July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

[tp] Drones for Human Rights!
by Hughes, James J. 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

January 30, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/opinion/drones-for-human-rights.html?sq=D… Drones for Human Rights By ANDREW STOBO SNIDERMAN and MARK HANIS Washington DRONES are not just for firing missiles in Pakistan. In Iraq, the State Department is using them to watch for threats to Americans. It's time we used the revolution in military affairs to serve human rights advocacy. With drones, we could take clear pictures and videos of human rights abuses, and we could start with Syria<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/sy…>. The need there is even more urgent now, because the Arab League<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/arab_le…>'s observers suspended operations last week. They fled the very violence they were trying to monitor. Drones could replace them, and could even go to some places the observers, who were escorted and restricted by the government, could not see. This we know: the Syrian government isn't just fighting rebels, as it claims; it is shooting unarmed protesters, and has been doing so for months. Despite a ban on news media, much of the violence is being caught on camera by ubiquitous cellphones. The footage is shaky and the images grainy, but still they make us YouTube witnesses. Imagine if we could watch in high definition with a bird's-eye view. A drone would let us count demonstrators, gun barrels and pools of blood. And the evidence could be broadcast for a global audience, including diplomats at the United Nations and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court. Drones are increasingly small, affordable and available to nonmilitary buyers. For hundreds of thousands of dollars - no longer many millions - a surveillance drone could be flying over protests and clashes in Syria. An environmental group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has reported that it is using drones to monitor illegal Japanese whaling in the waters of the Southern Hemisphere. In the past few years, human-rights groups and the actor and activist George Clooney<http://www.satsentinel.org/>, among others, have purchased satellite imagery of conflict zones. Drones can see even more clearly, and broadcast in real time. We could record the repression in Syria with unprecedented precision and scope. The better the evidence, the clearer the crimes, the higher the likelihood that the world would become as outraged as it should be. This sounds a lot like surveillance, and it would be. It would violate Syrian airspace, and perhaps a number of Syrian and international laws. It isn't the kind of thing nongovernmental organizations usually do. But it is very different from what governments and armies do. Yes, we (like them) have an agenda, but ours is transparent: human rights. We have a duty, recognized internationally, to monitor governments that massacre their own people in large numbers. Human rights organizations have always done this. Why not get drones to assist the good work? It may be illegal in the Syrian government's eyes, but supporting Nelson Mandela in South Africa was deemed illegal during the apartheid era. To fly over Syria's territory may violate official norms of international relations, but governments do this when they support opposition groups with weapons, money or intelligence, as NATO countries did recently in Libya. In any event, violations of Syrian sovereignty would be the direct consequence of the Syrian state's brutality, not the imperialism of outsiders. There are some obvious risks and downsides to the drone approach. The Syrian government would undoubtedly seize the opportunity to blame a foreign conspiracy for its troubles. Local operators of the drones could be at risk, though a higher-end drone could be controlled from a remote location or a neighboring country. Such considerations figured in conversations we have had with human rights organizations that considered hiring drones in Syria, but opted in the end for supplying protesters with phones, satellite modems and safe houses. For nearly a year now, brave amateurs with their tiny cameras arguably have been doing the trick in Syria. In those circumstances, the value that a drone could add might not be worth the investment and risks. Even if humanitarian drones are not used in Syria, they should assume their place in the arsenal of human rights advocates. It is a precedent worth setting, especially in situations where evidence of large-scale human rights violations is hard to come by. Drones can reach places and see things cell phones cannot. Social media did not document the worst of the genocide in the remote villages of Darfur in 2003 and 2004. Camera-toting protesters could not enter the fields where 8,000 men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in 1995. Graphic and detailed evidence of crimes against humanity does not guarantee a just response, but it helps. If human rights organizations can spy on evil, they should. Andrew Stobo Sniderman<http://www.stobo.ca/Home.html> and Mark Hanis<http://www.echoinggreen.org/fellows/mark-hanis> are co-founders of the Genocide Intervention Network. ----- 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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Lucrative update
