From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 1 03:28:12 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 07:28:12 -0400 Subject: Car bomb targets Arab channel, killing 7 Message-ID: One of Ryan's Lackey's business associates, a Shia network engineer from Southern Iraq, was killed in this bomb. Cheers, RAH ------- www.xinhuanet.com XINHUA online CHINA VIEW VIEW CHINA Monday,Nov.1,2004 Car bomb targets Arab channel, killing 7 www.chinaview.cn 2004-10-30 02:04:00 BAGHDAD, Oct. 30 (Xinhuanet) -- A car bomb exploded outside the Al-Arabiya TV's office in Baghdad on Saturday, killing seven people and injuring more than a dozen of others, said the TV channel and hospital sources. Police officer Ziad Tareq said at least seven people were killed and one of them was a woman. Doctors at the nearby Yarmuk Hospital said they received more than 16 wounded. Al-Arabiya said all of the seven killed were workers with it's bureau, located in the wealthy Mansour neighborhood in western Baghdad, where senior Iraqi officials and foreign businessmen resided. The explosion, which took place around 15:10 p.m. (1210 GMT), started a fire and sent black smoke over the area, saw a Xinhua photographer. The fire was put off one hour later and about 30 vehicles were seen damaged. The facade of the office building was deformed and the site was bestrewn with glass and car parts. Three bodies were charred beyond recognition, according to the TV channel. A militant group identified as "1920 Brigades" claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack, said a statement attributed to the group. But its authenticity could not be verified. The group said it accused the "treacherous network" of taking a pro-American tone in its reporting and had kept warning it of possible attacks. Sabah Nayee, former Al-Arabiya Baghdad Bureau Chief, said he knew about the threat and his office could be the target, but believed that the pan-Arab satellite news network was doing right and maintained popularity in Iraq. He said a joint meeting was held inside the building attended by MBC and Saudi news provider Al-Ekhbariya at the time of explosion. But Nayee could not conclude if the attackers were aware of the meeting before unleashing the assault. The two companies were renting the building along with Al-Arabiya, who hired around 50 staff across Iraq. It appeared the first time a popular Arab language media was targeted in car bombings, favored by insurgents to wage attacks against US forces in Iraq and their cooperators. Based in Dubai and a sister news channel of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya has broadcast purported videos and statements from militant groups, including former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network. It was previously temporarily banned by the Iraqi authority from covering news out of Iraq. However, the Saudi-funded channel was known by Iraqis to be more cooprative with the interim government led by Iyad Allawi, especially after he visited Saudi Arabiya earlier this year. End item -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From HLin at nas.edu Mon Nov 1 10:52:31 2004 From: HLin at nas.edu (Lin, Herb) Date: November 1, 2004 10:52:31 AM EST Subject: Call for Nominations - NRC project on Information Fusion and Message-ID: Data Mining Dave - given the interest of your constituency in this subject.. We'd surely appreciate a posting of this notice, since you have access to a broader range of people than we normally have. Thanks. herb CALL FOR NOMINATIONS for a National Research Council study on Technical and Policy Dimensions of Large-scale Government Use of Information Fusion and Data Mining PLEASE POST WIDELY (and apologies for duplicate postings) The subjects of data mining and information fusion are in the forefront of many public policy discussions about how the nation should exploit information technology for purposes such as counter-terrorism, law enforcement, and public health. Recognizing the concerns raised in such discussions, the National Research Council is launching a project that will examine technical and policy issues associated with the large-scale government use of information fusion and data mining for such purposes. In addition to examining the technical problems and needs, it will consider the social and policy issues, such as privacy, that arise with the prospect of such use and consider how alternative approaches to both technology and policy can help to resolve them. The National Research Council (NRC) is the operating arm of the National Academies (), which include the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The National Academies were created by congressional charter to advise the nation on matters of public policy that involve science and technology. The NRC - a non-profit organization - works outside the framework of government to ensure independent advice to the government through the use of committees composed of the nation's top scientists, engineers, and other experts -- all of whom serve pro bono in the national interest to examine specific topics and issues. Within the NRC, this project is being undertaken by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board () in cooperation with the NRC's Committee on National Statistics (). For this project, a broad range of perspectives is required on the committee that will oversee this project. Individuals with expertise are sought in fields such as distributed systems, databases and information retrieval, data mining, intelligent agents, system security, systems integration and architecture, economics, sociology, statistics, political science, intellectual property, privacy, and civil liberties. Committee membership (limited to about 15 individuals) will be based on personal expertise and a dedication to drawing conclusions based on the analysis of data and information, and not on satisfying requirements for political representativeness. And, while it seeks nominations from a wide variety of sources, the National Research Council reserves the exclusive right to determine the membership of the committee. In accordance with NRC policy for all of its studies, committee members will also be vetted for both bias and direct financial conflicts of interest, both in selecting the members initially and also by the committee itself in closed session, when it meets for the first time. Committee members should be ** willing and able to work collegially with other committee members of differing perspectives to reach consensus on information-based analysis. They should have a demonstrated ability to consider opposing views carefully and respectfully, and be willing and able to act as an individual rather than a representative of any organization or movement. ** sufficiently senior in their fields to warrant broad respect for their intellect, fairness, and stature. ** able to put in the time needed on this project (perhaps 6 meetings, each of 2-3 days, over the course of 18-21 months, plus inter-meeting work such as reading and commenting on report draft materials). During the course of the project, the study committee expects to hear from many other individuals through panel briefings, testimony, white papers and other channels for input. Obviously, committee membership is limited (probably 15 or so individuals) and thus additional perspectives will be sought through briefings, a major convening, and a call for input that will be issued shortly. A good illustration of the kinds of persons sought for this project is provided by the committee assembled in 1994-1996 to study national cryptography