July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: [FoRK] Decentralizing the Internet So Big Brother Canbt Find You
by Stephen Williams 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

I was really interested in Plug Computers a year or two ago, and I have a couple development units. For this kind of application, it seems that a certain range of applications, like personal servers and remote access to archives, is obvious (and there is an "app plug computer" for that, about $100). For really solving the decentralized problem, you'd want to pair it with mesh communications. I see several possibilities. Wifi-Wifi would be great, but there are antenna and power issues in many cases. Wifi-cellphone-picocell is more interesting because cell phones already can make significantly more distance than typical WiFi. This is also interesting if you add in resilient routing / store and forward / dynamic multi-modal addressing (including geo). Ideally, you can cover any distance and gaps for at least some transmission, and great transmission when possible, by opportunistically hitching a ride on any device to any device proximity. These devices (plug computers, smart phones, picocells, wifi base stations, bluetooth, zigbee) are inexpensive and low power enough that they could be just about everywhere. Every vehicle, street light / signal, business, person, and even important street surfaces and similar could be wirelessed with an open, cooperative, protocol. Doing it while controlling abuse and making use fair is the problem. The biggest hard problem is probably preventing bombing by e-signal. Some possible solutions: A) blackout in appropriate conditions (hard to prevent abuse of) and B) super-tracing / persistent following after the fact when a bad event happens and enough people vote for extreme transparency. In other words, detect the explosion or whatever, people hit the panic button, and every possible trigger is tracked back to a likely source and those sources are tracked for some time using all methods. There are a number of obvious apps for this kind of network: shotspotter (a la Bump) for all devices. Person-aware (what I mentioned yesterday a la traffic safety to prevent hitting children and animals in congested traffic areas). Emergency service / help expediting. sdw On 2/17/11 8:04 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/nyregion/16about.html?_r=1&pagewanted=pri… > > Decentralizing the Internet So Big Brother Canbt Find You > > By JIM DWYER > > On Tuesday afternoon, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke in > Washington about the Internet and human liberty, a Columbia law professor in > Manhattan, Eben Moglen, was putting together a shopping list to rebuild the > Internet b this time, without governments and big companies able to watch > every twitch of our fingers. > > The list begins with b cheap, small, low-power plug servers,b Mr. Moglen said. > b A small device the size of a cellphone charger, running on a low-power chip. > You plug it into the wall and forget about it.b > > Almost anyone could have one of these tiny servers, which are now produced > for limited purposes but could be adapted to a full range of Internet > applications, he said. > > b They will get very cheap, very quick,b Mr. Moglen said. b Theybre $99; they > will go to $69. Once everyone is getting them, they will cost $29.b > > The missing ingredients are software packages, which are available at no cost > but have to be made easy to use. b You would have a whole system with privacy > and security built in for the civil world we are living in,b he said. b It > stores everything you care about.b > > Put free software into the little plug server in the wall, and you would have > a Freedom Box that would decentralize information and power, Mr. Moglen said. > This month, he created the Freedom Box Foundation to organize the software. > > b We have to aim our engineering more directly at politics now,b he said. > b What has happened in Egypt is enormously inspiring, but the Egyptian state > was late to the attempt to control the Net and not ready to be as remorseless > as it could have been.b > > Not many law professors have Mr. Moglenbs credentials as lawyer and geek, or, > for that matter, his record as an early advocate for what looked like very > long shots. > > Growing up on the West Side of Manhattan, he began fooling around with > computers as a boy. In 1973, at age 14, he was employed writing programs for > the Scientific Time Sharing Corporation. At 26, he was a young lawyer, > clerking for Justice Thurgood Marshall. Later, he got a Ph.D. in history from > Yale. He was also the lawyer for the Free Software Foundation, headed by > Richard M. Stallman, which aggressively b and successfully b protected the > ability of computer scientists, hackers and hobbyists to build software that > was not tied up by copyright, licensing and patents. > > In the first days of the personal computer era, many scoffed at the