by Patrick 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Lucrative release 4 is out. I know many people are used to seeing releases numbered like "0.000001", "0.000002", "2.0.3.0.14.657" etc. but release numbering systems are essentially arbitrary in nature so don't get excited as Lucrative goes toward version 50+. This release is a fairly minor one, but included some changes such as the client name that I wanted to get out as soon as possible. There is also a new development weblog at http://lucrative.thirdhost.com/weblog/. I went through an install with someone over IRC last night and made a blog entry summarizing the install notes. I recommend reading the notes before attempting an install. I am glad to help with an install, drop me a note at patrick(a)lfcgate.com if you have trouble. Some documentation on the various entities in the Lucrative system is now available on the website, http://lucrative.thirdhost.com/documentation.php but more is needed and coming. If Lucrative is interesting to you, please consider helping in any way you can: Feedback Installation reports Suggestions Comments Criticism Feature requests Source code patches Donations Are all very much welcomed. And criticism is more useful to me than praise. My sincere thanks to everyone who has participated so far by installing, testing, providing feedback, spreading the word, and donating. And finally I just received word from SourceForge that the project registration for Lucrative has been approved. Regards, Patrick -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.3 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> mQGiBD5ECKcRBADUvjXHwLtxIyS4AyjBs/dFtN6rdeP18Fhzh1hD5fJwkFevqY9Z I1ASROTh6eXYF7pU5sEvbcPshHyTB41ZtTqZvQvpwWN0fUzOuutuI0mtC5UPp9Rz j47SdWLdEXNHjwnHDCYSyqtqZu8GujGRQybR0eP3NIh/NwbSDUKdgz7IjwCg//Jo UtjP3zUFobm/0UYA+CJ5krED/091x9Js0gwNwvjbzM8DqO+r8qNz0kXI13FkrPRk QNd37lxt6m2m8HZD1WYM2wKwtMzHSwJcWzaDZ/tNc+ppYjzpw0EQCh9FqjGs8Vau guF6PA1M8lJTCcLKaL4e7ynic+PAw5Xa/tdOYgFCG+eLMU5RLvzRCYoOLIjgMJLJ yG98BACAMlDmFVYgC/UKvzZmHfZ5CtCKd8sPfCXrYLu5NeFRE0LR6D6zjzmhi1xX okfreR5o3T/y78VBM98js+m2/+7Z0AElqydeW/RnV1zqwDGjDr9z2MgARf3yLAbs n3BU8Fz61RwvHy6cRkT+2dR2f69QQUSpkupvLwZIGX/iwm4uKLQdUGF0cmljayA8 cGF0cmlja0BsZmNnYXRlLmNvbT6JAE4EEBECAA4FAj5ECKcECwMCAQIZAQAKCRBb mvb9yuOVfaA2AKDAu5tDj9F2KI8cJMrKKkQRAcUyxACg6/bei7lUJH+E5igJqGRx SjKrRA65BA0EPkQIpxAQAPkYoH5aBmF6Q5CV3AVsh4bsYezNRR8O2OCjecbJ3HoL rOQ/40aUtjBKU9d8AhZIgLUV5SmZqZ8HdNP/46HFliBOmGW42A3uEF2rthccUdhQ yiJXQym+lehWKzh4XAvb+ExN1eOqRsz7zhfoKp0UYeOEqU/Rg4Soebbvj6dDRgjG zB13VyQ4SuLE8OiOE2eXTpITYfbb6yUOF/32mPfIfHmwch04dfv2wXPEgxEmK0Ng w+Po1gr9oSgmC66prrNlD6IAUwGgfNaroxIe+g8qzh90hE/K8xfzpEDp19J3tkIt AjbBJstoXp18mAkKjX4t7eRdefXUkk+bGI78KqdLfDL2Qle3CH8IF3KiutapQvMF 6PlTETlPtvFuuUs4INoBp1ajFOmPQFXz0AfGy0OplK33TGSGSfgMg71l6RfUodNQ +PVZX9x2Uk89PY3bzpnhV5JZzf24rnRPxfx2vIPFRzBhznzJZv8V+bv9kV7HAarT W56NoKVyOtQa8L9GAFgr5fSI/VhOSdvNILSd5JEHNmszbDgNRR0PfIizHHxbLY72 88kjwEPwpVsYjY67VYy4XTjTNP18F1dDox0YbN4zISy1Kv884bEpQBgRjXyEpwpy 1obEAxnIByl6ypUM2Zafq9AKUJsCRtMIPWakXUGfnHy9iUsiGSa6q6Jew1XrPdYX AAICD/wKwtF7Y4NKBe8PQ6jDbjWziiTv9Ac/EnRTJDQEoqgLa2LyE+6Ahw/VPGvp mfxkD2MKxC9E7kYVmasn6sHnSpvAv3e7O1Bqbo/qLzzCcJQ5VCurZ+elRM1GZ4Oc fM19FPKutb0/JFEv0nrqS4BGkF7WFBbu5dKYl/GIO7Co1mAerFIb719dOwMPVEIz OT08u8uB9jyR8gEElf+CVuNfOUkrUGg4HS4SbmTTrCSz3/8n5PkquSuAyjCB/dwM ZsZwA0/TTR8sDYlmlf9xPj5PGpGnV9OUwfig6eE0eWtRFeasmz0uiX+yp45ABtNh 6EXP/PFaBgXi9omXXjeeFYfpDvmfA6izvTIQfXTV6V9ZWrBfXarM+GQ+6guXWVbd 9fXvmCr982LkzuKQrK1OpRXBMUapXL+tOy/LYzz91InqKKhgPNGa12fvotZ4LzlM iqoM+Hpz5L9B5We1Ph0lD6RBVXDCqd+P8extnY/7AaDy7tC0UghaAaUuEZXJQPIc oQ3QGbpjM0nGe/VZN5EZhljau0NNENFaU56cOpvOhcO04gLGNNc2NS+rIpTMsaHh o1CG90c5zZZJuUbyx0mIHriNQXDgEwunSZPQorKK9KSppyyjeuOyi5F/mBBPXeyT weLhLqLvAr9se/+Z3aQvMADJi8zUZtGggLTw+N9R5XSwtSh2R4kARgQYEQIABgUC PkQIpwAKCRBbmvb9yuOVfWayAKC+mBhHdn1XZ5uH0RocAyJ32hx2kgCePyhB+IqM TjWLDLarQxcPYhbkFi4= =nx1M -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- --- 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' --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

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[freedmoney-svn] r247 - trunk/src/cash
by FreeDMoney SVN 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Author: rachel Date: 2007-07-16 18:12:17 +0100 (Mon, 16 Jul 2007) New Revision: 247 Modified: trunk/src/cash/init.cxx Log: create directories before opening database Modified: trunk/src/cash/init.cxx =================================================================== --- trunk/src/cash/init.cxx 2007-07-16 16:21:03 UTC (rev 246) +++ trunk/src/cash/init.cxx 2007-07-16 17:12:17 UTC (rev 247) @@ -194,6 +194,18 @@ int count=0; Db_Sqlite3 db; + + // Create directories + + if (!areDirsCreated()) + { + std::cout << "Creating Dirs" << endl; + if (!create_dirs()) + { + throw runtime_error("Cannot create Dirs"); + } + } + db.open(); // @@ -246,17 +258,6 @@ db.Exec(sql); } - // Create directories - - if (!areDirsCreated()) - { - std::cout << "Creating Dirs" << endl; - if (!create_dirs()) - { - throw runtime_error("Cannot create Dirs"); - } - } - count=0; // read issuer details from DB _______________________________________________ freedmoney-svn mailing list freedmoney-svn(a)freedmoney.org http://www.freedmoney.org/mailman/listinfo/freedmoney-svn --- 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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[tp] Drones for Human Rights!