policy, another highly controversial area. The committee was chaired by a former Deputy Secretary of State, and included (among others) a former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency, a former Attorney General of the United States, a former Deputy Attorney General, the inventor of public-key cryptography, the director of research and development for the Digital Equipment Corporation, and the creator of Lotus Notes. Persons of comparable stature are sought for this project as well. (This report can be found at .) Please forward nominations (self-nominations acceptable) to DMIF-INPUT at NAS.EDU. Submitted nominations should include contact information, biographies (including relevant published works, public statements, and current or former positions of relevance), and indications of relevant expertise and the perspective on the subject that the nominee will bring. The "subject" line of the e-mail should say "committee nomination." While nominations may be submitted at any time, nominations received after November 22, 2004, or without the information described above, may not be fully considered. More information about the project can be found at http://www.cstb.org/project_infofusion.html. ___________________________________________ Herb Lin, Senior Scientist Computer Science and Telecommunications Board The National Academies (202) 334-3191 voice || (202) 334-2318 fax || hlin at nas.edu www.cstb.org || Where the nation turns for independent and informed assessments of computing, communications, and public policy ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen at leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From dave at farber.net Mon Nov 1 08:31:43 2004 From: dave at farber.net (David Farber) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 11:31:43 -0500 Subject: [IP] Call for Nominations - NRC project on Information Fusion and Message-ID: Data Mining X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.619) Reply-To: dave at farber.net Begin forwarded message: From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Mon Nov 1 09:17:40 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 12:17:40 -0500 Subject: The "plagues" are Mosaic asymmetric attacks, not biological Message-ID: Variola wrote... >Again, the Mosaic approach of repeated asymmetric attacks on the Pharoah >is what Al Q >is up to. Eventually the Pharoah/US gets fed up and says fuck it. >Maybe not this election, but eventually, and Al has time. GW has only >4 more years, at best, and Rummy & Cheney are scheduled for a box in the >ground pretty >soon. Wolfy has more time, but after a few more kilocorpses will lose >power with >Joe Sixpack and Joe's post-Bush "leader". I think that's pretty on the money. Terrorism doesn't actually need to affect any single Head Bandit, but after a regime change or two and a pullout occurs the new Bandit can say "We meant to do that anyway." The French and Algeria is a great example. The Mosaic analogy was a good one, too, and not even original: See John Adams' "The Death of Leon Klinghoffer" and you'll know why it took so much heat....having Palestinians singing phrases from Exodus and Psalms was just a little too much for the music-funding establishment. It says a lot, however, that the guy still gets commissions. -TD "Oh Kent! I'd be lying if I said my men didn't commit any crimes!" -Homer Simpson "Touche." -Kent Brockman >From: "Major Variola (ret)" >To: "cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net" >Subject: The "plagues" are Mosaic asymmetric attacks, not biological >Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 21:11:55 -0800 > >At 05:21 PM 10/31/04 -0800, John Young wrote: > >To state the obvious to Major Variola, CDC will have first > >indication of a devastating US attack, reported fragmentarily > >under its links to hospitals, clinics and physicians, against > >which the might military and law enforcement have no defenses. > >You thought I meant bio plagues?! Jeezus John, is your metaphorizer >broken? Any >bio hazard is accidental, or Detrick, not Osama. A *succession of >attacks against the Empire* is what I mean, alluding to the Jews >attacking >the Pharaoh, until he let them alone. Pharoah=US, Moses=UBL, >Jews=Moslems. >Get your head around that one. > >News: >The infectious biological "attack" will be an accident of the modularity > >and recombination of influenza on some chinese duck/pig/human >farm. It will not be intentional but it will kill a lot before the >vaccine >can be produced, which takes ca. 6 mos.. See 1918 pandemic, >and add jet airplanes. A recent _Science_ article described >a model of this. You are one or two days away from that duck/pig/human >incubator nowadays, no matter where you live. That will happen, >but it won't be intentional. The geopoli implications will be fun, but >UBL is not involved there. > >Observation: >A non-infectious biological attack (eg anthrax which isn't >infectious) is cheap, but not Al Q's preferred MO. They go >for the special effects type attacks, simultaneous so you >know its them. (Otherwise it could be a suicical egyptian, >a rudder jerked too hard, a screw-jack improperly lubricated, >the NTSC is very creative.) > >Of course the Ft Detrick folks enjoy sending >the occasional sporulated letter to senators, but hey, their funding was > >running out, you do what you gotta do. > >Implementation: >A chem attack is pretty nifty, and in many ways easier than >fission or RDDs. Since there are so many chems moving >around, and rad sources are so easy to detect, by virtue of the >energy of the emissions, and controlled/surveilled materials. > >A tanker into a school is double the fun, >its been years since Columbine, and the underbelly is itching >for a scratch. (Again, you need to pull off 2 the same day.) >I wonder if there is a school that enrolls only >first born sons, that would be interesting to read about in your mosaic >er netscape er IE browser, eh? Since your allusion-detector is broken, > >"mosaic", get it? > >History: >"Let my people go" and taking a beating only works if you have >wannabe-moral brits who want to divest anyway and your name is >Ghandi. Otherwise the biblical plagues, aka asymmetric attack, approach >is >guaranteed to work in the limit. All you need is enough popular >support. >Its there. > >It only took 200 dead marines and one bomb >to evict us from Lebanon, maybe 50K corpses for S. Nam, don't know about > >N Korea, but do the math. .mil are disposable, but they have families >that >whine and vote. And the press is not *entirely* 0wn3d by the .gov, yet. > >Conclusion: >Again, the Mosaic approach of repeated asymmetric attacks on the Pharoah >is what Al Q >is up to. Eventually the Pharoah/US gets fed up and says fuck it. >Maybe not this election, but eventually, and Al has time. GW has only >4 more years, at best, and Rummy & Cheney are scheduled for a box in the >ground pretty >soon. Wolfy has more time, but after a few more kilocorpses will lose >power with >Joe Sixpack and Joe's post-Bush "leader". > >Operation Just Cause >Just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I have to ignore >Egyptian/Hebrew history. >Just because I live here doesn't mean I don't think the US deserves the >treatment >that any Empire deserves. Just because I'm an American doesn't mean I >can't use >sophisticated allusions. Just because I say Mosaic Plagues doesn't mean >I'm >talking about frogs & locusts. Dig? _________________________________________________________________ Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 1 09:04:16 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 