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Just Another Chip in the (Privacy) Wall
by R.A. Hettinga 18 Nov '04

18 Nov '04

<http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/11/wo_kushner111804.asp?p=0> Technology Review Just Another Chip in the (Privacy) Wall An electronic database implanted under the skin can assure speedy and proper medical care-but is it worth it? By David Kushner November 18, 2004 You can almost see the ads now: Imagine a bright future with a chip in your arm! Went to the supermarket, but left the wallet at home? No problem! Flex your bicep and the smiling cashier passes a scanner over your arm. Voila-identification chip recognized! Problem solved. Your credit is good with us! Passed out during a sunrise jaunt on the top of Haleakala Mountain in Maui? Fret not! The hospital down below is on the case. Arm please. Scanner! The readout on the computer is fine. Just a little altitude sickness. Key to the safety deposit box weighing you down? Chuck it! Next time you're in the bank, give the teller a friendly wave-and watch the doors open to greet you! After decades as the stuff of sci-fi novels and anime movies, the age of chipped humans is finally a reality. Last month, following two years of review, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of an implantable chip for medical applications. Each Verichip is the size of a grain of rice and contains a unique, 16-digit radio frequency ID. Linked to a database, that ID tag can call up a variety of information-from medical records to financial information. Not surprisingly, the technology is causing its share of controversy. Civil liberties groups are calling this the end of privacy. Religious groups are calling it the number of the beast. Down on the shores of Delray Beach, FL, Applied Digital-the company behind the Verichip-calls it a goldmine. Like a lot of new technologies, the Verichip happened rather by accident. Fifteen years ago, a company called Digital Angel developed implantable identification chips for the purpose of tracking companion pets and cattle. But the idea was nothing to moo at. Last year, 800,000 animal chips were sold in the United States for $55 to $70 apiece-30 percent more than in 2002. If the chips could identify animals, why not a human being? This thought occurred to Richard Seelig, a surgeon in New Jersey, shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Seelig watched with horror as New York City firemen scrawled their social security numbers in black ink on the forearms-just in case they were to be burned beyond recognition in the inferno. Familiar with Digital Angel's work, Seelig voluntarily implanted himself with a radio frequency identification chip. And the race to bring it to the rest of the world was on. According to Angela Fulcher, spokesperson for Applied Digital, the human chip works in essentially the same manner as the animal chips. The chip is contained inside a cylindrical transponder, a glass tube 11 millimeters in length and 2.1 millimeters in diameter. Along with the chip is an antenna coil, which picks up and transmits the identification number to a scanner. The Pocket Reader, an existing handheld scanner created by Applied Digital, reads the radio frequency ID number when it's passed over the skin within a space of three or four inches. Unlike the animal version, the human chip is coated with Biobond-a porous polypropylene sheathe that connects to surrounding tissues. The chip is implanted, via a proprietary Verichip inserter, in a fleshy area such as the bicep. "Based on our experience at with microchips and animals," Fulcher says, "we see the lifespan at being 10 years." Although newly approved by the FDA, Verichips are already in use outside the United States. In total, an estimated 1,000 people have been implanted thus far. In Mexico, Rafael Macedo de la Concha, the country's attorney general, was implanted with a chip to provide secure access to government documents. In Barcelona, a beach club is injecting partiers with ID chips in lieu of hand stamps. Despite the announcement of the FDA approval, however, such frivolous implants may soon be second guessed. Organizations have criticized Applied Digital for not adequately disclosing the FDA's finding of Verichip's risks. A group called the Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, or Caspian, obtained a letter from the FDA to Applied Digital dated October 12, and posted it on the Web. The letter cites several "potential risks to health associated with the device," including adverse tissue reaction, migration of the implanted transponder, electromagnetic interference, electrical hazards, and incompatibility with magnetic resonance imaging. In addition to medical concerns, privacy advocates lament the potential abuses of implantable IDs. The outcry stems from the proliferation of radio frequency identification in products and badges. The San Francisco Public Library is trying to put ID chips in all of its books. In Virginia, the Department of Motor Vehicles is considering putting chips on every driver's license. The Ross Correctional Facility in Chillicothe, Ohio is running a pilot program that will track prisoners using chipped badges. Ostensibly, the idea is to provide a kind of DNA for merchandise (and inmates), a unique identifier that can track where and how products are distributed. But questions raised by implantable chips only complicate the matters-particularly in light of the increased use of surveillance in the workplace. "I see implantable chips as the wave of the future," says Frederick S. Lane III, author of The Naked Employee: How Technology Is Compromising Workplace Privacy. Lane says "The problem is that it gives employers access to so much information that they get to call the shots as far as what's innocuous." And the battles could intensify if, as some fear, the devices can be used in conjunction global position satellites. Fulcher says Applied Digital has in fact developed a prototype of an implantable "personal location device," and has already obtained the intellectual property. Bringing such technology to market, Fulcher says, "is a multimillion dollar conversation. At the moment, we're focusing on our current technology. If the right partner came along, however, that might be of interest." David Kushner is a contributing writer for Technology Review who covers digital entertainment technology. He is the author of Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture. -- ----------------- 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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Russia 'tests new missile systems'
by cypher＠tediouspath.com 17 Nov '04

