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Doubt
by Tyler Durden 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

Peter Capelli wrote... >Yet what of your blindness, which doubts *everything* the current >administration does? 1. Abu Ghraib 2. WMD in Iraq 3. Patriot Act 4. Countless ties between this administration and the major contract winners in Iraq Hum. Seems a decent amount of doubt is called for. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

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The Big Rig
by R.A. Hettinga 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

<http://www.bostonmagazine.com/ArticleDisplay.php?id=454&print=yes> www.bostonmagazine.com Archives The Big Rig by Jake Halpern Copyright October 2004. Could someone steal your vote on election day? Let us count the ways. Lately it seems that virtually everyone I know -- Democrats, Republicans, and Naderites alike -- is espousing outlandish theories about plots to sway, postpone, or outright steal next month's election. "You just watch," a normally levelheaded friend of mine told me. "Three days before election day they're going to bring Osama out of his subterranean cell and parade him around like the Republican mascot." Of course, I realize that we are a nation of X-Files-watching, Art Bell-listening, wigged-out paranoiacs, but it's really getting to me, and this is why I decided to visit Ben Adida, who is a star Ph.D. student at MIT in the field of cryptography and information security. Adida's area of focus is voting machines and processes, and his specialty is breaking into them. It's his job, as part of the Caltech-MIT/Voting Technology Project, to determine the ways in which an election can be stolen right out of the ballot box. When I meet Adida at his cubbyhole of an office on the MIT campus, he is wearing jeans, a black T-shirt, and a pair of blue Puma sneakers. In short, he has the look of your classic twentysomething hacker from the movies, though he is quick to point out that the proper term for cyber-scoundrels is "cracker." "Technically, a hacker is simply a clever programmer, whereas a cracker is someone who actually breaks into systems," Adida explains. When it comes to voting machines, he is emphatic. "Every machine can be cracked into," he says. These days, most of the publicized concerns about voting machines involve the direct-recording electric (DRE) models-generally, touch-screen systems that resemble ATMs. The chief problem with these is that they leave no paper trail, and this could create quite a ruckus when George W. Bush and/or John Kerry demand recounts. If you haven't heard much about DREs in the Boston press, that's because they are not currently approved for use in Massachusetts. This doesn't mean you'll be using the punch cards that caused so much trouble in Florida; that system has been banned in this state since 1997. Those creaky old mechanical-lever machines once commonplace here, meanwhile, also have been outlawed effective with next month's election. As a result, if you live in Massachusetts, you will likely be voting via the optical scanner system, which requires you to indicate your choices by filling in the bubbles on a sheet of paper, much like on the SAT. This method will be used by 55 million people, or 32 percent of voters, in the United States and is generally regarded as the most reliable. Time to breathe easy? Not exactly. According to Adida, "No one will be able to crack into the [optical scanning] system via the Internet from their basement and skew the results. However, the crackers can succeed if they have hands-on access to the actual machine." Here is one possible scenario for how this could be done: Several weeks before the election, a cracker might gain access to an optical scanning device and reprogram it to favor a particular candidate. This is where things get interesting. Because the list of candidates is often not entered into the system until hours before an election, the crackers have no way of knowing which candidate to pick -- A, B, or C. So they program the machine to favor the candidate who gets the most votes between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., then tell their supporters to vote first thing in the morning. "Usually, when people hear this type of scenario for the first time they freak out," Adida says with a mischievous smile. There are simpler methods, too. For example, many optical scanning machines use red lasers to scan, which means that they cannot read red ink. Theoretically, someone could pass out red pens at a voting station in a precinct known to vote a certain way, invalidating many of that precinct's votes. As Adida continues to ramble about potential weaknesses in our voting system, I can't help but feel that some amount of paranoia is justified. According to the Caltech-MIT/Voting Technology Project, some 120,000 votes by Massachusetts residents were not counted in the 2000 presidential election. You have to wonder whether all of these invalidated ballots were the result of simple errors. Perhaps this is why at least 12 members of Congress have signed a letter asking the United Nations to monitor this year's election. Perhaps it is time to get nervous. When I express this to Adida, he nods somberly. "It's my job to be completely paranoid about elections," he tells me with a heavy sigh. "Because the stakes in presidential elections are so high, the motivation to do evil is also quite high, and so we have a plan for every possible scenario." This is all good and fine, I tell him. Plan, plan, plan away. What I wanted to know was whether any of this might really happen. What I wanted was peace of mind. "I don't know of any optical scanning system being cracked," Adida says finally. "But then again, it's conceivable that someone could alter the results discreetly enough that no one would ever know until it was too late." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
by Tyler Durden 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

