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Google Labs Publications: MapReduce
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

<http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce.html> Google Labs Publication MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters Jeffrey Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat Google Inc. Abstract MapReduce is a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating large data sets. Users specify a map function that processes a key/value pair to generate a set of intermediate key/value pairs, and a reduce function that merges all intermediate values associated with the same intermediate key. Many real world tasks are expressible in this model, as shown in the paper. Programs written in this functional style are automatically parallelized and executed on a large cluster of commodity machines. The run-time system takes care of the details of partitioning the input data, scheduling the program's execution across a set of machines, handling machine failures, and managing the required inter-machine communication. This allows programmers without any experience with parallel and distributed systems to easily utilize the resources of a large distributed system. Our implementation of MapReduce runs on a large cluster of commodity machines and is highly scalable: a typical MapReduce computation processes many terabytes of data on thousands of machines. Programmers find the system easy to use: hundreds of MapReduce programs have been implemented and upwards of one thousand MapReduce jobs are executed on Google's clusters every day. To appear in: OSDI'04: Sixth Symposium on Operating System Design and Implementation, San Francisco, CA, December, 2004. Download: PDF Version This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All person copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. Google Labs home page - All About Google )2004 Google -- ----------------- 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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Lockheed and the Future of Warfare
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/business/yourmoney/28lock.html> November 28, 2004 Lockheed and the Future of Warfare By TIM WEINER LOCKHEED MARTIN doesn't run the United States. But it does help run a breathtakingly big part of it. Over the last decade, Lockheed, the nation's largest military contractor, has built a formidable information-technology empire that now stretches from the Pentagon to the post office. It sorts your mail and totals your taxes. It cuts Social Security checks and counts the United States census. It runs space flights and monitors air traffic. To make all that happen, Lockheed writes more computer code than Microsoft. Of course, Lockheed, based in Bethesda, Md., is best known for its weapons, which are the heart of America's arsenal. It builds most of the nation's warplanes. It creates rockets for nuclear missiles, sensors for spy satellites and scores of other military and intelligence systems. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency might have difficulty functioning without the contractor's expertise. But in the post-9/11 world, Lockheed has become more than just the biggest corporate cog in what Dwight D. Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. It is increasingly putting its stamp on the nation's military policies, too. Lockheed stands at "the intersection of policy and technology," and that "is really a very interesting place to me," said its new chief executive, Robert J. Stevens, a tightly wound former Marine. "We are deployed entirely in developing daunting technology," he said, and that requires "thinking through the policy dimensions of national security as well as technological dimensions." To critics, however, Lockheed's deep ties with the Pentagon raise some questions. "It's impossible to tell where the government ends and Lockheed begins," said Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group in Washington that monitors government contracts. "The fox isn't guarding the henhouse. He lives there." No contractor is in a better position than Lockheed to do business in Washington. Nearly 80 percent of its revenue comes from the United States government. Most of the rest comes from foreign military sales, many financed with tax dollars. And former Lockheed executives, lobbyists and lawyers hold crucial posts at the White House and the Pentagon, picking weapons and setting policies. Obviously, war and crisis have been good for business. The Pentagon's budget for buying new weapons rose by about a third over the last three years, to $81 billion in fiscal 2004, up from $60 billion in 2001. Lockheed's sales also rose by about a third, to nearly $32 billion in the 2003 calendar year, from $24 billion in 2001. It was the No. 1 recipient of Pentagon primary contracts, with $21.9 billion in fiscal 2003. Boeing had $17.3 billion, Northrop Grumman had $11.1 billion and General Dynamics had $8.2 billion. LOCKHEED also has many tens of billions of dollars in future orders on its books. The company's stock has tripled in the last four years, to just under $60. "It used to be just an airplane company," said John Pike, a longtime military analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org, a research organization in Alexandria, Va. "Now it's a warfare company. It's an integrated solution provider. It's a one-stop shop. Anything you need to kill the enemy, they will sell you." As its influence grows, Lockheed is not just seeking to solve the problems of national security. It is framing the questions as well: Are there too few soldiers to secure the farthest reaches of Iraq? Lockheed is creating robot soldiers and neural software - "intelligent agents" - to do their work. "We've now created policy options where you can elect to put a human in or you can elect to put an intelligent agent in place," Mr. Stevens said. Are thousands of C.I.A. and Pentagon analysts drowning under a flood of data, incapable of seeing patterns? Lockheed's "intelligence information factory" will do their thinking for them. Mining and sifting categories of facts - for example, linking an adversary's movements and telephone calls - would "offload the mental work by making connections," said Stanton D. Sloane, executive vice president for integrated systems and solutions at Lockheed. Are American soldiers hard-pressed to tell friend from foe in the crags of Afghanistan? Lockheed is transferring spy satellite technology, created for mapping mountain ridges, to build a mobile lab for reading fingerprints. Lockheed executives say the mobile lab, the size of a laptop, is just the tool for special-operations commandos. It can be loaded with the prints of suspected terrorists, they say, and linked to the F.B.I.'s 470 million print files. They say they think that American police departments will want it, too. Does the Department of Homeland Security have the best tools to protect the nation? Lockheed has a host of military and intelligence technologies to offer. "What they do for the military in downtown Falluja, they can do for the police in downtown Reno," said Jondavid Black of the company's Horizontal Integration Vision division. Lockheed is also building a huge high-altitude airship, 25 times bigger than the Goodyear blimp, intended to help the Pentagon with the unsolved problem of protecting the nation from ballistic missiles. The airship, with two tons of surveillance sensors, could be used by the Department of Homeland Security to stare down at the United States, Lockheed officials said. In a pilot program for the department, Lockheed has set up spy cameras and sensors on the U.S.S. New Jersey, anchored in the Delaware River, providing 24-hour surveillance of the ports of Philadelphia and Camden, N.J. The program grew out of the Aegis weapons and surveillance systems for Navy ships, and it soon may spread throughout the United States. The melding of military and intelligence programs, information-technology and domestic security spending began in earnest after the Sept. 11 attacks. Lockheed was perfectly positioned to take advantage of the shift. When the United States government decided a decade ago to let corporate America handle federal information technology, Lockheed leapt at the opportunity. Its information-technology sales have quadrupled since 1995, and, for all those years, Lockheed has been the No. 1 supplier to the federal government, which now outsources 83 percent of its I.T. work. Lockheed has taken over the job of making data flow throughout the government, from the F.B.I.'s long-dysfunctional computer networks to the Department of Health and Human Services system for tracking child support. The company just won a $525 million contract to fix the Social Security Administration's information systems. It has an $87 million contract to make computers communicate and secrets stream throughout the Department of Homeland Security. On top of all that, the company is helping to rebuild the United States Coast Guard - a $17 billion program - and to supply, under the Patriot Act, biometric identity cards for six million Americans who work in transportation. Lockheed is also the strongest corporate force driving the Pentagon's plans for "net-centric warfare": the big idea of fusing military, intelligence and weapons programs through a new military Internet, called the Global Information Grid, to give American soldiers throughout the world an instant picture of the battlefield around them. "We want to know what's going on anytime, anyplace on the planet," said Lorraine M. Martin, vice president and deputy