July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

[liberationtech] One year later: German police unable to develop bstate trojanb
by Anne Roth 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://annalist.noblogs.org/post/2012/10/12/one-year-later-german-police-un… One year after the Chaos Computer Club found and analysed an illegal trojan virus used by German police, the so-called b state trojanb, and one year after the German Federal Minister of Justice, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger had promised b total transparency and clarificationb German police still donbt have an alternative to relying on software by private companies for the infiltration of computers. Recent answers of the interior ministry to questions by Jan Korte, MP Left party, clearly state that the ministry one year later is still lacking the capacity to do as promised: to develop a software for lawful interception that complies with a decision by Germanybs Federal Constitutional Court. (The original German document can be downloaded here http://annalist.noblogs.org/files/2012/10/121010_SchriftlichenFragenStaatst… - no official translation into English yet) The original b state trojanb by Digitask did far more than what is allowed by German law: "The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has recently received a newer version of the b Staatstrojanerb, a government spyware. The comparison with the older version, already analyzed by the CCC with the actual Sniffer-code from December 2010, revealed new evidence. Despite the claims of the responsible parties, the Trojan can still be remote-controlled, loaded with any code and also the allegedly b revision-proof loggingb can be manipulated. (CCC, 26 Oct 2011)" Also see "Several German states admit to use of controversial spy software" http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,15449054,00.html (Deutsche Welle). The German minister of the Interior, Hans-Peter Friedrich, then promised that the software was going to be produced in-house. The new replies by the ministry prove him wrong: "The software by DigiTask GmbH that was used in the past for computer surveillance (lawful interception) is not currently being used by federal public authorities anymore. The software that will be used for computer surveillance will be developed by a competence centre established within the Federal Criminal Police Office. It will be safeguarded that the source code will be audited regarding its range of functions by qualified experts. It will also be accessible for the relevant authorities for data protection (among others the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection). For the time until the afore mentioned in-house development is completed the Federal Criminal Police Office is preparing a commercial interim solution. The source code of that software has to undergo extensive audits with respect to the demands by the Federal Constitutional Court. (my translation, A.R.)" In a reply to the second question by MP Korte the ministry states that it doesnbt know whether software by DigiTask or other commercial developers designed for lawful interception is being used by state police forces in Germany. Further details are classified and only accessible to MP Korte. The spokesman on domestic policy of Angela Merkels conservative party in parliament, Hans-Peter Uhl, commented: "The development of a software by the Federal Criminal Office is presumably going to take months if not years. We may even have to ruefully admit that we lack the capability completely." -- http://about.me/annalist http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=vindex&search=0x7689407F942951E2 -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech ----- 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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the physics arXiv blog
by Technology Review Feed - arXiv blog 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Technology Review Feed - arXiv blog /////////////////////////////////////////// Wireless network modded to see through walls Posted: 30 Sep 2009 09:10 PM PDT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/arXivblog/~3/uoY0lEt9zZw/click.phdo The way signal strength varies in a wireless network can reveal what's going on behind closed doors It's every schoolboy's dream: an easy way of looking through walls to spy on neighbours, monitor siblings and keep tabs on the sweet jar. And now a dream no longer... Researchers at the University of Utah say that the way radio signals vary in a wireless network can reveal the movement of people behind closed doors. Joey Wilson and Neal Patwari have developed a technique called variance-based radio tomographic imaging which processes the signals to reveal signs of movement. They've even tested the idea with a 34-node wireless network using the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless protocol. This is the protocol for personal area networks employed by home automation services such as ZigBee. The basic idea is straightforward. The signal strength at any point in a network is the sum of all the paths the radio waves can take to get to the receiver. Any change in the volume of space through which the signals pass, for example caused by the movement of a person, makes the signal strength vary. So by "interrogating" this volume of space with many signals, picked up by multiple receivers, it is possible to build up a picture of the movement within it. In tests with a 34-node network set up outside a standard living room, Wilson and Patwari say they were able to locate moving objects in the room to within a metre or so. That's not bad and the team say there is