13:04:16 -0400 Subject: Ten reasons I'm not voting for you, Mr. George W. Bush. Message-ID: OpinionJournal - CAMPAIGN 2004 No More Years Ten reasons I'm not voting for you, Mr. George W. Bush. BY JIM TREACHER Monday, November 1, 2004 12:01 a.m. 10. Do you really think it's a good idea to be Hitler, George? Hitler killed millions of people and his approval ratings are in the toilet. Why can't you be somebody people like? Regis, maybe, or the Prophet Mohammed. Anybody but Hitler! Being Hitler = BAD IDEA. 9. Two words: You. Are. Dumb. 8. When Karl Rove used the remote-control device implanted in your upper back to force you to murder Iraqi babies and American soldiers for oil and/or no reason because Saddam was mean to your dad, plus what about the WMDs you lost after you lied about them even being there in the first place, and then Rove tried to make everybody think your Thanksgiving turkey wasn't plastic by planting fake documents about your military service and forcing Dan Rather to say "Sorry, I guess" on national TV, did you really think we wouldn't figure it out? 7. People might make fun of me. Maybe you're used to it by now, but I'm not. 6. I mean, black hoods? Fa-shion dis-a-a-a-ster. Wasn't Abu Ghraib dreary enough already? (More like Abu Drab!) I would have started a riot--a laugh riot. While pointing at you! 5. How dare you taunt a dying Christopher Reeve with a big brown bottle of stem cells? The man was on his deathbed, you sick monster. Why did you have to hold the spoon right in front of his lips? "C'mon, Chrissy, it's right here. You can do it, bwah! Just another coupla inches. Oooh, yer close. Close!" Shame on you, Dubya. 4. I can't really think of anything for item No. 4, and for that I blame you. (Also the Jews.) 3. Where's Osama? C'mon, Shrub, we all know you've got him in some secret Ashcroft prison and he's running around loose in the world, plus also besides which everybody just saw him live on tape giving the dramatic reading of "Fahrenheit 9/11" that the Halliburton PR department wrote for him to swing the election your way. Well 2. The Internet. 1. I can no longer afford the premiums on my falling-sky insurance. Adios, chimp! Mr. Treacher writes at JimTreacher.com. Editor's note: This is a satire of the Angry Left. Please do not take it seriously. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 1 09:11:47 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 13:11:47 -0400 Subject: Trio try for better mobile security Message-ID: vnunet.com Trio try for better mobile security The Trusted Mobile Platform from Intel, IBM and NTT DoCoMo aims to make mobiles a better bet for secure networking Daniel Robinson, IT Week 01 Nov 2004 Intel, IBM and mobile communications company NTT DoCoMo last week announced a set of security specifications for mobile client devices. They said the aim is to create a secure architecture for future wireless data services. The Trusted Mobile Platform specification, available via the link below, defines a set of hardware and software components plus communication protocols that can be used to build devices with various levels of security. It is intended to be an open standard, according to NTT DoCoMo chief executive Takanori Utano. The specification defines three classes of trusted mobile device (TMD), ranging from handsets with no hardware security features to those that include a trusted platform module (TPM) to handle cryptography functions and hardware-enforced separation between trusted and untrusted applications and their data. It also defines a set of protocols that allow a TMD to communicate with other platforms more securely The partnership brings together Intel's expertise in silicon and wireless devices, IBM's experience of business security and NTT DoCoMo's knowledge of security in wireless networks, the companies said. "This collaboration enhances handheld architectures to provide the trusted capabilities vital for widespread adoption of mobile commerce and enterprise usage," said Intel vice-president Sean Maloney. Chip designer ARM already includes technology called TrustZone in its latest processor cores to provide separation between secure and non-secure code. Although Intel uses ARM technology in its XScale mobile chips, the company has not disclosed whether the Trusted Mobile Platform supports technologies such as TrustZone. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 1 10:01:37 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 14:01:37 -0400 Subject: Activists fear e-voting security glitches Message-ID: TechTarget Activists fear e-voting security glitches By Bill Brenner, News Writer 01 Nov 2004 | SearchSecurity.com It's a recurring nightmare for many political activists and IT experts: electronic voting machines around the country suffer security breaches on Election Day, affecting the outcome of a bitterly-contested White House race and other key battles. "I'm extremely concerned, especially in states like Florida," said Reed Hundt, a Democrat who chaired the Federal Communications Commission during the Clinton Administration. "Republican governors control most of the battleground states and they haven't done a thing to make these systems transparent and trustworthy. Democrats will have to turn out in record numbers to be counted. I worry about a vote-counting catastrophe." State and federal efforts to replace paper and punch-card voting systems with electronic machines gained steam after Florida's 2000 election debacle. In October 2002 Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, mandating that every voting district modernize its election systems by 2006 and allocating $3.9 billion for that purpose. Many states invested the money in electronic voting machines. A study by Washington D.C.-based Election Data Services estimates more than 48 million registered voters will cast ballots on electronic equipment Nov. 2, compared to 53 million who will use optical scan systems and 22 million who will still use punch cards. About the same number of voters will use lever machines, while only about a million will use paper ballots, the study estimated. But concerns abound in many states. There are fears people will be able to use security holes to vote multiple times, that a power failure could wipe out votes and that no paper trail will exist for backup. Interviews with political activists and security experts and an extensive review of media coverage over the last several months suggests most of the concern is among Democrats, Green Party members and civil liberty groups. Democrats worry e-voting security glitches could tip an extremely close election in President George W. Bush's favor. If Republicans fear problems could tip the election to Sen. John F. Kerry, they're not talking about it. President Bush has expressed faith in the nation's e-voting equipment, and Republican governors like Jeb Bush in Florida believe the machines will work fine on Election Day. Maryland reflects national debate Recent events in Maryland reflect what has happened across the country. A group called TrueVoteMD tried unsuccessfully to stop e-voting and is now fighting in court to send designated poll watchers to voting stations. The state has adopted an independent firm's recommendations to boost security and Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich believes the machines are ready. Critics remain skeptical. Pam Woodside, chief information officer for Maryland's independent State Board of Elections, said the state began experimenting with e-voting in Baltimore City in 1998 using Sequoia Voting System machines. After the 2000 election problems, then-Gov. Parris Glendenning commissioned a panel of experts to review the best voting technology for the state. Texas-based Diebold Election Systems was eventually chosen to provide the machines. Shortly after the contract was signed, Woodside said the trouble began. First came a report co-authored by Avi Rubin, computer science professor and technical director of Johns Hopkins University's Information Security Institute. The report cited several security problems with e-voting machines that could allow voters to cast unlimited votes without being detected and without insider privileges. Other problems mentioned included incorrect use of cryptography and poor software development. Woodside said many of the report's conclusions were off base. "It assumed source code was on the Internet. That was incorrect. It assumed you could attach a keyboard to the unit. That's not true. It assumed you could vote multiple times and that's not true either," she said. 