idea that > free software could have an important place in the modern world. Today, it is > the digital genome for millions of phones, printers, cameras, MP3 players, > televisions, the Pentagon, the New York Stock Exchange and the computers that > underpin Googlebs empire. > > This month, Mr. Moglen, who now runs the Software Freedom Law Center, spoke > to a convention of 2,000 free-software programmers in Brussels, urging them > to get to work on the Freedom Box. > > Social networking has changed the balance of political power, he said, b but > everything we know about technology tells us that the current forms of social > network communication, despite their enormous current value for politics, are > also intensely dangerous to use. They are too centralized; they are too > vulnerable to state retaliation and control.b > > In January, investors were said to have put a value of about $50 billion on > Facebook, the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg. If revolutions for > freedom rest on the shoulders of Facebook, Mr. Moglen said, the > revolutionaries will have to count on individuals who have huge stakes in > keeping the powerful happy. > > b It is not hard, when everybody is just in one big database controlled by Mr. > Zuckerberg, to decapitate a revolution by sending an order to Mr. Zuckerberg > that he cannot afford to refuse,b Mr. Moglen said. > > By contrast, with tens of thousands of individual encrypted servers, there > would be no one place where a repressive government could find out who was > publishing or reading b subversiveb material. > > In response to Mr. Moglenbs call for help, a group of developers working in a > free operating system called Debian have started to organize Freedom Box > software. Four students from New York University who heard a talk by Mr. > Moglen last year have been building a decentralized social network called > Diaspora. > > Mr. Moglen said that if he could raise b slightly north of $500,000,b Freedom > Box 1.0 would be ready in one year. > > b We should make this far better for the people trying to make change than for > the people trying to make oppression,b Mr. Moglen said. b Being connected > works.b > > E-mail: dwyer(a)nytimes.com > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork -- Stephen D. Williams sdw(a)lig.net stephendwilliams(a)gmail.com LinkedIn: http://sdw.st/in V:650-450-UNIX (8649) V:866.SDW.UNIX V:703.371.9362 F:703.995.0407 AIM:sdw Skype:StephenDWilliams Yahoo:sdwlignet Resume: http://sdw.st/gres Personal: http://sdw.st facebook.com/sdwlig twitter.com/scienteer ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [FoRK] Decentralizing the Internet So Big Brother Canbt Find You
by Stephen Williams 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

I was really interested in Plug Computers a year or two ago, and I have a couple development units. For this kind of application, it seems that a certain range of applications, like personal servers and remote access to archives, is obvious (and there is an "app plug computer" for that, about $100). For really solving the decentralized problem, you'd want to pair it with mesh communications. I see several possibilities. Wifi-Wifi would be great, but there are antenna and power issues in many cases. Wifi-cellphone-picocell is more interesting because cell phones already can make significantly more distance than typical WiFi. This is also interesting if you add in resilient routing / store and forward / dynamic multi-modal addressing (including geo). Ideally, you can cover any distance and gaps for at least some transmission, and great transmission when possible, by opportunistically hitching a ride on any device to any device proximity. These devices (plug computers, smart phones, picocells, wifi base stations, bluetooth, zigbee) are inexpensive and low power enough that they could be just about everywhere. Every vehicle, street light / signal, business, person, and even important street surfaces and similar could be wirelessed with an open, cooperative, protocol. Doing it while controlling abuse and making use fair is the problem. The biggest hard problem is probably preventing bombing by e-signal. Some possible solutions: A) blackout in appropriate conditions (hard to prevent abuse of) and B) super-tracing / persistent following after the fact when a bad event happens and enough people vote for extreme transparency. In other words, detect the explosion or whatever, people hit the panic button, and every possible trigger is tracked back to a likely source and those sources are tracked for some time using all methods. There are a number of obvious apps for this kind of network: shotspotter (a la Bump) for all devices. Person-aware (what I mentioned yesterday a la traffic safety to prevent hitting children and animals in congested traffic areas). Emergency service / help expediting. sdw On 2/17/11 8:04 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: > http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/nyregion/16about.html?