ample potential for improvement by increasing accuracy while reducing the number of nodes. The advantage of this technique over others is first its cost. The nodes in such a network are off the shelf and therefore cheap. Other through-wall viewing systems cost in excess of $100,000. The second advantage is the ease with which it can be set up. Wilson and Patwari say that adding a GPS receiver to each node allows it work out its own location which should dramatically speed up the imaging process.Other systmes have to be "trained" to recognise the environment. Wilson and Patwari have even worked out how their system might be used: "We envision a building imaging scenario similar to the following. Emergency responders, military forces, or police arrive at a scene where entry into a building is potentially dangerous. They deploy radio sensors around (and potentially on top of) the building area, either by throwing or launching them, or dropping them while moving around the building. The nodes immediately form a network and self-localize, perhaps using information about the size and shape of the building from a database (eg Google maps) and some known-location coordinates (eg using GPS). Then, nodes begin to transmit, making signal strength measurements on links which cross the building or area of interest. The received signal strength measurements of each link are transmitted back to a base station and used to estimate the positions of moving people and objects within the building." That's ambitious but shoudl they ge ttheir system to the point where it can be used like this it raises another problem: the issue of privacy. The broader issue is how such a cheap and easy-to-configure monitoring networks might be used if they become widely available. What's to stop next door's teenage brats monitoring your every move or house breakers choosing their targets on the basis that nobody is inside? Of course, in the cat and mouse game of surveillance, it shouldn't be too hard to build a device that disables such a monitoring network. But only if you know it's there in the first place. There are fun and games galore to be had with this idea. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0909.5417: Through-Wall Motion Tracking Using Variance-Based Radio Tomography Networks -- You are subscribed to email updates from "Technology Review Feed - arXiv blog." To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailunsubscribe?k=118r9-S4Z0vJg-AkQPASPmD… Email delivery powered by Google. Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 ----- 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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the physics arXiv blog
by Technology Review Feed - arXiv blog 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Technology Review Feed - arXiv blog /////////////////////////////////////////// Wireless network modded to see through walls Posted: 30 Sep 2009 09:10 PM PDT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/arXivblog/~3/uoY0lEt9zZw/click.phdo The way signal strength varies in a wireless network can reveal what's going on behind closed doors It's every schoolboy's dream: an easy way of looking through walls to spy on neighbours, monitor siblings and keep tabs on the sweet jar. And now a dream no longer... Researchers at the University of Utah say that the way radio signals vary in a wireless network can reveal the movement of people behind closed doors. Joey Wilson and Neal Patwari have developed a technique called variance-based radio tomographic imaging which processes the signals to reveal signs of movement. They've even tested the idea with a 34-node wireless network using the IEEE 802.15.4 wireless protocol. This is the protocol for personal area networks employed by home automation services such as ZigBee. The basic idea is straightforward. The signal strength at any point in a network is the sum of all the paths the radio waves can take to get to the receiver. Any change in the volume of space through which the signals pass, for example caused by the movement of a person, makes the signal strength vary. So by "interrogating" this volume of space with many signals, picked up by multiple receivers, it is possible to build up a picture of the movement within it. In tests with a 34-node network set up outside a standard living room, Wilson and Patwari say they were able to locate moving objects in the room to within a metre or so. That's not bad and the team say there is ample potential for improvement by increasing accuracy while reducing the number of nodes. The advantage of this technique over others is first its cost. The nodes in such a network are off the shelf and therefore cheap. Other through-wall viewing systems cost in excess of $100,000. The second advantage is the ease with which it can be set up. Wilson and Patwari say that adding a GPS receiver to each node allows it work out its own location which should dramatically speed up the imaging process.Other systmes have to be "trained" to recognise the environment. Wilson and Patwari have even worked out how their system might be used: "We envision a building imaging scenario similar to the following. Emergency responders, military forces, or police arrive at a scene where entry into a building is potentially dangerous. They deploy radio sensors around (and potentially on top of) the building area, either by throwing or launching them, or dropping them while moving around the building. The nodes immediately form a network and self-localize, perhaps using information about the size and shape of the building from a database (eg Google maps) and some known-location coordinates (eg using GPS). Then, nodes begin to