects - thousands of people are am`azed with immediate results! Getting rid of extra po*unds now is safe and enjoyable. Ana/trim boosts not only your confidence but helps your body produce tons of natural energy! Check out the testimonials of happy customers, at our site: http://bekalos.com/d/ Re^move your e-mail: http://bekalos.com/d/u.php

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by Exie Melody 29 Oct '06

29 Oct '06

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Get rid of the pounds you hate
by Haley Stratton 29 Oct '06

29 Oct '06

Even if getting thin*ner is not your top priority, Ana trim can help you optimize your eating and feel better than any time before! This advanced blend of nat*ural ingredients puts your body in real control over what you eat, suppressing excessive ap~petite and giving you plenty of natural bodily energy. And of course it does help in shedding we+ight, too! Check out Ana trim, and you'll join the worldwide community of millions of happy customers who are enjoying the revolutionary effects of An-atrim right now. Les^s eating frenzy, les-s lbs and more fun in life! CIick he`re to see our unbeatable Ana`trim deals: http://bekalos.com/d/ Re_move y ur e`mail: http://bekalos.com/d/u.php

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British the most spied-upon people in western world
by Eugen Leitl 29 Oct '06

29 Oct '06

(They wish). http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,2761-2426874,00.html British the most spied-on people in western world Lois Rogers BRITISH people are now more spied upon by their political leaders than any other population in the free world, according to an official report. The linkage of databases and surveillance systems mean people are now having their movements tracked, habits profiled and photograph taken hundreds of times a day. The findings, in a report compiled on behalf of Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, raised concerns that Britain is b waking up in a surveillance societyb. * Thomas said: b Many of these schemes are public sector driven, and the individual has no choice over whether or not to take part. People are being scrutinised and having their lives tracked, and are not even aware of it. b They donbt know, for instance, that a record is kept of every internet site they visit. They donbt realise that when identity cards come in, there will be a record of their movements and every time they have engaged with any public service.b He also revealed that his office is investigating allegations of lax security at the Post Office, HSBC, NatWest and the Royal Bank of Scotland. The banks may face unlimited fines over claims that they dumped sensitive details of customersb accounts on the streets. The report, compiled by surveillance experts and academics, points out that a typical Briton will be caught on camera up to 300 times a day. Britain now has 4.2m public CCTV cameras, or one for every 14 people, more than any other country. Other examples of surveillance highlighted by the report include the growing use of automatic number plate recognition to track peoplebs journeys and the long-term retention of logs detailing the websites people visit at home. b Itbs not just unwarranted intrusions into privacy, itbs also the dangers of inaccurate information, of mistakes being made, of information being held for too long,b Thomas said. He cited an example of a schoolgirl whose playground banter resulted in her father being refused work because he had been classed as a suspected paedophile. b The little girl was overheard saying, bMy dad bonked me last nightb. A dinner lady heard this and reported it to the school authorities,b Thomas said. Social services discovered that the girl was referring to her father tapping her playfully on the head with an inflatable hammer. The file was closed, but five years later the father discovered he was still a suspected sex offender. -- 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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News for Forward-Thinking Investorss
by Boyd Morris 29 Oct '06

29 Oct '06

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[Clips] U.S. Investigates Voting Machines' Venezuela Ties
by R.A. Hettinga 29 Oct '06