_r=1&pagewanted=pri… > > Decentralizing the Internet So Big Brother Canbt Find You > > By JIM DWYER > > On Tuesday afternoon, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke in > Washington about the Internet and human liberty, a Columbia law professor in > Manhattan, Eben Moglen, was putting together a shopping list to rebuild the > Internet b this time, without governments and big companies able to watch > every twitch of our fingers. > > The list begins with b cheap, small, low-power plug servers,b Mr. Moglen said. > b A small device the size of a cellphone charger, running on a low-power chip. > You plug it into the wall and forget about it.b > > Almost anyone could have one of these tiny servers, which are now produced > for limited purposes but could be adapted to a full range of Internet > applications, he said. > > b They will get very cheap, very quick,b Mr. Moglen said. b Theybre $99; they > will go to $69. Once everyone is getting them, they will cost $29.b > > The missing ingredients are software packages, which are available at no cost > but have to be made easy to use. b You would have a whole system with privacy > and security built in for the civil world we are living in,b he said. b It > stores everything you care about.b > > Put free software into the little plug server in the wall, and you would have > a Freedom Box that would decentralize information and power, Mr. Moglen said. > This month, he created the Freedom Box Foundation to organize the software. > > b We have to aim our engineering more directly at politics now,b he said. > b What has happened in Egypt is enormously inspiring, but the Egyptian state > was late to the attempt to control the Net and not ready to be as remorseless > as it could have been.b > > Not many law professors have Mr. Moglenbs credentials as lawyer and geek, or, > for that matter, his record as an early advocate for what looked like very > long shots. > > Growing up on the West Side of Manhattan, he began fooling around with > computers as a boy. In 1973, at age 14, he was employed writing programs for > the Scientific Time Sharing Corporation. At 26, he was a young lawyer, > clerking for Justice Thurgood Marshall. Later, he got a Ph.D. in history from > Yale. He was also the lawyer for the Free Software Foundation, headed by > Richard M. Stallman, which aggressively b and successfully b protected the > ability of computer scientists, hackers and hobbyists to build software that > was not tied up by copyright, licensing and patents. > > In the first days of the personal computer era, many scoffed at the idea that > free software could have an important place in the modern world. Today, it is > the digital genome for millions of phones, printers, cameras, MP3 players, > televisions, the Pentagon, the New York Stock Exchange and the computers that > underpin Googlebs empire. > > This month, Mr. Moglen, who now runs the Software Freedom Law Center, spoke > to a convention of 2,000 free-software programmers in Brussels, urging them > to get to work on the Freedom Box. > > Social networking has changed the balance of political power, he said, b but > everything we know about technology tells us that the current forms of social > network communication, despite their enormous current value for politics, are > also intensely dangerous to use. They are too centralized; they are too > vulnerable to state retaliation and control.b > > In January, investors were said to have put a value of about $50 billion on > Facebook, the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg. If revolutions for > freedom rest on the shoulders of Facebook, Mr. Moglen said, the > revolutionaries will have to count on individuals who have huge stakes in > keeping the powerful happy. > > b It is not hard, when everybody is just in one big database controlled by Mr. > Zuckerberg, to decapitate a revolution by sending an order to Mr. Zuckerberg > that he cannot afford to refuse,b Mr. Moglen said. > > By contrast, with tens of thousands of individual encrypted servers, there > would be no one place where a repressive government could find out who was > publishing or reading b subversiveb material. > > In response to Mr. Moglenbs call for help, a group of developers working in a > free operating system called Debian have started to organize Freedom Box > software. Four students from New York University who heard a talk by Mr. > Moglen last year have been building a decentralized social network called > Diaspora. > > Mr. Moglen said that if he could raise b slightly north of $500,000,b Freedom > Box 1.0 would be ready in one year. > > b We should make this far better for the people trying to make change than for > the people trying to make oppression,b Mr. Moglen said. b Being connected > works.b > > E-mail: dwyer(a)nytimes.com > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork -- Stephen D. Williams sdw(a)lig.net stephendwilliams(a)gmail.com LinkedIn: http://sdw.st/in V:650-450-UNIX (8649) V:866.SDW.UNIX V:703.371.9362 F:703.995.0407 AIM:sdw Skype:StephenDWilliams Yahoo:sdwlignet Resume: http://sdw.st/gres Personal: http://sdw.st facebook.com/sdwlig twitter.com/scienteer ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [silk] Bitcoin
