-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBMTO: N48 04'14.8'' E11 36'41.2'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204 57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2001 16:06:43 -0500 From: David Farber <dave@farber.net> Reply-To: farber@cis.upenn.edu To: ip-sub-1@majordomo.pobox.com Subject: IP: Re: Interesting Clarke interview in case you missed it

Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 12:50:33 -0800 To: farber@cis.upenn.edu From: Jim Warren <jwarren@well.com>

...

...

Howard Schmidt, Microsoft's chief security officer, is expected to leave within the next month to join the Bush administration and work with White House cyber-security adviser Richard Clarke, according to sources in the computer-security industry.

Mark Sachs, a U.S. Army major who is an operations analyst at the Joint Task Force for Computer Network Operations, also expected to join Clarke's team. The task force Sachs currently works for oversees the Pentagon's global information systems, sources said.

Given

(1) the pervasive-net-surveillance and freedom-to-snoop-sans-court-orders that Attorney General Ashcroft and Bush's federal agencies are pursuing so eagerly and aggressively, against American residents and citizens alike;

(2) the endless security holes in Microsoft's software and MSN-network, that crackers and miscreants have exploited for years of virus and DDoS attacks, and

(3) the fact that "the Pentagon's global information systems" can as easily refer to the military's *surveillance* systems, as to the DoD's MIS systems ...

... then, one cannot help but wonder:

How much time will Microsoft's "security" officer and the Pentagon's "global information" officer spend on improving government and/or corporate/citizen computer security ...

... versus ...

How much time will they spend on expanding and deploying the administration's long-existent Echelon dragnet/fishing-expedition/communications-surveillance system, and the FBI's recently-announced covert keystroke-grabbing software ...

... into and onto all citizens' and organizations' computers?

After all, one of the Republican's last Attorneys General before Aschroft -- Reagan's Ed Meese -- made their perspective clear for all to see. He said, "If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect." (Of course, he said that *before* criminal investigators began investigating *him* around 1988.)

And all the polls show that the public *supports* whatever it is that the administration is doing, including demolition of [other people's] personal privacy and civil liberties.

All 'Right'-minded, properly-subservient citizens and business people should applaud this! They're from the government; they're here to help us.

--jim Jim Warren; jwarren@well.com, technology & public policy columnist & advocate

[self-inflating puffery: Playboy Foundation Hugh Hefner First-Amendment Award; Soc.of Prof.Journalists-Nor.Calif. James Madison Freedom-of-Information Award; founded InfoWorld, Dr.Dobb's Journal, and Computers, Freedom & Privacy Confs.; Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award (in its first year), blah blah]

And if you think this is something new, remember the 1995 Republican Congress' legislation to legalize use of evidence obtained by unauthorized search -- as reported by Farber on his IP list at the time:

So long, Fourth Amendment From: David Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu> Date: Thu, 2 Feb 1995 17:36:57 -0500 ... (Fri Jan 27), the House Judiciary Committee approved this abrogation of the Fourth Amendment, on a 19-14 vote, after breaking it out of H.R.3, "The Taking Back Our Streets Act of 1995":

In General.--Chapter 223 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following: "Sec. 3510. Admissibility of evidence obtained by search or seizure "(a) Evidence Obtained by Objectively Reasonable Search or Seizure.-- Evidence which is obtained as a result of a search or seizure shall not be excluded in a proceeding in a court of the United States on the ground that the search or seizure was in violation of the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, if the search or seizure was carried out in circumstances justifying an objectively reasonable belief that it was in conformity with the fourth amendment. The fact that evidence was obtained pursuant to and within the scope of a warrant constitutes prima facie evidence of the existence of such circumstances. "(b) Evidence Not Excludable by Statute or Rule.--Evidence shall not be excluded in a proceeding in a court of the United States on the ground that it was obtained in violation of a statute, an administrative rule or regulation, or a rule of procedure unless exclusion is expressly authorized by statute or by a rule prescribed by the Supreme Court pursuant to statutory authority.

From S.3, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Improvement Act of 1995 (still pending [in February, 1995] before the Senate Judiciary Committee):

"Sec. 3502A. Admissibility of evidence obtained by search or seizure "(a) Evidence Obtained by Objectively Reasonable Search or Seizure.-- Evidence obtained as a result of a search or seizure that is otherwise admissible in a Federal criminal proceeding shall not be excluded in a proceeding in a court of the United States on the ground that the search or seizure was in violation of the fourth amendment to the Constitution. "(b) Evidence Not Excludable by Statute or Rule.--Evidence shall not be excluded in a proceeding in a court of the United States on the ground that it was obtained in violation of a statute, an administrative rule, or a rule of court procedure unless exclusion is expressly authorized by statute or by a rule prescribed by the Supreme Court pursuant to chapter 131 of title 28.

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