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Wiretaps led to arrests of terror suspects
by Eugen Leitl 05 Apr '04

05 Apr '04

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040405/KHAWAJ… 5/National/Idx Wiretaps led to arrests of terror suspects By COLIN FREEZE AND ALAN FREEMAN Monday, April 5, 2004 - Page A8 OTTAWA and LONDON -- The tapping of e-mails and overseas phone calls by a host of Western spy agencies led to the arrests last week of terrorism suspects in Canada and Britain, including an Ottawa man who had been under scrutiny for at least four weeks. The RCMP and Scotland Yard launched separate operations after an alarming e-mail was picked up by a U.S. intelligence agency in February, sources said. The U.S. National Security Agency, which electronically monitors millions of conversations daily, reportedly picked through the chatter to find a message sent from Pakistan to England. According to the Sunday Times and The Guardian in Britain, several intercepted communications showed links between suspected senior al-Qaeda figures in Pakistan and an alleged bomb plot thwarted last week in Britain. Nine men of mostly Pakistani heritage were rounded up there along with a half-tonne of bomb-making chemicals, as hundreds of officers joined in simultaneous and urgent raids. The RCMP say the British raids are linked to the arrest of Mohammed Momin Khawaja in Ottawa 12 hours earlier. The 24-year-old software developer remains in prison, but is described locally as an exemplary young man -- a solitary figure from a good family, taking Arabic courses but keeping mostly to himself. He recently travelled to England and Pakistan. Family members say he went abroad to look for a wife. They further insist that global spy agencies somehow got their signals crossed. "How's it related to my brother, do you know what I mean? Somebody's making phone calls to maybe England or Pakistan or whatever, how is it related to my brother here in Canada?," said Qasim Khawaja, 26. After visiting him this weekend, he said his younger brother is "totally calm, smiling and just laughing" about the situation. "He thinks there's a misunderstanding and they are overblowing it." He said that during the raid, Mounties showed the family papers that said their e-mails and phone calls have been listened in on since Feb. 27, after his brother returned to Canada from his travels abroad. Qasim, also a computer programmer, questioned the value of such eavesdropping as an investigative technique. "Most of the people that are questioning us had a hard time using e-mails, you know what I mean? They are much older guys and they don't understand technology like we do. . . . nowadays viruses can even send e-mails, you know what I mean?" Investigators have continued to track down friends, family and nearly forgotten acquaintances across North America, he said. Mr. Khawaja said his father Mahboob, the 62-year-old head of the family, surfaced this weekend in Saudi Arabia, where he has been in police custody for several days. His family said police allowed him to call this week and confirm that he had been detained after the raid on his former home in Ottawa. He said he is being treated well, according to Qasim. Canadian agencies say they had no role to play in the arrest of the elder Mr. Khawaja, one of the founding members of Ottawa's 40,000-member Muslim community who left Pakistan 35 years ago and recently moved to Saudi Arabia to manage a polytechnic school. His Canadian family planned to visit next month, but the RCMP seized their passports and airline tickets in the raid. >From Saudi Arabia yesterday, a family friend said Mahboob Khawaja is "a normal guy." "I didn't see him as a fanatic or anything," said Mohamed Farhat Mehdi. He said that his friend often spoke of his family in Ottawa and "he talks with his Internet quite often." -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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Ban Is Eased on Editing Foreign Work
by R. A. Hettinga 05 Apr '04

05 Apr '04

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/politics/05PUBL.html?ei=1&en=b4429c6bc9f7…> The New York Times April 5, 2004 Ban Is Eased on Editing Foreign Work By THE NEW YORK TIMES ASHINGTON, April 4 - The federal government has eased a ban on editing manuscripts from nations that are under United States trade embargoes, a move that appears to leave publishers free once again to edit scholarly works from Iran and other such countries. The Treasury Department sent a letter on Friday to a lawyer for the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers, an international group representing more than 360,000 engineers and scientists, saying the organization's peer review, editing and publishing was "not constrained" by regulations from the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. The group says its members produce 30 percent of the world's literature in electrical and electronics engineering and computer science. The letter from the Treasury Department referred specifically to publishing by the institute, but Arthur Winston, the group's president, said he believed the ruling would be "a relief for nearly everyone" in the scholarly publishing community. "The ruling eliminates potentially disturbing U.S. government intrusions on our scholarly publishing process," Mr. Winston said. No one at the Treasury Department could be reached for comment Sunday night on the ruling. The department and publishers have long quarreled over the exemption of "information or informational materials" from the nation's trade embargoes. Congress has generally allowed such exemptions. Nonetheless, the Treasury Department sent out advisory letters over the past year telling publishers who were editing material from a country under a trade embargo that they were forbidden to reorder paragraphs or sentences, correct syntax or grammar, replace "inappropriate words" or add illustrations. The advisories concerned Iran, but experts said the ruling seemed to extend to Cuba, Libya, North Korea and other nations with which most trade is banned without a government license. In theory, even routine editing on manuscripts from those countries could have subjected publishers to fines of $500,000 and 10 years in jail. -- ----------------- 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: Shock waves from Fallujah
by Major Variola (ret) 05 Apr '04

05 Apr '04

At 03:29 PM 4/2/04 -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >Howie Carr is shocking Chris Wallace just now about partitioning Iraq >into three countries, Kurdish (who will have oil), Shiite (who will >have oil), and Sunni (who will not; geography's a bitch), all while >putting a Sharon-Fence around the newly created Sunni-stan. A fence is being considered around the Capital in DC also. The inhabitants think its to protect them, but some of us have other ideas... a national zoo or asylum? We could call it surdistan, or turdistan.