'The most secure' system around After the media pounced on the report, Ehrlich ordered a risk assessment. The state hired Columbia, Md.-based RABA Technologies to do the work, and its final report said the machines failed to meet 66 of its 328 standards. Woodside said the state immediately addressed the problems and believes the machines are now ironclad. "One of the items we addressed right away was to get the vendor to change the software so we could create unique pins for voting units in each county," she said. "We now use security keys that are dynamically allocated. We also demanded more secure encryption from the vendor." The RABA report also recommended the state use locks and tamper tape to protect areas housing the server and memory card that will accumulate and store the votes. "We've done that, put antivirus software on servers, activated logs and applied applicable Microsoft patches," Woodside said. "We now have the most secure e-voting system around." Lingering worries Linda Schade, a member of TrueVoteMD and the Green Party, begs to differ. While the group failed to block e-voting in Maryland, it is now fighting in court for the right to send monitors into polling precincts around the state. "The use of paperless electronic voting in Maryland has been marred by serious problems," Schade said. "It is clear these machines need to be watched closely. We now know that in the last election, people received incomplete ballots missing candidates, machines failed to boot, technicians without identification worked on machines making undocumented alterations. The State Board of Elections told the media and the public that the machines worked flawlessly, but since then local boards of elections have reported widespread problems." Rubin also remains fearful security glitches could skew ballot counts and disenfranchise voters. After spending the day as an election judge in Baltimore County during the primary, he gained a new appreciation for poll workers, saying they worked diligently all day to ensure machines worked properly and everyone's vote was counted. But last week he said most states that will use e-voting Nov. 2 without a paper trail are "in over their heads." "I am more worried about the fact that the voting machines have the potential to be rigged than I am that they were actually rigged," said Rubin. "There's no way to know, and that's not healthy. The worst thing is that there could be a security breach, and we'd have no way of knowing it." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From measl at mfn.org Mon Nov 1 12:25:57 2004 From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 14:25:57 -0600 (CST) Subject: "Ask yourselves why we didn't attack Sweden" In-Reply-To: References: <41846567.85E4BCF4@cdc.gov> <41869954.4040507@students.bbk.ac.uk> Message-ID: <20041101142432.N37875@ubzr.zsa.bet> On Mon, 1 Nov 2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > At 8:15 PM +0000 11/1/04, ken wrote: > >> HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE: The National Conservative Weekly Since 1944 > >> > > > >[Heap of transparent murderous lies snipped] > > > If you ever take a logic class, :-), that's an informal fallacy called an > ad hominem. That would be like me disregarding anything you say because > your email address was . Which is almost as bad as making arguments, and then refusing to defend them in the face of opposition (geodesic cowardice). > ;-) > > Cheers, > RAH -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin at mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 1 10:37:28 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 14:37:28 -0400 Subject: Psst. President Bush Is Hard at Work Expanding Government Secrecy Message-ID: The New York Times November 1, 2004 EDITORIAL OBSERVER Psst. President Bush Is Hard at Work Expanding Government Secrecy By DOROTHY SAMUELS t is only inevitable, I suppose, that some big issues never make it onto the agenda of a presidential campaign, and other lesser issues, or total nonissues, somehow emerge instead. Electoral politics, as Americans are regularly being reminded these final hard-fought days before the election, is a brutal, messy business, not an antiseptic political science exercise. That said, I hereby confess to feeling disappointed over Senator John Kerry's failure to home in hard on one of the more worrisome domestic policy developments of the past four years - namely the Bush administration's drastic expansion of needless government secrecy. President Bush's antipathy to open government continues to garner only a trivial level of attention compared with the pressing matters that seem to be engaging the country at the moment, including, in no particular order, the Red Sox, Iraq, terrorism, taxes and the mysterious iPod-size bulge visible under the back of Mr. Bush's suit jacket at the first debate. But the implications for a second term are ominous. Beyond undermining the constitutional system of checks and balances, undue secrecy is a proven formula for faulty White House decision-making and debilitating scandal. If former President Richard Nixon, the nation's last chief executive with a chronic imperial disdain for what Justice Louis Brandeis famously called the disinfecting power of sunlight, were alive today, I like to think he'd be advising Mr. Bush to choose another role model. As detailed in a telling new Congressional report, Mr. Bush's secrecy obsession - by now a widely recognized hallmark of his presidency - is truly out of hand. The 90-page report, matter-of-factly titled "Secrecy in the Bush Administration," was released with little fanfare in September by Representative Henry Waxman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Government Reform, and one of the most outspoken critics of the Bush administration's steady descent into greater and greater secrecy. The objective was to catalog the myriad ways that President Bush and his appointees have undermined existing laws intended to advance public access to information, while taking an expansive view of laws that authorize the government to operate in secrecy, or to withhold certain information. Some of the instances the report cites are better known than others. Among the more notorious, of course, are the administration's ongoing refusal to disclose contacts between Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force and energy company executives, or to explain the involvement of Mr. Cheney's office in the awarding of huge sole-source contracts to Halliburton for Iraq reconstruction; the post-9/11 rush to embrace shameful, unconstitutional practices