by Hughes, James J. 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

January 30, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/opinion/drones-for-human-rights.html?sq=D… Drones for Human Rights By ANDREW STOBO SNIDERMAN and MARK HANIS Washington DRONES are not just for firing missiles in Pakistan. In Iraq, the State Department is using them to watch for threats to Americans. It's time we used the revolution in military affairs to serve human rights advocacy. With drones, we could take clear pictures and videos of human rights abuses, and we could start with Syria<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/sy…>. The need there is even more urgent now, because the Arab League<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/arab_le…>'s observers suspended operations last week. They fled the very violence they were trying to monitor. Drones could replace them, and could even go to some places the observers, who were escorted and restricted by the government, could not see. This we know: the Syrian government isn't just fighting rebels, as it claims; it is shooting unarmed protesters, and has been doing so for months. Despite a ban on news media, much of the violence is being caught on camera by ubiquitous cellphones. The footage is shaky and the images grainy, but still they make us YouTube witnesses. Imagine if we could watch in high definition with a bird's-eye view. A drone would let us count demonstrators, gun barrels and pools of blood. And the evidence could be broadcast for a global audience, including diplomats at the United Nations and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court. Drones are increasingly small, affordable and available to nonmilitary buyers. For hundreds of thousands of dollars - no longer many millions - a surveillance drone could be flying over protests and clashes in Syria. An environmental group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has reported that it is using drones to monitor illegal Japanese whaling in the waters of the Southern Hemisphere. In the past few years, human-rights groups and the actor and activist George Clooney<http://www.satsentinel.org/>, among others, have purchased satellite imagery of conflict zones. Drones can see even more clearly, and broadcast in real time. We could record the repression in Syria with unprecedented precision and scope. The better the evidence, the clearer the crimes, the higher the likelihood that the world would become as outraged as it should be. This sounds a lot like surveillance, and it would be. It would violate Syrian airspace, and perhaps a number of Syrian and international laws. It isn't the kind of thing nongovernmental organizations usually do. But it is very different from what governments and armies do. Yes, we (like them) have an agenda, but ours is transparent: human rights. We have a duty, recognized internationally, to monitor governments that massacre their own people in large numbers. Human rights organizations have always done this. Why not get drones to assist the good work? It may be illegal in the Syrian government's eyes, but supporting Nelson Mandela in South Africa was deemed illegal during the apartheid era. To fly over Syria's territory may violate official norms of international relations, but governments do this when they support opposition groups with weapons, money or intelligence, as NATO countries did recently in Libya. In any event, violations of Syrian sovereignty would be the direct consequence of the Syrian state's brutality, not the imperialism of outsiders. There are some obvious risks and downsides to the drone approach. The Syrian government would undoubtedly seize the opportunity to blame a foreign conspiracy for its troubles. Local operators of the drones could be at risk, though a higher-end drone could be controlled from a remote location or a neighboring country. Such considerations figured in conversations we have had with human rights organizations that considered hiring drones in Syria, but opted in the end for supplying protesters with phones, satellite modems and safe houses. For nearly a year now, brave amateurs with their tiny cameras arguably have been doing the trick in Syria. In those circumstances, the value that a drone could add might not be worth the investment and risks. Even if humanitarian drones are not used in Syria, they should assume their place in the arsenal of human rights advocates. It is a precedent worth setting, especially in situations where evidence of large-scale human rights violations is hard to come by. Drones can reach places and see things cell phones cannot. Social media did not document the worst of the genocide in the remote villages of Darfur in 2003 and 2004. Camera-toting protesters could not enter the fields where 8,000 men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in 1995. Graphic and detailed evidence of crimes against humanity does not guarantee a just response, but it helps. If human rights organizations can spy on evil, they should. Andrew Stobo Sniderman<http://www.stobo.ca/Home.html> and Mark Hanis<http://www.echoinggreen.org/fellows/mark-hanis> are co-founders of the Genocide Intervention Network. ----- 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: Authenticate the "adult field", go to jail...
by obvious＠beta.freedom.net 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

RAH writes: > I don't think you understand how bearer credentials would work. > > With blinded bearer credentials, prosecutors wouldn't have much of a leg to > stand on, since the authenticator is only validating the *existence*, or > not, of a blinded age credential. With bearer credentials, authenticated in > exchange, of course, for cash :-), the authenticator of those credentials > has no idea *who* is asking for that proof of age. You're saying that the customer comes to the porn merchant with a blinded credential. The merchant goes to the authenticator with the credential, and pays for it to be authenticated. The blinding is there to protect the customer, as the credential is unlinkable to his credit card which he used to prove his age. > There's no direct sales contact with any particular content vendor. > Validation of age would probably be done in somekind of graded auction > market, anyway. Actually there is direct sales contact with the content vendor. The notion that he is going to come to the authenticator and pay CASH for EVERY customer contact is absurd. It's completely uneconomical until we have a worldwide ecash infrastructure. If that's what you had in mind, shut up for ten years and speak up when you have something relevant to say. What will really happen is that the porn merchant will have an account with the authenticator, and he'll pay every month or so based on how many authentications have been done. That's how business works. This means that there IS sales contact, and the authenticator DOES KNOW who his merchants are. It is exactly the same business relationship as exists today, except that the customers have the benefit of blinding to protect their identities. > >> Thomas Reedy, 37, and his wife, Janice Reedy, 32, of Fort Worth, are > >> accused in an 87-count indictment of providing access to several >child-porn > >> Internet sites by verifying subscribers' credit cards and assigning them > >> passwords. > >> > >> The Reedys maintain that they did not know that some of the pornographic > >> sites they provided access to contained illegal child pornography. > > > > In fact if anything this kind of prosecution is an argument *against* > > getting into the ecash/ecredential business, especially if it is focused > > on porn as some have proposed. All you need is for someone to use it > > to sell or authorize access to kiddie porn, and you're going to jail. > > It would be