transmit, making signal strength measurements on links which cross the building or area of interest. The received signal strength measurements of each link are transmitted back to a base station and used to estimate the positions of moving people and objects within the building." That's ambitious but shoudl they ge ttheir system to the point where it can be used like this it raises another problem: the issue of privacy. The broader issue is how such a cheap and easy-to-configure monitoring networks might be used if they become widely available. What's to stop next door's teenage brats monitoring your every move or house breakers choosing their targets on the basis that nobody is inside? Of course, in the cat and mouse game of surveillance, it shouldn't be too hard to build a device that disables such a monitoring network. But only if you know it's there in the first place. There are fun and games galore to be had with this idea. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/0909.5417: Through-Wall Motion Tracking Using Variance-Based Radio Tomography Networks -- You are subscribed to email updates from "Technology Review Feed - arXiv blog." To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailunsubscribe?k=118r9-S4Z0vJg-AkQPASPmD… Email delivery powered by Google. Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 ----- 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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[liberationtech] Google Bows Down To Chinese Government On Censorship
by Martin Johnson 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Sometime between December 5 and December 8 last year, Google made a surprising decision that hasnbt yet been reported. They decided to remove a feature which had previously informed users from China of censored keywords. At the same time, they deleted the help article which explained how to use the feature. This indicates a new development in the relationship between the Chinese government and Google. Since Google moved its search engine to Hong Kong in 2010, censorship of its services such as YouTube, Google Plus and thousands of keywords on Google Search has been done by the Great Firewall, out of control of Google. This latest move was fully controlled by Google and can as such only be described as self-censorship. Full story at https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2013/jan/google-bows-down-chinese-government-… -- Martin Johnson --- https://GreatFire.org - Monitoring Online Censorship In China. https://FreeWeibo.com - Uncensored, Anonymous Sina Weibo Search. https://Unblock.cn.com - We Can Unblock Your Website In China. -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech ----- 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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Fun with Lawyers
by Somebody 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

So here's an interesting question. If 10,000 people on, say, April 15th did a Yahoo search on the word Mesothelioma then clicked on the top sponsored lawyer link, would said ambulance chaser have to fork half a million dollars over to Yahoo? Even more efficient - how hard would it be for some clever coder to write a few Perl scripts to do this? Just thinking out loud. ----------------------------------------------------- Lawyers Bid Up Value Of Web-Search Ads By CARL BIALIK THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE April 8, 2004; Page B1 "Mesothelioma" may be the most valuable word on the Internet. The rare, asbestos-related cancer is the king of search advertising, a Web phenomenon in which companies bid to get their ads placed high on the search-result pages of sites like Yahoo and Google and then pay when users click on them. While many search ads cost less than a dollar a click, personal-injury law firms looking to land new clients have bid up mesothelioma ads to $90 or more. "It can get to be a bidding war," says Tracy Helser, Web manager for Kazan, McClain, Abrams, Fernandez, Lyons & Farrise, an Oakland, Calif., firm specializing in asbestos cases that advertises on search engines. Paid searches have become a cash cow for search engines and their partners by creating a flexible market for business "leads," which allow an advertiser to reach a new customer. Though it can change daily, the amount advertisers will pay for such leads ranges from as much as $100 for mesothelioma information to $20 for conference-call services and 31 cents for paper clips. Mainly because of a surge in search advertising and its acquisition of search company Overture, Yahoo Inc. took in $635.5 million in advertising-related revenue in the latest quarter, more than triple its year-earlier result. (See related article.) Google Inc. doesn't release financial data publicly, but most of its revenue comes from search advertising. With mesothelioma, it's simple economics, says Chris Hahn, executive director of the not-for-profit Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation in Santa Barbara, Calif. "Why is [mesothelioma] the highest paying keyword? Because there is nothing more valuable than one mesothelioma patient." Lawyers are so eager to attract mesothelioma cases because there is a clear link between it and asbestos exposure. Lawyers say a typical award in a mesothelioma settlement is $1 million, and attorneys get 40%. For cases that go to trial, the mean award in 2001 was $6 million, triple the amount two years earlier, according to a study by think tank Rand Corp. Over roughly two decades of asbestos litigation through 2002, Rand says, mesothelioma cases represented about 4% of asbestos-related cases but 20% of all cash paid out in asbestos-related claims. >From an