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[Clips] Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold Discuss Impeachment
by R. A. Hettinga 08 Jan '06

08 Jan '06

Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 23:07:59 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold Discuss Impeachment Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://www.newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=http://www.newsmax.…> Reprinted from NewsMax.com Sunday, Jan. 8, 2006 2:11 p.m. EST Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold Discuss Impeachment Two leading Senate Democrats declined on Sunday to rule out the possibility that President Bush could be impeached over his decision to wiretap terrorists who make phone calls to the U.S. Asked about Rep. John Lewis' complaint that the Bush surveillance program could be an impeachable offense, Sen. Ted Kennedy told ABC's "This Week": "I'm concerned about the abuses of executive power in the areas of torture and the areas of spying - and about how we're treating individuals in terms of the court systems." The Massachusetts Democrat said he agreed with Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whom he quoted as saying: "We're at war but war is not a blank check to a president to override the rights and liberties of the Constitution." "I don't believe that this president understands that," Kennedy added. In separate comments covered by the Vermont Guardian, Sen. Russ Feingold told reporters that there needs to be "an orderly and dignified" investigation into the Bush surveillance program. "If there was a legal violation there needs to be accountability," he said. "You can't put the cart before the horse, but I would not rule out any form of accountability." That would include impeachment, Feingold reportedly added. Asked by a supporter whether there was a way citizens could impeach Bush "here and now," the Wisconsin Democrat replied: "I'm not going to prejudge what that accountability should be." -- ----------------- 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' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips -- ----------------- 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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[Clips] Eight House Dems Back Impeachment Probe
by R. A. Hettinga 08 Jan '06

08 Jan '06

Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 23:08:10 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Eight House Dems Back Impeachment Probe Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://www.newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=http://www.newsmax.…> Reprinted from NewsMax.com Sunday, Jan. 8, 2006 10:11 a.m. EST Eight House Dems Back Impeachment Probe Eight House Democrats have announced their support for legislation that would establish an impeachment inquiry into whether President Bush for committed high crimes and misdemeanors against the U.S. in connection with the Iraq war. HR 635 calls for "Creating a select committee to investigate the administration's intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture [and] retaliating against critics." The legislation says that the select committee should "make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment." The bill, first proposed by Rep. John Conyers last month, claims that there is "at least a prima facie case that these actions" violated federal law. According to the Atlanta Progressive News, HR635 has attracted the support of seven co-sponsors so far, including Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA), Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX), Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ), Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA). -- ----------------- 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' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips -- ----------------- 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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[Clips] Homeland Security opening private mail
by R. A. Hettinga 08 Jan '06

08 Jan '06

Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2006 20:48:33 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Homeland Security opening private mail Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10740935/print/1/displaymode/1098/> MSNBC.com Homeland Security opening private mail Retired professor confused, angered when letter from abroad is opened By Brock N. Meeks Chief Washington correspondent MSNBC Updated: 5:55 p.m. ET Jan. 6, 2006 WASHINGTON - In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known and corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never had any reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but spectacularly ordinary. But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance. Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words "by Border Protection" and carrying the official Homeland Security seal. "I had no idea (Homeland Security) would open personal letters," Goodman told MSNBC.com in a phone interview. "That's why I alerted the media. I thought it should be known publicly that this is going on," he said. Goodman originally showed the letter to his own local newspaper, the Kansas-based Lawrence Journal-World. "I was shocked and there was a certain degree of disbelief in the beginning," Goodman said when he noticed the letter had been tampered with, adding that he felt his privacy had been invaded. "I think I must be under some kind of surveillance." Goodman is no stranger to mail snooping; as an officer during World War II he was responsible for reading all outgoing mail of the men in his command and censoring any passages that might provide clues as to his unit's position. "But we didn't do it as clumsily as they've done it, I can tell you that," Goodman noted, with no small amount of irony in his voice. "Isn't it funny that this doesn't appear to be any kind of surreptitious effort here," he said. The letter comes from a retired Filipino history professor; Goodman declined to identify her. And although the Philippines is on the U.S. government's radar screen as a potential spawning ground for Muslim-related terrorism, Goodman said his friend is a devout Catholic and not given to supporting such causes. A spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection division said he couldn't speak directly to Goodman's case but acknowledged that the agency can, will and does open mail coming to U.S. citizens that originates from a foreign country whenever it's deemed necessary. "All mail originating outside the United States Customs territory that is to be delivered inside the U.S. Customs territory is subject to Customs examination," says the CBP Web site. That includes personal correspondence. "All mail means 'all mail,'" said John Mohan, a CBP spokesman, emphasizing the point. "This process isn't something we're trying to hide," Mohan said, noting the wording on the agency's Web site. "We've had this authority since before the Department of Homeland Security was created," Mohan said. However, Mohan declined to outline what criteria are used to determine when a piece of personal correspondence should be opened, but said, "obviously it's a security-related criteria." Mohan also declined to say how often or in what volume CBP might be opening mail. "All I can really say is that Customs and Border Protection does undertake [opening mail] when it is determined to be necessary," he said. -- ----------------- 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' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips -- ----------------- 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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[Clips] The Wisdom in Wiretaps
by R. A. Hettinga 08 Jan '06