interesting to see this tested in court. There is sizeable > legal precedent for the issuers of bearer cash, say a nation-state, not > being held liable for purchases using that cash. The same could be said for > issuers of bearer credentials. Somehow I doubt that the Reedys are going to get away with saying that governments aren't held liable for misdeeds commited with their currency, so they shouldn't be blamed when someone sells bad stuff using the Reedy's own services. Look at what they're accused of! Providing access to kiddie porn by verifying credit cards and assigning passwords. That's exactly what your bearer cert business will do except instead of passwords they'll issue blinded tokens. This is especially true when the de facto market for such a business is only the worst porn, the porn that the customers really don't want anyone to be able to find out they were involved with. This kind of information comes out in court. You can't hide it. Obvious. ________________________________________________________________________ Total Internet Privacy -- get your Freedom Nym at http://www.freedom.net --- 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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FC: Congress drafts new "anti-terror" bill -- with expiration date
by Declan McCullagh 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Text of the new PATRIOT ("Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism") Act: http://www.well.com/~declan/sep11/patriot.act.100101.pdf Background on other legislation: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,47199,00.html http://www.wartimeliberty.com/search.pl?topic=legislation -Declan ********* http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47230,00.html Eavesdrop Now, Reassess Later? By Declan McCullagh (declan(a)wired.com) 5:00 p.m. Oct. 1, 2001 PDT WASHINGTON -- House negotiators have drafted anti-terrorism legislation to grant police unprecedented eavesdropping powers that would automatically expire in two years. Leaders of the House Judiciary committee have crafted a new anti-terrorism bill, called the Patriot Act, that includes nearly all the surveillance abilities requested by President Bush -- but with a sunset date of Dec. 31, 2003. A vote on the bill is expected this week. A 122-page draft (PDF) of the Patriot Act, obtained by Wired News, says that police could conduct Internet wiretaps in some situations without court orders, that judges' ability to reject surveillance requests would be sharply curtailed, and that the powers of a secret federal court would be expanded. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- End forwarded message -----

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[FoES] Men are from Mars, the Illuminati are from Uranus, pt. 25 (foes version)
by Er Times 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Note: Sorry if you get this twice, but Chris K. has graciously set up a temp foes server and I wanted to offer this up for a wider discussion. MEN ARE FROM MARS, THE ILLUMINATI ARE FROM URANUS, PT. 25 COMMENTARY: Over the past six months, there has been one story that haunts me above all others. In fact, I have a whole series of related items that I can?t move forward on until I get this story out. This is the story of Columbia Pacific University. Last year, Dan Hopsicker busted out a series of three articles called ?COINTELPRO 911? that rocked my world and the worlds of many other people researching 911. I won?t hesitate to say that it substantially affected my life and entire worldview. Previously, I had certainly spent considerable time researching political topics, spies, covert operations, the drug mafia, and a host of other topics. But I had never seriously considered the topic of intelligence and organized crime penetration and collaboration with significant elements of the New Age movement, especially cults. Hopsicker?s series opened a whole new world to me, a great, gaping abyss of intrigue, skullduggery, manipulation, and social programming. It was almost like being let in on a cosmic joke. It was also intimidating and terrifying. But it is definitely funny! Or at least Hopsicker?s take lightens the darker aspects of it. Columbia Pacific is the alma mater of John ?Men are from Mars? Gray. It is part of a network of phony diploma mills that appear to be fronts for intelligence agencies. Abdusattir Shaikh, the FBI informant who housed two of the 911 hijackers, is a part of this network. The Columbia Pacific story is one of numerous heartbreaks, some so dark it hurts to think about them, some so funny, it is hard not to laugh. It?s a story almost unparalleled in my lifetime, in my opinion. And one that may never be told in any mainstream news outlet, sadly. Hopsicker veered away from this topic during the election?s aftermath and didn?t return? until now. In the meantime, I did my own digging and found far more than he had used in his original series. But I never could get myself to write it up. I don?t know why, it wasn?t writers block in the usual sense, just some kind of mental block? maybe just FEAR. However, two days ago, Hopsicker came back to this story? in fucking spades. He hadn?t forgotten about this detail that has fascinated and bothered me for six months.. He went to San Diego and interviewed everybody he could find. And in doing so, he kicked me in the ass to write my take on Columbia Pacific University, which will be Men are from Mars, pt. 26 and in your inbox shortly. Number 26 will be a preview to a series that could only be titled ?Lord of My Wind? and could be considered a sequel to Men are from Mars. By reading the Hopsicker stories and Number 26, one will hopefully acquire the necessary background to understand the ?Lord of My Wind? series. But now for Dan Hopsicker?. I?ll include the text, but as with all Hopsicker stories, they are better with the pictures on his homepage. Also, here are the links to the original COINTELPRO 911 series that rocked my world six months ago. ORIGINALS: http://www.madcowprod.com/mc6612004.html http://www.madcowprod.com/mc6712004.html http://www.madcowprod.com/MC6812004.html NEW: http://www.madcowprod.com/04112005.html THE SECRET WORLD OF 9.11 Terrorists, Arms Dealers, & Ghosts in Malawi ?There?s a secret world all around us,? a legendary CIA agent tells a young recruit in ?Overworld,? L.J.. Kolb?s eye-opening account of growing up as the son of an American spy. ?You just don?t see it unless you know where to look.? April 11,2005 -Venice, FL. by Daniel Hopsicker Crucial details in the biography of "Professor? Abdussattar Shaikh, the San Diego man called the "best chance to uncover the Sept. 11 plot before it happened? by the Joint Congressional 9.11 Intelligence Committee, are untrue, mis-leading, or false, a MadCowMorningNews investigation has discovered. Like the senior Al-Qaeda operative just indicted for planning to blow up U.S. financial landmarks, alleged to have operated freely in this country using his student status "as cover to conceal the true purpose of his subsequent trips to the United States," the true identity of Shaikh, a key witness to the 9.11 conspiracy, is shielded from view by bogus claims of academic employment and status. The practice of using Universities to provide cover for foreign nationals in the U.S.?either as terrorists or as U.S. intel assets, or both?appears to have been widespread; so widespread in San Diego, at least, that the San Diego FBI?s own confidential informants were engaged in it. An image boost from a friendly media outlet The man who had two hijackers living in his house in San Diego while operating at the same time as a confidential informant for the FBI was identified in wire reports as ?a retired professor of English as San Diego State? as well as ?vice president for