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Utah go boom, not in the public domain
by Khoder bin Hakkin 21 Dec '01

21 Dec '01

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20122001-044449-5310r One report currently being investigated by U.S. intelligence officials came from Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence sources who had conducted an interrogation of a "terrorist suspect" in early November. Under "coercion," the suspect said that agents of bin Laden had smuggled two portable nuclear weapons into the United States, according to the report seen by a U.S. government expert. The government expert, who has had access to the Pakistani investigation, said ISI provided "the highest levels of the U.S. government" with materials from the ISI interrogation including a summary of the suspect's confession, which this source had seen. The summary did not give the specific dates of the smuggling, the method, or time of entry. The suspect said only that the smuggling had been carried out, the U.S. government expert said. The sources of the report "were current ISI officers who had kept contact with U.S. counterparts" they had known from the 1980s, this U.S. government expert said. The summary was accompanied by "collateral" or supporting documents, he said. The package was given to senior U.S. officials in mid-November. The ISI had not rated the report's credibility but felt it important enough to alert the U.S. government, this source said. "What was disconcerting about the (suspect's) information was that he knew details of the activation of the weapons and their construction that are not in the public domain," the U.S. expert analyst said. ....... "Coercion" is a nice word for raping his wife? -- foo

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feds were warned, but asleep
by Khoder bin Hakkin 21 Dec '01

21 Dec '01

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1576/913687.html Published Dec 21 2001 WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When a Twin Cities flight instructor phoned the FBI last August to alert the agency that a terrorist might be taking lessons to fly a jumbo jet, he did it in a dramatic way: "Do you realize how serious this is?" the instructor asked an FBI agent. "This man wants training on a 747. A 747 fully loaded with fuel could be used as a weapon!" The aviation student he was talking about was Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested the following day and last week was charged in a federal indictment with conspiring with Osama bin Laden and others to carry out the Sept. 11 attacks. New details of how Moussaoui raised suspicions at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan -- and the company's eerily prescient tip -- are emerging from the briefings the school recently gave to congressional offices. The still-unidentified flight instructor became wary of Moussaoui immediately, according to Minnesota Rep. Jim Oberstar and others with direct knowledge of the briefings. Moussaoui first raised eyebrows when, during a simple introductory exchange, he said he was from France, but then didn't seem to understand when the instructor spoke French to him. Moussaoui then became belligerent and evasive about his background, Oberstar and other sources said. In addition, he seemed inept in basic flying procedures, while seeking expensive training on an advanced commercial jet simulator. Besides alerting the FBI about Moussaoui, the school's Phoenix office called the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) early this year about another student -- Hani Hanjour, who was believed to be the pilot of the plane that flew into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. The school had raised questions about Hanjour's limited ability to speak English, the universal language of aviation. An FAA representative sat in on a class to observe Hanjour, who was from Saudi Arabia, and discussed with school officials finding an Arabic-speaking person to help him with his English, said Oberstar and others with direct knowledge of the school's briefings. Oberstar and Minnesota Rep. Martin Sabo, who also was briefed by the school, praised Pan Am for its efforts to safeguard the skies and for passing federal authorities clues to possible terrorist activities before Sept. 11. They said that, with the benefit of hindsight, it appears that the FBI and the FAA could have responded more vigorously. "From what I've heard, the school was clearly more alert than federal officials," Sabo said. ----- Whose more incompetent, the politicos who made us such enemies or the feds who can't protect against them?

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The crime of distributed computing (fwd)
by Jei 21 Dec '01