attorney's point of view, mesothelioma cases, when pursued individually, "are the most valuable cases in the system," says Deborah Hensler, professor of law at Stanford and co-author of several Rand studies on asbestos litigation. MOUSE MONEY Advertisers bid more for top placements when a Web user searches for key words that carry big paybacks. Key word Top per-click bid* Mesothelioma attorney $70.24 Car accident lawyer 50 Investment fraud 30 Wisconsin mortgage 19 Conference calling 18.22 Casino 14.97 "You can overspend" for mesothelioma search ads, admits Philip Harley, a partner with Paul, Hanley & Harley LLP in Berkeley, Calif., which advertises online and gets about 20% to 25% of its mesothelioma clients from the Web. But, he adds, "if you spend carefully, you get a very nice return. It's a good way to build a client base." For people diagnosed with mesothelioma, the cancer's course is swift. Attacking the protective lining around the lungs, abdominal organs or heart, mesothelioma initially brings on chest pain, coughing and shortness of breath. There are treatments that can extend life, but many patients have less than a year to live once they are diagnosed. The cancer generally surfaces 30 years or more after exposure, and the number of annual diagnoses has been steady over the past decade, at roughly 3,000 cases. Settlements are frequently paid out of bankruptcy trusts established after asbestos manufacturers restructured under Chapter 11, but some healthy companies also face liability. (Far less is spent each year on mesothelioma research than on lawsuits. See related article.) For victims of the rare cancer, the Internet has become a main source of treatment information. Robert Taub, director of the Mesothelioma Center at Columbia University in New York, says that the patients he sees go on the Web within three or four days of diagnosis. David Sugarbaker, professor of surgery at Harvard's medical school in Cambridge, Mass., and chief of thoracic surgery at Brigham Women's Hospital, says that many of his patients watch a Webcast of his radical surgery (at www.chestsurg.org) before they have it. Robin Coffey, speaking just after her husband Mark, age 46, had the surgery successfully in February, said he insisted on watching the graphic video beforehand because "he felt more confident that [the doctor] was smart." Ms. Coffey, of Grand Island, N.Y., says her husband was resigned to die within a year before he found Dr. Sugarbaker online. "To go from having just a year to possibly having much more time is unbelievable," she says. The couple hasn't yet looked into litigation, she says. These Web searches by patients provide fertile advertising ground for lawyers. Paid-search ads typically run at the top or the side of main search results, so if people search for mesothelioma, they get nonpaid results framed by the ads. (In addition to paid-search ads on their own sites, Yahoo and Google provide such ads to third-party companies such as Time Warner Inc.'s America Online, Ask Jeeves Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN in revenue-sharing deals.) When viewers click on the ads, they are sent to lawyer sites with a mixture of information, links to other cancer sites -- and a phone number, online form or e-mail address to contact an attorney. While still a fraction of overall legal-services advertising, online spending rose more than fivefold to $8.7 million between January and November last year, compared with just $1.5 million a year earlier, according to market-researcher TNS Media Intelligence/CMR. Overall, legal-services ad spending was $434.8 million in the recent period. Lawyer Jonathan David, who says he tries many mesothelioma cases out of his law offices near Houston, was recently bidding about $92 a click on Yahoo's Overture ad system to direct those searching for "mesothelioma lawyer" to his ad offering legal services. Meanwhile, Paul Danziger, a Houston attorney, was bidding $45 per click on Overture for his ad, keyed off the search term "mesothelioma." James Sokolove, a lawyer and marketer for partner law firms in Newton, Mass., also spends "significantly" online. He says that in most instances, the client-acquisition cost is about 50% less for paid searching than for TV. This is true even for mesothelioma ads, he says, because their targeted nature makes up for the high price. (Besides mesothelioma, Mr. Sokolove also advertises for clients in drug-recall and stockbroker-malfeasance cases.) Some search-engine watchers are skeptical of the high costs of mesothelioma ads. Fredrick Marckini, chief executive of search-marketing firm iProspect in Watertown, Mass., says he doubts that bids as high as $50 are worthwhile. "The vast majority of people who are engaged in online marketing are not measuring their outcome and return," he says. Yahoo and Google decline to say what portion of their overall advertising revenue comes from high-value keywords like "mesothelioma." A Yahoo spokeswoman says, "Overture has millions of keyword marketplaces and more than 100,000 advertisers, so we are not reliant on any one keyword marketplace." The bidding systems on Yahoo and Overture are similar, but each has its wrinkles. Overture advertisers pay a penny more than the next-lowest bid, per click, and bidding is done publicly online. Under Google's system, bids are available only to advertisers, and Google bidding is capped at $50 a click. Google also takes into account other factors, such as popularity, when determining the order of ads on a search-result page. The high price of mesothelioma ads has had some unintended consequences as firms try other means to land mesothelioma patients. In particular, some firms are