international projects at American Commonwealth University.? After visiting the various locations around San Diego where he was said to have worked, we discovered that Abdussattar Shaikh never taught at San Diego State, nor been a Professor of English, and possesses a phony PhD from a bogus diploma mill run by people with U.S. military and intelligence connections, and the University for which he was said to be a vice president for international projects does not, in fact, exist. The official explanation of who Abdussattar Shaikh is appears to be a lie. And there's one more thing... "Abdussattar Shaikh" is not his real name. The Secret World of 9.11 In the gap between what happens and what gets reported lies the secret history. In sunny San Diego, we discovered, it was visible almost everywhere you looked. Just as a handful of highly-suspect flight schools in Florida provided ?cover? for Mohamed Atta and his terrorist cadre, a handful of bogus ?Universities? in San Diego provided a cloak of legitimacy to a number of suspected terrorists. The ?University? for which Shaikh handled those mysterious ?international projects,? American Commonwealth University, is one of a cluster of interlocking diploma mills which exist only as mail drops in San Diego. At the time in question, American Commonwealth no longer even existed as that. It had been forced out of business by state regulators. In its place at its old address in a non-descript office building alongside the 805 freeway in San Diego are a clutch of other faux citadels of learning, with names like Golden Gate University, Huron International University, and the American Institute of Hypnotherapy, all presumably carrying on the murky legacy of Amer-Comm U. The scam schools, we learned, are run by an reoccurring cast of characters who might be dismissed as ?scam artists,? except that some of them have what appear to be U.S. military and intelligence connections. Shaikh?s supposed ?employer,? American Commonwealth University, for example, began life as William Lyon University, named for and founded by retired Air Force General William Lyon, a big wheel in California Republican circles as Chairman of the GOP?s ?Team California Victory 2004,? and a member of a group of wealthy, high-powered Orange County's Republicans called ?The New Majority.? One big question raised by the news: how many FBI informants who house terrorists under cover of working for non-existent Universities with U.S. military connections are still out there? The San Diego Union Tribune Spins the Shaikh Consider how Shaikh was presented to the American people in the media: The Associated Press labeled Shaikh ?a retired San Diego State University English teacher.? Ditto The Los Angeles Times, which called him ?a retired professor in suburban San Diego.? Shaikh?s description as ?prominent Muslim leader and former San Diego State University English professor? was based on initial reporting by the San Diego Union-Tribune. ?The retired San Diego State University English professor said he often invites students to live in his five-bedroom house for companionship and to learn other cultures and languages,? said the Sept 16,2001 San Diego Union Tribune. It wasn?t true. They admitted the error in a correction. ?Muslim leader Abdussattar Shaikh was misidentified as a retired San Diego State University professor in a story Sunday. In fact, he is a retired educator who taught at Mesa and Miramar colleges and American Commonwealth University in San Diego. The Union-Tribune regrets the error.? But the damage had been done, and in most subsequent stories Shaikh was called a ?San Diego Professor,? which was apparently all that was necessary to deflect any closer scrutiny. He was called ?a trusted informant for the FBI." Newsweek dubbed him a tested undercover asset." No U.S. media outlet has reported, until now, that Abdussattar Shaikh is not even his real name, as we learned from a profile on Indian-born Shaikh in his hometown Indian newspaper India-West, which reported on Oct 12, 2001 that Shaikh had changed his name from "Abdussattar Chhipa," a common Muslim name in India and Pakistan. No word, however, on why. "State-Sponsored Crime can be highly efficient." We contacted the California Bureau of Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education enquiring about Abdussattar Shaikh?s PhD. Deborah Godfrey asked us to hold while she checked, then came back and said there was nobody by that name in her records. ?There is no definitive source for records from that ?school,?? she stated. ? The transcripts I have came from someone?s garage.? At one time both ?schools? cited in Shaikh?s resume?American Commonwealth and United States International University?had been run by Dr. Richard Crews, an M.D. from Harvard, whose pedigree includes stints as Chief of Psychiatry at Womack military hospital and "Chief of Mental Hygiene Consultation Services? at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home of America?s Special Forces. Curiously for someone with this background, Crew?s life had somehow led him to the Presidency of two bogus Universities. But the clearly educationally-minded Dr. Crews wasn?t done by a long shot. He?d also helmed Columbia Pacific University, the school that awarded Mars & Venus?s ?Dr.? John Gray his doctorate in snake-oil. The bogus diploma mill was eventually shut down in the late ?90?s by the state of California. But not without a fight. A sticky GOP wicket ?At one time there was no law in this field at all,? explained California?s Deborah Godfrey. ?When we first tried to take action against Columbia Pacific, it was all the way back in 1989,? she said. ?We immediately encountered the wrath of Governor Pete Wilson. There was an vindictive atmosphere, full of reprisals.? When Wilson finally appointed a task force to investigate the industry, it was packed with the owners of the bogus schools. In fact, Richard Crews was the chairman of the committee. When we heard this we thought: this guy is pretty ?connected.? Then we found a story about Gov. Wilson?s having relied on special interest groups to pay the costs of routine and campaign travel. The biggest contributors were pretty predictable: California Winegrape Growers, the Independent Oil Producers, Merchants and Manufacturers Assn. of California? and there, listed with the big lobbyist, was William Lyon University of San Diego, which will one day after changing its name provide cover for Abdussattar Shaikh. Why did clean-cut Pete Wilson go to bat for a bunch of diploma mills ten years ago? It could only be because of GOP big-wig Gen William Lyon. Despite the bad publicity, the cluster of phony universities in San Diego soldiered on. They seemed like the hundreds of tiny ?airlines? through which the CIA once concealed the biggest airline in the world, changing names almost faster than you can say "CIA front." For example, Columbia Pacific, John Gray?s alma mater, has also been known as both ?Columbia Commonwealth? and ?Commonwealth Pacific.? It currently operates under a charter from the country of Malawi, which might conceivably lay claim to being an educational up-and-comer had not its President-for-Life just been in the news for allegedly refusing to move into his new $300 million palace because it was haunted by ghosts. "Bribes replaced apples a long time ago." For a ?lone cadre slipping through Europe and America unnoticed,? as Hedrick Smith lied in the opening of PBS?s Front Line documentary on the 9.11 attack, the hijackers didn't associate with only the poor nobodies you would expect foreign students to know while they lived in the U.S. Just as in Venice, we discovered, the people they hung with were anything but poorly-connected. But if Abdussattar Shaikh wasn?t who authorities claimed, who was he? While the answer to that