21 Dec '01

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/23477.html The crime of distributed computing By Ann Harrison Posted: 20/12/2001 at 17:33 GMT A college computer technician who offered his school's unused computer processing power for an encryption research project will be tried next month in Georgia for computer theft and trespassing charges that carry a potential total of 120 years in jail. The closely-watched case if one of the first in which state prosecutors have lodged felony charges for allegedly downloading third-party software without permission. David McOwen was working as a PC specialist at the state-run DeKalb Technical Institute in 1998, when he learned about a project by the non-profit organization distributed.net that allowed computer users to donate their unused processing power to test the RC5 encryption algorithm. Noticing that many of the machines he maintained on the seven DeKalb campuses sat idle for long periods, McOwen installed distributed.net clients at several of those locations while performing a Y2K upgrade on the machines in 1999. According to McOwen, during the Christmas holidays in 1999 school administrators noticed that unused machines were sending and receiving the distributed.net data -- about the equivalent of one email a day. The school sent McOwen a letter of suspension in January of 2000, without specifying a grievance, and McOwen resigned shortly afterwards, believing that he had put the incident behind him. Instead, in June of 2001 McOwen was contacted by an investigator from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation who informed him that he was the subject of an 18-month computer crime investigation. In October, prosecutors from the Georgia state attorney general's office charged McOwen with eight violations of Georgia's tough computer crime law: one count of computer theft, and seven counts of computer trespass -- one for each of the school offices where McOwen downloaded the distributed.net client. Each felony count carries a $50,000 fine and a 15-year possible prison term, for a 120 year maximum possible sentence. The indictment also calls for restitution equal to the amount of money paid to state workers to uninstall the programs from 500 PCs. As the case nears trial, it's raising eyebrows among some legal and technology experts for the unusual application of an anti-hacking law to actions taken by a network's legitimate administrator. 'This Is Not Hacking' "Our problem with this kind of statute is that it is written in such broad terms that it can reach all sorts of behavior that doesn't constitute computer fraud, but can give the government prosecutorial discretion," says Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, who has followed McOwen's case. "This is a hacking statute," says McOwen, "but obviously this is not hacking." At an early stage in the proceedings, prosecutors claimed that McOwen had cost the state of Georgia $415,000 in bandwidth charges, based on a calculation that the distributed.net clients consumed precisely 59 cents worth of bandwidth per second. The state has since backed away from the $415,000 figure. Today, much of the case rests on whether McOwen violated DeKalb's policies by downloading the distributed.net client. Russ Willard, a spokesman for Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker, contends that McOwen deliberately ignored the college's written computer usage guidelines, which were issued to him with his first user I.D. and password. Willard says the policy forbade McOwen from downloading any unauthorized third-party software onto the college's machines. McOwen claims he had permission from college officials to download the software, and his lawyer suggests that there were no written guidelines forbidding such installations to begin with. "If there is a policy I have not seen it," says attorney David Joyner, who says he has received all the discovery evidence in the case. DeKalb college president Paul Starnes and McOwen's supervisors from the college's IS department would not comment on the case. Even if there was such a policy presented to McOwen, those who work at universities say they are often disregarded. "It think it's so common on the academic community that nobody reads agreements like that," says David Farber, a professor of telecommunications at the University of Pennsylvania and former chief technologist of the FCC. "It is part and parcel of many academics and many students that inquisitiveness motivates them to download third-party software. If you are going to prosecute a person for that on those grounds, than you should prosecute everybody on campus because everyone has done it." Financial Motive Alleged Willard says that McOwen was singled out for prosecution partly because he had ignored his supervisor's warnings. "In this case, Mr. McOwen was expressively prohibited by his superiors from downloading these programs and was informed on many occasions by his supervisors to stop downloading programs," said Willard. "They were aware that he was doing it and he had gone in and cleaned it up on numerous occasions." Joyner insists McOwen received no such warning. Prosecutors also claim that McOwen had a financial motive for volunteering the school's machines. McOwen was a top producer on distributed.net for "Team AnandTech," a group sponsored by a hardware forum site which is still the second ranking contributor to the RC5 research project. A $1,000 prize goes to the individual contributor who recovers the RC5 encryption key. "McOwen placed a program on computers, that in his estimation would benefit him personally, including computers that has sensitive student financial and identity information without authorization," says Willard. "There is concern about the program itself compromising or providing the basis to compromise sensitive personal or financial information, there is the matter of Mr. McOwen's unauthorized activities on this computer, and finally there is the point that there was misappropriation of state property." McOwen says the prize money wasn't a factor. "People do these projects for the betterment of mankind," says McOwen. "You are not doing it for the prize and possibility of money, you are doing it because it is the right thing to do." "I think the prosecutor's office needs some lessons in computer science," says Farber. "If you want to make a point, there are much better examples than this guy." The case is set for trial on 28 January. © 2001 SecurityFocus.com, all rights reserved.

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FC: FBI refuses to tell Congress aide about "classified" Magic Lantern (fwd)
by Jei 21 Dec '01

21 Dec '01

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 17:10:39 -0500 From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: politech(a)politechbot.com Cc: Norman.Singleton(a)mail.house.gov Subject: FC: FBI refuses to tell Congress aide about "classified" Magic Lantern Background on "Magic Lantern": http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=lantern ---

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All your MicrosoftOSes are belong to us
by Khoder bin Hakkin 21 Dec '01

21 Dec '01

All your MicrosoftOSes are belong to us and we don't have to do squat. WASHINGTON Microsoft's newest version of Windows, billed as the most secure ever, contains several serious flaws that allow hackers to steal or destroy a victim's data files across the Internet or implant rogue computer software. The company released a free fix Thursday. A Microsoft official acknowledged that the risk to consumers was unprecedented because the glitches allow hackers to seize control of all Windows XP operating system software without requiring a computer user to do anything except connect to the Internet. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7050-2001Dec20.html -- foo