attempting to boost their Web sites' spot on search engines' so-called algorithmic, or nonpaid, listings by tweaking the content and links to get a higher ranking. These efforts can include using the desired keywords (like "mesothelioma") frequently near the top of their home page, and including them in the Web address. Due to these efforts, eight of the top 10 nonpaid listings in a recent Google search of "mesothelioma" were for sites sponsored by law firms, pushing down nonlawyer sites such as the National Cancer Institute. By comparison, a search for "cancer" -- a tamer ad category -- produces the American Cancer Society as the top nonpaid result. Lawyers say that they are providing valuable medical and legal information on the rare cancer for free. One recent entrant to asbestos law, Childress & Charpentier in Melbourne, Fla., took unusual steps to climb the free search rankings. The firm snapped up expired Web addresses -- including bmwexperience.com and biotechnology-investor.com -- and populated them with words related to mesothelioma. These sites then redirected to the firm's home page, mesothelioma-and-asbestos.com. The firm tried paid search ads, but found them to be too pricey -- as much as $7,000 to $8,000 per month, according to Carl Peterson, an associate with the firm. --- 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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[osint] 'Stunning' arms haul in Falluja
by BMCLEE＠aol.com 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

[Excerpt: Weapons caches, many in the south of Falluja - the last area taken by the marines - were often marked by a brick suspended on a piece of string outside a house, they added....The amount of weapons was in no way just to protect a city," said Maj Jim West, a Marine intelligence officer...."There was enough to mount an insurgency across the country," he added....Earlier, Iraqi Minister of State Kassim Daoud told a news conference: "Soldiers from the Iraqi National Guard found a chemical laboratory that was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons....."They also found in the lab booklets and instructions on how to make bombs and poisons. They even talked about the production of anthrax."] Last Updated: Thursday, 25 November, 2004, 14:42 GMT http://212.58.240.132/1/hi/world/middle_east/4041235.stm 'Stunning' arms haul in Falluja US marines combing the Iraqi city of Falluja after a major offensive say they found weapons stocks sufficient to mount an insurgency across the country. The "stunning" finds included mortars, bomb-making equipment, grenades and rockets, officials said. The biggest haul was made at a mosque complex in the east of the city. Soldiers also found a house which contained a laboratory and instructions on how to make anthrax and blood agents, the US military told the BBC. US marines say it may be several weeks before civilians who fled the city can return. Following the US-led offensive, the city remains without power or water. The discoveries came as hundreds of British troops from the Black Watch took part in a fresh offensive against suspected Saddam Hussein loyalists living on the bank of the Euphrates river in central Iraq. In other developments: * US officials say they found five new bodies, including the corpses of some Iraqi soldiers, in the northern city of Mosul - the scene of a recent upsurge in attacks * Police in southern Iraq arrest five suspected foreign fighters - two Saudis, two Tunisians and one Libyan - they claim were planning to mount attacks in Basra. 'Foreign fighters' centre' Marine commanders said troops moving from house to house had discovered large numbers of weapons stores, including stocks of up to 700 mortar shells. Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and heavy cannon have also been found throughout the city, officers said. Weapons caches, many in the south of Falluja - the last area taken by the marines - were often marked by a brick suspended on a piece of string outside a house, they added. Iraqi Red Crescent convoy waits at entrance to Falluja, 24 Nov 2004 Aid organisations need to assess how many need help in Falluja "The amount of weapons was in no way just to protect a city," said Maj Jim West, a Marine intelligence officer. "There was enough to mount an insurgency across the country," he added. Earlier, Iraqi Minister of State Kassim Daoud told a news conference: "Soldiers from the Iraqi National Guard found a chemical laboratory that was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons. "They also found in the lab booklets and instructions on how to make bombs and poisons. They even talked about the production of anthrax." 'Hotbed' The US has claimed Falluja was a centre for foreign fighters who had come to Iraq to fight the coalition. Earlier this week Iraq's interim defence minister said 60 Arab fighters were among those arrested in Falluja. The Americans claim to have killed at least 1,000 Iraqis in the Falluja assault launched two and a half weeks ago. More than 50 marines died and more than 400 were wounded. The number of Iraqi civilians killed and injured when they were caught up in the fighting is still not known. The Iraqi Red Crescent said on Thursday it had managed to deliver food aid, and that its volunteers would stay to help bury the dead and evacuate families still trapped in Falluja. enditem UNRESTRICTED [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-osint(a)yahoogroups.com. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor bisoldi(a)intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint(a)yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscribe(a)yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscribe(a)yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe(a)yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ --- 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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Re: EFF no longer funding Tor (was Re: ATTN: for-profit Tor