by Alaric Snell-Pym 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On 05/16/11 21:07, Sirtaj Singh Kang wrote: > > On 16-May-11, at 9:34 PM, Alaric Snell-Pym wrote: >> You bet: http://bitmunchies.com/ > > Complete with fractional prices, I love it. Yeah, bitcoins can be divided into 10^8 little bits - and after that, there's already plans to introduce further subdivision. In case of deflation. > The currency is undergoing a bit of a bubble right now, by the way - > https://mtgox.com/ > At USD 8.373 per bitcoin, the bitcoin economy is theoretically valued at > USD 209 million. I have no idea what that means. It means "the current bounty for finding a flaw in the cryptographic basis of bitcoin is about $209 million" :-) > > -Taj. > ABS -- Alaric Snell-Pym http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [silk] Bitcoin
by Alaric Snell-Pym 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On 05/16/11 21:07, Sirtaj Singh Kang wrote: > > On 16-May-11, at 9:34 PM, Alaric Snell-Pym wrote: >> You bet: http://bitmunchies.com/ > > Complete with fractional prices, I love it. Yeah, bitcoins can be divided into 10^8 little bits - and after that, there's already plans to introduce further subdivision. In case of deflation. > The currency is undergoing a bit of a bubble right now, by the way - > https://mtgox.com/ > At USD 8.373 per bitcoin, the bitcoin economy is theoretically valued at > USD 209 million. I have no idea what that means. It means "the current bounty for finding a flaw in the cryptographic basis of bitcoin is about $209 million" :-) > > -Taj. > ABS -- Alaric Snell-Pym http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Tor 0.1.2.8-beta is out
by Roger Dingledine 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

This is the eighth development snapshot for the 0.1.2.x series. You'll notice that it's a beta -- more mature than an alpha but not yet a release candidate. It fixes a few crash bugs, and generally continues to clean things up. We're getting close! The bundles also come with Vidalia 0.0.11. http://tor.eff.org/download.html Changes in version 0.1.2.8-beta - 2007-02-26 o Major bugfixes (crashes): - Stop crashing when the controller asks us to resetconf more than one config option at once. (Vidalia 0.0.11 does this.) - Fix a crash that happened on Win98 when we're given command-line arguments: don't try to load NT service functions from advapi32.dll except when we need them. (Bug introduced in 0.1.2.7-alpha; resolves bug 389.) - Fix a longstanding obscure crash bug that could occur when we run out of DNS worker processes. (Resolves bug 390.) o Major bugfixes (hidden services): - Correctly detect whether hidden service descriptor downloads are in-progress. (Suggested by Karsten Loesing; fixes bug 399.) o Major bugfixes (accounting): - When we start during an accounting interval before it's time to wake up, remember to wake up at the correct time. (May fix bug 342.) o Minor bugfixes (controller): - Give the controller END_STREAM_REASON_DESTROY events _before_ we clear the corresponding on_circuit variable, and remember later that we don't need to send a redundant CLOSED event. (Resolves part 3 of bug 367.) - Report events where a resolve succeeded or where we got a socks protocol error correctly, rather than calling both of them "INTERNAL". - Change reported stream target addresses to IP consistently when we finally get the IP from an exit node. - Send log messages to the controller even if they happen to be very long. o Minor bugfixes (other): - Display correct results when reporting which versions are recommended, and how recommended they are. (Resolves bug 383.) - Improve our estimates for directory bandwidth to be less random: guess that an unrecognized directory will have the average bandwidth from all known directories, not that it will have the average bandwidth from those directories earlier than it on the list. - If we start a server with ClientOnly 1, then set ClientOnly to 0 and hup, stop triggering an assert based on an empty onion_key. - On platforms with no working mmap() equivalent, don't warn the user when cached-routers doesn't exist. - Warn the user when mmap() [or its equivalent] fails for some reason other than file-not-found. - Don't warn the user when cached-routers.new doesn't exist: that's perfectly fine when starting up for the first time. - When EntryNodes are configured, rebuild the guard list to contain, in order: the EntryNodes that were guards before; the rest of the EntryNodes; the nodes that were guards before. - Mask out all signals in sub-threads; only the libevent signal handler should be processing them. This should prevent some crashes on some machines using pthreads. (Patch from