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Utah go boom, not in the public domain
by Khoder bin Hakkin 21 Dec '01

21 Dec '01

One report currently being investigated by U.S. intelligence officials came from Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence sources who had conducted an interrogation of a "terrorist suspect" in early November. Under "coercion," the suspect said that agents of bin Laden had smuggled two portable nuclear weapons into the United States, according to the report seen by a U.S. government expert. The government expert, who has had access to the Pakistani investigation, said ISI provided "the highest levels of the U.S. government" with materials from the ISI interrogation including a summary of the suspect's confession, which this source had seen. The summary did not give the specific dates of the smuggling, the method, or time of entry. The suspect said only that the smuggling had been carried out, the U.S. government expert said. The sources of the report "were current ISI officers who had kept contact with U.S. counterparts" they had known from the 1980s, this U.S. government expert said. The summary was accompanied by "collateral" or supporting documents, he said. The package was given to senior U.S. officials in mid-November. The ISI had not rated the report's credibility but felt it important enough to alert the U.S. government, this source said. "What was disconcerting about the (suspect's) information was that he knew details of the activation of the weapons and their construction that are not in the public domain," the U.S. expert analyst said. ....... "Coercion" is a nice word for raping his wife? -- foo

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Government Grants Information Package........ 9287
by g12190＠china.com 21 Dec '01

21 Dec '01

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Taylor on rubber hose crypto
by mattd 21 Dec '01

21 Dec '01

Extract ...The EFAis particularly concerned about provisions which authorize law enforcement officers to ask individuals to provide keys to encrypted data. Mr Taylor said the Cybercrime Act was contrary to the common law privilege against self-incrimination. "One of the major concerns with that is that you may not have access to the encryption keys or you have simply forgotten it." Senator Ellison said the new law was consistent with the recommendations of the Council of Europe and would ensure Australia was leading the effort against cyber terrorism. From http://theage.com.au/news/national/2001/12/21/FFXXLRFUGVC.html "If "the law" is used to protect government-employed criminals, then the law is wrong and we should disregard that portion of it. . Government agents must, therefore, expect to be accountable to the citizens, while accountability in the other direction is virtually the definition of tyranny." professor rat.

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Wild World Wide.Collapse of Govts.
by mattd 21 Dec '01

21 Dec '01

The importance of the introduction of the Euro and the collapse of govts in Argentina,bolivia and Columbia must rivet the attention of all cypherpunks interested in the introduction of e-cash and collapse of Govts,crypto-anarchist style. The amazing introduction of the Euro went surprisingly smoothly for a project with so many intrinsic logistical hazards. That the introduction of barter units could happen in one fell swoop becomes realistic in the light of euro-experience. Probably safer to stick with organic release through distributed P-P for now without working AP to defend against tax collectors.Its just exciting to realize the speed of change that's possible now. That there's a dark flip side to that coin is obvious in South America.There's no need for anyone to die for crypto-anarchy. The regrettable spectacle of dual power for some indeterminate time should not be taken as a 'given',in spite of the hirstory of the region.With todays networks and a global mexican wave of anarchy, collapse of govts becomes the precursor of crypto-anarchy.Fascism is usually the reaction of the oligarchs to people power.It doesnt have to be that way.We come back to the possible mass switch to e-cash.People need economic security as much as physical security.AP backs up the justice system while everyone becomes a mint.Reputations are not so much positive as,'least negative',as judged by AP nominations.The crypto revolution stands poised to inherit the earth.The first global revolution in hirstory.If only Hari Seldon were here to see it. "Who wants to participate to help form what will be the LAST revolution on earth, the one that'll take down ALL the governments?"james dalton Bell.Cypherpunk cherubim,crypto-anarchist and enemy of the state.

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Lynx fraud
by mattd 21 Dec '01

21 Dec '01

>>Despite both your premedicated ability to see connections, even those that aren't there, you both miss the metaphor: they're wanting to prohibit LYNX, a nonMS browser, and the damn furry-eared cat is a scratch monkey.<<from major variola (ret) Thanks you for sharing,I didnt realise "jei" was in the same boat as me.There is no metaphor according to the original story(thats from peccable sauce,declan Mc CATO.btw) "Jei" presented a straight news story from declan and I commented on it.Who the hell are "They" who seek to prohibit a non MS browser and how could they anyway? *They* sound like corrupt authoritarians that should become AP nominee's from the sound of it.What medications are you on?

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