by Roger Dingledine 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

operators) User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i Reply-To: or-talk(a)freehaven.net On Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 08:35:41PM -0500, Roger Dingledine wrote: > We don't need complex theories to explain it. They simply ran out of > money. They had to let go some of their actual employees too. This time > of year is never good for non-profits. I've put up a donations page for Tor here: http://tor.eff.org/donate.html.en Nick and I are continuing to work on Tor in our spare time, but as you can see, the user base is growing faster than our development can keep up. Please help us to put our attention back on Tor development rather than getting day jobs. Thanks, --Roger ----- 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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[tor-talk] Tor-ramdisk 20120622 released
by Anthony G. Basile 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Hi everyone I want to announce to the list that a new release of tor-ramdisk is out. Tor-ramdisk is an i686, x86_64 or MIPS uClibc-based micro Linux distribution whose only purpose is to host a Tor server in an environment that maximizes security and privacy. Security is enhanced by hardening the kernel and binaries, and privacy is enhanced by forcing logging to be off at all levels so that even the Tor operator only has access to minimal information. Finally, since everything runs in ephemeral memory, no information survives a reboot, except for the Tor configuration file and the private RSA key, which may be exported/imported by FTP or SCP. Changelog: Tor was updated to 0.2.2.37, BusyBox to 1.20.1 and the kernel to 3.4.2 plus Gentoo's hardened-patches-3.4.2-2.extras. The MIPS port also incorporated these changes, but for this architecture the kernel was kept at vanilla 3.2.5. i686: Homepage: http://opensource.dyc.edu/tor-ramdisk Download: http://opensource.dyc.edu/tor-ramdisk-downloads x86_64: Homepage: http://opensource.dyc.edu/tor-x86_64-ramdisk Download: http://opensource.dyc.edu/tor-x86_64-ramdisk-downloads MIPS: Homepage: http://opensource.dyc.edu/tor-mips-ramdisk Download: http://opensource.dyc.edu/tor-mips-ramdisk-downloads -- Anthony G. Basile, Ph. D. Chair of Information Technology D'Youville College Buffalo, NY 14201 (716) 829-8197 _______________________________________________ tor-talk mailing list tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk ----- 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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Fun with Lawyers
by Somebody 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

So here's an interesting question. If 10,000 people on, say, April 15th did a Yahoo search on the word Mesothelioma then clicked on the top sponsored lawyer link, would said ambulance chaser have to fork half a million dollars over to Yahoo? Even more efficient - how hard would it be for some clever coder to write a few Perl scripts to do this? Just thinking out loud. ----------------------------------------------------- Lawyers Bid Up Value Of Web-Search Ads By CARL BIALIK THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE April 8, 2004; Page B1 "Mesothelioma" may be the most valuable word on the Internet. The rare, asbestos-related cancer is the king of search advertising, a Web phenomenon in which companies bid to get their ads placed high on the search-result pages of sites like Yahoo and Google and then pay when users click on them. While many search ads cost less than a dollar a click, personal-injury law firms looking to land new clients have bid up mesothelioma ads to $90 or more. "It can get to be a bidding war," says Tracy Helser, Web manager for Kazan, McClain, Abrams, Fernandez, Lyons & Farrise, an Oakland, Calif., firm specializing in asbestos cases that advertises on search engines. Paid searches have become a cash cow for search engines and their partners by creating a flexible market for business "leads," which allow an advertiser to reach a new customer. Though it can change daily, the amount advertisers will pay for such leads ranges from as much as $100 for mesothelioma information to $20 for conference-call services and 31 cents for paper clips. Mainly because of a surge in search advertising and its acquisition of search company Overture, Yahoo Inc. took in $635.5 million in advertising-related revenue in the latest quarter, more than triple its year-earlier result. (See related article.) Google Inc. doesn't release financial data publicly, but most of its revenue comes from search advertising. With mesothelioma, it's simple economics, says Chris Hahn, executive director of the not-for-profit Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation in Santa Barbara, Calif. "Why is [mesothelioma] the highest paying keyword? Because there is nothing more valuable than one mesothelioma patient." Lawyers are so eager to attract mesothelioma cases because there is a clear link between it and asbestos exposure. Lawyers say a typical award in a mesothelioma settlement is $1 million, and attorneys get 40%. For cases that go to trial, the mean award in 2001 was $6 million, triple the amount two years earlier, according to a study by think tank Rand Corp. Over roughly two decades of asbestos litigation through 2002, Rand says, mesothelioma cases represented about 