March 2006 - cypherpunks-legacy

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12 Mar '06

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Justin Berry, Jimbo Wales, and Wikipedia
by Eric Cordian 12 Mar '06

12 Mar '06

A few weeks ago, a NY Times reporter named Kurt Eichenwald wrote a series of articles on a 19 year old young man named Justin Berry, who made hundreds of thousands of dollars starting at age 13 performing sexually in front of his webcam, and subsequently ran a number of pay teen sites with sexual content. There used to be a fairly lengthy article about Mr. Berry on Wikipedia, but it was summarily deleted, along with its entire revision history, by Wikipedia's owner, Jimbo Wales, and it is represented that Mr. Berry called Mr. Wales and expressed displeasure at his portrayal. Since that time, the article has been reduced to a 2-sentence stub, and all attempts to add any additional information to it, no matter how well sourced, have resulted in the additions being reverted, usually accompanied by various incomprehensible mutterings by Wikipedia admins, who, when asked specific direct questions about what was wrong with the original article, or why specific information can't be added to the current one, become non-responsive and stonewalled. To the best of my knowlege, no one has successfully added any information to the article since Jimbo deleted it, and discussion amongst admins about the article is taking place out of band, and not on any of the Wikipedia pages where such discussion usually takes place. Now of course, Wikipedia is a private organization, which can do anything it wants on servers that it owns. Nonetheless, the actions which are taking place are in direct contravention of stated Wikipedia policy, and there seems to be a deliberate attempt to not be forthcoming with any information on the subject. Everyone who has pressed the issue has gotten banned for various contrived excuses like "uncivility" and "trollishness", and even comments about the situation on peoples private talk pages have been edited by admins. While Wikipedia is a private organization, they are attempting to create a reputation for themselves as an unbiased source of truthful information. Clearly they have a choice of being truthful and being respected, or of censoring, violating their own policies, and not being taken seriously. When things like this happen, our respect for them, and our view of them as an authoritative source of information, need to be adjusted accordingly. I found an interesting quote by Jimbo Wales about Wikipedia and the truth. "If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not." Wikipedia, in the propaganda it writes about itself, represents itself as not censoring even offensive material, and arriving at article content entirely through consensus. The reality, at least in this case, seems to be a lot different than the officially stated policy. I invite Jimbo Wales or someone else who can speak for the Wikimedia Foundation, to respond to this post, and give us all a straight answer about exactly what is going on with this particular article. If nothing can be added to Justin Berry's article because Justin or his handlers would be displeased by it, do we apply the same standards to George Bush's article, or Scott Peterson's? One wonders why a teenage male sex performer merits such personal attention from Wikipedia's owner, allegedly a wealthy married heterosexual. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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journalistic insecurity and facilitating whistleblower privacy
by coderman 11 Mar '06