like secret detentions and trials; and the resistance and delay in turning over key documents sought by the Sept. 11 commission. The report lists many other troubling examples as well. Mr. Bush and his appointees have routinely impeded Congress's constitutionally prescribed oversight role by denying reasonable requests from senior members of Congressional committees for basic information. They forced a court fight over access to the Commerce Department's corrected census counts, for instance, withheld material relating to the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib and stonewalled attempts to collect information on meetings and phone conversations between Karl Rove, the presidential adviser, and executives of firms in which he owned stock. The administration has also taken to treating as top secret documents previously available under the Freedom of Information Act - going so far as to reverse the landmark act's presumption in favor of disclosure and to encourage agencies to withhold a broad, hazily defined universe of "sensitive but unclassified" information. Under a phony banner of national security, Mr. Bush has reversed reasonable steps by the Clinton administration to narrow the government's capacity to classify documents. Aside from being extremely expensive, the predictably steep recent increase in decisions to classify information runs starkly counter to recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission geared to strengthening oversight of the intelligence agencies. Not one for self-criticism - or any kind of criticism, for that matter - President Bush says he's content to leave it to historians to assess his presidential legacy. What he fails to mention is that he has seriously impeded that historical review by issuing a 2001 executive order repealing the presumption of public access to presidential papers embedded in the 1978 Presidential Records Act. On a superficial level, the hush-hush treatment of this issue on the fall campaign trail might seem perversely fitting. But Mr. Bush's unilateral rollback of laws and practices designed to promote government accountability surely rates further scrutiny by voters. We've learned over the last four years that what we don't know can hurt us. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 1 11:21:56 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 15:21:56 -0400 Subject: "Ask yourselves why we didn't attack Sweden" In-Reply-To: <41869954.4040507@students.bbk.ac.uk> References: <41846567.85E4BCF4@cdc.gov> <41869954.4040507@students.bbk.ac.uk> Message-ID: At 8:15 PM +0000 11/1/04, ken wrote: >> HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE: The National Conservative Weekly Since 1944 >> > >[Heap of transparent murderous lies snipped] If you ever take a logic class, :-), that's an informal fallacy called an ad hominem. That would be like me disregarding anything you say because your email address was . ;-) Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 1 11:36:03 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 15:36:03 -0400 Subject: Geodesic neoconservative empire In-Reply-To: <41869CBF.9010403@students.bbk.ac.uk> References: <41825F75.31931.BCDDEC8@localhost> <20041029212318.M41612@ubzr.zsa.bet> <6.0.3.0.0.20041030132232.04096908@pop.idiom.com> <41869CBF.9010403@students.bbk.ac.uk> Message-ID: At 8:29 PM +0000 11/1/04, ken wrote: >Read up on Lord Lugard. Oh. I get it. September came two months later this year across the pond... Cheers, RAH Now, *that*, I say, *that*, son, is an ad hominem... -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 1 08:41:37 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 17:41:37 +0100 Subject: [IP] Call for Nominations - NRC project on Information Fusion and Data Mining (fwd from dave@farber.net) Message-ID: <20041101164137.GI1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from David Farber ----- From bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk Mon Nov 1 12:15:16 2004 From: bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk (ken) Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 20:15:16 +0000 Subject: "Ask yourselves why we didn't attack Sweden" In-Reply-To: References: <41846567.85E4BCF4@cdc.gov> Message-ID: <41869954.4040507@students.bbk.ac.uk> R.A. Hettinga wrote: > At 9:09 PM -0700 10/30/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > >>I'm surprised >>the "Ask yourselves why we didn't attack Sweden" comment >>isn't discussed more > > > > > > > HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE: The National Conservative Weekly Since 1944 > [Heap of transparent murderous lies snipped] O dear, I seem to have snipped all of it. There was no content there at all..... From bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk Mon Nov 1 12:29:51 2004 From: bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk (ken) Date: Mon, 01 Nov 2004 20:29:51 +0000 Subject: Geodesic neoconservative empire In-Reply-To: <6.0.3.0.0.20041030132232.04096908@pop.idiom.com> References: <41825F75.31931.BCDDEC8@localhost> <20041029212318.M41612@ubzr.zsa.bet> <6.0.3.0.0.20041030132232.04096908@pop.idiom.com> Message-ID: <41869CBF.9010403@students.bbk.ac.uk> Bill Stewart wrote: > >> On Fri, 29 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: >> > This presupposes the US intends to rule Afghanistan and Iraq, >> > which is manifestly false. > > > Since this chain started by ragging on RAH about it being a > _geodesic_ neo-{Khan, con-men} empire, you're both correct - > there isn't a conflict between ruling them by proxy > and not ruling them directly Most all empires that lasted more than a few decades used indirect rule (famous big exception China - though not always and they had to endure generations of collapse between each advance) Rome & Britain just best known. Read up on Lord Lugard. From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 2 05:16:41 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 08:16:41 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 2, 2004 COMMENTARY This Memorable Day By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON November 2, 2004; Page A22 In singular moments in our history, the security of the United States hinged on a single presidential election. Imagine George McClellan recognizing an undefeated Confederacy in March 1865. Consider an eight-year Jimmy Carter tenure. Or contemplate Walter Mondale taking over from a defeated President Reagan to implement unilaterally a nuclear freeze, Mike Dukakis asking Saddam to leave Kuwait, or Al Gore mobilizing America to invade Afghanistan. We are now faced with the same critical choice. Today's vote determines how the United States finishes the present war against terrorists, and, indeed, whether we continue to defeat Islamic fascism and those Middle East autocracies that fuel it. * * * John Kerry sees our struggle as an unending law enforcement problem, akin to gambling and prostitution. Thus the terrorist attacks of the 1990s were not deadly precursors to 9/11, but belong to a now nostalgic era of "nuisance." In contrast, George W. Bush envisioned September 11 as real war -- a global struggle against Dark-Age extremism, striving for a modern nuclear caliphate that could blackmail the industrialized world and destroy Western liberal values. So Mr. Bush took terrorist killers at their word, convinced that such "evildoers," like a Hitler or Stalin, had no legitimate complaint against America. Rather, they murder out of a deep frustration that Western-inspired freedom is on the march, threatening both Islamic fascism and those repressive