of the company's Joint Command, Control and Communications Systems division. Lockheed's global reach is also growing. Its "critical mass" of salesmanship lets it "produce global products for a global marketplace," said Robert H. Trice Jr., the senior vice president for corporate business development. With its dominant position in fighter jets, missiles, rockets and other weapons, Lockheed's technology will drive the security spending for many American allies in coming decades. Lockheed now sells aircraft and weapons to more than 40 countries. The American taxpayer is financing many of those sales. For example, Israel spends much of the $1.8 billion in annual military aid from the United States to buy F-16 warplanes from Lockheed. Twenty-four nations are flying the F-16, or will be soon. Lockheed's factory in Fort Worth is building 10 for Chile. Oman will receive a dozen next year. Poland will get 48 in 2006; the United States Treasury will cover the cost through a $3.8 billion loan. In the future, Lockheed hopes to build and sell hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of the next generation of warplanes, the F-35, to the United States Army, Navy and Air Force, and to dozens of United States allies. Three years ago, Lockheed won the competition to be the prime contractor for this aircraft, known as the Joint Strike Fighter. The program was valued at $200 billion, the biggest Pentagon project in history, but it may be worth more. The F-35 is in its first stages of development in Fort Worth; its onboard computers will require 3.5 million lines of code. Each of the American military services wants a different version of the jet. There have been glitches involving the weight of the craft. "We did not get it right the first time," said Tom Burbage, a Lockheed executive vice president working on the program. But a day will come, he said, "when everybody's flying the F-35." Lockheed hopes to sell 4,000 or 5,000 of the planes, with roughly half the sales to foreign nations, including those that bought the F-16. "It's a terrific opportunity for us," said Bob Elrod, a senior Lockheed manager for the F-35 program. "It could be a tremendous success, at the level of the F-16 - 4,000-plus and growing." That would represent "world domination" for Lockheed, he said. In the United States, where national security spending now surpasses $500 billion a year, Lockheed's dominance is growing. Its own executives say the concentration of power among military contractors is more intense than in any other sector of business outside banking. Three or four major companies - Lockheed, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and arguably Boeing - rule the industry. They often work like general contractors building customized houses, farming out the painting, the floors and the cabinets to smaller subcontractors and taking their own share of the money. AND, after 9/11, cost is hardly the most important variable for Pentagon planners. Lockheed has now won approval to build as many F-22's as possible. The current price, $258 million apiece, easily makes the F-22 the most expensive fighter jet in history. Mr. Stevens, whose compensation last year as Lockheed's chief operating officer was more than $9.5 million, says cost is essentially irrelevant when national security is at stake. "Some folks might think, well, here's a fighter that costs a lot," he said. "This is not a business where in the purest economical sense there's a broad market of supply and demand and price and value can be determined in that exchange. It's more challenging to define its value." Lockheed says it has transformed its corporate culture. In the 1970's, it was discovered that the company had paid millions of dollars to foreign officials around the world in order to sell its planes. In one case, Kakuei Tanaka, who had been the prime minister of Japan, was convicted of accepting bribes. "Without Lockheed, there never would have been a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act," said Jerome Levinson, who was the staff director of the Senate subcommittee that uncovered the bribery. The antibribery provisions of that law, passed in 1977, owed their existence to the Lockheed investigation, he said. The last bribery case involving Lockheed came a decade ago, when a Lockheed executive and the corporation admitted paying $1.2 million in bribes to an Egyptian official to seal the sales of three Lockheed C-130 cargo planes. Mr. Trice, Lockheed's senior vice president for business development, says the company cleaned up its act at home and overseas since the last of the series of major mergers and acquisitions that gave the corporation its present shape in March 1995. "You simply have to look people in the eye and say 'we don't do business that way,' " he said. There really is no need to do business that way any more - not in a world where so much of Lockheed's wealth flows directly from the Treasury, where competition for foreign markets is both controlled and subsidized by the White House and Congress, and where Lockheed's influence runs so deep. Men who have worked, lobbied and lawyered for Lockheed hold the posts of secretary of the Navy, secretary of transportation, director of the national nuclear weapons complex and director of the national spy satellite agency. The list also includes Stephen J. Hadley, who has been named the next national security adviser to the president, succeeding Condoleezza Rice. Former Lockheed executives serve on the Defense Policy Board, the Defense Science Board and the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which help make military and intelligence policy and pick weapons for future battles. Lockheed's board includes E. C. Aldridge Jr., who, as the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer, gave the go-ahead to build the F-22. None of those posts and positions violate the Pentagon's rules about the "revolving door" between industry and government. Lockheed has stayed clear of the kind of conflict-of-interest cases that have afflicted its competitor, Boeing, and the Air Force in recent months. "We need to be politically aware and astute," Mr. Stevens said. "We work with the Congress. We work with the executive branch." In these dialogues, he said, Lockheed's end of the conversation is "saying we think this is feasible, we think this is possible, we think we might have invented a new approach." Lockheed makes about $1 million a year in campaign contributions through political action committees, singling out members of the Congressional committees controlling the Pentagon's budget, and spends many millions more on lobbying. Political stalwarts who have lobbied for Lockheed at one point or another include Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi and a former Republican national chairman; Otto Reich, who persuaded Congress to sell F-16's to Chile before becoming President Bush's main Latin America policy aide in 2002; and Norman Y. Mineta, the transportation secretary and former member of Congress. Its connections give Lockheed a "tremendous opportunity to influence contracts flowing to the company," said Ms. Brian of the Project on Government Oversight. "More subtly valuable is the ability of the company to benefit from their eyes and ears inside the government, to know what's on the horizon, what are the best bets for the government's future technology needs." SO who serves as the overseer for the biggest military contractors and their costly weapons? Usually, the customer itself: the Pentagon. "These programs are huge," said Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon's comptroller and chief financial officer for the last three years, who recently joined Booz Allen Hamilton, the consulting firm. "There is a historical tendency to underestimate their test schedules, their technological hurdles, the likely weight of an airplane and, as a result, to underestimate costs. "Because you have so few contractors, you don't get the level of attention that the average citizen would think would be devoted to a program costing billions of dollars," he said. "With this massive agglomeration into a very small number of companies, you get far less visibility as to whether the subcontractors are effectively managed. Problems accumulate." "Twenty years ago, the complaint was, it takes so long to build things," he said. Weapons designed in the depths of the cold war were built long after the Berlin Wall crumbled. That led some people, including George W. Bush while running for president in 1999, to suggest that the Pentagon skip a generation of weapons set to roll off the assembly line in this decade and concentrate instead on lighter, faster, smarter systems for the future. That didn't happen. It still takes two decades to build a major weapons system, and the costs are still staggering. "The complaints haven't changed 20 years later," Mr. Zakheim said. The difference between then and now is the concentration of expertise, experience and power in a few hands, he said, "and I don't think the effect has necessarily been a good one." Mr. Stevens rejected that criticism. "I can't tell you the number of times I've heard 'not progressive, not sophisticated, ponderous, slow' " as terms used to describe Lockheed, he said. "I see none of that." What he sees is a far grander vision. Lockheed, he said, is promising to transform the very nature of war. During the cold war, when Lockheed and its component parts built an empire of nuclear weapons, Mr. Stevens said, the watchword was: "Be more fearful. 'Deterrence,' isn't that Latin? 'Deterrere.' Induce fear. Terrorize." Today, Lockheed is building weapons so smart that they can change the world by virtue of their precision, he said; they aim to wage war without the death of innocents, without weapons misfiring, without fatal miscalculation. "I know the fog of war exists," Mr. Stevens said, adding that it could be lifted. "We envision a world where you don't have any more fratricide," no more friendly fire, he said. "With technology we've been able to make ourselves more secure and more humane. "And we aren't there yet - but we sure have pioneered the kind of work that is taking us well along that trajectory. And there's a lot of evidence that says we're doing well. And we're setting the bar high and we expect to be able to do that. Now that's pretty exciting stuff. "I don't say this lightly," he said. "Our industry has contributed to a change in humankind." -- ----------------- 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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[ISN] Universities struggling with SSL-busting spyware
