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Prepaid debit cards: usable for privacy anymore?
by Roy M. Silvernail 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

I've often heard that a rechargeable debit card is a useful tool for maintaining financial privacy. But I looked at a number of such cards today, and all of them require an activation procedure that involves disclosing name, address and SSN. Has the market closed ranks on KYC, or are there still cards that can be charged without associating with a meatspace identity? -- Roy M. Silvernail is roy(a)rant-central.com, and you're not "It's just this little chromium switch, here." - TFT http://www.rant-central.com

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[Fwd: Tor WIN in germany :)]
by Ted Smith 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

-------- Forwarded Message -------- From: morphium <morphium(a)morphium.info> Reply-to: or-talk(a)freehaven.net To: or-talk(a)freehaven.net, or-talk(a)seul.org Subject: Tor WIN in germany :) Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:07:54 +0100 Hi, 2 hours ago I left court with a verdict of not guilty :) They accused me of fraud & computer fraud, because someone ordered something via my Tor node. I think this is the first Tor verdict in germany, isn't it? Tomorrow my lawyer will do a press release in german. If you have any questions, feel free to mail them. Best regards from .de, Theodor 'morphium' Reppe *********************************************************************** To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to majordomo(a)torproject.org with unsubscribe or-talk in the body. http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/ [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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key escrow: no news is bad news ?
by John Case 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

You don't hear much about key escrow anymore. In fact, even at the height of the patriot act hysteria, there was little to no talk of key escrow. I can't be the first to put forth the conjecture that this is *not* good news ?

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New threat for UK's offshore havens: tax
by R.A. Hettinga 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

You can run, but you can't hide. But you knew that already, right? Right? (This thing even on anymore?) Cheers, RAH ------- <http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/28/tax-more-tax-havens-told/pri… > The Guardian New threat for UK's offshore havens: tax Nick Mathiason guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 October 2009 21.59 GMT A Treasury report will ask overseas territories and crown dependencies to raise taxes. Photograph: Cate Gillon/Getty Britain's tax havens will be read the last rites tomorrow when a Treasury commissioned report will tell them to raise new taxes if they are to survive the economic crisis. Amid fears that Britain may have to bail out tax havens which are showing signs of financial stress, the government will publish the findings of an economic healthcheck of its overseas territories and crown dependencies including Jersey, the Isle of Man and the Cayman islands. Having spent the last 20 years luring the world's super-rich and top companies to their shores, Britain's offshore centres will be told they have no excuse not to diversify their tax bases to ward off financial crisis. Sir Michael Foot, a former Bank of England official and Bahamas bank inspector, will demand that island paradises must take greater responsibility for their economic futures. He is likely to emphasise that offshore jurisdictions will have no one to blame but themselves if they get into financial difficulties. Foot is also expected to say they have no excuse not to abide by anti-money laundering and counter- terrorism finance benchmarks. It is understood the government has particular concerns over the ability of Anguilla and Montserrat to ride out the economic storm. The Caribbean islands have been affected by the decline in financial services and US tourism. In the event of further economic deterioration, certain Caribbean islands could become failed states and be dragged into the illegal drugs trade, Whitehall insiders have said recently. Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man are all UK crown dependencies. Britain's 14 overseas territories include Bermuda, the Caymans, Gibraltar and the British Virgin islands. It is thought Foot believes the crown dependencies have taken significant steps to abide by international regulations. But there is concern that moves to reduce all three islands' corporation tax to zero may breach European tax protocols. Earlier this month the Treasury slashed the Isle of Man's budget by #140m after it discovered a 400-year revenue sharing agreement was weighted sharply in the tax haven's favour. The cut was equivalent to a 24% budget reduction. The 80,000-strong island faces steep spending cuts and possible higher taxes. Similarly, the Caymans have also faced a financial crisis after a public spending programme and reduced fees from banks meant it was forced to beg the Foreign Office for permission to raise a #280m bank loan. Chris Bryant, the Foreign Office minister, refused until the islands' leaders convinced him they had a financial plan. For tax havens that spent tens of millions in attracting international business, the fall from grace has been swift as the opaque nature of their finances has led to world leaders blaming them for helping to destabilise the financial system.