11 Mar '06

more fallout from the top sekrit "national security letters" (30,000 issued per year, wonder how high this has increased with the new focus on journalistic sources?) """ On Tuesday, an email arrived from Dan Eggen, Justice Department correspondent for The Washington Post. Dan wanted a copy of the letter and more information on the story. That's right I write a story about how the Bush administration is monitoring the email of journalists and a journalist fires off an email asking me to violate the USA Patriot Act and risk certain jail time by providing him with a copy of a letter that I'm not even supposed to admit I have. ... Then I checked my voice mail to find a call from Robert O'Harrow Jr., another Post reporter, wanting information on my sources. Hmmm. I write a story about how the Bush administration is monitoring phone calls of reporters and a reporter calls me on the phone to obtain information on my confidential sources. Anyone see a pattern here? Next, I get both a phone call and an email from David Armstrong of the National Security News Service saying he is working with 60 Minutes on a story about domestic spying by the National Security Agency. He wants info on my sources. ... When Mark Felt, the number two man in the FBI, served as Post reporter Bob Woodward's primary source on Watergate, he insisted that Woodward avoid contact by telephone and devised a scheme of planted messages in a newspaper left at Woodward's door and meetings in an underground garage in Arlington.... My sources know better than to use phone lines and email to contact me. We've worked out elaborate, and always changing, methods for sharing information. """ are the vast majority of journalists really this brain dead? here is what i'd like to know from a reporter to whom i was about to divulge sensitive information: - do i _really_ trust you? even if they turn the screws? - do you know what physical security is (and implement it)? [ oops, is anyone left standing? ] - do you use network security best practices when communicating privately online? [ os up to date with security patches, unnecessary services disabled, firewall, etc ] - can i communicate via a secure channel? [ examples: whispered conversations in a noisy parking garage ;) off the record with mutually verified keys http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ other SSL mechanism with mutual authentication like http://openvpn.net/ pgp/gpg encrypted email (though this seems not so popular?) ] - do you protect your stored data appropriately? [ loop-aes encrypted volumes, FileVault, gpg encrypted files, etc ] - do you use good passwords/phrases for authentication? what other questions would you ask? --- http://www.capitolhillblue.com/blog/2006/03/we_dont_burn_our_sources.html We don't burn our sources March 9, 2006 05:25 AM / The Rant . By DOUG THOMPSON One of the questions frequently raised by critics of this web site is "how can you guys have sources the mainstream media doesn't have?" Good question. We often quote confidential sources in our stories. We have a choice of depending on such sources or not publishing the story. If I'm satisfied the sources are accurate I go with the story. It's a question of trust and, during my 23 years in Washington as both a journalist and a political operative, I built up a network of sources I trust and who trust me to protect their identity and not put them in harm's way. More than 40 years in journalism taught me to protect such sources at all cost. Many of those same sources don't trust the so-called "mainstream media" outlets because they've been burned by journalists who put the story ahead of protecting those who provide them with the information. Even worse, the mainstreamers can be downright sloppy when it comes to protecting those who have such information. On Monday, I outlined how the Bush Administration has launched an all-out war on the press, directing attorney general Alberto Gonzales to go after reporters with subpoenas, wiretaps, monitoring of emails and surveillance to try and stop leaks about the many questionable activities of the White House. I learned about the efforts because the FBI made the incredibly stupid mistake of sending one of their "National Security Letters" to a company I own demanding information on one of its clients - me. Then I confirmed the story with my administration sources and ran with it on Monday, knowing that even acknowledging receipt of a National Security Letter could lead to trouble. The letter was withdrawn after my attorney negotiated a deal. On Tuesday, an email arrived from Dan Eggen, Justice Department correspondent for The Washington Post. Dan wanted a copy of the letter and more information on the story. That's right I write a story about how the Bush administration is monitoring the email of journalists and a journalist fires off an email asking me to violate the USA Patriot Act and risk certain jail time by providing him with a copy of a letter that I'm not even supposed to admit I have. In fact, I don't have it. I never did. The FBI sent the letter to my web hosting company offices which are 300 miles away from my home and studio. At my instructions it went from the employee who received it straight to my attorney and he dealt directly with the feds. I never saw the letter, do not know what happened to it and am not privy to details of what it said. I don't want to know. That's why I'm still sitting here and not on my way to Gitmo. Then I checked my voice mail to find a call from Robert O'Harrow Jr., another Post reporter, wanting information on my sources. Hmmm. I write a story about how the Bush administration is monitoring phone calls of reporters and a reporter calls me on the phone to obtain information on my confidential sources. Anyone see a pattern here? Next, I get both a phone call and an email from David Armstrong of the National Security News Service saying he is working with 60 Minutes on a story about domestic spying by the National Security Agency. He wants info on my sources. Let's see. A reporter uses both the telephone and email to request the names of confidential sources on a story about how the National Security Agency monitors telephone and email use of, you guessed it, reporters. Sorry guys. I'm not about to burn my sources when you take so little precaution in seeking information from me. Besides, I wouldn't help 60 Minutes if they were the only news outlet left on the face of the planet. In 1981 I served on a panel discussion with Fred Graham, then legal correspondent for CBS News. During a break I told him about a paper I once worked for, The Alton Telegraph in Illinois, which had lost a landmark libel suit for something they never published. I thought it might make a good story about injustice. Instead, Graham turned the story over to Morley Safer and 60 Minutes and they put together a hatchet job on the newspaper and told the story from a trial lawyer's point of view. Instead of defending freedom of the press, Safer and his crew sensationalized the story for ratings. Some years later, we would learn again just how 60 Minutes and CBS News hangs people out to dry. Jeffrey Wigand, a fired corporate vice president for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co., blew the whistle on the company's campaign to hide the true dangers of nicotine. But 60 Minutes and Mike Wallace caved to corporate pressure and shelved the story after revealing Wigand's identity. His reputation was ruined by the network's incompetence. Given such track records, why should any source trust the mainstreamers? The Washington Post sends an unsecure email openly asking me to violate federal law by turning over a classified document and I'm supposed to believe they will protect sources that I've cultivated and protected for more than two decades? When Mark Felt, the number two man in the FBI, served as Post reporter Bob Woodward's primary source on Watergate, he insisted that Woodward avoid contact by telephone and devised a scheme of planted messages in a newspaper left at Woodward's door and meetings in an underground garage in Arlington. Felt knew using the telephone or other standard communications means of the time would lead the secrecy-obsessed Nixon White House to his door. Felt's identity remained a secret for 31 years. My sources know better than to use phone lines and email to contact me. We've worked out elaborate, and always changing, methods for sharing information. I'm not about to risk their confidentiality with reporters who are less careful. I've been hauled in front of grand juries by overzealous prosecutors who wanted names of sources. They didn't get them. As a journalist, I was trained to develop my own network of sources, not call other reporters and ask them to give up theirs. Maybe I'm too old-fashioned for today's pop-culture journalism. Maybe it's out of style for reporters to do their own legwork and research instead of depending on Google and others to do it for them. Or maybe I'm just too old to change and too damn suspicious to get trapped by youngsters. My mama drowned the dumb ones. --- more on the national security letters here: http://www.aclu.org/safefree/patriot/17458res20040929.html and here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/05/AR200511050…