coderman.) - Fix switched arguments on memset in the implementation of tor_munmap() for systems with no mmap() call. - When Tor receives a router descriptor that it asked for, but no longer wants (because it has received fresh networkstatuses in the meantime), do not warn the user. Cache the descriptor if we're a cache; drop it if we aren't. - Make earlier entry guards _really_ get retried when the network comes back online. - On a malformed DNS reply, always give an error to the corresponding DNS request. - Build with recent libevents on platforms that do not define the nonstandard types "u_int8_t" and friends. o Minor features (controller): - Warn the user when an application uses the obsolete binary v0 control protocol. We're planning to remove support for it during the next development series, so it's good to give people some advance warning. - Add STREAM_BW events to report per-entry-stream bandwidth use. (Patch from Robert Hogan.) - Rate-limit SIGNEWNYM signals in response to controllers that impolitely generate them for every single stream. (Patch from mwenge; closes bug 394.) - Make REMAP stream events have a SOURCE (cache or exit), and make them generated in every case where we get a successful connected or resolved cell. o Minor bugfixes (performance): - Call router_have_min_dir_info half as often. (This is showing up in some profiles, but not others.) - When using GCC, make log_debug never get called at all, and its arguments never get evaluated, when no debug logs are configured. (This is showing up in some profiles, but not others.) o Minor features: - Remove some never-implemented options. Mark PathlenCoinWeight as obsolete. - Implement proposal 106: Stop requiring clients to have well-formed certificates; stop checking nicknames in certificates. (Clients have certificates so that they can look like Tor servers, but in the future we might want to allow them to look like regular TLS clients instead. Nicknames in certificates serve no purpose other than making our protocol easier to recognize on the wire.) - Revise messages on handshake failure again to be even more clear about which are incoming connections and which are outgoing. - Discard any v1 directory info that's over 1 month old (for directories) or over 1 week old (for running-routers lists). - Do not warn when individual nodes in the configuration's EntryNodes, ExitNodes, etc are down: warn only when all possible nodes are down. (Fixes bug 348.) - Always remove expired routers and networkstatus docs before checking whether we have enough information to build circuits. (Fixes bug 373.) - Put a lower-bound on MaxAdvertisedBandwidth. ----- 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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[silk] FBI buries docs showing US officials stole nuke secrets?
by Srini Ramakrishnan 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

I always thought it was the Chinese who sold the nuke to PK! Cheeni http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3216737.… Also on BB, http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/19/fbi-buries-docs-show.html >From The Sunday Times January 20, 2008 FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft The FBI has been accused of covering up a file detailing government dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets INSIGHT THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets. The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency's investigation of the network. Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency's Washington field office. She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file. Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an "outright lie". "I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations," she said. The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent. The letter says: "You may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office." It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file b many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public. Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion. She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points. The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001. It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official's warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause cC)lC(bre in the US. The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish "targets" talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of "operatives" at the ATC. Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed. "I cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders," she said, "but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists. "This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security." Insight: Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert and Joe Lauria ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[silk] FBI buries docs showing US officials stole nuke secrets?