17 Nov '04

Russia 'tests new missile systems' Wednesday, November 17, 2004 Posted: 6:59 PM EST (2359 GMT) MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday that his country's armed forces will soon have access to advanced nuclear missile systems unavailable in any other country. "We are conducting research and are testing the most up-to-date nuclear missile systems, which, I'm sure, will be supplied to the armed forces in the near future," Putin told a conference of high-ranking military officials, according to a translation from Russia's Interfax News Agency. "What is even more important, these systems will have no analogues in the other nuclear powers during the next few years." The Bush administration said the developments in Russia's nuclear program are consistent with the Moscow Treaty, signed between President Bush and Putin in May 2002. "We are confident that Russia's plans are not threatening and are consistent with its obligations, and I think are indicative of a new strategic relationship between the United States and Russia that is focused on reducing threats and increasing confidence," deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters. The treaty, which required both sides to reduce their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012, was designed to establish a new strategic relationship between the two nations based on partnership and cooperation. But State Department officials told CNN on condition of anonymity that although they don't think Putin's comments are anything to worry about, they will be seeking further clarification from the Russians about the specific modernizations in Moscow's program. "As far as we can tell there is nothing to be concerned about, but Putin did not give a lot of detail," one official said. "We are trying to figure out what he meant. Did he mean what we think he means or is this something that is not covered by the treaty?" Another official said that Putin's comments could be viewed an attempt to impress his military leaders with assurances that Russia's weapons programs are competitive. "This may well have been his way of talking to his defense folks," this official said. "But we are trying to find out more." President Bush will meet with Putin in Chile later this week at a summit of Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation, where he is expected to discuss the matter, this official said. http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/11/17/russia.putin/index.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This message was sent from The Tedious Path Are you ready to travel The Tedious Path? http://www.tediouspath.com http://forum.tediouspath.com

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How scammers run rings round eBay
by R.A. Hettinga 17 Nov '04