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by Greta Dubois 11 Mar '06

11 Mar '06

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NO-QUESTIONS WIRETAPPING - "liberty theater"
by coderman 11 Mar '06

11 Mar '06

let's call this particular form of freedom lip service: "liberty theater" it's been quite a show and only promises to get even more entertaining... :) ---cut--- http://www.oregonlive.com/commentary/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/11… NO-QUESTIONS WIRETAPPING Friday, March 10, 2006 David Sarasohn R emember that fundamental principle -- the one that got everybody so upset when they first heard about the National Security Agency's freelance wiretapping -- that says that if the U.S. government wants to listen to your phone calls, it needs to get a court's permission? George W. Bush used to talk about it when he was running for re-election. Some people call it the Fourth Amendment. Remember it? The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has a message for you about that principle: Forget it. After months of huffing and puffing and declaring its determination to stand up for the Constitution against the White House, the committee -- or at least its eight-member GOP majority -- has decided resolutely to get out of the way. As a result, the majority is now supporting a proposal that would allow the Justice Department, for the first time ever, to listen in on phone calls without telling anybody -- courts or Congress. But only for 45 days. The 45-day limit is the committee Republicans' idea of a constitutional limit on executive power. Not that the eavesdropping would have to stop after 45 days -- although if it did, nobody outside the executive branch would ever know that the wiretapping had happened -- or that after 45 days a court would have to give its approval. The most the Intelligence Committee dares to suggest is that after listening to someone's phone calls for a month and a half, the government would have to tell a congressional subcommittee that it wants to keep doing it. This is not your father's Fourth Amendment. It's not even George Bush's father's Fourth Amendment. "Aside from the civil liberties dimension," William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University, told The New York Times, "there's an invitation here to the president to go on indefinitely with warrantless surveillance." It's not like there's any principle involved. "The Constitution has always been a teeter-totter between collective security and individual privacy," says Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a minority member of the committee. "This new proposal moves the teeter-totter very significantly in one direction. "I think this is a significant skewing of the balance. We're on the brink of some approaches the committee will regret, and the country will regret." Remarkably, Republican committee members are preening themselves on resisting White House pressure. The committee did turn down the proposal of Sen. Mike DeWine to simply declare whatever the administration had done to be legal -- without delving very deeply into what the administration has done. The majority's reluctance to bother the White House by pursuing the facts needed to conduct oversight is likely to limit any efforts the committee might make in the future; as Wyden notes, "Congress can't possibly legislate in a bipartisan manner with the level of information we've got now." There are other interesting things for Congress to examine. The administration claims its judge-free wiretap power comes from the congressional authorization of force following Sept. 11, 2001. Thursday, the Washington Post quoted David S. Kris, associate deputy attorney general in charge of national security issues from 2000 to 2003, that "In sum, I do not believe the statutory law will bear the government's weight. . . . I do not think Congress can be said to have authorized the NSA surveillance." You might think that point would interest the congressional majority, although nobody wants to be so impolite as to bring it up. It hasn't been a heartening stretch for congressional GOP leaders concerned about constitutional rights. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter just floor-managed the reauthorization of the Patriot Act while insisting that he had many concerns about it, and promising to produce separate legislation to deal with them -- although by renewing the bill, he's abandoned any leverage on the issue. Maybe he can bring it up again under the new Bill of Rights 45-day exception rule. Of course, if Specter later remembers his constitutional concern, it's not hard to imagine the Senate majority and White House response: Forget it. David Sarasohn, associate editor, can be reached at 503-221-8523 or davidsarasohn(a)news.oregonian.com. ---end-cut---

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POLL: crypto hardware & Fwd: [Xen-devel] Announce of our Xen project; Routing simulation with Einar (fwd)
by coderman 11 Mar '06