08 Jan '06

Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Sat, 7 Jan 2006 17:47:28 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] The Wisdom in Wiretaps Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB113659640180740425.html> The Wall Street Journal January 7, 2006 REVIEW & OUTLOOK The Wisdom in Wiretaps January 7, 2006; Page A6 The Bush Administration's use of warrantless wiretaps in the war on terrorism continues to generate controversy, and Congress is planning hearings. Some of the loopier elements of the Democratic Party have even suggested the wiretaps are grounds for impeachment. But the more we learn about the practice, the clearer it is that the White House has been right to employ and defend it. The issue is not about circumventing normal civilian Constitutional protections, after all. The debate concerns surveillance for military purposes during wartime. No one would suggest the President must get a warrant to listen to terrorist communications on the battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan. But what the critics are really insisting on here is that the President get a warrant the minute a terrorist communicates with an associate who may be inside in the U.S. That's a loophole only a terrorist could love. To the extent the President's critics are motivated by anything other than partisanship, their confusion seems to involve a 1978 law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA provides a mechanism by which the executive can conduct warrant-approved surveillance under certain circumstances. But FISA covers only a limited number of intelligence-gathering scenarios. And no Administration -- Democrat or Republican -- has recognized FISA as a binding limit on executive power. Jimmy Carter's Attorney General, Griffin Bell, emphasized when FISA passed that the law "does not take away the power of the President under the Constitution." And in the 1980 case of United States v. Truong, the Carter Administration successfully argued its authority to have conducted entirely domestic, warrantless wiretaps of a U.S. citizen and a Vietnamese citizen who had been passing intelligence to the North Vietnamese during the 1970s Paris peace talks. In 1994, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick also asserted an "inherent authority" not just to warrantless electronic surveillance but to "warrantless physical searches," too. The close associate of Hillary Rodham Clinton told Congress that much intelligence gathering couldn't be conducted within the limits placed on normal criminal investigations -- even if you wanted to for the sake of appearances. For example, she added, "it is usually impossible to describe the object of the search in advance with sufficient detail to satisfy the requirements of the criminal law." Some critics have argued that the surveillance now at issue could have been conducted within the confines of FISA. But that doesn't appear to be true. FISA warrants are similar to criminal warrants in that they require a showing of "probable cause" -- cause, that is, to believe the subject is an "agent of a foreign power." But if the desired object of surveillance is a phone number found on 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's computer, you may not even know the identity of its owner and you can't show probable cause. Nor does the actual track record of FISA argue for the sacredness of judicial oversight of intelligence gathering. In the 1990s, FISA judges nitpicked warrant requests to the extent that Ms. Gorelick and others believed FISA required a complete "wall" of separation between foreign intelligence gathering and U.S. criminal investigators. One consequence was the FBI's failure to request a warrant to search alleged "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui's computer. Only after 9/11 did FISA's appeals panel rule that such a wall had never been necessary, and did the Patriot Act destroy it once and for all. Other critics accept the President's inherent power but say he still should have asked Congress to approve the wiretaps. But some in Congress were informed of the wiretaps and did nothing to stop them. Instead, the ranking Democrat on Senate Intelligence, Jay Rockefeller, wrote a private letter to Vice President Dick Cheney expressing his "lingering concerns" and saying he'd keep it on file for posterity -- or more precisely, for posterior-covering. The Senator then released the letter after the story became public as a way to play "gotcha." If Mr. Rockefeller had been serious about his objections in 2003, he should have told Mr. Cheney to cease and desist or that he'd try to pass legislation to stop it. After reading Mr. Rockefeller's letter of self-absolution, we can understand if Mr. Cheney concluded that the wiretapping was too important to the war on terror to risk seeking an explicit legislative endorsement from so feckless a Congress. The way the Members have played politics with the Patriot Act is another reason not to give Congress a chance to micromanage war-fighting decisions. As for the judiciary, one question that Congressional hearings should explore is whether FISA itself is unconstitutional. That is, whether it already grants the courts too much power over the executive branch's conduct of foreign policy by illegitimately imposing the "probable cause" standard. Laurence Silberman, a former deputy attorney general, testified on this point while Congress was debating FISA. He also pointed out that while fear of exposure is a strong disincentive to executive abuse of surveillance power, "since judges are not politically responsible, there is no self-correcting mechanism to remedy their abuses of power" in such matters. In other words, FISA grants the judiciary a policy supremacy that the Constitution doesn't. The upside of the coming Congressional hearings, we guess, is that Americans will get a lesson in the Constitution's separation of powers. We're confident they'll come away believing the Founders were right to the give the President broad war-fighting -- including surveillance -- powers. -- ----------------- 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' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips -- ----------------- 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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08 Jan '06