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Re: yo bud
by mark 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

yo mate, ok I`ll give you my trick but if you give it someone else I`ll fuckin kill you :) you know in roulette you can bet on blacks or reds. If you bet $1 on black and it goes black you win $1 but if it goes red you loose your $1. So I found a way you can win everytime: bet $1 on black if it goes black you win $1 now again bet $1 on black, if it goes red bet $3 on black, if it goes red again bet $8 on black, if red again bet $20 on black, red again bet $52 on black (always multiple you previous lost bet around 2.5), if now is black you win $52 so you have $104 and you bet: $1 + $3 + $8 + $20 + $52 = $84 So you just won $20 :) now when you won you start with $1 on blacks again etc etc. its always bound to go black eventually (it`s 50/50) so that way you eventually always win. But there`s a catch. If you start winning too much (like $1000 a day) casino will finally notice something and can ban you. I was banned once on royal casino. So don`t be too greedy and don`t win more then $200 a day and you can do it for years. I think bigger casinos know that trick so I play for real money on smaller ones, right now I play on elite vip casino: www.elite24casino.net for more then 3 months, I win $50-$200 a day and my account still works. You`ll find roulette there when you log in go to "specialty" section - "american roulette". And don`t you dare talling about it anyone else, if too many people knows about it casinos will finally found a way to block that trick. If you have any questions just drop me a line here or on skype. c ya ----- Original Message ----- From: "sprague79" <cypherpunks(a)jfet.org> To: <jeffreyadkv(a)lampang.net> Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 1:14 PM Subject: Please send me the system > Hi mark. > > Please tell me when you will send me your roulette trick? > You promised you`ll send it few weeks ago :( > > Thanks in advance. >

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attack of the drones
by Eugen Leitl 29 Oct '09