"The remaining communists have made some psychological recovery - see for example Tyler Durden's peculiar version of recent history, where in his universe the communists actually won and are still winning," Again, you live in a world that's evenly divided between black and white. Since I'm not white you figure I must be black. To reiterate a point your world view does not seem prepared to understand, communism (like Whabism these days) is a fleeting ideological counter-pole to the perceived evils of America and capitalism. To make an analogy, let's say someone on the street tried to force-feed you the most healthy food in the world at gun point. There's a good chance that, after that, you will not eat that healthy food any longer because you perceive it to be "evil". Likewise with Imperliasm and free markets: The more we try to shove it down the throats of the Islamic world the more they will reject both us as well as whatever we're trying to give 'em. -TD >From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd(a)echeque.com> >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) >Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:41:39 -0700 > > -- >"R.A. Hettinga" > > > This is actually the running fantasy in Marxism since the > > > 1950's, when it turned out that that, instead of the > > > "workers" eating the "bourgeoisie" by the firelight or some > > > Glorious Revolution or another, would instead be come > > > "bourgeoisie" themselves. > >John Kelsey > > I think this bit gets at the heart of why the Islamic > > fundamentalists are hard to deal with. For most people I > > know, some notion of peace and prosperity is the thing we > > want from our governments. [...] > > > > The Islamic fundamentalists can't offer that. [...] No > > peace, not much prosperity, but a lot of capital-P Purpose. > > A place in history, a part of the Jihad. In this sense, it's > > a lot like Marxism was, back when it had serious adherents; > > it's a mass movement, like Eric Hoffer talks about. > >Mass movements of this kind require the promise of inevitable >victory. When communism suffered one decisive, uncomplicated, >unambiguous defeat, the dominos fell one after another all the >way to Moscow. The remaining communists have made some >psychological recovery - see for example Tyler Durden's >peculiar version of recent history, where in his universe the >communists actually won and are still winning, and similarly >the Islamists have made a considerable psychological recovery >from Afghanistan, but the ideal of date with destiny tends to >lose its appeal when you keep picking yourself off the dirt >with a bloody nose. > >In Iraq we face a guerrila movement, and discover, yet again, >that guerrilas can only be defeated by local forces - and the >boys from Baghdad are not all that local. This gives the >Islamicists renewed hope. > >So what do you do, if, like Israel, you face terrorists >embedded in a local population that supports thems sufficiently >they can melt into the people? Withdrawal did not work, for >the terrorists keep sending car bombs and the like from their >stronghold, as in Fallujah. > >What worked in Afghanistan was to find some local warlord we >could live with, someone in no hurry to get his six pack of >virgins, someone who might want to put sacks over the heads of >the women of his town, but had no grandiose ambitions to stuff >all the women of the world into bags, and then we cut a deal >with him - we help him his slay his enemies, he helps us slay >our enemies. > >Unfortunately the US plan to bring democracy to the middle >east, and to preserve Iraq as a unitary state, keeps getting in >the way of this sort of deal. > > --digsig > James A. Donald > 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG > o32eoG4KhmccNjDBkOW9upEtn8Lka3zsooGJn8lY > 4dMgCNOmt5z/S3km7vma/L6RECrRaVEmnhEZ4E2hb _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

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Fwd: the simian unelected is blocking the world
by Chris Kuethe 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

meant to send this to the list too.... ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Chris Kuethe <chris.kuethe(a)gmail.com> Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 08:56:45 -0600 Subject: Re: the simian unelected is blocking the world X-Approval-Subject: BOUNCE cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net: Non-member submission from [Chris Kuethe <chris.kuethe(a)gmail.com>] To: Eugen Leitl <eugen(a)leitl.org> On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 12:11:59 +0200, Eugen Leitl <eugen(a)leitl.org> wrote: > > Access to http://www.georgewbush.com/ is blocked but from US IP address > space. > > Access Denied > You don't have permission to access "http://www.georgewbush.com/" on this > server. Hrmmmmm. Shrub a) has now disabled the geo-ip test or b) considers .ca to be part of .us because from my cable modem (rDNS = .net) I can get to the site just fine, and I can also get to it from work (rDNS = .ca) > ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org Germany, no? Have your politicians pissed of Shrub lately? I'm surprised I can see the site, what with various provincial governments tossing around memos referring to him as "Shrub". -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too? -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too?