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by Agnes Leary 08 Jan '06

08 Jan '06

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by Salvador 08 Jan '06

08 Jan '06

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07 Jan '06

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[e-gold-list] Dr. Jackson - Business Week Article Response
by R. A. Hettinga 07 Jan '06

07 Jan '06

Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2006 22:15:41 -0500 To: "Philodox Clips List" <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [e-gold-list] Dr. Jackson - Business Week Article Response Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2006 21:39:52 -0500 Subject: [e-gold-list] Dr. Jackson - Business Week Article Response To: "e-gold Discussion" <e-gold-list(a)talk.e-gold.com> From: "Bill Cunningham" <bcunningham(a)businessadvisersinc.com> In on-going conversation with Dr. Jackson, he replied to a recent Business Week article with the following letter. He has agreed to allow me to share it on this forum as well as other information outlets. _________________________________________________________________ Letter from Dr. Douglas Jackson; Chairman, e-gold, Ltd. e-goldF has recently been the subject of a slanderous and unfounded article in Business Week. e-gold strongly refutes the allegations and presumptions of this article. The article chose to focus through anecdote and suspicion only on an exception - criminal abuse - and ignores the overwhelming majority of e-gold usage. It also fails to note that all online payment mechanisms including credit cards and intermediaries such as PayPal are targeted by criminals,likely at a much greater magnitude than e-gold, and fails to relate the very proactive steps e-gold takes to eliminate any criminal behavior involving e-gold. e-gold and its Operator, Gold & Silver Reserve (G&SRF), including G&SR's exchange service OmniPayF in cooperation with the United States Government and pursuant to a lawfully issued written request, did allow an examination of the e-gold and OmniPay computer systems and data. The examination occurred on December 16th after normal business hours so as to avoid disrupting access to the system. The examination utilized the full resources of e-gold's system and prevented customer access. We were told by the government examiners that the outage would be for a few hours, however, due to the volume of data maintained by e-gold for its customers' protection, a surprise to the examiners, the examination occupied e-gold's computing capacity for 36 hours. e-gold apologizes for any inconvenience of the system down time caused by the government's request. No charges have been filed against e-gold, G&SR, OmniPay or any of its principals. e-gold operates legally and does not condone persons attempting to use e-gold for criminal activity. e-gold has a long history of cooperation with law enforcement agencies in the US and worldwide, providing data and investigative assistance in response to lawful requests. I'm proud of what we have accomplished so far with e-gold. e-gold, now in its 10th year online, is growing exponentially because of a network effect, a global cascade of Users telling their friends who then tell their friends. For the first time since our launch in 1996, this growth is providing the revenue and resources needed for e-gold to accelerate technical development and other refinements to make it more reliable and even less hospitable to those who would seek to abuse it. We are processing the same volume of transactions and growing at the same exponential pace that PayPal was in the second quarter of 2000. One difference, though, is that they had to give away $tens of millions of their investors' money to build a critical mass of user balances and were continuing a burn rate of about $10 million per month during this period. Altogether they burned through about $275 million of capital losses before their IPO. e-gold, in contrast, lacking significant outside investment: o has attained a circulation larger than Canada's official gold reserves currently 3.46 metric tonnes of gold, equivalent to about $55 million at current exchange rates). o has web traffic surpassing etrade.com and citi.com and is neck and neck with kitco.com as the most heavily trafficked gold related site on the Web o settles 50 to 60 thousand user-to-user payments per day, a daily value of about $10 million o has active Users in every country, (including more than 150,000in China)despite our lack so far of foreign language versions - a high priority on our to-do list e-gold is the only payment mechanism that is truly global, enabling any merchant to accept payment online even if the payer lives in a third world country,has no credit card, or is perhaps 'unbanked' altogether. e-gold enables the migrant worker of modest means to send value back to his family in Mexico or Bangladesh at a fraction of the cost of conventional international remittance mechanisms. e-gold alone is free of chargeback risk, yet the fee for receiving payment in e-gold is a tiny fraction of those charged by any other systems. Thanks to e-gold, for the first time in history, normal people of modest means worldwide have the option of using currency