4% of asbestos-related cases but 20% of all cash paid out in asbestos-related claims. >From an attorney's point of view, mesothelioma cases, when pursued individually, "are the most valuable cases in the system," says Deborah Hensler, professor of law at Stanford and co-author of several Rand studies on asbestos litigation. MOUSE MONEY Advertisers bid more for top placements when a Web user searches for key words that carry big paybacks. Key word Top per-click bid* Mesothelioma attorney $70.24 Car accident lawyer 50 Investment fraud 30 Wisconsin mortgage 19 Conference calling 18.22 Casino 14.97 "You can overspend" for mesothelioma search ads, admits Philip Harley, a partner with Paul, Hanley & Harley LLP in Berkeley, Calif., which advertises online and gets about 20% to 25% of its mesothelioma clients from the Web. But, he adds, "if you spend carefully, you get a very nice return. It's a good way to build a client base." For people diagnosed with mesothelioma, the cancer's course is swift. Attacking the protective lining around the lungs, abdominal organs or heart, mesothelioma initially brings on chest pain, coughing and shortness of breath. There are treatments that can extend life, but many patients have less than a year to live once they are diagnosed. The cancer generally surfaces 30 years or more after exposure, and the number of annual diagnoses has been steady over the past decade, at roughly 3,000 cases. Settlements are frequently paid out of bankruptcy trusts established after asbestos manufacturers restructured under Chapter 11, but some healthy companies also face liability. (Far less is spent each year on mesothelioma research than on lawsuits. See related article.) For victims of the rare cancer, the Internet has become a main source of treatment information. Robert Taub, director of the Mesothelioma Center at Columbia University in New York, says that the patients he sees go on the Web within three or four days of diagnosis. David Sugarbaker, professor of surgery at Harvard's medical school in Cambridge, Mass., and chief of thoracic surgery at Brigham Women's Hospital, says that many of his patients watch a Webcast of his radical surgery (at www.chestsurg.org) before they have it. Robin Coffey, speaking just after her husband Mark, age 46, had the surgery successfully in February, said he insisted on watching the graphic video beforehand because "he felt more confident that [the doctor] was smart." Ms. Coffey, of Grand Island, N.Y., says her husband was resigned to die within a year before he found Dr. Sugarbaker online. "To go from having just a year to possibly having much more time is unbelievable," she says. The couple hasn't yet looked into litigation, she says. These Web searches by patients provide fertile advertising ground for lawyers. Paid-search ads typically run at the top or the side of main search results, so if people search for mesothelioma, they get nonpaid results framed by the ads. (In addition to paid-search ads on their own sites, Yahoo and Google provide such ads to third-party companies such as Time Warner Inc.'s America Online, Ask Jeeves Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN in revenue-sharing deals.) When viewers click on the ads, they are sent to lawyer sites with a mixture of information, links to other cancer sites -- and a phone number, online form or e-mail address to contact an attorney. While still a fraction of overall legal-services advertising, online spending rose more than fivefold to $8.7 million between January and November last year, compared with just $1.5 million a year earlier, according to market-researcher TNS Media Intelligence/CMR. Overall, legal-services ad spending was $434.8 million in the recent period. Lawyer Jonathan David, who says he tries many mesothelioma cases out of his law offices near Houston, was recently bidding about $92 a click on Yahoo's Overture ad system to direct those searching for "mesothelioma lawyer" to his ad offering legal services. Meanwhile, Paul Danziger, a Houston attorney, was bidding $45 per click on Overture for his ad, keyed off the search term "mesothelioma." James Sokolove, a lawyer and marketer for partner law firms in Newton, Mass., also spends "significantly" online. He says that in most instances, the client-acquisition cost is about 50% less for paid searching than for TV. This is true even for mesothelioma ads, he says, because their targeted nature makes up for the high price. (Besides mesothelioma, Mr. Sokolove also advertises for clients in drug-recall and stockbroker-malfeasance cases.) Some search-engine watchers are skeptical of the high costs of mesothelioma ads. Fredrick Marckini, chief executive of search-marketing firm iProspect in Watertown, Mass., says he doubts that bids as high as $50 are worthwhile. "The vast majority of people who are engaged in online marketing are not measuring their outcome and return," he says. Yahoo and Google decline to say what portion of their overall advertising revenue comes from high-value keywords like "mesothelioma." A Yahoo spokeswoman says, "Overture has millions of keyword marketplaces and more than 100,000 advertisers, so we are not reliant on any one keyword marketplace." The bidding systems on Yahoo and Overture are similar, but each has its wrinkles. Overture advertisers pay a penny more than the next-lowest bid, per click, and bidding is done publicly online. Under Google's system, bids are available only to advertisers, and Google bidding is capped at $50 a click. Google also takes into account other factors, such as popularity, when determining the order of ads on a search-result page. The high price of mesothelioma ads has had some unintended