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

--- begin forwarded text

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Class fingerprint scans to stop truancy
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

<http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=IF0PGSNPI5OKTQFIQMGCN…> The Telegraph Class fingerprint scans to stop truancy By David Sapsted (Filed: 01/12/2004) Pupils at a secondary school are being "fingerprinted" before each lesson in a bid to combat truancy. All 1,300 students arriving for classes at Impington Village College, near Cambridge, have to place their fingertips on a scanner, which then registers them as present. The scheme is the first of its kind in the country. If a pupil does not check in, the system sends a text message or e-mail to his or her parents, telling them their child is absent. The school telephones parents who do not have a computer or mobile phone alerts. The system, which uses reference points taken from each child's finger rather than a complete fingerprint, has been supplied free on an experimental basis by a technology company. If the scheme is a success, it is likely to be extended to verify the identity of examination candidates; make head counts on school trips; control the issuing of library books and monitor access to school buildings. A spokesman for Cambridgeshire county council said yesterday: "We are impressed by what we have seen so far. The system has many benefits." The technology will also be used to introduce a cashless catering system, which will avoid the need for pupils to carry money and help to increase security. Jacqueline Kearns, the warden of Impington Village College, said: "We are delighted with the new fingertip recognition technology. "It will revolutionise the way students register and will enable us and their parents to keep track of any who are late or absent. "Staff and students have embraced the new technology and we are looking at ways it can improve efficiency and pupil safety." -- ----------------- 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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Swedish military feared linked to Estonia ferry disaster
by Nomen Nescio 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 For those interested in intelligence, munitions smuggling by authorities and so on - a few words concerning military smuggling of munitions on the Estonia, feared to have played a part in the sinking and killings of 852 people on Sept 28, 1994, when the ferry M/S Estonia sinked during a journey from Estonia to Sweden. It has been rumoured for a long time that there were some kind of smuggling of sensitive material taking place on Estonia and that Russian authorities did not like this, needless to say. The very stressed and hasty investigation performed by the involved nations also raised suspicions amongst a lot of people. On top of all this the Swedish social democratic government did all they could to hinder future investigations of the wreckage by trying to cover it with stones and concrete. First some other related info. The reader should know that the Swedish social democratic party is notorious for acting in undemocratic and deceitful manners against the Swedish people. Two of the most infamous affairs being the "IB affair" and the "Catalina affair". In the IB affair it was shown that the social democratic party had founded a secret and unlawful military intelligence bureau as the party's own private spy organization to spy on other politcal adversaries, a Swedish version of Watergate if you will, but it went far beyond that. Hundreds of thousands of people were targeted during a number of years. Even Olof Palme himself knew about break-ins that the intelligence officers performed in other countries embassies in Stockholm, one of them was Egypt's embassy. One major characteristic is that the Swedish way of doing things means sweeping things under the carpet and not letting the public know the truths, this is shown in every "affair" known in resent years, including the Estonia disaster. In all of these affairs it's the social democrats that has been the most responsible party and the party almost in constant power in Sweden historically speaking. The magazine breaking the news in 1973 today has a web site about the affair, http://www.fib.se/IB/ In the Catalina affair it was very recently shown actually, after the planes was discovered east of the island Gotland in the Baltic Sea, that they were both indeed gunned down, as had been suspected for decades. On June 13 1952 the DC3 plane Hugin disappeared and the only thing found was a trashed rescue raft. Three days later the rescure plane of type "Catalina" was also gunned down and forced to emergency landing. It's today also known however that the Swedish (social democratic) governments have all been maliciously and intentionally lying all along about the Hugin's purpose to both the Swedish people as well as the families. Hugin was in fact gathering intelligence very close (some say on the wrong side even) of the Russian border and was relaying all this signal intelligence directly to the Americans. USA was amongst other things interested in Russias capacity to fight the B-47. This was well known for the Russians and this was the direct cause of the attacks in 1952. It is believed that the Swedish FRA, standing for "Fvrsvarets RadioAnstalt", translating to "The Defence's Radio Institution", which is Swedens NSA, signed secret treaties with the US some three years prior to the assult on these planes. The FRA had 5 employees on the Hugin when it was gunned down. It wasn't until 1991 that the families knew what happened, that was when the Russians admitted a Mig-15 gunned them down. When the recon plane was found in June 2004 it was situated far east of the earlier officially declared crash site which further fules the speculation that Hugin was indeed flying where it shouldn't have been, conducting its sigint operations and that the Swedish governments knew this all along. The Hugin was found June 10, 2003. I'm not sure how much of these affairs is known outside Sweden, but it's interesting read that's for sure and I just may get back to these things and others like them later on. Back to other things now. This was published today in Sweden, along with a tv show of one hour: > INRIKES Publicerad 30 november > > "Krigsmateriel fraktades pe Estonia" > > > Estonia hade veckorna fvre fvrlisning- > en vid tve tillfdllen krigsmateriel > fren Baltikum i lasten. Enligt kvdll- > ens Uppdrag granskning i SVT rvrde > det sig om rysk elektronik som svenska > fvrsvaret tog in fvr att studera. > > Lars Borgnds som gjort programmet > sdger att avslvjandet belyser hur > svenska myndigheter hanterat kata- > strofen. -Man har t.ex. inte undersvkt > bilddck, sdger han till SVT Text. > > Den pensionerade tullintendenten > Lennart Henriksson uppger att han fett > order om att sldppa igenom bilarna pe > begdran av fvrsvarsmakten. > Lds mer pe svt.se/nyheter Which translates into something like this: DOMESTIC Published November 30 "War material was freighted on the Estonia" The weeks before the sinking the Estonia had at least at two different occasions war material in its cargo. According to tonight's Uppdrag Granskning(*) in the Swedish state television the equipment was russian electronics that the Swedish military brought in for studies. Lars Borgnds who did the show says that the revelations shows how the authorities have handled the situation. - One example is the failure to examine the car deck, he says to SVT. The retired former head of customs at the port of Stockholm Lennart Henriksson says he was given direct orders to let the cars through and that the order came from the military. (*) The name of the tv show sent on Nov 30, featuring Wallraff styled recordings of swedish officials verifying the smuggling of war material on the direct order from the swedish military commander in chief Owe Viktorin. It was showed in the show that Owe Viktorin personally asked the chief of the swedish customs to order their workers to let specific cars through customs without questions. And so they did. The "KSI" mentioned below is perhaps the most secret Swedish military intelligence organization (we know of) today. The abbreviation stands for "Kontoret fvr Sdrskild Inhdmtning", which translated into something like "The office for special intelligence gatherings". They are known to conduct regular espionage operations on foreign soil and have been deeply involved in the smuggling of intelligence and the recruiting of spies on the ground from Russia for quite some time. They are more or less "not existing", you cannot