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Gutmann: operating under the radar
by R. A. Hettinga 05 Apr '04

05 Apr '04

<http://www.computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/PrintDoc/3F25D67E47980786CC256E6C00…> Computerworld NZ Tuesday, 6 April, 2004 Gutmann: operating under the radar Paul Brislen, Auckland He describes himself as a "professional paranoid", but cryptography expert Peter Gutmann (pictured) is quite willing to buy products online using his credit card and advocates writing down passwords on a piece of paper. Gutmann, a developer, author, speaker and honorary researcher at Auckland University's computer science department, realises that the password advice might seem to fly in the face of reason. "Think about it. If you've written down your complicated password on a piece of paper someone would have to break into your house to get it to then break into your online account. That's not likely when the crooks are sitting in Eastern Europe." Conversely, he says having one user name and password for all accounts is perhaps the worst thing a user can do. "That way if one account is compromised then effectively all of them could be." Gutmann is world-renowned for his work on security architecture and is in demand on the IT security speaking circuit. His PhD thesis has been released as an academic text book (Cryptographic security architecture: design and verification) and he has at least two more in the pipeline. "That one's very much an academic book. The next one is more straightforward and is more about my take on different security issues." Gutmann's role at Auckland University doesn't pay anything but it allows him to do what he likes. His income is derived from one of those products nobody's ever heard of but which many of us use - Cryptlib. Cryptlib is in embedded products such as ATM machines and print servers, for authenticating user rights to a particular printer. "It's widely used but invisible. Basically it's a general purpose tool used inside applications so most people don't even know it's there." Gutmann says this is the best approach to issues like email encryption - make it happen automatically. "PGP has been around for over a decade and has a tiny market share still." Cryptlib, by comparison, is marketed by health software developer Orion Systems. "There are plenty of cool people using it but if I tell you who they are they'll kill me," says Gutmann, only half joking. Gutmann didn't set out to be a cryptographer. "I was working in data compression but you really can't make much of a difference there. I sort of drifted into cryptography." Gutmann says his approach isn't one of maths-intensive algorithms. "There's very little maths involved. Basically that part of it's secure these days. It costs too much in terms of time and effort to break the code to make it worthwhile. I work on the stuff around that to make sure that's defensible." Gutmann offers the example of public keys. "What's the point of securing your system with the most up-to-date encryption technology if you email someone your key in an insecure manner?" Gutmann likes to quote cryptographer Bruce Schneier on the subject. "Basically he says it's like putting a large iron stake in the ground in your front garden and hoping the burglar will run into it. It's the rest of the garden that matters as well." So Gutmann isn't worried that if he's too good at his job he'll do himself out of a career. "As long as there are computers we'll need security people." -- ----------------- 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: And who was it saying those terrible Sunnis would be isolated?
by Tyler Durden 05 Apr '04

05 Apr '04

What I'm wondering is whether the Iraqis will end up giving US the bums-rush faster than the Soviets got it in Afghanistan. Guess the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld "dancing in the streets" scenario is correct, but it will have taken a slightly different route than they had planned. -TD >From: Harmon Seaver <hseaver(a)cybershamanix.com> >To: cypherpunks(a)minder.net >Subject: And who was it saying those terrible Sunnis would be isolated? >Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2004 20:44:17 -0500 > > Shiites hit a home run! > >http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3599381.stm > > >-- >Harmon Seaver >CyberShamanix >http://www.cybershamanix.com > _________________________________________________________________ Tax headache? MSN Money provides relief with tax tips, tools, IRS forms and more! http://moneycentral.msn.com/tax/workshop/welcome.asp

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States Link Databases to Find Tax Cheats (fwd from brian-slashdotnews@hyperreal.org)
by Eugen Leitl 05 Apr '04

05 Apr '04

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

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priceless
by Major Variola (ret) 05 Apr '04

05 Apr '04

At 08:44 PM 4/4/04 -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote: > Shiites hit a home run! > >http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3599381.stm Deposing a harmless tyrant: $87,000,000,000 Generating 2 Islamic republics plus an ethnic republic that destabilizes Turkey: priceless For colonialism, there's the military. For disinfo, there's the CIA's silence. For everything else, there's neo-conservatism.

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And who was it saying those terrible Sunnis would be isolated?
by Harmon Seaver 04 Apr '04

04 Apr '04

Shiites hit a home run! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3599381.stm -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com

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capitalized capitol
by Major Variola (ret.) 04 Apr '04

04 Apr '04

3 [2capital] a : a city serving as a seat of government b : a city preeminent in some special activity <the fashion capital> However it seems the "ol" version is correct when capitalized: Etymology: Latin Capitolium, temple of Jupiter at Rome on the Capitoline hill 1 a : a building in which a state legislative body meets b : a group of buildings in which the functions of state government are carried out 2 capitalized : the building in which the U.S. Congress meets at Washington

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Re: Do Cryptographers burn? (fwd from hadmut@danisch.de)
by Eugen Leitl 04 Apr '04

04 Apr '04

----- Forwarded message from Hadmut Danisch <hadmut(a)danisch.de> -----

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