17 Nov '04

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/16/petty_fraudsters_ebay/print.html> The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register B; Internet and Law B; Wild Wild Web B; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/16/petty_fraudsters_ebay/ How scammers run rings round eBay By Ken Young (robin.lettice at theregister.co.uk) Published Tuesday 16th November 2004 16:15 GMT Everyone knows that buying and selling on eBay is precarious. Even eBay admits this and gives basic advice on its site that it believes helps eliminate most fraud. But there appears to be a basic weakness in eBay's system that fraudsters and petty thieves are exploiting. It occurs when buyers pay sellers direct into the sellers' bank account by cheque or cash. The following is a real example that occurred in September this year (names withheld for legal reasons). Let's call the buyer Tom and the seller Harry. Tom won the bid for a mobile phone and agreed to pay Harry (who lives 80 miles away from Tom) B#185 plus B#6 insurance using cash at a branch of Harry's bank. A few days later a box arrived. It contained a battery charger and an earplug, but no phone. Tom informed Harry who said that he believed someone at the post office must have stolen the phone and that he would look into it. Days passed and Tom then asked Harry to claim on the insurance. Harry said he had lost the insurance slip and would instead refund 50 per cent of the B#185. A week passed and Tom called Harry to say no payment had been received and that he was losing his patience and would report the matter to eBay. Harry made more excuses and stopped answering his mobile phone. Over the next few weeks they spoke occasionally but Harry refused to send any money and blamed Tom for his removal from eBay (subsequent to Tom informing eBay of his loss). Tom contacted Harry's bank but the bank refused to provide Harry's address. Tom only knows Harry's mobile phone number and Hotmail email address. In summary, Tom spent B#196 on a phone that never arrived and he is not alone. As a result of basic research for this story we have been contacted by five people who have experienced similar scams (their stories, in emails, are copied below). The fact is it appears far too easy for this scam to be perpetrated. Pattern of fraud The pattern is all too predictable. Buyers and sellers agree not to go through the more secure PayPal system because it costs more to do so. So buyers take the risk of sending the money to the seller who either doesn't send the goods or sends shoddy or fake goods. The sellers protect themselves against prosecution by claiming loss, or disputing the buyer's version of events. The amounts involved - though not insignificant to the buyer - are too small for eBay to want to take the matter further. There is one other common factor in all these stories. Though the buyers report the matter to eBay they are invariably frustrated at standard email responses and being steered towards a mediation system which costs the buyer B#15 and even then may or may not lead to resolution. Alternatively, sellers can claim compensation through eBay and may get a maximum of B#105 - if they claim between 30 and 90 days after the event and meet the criteria for payment. In our example above Tom made a claim last month and is still waiting. A common refrain is: "Should I report this to the police? eBay are not replying to my emails about this and I don't know if the police are aware or not. What should I do?" eBay declined an interview in relation to this story but instead issued a statement: "eBay takes the issue of fraud very seriously and investigates every case of fraud reported to it. eBay currently has over 1,000 people worldwide with backgrounds in law enforcement, customer support, advanced computer engineering and analysis dedicated to making eBay one of the safest places to trade online and, in the UK, employs an ex-Scotland Yard officer as liaison point for law enforcement agencies. "The majority of transactions on the eBay site are completely secure and without incident. Approximately 0.01 per cent of transactions end in a confirmed case of fraud." This means that for every million transactions, 100 are 'confirmed' fraudulent, though the criteria for this confirmation are not available. Any security consultant will say that is an acceptable level of risk and way below fraud levels on credit cards. Not surprisingly, eBay therefore does not advise people specifically not to pay by cheque or cash payment into a seller's bank account. Top tips On the eBay website its 'top tips' state that sellers should ideally use secure payment systems like PayPal (which offers greater levels of protection, though still limited if the seller has little or no track record) and should NOT use money transfer services "like Western Union". But aside from telling buyers to be wary it does not tell buyers NOT to send cheques or pay directly into sellers' bank accounts (either by money transfer or using cash at a bank branch). Clearly it believes that most such transactions are safe and therefore if the buyer assesses the risk as low, then why not? Many eBay users may agree - it's 'caveat emptor' applied to the world of online car boot sales. But when Steve Gold, a security consultant, celebrity ex-hacker (he co-hacked the Duke of Edinburgh's Prestel mailbox), and former accountant also gets hit by such a scam you begin to wonder how the mass of eBay's users are avoiding getting stung and whether the 0.01 per cent figure is an accurate reflection of the amount fraud occurring. Gold, an experienced eBay user, reports that he bought a hard drive for B#63 from a man who never sent the item. After weeks of the usual hassle he used 192.com to track the man down to confront him. The seller - somewhat shocked to see his 'victim' - pleaded poverty and illness and apologized profusely. Gold admitted defeat safe in the knowledge that at least he had confronted his fraudster and learnt a useful - if painful - lesson. Pants down He now says he uses a mixture of web tools to check out sellers. He pays 192.com B#25 per 100 enquiries to get addresses from phone numbers; he uses maporama.com to check out locations of sellers; and he admits he is more cautious than ever. "eBay is caught with its pants down," he says. "They are neglecting their customers; they should make a shed load of information available to help people to avoid this." Like others Gold says he hit a brick wall when he tried to get other bodies involved: "I went to trading standards - they weren't interested. I even compiled a dossier on the seller and sent it to his local police force. Subsequently they told me they were aware of eBay fraud but don't deal with it." Gold believes the level of fraud on eBay is higher than the 0.01 per cent figure given: "But how can we tell? eBay won't reveal the real figures so we have no way of knowing." He has a point. Credit card fraud has been reduced over the years by greater public awareness over the levels and types of fraud occurring. eBay is relying on sellers to be 'careful' but the question for the regulatory authorities remains: Is eBay doing enough to protect its users? Those who lose out as a result of this type of scam certainly think not. Clearly eBay cannot be held responsible for dishonesty among sellers but perhaps it could do a lot more to warn people how easy it is for petty criminals to exploit our desire for a bargain. Maybe it is time for an independent body to track complaints against the system so that buyers can get a better picture of the types and frequency of frauds occurring. B. Below are a selection of emails from others defrauded via eBay. Names have been omitted for legal reasons: I was cheated out of B#200 when I tried to buy an ipod. I corresponded with the seller, who seemed friendly until I sent my money and he clammed up. I got emails from another apparent victim, who also was a bit shy of giving out his contact details. I suspect the second person was the first in disguise. Top cap it all, the seller gave a bank account for me to deposit the money, which I did, but it turned out that his identity was totally fake - in fact it was someone else's ID. So he had used a real ID (not his own), to open not one but three accounts at Nationwide to use for fake eBay transactions. I contacted the police but the trail went cold. I did manage to get Nationwide to close the accounts down They said he had been taking money out as soon as it hit the account. I tried to contact eBay with the details, saying the guy wasn't returning my emails, they responded with an email saying "why don't you try our arbitration service." I emailed them asking how I could do that if the guy won't respond to me. They replied saying they were sorry about that but maybe I should try their arbitration service. I then asked how I could claim on their insurance policy to reimburse defrauded customers, and they simply replied advising me to try their arbitration service. I bought a couple of Tiffany items - from different sellers - for my niece last Christmas. One item was fine - the other was a fake. The girl who sold it handled it perfectly. She was very chatty (by email) and was 'touched' when I told her the thing was intended as a gift for my niece etc..... Anyway, when my niece received the item, it was obviously a fake. We did consult Tiffany, who confirmed that they hadn't ever manufactured a piece in that style. I got back on to her and her response was something not so far short of f off - but without the swear words. I was furious. I contemplated forms of retribution. I did, however, go thru the Safe Harbour system but with no success. I later made a claim from eBay but it was such a long-winded process that i kind of forgot to finish it off. So I just lost the money. From my experience I'd suggest eBay needs to sort out its claims policy. It's such a hassle that it really is off-putting. I still use eBay but without the same enthusiasm. I have a reseller friend who was a victim of an eBay scam, and to add insult to injury not only did they steal his card details on a non-existent transaction, they sent him a brick through the post to rub salt into that wound. - -- - ----------------- 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZttm8PxH8jf3ohaEQJupACffXM/FxKtkOvURxpHZ/rdHqcdT1UAoIb5 Xrp51MUU1m32O0RrnG/yCr65 =p97f -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Students Tracked By RFID (fwd from brian-slashdotnews@hyperreal.org)
by Eugen Leitl 17 Nov '04