regimes that hand-in-glove with them have deflected their own failures onto the United States. John Kerry promises "help is on the way" to remove President Bush, who has, according to Mr. Kerry, lied when he is exposed as incompetent. Such strident condemnation ignores the stunning victory over the Taliban, the first voting in Afghanistan in 5,000 years, the removal of Saddam Hussein with scheduled elections for next January, positive changes in Libya, Pakistan and the Gulf States, and the absence of another 9/11-like attack here at home. Moqtada al-Sadr and Osama bin Laden now whine about American retaliation and send out peace feelers. But their apprehension arises not because of Sen. Kerry's rhetoric or his promises of U.N. collectivism. Rather, the specter of four more years of a resolute George W. Bush equates to their continued defeat. Their trepidation was shared by the 1980 hostage takers in Tehran, who relented in terror of an inaugurated Ronald Reagan warning them of the impending end to Carteresque appeasement. Most of Sen. Kerry's allegations about this war ring false or insincere because he shifts in tune to mercurial polls. The senator's yes/no/maybe public statements and votes reflect the perceived daily pulse of the battlefield -- and his lack of either a strategic understanding of the war or faith in the skill and resoluteness of the U.S. military. He insists that there were no al Qaeda ties to Baathists, but we see them in postbellum Iraq, knew of them during the first World Trade Center bombing, and once accepted President Clinton's claim for them during his 1998 retaliation against the Sudan. WMD are likewise derided as a chimera. But President Clinton, Sen. Kerry, and Sen. John Edwards are all on record frantically warning about Saddam's bio-chem arsenal -- with others citing intelligence confirmation from Vladimir Putin to Hosni Mubarak. During the three-week war, American troops in the field did not don bothersome chemical suits because of President Bush's naoveti or duplicity. In Sen. Kerry's world, brave folk such as Iraq's Prime Minister Allawi, the Poles, and the Australians are belittled as hollow and bought allies, while Germany and France, that profited lucratively with Saddam, will be invited to join "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," now dubbed analogous to the Bay of Pigs. The explanation for Saddam's removal, in Teresa Heinz Kerry's words, is "blood for oil," a mantra echoed by "Fahrenheit 9/11," MoveOn.org, and bin Laden's latest infomercial. But after the invasion, petroleum prices soared. Iraq's national treasure is for the first time transparent and autonomous. France, Russia and the U.N. can no longer appropriate it. President Bush, once libeled as the villainous Texas oil schemer, is now reinvented on the campaign trail as Sen. Kerry's clueless naof, bullied by a sinister OPEC. True, much of the Kerry negativism derives from opportunism. Yet there is also a logic that explains the flip-flopping, rooted in deep-seeded doubts about both the utility and morality of using American military power. Thus Sen. Kerry voted against many of our present weapons systems. That obstructionism explains why in 1988 he looked back at the Reagan strategic build-up as one of "moral darkness." Mr. Kerry, as a soldier and a senator, conducted freelance negotiations with both the communist North Vietnamese and Sandinistas. His opposition to the 1991 Gulf War might have ensured a Saddam Hussein sitting on 30% of the world's oil, replete with nukes, and lording over what was left of Kuwait, the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. His recent embrace of a "global test" as the proper requisite of American military action was not novel, but reflected his 1994 remarks that American efforts to stop Serbian fascism should be predicated only on U.N. approval -- although Sen. Kerry later supported Bill Clinton when he subsequently bombed successfully without either the sanction of the U.S. Senate or the U.N. Security Council. And when President Clinton reaffirmed America as the "indispensable nation," Sen. Kerry predictably lamented the "arrogant, obnoxious tone." Sen. Kerry insists that President Bush "squandered" global goodwill and that America is now roundly disliked. But who is angry with President Bush -- and why? North Korea to be sure -- their Danegeld of oil and food is gone, their nuclear antics under multiparty scrutiny. Iran is furious as well -- but even more terrified that the U.S. is no longer in an investigative, but rather a warrior, mood. The Arafat kleptocracy and much of the Middle East pine for the good old days of "sensitive" American cops vainly subpoenaing terrorists snug in safe compounds and palaces. If Belgium, France and Germany are purportedly seething at Mr. Bush's troop repositioning, "dead or alive" homilies, and the smashing of Saddam's cashbox, then billions in India, China and Russia see all that as a larger effort to stop a globally despised Islamic fascism. Most Americans applaud the support of Australia and Britain rather than worry over the censure of New Zealand and Canada. Yes, George W. Bush is a divisive wartime figure -- so were Lincoln, Churchill and Roosevelt. But war itself is divisive precisely because to end it one side must lose. In war, it is hard to know when victory is near, since the last campaigns are often the bloodiest. Yet we are seeing the foundations of a new Middle East, with terrorists scattered, jailed and dead. And, yes, victory itself is on the horizon -- but only if on this memorable day we persevere, and allow George W. Bush to finish the job. Mr. Hanson, a military historian, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, at Stanford. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Tue Nov 2 06:21:23 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 09:21:23 -0500 Subject: Psst. President Bush Is Hard at Work Expanding Government Secrecy Message-ID: "That said, I hereby confess to feeling disappointed over Senator John Kerry's failure to home in hard on one of the more worrisome domestic policy developments of the past four years - namely the Bush administration's drastic expansion of needless government secrecy." Come on! The bar slut has passed out on the pooltable and Bush's fratbrother Mr Kerry hasn't had his go yet... -TD >From: "R.A. Hettinga" >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net, cryptography at metzdowd.com >Subject: Psst. President Bush Is Hard at Work Expanding Government Secrecy >Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 14:37:28 -0400 > > > >The New York Times > >November 1, 2004 >EDITORIAL OBSERVER > >Psst. President Bush Is Hard at Work Expanding Government Secrecy >By DOROTHY SAMUELS > >t is only inevitable, I suppose, that some big issues never make it onto >the agenda of a presidential campaign, and other lesser issues, or total >nonissues, somehow emerge instead. Electoral politics, as Americans are >regularly being reminded these final hard-fought days before the election, >is a brutal, messy business, not an antiseptic political science exercise. > > That said, I hereby confess to feeling disappointed over Senator John >Kerry's failure to home in hard on one of the more worrisome domestic >policy developments of the past four years - namely the Bush >administration's drastic expansion of needless government secrecy. > > President Bush's antipathy to open government continues to garner only a >trivial level of attention compared with the pressing matters that seem to >be engaging the country at the moment, including, in no