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Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
by Tyler Durden 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

John Kelsey wrote... >The irony is that the neocons seemed to be trying to build up a kind of >mass movement mentality >in the US, which clearly has caught George Bush >and his top advisors--this wonderful notion that >we're going to go out and >civilize these heathens, bring them democracy and free markets, and >then >they'll stop wanting to be part of crazy mass movements that tell them to >strap dynamite to >themselves and blow up bus stops full of people. This >seems doomed to fail. A lot of people in >the Middle East clearly want >what we're selling, but it doesn't take many suicide bombers to make >that >sort of thing break down. Let's remember that any regime is only temporary, no matter how fundamentalist. The main flaw in the whole "save the world" logic is that it assumes that some regime (Islamist, Communist or whatever) would actually be able to hold on to everybody in perpetuity, and I think history is now at the point where we have a good indication that this ain't the case. In the case of China, Vietnam and, to some extent, the Islamists, I don't get the impression that a hatred of free markets was he underlying reason for the adoption of commusim (or whatever). Communism was merely a political pole that could be held on to so as to crystallize a movement whereby outside influences could be pushed out, and then the internal issues resolved. I would argue that the more we proclaim ourselves to be the evanglists for free markets throughout the world, and then ram our cocks up Abu Ghraib inmates asses, to the same extent what we have to offer looks tainted and foul. They need to puish us out so they need to reject free markets. They need to reject free markets so a new "pole" is created. Mr Donald woul think that I argue against free markets, but instead what I am arguing against is methodology which retards free markets. -TD _________________________________________________________________ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/

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Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
by Tyler Durden 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

Mr Donald wrote... >A claim that presupposes that the west is just as totalitarian >as its enemies, that well known reality is not to be trusted, >that newsmen and historians are servants of the vast capitalist >conspiracy, so in place of obvious truths, we can substitute >any ridiculous fantasy that we find politically conforting, for >example Tyler Durden's fantasy that the US attacked Korea, and >attacked to impose poverty on Koreans so that the US can be >rich Once again you make the mistake that, because YOU are drinking from a spigot of hype, that because I disagree with you I must be drinking from some other spigot. There are plenty of counter-examples to the "benefits" of US interventionism, particularly throughout central America. But I don't really want to debate that point, but instead focus on Iraq. In Iraq this philosophy of "saving the locals from tyrrany" has taken a new turn. In this case, I actually believe that George W, Dick Cheney and the whole cabal believe that: 1. The best thing for the Iraqis would be a western-style free-market economy. (Check?) 2. An Iraqi free market would slowly stabilise the whole middle east region. (Check?) 3. Iraq has resources (ie, oil) that could be utilized to kick-start a true industrialized economy (Check?) 4. The US has the ability to extract that oil and then turn those dollars into local goods-and-services, thus kickstarting forementioned Iraqi industrialization (Check?) 5. Meanwhile, Saddam was really, really bad and a terrorist and he's got all sorts of scary WMDs. 6. It is therefore in everybody's best interests for the US to kick out Saddam and get this party started. 7. Oh, and the US will benefit too (as we should) as we help ole' man Iraq get back on his feet. But apparently, the locals are not particularly happy about the unilateral decisions we've been making in their benefit. Of course, you might chalk this up to fanaticism/Islam or whatever, but I suspect they just don't trust us (Abu Ghraib), and remember the fact that it was the US that propped up Saddam as long as he stuck to the script. Who knows? If Bush & Co are able to steal this election, maybe in a year or two (after the death toll hits the 5 digit mark) we'll start hearing about how Saddam wasn't so bad after all, and why don't we give him a second chance? (We'll watch him closely, so don't you worry!) -TD > --digsig > James A. Donald > 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG > AErjoTRu9URKg4L+F5xjlOq35GQBD2reuyMhDJ5b > 46ur5/+9ZCqnZu8EDgtmmeUH93ImKPyfT6+Pj/QUE _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

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Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
by John Kelsey 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