consequences as firms try other means to land mesothelioma patients. In particular, some firms are attempting to boost their Web sites' spot on search engines' so-called algorithmic, or nonpaid, listings by tweaking the content and links to get a higher ranking. These efforts can include using the desired keywords (like "mesothelioma") frequently near the top of their home page, and including them in the Web address. Due to these efforts, eight of the top 10 nonpaid listings in a recent Google search of "mesothelioma" were for sites sponsored by law firms, pushing down nonlawyer sites such as the National Cancer Institute. By comparison, a search for "cancer" -- a tamer ad category -- produces the American Cancer Society as the top nonpaid result. Lawyers say that they are providing valuable medical and legal information on the rare cancer for free. One recent entrant to asbestos law, Childress & Charpentier in Melbourne, Fla., took unusual steps to climb the free search rankings. The firm snapped up expired Web addresses -- including bmwexperience.com and biotechnology-investor.com -- and populated them with words related to mesothelioma. These sites then redirected to the firm's home page, mesothelioma-and-asbestos.com. The firm tried paid search ads, but found them to be too pricey -- as much as $7,000 to $8,000 per month, according to Carl Peterson, an associate with the firm. --- 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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[osint] 'Stunning' arms haul in Falluja
by BMCLEE＠aol.com 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

[Excerpt: Weapons caches, many in the south of Falluja - the last area taken by the marines - were often marked by a brick suspended on a piece of string outside a house, they added....The amount of weapons was in no way just to protect a city," said Maj Jim West, a Marine intelligence officer...."There was enough to mount an insurgency across the country," he added....Earlier, Iraqi Minister of State Kassim Daoud told a news conference: "Soldiers from the Iraqi National Guard found a chemical laboratory that was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons....."They also found in the lab booklets and instructions on how to make bombs and poisons. They even talked about the production of anthrax."] Last Updated: Thursday, 25 November, 2004, 14:42 GMT http://212.58.240.132/1/hi/world/middle_east/4041235.stm 'Stunning' arms haul in Falluja US marines combing the Iraqi city of Falluja after a major offensive say they found weapons stocks sufficient to mount an insurgency across the country. The "stunning" finds included mortars, bomb-making equipment, grenades and rockets, officials said. The biggest haul was made at a mosque complex in the east of the city. Soldiers also found a house which contained a laboratory and instructions on how to make anthrax and blood agents, the US military told the BBC. US marines say it may be several weeks before civilians who fled the city can return. Following the US-led offensive, the city remains without power or water. The discoveries came as hundreds of British troops from the Black Watch took part in a fresh offensive against suspected Saddam Hussein loyalists living on the bank of the Euphrates river in central Iraq. In other developments: * US officials say they found five new bodies, including the corpses of some Iraqi soldiers, in the northern city of Mosul - the scene of a recent upsurge in attacks * Police in southern Iraq arrest five suspected foreign fighters - two Saudis, two Tunisians and one Libyan - they claim were planning to mount attacks in Basra. 'Foreign fighters' centre' Marine commanders said troops moving from house to house had discovered large numbers of weapons stores, including stocks of up to 700 mortar shells. Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and heavy cannon have also been found throughout the city, officers said. Weapons caches, many in the south of Falluja - the last area taken by the marines - were often marked by a brick suspended on a piece of string outside a house, they added. Iraqi Red Crescent convoy waits at entrance to Falluja, 24 Nov 2004 Aid organisations need to assess how many need help in Falluja "The amount of weapons was in no way just to protect a city," said Maj Jim West, a Marine intelligence officer. "There was enough to mount an insurgency across the country," he added. Earlier, Iraqi Minister of State Kassim Daoud told a news conference: "Soldiers from the Iraqi National Guard found a chemical laboratory that was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons. "They also found in the lab booklets and instructions on how to make bombs and poisons. They even talked about the production of anthrax." 'Hotbed' The US has claimed Falluja was a centre for foreign fighters who had come to Iraq to fight the coalition. Earlier this week Iraq's interim defence minister said 60 Arab fighters were among those arrested in Falluja. The Americans claim to have killed at least 1,000 Iraqis in the Falluja assault launched two and a half weeks ago. More than 50 marines died and more than 400 were wounded. The number of Iraqi civilians killed and injured when they were caught up in the fighting is still not known. The Iraqi Red Crescent said on Thursday it had managed to deliver food aid, and that its volunteers would stay to help bury the dead and evacuate families still trapped in Falluja. enditem UNRESTRICTED [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe(a)yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ --- 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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