phone MUST and ask for KSI or someone you know working at KSI, they will not acknowledge anything or anyone, although KSI is known to exist and is also mentioned (briefly) in some official documents. KSI is part of MUST, which stands for "Militdra Underdttelse och Sdkerhetstjdnsten", translating to "The military intelligence and security service" and is the Swedish version of CIA so essentially KSI is like a bureau within CIA with some black bag types of jobs in their resume as well. MUST, http://www.hkv.mil.se/article.php?id=35 FRA, http://www.fra.se MUST's annual report 2003 http://www.hkv.mil.se/attachments/sak_ar03_sv.pdf MUST's annual report 2002 http://www.hkv.mil.se/attachments/sak_ar02_s5_sv.pdf SVT Program homepage http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=2232 This is an english text present at the svt.se site. http://svt.se/svt/jsp/Crosslink.jsp?d=13038&a=293822 - --------------------------------------- In english: War materials smuggled on Estonia Ten years after the Estonia ferry disaster, a former head of customs in Stockholm has confirmed what has been the subject of much speculation - the ferry was being used for smuggling across the Baltic Sea. This secret cargo comprised Russian war materials that had been let through customs on orders from the highest instance. The person that has now chosen to tell all is Lennart Henriksson. He was employed by the customs office in Stockholm for 38 years and was customs inspector and head of the sea customs. Ive been walking around thinking about what happened for ten years. Each time Estonias name came up Ive thought the little I know should be brought into the light of day. I want to clear my conscience, he says. His revelation has put a new light on the Estonia disaster and how it has been handled by politicians and authorities. And its something that has been unknown to the Accident Investigation Board that investigated the disaster. The evening before Lennart Henriksson got in touch with Uppdrag Granskning, hed seen our report on what was happening ten years after the Estonia disaster. The report took up the questions surrounding the accident and how the experts in Sweden and abroad wanted to carry out the investigation. Also in the report were the rumours and speculation about the ferry carrying smuggled goods and that it was the object of sabotage or an explosion. We also told of some relatives to the deceased who suspected that the truth behind the accident has not been uncovered. And that the authorities have colluded and lied. For ten years, Lennart Henriksson has borne this knowledge alone, despite being personally acquainted with people who died when Estonia went down on the night between the 27 and 28 September 1994. Not long before the accident, something happened that he had never experienced before during his many years in the customs. Some time in the middle of September, I now know it was around the 12th or 13th, I went to my boss who said we were called to a meeting with the director of customs. We went up there and the director said that a vehicle would be arriving on the Estonia that shouldnt be searched. He also gave me a licence number, Lennart Henriksson told us. He asked directly why it shouldnt be searched. He said it was an order. 'But from where? I wondered. From the highest quarters he answered, says Henriksson. Normally, customs searched all the vehicles from Estonia, as smuggling was rife. Lennart Henriksson had never experienced anything like this before - that a vehicle was being let through without a search. When the ferry finally arrived, he went down to the ferry quay and spoke to the driver, who was registered as Frank Larsson. The vehicle was a Volvo 745 estate car. I said the customs were carrying out inspections and he gave me a look but I said the search would be faked. We opened a few boxes and as far as I could see it was military electronics in them. What did you base that on? Anyone whos done their military service knows what it looks like. But I dont know how old it was or what condition it was in. The person that gave him the order, says Lennart Henriksson, was the head of the Eastern customs region Inge Lindunger. Lennart Henrikssons immediate superior, who was present when Lindunger gave the order and who was also on the quay when the Volvo arrived, was Superintendent Stig Sandelin. Who this was that was bringing what looked like military electronics into the country, Lennart Henriksson didnt know but he was curious and made a note of the car's licence number. Later that day, he found out who the car was registered to. He still has that document. The registered owner was Ericsson Access AB, a company that at this time was part of the Ericsson group of companies. But today, they say they know nothing about the incident. Not long afterwards, it happened again. The ferry was schedule to arrive on 20 September - and again there was a transport that was waved through without inspection. This time it was a van and Lennart Henriksson looked through the boxes again. It was the same stuff in this vehicle as well: military electronics. I looked into a few boxes but not too closely. What were you thinking this second time? I thought it was a strange procedure. But orders are orders and you dont reflect too much on why. But what was it in those vehicles and who was bringing it in? And perhaps the most important question: was there anything like it on board Estonia on the night of the accident? When Uppdrag Granskning spoke with customs superintendent Stig Sandelin, he remains silent and refers to classified information and national security. On the other hand he does confirm the transports took place - and that he saw the materials being shipped to Sweden. But was there a similar cargo on the night of the accident? He says he doesnt know. Ive no idea. I dont know what was on board when she went down, says Sandelin. In a recorded conversation between Lennart Henriksson and Stig Sandelin, he's more open. According to Stig Sandelin, there was an agreement between the Commissioner of the Swedish Customs at the time, Ulf Larsson, and Ove Wictorin, who was then Supreme Commander of the Swedish armed forces, that Sandelin was to handle the customs clearance when the materials arrived. During the conversation, Lennart Henriksson asked if he knew who the materials were for. Yes, its the military. I dont know what they saw in it but then it was exciting for them to get hold of old Russian stuff. Thats history now, says Sandelin. In other words, Lennart Henrikssons belief that it was military material being brought in on the Estonia on 14 and 20 September was correct. Stig Sandelin had confirmed it. It was Russian materials, the Swedish defence was mixed up in it and it all took place in great secrecy - that is still the case today. Uppdrag Granskning has also received confirmation that the boxes Lennart Henriksson looked inside contained military electronics, not weapons or explosives. But we dont know what was in the boxes Henriksson didnt look inside. The international Accident Investigation Board, which had investigated the accident for three years, never knew that the Estonia passenger ferry was used to transport secret war materials shortly before the accident. But why was the Swedish defence smuggling war materials from Estonia? It was 1994 and five years had passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, leaving the Baltic States free. The Soviet bases were pulled down and all the materials were taken to Russia. Svren Lindman was the Swedish defence attachi in the three Baltic countries at that time. It was his task to observe the military break-up in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on behalf of the Swedish defence. According to Lindman, the Russians had already shipped home the most interesting materials from the Baltic with just a few exceptions. There was not much left. On the other hand, there was a lot of advanced equipment in the nearby Leningrad area inside Russia. Svren Lindman took military materials back with him from the Baltic himself occasionally. With his diplomatic passport he could easily pass through the controls. Alexander Einseln, Estonias first Supreme Commander, confirms the situation: Everything was for sale and anything was available if you could pay for it", he says. Was the situation in Estonia such that it was possible to smuggle equipment on board the ferry? "Yes, without doubt. There were no controls at all", says Einseln. Svren Lindman has no knowledge of the transports that Lennart Henriksson is talking about - on the 14 and 20 September 1994. In his opinion, as he didn't know about them, they might have involved the most secret section of Swedish defence - KSI, the Office of Special Intelligence. In other words the Swedish secret service. It would be a dereliction of duty if KSI hadnt been in the Baltic digging up whatever they could after the collapse of the Soviet Union, says Lindman. We have confirmation from Lennart Henriksson and Stig Sandelin that covert transport of Russian war materials on Estonia took place on 14 and 20 September. But now when we contact people higher up in the customs and military organisations to obtain more information it seems their memories fail them. Uppdrag Granskning asked Lennart Henriksson to phone director of customs Inge Lindunger, who had given him the order to let the first car through. He says he doesnt remember now either. Whatever it was, its a thing of the past now", says Inge Lindunger. The Commissioner of the Swedish Customs at the time Ulf Larsson answers likewise: It doesnt ring any bells", he says. We get the same response