11 Mar '06

mmm, virtual machines... """ Some time before Christmas, a project was started. The task was to enhance an existing LiveCD solution with User-mode Linux. A number of requirements was stated, where the greatest challenge was to fit 10 virtual routers within an old no-name PC with only 256MB Ram. ... With this solution, students taking CCNA/CCNP level studies can have their own router lab on a bootable CD... The student can set up a virtual network of 10 routers or hosts, and exercise BGP, OSPF, ISIS and RIP routing. """ POLL: how many of you cypherpunks have a padlock enabled core at your disposal (C5P, C5J or +)? anyone who will have one within the next two months (if not now)? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: James Morris <jmorris(a)redhat.com> Date: Mar 6, 2006 8:52 AM Subject: [Xen-devel] Announce of our Xen project; Routing simulation with Einar (fwd) To: netdev(a)vger.kernel.org This looks potentially useful for network development. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2006 17:06:11 +0100 From: Rickard Borgmdster <doktorn(a)sub.nu> To: xen-devel(a)lists.xensource.com Subject: [Xen-devel] Announce of our Xen project; Routing simulation with Einar Hello all, Some time before Christmas, a project was started. The task was to enhance an existing LiveCD solution with User-mode Linux. A number of requirements was stated, where the greatest challenge was to fit 10 virtual routers within an old no-name PC with only 256MB Ram. And the solution must still be run from a LiveCD. Thanks to Xen, the task was possible to complete. -But, what does it do? With this solution, students taking CCNA/CCNP level studies can have their own router lab on a bootable CD. No need for expensive equipment. The student can set up a virtual network of 10 routers or hosts, and exercise BGP, OSPF, ISIS and RIP routing. The routing software is Quagga, whose interface is very similar to Ciscos native CLI. Feel free to download our first Release Candidate at the project website; http://www.isk.kth.se/proj/qroutix/ Please note that the name "Qroutix" isn't ment for the final product. We're currently phasing over to the new name, which will impact the URL eventually. If the abobe link doesn't work, please try: http://www.isk.kth.se/proj/einar/ Don't hesitate to mail me or Anders feedback if you like (or dislike) our project. Best regards Rickard Borgmdster _______________________________________________ Xen-devel mailing list Xen-devel(a)lists.xensource.com http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

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Wow check out this huge enlargement patch sale!
by Deena Robison 10 Mar '06

10 Mar '06

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[dave@farber.net: [IP] Bush declares war on freedom of the press]
by Eugen Leitl 10 Mar '06

10 Mar '06

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

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Last chance for lower rates
by Ronald Hemphill 10 Mar '06

10 Mar '06

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Telling the 'approved' story
by coderman 10 Mar '06

10 Mar '06

i'd be laughing a lot harder were this not so disturbing; though still the funniest thing i've read this month: ---cut--- http://www.capitolhillblue.com/blog/2006/03/telling_the_approved_story.html Telling the 'approved' story March 7, 2006 01:12 AM / The Rant . By DOUG THOMPSON On an unspecified day last week an employee of a federal agency that cannot be revealed delivered a document that cannot be identified to a company that cannot be named seeking information that cannot be discussed. The aforementioned federal agent left the unidentified document with an employee of the unnamed company. That employee then called the owner, who must remain anonymous, to inform him that the document that could not be identified sought information that could not be discussed. The owner who must remain anonymous instructed the employee to deliver the unidentified document to a lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege. The lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege examined the unidentified document and then reviewed the information that could not be discussed with the owner who must remain anonymous. With the approval of the owner who must remain anonymous, the lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege contacted a U.S. attorney who demanded that his identity be concealed. The U.S. attorney who demanded that his identity be concealed then claimed the owner who must remain anonymous violated a law that could not be disclosed and faced arrest for charges that could not be specified because he had referred to the document that cannot be identified in an article for a certain, but unnamed, web site. The lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege argued that his client could not be charged under the undisclosed law because he had been acting as a journalist at the time of the alleged publication and not as the owner of the company that cannot be named. He had, in fact, learned of the existence of the document that cannot be identified from a third-party, who was not named, and was not aware of its exact contents because he had not seen or read the document and, therefore, was not aware of the exact contents that cannot be discussed. The U.S. attorney who demanded his identity be concealed consulted with others who names are classified and concluded that the owner who must remain anonymous walked a fine line between legal and illegal and would not face arrest for violating a law that could not be disclosed on charges that could not be specified. So walking this fine line of justice allowed the owner who must remain anonymous to avoid confinement at an institution at an unknown location for an unspecified length of time. In exchange for his freedom, the owner who must remain anonymous agreed to write a "clarification" of what happened, following the guidelines for publication laid down by the Bush administration. Which is what you just read. ---end-cut--- the piece which cannot be mentioned because it named the letter which must remain secret is here: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/blog/2006/03/bush_declares_war_on_freedom_o.…

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