>From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> >Sent: Oct 27, 2004 9:37 AM >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) ... >This is actually the running fantasy in Marxism since the 1950's, when it >turned out that that, instead of the "workers" eating the "bourgeoisie" by >the firelight or some Glorious Revolution or another, would instead be come >"bourgeoisie" themselves. I think this bit gets at the heart of why the Islamic fundamentalists are hard to deal with. For most people I know, some notion of peace and prosperity is the thing we want from our governments. Different people differ on how to do that (like, whether the government should employ most of the doctors or the teachers), but that's the kind of goal that makes sense. And that's largely what the West has to offer. Not membership in a master race, or a date with destiny, or as vision of yourself as part of a great, centuries-old Jihad, but safe streets, working sewers, functioning markets, and a rising tide that promises to life all boats eventually, so that one day, your poor people, like ours, will be overweight from spending too much time sitting in front of the TV in an air conditioned room. The Islamic fundamentalists can't offer that. A country run by these guys is just not going to be in the forefront of technology, its economy will grow slowly, and it's likely to always be close to going to war with some infidels around it. No peace, not much prosperity, but a lot of capital-P Purpose. A place in history, a part of the Jihad. In this sense, it's a lot like Marxism was, back when it had serious adherents; it's a mass movement, like Eric Hoffer talks about. What Hayek called the liberal order (e.g., working minimal government, liberal democracy, rule of law) can't offer any of that. It offers safe streets and working sewers and peace and prosperity, but you have to come up with your own purpose. The irony is that the neocons seemed to be trying to build up a kind of mass movement mentality in the US, which clearly has caught George Bush and his top advisors--this wonderful notion that we're going to go out and civilize these heathens, bring them democracy and free markets, and then they'll stop wanting to be part of crazy mass movements that tell them to strap dynamite to themselves and blow up bus stops full of people. This seems doomed to fail. A lot of people in the Middle East clearly want what we're selling, but it doesn't take many suicide bombers to make that sort of thing break down. --John

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[FoRK] Google buys Keyhole (fwd from andrew@ceruleansystems.com)
by Eugen Leitl 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

----- Forwarded message from "J. Andrew Rogers" <andrew(a)ceruleansystems.com> -----

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"Spam Kings" Released by O'Reilly
by R.A. Hettinga 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

--- begin forwarded text

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US Bancorp teams up with VeriSign on banking security
by R.A. Hettinga 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

>The bank will use VeriSign's Unified Authentication service to validate >and secure interactions with commercial banking customers, providing them >with a secure USB token that they must use when accessing services online. >Those tokens will hold a digital certificate that identifies the bearer >and will need to be inserted into machines before accessing web-based >commercial banking applications, Lin said. <http://www.computerweekly.com/print/ArticlePrinterPage.asp?liArtID=134593&l…> Printed from ComputerWeekly.com Technology: Security Products Wednesday 27 October 2004 US Bancorp teams up with VeriSign on banking security US Bancorp will use a hardware-token based authentication service from VeriSign to secure access to commercial banking services for its customers. The bank will use VeriSign's Unified Authentication service to validate and secure interactions with commercial banking customers, providing them with a secure USB token that they must use when accessing services online. The deal is just the latest evidence of renewed interest in so-called "multifactor" authentication within the banking industry, which is struggling with an epidemic of sophisticated online identity theft scams, according to Judy Lin, executive vice-president for VeriSign's security services. As part of the programme, US Bancorp will make VeriSign security tokens available to more than 10,000 commercial banking customers. Those tokens will hold a digital certificate that identifies the bearer and will need to be inserted into machines before accessing web-based commercial banking applications, Lin said. The Unified Authentication service combines VeriSign-branded eToken USB authentication devices from Aladdin Knowledge Systems with a managed validation service that runs on VeriSign's infrastructure. It also includes software modules that plug into a bank's existing back-end infrastructure. Banks can also choose to operate their own validation server as part of the service, Lin said. At US Bancorp, the authentication service will be integrated with existing user directory and identity management technology, validating interactions between the bank and its customers. A server operated by VeriSign will handle token validation, but no customer information will leave US Bancorp's network in the process, she said. VeriSign launched the Unified Authentication service in September as an extension of its Intelligence and ControlSM Services, which offer businesses network security information and tools. User login and permission information resides in the customer's user directory, but is linked to a unique serial number for a secure token or other authentication device stored on a VeriSign server. Login requests by users will be passed to the VeriSign server, where a stored algorithm will validate that the serial number of the secure token or the one-time password is valid for the user requesting access, VeriSign said. US Bancorp is the eighth largest bank in the US. The bank is looking into a similar programme for its consumer banking customers, although such a service would likely forgo use of USB hardware tokens, which can cost $20 or more each. Instead, inexpensive solutions such as plastic cards with lists of single-use passwords could be employed, she said. Paul Roberts writes for IDG News Service ) 2004 ComputerWeekly.com Ltd. All rights reserved -- ----------------- 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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