particular order, >the Red Sox, Iraq, terrorism, taxes and the mysterious iPod-size bulge >visible under the back of Mr. Bush's suit jacket at the first debate. But >the implications for a second term are ominous. > > Beyond undermining the constitutional system of checks and balances, >undue >secrecy is a proven formula for faulty White House decision-making and >debilitating scandal. If former President Richard Nixon, the nation's last >chief executive with a chronic imperial disdain for what Justice Louis >Brandeis famously called the disinfecting power of sunlight, were alive >today, I like to think he'd be advising Mr. Bush to choose another role >model. > > As detailed in a telling new Congressional report, Mr. Bush's secrecy >obsession - by now a widely recognized hallmark of his presidency - is >truly out of hand. > > The 90-page report, matter-of-factly titled "Secrecy in the Bush >Administration," was released with little fanfare in September by >Representative Henry Waxman of California, the ranking Democrat on the >House Committee on Government Reform, and one of the most outspoken critics >of the Bush administration's steady descent into greater and greater >secrecy. The objective was to catalog the myriad ways that President Bush >and his appointees have undermined existing laws intended to advance public >access to information, while taking an expansive view of laws that >authorize the government to operate in secrecy, or to withhold certain >information. > > Some of the instances the report cites are better known than others. >Among >the more notorious, of course, are the administration's ongoing refusal to >disclose contacts between Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force >and energy company executives, or to explain the involvement of Mr. >Cheney's office in the awarding of huge sole-source contracts to >Halliburton for Iraq reconstruction; the post-9/11 rush to embrace >shameful, unconstitutional practices like secret detentions and trials; and >the resistance and delay in turning over key documents sought by the Sept. >11 commission. > > The report lists many other troubling examples as well. Mr. Bush and his >appointees have routinely impeded Congress's constitutionally prescribed >oversight role by denying reasonable requests from senior members of >Congressional committees for basic information. They forced a court fight >over access to the Commerce Department's corrected census counts, for >instance, withheld material relating to the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib and >stonewalled attempts to collect information on meetings and phone >conversations between Karl Rove, the presidential adviser, and executives >of firms in which he owned stock. The administration has also taken to >treating as top secret documents previously available under the Freedom of >Information Act - going so far as to reverse the landmark act's presumption >in favor of disclosure and to encourage agencies to withhold a broad, >hazily defined universe of "sensitive but unclassified" information. > > Under a phony banner of national security, Mr. Bush has reversed >reasonable steps by the Clinton administration to narrow the government's >capacity to classify documents. Aside from being extremely expensive, the >predictably steep recent increase in decisions to classify information runs >starkly counter to recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission geared to >strengthening oversight of the intelligence agencies. > > Not one for self-criticism - or any kind of criticism, for that matter - >President Bush says he's content to leave it to historians to assess his >presidential legacy. What he fails to mention is that he has seriously >impeded that historical review by issuing a 2001 executive order repealing >the presumption of public access to presidential papers embedded in the >1978 Presidential Records Act. > >On a superficial level, the hush-hush treatment of this issue on the fall >campaign trail might seem perversely fitting. But Mr. Bush's unilateral >rollback of laws and practices designed to promote government >accountability surely rates further scrutiny by voters. We've learned over >the last four years that what we don't know can hurt us. > >-- >----------------- >R. A. Hettinga >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation >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' _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 2 07:31:59 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 10:31:59 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 3:32 AM +1300 11/3/04, Peter Gutmann wrote: >Eugen Leitl writes: >>On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 08:16:41AM -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >>> >>No cypherpunks content. Just local politics. > >And it's not even original, they've mostly just translated it into English, >updated it a bit (e.g. League of Nations -> UN), and changed the Russian names >and references to Middle Eastern ones. Yup. That's Davis' point, actually. Fuck with the West, we kick your ass. BTW, the Greeks at naval battle of Salamis were arguing, violently, the very night before the battle. The Persian deaths numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The Greeks died in the low hundreds. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 2 07:55:00 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 10:55:00 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 10:31 AM -0500 11/2/04, R.A. Hettinga wrote: >The Persian deaths numbered in the hundreds >of thousands. The Greeks died in the low hundreds. More recently, and closer to Hanson's point in the article, both of Lincoln's elections were very close. But, after Lincoln's second inauguration, Grant took charge of the Union Army and began killing Confederates (and Union soldiers) in a series of horrific battles culminating in the end of the Civil War. Expect more carnage than culture when Bush is elected. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jya at pipeline.com Tue Nov 2 11:58:29 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 11:58:29 -0800 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: And an admirable role model for the Simian's memory: An avenging rebel terrorist shot Abe, not Grant, who suicided himself with whiskey and self-pity, after lollygagging in the animal-beshat White House, lost that, took up liquor, became a helpless drunk, friends caretook his inept pickled carcass for a few years then he wrote a vain, distorted book about his carnaging of the rebels, and worst comedownance, got entombed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, so it is said, but who knows what military-industrial effigy lies in that grafitti-and-dogshit-smeared pile overlooking beshitten liberal-elitist, nest of rebellious vermin Columbia University, Riverside Church, the National Council of Churches, and best, squalid, infested, periodically ractist white-massacreing Harlem. Still, when you visit Grant's Tomb you see mostly well-dressed African Americans studying the memoria displayed welling tears at the piles of war dead, the freed slaves, the army grunts and officers gauntly posed in muddy filth. A tourist bus roars in, pinky blobs waddle into the high-domed gloom, see no cafe, no gift shop, come out to circle the monument looking for something to buy or eat or video. Nothing there like the rest of the homeland shopfested US. What the fuck they mouth, fart, scratch, heave their globs fore and aft, struggle to re-mount the bus, stare out the dark glass at me in my Swift