17 Nov '04

----- Forwarded message from brian-slashdotnews(a)hyperreal.org -----

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[p2p-hackers] Seth Johnson: Request for the P2P Workshop at the FTC (fwd from seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org)
by Eugen Leitl 17 Nov '04

17 Nov '04

----- Forwarded message from Seth Johnson <seth.johnson(a)RealMeasures.dyndns.org> -----

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1st amendment
by Major Variola (ret) 17 Nov '04

17 Nov '04

At 10:56 PM 11/16/04 -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: ><http://cbs11tv.com/localnews/local_story_317193815.html/resources_storyPrin…> >DALLAS SERVER COMPANY CARRIES ZARQAWI DEATH VIDEOS, TERRORIST WEBSITES Any State employee who attempts to oppress free speech, including video, deserves killing. Read the Bill of Rights. Any limitation on financial speech is dubious at best; however, one imagines that bandwidth is readily donated, for free, as in liberty, and beer, and code, and other forms of expression. Any private ISP is free to do as they please; however, when the State is involved, its minions must respect the BoR or expect a well-deserved visit from Mr. Soze, et al. Render unto Caesar, etc.

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condosleeza rice
by Major Variola (ret) 16 Nov '04

16 Nov '04

Dangle da carrot and dem negroes go fer da bait. Dang they'll lie for you like nothin' and dey're disposable as well! Gawd I love da south! Its a shame, Powell won't run. Instead, Fascism needs you, or your children. And hey, if Arnie gets his amendment (snort), the Carcano needs dusting off, say what you will about Oswald's politics, or the quality of spanish bolt-actions, or Maria's grim-reaper physiognomy, where is Oswald's ghost when you need it?

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CBS 11: Dallas Server Company Carries Zarqawi Death Videos, Terrorist Websites
by R.A. Hettinga 16 Nov '04