from the Supreme Commander of the day Ove Wictorin: it's nothing he remembers. Then can KSI, the secret service organisation, have acted independently without the knowledge of the Supreme Commander? Officially, KSI is part of the military's intelligence and security service MUST but is such a secret organisation that nothing is said about it and very few know how and where it operates or who works there. The head of MUST at this time was Erik Rossander. Of course the intelligence service is interested in the material standard of other powers. Thats one of the assignments. But Im not saying how you get it, states Rossander. Otherwise, he wouldnt comment on the issue. Everything we did is covered by the secrets act and that still applies. The heads of customs had slight recollections or none at all; the Supreme Commander and the head of Ericsson Access said they had no knowledge of the covert transport of war materials on Estonia. And yet we know they took place on the 14 and 20 September. The question is, was there a cargo like it on the car deck when the ferry sank on the 28th? The former Supreme Commander of Estonia, Alexander Einseln, believes that if there was a military cargo on the night of the accident, it could explain, in his view, the extraordinary way in which the Estonia disaster was handled. It's unusually suspicious that a democratic country like Sweden should react so quickly to cover the wreck and keep everyone away. I saw the same behaviour from the Finns and the Estonians and thats what has made me question whether something had to be concealed. Why such a hurry? wonders Einseln. What do you think should be done now? The ship must be lifted and inspected. But I wouldnt let the three countries involved be part of it. Countries without any national interests to protect should be asked to help, he says. REPORTER: Lars Borgnds - --------------------------------------- Links about the Estonia disaster http://www.estoniasamlingen.se/ http://www.seainfo.se http://user.tninet.se/~uht674g http://www.estonia.kajen.com http://w1.316.telia.com/~u31612930 http://www.multi.fi/~stigb/Estonia http://www.titanicnorden.com/skepp/estonia.html http://factgroup.nu http://heiwaco.tripod.com http://axelnelson.com/skepp/Estonia.html http://susning.nu/Estonia http://www.elaestonia.org Yours Berra (Verification may not work due to high bit characters) - -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: PGP Universal 1.2.2 mQGiBEGtw28RBADoYtPEDQY0ViYkoOXftj/1KNoKugHwp1CMkKArBStmEegcwju/ IqrWLYA63iXG7zFXenNx77c+MEMHVzyx6aioDypa331pBOBwHN7fpqJZLExR/sQG hEPOlPLlr37xSx41PXbtK7kV7t9UjW5i0Rub60haQ/7iWC6tU6MopvHECwCg/yrf 9MNwngloM9IC9ZBhtg2JRrMEAJEin9BlPM9nht6+G2K6ZF7LYeBwEnH0SHTKGhwW FvEo4Ii0MjEPdvGmMqkiqiYDE09Ke3jPWVib7AkWxj7atUB+FhY6gGb6lvSnViWp R8fLgnd+jJh699g/0xJuD0eca15gmGr95TAK3+MSMhw0tuwbjAi7ItVhnHzxJ2HN xYtIA/461lGfJxxlJS4ZMjnlgb5ANq445dcbFoc5Vic21Uugvi+y+5pGrJf5/i1K KDROJ3TvW/xCmvFWNF29qPs7AqEGIN1uC27z1EP592bSggH1IwEkdWyWYihI6T5w xiSZ1AR5d8X9bbYaTjclIzzxD3DbsvbQlXmqIO+Af57PSsz10bQFQmVycmGJAFUE EBECABUFAkGtw28FCQIIwIAFCwkCAwECGQEACgkQ4zSiVHY/CRb1dQCcDj+2d8Hz bQWKc5Ey4Sb7D9gj2g0AoOMLhkwW6k23v7a2BvOZSgNTQO+DuQQNBEGtw3AQEAD5 GKB+WgZhekOQldwFbIeG7GHszUUfDtjgo3nGydx6C6zkP+NGlLYwSlPXfAIWSIC1 FeUpmamfB3TT/+OhxZYgTphluNgN7hBdq7YXHFHYUMoiV0MpvpXoVis4eFwL2/hM TdXjqkbM+84X6CqdFGHjhKlP0YOEqHm274+nQ0YIxswdd1ckOErixPDojhNnl06S E2H22+slDhf99pj3yHx5sHIdOHX79sFzxIMRJitDYMPj6NYK/aEoJguuqa6zZQ+i AFMBoHzWq6MSHvoPKs4fdIRPyvMX86RA6dfSd7ZCLQI2wSbLaF6dfJgJCo1+Le3k XXn11JJPmxiO/CqnS3wy9kJXtwh/CBdyorrWqULzBej5UxE5T7bxbrlLOCDaAadW oxTpj0BV89AHxstDqZSt90xkhkn4DIO9ZekX1KHTUPj1WV/cdlJPPT2N286Z4VeS Wc39uK50T8X8dryDxUcwYc58yWb/Ffm7/ZFexwGq01uejaClcjrUGvC/RgBYK+X0 iP1YTknbzSC0neSRBzZrM2w4DUUdD3yIsxx8Wy2O9vPJI8BD8KVbGI2Ou1WMuF04 0zT9fBdXQ6MdGGzeMyEstSr/POGxKUAYEY18hKcKctaGxAMZyAcpesqVDNmWn6vQ ClCbAkbTCD1mpF1Bn5x8vYlLIhkmuquiXsNV6z3WFwACAhAA18ulprxi8SmHLuEN hc3c5gaGBNYOTxZpc2S5FEnKw7yMLTVs30xOvG0K3QdcZpFY24aMeXDy1Qf6sHy+ ZxQA2axKrQfNmRYCVO2lpcqB8f/onavSy1KpUpWcdbmSAOxank0kak2ZTqFx6WYA MqAwfFeg5id3bdajEVGW4wsmijtecFcHNInJE81sPVm/pUtcDHCCqO2iToNFPL5r kFNxJ6CrRfW2Ba8iKlPqohsEymzheRjt/5OXPpljjJn3xjr2IUT0EBFFebS0RI7N Rya3/yHlyLelQfeZSSBDc1I9p0DaLg/SauWdoP/mOMJ9MEJSnkL3DfNFabHXhz9K Ao2uO9+uXjQFRDB8kE2eRVbHQF9zUZ/Ag++MoR+lCNYkKLRAkuaPnrBnjOJMe/3q Y8Dlsu1pl8a5n0G4p0SnLBZW20QYUbU/xXNwatFwQ0+YgqaLEil0U9BKGEjKYmtk 9FxmL8xZSZ6JQRLJBHz/bP41UxqXmbKlP/XC+b5PgGDRNfIHLpZmS5D+mdeQzOhl 8oMetLocABZyR9LKP9VlWLlBLsH8dVqZGHZSGeQ4tnPdRJTrmkC0QBTrTvuHWz7o rGDp3ccMfBxq73FPXCaSGrR5razGrYXzeAHK7YvQiXWzS40WPwrb0ZgDAgb6wlII TAkj+aK6X92Fitr39NdGHIg/Tp6JAEwEGBECAAwFAkGtw3AFCQIIwIAACgkQ4zSi VHY/CRZwmQCg6KkE2F1ULfpRNThRh93nMOwwoOAAn0G9rZfuJH6Vc3uWCtLjNAmO C6rv =NRCZ - -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP Universal 1.2.2 iQA/AwUBQa3Ej+M0olR2PwkWEQK2jwCfVTs4mwxmI5l10xj2u2KyGA0ZGrAAoLEr og8Y//1k/FvLjQTXw3lNvQ4Z =dML3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Quantum key distribution
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

<http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-10/iss-6/p22.html> - The Industrial Physicist ?Quantum key distribution Data carrying photons may be transmitted by laser and detected in such a way that any interference will be noted by Jennifer Ouellette pdf version of this article Computing's exponential increase in power requires setting the bar always higher to secure electronicdata transmissions from would-be hackers. The ideal solution would transmit data in quantum bits, but truly quantum information processing may lie decades away. Therefore, several companies have focused on bringing one aspect of quantum communications to market- quantum key distribution (QKD), used to exchange secret keys that protect data during transmission. Two companies, MagiQ Technologies (New York, NY) and ID Quantique (Geneva, Switzerland), have released commercial QKD systems, and several others plan to enter the marketplace within two years. Figure 1. When blue light is pumped into a nonlinear crystal, entangled photon pairs (imaged here as a red beam with the aid of a diode laser) emerge at an angle of 30 to the blue beam, and the beams are sent into single-mode fibers to be detected. Because the entangled photons "know" each other, any interference will result in a mismatch when the two beams are compared. (University of Vienna/Volker Steger) "There is a continuous war between code makers and code breakers," says Alexei Trifonov, chief scientist with MagiQ. Cryptologists devise more difficult coding schemes, only to have them broken. Quantum cryptography has the potential to end that cycle. This is important to national security and modern electronic business transactions, which transmit credit card numbers and other sensitive information in encrypted form. The Department of Defense (DoD) currently funds several quantum-cryptography projects as part of a $20.6 million initiative in quantum information. Globally, public and private sources will fund about $50 million in quantum-cryptography work over the next several years. Andrew Hammond, a vice president of MagiQ, estimates that the market for QKD systems will reach $200 million within a few years, and one day could hit $1 billion annually. Key types QKD was proposed roughly 20 years ago, but its premise rests on the formulation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in 1927. The very act of observing or measuring a particle-such as a photon in a data stream-changes its behavior (Figure 1). Any moving photon can have one of four orientations: vertical, horizontal, or diagonal in either direction. A standard laser can be modified to emit single photons, each with a particular orientation. Would-be hackers (eavesdroppers in cryptography parlance) can record the orientations with photon detectors, but doing so changes the orientation of some photons-and, thus, alerts the sender and receiver of a compromised transmission. An encryption key-the code needed to encrypt or decipher a message-consists of a string of random bits. Such a key is useless unless it is completely random, known only to the communicating parties, and changed regularly. In the one-time-pad approach, the key length must equal the message length, and it should be used only once. In theory, this makes the encrypted message secure, but problems arise in practice. In the real world, keys must be exchanged by a CD-ROM or some other physical means, which makes keys susceptible to interception. Reusing a key gives code breakers the opportunity to find patterns in the encrypted data that might reveal the key. Historically, the Soviet Union's accidental duplication of one-time-pad pages allowed U.S. cryptanalysts to unmask the spy Klaus Fuchs in 1949. Rather than one-time-pad keys, many data-transmission security systems today use public-key cryptography, which relies on very long prime numbers to transmit keys. A typical public-key encryption scheme uses two keys. The first is a public key, available to anyone with access to the global registry of public keys, and the message is encrypted with it. The second is private, accessible only to the receiver. Both keys are needed to unscramble a message. The system's primary weakness is that a powerful computer could use the public key to learn the private key (see The Industrial Physicist, August 2000, pp. 29-33). Quantum key distribution A key distributed using quantum cryptography would be almost impossible to steal because QKD systems continually and randomly generate new private keys that both parties share automatically. A compromised key in a QKD system can only decrypt a small amount of encoded information because the private key may be changed every second or even continuously. To