that is designed from the ground up to be immune to debasement, with a governance model that precludes even its management and founders from having the power to subvert it. Gold & Silver Reserve has been operating for over nine years. Seeking to comply with every applicable law, G&SR has reached out to the Government dozens of times, has repeatedly met with officials from the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI, SEC and a variety of other Federal agencies, and has been told q in no uncertain terms q that we were operating legally and in full compliance with all laws, rules and regulations. Additionally, the Government has requested from us q on more than three hundred occasions q information regarding individuals it believed to be lawbreakers. Gold & Silver Reserve complied with every single request in a professional and timely fashion. Numerous Government officials have gone so far as to commend us in writing for our efforts in complying with their requests and aiding them in their investigations. Very recently, however, the Government concluded that it was unable to lregulaten our business under any current statutes or regulations. Rather than moving Congress to enact legislation, the Government apparently chose to undertake to regulate us under pre-existing statutes which are totally and utterly inapplicable to our business. To do so, the case the Government brought against Gold & Silver Reserve centered around false statements and fabrications made to a Magistrate Judge in Washington, D.C. A week later, when challenged by that Judge, the Government, fearing it would lose its case filed a second suit against Gold & Silver Reserve. We are now addressing that action and are confident that we will be victorious in a very short time. Both OmniPay and e-gold have been substantially harmed. Both sites were off-line altogether for 36 hours - an interval during which we were at a loss to know what to announce or even how to announce it. There were other direct interventions as well that I am not yet at liberty to discuss that nearly crippled OmniPay's ability to honor its obligations to and on behalf of users. The worst effect of course is on our reputation. This irresponsible smear piece will surely impair our efforts to build strategic relationships with the host of businesses and individuals that would benefit from an embrace of e-gold. Let me be very clear. e-gold in no manner condones persons or organizations attempting to use e-gold to support criminal acts. The exact opposite is true. e-gold limits accounts that are suspect of illicit activity and has a long history of cooperation with law enforcement agencies. There are two elements that make e-gold about the dumbest choice a criminal could make if seeking to obfuscate a money trail or otherwise hide the proceeds of crime. 1. it is impossible for a general user of e-gold to send/add money(value in any form) into the system... he can only get e-gold by receiving an e-gold Spend from someone who already has some. 2. there's a permanent record of all transfers, that is, a permanent record of the entire lineage of every particle of value in the e-gold system. There is nothing "anonymous and untraceable" about e-gold. e-gold Spends settle by book entry - it isn't so-called "digital cash". e-gold is not about crime. e-gold is not a hospitable environment for criminals. e-gold maintains an efficient and highly capable investigative staff to aid in the identification, apprehension and prosecution of any criminal abusing the system. Our staff has participated in hundreds of investigations supporting the FBI, FTC, IRS, DEA, SEC, USPS, and others. This is the reality of every payment system, the need to aid in rooting out criminal abuse, whether it is child pornographers taking advantage of the multiple layers and indirection of credit card middlemen, or smurfs aggregating cash via international remittance processors or even state lotteries. e-gold has taken a proactive approach, reaching out to law enforcement agencies and NGO's (Non-Governmental Organization) to foster closer cooperation in combating crime online. For example, e-gold is a charter member of the Financial Coalition to eradicate Child Pornography, organized by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, along with Visa, MasterCard, Microsoft, AOL, PayPal, First Data and some of the major banks. I hope to have additional and useful facts shortly and will communicate them when appropriate. I can assure you e-gold is up and running, supporting its customers, and continuing to grow. Dr. Douglas Jackson _____________________________________________________________________ Bill Cunningham Business Advisers bcunningham(a)baiadviser.com 321-773-4385 www.businessadvisersinc.com "Dedicated to Making Your Success a Reality" --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: rah(a)shipwright.com To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-e-gold-list-507998N(a)talk.e-gold.com Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses. -- ----------------- 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' -- ----------------- 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: phone records for sale
by coderman 06 Jan '06

