UKUSA Courts Monitoring

[Ken Brown]

John Young wrote:

> For example, this DNS entry:
> 
> Host, master (HM-ORG-ARIN)              hostmaster at USCOURTS.GOV
>        Nortel Plc F.A.O. Andrew MacphersonLondon
>        HarlowEssex
>        GB
> 
>        (202) 273-2640
>        Fax- (202) 273-2651
> 
>        Record last updated on 13-Aug-1998.
>        Database last updated on 8-Sep-2001 23:09:15 EDT.
> 
[...]


The name "Andrew Macpherson" struck me as vaguely familiar. I did some
searches  to update myself. He (or "an unknown entity using that name")
has been an occasional contributor to Bugtraq & other mailing lists on
SSH, email protocols, and security for BSD, NIS, NFS & other stuff.
There is a suggestion for an encrypted Unix passwd changing scheme at
http://http1.brunel.ac.uk:8080/depts/cc/Papers/netpassword-paper/paper.html
Also he's been on the committee of UK Unix User Group, along with some
people I actually know - so we are getting into true names territory
here.

Well, maybe he is a Secret Master of Repression of Telecoms. Of course
it could be that, like nearly every other DNS record in the world, the
name is that of the senior nerd on site & for whatever reason Nortel are
(or once were) running their tech stuff from the UK. According to
http://www.cs.duke.edu/csl/news/duke-cs-general/msg00000.html Bell
Northern & Northern Telecom merged nt.com, bnr.ca & bnr.co.uk into one
DNS domain in 1997 so it might well be that the whole thing has
sometimes been  managed centrally outwith the USA.

It isn't at all surprising that Nortel register .gov names of course,
even the Men In Black need to actually be connected to the Net to use it
& I suspect that Nortel does quite a lot of that.   

But, even if this isn't evidence of it, I still think you USAns are
paying our spies to spy on you so that your ones don't have to. Why else
are there so many British military & comms people based in Canada? And
at least some in Bermuda and the Bahamas. Not to mention Baltimore. 
There's a whole lot of listening going in in the world.

But then you guys also had (till recently) big bases in Bermuda which is
*our* colony, thank you very much. Gotta keep those sassy Bermudans in
their place. Of course there were no British or US naval officers at all
who liked to be there for a nice break & maybe some yacht racing at the
taxpayer's expense, no, who would think such a thing...


Ken Brown



AM doesn't like anonymous mail though:

>> Re: Use of reverse lookups with SMTP
>> Andrew Macpherson (Andrew.Macpherson.1248566 at nortel.co.uk)
>> Wed, 29 Jan 1997 11:54:34 +0000 
>> tim at uunet.pipex.com said:
[...]
>> | Yes, definitely. There are plenty of reasons why the DNS may be 
>> | unable to map a number to a name. None of them are good reasons for 
>> | refusing mail. 
>> 
>> What might these be, other than
>> 
>> a A desire to be anonymous [good reason for rejection]
>> b Incompetence in setting up ones Internet presence 
>>   [ Those one does business with are not demonstrated incompetents ]
>> c ISP incompetence [ Refuse this so that bad service goes out of business ]
>> 
>> One should refuse all connexions which fail the 
>> number -> name -> set of numbers including original
>> test, for all services, including SMTP.verse lookups with SMTP" 
[...]