build up a secret key from a stream of single photons, each photon is encoded with a bit value of 0 or 1, typically by a photon in some superposition state, such as polarization. These photons are emitted by a conventional laser as pulses of light so dim that most pulses do not emit a photon. This approach ensures that few pulses contain more than one photon. Additional losses occur as photons travel through the fiber-optic line. In the end, only a small fraction of the received pulses actually contain a photon. However, this low yield is not problematic for QKD because only photons that reach the receiver are used. The key is generally encoded in either the polarization or the relative phase of the photon (see "Keeping Alice and Bob secure", below). The most common standard protocol for QKD is called BB84, after its inventors, IBM's Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard. Invented in 1984, it uses a stream of single photons to transfer a cryptographic key between two parties, who can use it to encode and decode data transmitted using standard high-speed techniques. Right now, single photons allow real-time data transmissions only at low speed, typically 100 bits/s-a hundred millionth the speed of today's fastest fiber-optic transmission systems. That explains why most companies have focused on commercializing QKD and not on data encryption. Polarization-based encoding works best for free-space communication systems rather than fiber-optic lines. Data are transmitted faster in free-space systems, but they cannot traverse the longer distances of fiber-optic links. In July 2004, a team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), working with Acadia Optronics (Rockville, MD), demonstrated the world's fastest quantum- cryptography system by sending a quantum key over a 730-m free-space link at rates of up to 1 megabit/s- 1,000 times as fast as previously reported results. The NIST system uses an infrared laser to generate the photons and reflecting telescopes with 8-in. mirrors to send and receive the photons through air. NIST's system differs from other existing QKD systems in how it identifies a photon from the sender, as opposed to photons from another source, such as the sun. The scientists record the exact time of each emission and look for a photon only when one is expected. The window of observation time must be very short, but NIST physicist Joshua Bienfang says that making frequent brief observations enables the team to generate new keys more often. Fiber-optic links Randomly generated keys are changed up to 1,000 times/s in MagiQ's OPN Security Gateway, which uses a secure fiber-optic link to transmit the changing key sequence up to 120 km as a stream of polarized photons. The company claims that linking its systems together can transmit a QKD several hundred kilometers (Figures 2 and 3). Quantum properties other than polarization can encode the value of a bit for the quantum key, says Gregoire Ribordy, CEO of Swiss start-up ID Quantique. His company introduced the first commercial quantum-cryptography products in 2002: single-photon detectors and random-number generators, two essential components for quantum-cryptography systems. In 2003, the company partnered with two electronic-security firms to develop a commercial system. Figure 3. A more detailed network shows routers for concentrating and directing Internet traffic, Sonet telecommunications protocol, wave division multiplexers, optical amplifiers, and repeaters. ID Quantique's system encodes data in the phase of the photon instead of its polarization state. An interferometer splits beams of light and then recombines them at the output end, and it can do the same with a single photon. Although a photon cannot split in two, its dual wave-particle nature allows it to travel through both arms of the interferometer as a wave, only becoming a particle again when it recombines and is detected at the output end. It takes but a slight change in the length of one interferometer arm to randomly alter a photon's phase. Figure 4. Henry Yeh, director of programs, and Chip Elliot, principal engineer, in the Quantum Laboratory at BBN Technologies, which operates the DARPA-funded world's first quantum key distribution network. (BBN Technologies) In 2002, scientists at Northwestern University developed a quantum-cryptography method capable of sending encr ypted data over a fiber- optic line at 250 megabits/s, almost 1,000 times as fast as prior quantum technology. The team used standard lasers and existing optical technology to transmit large bundles of photons; other techniques used in quantum cryptography rely on single photons, which are harder to detect. BBN Technologies (Cambridge, MA) operates the world's first quantum cryptographic network, which links several different kinds of QKD systems (Figure 4). Some use off-the-shelf optical lasers and detectors to emit and detect single photons; others use entangled pairs of photons. This DARPA-funded network runs between BBN, Harvard, and Boston University, a citysized schematic designed to test the robustness of such systems in real-world applications (Figure 5). It allows multiple users at each organization to tap into a fiberoptic loop secured by a quantum-cryptography system. BBN will soon add a free-space QKD link and an entangled- photon QKD system. Other companies are also investing in quantum-cryptography systems. IBM's Almaden Research Center, the NEC Research Institute, Toshiba, and Hewlett-Packard are on the brink of introducing products. In March 2004, NEC scientists in Japan sent a single photon over a 150-km fiber-optic link, breaking the transmissiondistance record for quantum cryptography. Figure 5. This network allows users at BBN Technologies, Harvard University, and Boston University to tap into a fiber-optic loop secured by a quantum-cryptography system. (BBN Technologies/Funding by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) To date, most commercially viable QKD systems rely on fiber-optic links limited to 100 to 120 km. At longer distances, random noise degrades the photon stream. Quantum keys cannot travel far over fiberoptic lines, and, thus, they can work only between computers directly connected to each other. The only way to achieve such a system with total security in a networking environment and at greater distances is to add quantum repeaters-rudimentary quantum computers- to regenerate the bits. NEC and Hewlett- Packard are developing components needed to make quantum repeaters a reality. Entangled photons To date, physicists have not developed an ideal single-photon source. In a small number of instances, more than one photon is emitted, making the system vulnerable. A hacker could tap the system and measure one of the photons to discover what polarization the sender is using, and then send the other onto the receiver-all without revealing his or her presence. That explains why entangled photons present an attractive future option. When two photons become entangled, if one is vertically polarized, the other is always polarized horizontally. The polarization of a single photon cannot be known until it is measured, and the measurement will automatically determine the polarization of the other photon, even if it is several hundred meters away. Albert Einstein dubbed this "spooky action at a distance." A QKD system using entangled photons would have a critical advantage: the key comes into existence simultaneously at both sender and receiver nodes, eliminating the possibility of interception. Entangled-state quantum cryptography works by generating entangled-photon pairs and distributing them through fibers or free space so that each arrives at the receiver's detectors simultaneously. Once measured, the photons assume one of four polarization states at random. Entanglement works over fiberoptic lines, but there are inevitable losses, which limits transmission distance. Free-space techniques extend the entanglement to distances in the range of 24 km. Last April, a team from the University of Vienna, Austria's ARC Seibersdorf Research (Seibersdorf), and Ludwig- Maximilians University (Munich, Germany) performed the first quantum-secured transfer of money using entangled photons. The scientists installed a 1.45-km fiber-optic line under Vienna's streets to link a transmitter at city hall to a receiver at the headquarters of an Austrian bank. They used a crystal with nonlinear optical properties to split photons with wavelengths of 405 nm into entangled pairs of photons with wavelengths of 810 nm. Using the key, the team safely transferred funds from city hall to the bank. In April 2004, the European Union launched the SECOQC project, which involves 41 participants from 12 countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Participants have pledged 11.4 million euro ($14.8 million U.S.) in funding over the next four years to create a secure quantum network globally. One of the project's eight goals is to develop a suitable QKD system. The techniques under consideration are the University of Vienna's entangledphoton scheme, ID Quantique's attenuated pulsed-laser source of single photons, and free-space links. The last would also enable key distribution using modulated coherent states rather than photon counting. Faster detectors Future developments will focus on faster photon detectors, a major factor limiting the development of practical systems for widespread commercial use. Chip Elliott, BBN's principal engineer, says the company is working with the University of Rochester and NIST's Boulder Laboratories in Colorado to develop practical superconducting photon detectors based on niobium nitride, which would operate at 4 K and 10 GHz. Laboratory models can already detect billions of photons per second-several hundred orders of magnitude faster than today's commercial photon detectors. The ultimate goal is to make QKD more reliable, integrate it with today's telecommunications infrastructure, and increase the transmission distance and rate of key generation. "It's one thing to achieve quantum cryptography in the laboratory on a multimillion dollar government- funded project," says MagiQ's Trifonov. "It's quite another to make it reasonably cost-effective for commercial applications." -- ----------------- 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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Conversational Engagement Tracked