16 Nov '04

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 <http://cbs11tv.com/localnews/local_story_317193815.html/resources_storyPrin…> CBS 11 | cbs11tv.com DALLAS SERVER COMPANY CARRIES ZARQAWI DEATH VIDEOS, TERRORIST WEBSITES * THE PLANET.COM SAYS IT IS UNWITTING VICTIM, CAN'T POLICE ITSELF Nov 14, 2004 11:00 pm US/Central By Todd Bensman and Robert Riggs The Investigators CBS-11 News CARBONDALE, ILL. -- The grainy Internet movie file flashes a title: "Al Qaeda Movement in the Land of the Two Rivers. An Operation Against the British Troops Near Baghdad." The streaming online video clip shows a car as it motors slowly up a single-lane road, away from the cameraman who shakily zooms in as it gathers speed toward a British checkpoint. A caption appears, reading "Here goes the brave lion to tear up his prey and to win paradise." The cameraman is speaking in Arabic, his voice rising with "God is Great, God is Great" as the car at center screen arrives at the British checkpoint and a soldier standing in the road. Suddenly, a massive fireball of orange and black lashes upward and outward, instantly slaughtering him and wounding two other British soldiers of the Black Watch Regiment, along with the suicide bomber, according to later press reports. The Jihadists responsible are then filmed at the scene kicking a dismembered arm left behind by a recovery tank squad. This is a movie clip put up just last week by notorious terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organization within a few days of the actual Nov. 7 attack. Sometime over the weekend, as CBS-11 aired promotions for this story, it disappeared with others of its ilk on an Internet server owned by an up-and-coming Dallas web site hosting company called The Planet. In downtown Dallas ((www.theplanet.com) Glorifying the slaughter of American soldiers and their allies in Iraq. Helping to enhance the global street credentials of Zarqawi among any like-minded person with access to a computer. Aaron Weisburd, a self-appointed cyber warrior who since 2002 has run a crusade called Internet Haganah (www.Internet-Haganah.us) to shut down these so-called "e-jihadists," is the one who tracked the movies to Dallas. And in recent weeks, Weisburd has discovered that Zarqawi's home movies on The Planet servers have plenty of other bad company in Big D. The Planet's Dallas servers have in recent months hosted web sites run by Islamic extremist organizations the U.S. government has long since banned as Designated Terrorist Organizations - three different Palestinian Islamic Jihad promotional sites and Hamas' monthly news magazine. Two Hamas websites and two Al Quaeda websites remain on The Planet's servers, according to Internet Haganah. For the past two and a half years, Weisburd and his Internet Haganah (www.haganah.us) volunteer translators and analysts across the globe have been using a tracking program he devised to expose the presence of extremist outlawed Jihadists and hound them off the Web by asking the server companies to drop their business. A former computer programmer, Weisburd started chasing after e-jihadists on a lark and soon realized that literally thousands of extremist Islamic web sites were out there in cyberspace, beckoning to millions of Muslims around the world to join their bloody causes. "Every moment that these sites are up they encourage jihadists to commit acts of terrorism," Weisburd told CBS-11 News in his first interview with an American media organization. "They provide instructions to people in how to do things like build bombs. They build identity and a sense of community. They incite violence. They encourage people to go out and kill people. "I'm of the opinion that one ought not to just sit there and tolerate terrorists advertising their organization," he said. "They're not just some other organization. They're not a humanitarian organization. They're not a corporation. They're terrorists. They're in the business of killing people. They shouldn't be allowed to enjoy that kind of legitimacy." - From his home office in the southern Illinois college town of Carbondale, Weisburd has found sites in Dallas literally singing the praises of suicide bombing, sporting photo memorials of martyrs and promoting their bloody, violent causes. Working internationally, he claims his efforts have knocked down more than 550 extremist web sites. Sometimes, he said, service provider companies resist but most do not want to be associated with terrorists. "My guess is that in the grand scheme of things one bad customer isn't worth nearly as much as all the good customers you want to keep who don't want to be associated with this stuff either," Weisburd said. "I mean, do you really want to be known as associated with terrorists?" Most of the time, the giant service providers do not know what kinds of web sites they are hosting until someone complains. Such companies typically sell wholesalers their web space and those wholesalers in turn contract much of the business with the public, with just about anyone who offers a name and a credit card. Under federal law, it is illegal for any American company to knowingly do business with a designated terrorist organization without reporting it, although federal prosecutions are considered difficult to bring to fruition across multiple international jurisdictions. Federal prosecutions also are difficult because straw purchasers several steps removed from a terrorist group who might secretly buy the web sites can be difficult to directly link to terrorist organizations. The First Amendment otherwise protects even most hate speech from prosecution, limiting what the government can do but certainly not what civilians like Weisburd can do. Which is to track down the e-jihadists wherever they may turn up, report their new presence and have them thrown off the Web until they pop up again somewhere else. Weisburd said his computer programs constantly prowl the World Wide Web for more than 200 web sites in his growing database, keeping them ever on the run. Weisburd and the estimated 30,000 Internet Haganah followers who see his regular reports on the whereabouts of Islamic extremist websites said he couldn't yet claim credit for shaming the five web sites he knows of off the Dallas servers. In September, three