- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

The CIA's curious connection to curious religions
by Ryan Carboni 01 Aug '17

01 Aug '17

Scientology is well known in the United States. Related organizations of Scientology include mental health advocacy groups which make involuntary commitment less possible. Scientology's relationship with the CIA is mainly for some overseas activities. Makes sense right, highly obedient members of a religion as a reserve intelligence corps? There is one document here: http://www.xenu.net/archive/greece/ciacos.gif Miles Copeland's memoir mentioned Scientology's relationship with the CIA. Scientology did a lot of horrible things in the United States. Who is really in charge of the United States? The above are not particularly original conclusions and can be found elsewhere. There is Falun Gong. It is like Scientology translated into Chinese. There is no clear cut connection in that case, but the interesting thing is various interviews done so weakly.... Maybe John Young is a cult leader too? Must be why Muckrock's interview of him seemed like he provided the questions and he had fun with it. https://archive.is/84A8t http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2053761,00.html https://archive.is/wiB2v https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/nyregion/falun-gong-queens-federal-lawsu… Well anyway, there is no big deal with so many religions dealing with aliens. Nope. P.S. It would be rather interesting if an actually competent journalist found out what SSRIs are used for in law enforcement investigations. It would make the APA liable for billions for their cover-up. SSRIs certainly aren't used for mental health purposes in some cases.... Everything is so horrible in this country... and everyone seems to be covering for each other.

3 2

Cryptome Archive 2016-1996 Full Index
by John Young 01 Aug '17

01 Aug '17

Cryptome Archive 2016-1996 Full Index https://cryptome.org/cryptome-2016-1996.htm

5 4

Def Con voting machine hack update
by Razer 01 Aug '17

01 Aug '17

According to The Hill, it took ' only a few minutes' to figure out how to crack one. Thirty out of 30 were cracked. http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/344488-hackers-break-into-voting-ma…

2 2

HBO hacked
by Razer 01 Aug '17

01 Aug '17

> On Sunday, an anonymous email was sent to many reporters announcing > the hack: “Hi to all mankind. The greatest leak of cyber space era is > happening. What’s its name? Oh I forget to tell. Its HBO and Game of > Thrones……!!!!!! You are lucky to be the first pioneers to witness and > download the leak. Enjoy it & spread the words. Whoever spreads well, > we will have an interview with him. HBO is falling.” http://ew.com/tv/2017/07/31/hbo-hacked-game-of-thrones/ HBO has joined the ranks of Hollywood entertainment companies to suffer a major cyber attack. EW has learned that upcoming episodes of a couple series and at least one alleged script or treatment have been put online by hackers who breached the company’s systems — with more threatened to be coming soon. “HBO recently experienced a cyber incident, which resulted in the compromise of proprietary information,” the network confirmed in a statement. “We immediately began investigating the incident and are working with law enforcement and outside cybersecurity firms. Data protection is a top priority at HBO, and we take seriously our responsibility to protect the data we hold.” Hackers claimed to have obtained 1.5 terabytes of data from the company. So far, an upcoming episode of Ballers and Room 104 have apparently been put online. There is also written material that’s allegedly from next week’s fourth episode of Game of Thrones. More is promised to be “coming soon.” HBO is not commenting on what content might have been stolen, confirming specific titles or the amount of data accessed. This morning, HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler sent an email to HBO employees alerting them of the breach. “As most of you have probably heard by now, there has been a cyber incident directed at the company which has resulted in some stolen proprietary information, including some of our programming,” he wrote. “Any intrusion of this nature is obviously disruptive, unsettling, and disturbing for all of us. I can assure you that senior leadership and our extraordinary technology team, along with outside experts, are working round the clock to protect our collective interests. The efforts across multiple departments have been nothing short of herculean. It is a textbook example of quintessential HBO teamwork. The problem before us is unfortunately all too familiar in the world we now find ourselves a part of. As has been the case with any challenge we have ever faced, I have absolutely no doubt that we will navigate our way through this successfully.” On Sunday, an anonymous email was sent to many reporters announcing the hack: “Hi to all mankind. The greatest leak of cyber space era is happening. What’s its name? Oh I forget to tell. Its HBO and Game of Thrones……!!!!!! You are lucky to be the first pioneers to witness and download the leak. Enjoy it & spread the words. Whoever spreads well, we will have an interview with him. HBO is falling.” It’s not clear if the hackers actually have what would be the crown jewel target for an HBO cyber breach — upcoming episodes of the company’s biggest hit, Game of Thrones. So far, no GoT episodes have leaked. In April, a hacker penetrated Netflix to release episodes from season 5 of Orange Is the New Black ahead of its summer return. And in May, a hacker claimed to have stolen Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, but Disney chief Bob Iger later said the threat was a hoax. The biggest Hollywood hack victim was Sony in 2014, where approximately 100 terabytes of data was uploaded online (versus the 1.5 TB claimed in the HBO attack). For years, HBO has fought a cyber-battle to keep Game of Thrones storylines secret and the show’s content from being illegally distributed — particularly before episodes air. In season 5, the first four episodes leaked online before the show’s season premiere after review DVDs that were sent to the press and industry insiders. HBO has since halted the practice of sending any episodes in advance. That same year, some clips leaked ahead of time from overseas HBO distributors, and even images of Jon Snow’s death found their way online before the finale aired. Just a couple weeks ago, a Thrones trailer to be screened at Comic-Con leaked onto YouTube in advance of its release.

