May 2006 - cypherpunks-legacy

Dear Sir, i am interested in it
by Kara Hayden 13 May '06

13 May '06

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3.25%% approvedd rattee
by Lindsay Miranda 13 May '06

13 May '06

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3.25%% approvedd rattee
by Vern Long 13 May '06

13 May '06

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[Clips] Reversing Course on Electronic Voting
by R.A. Hettinga 12 May '06

12 May '06

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB114739688261250925.html> The Wall Street Journal Reversing Course on Electronic Voting Some Former Backers of Technology Seek Return to Paper Ballots, Citing Glitches, Fraud Fears By JEANNE CUMMINGS May 12, 2006; Page A4 WASHINGTON -- Some advocates of a 2002 law mandating upgrades of the nation's voting machinery now worry the overhaul is making things worse. With the 2006 midterm elections approaching, proponents of the Help America Vote Act are filing lawsuits to block some state and election officials' efforts to comply with the act. The Help America Vote Act called for upgrading election equipment to guard against another contested outcome such as the 2000 presidential vote. Among the flaws in balloting almost six years ago were antiquated hand-operated voting machines and punch-card ballots that were difficult to read. To redress that, members of Congress pushed for modernization, which could include touch-screen voting machines, on which ballots are cast and recorded solely electronically. At the time, the electronic voting machines were seen as a reliable contrast to the older technology. The lawsuits -- nine so far -- coincide with a stampede by state and county officials to spend $3 billion allocated by Congress to help pay for upgrades. To comply with the Help America Vote Act, a number of states and dozens of counties purchased touch-screen voting machines. The deadline for spending the money is tied to each state's 2006 primary dates. Arizona was sued this week over such purchases and Colorado election officials are likely to be sued next week. The Arizona lawsuit seeks to block the purchase of electronic-voting machines that critics say are vulnerable to fraud and prone to inaccurate tabulations. Another complaint is that it is more difficult to recount ballots cast on electronic-voting machines than paper ones. The Help America Vote Act "has been turned on its head and it's causing more problems than solutions at this point," says Lowell Finley, a San Francisco lawyer and cofounder of Voter Action, a nonpartisan organization that is bringing some of the lawsuits. Makers of the new electronic-voting machines and local election officials acknowledge glitches with the new equipment, but say most problems result from human error, not technology. "This technology has been used effectively for 10 to 15 years," says David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold Inc., a maker of electronic-voting equipment. Jan Brewer, Arizona's secretary of state, calls the lawsuit's allegations "unsubstantiated" and said electronic machines are needed to allow disabled voters to cast their ballots privately and efficiently. "I have referred this matter to the attorney general and have asked him to seek a dismissal as soon as possible," she says. Still, the 2004 presidential campaign and some early primary elections this year have provided evidence that the machines don't always work smoothly. And several states, after experiencing problems with touch-screen electronic systems, abandoned them to return to optically scanned paper ballots, already commonly used for absentee balloting. Typically, paper ballots require a voter to use a pencil to fill in a circle. The system is less costly to buy and maintain, and provides a paper record of ballots that can be reviewed in close or disputed elections. Two governors have taken steps to curb the problems linked to electronic voting machines. New Mexico's Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson found his state in the national spotlight in 2004, when its election-night tallying of electronic voting was tardy and confusing. This year, he pushed through legislation mandating paper ballots -- which had been electronically scanned -- throughout the state. Maryland's Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich in February called for change after seeing a jump in the cost of maintaining and storing the sensitive electronic machines. Costs are anticipated to grow to $9.5 million next year from $858,000 in 2001. Critics of the touch-screen voting method are following two lines of attack: the machines are unreliable and some local election officials have become too dependent on an industry that already has too much control over testing and operating the sophisticated equipment. A North Carolina early voting test in the 2002 general election of six touch-screen machines made by Election Systems & Software Inc. uncovered a software problem that led to 436 uncounted votes. Local officials were further frustrated when a company representative acknowledged that they had seen the glitch before in a nearby county -- and hadn't shared the information. Ken Fields, spokesman for ES&S, of Omaha, Neb., said the problem stemmed from an "obscure technical issue" that made some machines function as if their memory was full. The glitch was solved by Election Day, he said. In Indiana, an ES&S employee alerted local-election officials that another ES&S worker had installed unauthorized software on the machines before the election. That and other disputes led to a multimillion-dollar settlement. Mr. Fields said it was "a mistake" to alter the software. "We could have done a better job communicating with the county," he said. In other cases, investigations have found that problems were caused by inexperienced election workers. In Illinois's recent primary, election officials in one precinct inserted a ballot improperly and paper jams caused breakdowns on other machines. "Perfect shouldn't be the death of good," says Mr. Bear, who contends there's plenty of evidence showing electronic machines perform far better than Florida's much-lampooned punch ballots and antiquated lever ballots. "There have always been issues with elections. Technology didn't introduce those issues," he said. Despite common charges that the machines lack adequate security, no cases have emerged proving that a hacker or an insider has or could electronically manipulate the vote. Still, computer-science experts argue that the systems lack protection. And former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former President Jimmy Carter, who were co-chairmen of the bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, warned in their 2005 final report that it could happen. "Software can be modified maliciously before being installed into individual voting machines. There is no reason to trust insiders in the election industry any more than in other industries," they found. -- ----------------- 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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[dave@farber.net: [IP] more on COMMENTS REQUESTED -- Apparent large telco liability based on USA Today facts]
by Eugen Leitl 12 May '06