29 Oct '09

http://www.newsweek.com/id/215825/output/print Attack of the Drones Now that congress has killed the F-22, the Air Force is facing another shock to the system: planes without pilots. By Fred Kaplan | NEWSWEEK Published Sep 19, 2009 >From the magazine issue dated Sep 28, 2009 For more than 60 years, the Air Force has trumpeted itself as the service of glamour, its pilots ruling the skies, soaring, diving, bombing, and strafing from far abovebyet still commanding the clash of armies on the ground. In movies, they wore white scarves and set the girls' hearts aflutter. But all that is changing in ways that few outsiders understand. A fierce fight is on for the mission, culture, and identity of the Air Force, and the Top Guns are losing. This is the real story behind a passionate political struggle this past summer over a major weapons system, the F-22 Raptor, the world's most sophisticated fighter plane. On its face, the F-22 debate was a straightforward budget battle. The Air Force had 183 of the stealth fighters in its fleet, and another four on the way. It wanted $4 billion for 20 more planes in the next yearba down payment on 200 more it hoped to build in the next decade, for a total of 387. For years, senior Air Force officers had pushed for the F-22 with an intense, almost messianic passion. Congress complied, largely because huge sums of money were at stake. (The Air Force had shrewdly spread the plane's contracts and subcontracts across 46 states.) But the request came at a time of economic calamity, mounting national debt, and a shift in thinking about military requirements. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said no, and President Obama announced he would veto the entire defense budget if it contained money for even one more F-22. The project was killed, story over. But the struggle goes much deeper than that, and its consequences are more profound. To understand why, you need to go back to the beginning: 1981, the height of the Cold War, when the F-22 was born. Its mission was air-to-air combatbkeeping control of the sky during a major war, so that bombers could reach their targets, and soldiers down below could fight without worrying about enemy aerial attacks. With its stealth technology (making it much less visible to radar) and high-tech electronics (making it more powerful at longer ranges), the plane was designed to shoot down the latest Soviet combat planes with greater ease than anything else in the sky. But the first operational F-22 didn't roll onto a runway until the end of 2005, after nearly a quarter century of delays, technical setbacks, and massive cost overruns. By that time, the Cold War was long over. No country on earth had an air force remotely capable of going up against the latest versions of the U.S. F-15 and F-18 fighter planes, much less something newer. Many in Congress, and some civilian analysts in the Pentagon, wanted to cut our losses and kill the F-22 outright. But defenders of the plane were more powerful. To them, the Air Force meant fast, agile planes dogfighting high in the sky. To kill the most advanced fighter plane was tantamount to killing the Air Force. So they did what they do best: they put up a fight. They were fighting against history. From 1947 to 1982, all 10 generals who served as Air Force chief of staff were bomber pilots. From 1982 until last year, all nine generals who occupied that position were fighter pilots. In 2008, a new era in warfare was beginning, and Secretary Gates asked President Bush to appoint a different kind of chief of staff: Gen. Norton Schwartz. He came up through the ranks flying neither bombers nor fighters but C-130s, the bulky cargo planes that haul troops, weapons, and supplies from bases and supply depots to the battlefront. "Airlift," as this duty is called, is a vital mission; the Army, Marines, and Special Forces couldn't mobilize swiftly without it. But it's unglamorous. The Air Force brass had never valued it as highly as missions that involve fast combat planes or bombing targets deep behind enemy linesbuntil now. Just as the Vietnam War paved the way for the rise of the fighter pilotbbefore then, much higher status was given to pilots of nuclear bombersbthe Iraq and Afghanistan wars are demanding a new Air Force culture. "War is the great teacher of innovation, the great stimulus to thought in military affairs," says Ashton Carter, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and logistics. The present wars, he adds, "have challenged the cultures in all the servicesb&There's a heated competition to be relevant." Iraq and Afghanistan are very different wars from the war the F-22 Raptor was designed to fight. (Not one of the advanced aircraft has flown a single mission over either theater.) The enemy isn't a foreign government, but an insurgency; there are few "strategic" targets to bomb and no opposing air force to go after. So the main Air Force role is to support American and allied troops on the ground. This means two things: first, airlifting supplies (General Schwartz's specialty); second, helping the troops find and kill bad guys. For this second mission, the Air Force has been relying more and more on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with names like Predator, Reaper, Global Hawk, and Warrior Alpha. Joystick pilots located halfway around the world operate these ghost planes. They pinpoint their targets by watching streams of real-time video, taken by cameras strapped to the bellies of the UAVs. Many of the aircraft also carry super-accurate smart bombs, which the joystick pilots can fire with the push of a button once they've spotted the targets on their video screens. The first UAVs were used in Yugoslavia in the '90s and during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. They proved so effective that, when the war in Iraq became an insurgency, every American soldier, Marine, and Special Ops officer wanted one overhead to help find and destroy snipers' nests, roadside bombs, and other threats. Gates noticed this growing demand for the unmanned planes soon after taking over the Pentagon at the end of 2006, in the last half of George W. Bush's second term as president. Gates's top priority was cleaning up the mess in Iraq, and UAVs seemed to be a potent tool. He ordered a crash program to build more of the planes, as well as the infrastructure to support them. But senior Air Force officers, including the chief of staff at the time, Gen. T. Michael Moseley, didn't seem motivated to put the UAVs into action over Iraq. Gates would grumble that the troops were at war but the Pentagon wasn't. "Trying to get Moseley to move on this was like pulling teeth," a senior Pentagon official recalls. "Gates was terribly frustrated." An Air Force pilot who worked inside the Pentagon at the time agrees: "There was a big resistance to unmanned systems within the Air Force because they're not very sexy. The attitude was 'Airplanes without pilots in them? That's not what we're