by Srini Ramakrishnan 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

I always thought it was the Chinese who sold the nuke to PK! Cheeni http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3216737.… Also on BB, http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/19/fbi-buries-docs-show.html >From The Sunday Times January 20, 2008 FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft The FBI has been accused of covering up a file detailing government dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets INSIGHT THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets. The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency's investigation of the network. Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency's Washington field office. She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file. Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an "outright lie". "I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations," she said. The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent. The letter says: "You may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office." It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file b many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public. Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion. She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points. The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001. It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official's warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause cC)lC(bre in the US. The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish "targets" talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of "operatives" at the ATC. Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed. "I cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders," she said, "but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists. "This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security." Insight: Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert and Joe Lauria ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[drone-list] Afghan Drone Savagery Report Released
by John Young 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Centcom.mil released on 22 March 2012 a declassifed 2,100-page report on drone slaughter of 23 Afghan non-combatants - men, women, children - in February 2010, blamed on Creech AFB pilots over-enthusiasticly calling in Hellfires on a 3-vehicle civilian convoy. Minutely detailed descriptions are provided of how drones are directed from screeners at Centcom and pilots at Creech AFB using a battery of secure communications devices: IRC chat, radio, video, satellites, VOIP, telephone, not all of which are coordinated and supervised and thus lead to disaster. Pilots of choppers which fired the Hellfire missiles claim drone operators cannot be trusted due to lack of contact with real world conditions on the ground and because mission controllers at Creech reward "Top Gun" aggressiveness. Caution of screeners at Centcom and in Afghanistan in this case were overridden by drone operators at Creech to authorize kinetic action against the civilians. As one military interviewee said: from the safety of Creech drone pilots were too avid for kills and used the Tom Cruise Top Gun appellation to describe their "juvenile" behavior. The whole report is worth reading and promulgating to counter the PR machinery promoting drones as safe-kill from afar. Interviews of the civilians writhing painfully in hospitals probably won't get much press. Here are a couple of small excerpts: http://cryptome.org/2012/03/creech-savagery.pdf (summary of the report) http://cryptome.org/2012/03/creech-savagery2.pdf (hospital interview) _______________________________________________ drone-list mailing list drone-list(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/drone-list If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[drone-list] Afghan Drone Savagery Report Released
by John Young 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Centcom.mil released on 22 March 2012 a declassifed 2,100-page report on drone slaughter of 23 Afghan non-combatants - men, women, children - in February 2010, blamed on Creech AFB pilots over-enthusiasticly calling in Hellfires on a 3-vehicle civilian convoy. Minutely detailed descriptions are provided of how drones are directed from screeners at Centcom and pilots at Creech AFB using a battery of secure communications devices: IRC chat, radio, video, satellites, VOIP, telephone, not all of which are coordinated and supervised and thus lead to disaster. Pilots of choppers which fired the Hellfire missiles claim drone operators cannot be trusted due to lack of contact with real world conditions on the ground and because mission controllers at Creech reward "Top Gun" aggressiveness. Caution of screeners at Centcom and in Afghanistan in this case were overridden by drone operators at Creech to authorize kinetic action against the civilians. As one military interviewee said: from the safety of Creech drone pilots were too avid for kills and used the Tom Cruise Top Gun appellation to describe their "juvenile" behavior. The whole report is worth reading and promulgating to counter the PR machinery promoting drones as safe-kill from afar. Interviews of the civilians writhing painfully in hospitals probably won't get much press. Here are a couple of small excerpts: http://cryptome.org/2012/03/creech-savagery.pdf (summary of the report) http://cryptome.org/2012/03/creech-savagery2.pdf (hospital interview) _______________________________________________ drone-list mailing list drone-list(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/drone-list If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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CDR: Re: Internet Hoax Articles Considered Harmful=20