06 Jan '06

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-privacy05.html ---cut--- Steven M. Bellovin Fri, 06 Jan 2006 14:02:12 -0800 18 USC 2702(c) says A provider described in subsection (a) may divulge a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber to or customer of such service (not including the contents of communications covered by subsection (a)(1) or (a)(2)) ... (6) to any person other than a governmental entity. ... If the phone companies are not giving it out voluntarily, perhaps they're being tricked or perhaps they have corrupt employees. ---end-cut--- from the article: ""In some cases, telephone company insiders secretly sell customers' phone-call lists to online brokers, despite strict telephone company rules against such deals, according to Schumer."" the call center employees and other data services API's (less common) is exactly how they do it. t-mobile, verizon, sprint, they all contract out to call centers for various things which provide the call center operators a restricted environment in which to use their internal applications (usually IE, sometimes Remedy or Oracle Forms, graphical Java apps, etc). obviously part of the features of these applications is search by name, MIN, account, etc. often you can access a person's entire account through such systems and very little if any oversight is provided. the carriers sole focus (as it seems) is to prevent fraudulent equipment/phone deliveries to operators using customer accounts. they could care less about unauthorized access given their lack of any attempt to halt such activity. in addition to this, many of these internal networks are horribly insecure, as was well demonstrated by the t-mobile hacks earlier this year. [1] the only reason they continue to get away with such poor practice is that these networks are (in theory) all internal with dedicated lines from the call center back to the carrier networks on which the applications are run. and the fallout from their insecurity is not directly attributable back to them (they can and do blame various middle men, from devious operators to negligent call center policies, etc) [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/16/t_mobile_hacker_guilty/ ---- more fun quotes: "To test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records for an agent's cell phone and received the list within three hours, the police bulletin said." "I would say the most powerful investigative tool right now is cell records," Rizzo said. "I use it a couple times a week. A few hundred bucks a week is well worth the money."

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