Palestinian Islamic Jihad web sites he had shut down in Switzerland showed up on The Planet's servers in Dallas. Weisburd said he reported their resurfacing to his Internet Haganah readers and moved on to other business. The three websites have since disappeared but Weisburd isn't sure of what happened. The Planet executives declined requests for on-camera interviews but said in telephone conversations that the company simply does not have the ability to police for Islamic extremist material among the 1.5 million web sites and 20,000 customers. The web sites appear to violate content that is banned by The Planet's own acceptable use policy. More than a week after CBS-11 informed Chief Operating Officer Lance Crosby of a Hamas magazine web site, www.fm-m.com that were operating off of his servers, it remained online. Hamas, which was designated a terrorist organization in 1995, has taken credit for years of suicide bombings that have claimed the lives of hundreds of Israeli civilians and at least ten Americans. An email request for interviews at the website went unanswered last week. But former federal prosecutor Matt Yarbrough, now a private attorney specializing in cyber law, said server companies like The Planet can easily and cheaply patrol their servers. "There would have to be a social sort of outcry or decision here on the part of the service provider to want to do this, but it is technically possible," Yarbrough said. "All they would have to do is basically run a string search across its own server farm to look at the content of each one of these web sites, whether it's a key word, or terrorism, or bomb, or Holy Jihad." Yarbrough said service providers who choose not to police for extremist Islamic material risks civil liability should anyone ever be injured or killed as a result of Internet encouragement. "Victims of terrorist attacks are not going to be suing terrorists; they're going to be suing deep pockets right here in the United States that played some role, even if it's very tenuous to what happened in the act of terrorism," Yarbrough said. Mark Briskman, head of the Dallas area chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, said his organization was "saddened to know that a company in Dallas is hosting hate materials and hope they take actions against any sites that violate their rules." "This is not an issue of freedom of speech," Briskman said. "Rather, a company can choose with whom they wish to do business and hold the right to terminate that business relationship. " Meanwhile, macabre new video clips continued showing up on The Planet servers last week, posted there by Zarqawi's organization, Weisburd said. They included a video clip entitled "Smoke 'em Out" showing American soldiers putting out fires from a car bomb attack somewhere in Iraq. The video then shows footage of a dead U.S. soldier, accompanied by the caption "The picture of a U.S. soldier who was killed in the explosion." A smiling Iraqi man is shown proudly holding a torn American combat boot. Weisburd said he discovered the video clips on the Dallas server while patrolling a highly restricted Al Qaeda discussion forum where Zarqawi's personal spokesman often posts messages about the group's latest terror attacks. After the suicide bombing that killed the British soldier, Weisburd said, the terrorist spokesman posted a message in the forum claiming credit and promising to post proof soon. The next day, Zarqawi's spokesman announced the proof and provided a link to the video of the exploding car bomb, on The Planet.com. Asked how he would like The Plant to respond, Weisburd said, "I would hope that they would contact their customer whose site is being used to host that film and that their customer would respond by suspending that account. "The Planet is not profiting from this hardly at all. Being a step or two removed from the paying customer, there's really very little interest for them," he said. "But they have a lot to lose in terms of simply business reputation. " As in any war, even in cyberspace, those who shoot are liable to be shot at. And figuratively, Weisburd, who is Jewish, has taken plenty of shots from the e-Jihadists who have come to hate him and the trouble he causes. "Web sites are central to their identity. It's a window on their soul," Weisburd explained. "They associate with these sites in a very personal way. And so, when you cause one of these sites to be shut down you cause them personal pain. They'll find their sites down and go to my site and find out it was me." Haganah is a hebrew word meaning "defense" and became potent when it was chosen as the name of Jewish defense militias that fended off relentless Arab attacks on settlements before Israel's 1948 establishment. The Haganah was precurser to today's Israeli Defense Force. Internet Haganah's persistence has drawn repeated counterattacks from Islamist website forums and chat rooms. Posters urge Muslim hackers to attack Weisburd, and they have succeeded on a number of occasions of shutting him down, albeit temporarily. "They just generally call me 'That Jew,' Al Yahood," he said. "In Arabic, calling somebody a Jew is as bad as it gets." Physical threats of violence are not uncommon, either. Most recently, Weisburd received a letter from someone in Cherry Hill, N.J. threatening that they would cut his head off if he did not stop the cyber warfare. But Weisburd, who keeps loaded firearms at hand at all times, says he is ready for them and will keep the pressure on. "I'm in-your-face," he said. "It's important to confront them as it would be any thug. The way you deal with people like them is you stand up and fight them. You don't run away and hide. "You don't let them control the battlefield, and you don't let them take advantage of your own networks in order to destroy your own society." For more information about what you can do about Internet terrorism, contact www.Internet-Haganah.us. - -- - ----------------- 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZrPDsPxH8jf3ohaEQJ2LQCgySzPPx8aFoQeLvgVTxaVBrFeKWsAoIYb fUIpuf/XiBBXwGs+mvXxAKXM =zk6G -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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[osint] Al-Qaeda propaganda website shut down
by R.A. Hettinga 16 Nov '04