12 May '06

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

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/. [Americans Not Bothered by NSA Spying]
by Eugen Leitl 12 May '06

12 May '06

Just being good Germans, the lot. Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/12/1334217 Posted by: Zonk, on 2006-05-12 14:23:00 [1]Snap E Tom writes "According to a Washington Post poll, a majority (63%) of Americans 'said they found the NSA program to be [2]an acceptable way to investigate terrorism.' A slightly higher majority would not be bothered if the NSA collected personal calls that they made. Even though the program has received bi-partisan criticism from Congress, it appears that the public values security over privacy." References 1. http://www.shuchow.com/ 2. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/12/AR200605120… 75_pf.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 Yigil Wilhelm 12 May '06

12 May '06

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[Clips] Note the date: Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report
by R.A. Hettinga 12 May '06

12 May '06

...From the "so, what else is new?" file... Cheers, RAH ------- --- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: rah(a)shipwright.com Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 22:06:31 -0400 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Note the date: Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html?ei=5090&en=016edb46b7…> The New York Times December 24, 2005 Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials. The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said. As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said. The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter. "There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that." Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda. What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation. The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified. Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.'s use of broad searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the program's operational details, as well as its legality. Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said. This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom. The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's Capps program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties. But the Bush administration regards the N.S.A.'s ability to trace and analyze large volumes of data as critical to its expanded mission to detect terrorist plots before they can be carried out, officials familiar with the program say. Administration officials maintain that the system set up by Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not give them the speed and flexibility to respond fully to terrorist threats at home. A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists. "All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared with them, and since 9/11, there's been much more active involvement in that area," said the former manager, a telecommunications expert who did not want his name or that of his former company used because of concern about revealing trade secrets. Such information often proves just as valuable to the government as eavesdropping on the calls themselves, the former manager said. "If they get content, that's useful to them too, but the real plum is going to be the transaction data and the traffic analysis," he said. "Massive amounts of traffic analysis information - who is calling whom, who is in Osama Bin Laden's circle of family and friends - is used to identify lines of communication that are then given closer scrutiny." Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined. The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches. One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches. The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully addressed by 1970's-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for domestic surveillance. Historically, the American intelligence community has had close relationships with many communications and computer firms and related technical industries. But the N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's operational capability, according to current and former government officials. Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be significant. "If the government is gaining access to the switches like this, what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data," he said. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _______________________________________________ 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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by Thelma Lusk 12 May '06

12 May '06

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by Brett Romo 12 May '06

12 May '06

widely-loved books like Winnie-the-Pooh, would immediately become eligible for going online. Interests on both sides of the previous levels for some titles. MIT Press reports similar results. Publishers cite the exposure available on the Web as

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