about!' " (A half century ago, Gen. Curtis LeMay, the first head of the Strategic Air Command, opposed development of the intercontinental ballistic missile, which he feared would supplant the long-range bomber. He didn't want the Air Force to become, he said, "the silent silo-sitters of the '60s.") Gates wanted to nudge the naysayers aside. He got his chance in June 2008, when two Air Force scandals erupted. In one case, electrical fuses for ballistic-missile warheads were mistakenly shipped to Taiwan. In another, a bomber flew over U.S. territory carrying live nukes. Gates used the opportunity to fire Moseley and the civilian secretary of the Air Force, Michael Wynne. Gates, who had been a Minuteman ICBM crewman in his youth, was genuinely shocked by the two incidents, says one senior military officer, who did not want to be named because he did not want to be publicly drawn into interservice politics. "But," the officer adds, "they weren't the only reasons these guys were fired. Gates was looking for some excuse, and this was a pretty good one." (Moseley and Wynne did not respond to requests for comment.) The Air Force lobbied Gates to appoint another fighter pilot, but Gates wanted Schwartz for the job. Schwartz, who had intended to retire at the end of the year, was just wrapping up a tour as head of the Air Force's Transportation Command. (Just before that, he had been deputy commander of the Special Operations Command.) Gates liked his pragmatic bent and his eagerness to cooperate with the other services. Gates had just forced the Army to buy a fleet of expensive new armored personnel carriers, called MRAPs, and he needed the Air Force to get them to Iraq quickly. Schwartz leapt to the task. Gates figured that, as chief of staff, Schwartz would embrace unmanned aerial vehicles. He did. In an e-mail, Gen. David Petraeus, who commands the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, praised Schwartz for doing "a particularly impressive job of accelerating" the deployment of UAVs, and helping the troops on the ground. This sort of joint effort may sound unremarkable, but in the annals of ArmybAir Force relations, it's practically revolutionary. In 2007, the year before Schwartz became chief, UAVs were performing 21 combat air patrols at any one time, for a total of just over 100,000 hours. By 2011, they'll reach 54 patrols and almost 350,000 hours. For now, the joystick pilots have to be certified fighter pilots as well. But Schwartz says this requirement will be dropped, mainly because there aren't enough fighter pilots to fill the growing demand for UAV crews. "There's no need for them to be pilots," one senior Pentagon official says. "It's sort of like a union regulation." This year, the Air Force will train more joystick pilots than new fighter and bomber pilots. "If you want to be in the center of the action, this is the place to be," Schwartz says. "It's not a temporary phenomenonb&It's a sustainable career path. I've made that very clear." Lt. Col. Travis Burdine, a Predator pilot-from-afar, has gotten the message: "We all joined the Air Force to go flying, but word on the street is that job satisfaction is very high [manning a joystick]. Every day we're doing this, we're in the thick of the fight. We fly 36 [combat air patrols] a day. Where they're happening, the hottest 36 things are going on." It's not hard now to imagine a time when the dominant combat leaders of the Air Force have no physical contact with airplanes. "We're opening an aperture," Schwartz says. "How do we define a warrior-airman? The definition is expanding." Whatever happens, he says, "the trend lines are inescapable: we increasingly will become less of a manned aviation force." C. R. Anderegg, the Air Force historian, says that just as the generals of the 1950s and '60s were predominantly bomber pilots, and the generals of the 1970s and '80s were mainly fighter pilots, so a lot of the generals in the coming decades may be UAV joystick pilots. "It's going to be pretty hard for a promotion board, picking the next one-star generals, to pick a colonel who hasn't commanded a UAV wing over a colonel who has. The UAV commander has the experience, and he has a larger, less insular view of the battlefield than, say, an F-22 pilot at Langley." Many fighter-pilot generalsbthe most fervent advocates of building more F-22sbcontinue to resist these changes. Their motives aren't entirely parochial. Many worry that 187 F-22s simply aren't enough for the long-term needs of national defense. "The concern among many leaders in the Air Force," says one general, "is that this obsessive focus on today's wars is jeopardizing our security in the future." These generals imagine a future war against, say, a resurgent China or a revitalized Russia. Gates gets that. But the official Air Force studies that justify a fleet of 387 F-22s assume the United States fights two major wars simultaneously against foes that each possess an air force nearly equal to ours. Such a scenario is dubious and, in any case, very distant. It was, in fact, these studies that convinced Gates that he was right to halt the program at 187 planes. "It's very difficult to come up with two very sophisticated threats that might materialize at the same time," says a senior officer who has supervised analytical studies about weapons needs. Even if the nearly impossible came truebif the U.S. did fight two wars at once against major powersbat least one Pentagon analysis concludes that F-35s could handle the second threat nearly as well as F-22s, according to a senior officer who participated in the study. The F-35ba smaller, cheaper plane, which Gates wants to buy in large quantitybis not quite as good as the F-22 in shooting down planes but much better at destroying surface-to-air missile batteries. On July 17, the Senate voted to stop the F-22 program by a margin of 58b40ba more lopsided margin than administration officials had predicted. It was not a party-line vote: 15 Democrats voted to continue production; 15 Republicans voted with Obama and Gates to kill it. (The F-22's floor managers were Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., representing Lockheed Martin, the chief contractor, and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., representing Pratt & Whitney, which makes the engine.) The vote went the way it did because Gates, a widely respected Republican hawk, provided cover for opponents of the program. In a speech the day before the Senate acted, Gates declared that it was no longer possible to design and buy the most sophisticated weapons systems "to keep up with or stay ahead of another superpower adversary, especially one that imploded nearly a generation ago." He might have added that the Air Force has to change its culture to keep up with the times. The glamour days are over, and a new era has begun. Kaplan is the National-Security Columnist for Slate and the author of 1959: The Year Everything Changed.

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