16 Nov '04

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - --- begin forwarded text To: "Bruce Tefft" <btefft(a)community-research.com> Thread-Index: AcTMRPaUQi8W4viLTUaHaDASsEmcWgAAM3oQ 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: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 20:38:21 -0500 Subject: [osint] Al-Qaeda propaganda website shut down Reply-To: osint(a)yahoogroups.com Al Qaeda propaganda website shut down Wednesday November 17, 05:54 AM Al-Qaeda propaganda website shut down A web site that reportedly contained speeches by Suleiman Abu Ghaith, an alleged spokesman for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was shut down by a Swedish internet provider after the site was traced to its server. Spray Network, a subsidiary of Lycos Europe, shut the site down after being informed of the site, said Fredrik Skaerheden, a Spray Network spokesman. "We have a very clear policy that any material that in any way may urge or encourage criminal acts or violence is immediately removed," Skaerheden told The Associated Press. The web site, www.members.lycos.co.uk/abugaith1, reportedly contained several audio files of Abu Ghaith giving speeches and sermons in Arabic, and contained several violent and bloody images. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, which first traced the site to the Swedish server, at least one of the sermons called for Muslims to give their lives to fight the United States. A report on MEMRI's Web site quoted the sermon as hailing bin Laden and describing the Jihad fighters as people who "seek death as others seek life and seek Allah's promise in the Koran and sacrifice their property, their blood, and their lives as a sign of the sincerity of their faith." Anyone can create a web site for free on Lycos' servers, Skaerheden said, adding that many of the Lycos Europe member sites are hosted by Spray's servers in the Swedish capital, Stockholm. http://au.news.yahoo.com/041116/2/rr8i.html - ------------------------ 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZqzocPxH8jf3ohaEQLqBQCfXmSSbDyKMsn5ECNGIukcdIo+ntwAn2Pa uA+n1tf2Qb0KT0IbFvSZpr6c =Eg7m -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Crypto-Tax: Re: India to tax / levy license fees on ISPs that offer VPNs
by R.A. Hettinga 16 Nov '04

16 Nov '04

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