questions remains unknown, one thing that is clear today is Shaikh's curious association with another shadowy figure living in San Diego. Sam Koutchesfahani, an Iranian exile, had been an arms dealer for the Shah, until the Peacock Throne went pffft. In San Diego, as one of a large number of Iranians-in-exile, many with former CIA ties, he turned his attentions to a variety of tasks, including infiltrating Middle Eastern men into the U.S. illegally for the better part of a decade. ?For more than six years in the 1990s, people from the Middle East came to San Diego County on bogus student visas,? reported a September 21, 2001 San Diego Union-Tribune story headlined ?Terrorists may have exploited student visas.? ?Through an underground network led by a Rancho Santa Fe man, nearly 100 Middle Easterners paid local community college teachers and administrators for counterfeit admission papers and grades, which allowed them to get student visas.? (The final figure was "more than 200," according to Sam's plea bargain.) ?At the center of the scam was a Rancho Santa Fe man, Sam Koutchesfahani, whose family roots and wealth were deep in Iran. He pleaded guilty to tax evasion and fraud and was sentenced to a year in prison. Koutchesfahani was the owner of a rented house in Rancho Santa Fe where 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult took their lives in 1997.? "Sam & Fifi at the Moonlight Beach Lodge." Koutchesfahani had been bribing college and university instructors in the San Diego area to procure phony student visas for middle-eastern men he was helping insert into the U.S. And if that wasn't part of Abdussattar Shaikh's job description as well, then he may just be the unluckiest sumbitch in recent American history for having "unwittingly" housed two of the 19 terrorist hijackers. We received confirmation of a link between the two men when we were contacted by a man who had worked at a motel in Encinitas, on the beach just north of San Diego, during the mid-90?s. While he worked there it had been sold to a group led by a Lebanese man who apparently has so far completely escaped scrutiny named Tamer Tamer Salomah, and which included Sam Koutchesfahani. Here we recalled the convenience store in Venice where Mohamed Atta and Marwan hung out. It was abandoned the day after the 9.11 attack by its owner, another Lebanese man, named Meekram Chams. Today Joe Cicchese is the general manager of a hotel and convention center complex in Corvallis, Oregon. But ten years ago, while going to school in San Diego, he worked as a motel clerk, where he met Sam Koutchesfahani. ?I just happened upon your article where you mentioned Sam Koutchesfahani, with the Heaven's Gate cult in his home and all,? he wrote us. ?I worked for Sam and his wife Fifi in 1994-95. then they were using the last name of Fahani. Motel was called Moonlight Beach Lodge. It has changed names twice since; today its called the Portofino Inn. I worked there in 1995 when Tamer bought the place, and he brought Sam in. Sam said he was "a silent partner" so his name may not appear on the title.? We lost no time in phoning Mr. Cicchese to ask for his recollections. A violent character in a dubious enterprise Said Cicchese, ?Neither one of them knew how to run a hotel. That?s what I told the FBI when I contacted them in October 2001 with info on Sam and his bribes to admit middle-eastern students to Universities in San Diego they did not qualify to attend. But I never heard back from them on whether or not my info proved fruitful.? So, who was Sam Fahani/ Koutchesfahani? ?He told me he did arms deals for the Shah,? Cicchese replied. ?And I believed it, because he was a really violent character. He and I didn?t get along too well, because I didn?t hide the fact that he didn?t know the first thing about motel management.? ?Then one day he called me into his office because he was pissed about something,? Cicchese continued, ? and he told me he was going to beat me with a tire iron.? ?Later that day I had to leave the front desk for some reason, and I saw Sam walking towards me up the center drive running through the motel, and he had a tire iron in his hand!? ?And a customer came up to him and asked him about something, and Sam kept looking back and forth between the customer and me the whole time he talked with him. If that customer hadn?t stopped him, I think he was going to hit me with it.? If neither Tamer nor Sam knew anything about motels, why did they buy it? ?I heard them talking about using it to house some students,? Cicchese explained. ?Tamer taught at some international University in San Diego with a lot of foreign students, and they were going to use the motel to house them.? We asked, ?United States International University?? Cicchese said, ?Yeah. That?s the one.? So one link between Sam Koutchesfahani and Abdussattar Shaikh is participation in some kind of covert operation involving bogus universities in San Diego. Clunker cars on campus at Auld Lang Syne We discovered that Koutchesfahani also boasts a bogus PhD as well. He has a doctorate in psychology (we like to think that perhaps his specialty is anger management) from a diploma mill called ?Newport University.? A story in the June 09, 1996 SALT LAKE TRIBUNE contained this description of the campus of "Newport University:" ?A couple of clunker cars sit in the driveway of a 40-year-old brick house, which sits squarely in a commercial zone: a hardware store in back, an equipment-rental company in front and a McDonald's expanding up the street.? ?The back yard has an old cedar fence, a rusting clothesline and an overgrown shade tree. Inside the house, a secondhand desk, some office chairs, bookshelves and a pair of torch lamps are assembled in the living room?? ?Welcome to Newport University, Utah's newest private college.? But there is yet another, even more incredible link between the two men: Both worked for the San Diego FBI as confidential informants. In court documents in his bribery case we learned to our astonishment that at exactly the same time he was renting a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe to the Heaven?s Gate cultists, Sam Koutchesfahani worked as a confidential informant for the San Diego FBI. So if nowhere else, Shaikh and Koutchesfahani?s paths crossed in the waiting room of the San Diego FBI, which we picture as looking as strange and exotic as the Wookie Bar from Star Wars. More competition for Unluckiest Sumbitch The San Diego FBI office has endured much embarrassment since the 9.11 attack. Were they the unluckiest sumbitch in recent American history? The FBI admitted they had been searching for Al-Midhar and Alhazmi since August because of suspected connections to Osama bin Laden. Like the after-image of innocent people hanging out of 100th story windows in the World Trade Center on the morning of the attack, questions about Shaikh persisted. Three other suspected terrorists who had rented rooms in his home?Omer Bakarbashat, Ramez T. Noaman and Yazed Al-Salmi?were arrested as material witnesses in the ongoing terror investigation. Congressional investigators allowed that they had some problems with the veracity of Shaikh?s statements. For example, Shaikh had vociferously denied being an informant for the FBI, until it was definitively learned he had been one. News reports began to sound slightly less sure about him? "Little is known about the 65-year-old, Indian-born Shaikh, who has declined several interview requests by The Associated Press, other than to deny his neighbors' reports that suspected hijacker Mohamed Atta visited his home.? And, amazingly, at least three of his neighbors had seen Mohamed Atta visit his home on several occasions. The Indian-born Shaikh was lying about it. Neighbor Marna Adair told the FBI that the polite, clean-shaven