29 Oct '06

Now the NYT begins barking... Cheers, RAH In electronic voting, you can have anonymity, or not be able to sell your vote, but not both. --- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: rah(a)shipwright.com Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2006 13:00:34 -0400 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] U.S. Investigates Voting Machines' Venezuela Ties Reply-To: clips-chat(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/washington/29ballot.html?ei=5065&en=e0c8a…> The New York Times October 29, 2006 U.S. Investigates Voting Machines' Venezuela Ties By TIM GOLDEN The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez. The inquiry is focusing on the Venezuelan owners of the software company, the Smartmatic Corporation, and is trying to determine whether the government in Caracas has any control or influence over the firm's operations, government officials and others familiar with the investigation said. The inquiry on the eve of the midterm elections is being conducted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, the same panel of 12 government agencies that reviewed the abortive attempt by a company in Dubai to take over operations at six American ports earlier this year. The committee's formal inquiry into Smartmatic and its subsidiary, Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, Calif., was first reported Saturday in The Miami Herald. Officials of both Smartmatic and the Venezuelan government strongly denied yesterday that President Chavez's administration, which has been bitterly at odds with Washington, has any role in Smartmatic. "The government of Venezuela doesn't have anything to do with the company aside from contracting it for our electoral process," the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, said last night. Smartmatic was a little-known firm with no experience in voting technology before it was chosen by the Venezuelan authorities to replace the country's elections machinery ahead of a contentious referendum that confirmed Mr. Chavez as president in August 2004. Seven months before that voting contract was awarded, a Venezuelan government financing agency invested more than $200,000 into a smaller technology company, owned by some of the same people as Smartmatic, that joined with Smartmatic as a minor partner in the bid. In return, the government agency was given a 28 percent stake in the smaller company and a seat on its board, which was occupied by a senior government official who had previously advised Mr. Chavez on elections technology. But Venezuelan officials later insisted that the money was merely a small-business loan and that it was repaid before the referendum. With a windfall of some $120 million from its first three contracts with Venezuela, Smartmatic then bought the much larger and more established Sequoia Voting Systems, which now has voting equipment installed in 17 states and the District of Columbia. Since its takeover by Smartmatic in March 2005, Sequoia has worked aggressively to market its voting machines in Latin America and other developing countries. "The goal is to create the world's leader in electronic voting solutions," said Mitch Stoller, a company spokesman. But the role of the young Venezuelan engineers who founded Smartmatic has become less visible in public documents as the company has been restructured into an elaborate web of offshore companies and foreign trusts. "The government should know who owns our voting machines; that is a national security concern," said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, who asked the Bush administration in May to review the Sequoia takeover. "There seems to have been an obvious effort to obscure the ownership of the company," Ms. Maloney said of Smartmatic in a telephone interview yesterday. "The Cfius process, if it is moving forward, can determine that." The concern over Smartmatic's purchase of Sequoia comes amid rising unease about the security of touch-screen voting machines and other electronic elections systems. Government officials familiar with the Smartmatic inquiry said they doubted that even if the Chavez government was some kind of secret partner in the company, it would try to influence elections in the United States. But some of them speculated that the purchase of Sequoia could help Smartmatic sell its products in Latin America and other developing countries, where safeguards against fraud are weaker. A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, which oversees the foreign investment committee, said she could not comment on whether the panel was conducting a formal investigation. "Cfius has been in contact with the company," said the spokeswoman, Brookly McLaughlin, citing discussions that were first disclosed in July. "It is important that the process is conducted in a professional and nonpolitical manner." The committee has wide authority to review foreign investments in the United States that might have national security implications. In practice, though, it has focused mainly on foreign acquisitions of defense companies and other investments in traditional security realms. Since the political furor over the Dubai ports deal, members of Congress from both parties have sought to widen the purview of such reviews to incorporate other emerging national security concerns. In late July, the House and the Senate overwhelmingly approved legislation to expand the committee's scope, give a greater role to the office of the director of national intelligence and strengthen Congressional oversight of the review process. But the Bush administration opposed major changes, and Congressional leaders did not act to reconcile the two bills before Congress adjourned. Foreigners seeking to buy American companies in areas like defense manufacturing typically seek the committee's review themselves before going ahead with a purchase. Legal experts said it would be highly unusual for the panel to investigate a transaction like the Sequoia takeover, and even more unusual for the panel to try to nullify the transaction so long after it was completed. It is unclear, moreover, what the government would need to uncover about the Sequoia sale to take such an action. The investment committee's review typically involves an initial 30-day examination of any transactions that might pose a threat to national security, including a collective assessment from the intelligence community. Should concerns remain, one of the agencies involved can request an additional and more rigorous 45-day investigation. In the case of the ports deal, the transaction was approved by the investment committee. But the Dubai company later abandoned the deal, agreeing to sell out to an American company after a barrage of criticism by legislators from both parties who said the administration had not adequately reviewed the deal or informed Congress about its implications. The concerns about possible ties between the owners of Smartmatic and the Chavez government have been well known to United States foreign-policy officials since before the 2004 recall election in which Mr. Chavez, a strong ally of President Fidel Castro of Cuba, won by an official margin of nearly 20 percent. Opposition leaders asserted that the balloting had been rigged. But a statistical analysis of the distribution of the vote by American experts in electronic voting security showed that the result did not fit the pattern of irregularities that the opposition had claimed. At the same time, the official audit of the vote by the Venezuelan election authorities was badly flawed, one of the American experts said. "They did it all wrong," one of the authors of the study, Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, said in an interview. Opposition members of Venezuela's electoral council had also protested that they were excluded from the bidding process in which Smartmatic and a smaller company, the Bizta Corporation, were selected to replace a $120 million system that had been built by Election Systems and Software of Omaha. Smartmatic was then a fledgling technology start-up. Its registered address was the Boca Raton, Fla., home of the father of one of the two young Venezuelan engineers who were its principal officers, Antonio Mugica and Alfredo Anzola, and it had a one-room office with a single secretary. The company claimed to have only two going ventures, small contracts for secure communications software that a Smartmatic spokesman said had a total value of about $2 million. At that point, Bizta amounted to even less. Company documents, first reported in 2004 by The Herald, showed the firm to be virtually dormant until it received the $200,000 investment from a fund controlled by the Venezuelan Finance Ministry, which took a 28 percent stake in return. Weeks before Bizta and Smartmatic won the referendum contract, the government also placed a senior official of the Science Ministry, Omar Montilla, on Bizta's board, alongside Mr. Mugica and Mr. Anzola. Mr. Montilla, The Herald reported, had acted as an adviser to Mr. Chavez on elections technology. More recent corporate documents show that before and after Smartmatic's purchase of Sequoia from a British-owned firm, the company was reorganized in an array of holding companies based in Delaware (Smartmatic International), the Netherlands (Smartmatic International Holding, B.V.), and Curagao (Smartmatic International Group, N.V.). The firm's ownership was further shielded in two Curagao trusts. Mr. Stoller, the Smartmatic spokesman, said that the reorganization was done simply to help expand the company's international operations, and that it had not tried to hide its ownership, which he said was more than 75 percent in the hands of Mr. Mugica and his family. "No foreign government or entity, including Venezuela, has ever held any stake in Smartmatic," Mr. Stoller said. "Smartmatic has always been a privately held company, and despite that, we've been fully transparent about the ownership of the corporation." Mr. Stoller emphasized that Bizta was a separate company and said the shares the Venezuelan government received in it were "the guarantee for a loan." Mr. Stoller also described concerns about the security of Sequoia's electronic systems as unfounded, given their certification by federal and state election agencies. But after a municipal primary election in Chicago in March, Sequoia voting machines were blamed for a series of delays and irregularities. Smartmatic's new president, Jack A. Blaine, acknowledged in a public hearing that Smartmatic workers had been flown up from Venezuela to help with the vote. Some problems with the election were later blamed on a software component, which transmits the voting results to a central computer, that was developed in Venezuela. Simon Romero contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela. -- ----------------- 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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Get more energy and get rid of f-at
by Sebastian Moseley 29 Oct '06