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

<http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/12/rnb_120104.asp?trk=nl> Technology Review Conversational Engagement Tracked December 1, 2004 It would be useful if a computer could sense ebbs and flows in conversation in order to automatically adjust remote communications systems. It would be useful, for instance, if a system automatically switched from a walkie-talkie-type push-to-talk system to a telephone-like full duplex audio connection when the participants become highly engaged in a conversation. Language is often fairly cryptic, however. The phrase "I am interested in this conversation", for instance, can signal enjoyment or polite boredom. Researchers from the University of Rochester and Palo Alto Research Center are aiming to allow computers to automatically assess peoples' engagement in a conversation by analyzing the way they speak rather than what they say. The researchers' system analyzes tone of voice and prosodic style, which includes changes in strength, pitch and rhythm. As voice communication shifts from traditional telephone networks to the more flexible Internet it is becoming easier to seamlessly shift between different communication channels. The system could automatically adapt voice channels on-the-fly. It could also help a user who is engaged in conversation avoid distractions by deferring loud and new email announcements and changing instant messaging status to busy. The researchers' system adds the ability to sense characteristics of conversational engagement to previous methods of recognizing speech emotion, taking into consideration changes in emotion over time and the influence of participants on each other. The system measures five levels of engagement. The researchers' used recorded phone conversations to test the system. The system sensed users' engagement accurately 63 percent of the time, more than triple the 20 percent accuracy that would result from random choices. The method could be used in practical applications in three to six years, according to the researchers. The work appeared in the proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP) held October 4 to 8, 2004 on Jeju Island in Korea. -- ----------------- 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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[ISN] Universities struggling with SSL-busting spyware
by InfoSec News 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/1130univestrug.html By Paul Roberts IDG News Service 11/30/04 U.S. universities are struggling with a flare-up of dangerous spyware that can snoop on information encrypted using SSL. Experts are warning that the stealthy software, called Marketscore, could be used to intercept a wide range of sensitive information, including passwords and health and financial data. In recent weeks, information technology departments at a number of universities issued warnings about problems caused by the Marketscore software, which promises to speed up Web browsing. The program, which routes all user traffic through its own network of servers, poses a real threat to user privacy, security experts agree. Columbia University, Cornell University, Indiana University, The State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany, and The Pennsylvania State University are among those noting an increase in the number of systems running Marketscore software in recent weeks. Each institution warned their users about Marketscore and posted instructions for removing the software. The software is bundled with iMesh peer-to-peer software, and may have made it onto university networks that way, said David Escalante, director of computer security at Boston College. The company that makes the software, Marketscore, has headquarters in Reston, Va., at the same mailing address as online behavior tracking company comScore Networks. ComScore Networks did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Reports of infected systems on campuses ranged from a handful up to about 200 on one large campus network, Escalante said. Marketscore is just the latest incarnation of a spyware program called Netsetter, which first appeared in January, said Sam Curry, vice president of eTrust Security Management at Computer Associates. "Basically it takes all your Web traffic and forces it through its own proxy servers," he said. Ostensibly, the redirection speeds up Web surfing, because pages cached on Marketscore's servers load faster than they would if they were served directly from the actual Web servers for sites such as Google.com or Yahoo.com. However, those performance benefits have been elusive. "People who have installed the software complain to us that they're not getting any improvement," Curry said. Richard Smith, an independent software consultant in Boston, is also skeptical of performance improvement claims made by Marketscore and others, especially since many Internet service providers already offer Web caching for their dial-up customers, he said in an e-mail message. At Cornell, the university IT Security Office blocked connections between Cornell's network and the Marketscore servers, according to a message posted on the university's Web site. Administrators at SUNY Albany took similar steps, according to a message posted on that university's Web site. While other legal software programs make similar claims about improving Web browsing speed as Marketscore, Internet security experts are troubled that the software creates its own trusted certificate authority on computers. That certificate authority intercepts Web communications secured using SSL, decrypting that traffic, then sending it to the Marketscore servers before encrypting the traffic and passing it along to its final destination. That traffic could include sensitive information, including passwords, credit card and Social Security numbers, Curry said. Marketscore should be a big concern for companies -- especially those like banks with employees who handle sensitive data, Escalante said. "I don't know how good it is for parties on either end of a transaction to have a third party listening in," he said. If nothing else, all the extra decrypting and encrypting slows down SSL traffic, casting doubt on Marketscore's claims to be an Internet accelerator, Smith said. CA's eTrust anti-virus software labeled Marketscore "spyware" up until June of this year, but stopped doing so after Marketscore appealed that designation using an established vendor appeal process, he said. CA is currently re-evaluating the "spyware" designation using a complicated, multifactor scoring system. The software is less repugnant than its predecessor, Netsetter, which did not clearly disclose to users what it did when installed and made itself difficult to remove. Marketscore is better on both those counts, clearly stating both in the end user license agreement and during the installation process what the product does, and providing users with an easy uninstall program. CA considers Marketscore an example of a new breed of software that lies in the gray area between spyware and legitimate software, Curry said. "Under the old definition, (Marketscore) clearly qualified as spyware. But there are new categories emerging," he said. While Marketscore clearly tracks user behavior, it doesn't hijack Web browser home pages, spew pop-up advertisements or conceal its presence, like earlier generations of spyware did, Curry said. "There's more granularity. Companies have responded and ... are adding benefits and value to these programs. We're looking at ways to more accurately identify this," he said. Perhaps trying to increase its appeal, Marketscore is now advertising itself as an e-mail protection service, in addition to an Internet accelerator. According to the Marketscore.com Web site, members will receive Symantec's CarrierScan Server anti-virus technology at no cost. However, that promise doesn't sit well with Symantec, which said it has no relationship with Marketscore and, in fact, considers the software "spyware," said Genevieve Haldeman, a company spokeswoman. "We don't have relationships with companies that make software we consider malicious," she said. Symantec is considering legal action to force Marketscore to stop using its name and logo on the Marketscore.com Web site, she said. Spyware or not, the lesson of Marketscore is that "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," Curry said. _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/ --- 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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[ISN] Universities struggling with SSL-busting spyware