Atta was frequently at the home of Abdussattar Shaikh between August and early December of 2000. Adair said she identified a photograph of Atta on Sept. 17 to FBI agents who visited her home and showed her three pages of photos. Adair, a homemaker whose door is about 50 feet from Shaikh's house and gives a clear view of the driveway, said she is "positive" she saw Atta. Another neighbor, Deborah Fortner, remembered seeing Atta as well. "He was the one that was scary. He's got these piercing eyes. That's something you never forget about him." Even the FBI was forced to admit to the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 911 that ?the hijackers may have known the informant [Shaikh] months earlier than the informant admitted.? But somehow Shaikh?s ?cover? held. Clues to the real story about the hijackers who lived in San Diego were visible in the first stories filed from there about the city?s role in the 9.11 plot. It was a story was about ?students:? ?Prominent Muslim leader Abdussattar Shaikh said he thought he was offering shelter to students from Saudi Arabia studying English,? reported the Sept 15, 2001 San Diego Union-Tribune. ?FBI agents are trying to piece together the many aspects of the hijackers' lives in San Diego.? Every news account quoted Bill Gore, head of the San Diego FBI office, denying that Shaikh was a suspect. He was not suspected of knowingly harboring the terrorists, Gore told reporters. Who knows? Maybe the FBI was trying to piece together some of the ?many aspects of the hijackers lives?? Just not all of them. NEXT: --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! _______________________________________________ FoES mailing list FoES(a)mail.hotcat.org https://www.hotcat.org/mailman/listinfo/foes ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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Re: Sampled Traffic Analysis by Internet-Exchange-Level Adversaries
by coderman 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On 5/28/07, coderman <coderman(a)gmail.com> wrote: >... is the assumption that inspection at >OC/WDM layers is too cumbersome/expensive for all but the previously >mentioned TLA/$gov adversaries? one more comment that ties into your mention PCIe bus limitations. previous research on monitoring high speeds links has shown FPGA devices well suited for header and deep packet inspect at line rates up to 10GigE for hundreds of snort style filter rules. this approach scales in a linear fashion. i'll try to find some of the papers on this subject; i don't have them on hand. coincidentally, many of those involved in such projects seem to get sucked into the proprietary/classified commercial and government sectors. *grin* it's turtles, all the way down... ----- 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: [cryptography] Digital cash in the news...
by Ian G 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On 12/06/11 10:55 PM, Nicholas Bohm wrote: > Ah well. I joined bitcoin quite early, seeing it as like donating spare > cycles to an interesting experiment. I do agree whole heartedly that this is a great fun experiment, and worthy of attention. It has pushed the boundaries of what we've known and is possible. Its solution is indeed elegant. > I ended up with quite a substantial > balance, at no cost that I can identify. > Now I find I can exchange a little over five bitcoins for a #50 Amazon > gift certificate that Amazon seems happy to credit to my account. Hmmm! So the innovators invested rather little, and came out with a lot. Always attractive :) And from PLC, we can agree that the innovators may deserve some compensation for the risk of a dodgy product. However. Unless the laws of financial conservation have been repealed by the design, those who follow have to invest a lot and come out with less... > I quite see the force of the critical comments made here; but they > remind me of a (probably apocryphal) remark attributed to the late > Garret Fitzgerald when Prime Minister of Ireland. After a new scheme had > been outlined to his cabinet, and greeted with enthusiasm by several > ministers, he remarked, "Well, it's all very well in practice; but will > it work in theory?" Sounds like a very perceptive man, I wonder what he would have thought of Ireland today? In every bubble, there are those that see it is working in practice, and are benefitting from it. (E.g., the banks really loved subprime.... I mean, they *really truly loved subprime* !!!) Then there are those who are to come, later, and lose. Finally, there are those who have to clean up. When Fitgerald asks whether the theory is against the new innovation, I suspect he's asking whether the supporters/beneficiaries are expecting him to be in the last group, the clean up crew [1] ? In this context, the practice tells us what is happening now. $10 and rising! Yoo hoo! The theory will tell us what is likely to happen in the future. iang [] Keynes replies from his grave, "in the long run, we're all dead." _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- 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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[tt] NYT: Microdrones, Some as Small as Bugs, Are Poised to Alter War
by Premise Checker 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Microdrones, Some as Small as Bugs, Are Poised to Alter War http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/world/20drones.html By ELISABETH BUMILLER and THOM SHANKER WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio--Two miles from the cow pasture where the Wright Brothers learned to fly the first airplanes, military researchers are at work on another revolution in the air: shrinking unmanned drones, the kind that fire missiles into Pakistan and spy on insurgents in Afghanistan, to the size of insects and birds. The base's indoor flight lab is called the "microaviary," and for good reason. The drones in development here are designed to replicate the flight mechanics of moths, hawks and other inhabitants of the natural world. "We're looking at how you hide in plain sight," said Greg Parker, an aerospace engineer, as he held up a prototype of a mechanical hawk that in the future might carry out espionage or kill. Half a world away in Afghanistan, Marines marvel at one of the new blimplike spy balloons that float from a tether 15,000 feet above one of the bloodiest outposts of the war, Sangin in Helmand Province. The balloon, called an aerostat, can transmit live video --from as far as 20 miles away--of insurgents planting homemade bombs. "It's been a game-changer for me," Capt. Nickoli Johnson said in Sangin this spring. "I want a bunch more put in." > From blimps to bugs, an explosion in aerial drones is transforming the way America fights and thinks about its wars. Predator drones, the Cessna-sized workhorses that have dominated unmanned flight since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, are by now a brand name, known and feared around the world. But far less widely known are the sheer size, variety and audaciousness of a rapidly expanding drone universe, along with the dilemmas that come with it. The Pentagon now has some 7,000 aerial drones, compared with fewer than 50 a decade ago. Within the next decade the Air Force anticipates a decrease in manned aircraft but expects its number of "multirole" aerial drones like the Reaper--the ones that spy as well as strike--to nearly quadruple, to 536. Already the Air Force is training more remote pilots, 350 this year alone, than fighter and bomber pilots combined. "It's a growth market," said Ashton B. Carter, the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer. The Pentagon has asked Congress for nearly $5 billion for drones next year, and by 2030 envisions ever more stuff of science fiction: "spy flies" equipped with sensors and microcameras to detect enemies, nuclear weapons or victims in rubble. Peter W. Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Wired for War," a book about military robotics, calls them "bugs with bugs." In recent months drones have been more crucial than ever in fighting wars and terrorism. The Central Intelligence Agency spied on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan by video transmitted from a new bat-winged stealth drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, otherwise known as the "Beast of Kandahar," named after it was first spotted on a runway in Afghanistan. One of Pakistan's most wanted militants, Ilyas Kashmiri, was reported dead this month in a C.I.A. drone strike, part of an aggressive drone campaign that administration officials say has helped paralyze Al Qaeda in the region--and has become a possible rationale for an accelerated withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan. More than 1,900 insurgents in Pakistan's tribal areas have been killed by American drones since 2006, according to the Web site www.longwarjournal.com. In April the United States began using armed Predator drones against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's forces in Libya. Last month a C.I.A.-armed Predator aimed a missile at Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric believed to be hiding in Yemen. The Predator missed, but American drones continue to patrol Yemen's skies. Large or small, drones raise questions about the growing disconnect between the American public and its wars. Military ethicists concede that drones can turn war into a video game, inflict civilian casualties and, with no Americans directly at risk, more easily draw the United States into conflicts. Drones have also created a crisis of information for analysts on the end of a daily video deluge. Not least, the Federal Aviation Administration has qualms about expanding their test flights at home, as the Pentagon would like. Last summer, fighter jets were almost scrambled after a rogue Fire Scout drone, the size of a small helicopter, wandered into Washington's restricted airspace. Within the military, no one disputes that drones save American lives. Many see them as advanced versions of "stand-off weapons systems," like tanks or bombs dropped from aircraft, that the United States has used for decades. "There's a kind of nostalgia for the way wars used to be," said Deane-Peter Baker, an ethics professor at the United States Naval Academy, referring to noble notions of knight-on-knight conflict. Drones are part of a post-heroic age, he said, and in his view it is not always a problem if they lower the threshold for war. "It is a bad thing if we didn't have a just cause in the first place," Mr. Baker said. "But if we did have a just cause, we should celebrate anything that allows us to pursue that just cause." To Mr. Singer of Brookings, the debate over drones is like debating the merits of computers in 1979: They are here to stay, and the boom has barely begun. "We are at the Wright Brothers Flier stage of this," he said. Mimicking Insect Flight A tiny helicopter is buzzing menacingly as it prepares to lift off in the Wright-Patterson aviary, a warehouse-like room lined with 60 motion-capture cameras to track the little drone's every move. The helicopter, a footlong hobbyists' model, has been programmed by a computer to fly itself. Soon it is up in the air making purposeful figure eights. "What it's doing out here is nothing special," said Dr. Parker, the aerospace engineer. The researchers are using the helicopter to test technology that would make it possible for a computer to fly, say, a drone that looks like a dragonfly. "To have a computer do it 100 percent of the time, and to do it with winds, and to do it when it doesn't really know where the vehicle is, those are the kinds of technologies that we're trying to develop," Dr. Parker said. The push right now is developing "flapping wing" technology, or recreating the physics of natural flight, but with a focus on insects rather than birds. Birds have complex muscles that move their wings, making it difficult to copy their aerodynamics. Designing insects is hard, too, but their wing motions are simpler. "It's a lot easier problem," Dr. Parker said. In February, researchers unveiled a hummingbird drone, built by the firm AeroVironment for the secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which can fly at 11 miles per hour and perch on a windowsill. But it is still a prototype. One of the smallest drones in use on the battlefield is the three-foot-long Raven, which troops in Afghanistan toss by hand like a model airplane to peer over the next hill. There are some 4,800 Ravens in operation in the Army, although plenty get lost. One American service member in Germany recalled how five soldiers and officers spent six hours tramping through a dark Bavarian forest--and then sent a helicopter--on a fruitless search for a Raven that failed to return home from a training exercise. The next month a Raven went AWOL again, this time because of a programming error that sent it south. "The initial call I got was that the Raven was going to Africa," said the service member, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss drone glitches. In the midsize range: The Predator, the larger Reaper and the smaller Shadow, all flown by remote pilots using joysticks and computer screens, many from military bases in the United States. A Navy entry is the X-47B, a prototype designed to take off and land from aircraft carriers automatically and, when commanded, drop bombs. The X-47B had a maiden 29-minute flight over land in February. A larger drone is the Global Hawk, which is used for keeping an eye on North Korea's nuclear weapons activities. In March, the Pentagon sent a Global Hawk over the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan to assess the damage. A Tsunami of Data The future world of drones is here inside the Air Force headquarters at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., where hundreds of flat-screen TVs hang from industrial metal skeletons in a cavernous room, a scene vaguely reminiscent of a rave club. In fact, this is one of the most sensitive installations for processing, exploiting and disseminating a tsunami of information from a global network of flying sensors. The numbers are overwhelming: Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the hours the Air Force devotes to flying missions for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance have gone up 3,100 percent, most of that from increased operations of drones. Every day, the Air Force must process almost 1,500 hours of full-motion video and another 1,500 still images, much of it from Predators and Reapers on around-the-clock combat air patrols. The pressures on humans will only increase as the military moves from the limited "soda straw" views of today's sensors to new "Gorgon Stare" technology that can capture live video of an entire city--but that requires 2,000 analysts to process the data feeds from a single drone, compared with 19 analysts per drone today. At Wright-Patterson, Maj. Michael L. Anderson, a doctoral student at the base's advanced navigation technology center, is focused on another part of the future: building wings for a drone that might replicate the flight of the hawk moth, known for its hovering skills. "It's impressive what they can do," Major Anderson said, "compared to what our clumsy aircraft can do." _______________________________________________ tt mailing list tt(a)postbiota.org http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/tt ----- 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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