3 6

shells suck! - is a sane syntax possible?
by Zenaan Harkness 01 Aug '17

01 Aug '17

The BASH shell is an inordinate duplicity of features wrapped in a cacophany of syntax, where it's almost impossible to ascertain the sane lowest common denominator and almost-identical appearing syntax can have disastrous results if a single character is missed or added (thus resulting in a completely alternate syntax reality). And when one tries to do something truly elegant, to "master bash", one discovers after weeks of ones irrelevant-to-bash time, that absolutely nothing is elegant, and the variations ultimately make nothing of any even mild complexity/robustness, simple. So then of course one discovers dash, when you want higher performance, a much smaller footprint, or simply to attain that hallowed "lowest common denominator" syntax (don't be fooled friends, don't be fooled!). To test out new code/syntax efficiently one would presume the command line is a reasonable place to go, but for starters dash (at least when launched from a bash shell) has no readline support, and xorg -> xterm -> bash -> tmux -> bash -> dash is evidently too much for little dash, since not even the arrow keys work (nor Home, End, Del and probably others), no readline, no command history, just backspace and paste with the mouse (same on Linux console for the curious...). There goes -that- experiment! Of course there's a certain irony where for increased performance in bash there is the useful-sounding "arithmetic context" feature ("((" and "))"), which by the way is not impelemented in dash - for performance reasons. Oh well, so I throwze in me towell, "eff it! effing eff it already!!" and decides the LCD of "/bin/test" will bring the sanity of consistency if not the salvation of sane syntaxity. But, you guessed it, NO! 'Twas not to be! Dash. Simple. LCD. Yes, that must be it the one true way - I see it in all system scripts - albeit they look a little verbose here and there, there's an undeniable consistency about them, and everyone says "dash runs faster", so it must be true:: performance? check! apparent relative consistency? check! What's not to like? Well, learning the differences for starters. Despite a MUCH more approachable man page than that ungodly bash man page (which is admittedly still better than no man page). And don't get me started on the frustration arising from trying to test dash from the command line due to the frustration of trying to use dash instead of bash in my scripts, due to the frustration arising from the ungodly unconsistencys of bash syntax, and bash syntax as compared with dash syntax, and bash vs dash inbuilt test syntax and vs /bin/test and /bin/[ command line "command" syntax (just try lexico strings comparison with < or > in each environment). AAARRRGHHGHGHGGE !@#@!!.. ... . . . .. ....... . Thy consistency must not be obtained yet ye suffer the inability to compare numbers except for some strange options which evidence the necessity to prefix every test, for numbers or strings, with a bloody x. That's right! The crucifixion of syntax itself with the imposition of the cross, the wholey cross, and nothing but the cross, every where, every time, every place, everywhere, every script, and also every where. And I mean --everywhere-- you look! (Did I mention EVERYwhere?!!). And why? Why thank you for asking - because /bin/test won't work in various system-destroying scenarios otherwise, that's why!!! See above, heathen, see above! <soothing voiceover> Imagine a soft blue light as you experience that quiescence calmly rising, on your deep in-breath, bathed in pure essential shell mastery of that single letter, "x", solving all your syntaxtical perturbxtions, gently smaxhes itxelf on your eye ballx, thux enxuring your enduring peaxe and happinexx with life and Unix itxelf. </soothing voiceover> Seriously, it's time for a change, time for sane shell syntax, time for ... the one true language. (No no! Not the oblig xkcd cartxxn, ANYthing but the oblig!! We need standards, lots of them, and more standards!) And since all the existing shell and scripting standards are completely insufficient, it's time for the obligatory implementation of a new, all-encompassing shell with universal syntax applicable to all languages, all tools and all environments, incestuously binding with all other languages and admitting no deficiency! That's right - you guessed it :) , it's time for Lisp! Shell has had its day, and "eval" is waay too clumsy in comparison with the visual elegance of Lisp where every second letter is an utterly uniform opening or closing bracket, where the original theoretical language struts itself in simple glory and where ultimately every "fancy new design feature" in every "fancy new language" somehow always existed in elegance from the origin. Bow, punk! Bow before Lisp, the alpha and the omega of programming languages! Every concept ever "discovered" in "fancy new programming language"s of the day, from functions to modules, objects to tail calls, run-time self modification, objects, and universal appeal. That's Lisp. Well perhaps that teeny little "universal appeal" bit ... And on that note, a question: Any suggestions as to which functional language variant might be most suitable for "shell" glue script repalement language? Thanks, Z (PS: there's a little rather bland and dull, but nonetheless just mildly humorous, humour, on the fish shell web page: https://fishshell.com/ I might check that out as a bash replacement...)