by InfoSec News 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/1130univestrug.html By Paul Roberts IDG News Service 11/30/04 U.S. universities are struggling with a flare-up of dangerous spyware that can snoop on information encrypted using SSL. Experts are warning that the stealthy software, called Marketscore, could be used to intercept a wide range of sensitive information, including passwords and health and financial data. In recent weeks, information technology departments at a number of universities issued warnings about problems caused by the Marketscore software, which promises to speed up Web browsing. The program, which routes all user traffic through its own network of servers, poses a real threat to user privacy, security experts agree. Columbia University, Cornell University, Indiana University, The State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany, and The Pennsylvania State University are among those noting an increase in the number of systems running Marketscore software in recent weeks. Each institution warned their users about Marketscore and posted instructions for removing the software. The software is bundled with iMesh peer-to-peer software, and may have made it onto university networks that way, said David Escalante, director of computer security at Boston College. The company that makes the software, Marketscore, has headquarters in Reston, Va., at the same mailing address as online behavior tracking company comScore Networks. ComScore Networks did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Reports of infected systems on campuses ranged from a handful up to about 200 on one large campus network, Escalante said. Marketscore is just the latest incarnation of a spyware program called Netsetter, which first appeared in January, said Sam Curry, vice president of eTrust Security Management at Computer Associates. "Basically it takes all your Web traffic and forces it through its own proxy servers," he said. Ostensibly, the redirection speeds up Web surfing, because pages cached on Marketscore's servers load faster than they would if they were served directly from the actual Web servers for sites such as Google.com or Yahoo.com. However, those performance benefits have been elusive. "People who have installed the software complain to us that they're not getting any improvement," Curry said. Richard Smith, an independent software consultant in Boston, is also skeptical of performance improvement claims made by Marketscore and others, especially since many Internet service providers already offer Web caching for their dial-up customers, he said in an e-mail message. At Cornell, the university IT Security Office blocked connections between Cornell's network and the Marketscore servers, according to a message posted on the university's Web site. Administrators at SUNY Albany took similar steps, according to a message posted on that university's Web site. While other legal software programs make similar claims about improving Web browsing speed as Marketscore, Internet security experts are troubled that the software creates its own trusted certificate authority on computers. That certificate authority intercepts Web communications secured using SSL, decrypting that traffic, then sending it to the Marketscore servers before encrypting the traffic and passing it along to its final destination. That traffic could include sensitive information, including passwords, credit card and Social Security numbers, Curry said. Marketscore should be a big concern for companies -- especially those like banks with employees who handle sensitive data, Escalante said. "I don't know how good it is for parties on either end of a transaction to have a third party listening in," he said. If nothing else, all the extra decrypting and encrypting slows down SSL traffic, casting doubt on Marketscore's claims to be an Internet accelerator, Smith said. CA's eTrust anti-virus software labeled Marketscore "spyware" up until June of this year, but stopped doing so after Marketscore appealed that designation using an established vendor appeal process, he said. CA is currently re-evaluating the "spyware" designation using a complicated, multifactor scoring system. The software is less repugnant than its predecessor, Netsetter, which did not clearly disclose to users what it did when installed and made itself difficult to remove. Marketscore is better on both those counts, clearly stating both in the end user license agreement and during the installation process what the product does, and providing users with an easy uninstall program. CA considers Marketscore an example of a new breed of software that lies in the gray area between spyware and legitimate software, Curry said. "Under the old definition, (Marketscore) clearly qualified as spyware. But there are new categories emerging," he said. While Marketscore clearly tracks user behavior, it doesn't hijack Web browser home pages, spew pop-up advertisements or conceal its presence, like earlier generations of spyware did, Curry said. "There's more granularity. Companies have responded and ... are adding benefits and value to these programs. We're looking at ways to more accurately identify this," he said. Perhaps trying to increase its appeal, Marketscore is now advertising itself as an e-mail protection service, in addition to an Internet accelerator. According to the Marketscore.com Web site, members will receive Symantec's CarrierScan Server anti-virus technology at no cost. However, that promise doesn't sit well with Symantec, which said it has no relationship with Marketscore and, in fact, considers the software "spyware," said Genevieve Haldeman, a company spokeswoman. "We don't have relationships with companies that make software we consider malicious," she said. Symantec is considering legal action to force Marketscore to stop using its name and logo on the Marketscore.com Web site, she said. Spyware or not, the lesson of Marketscore is that "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," Curry said. _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/ --- 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] Arabs launch money laundering, terror financing watchdog
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

--- begin forwarded text To: "Bruce Tefft" <btefft(a)community-research.com> Thread-Index: AcTXnb2VTpnLxWr1TYWTH/A76UVXkw== From: "Bruce Tefft" <btefft(a)community-research.com> Mailing-List: list osint(a)yahoogroups.com; contact osint-owner(a)yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list osint(a)yahoogroups.com Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 08:00:49 -0500 Subject: [osint] Arabs launch money laundering, terror financing watchdog Reply-To: osint(a)yahoogroups.com http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_1-12-2004_pg4_1 Arabs launch money laundering, terror financing watchdog * US hails Middle East-North Africa Financial Action Task Force MANAMA: Arab states agreed on Tuesday to work together to try to keep money out of the hands of terrorists. Tuesday's creation of the 14-member Middle East-North Africa Financial Action Task Force was hailed by the US Treasury Department official responsible for fighting terrorist financing, Juan Carlos Zarate, who attended the inaugural meeting in Bahrain. The task force was "a testament to the fact that Gulf countries and countries in the region have taken very seriously ... the threat of terrorist financing," Zarate told reporters. "I think we need to do more. There are still those who are providing support to Al Qaeda and to like-minded terrorist groups ... who want to hide money in the international financial system." The task force is the first of its kind in the region, which has come under increased scrutiny following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States. The United Arab Emirates, which joined the new task force and is known for its freewheeling financial sector, has been identified by US investigators as a major money transfer center for Al Qaeda, the terror network responsible for Sept. 11. The Emirates has tightened reporting and other regulations since September 11. Bahrain earlier this year signed the 1999 UN international convention for the suppression of financing of terrorism. Saudi Arabia has cracked down on charities suspected of funneling money to terrorists. Emirates Central Bank Governor Sultan bin Nasser al-Suwaidi told reporters at the Bahrain meeting that now countries in the region must ensure their words are translated into action. "We need to strengthen our regulations and enforce the right laws and regulations," al-Suwaidi said. The watchdog bringing together Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, Kuwait, Tunisia, Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen will be a regional version of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force. The 33-member FATF was set up in 1987 to monitor and fight money laundering, and in 2001 expanded its role to combatting the financing of terror. Iraqi officials attended the Bahrain meeting as observers, as did officials from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United States, Britain and France. Bahraini Finance Minister Abdulla Saif said the task force showed officials in his region were serious about ensuring their banking and financial systems were transparent and could not be exploited by criminals. Bahrain was to host the task force, which was to be headed initially by a Lebanese president, an Egyptian vice president and a Saudi executive director, according to the founding documents delegates signed Tuesday. The presidency and vice-presidency will rotate annually among the member countries. ap ------------------------ 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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