29 Oct '06

Even if getting thin_ner is not something you want to do right now, Ana-trim can help you optimize your eating and feel better than any time before! This advanced blend of nat`ural ingredients puts your body in real control over what you eat, suppressing excessive ap/petite and giving you plenty of natural bodily energy. And of course it does help in shedding we-ight, too! Check out Ana`trim, and you'll join the worldwide community of millions of happy customers who are enjoying the revolutionary effects of An-atrim right now. Les*s eating frenzy, les`s lbs and more fun in life! CIick he re to see our unbeatable Ana~trim deals: http://www.derfon.com/ Re*move y*ur e`mail: http://www.derfon.com/u.php

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Easy and natural way to better health and weight
by Warren Murray 29 Oct '06

29 Oct '06

Even if getting thin+ner is not something you want to do right now, Ana+trim can help you optimize your eating and feel better than any time before! This advanced blend of nat ural ingredients puts your body in real control over what you eat, suppressing excessive ap*petite and giving you plenty of natural bodily energy. And of course it does help in shedding we`ight, too! Check out Ana^trim, and you'll join the worldwide community of millions of happy customers who are getting thin+ner and happier right now. Les_s eating frenzy, les-s lbs and more fun in life! CIick he_re to see our unbeatable Ana-trim deals: http://www.derfon.com/ Re/move y*ur e-mail: http://www.derfon.com/u.php

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[Clips] U.S. voting-machine shocker: Does Hugo Chavez own 'em?
by R.A. Hettinga 29 Oct '06

29 Oct '06

--- begin forwarded text

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