2 1

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/09/disreputable-men.html
by Ryan Carboni 31 Jul '17

31 Jul '17

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/09/disreputable-men.html Gary Sick's is an interesting story. Sick is the author of October Surprise, one of the best accounts of the covert deal struck in the Fall of 1980 between senior Republicans, arms merchants and Iranian mullahs to delay the return of the American hostages until Ronald Reagan's inauguration. But as interesting as it is, that's not the story I mean. I'm talking about Sick's own story: his passage from career White House insider to "conspiracy theorist." ... My experience was not unlike that of a medieval scholar discovering traces of a hidden text beneath the script of an old parchment.... I felt as if I were wandering into a spy novel. The backgrounds and activies of some of these individuals who were emerging from the shadows of this operation seemed to come out of fiction, and yet they were real.... most of my professional life had been spent as an analyst of political and military intelligence. I knew that there were operatives for hire, ready to skirt the law for money, perhaps out of habit or duty, or simply for the thrill and sense of power illegal acts conveyed. But it was nonetheless a shock to meet them.... ... Such characters are a researcher's nemesis; they are meant to be. When the CIA or other intelligence agencies need to hire a "contractor," who may be required to carry out taks that are potentially dangerous and of questionable legality, they look for three things: a specific and useful skill (a knowledge of money-laundering, perhaps); a romantic streak that glorifies both the secrecy and the risk; and a propensity for exageration and trouble. One former CIA officer, David MacMichael, has said that the agency looks for these freelancers at small community airports and gun ranges - places where men go to excape the boredom of everyday life. Looking for adventure, these men are fascinated by the imagined glamour and excitement of the world of espionage. MacMichael said that often, after one or two assignments, the agency will put a contractor on a case in which he runs afoul of the law. The contractor finds himself in a compromising position - nothing so major as to put him permanently out of commission, but significant enough that if he ever starts telling tales out of school about covert operations, his record will discredit his testimony. ... Take, for instance, the case of Delmart Vreeland. A scoundrel by every account, but also one with exceptional information for those with ears to hear. He did pass on the "Let one happen, stop the rest" warning from a Toronto jail cell before 9/11; his claim that Canadian diplomat Marc Bastien had been poisoned in Moscow has been proven correct; the Pentagon unwittingly acknowledged his lengthy service record when it was called in open court, by relying on archived records undamaged by the 9/11 attack from which he had not been purged (the prosecution argued, incredibly, that Vreeland must have hacked into the Pentgon files from his jail cell); Leo Wanta, longtime intelligence asset who destabilized the Soviet ruble in the '80s at the White House request, confirmed Vreeland was an operative of the Office of Naval Intelligence; his lawyers did receive death threats and found their files vandalized; and Vreeland has vanished. But none of that matters to the coincidentalists, who stubbornly refuse to see deeper than the "legends" created for men like Vreeland, which is precisely the point. So Lee Harvey Oswald is a "communist," and Barry Seal just a drug runner. That Oswald was seen with the CIA's David Atlee Phillips in September 1963, and Barry Seal was gunned down with Vice President George Bush's personal phone number in his trunk, need to be ignored. The coincidentalists can't make sense of such evidence, that respectable men would have anything to do with such characters. But without them, some respectable men would be able to do very little. --- Well, Vreeland had since the essay been written, convicted of soliciting child prostitution in Franklin County, which is a bit messed up if you heard the backstory of Franklin County. The moment we live in a free society is probably when Kiriakou is working at an Apple Store and is visited by the Attorney General and when Thomas Drake has a fellowship with a major think tank, and it is when Delmart Vreeland is a free man not on trumped up charges. I think Marine One with Obama in it flew by my house once.

2 1