by Declan McCullagh 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Sun, Oct 07, 2001 at 11:54:50PM -0700, Tim May wrote: > PHILADELPHIA, Pennyslvania (AP) - Homeland Defense Secretary Tom Ridge = > said Sunday that the U.S. faces a serious and expanding threat from=20 > fraudulent Internet articles, or hoaxes. Almost. The most obvious sign that this is a hoax is your inclusion of the state in the dateline. For major cities, it's usually not = included. -Declan ------------------ I knew it was a hoax because I read the original article, which read: Ridge stressed that the U.S moves to limit false news articles will be=20 done with input from civil liberties groups, saying the moves are=20 ``against info-terrorists, info-terrorism, their sanctuaries and their=20 supporters, those who harbor them, those who give sanctuary to those=20 who harbor them, those who support those who give sanctuary to those who harbor them, those who associate with those who give them support, sanctuary, or harbor them, those we suspect of being associated with=20 those who are associated with those who give them support, sanctuary, or harbor them, those who are suspected of voting for the rulers of any country which has given them support, sanctuary, or harbored them, those who may associate in the future with someone who might consider giving them support, sanctuary, or harboring them...'' I cut it short, because the original is 378 GB... Suffice it to say that the ParaMeters for who is TargetAble as a = Certified BadGuy=20 has recently gotten Wider...and can be expected to MushRoom(BOOM!) at an expoential rate in the near future, now that THEY [TM] have seen the = Ease with which THEY [TM] can SMEAR just about anyone THEY [TM] please by=20 Painting a Wider Swath via GuiltByAssociation... (Can eWe Say "I Only Sent A Single eMail To Jim Bell In My Whole Life?") ((Sure, eWe Can...)) Sincerely, SomeOne Who Didn't Actually *Write* This eMail, But Who Knows An Uncle Of The Person Who Did ------=_NextPart_000_0077_01C14FD9.C2F024A0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=3DContent-Type content=3D"text/html; = charset=3Diso-8859-1"> <META content=3D"MSHTML 6.00.2600.0" name=3DGENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=3D#ffffff><FONT face=3DArial> <DIV><EM>Subject</EM>: CDR: Re: Internet Hoax Articles Considered = Harmful </DIV> <DIV><EM>From</EM>: Declan McCullagh <<A=20 href=3D"mailto:declan@well.com">declan(a)well.com</A>> = </DIV><PRE>On Sun, Oct = 07, 2001 at 11:54:50PM -0700, Tim May wrote: > PHILADELPHIA, Pennyslvania (AP) - Homeland Defense Secretary Tom = Ridge=20 > said Sunday that the U.S. faces a serious and expanding threat from = > fraudulent Internet articles, or hoaxes. Almost. The most obvious sign that this is a hoax is your inclusion of the state in the dateline. For major cities, it's usually not = included. -Declan ------------------</PRE><PRE>I knew it was a hoax because I read the = original article, which read:</PRE> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>Ridge stressed that the U.S moves to limit false = news articles=20 will be <BR>done with input from civil liberties groups, saying the = moves are=20 <BR>``against info-terrorists, info-terrorism, their sanctuaries and = their=20 <BR>supporters, those who harbor them, those who give sanctuary to those = </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>who harbor them, those who support those who give = sanctuary to=20 those</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>who harbor them, those who associate with those who = give them=20 support,</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>sanctuary, or harbor them, those we suspect of being = associated with </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>those who are associated with those who give them = support,=20 sanctuary,</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>or harbor them, those who are suspected of voting = for the=20 rulers of any</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>country which has given them support, sanctuary, or = harbored=20 them,</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>those who may associate in the future with someone = who might=20 consider</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>giving them support, sanctuary, or harboring=20 them...''</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>I cut it short, because the original is 378 = GB...</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>Suffice it to say that the ParaMeters for who is = TargetAble as=20 a Certified BadGuy </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>has </FONT><FONT size=3D2>recently gotten = Wider...and can be=20 expected to MushRoom(BOOM!) at an</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>expoential rate in the near future, now that THEY = [TM] have=20 seen the Ease with</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>which THEY [TM] can SMEAR just about anyone THEY = [TM] please=20 by </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>Painting a Wider Swath via = GuiltByAssociation...</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>(Can eWe Say "I Only Sent A Single eMail To Jim Bell = In My=20 Whole Life?")</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>((Sure, eWe Can...))</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>Sincerely,</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>SomeOne Who Didn't Actually *Write* This = eMail,</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>But Who Knows An Uncle Of The Person Who = Did</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3D2><BR> </DIV></FONT></FONT></BODY></HTML> ------=_NextPart_000_0077_01C14FD9.C2F024A0-- _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? 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