Boat get-up, jesus-bearded, gut abusting, carrying a Viet Vet begging sign that says Apocalypse Now or Else. From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Tue Nov 2 09:11:27 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 12:11:27 -0500 Subject: Musings on "getting out the vote" Message-ID: And they seem to believe there's going to be a huge difference between Kang and Kodos. So far, the only things Kerry seems to have promised is that he'd be better at doing all the crazy shit Bush has dove into. So when they ask me (at the corner of Wall and Broadway), "Are you a John Kerry Supporter", I reply, "Well, 'supporter' is not the word I would use." And then I 'move on'. -TD >From: "J.A. Terranson" >To: undisclosed-recipients: ; >Subject: Musings on "getting out the vote" >Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 08:42:41 -0600 (CST) > > > >Several weeks ago, a couple of MoveOn droids showed up at my door to "take >a survey". I told them that yes, I was a registered republican, and that >yes, I was voting for Kerry, so fuck off. > >Last week, while I was away, they came back to "check that [my wife] was >still planning to vote for Kerry". > >Today, after two hours in line, after braving the lawyers with the >republican stickers hovering over the line, and challenging voters who >Seem A Little Dark For This Part Of Town, and casting my vote for the guy >I hate the least [Kerry], we were walking to the car and were again >accosted by a couple of *very pushy* MoveOn droids: > > "Sir! Sir! Have you voted?" > > "Yes. Go away." > > "Sir! Wait a minute! Have you been contacted by your MoveOn > representative yet?" (as he tries to physically insert himself between me > and the street) > > "Yes. Too many fucking times: get out of my fucking way!" > >First of all, while I appreciate their willingness to help throw the angry >little midget fuck in the whitehouse out on his ass, they are alienating >people. I *guarantee* the sight of me fighting off the MoveOn people made >a mental impression on the hundred plus people on line. > >Second, I signed up to drive folks to the polls today for a few hours, >*with* MoveOn. I also came very close to saying fuckit - these assholes >need an IMMEDIATE attitude adjustment, or they are going to help turn the >vote *away* from their supposed goal. > > > > >-- >Yours, > >J.A. Terranson >sysadmin at mfn.org >0xBD4A95BF > > "An ill wind is stalking > while evil stars whir > and all the gold apples > go bad to the core" > > S. Plath, Temper of Time _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! hthttp://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 2 09:56:59 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 12:56:59 -0500 Subject: Nokia, Philips trial NFC for Wireless Ticketing Message-ID: Nokia, Philips trial NFC for Wireless Ticketing Nokia, Royal Philips Electronics together with Rhein-Main Verkehrsverbund (RMV), public transport authority for Frankfurt's greater area, today announced a joint project to trial a Near Field Communication (NFC) ticketing solution that uses mobile phones to access an existing contactless smart card ticketing infrastructure. The trial, which starts early 2005, will enable RMV's current customers to use Nokia 3220 phones equipped by tailored Nokia NFC shell covers to gain access to a local bus network in Hanau, a city near Frankfurt. As a result, travelers can enjoy a convenient and secure solution designed around their needs to buy, store and use tickets with their Nokia 3220 mobile phones. About Near Field Communication (NFC): Evolving from a combination of contactless identification and networking technologies, Near Field Communication (NFC) is a wireless connectivity technology that enables convenient short-range communication between electronic devices. NFC offers the ultimate in convenience for connecting all types of consumer devices and enables rapid and easy communications. It is the perfect solution for controlling data in our increasingly complex and connected world. NFC technology evolved from a combination of contactless identification (RFID) and interconnection technologies. NFC operates in the 13.56 MHz frequency range, over a distance of typically a few centimetres. NFC technology is standardized in ISO 18092, ECMA 340, and ETSI TS 102 190. Near Field Communication is also compatible to the broadly established contactless smart card infrastructure. The ticketing solution will be demonstrated at the CARTES IT & SECURITY trade show in Paris (2-4 November). As the first live NFC-based ticketing application of its kind, the trial will use Nokia 3220 mobile phones with a contactless NFC solution, based on the Nokia NFC shell - the mobile phone's outside cover. The RMV electronic ticketing application will be securely stored on an integrated smart card controller in the phone, and is fully compatible with today's smart card-based ticketing products. Users will simply need to touch their phones against the contactless reader as they get on and off the bus to register their journey. This trial will provide the partners with practical experience of NFC-enabled mobile ticketing on a check-in/check-out basis, paving the way for broad adoption of the technology. The mobile phone offers customers a quick and convenient way to use the public transport network, and RMV is at the forefront of understanding how customers will approach the technology. As an integrated device, the mobile phone can also be used as a resource for transport information, such as timetables, as well as being a terminal for ticketing. For RMV an important feature of the project is that the Nokia NFC shells are compatible with the contactless smart card infrastructure already installed in Hanau. "Nokia is taking a leading role in bringing easy and convenient touch-based interactions to the market. Local ticketing is a great example of how mobility can bring completely new value to consumers and companies that serve them. This ticketing trial will provide us with valuable experience to meet requirements from mobile operators, transport operators and end-users going forward." said Jarkko Sairanen, Vice President, Strategy and Planning, at Nokia Technology Platforms. "With NFC we are delivering on our promise of providing simple and easy-to-use solutions to complex problems," commented Reinhard Kalla, Vice President and General Manager of Identification at Philips Semiconductors. "Together with Nokia and RMV, we have developed the first ticketing application for NFC technology, providing an example of how an intuitive, touch-based solution can simplify the daily lives of users." About the solution Jointly developed by Philips and Sony, NFC enables touch-based interactions in consumer electronics, mobile devices, PCs, smart objects and for payment purposes. Consumers are seeking easier ways to interact with their immediate environment and want to experience easy communication between their electronic devices and gain fast access to services. An intuitive technology, NFC bridges that connectivity gap and allows the connected consumer to interact with their environment. The trial implementation is in line with the Association of German transport operators (Verein Deutscher Verkehrsbetriebe ,VDV), specification that has been developed for a country wide electronic ticketing core application (VDV Kernapplikation). NFC is compatible with Sony's FeliCa(TM) card and the broadly established contactless smart card infrastructure based on ISO 14443 A, which is used in Philips' MIFARE. technology. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 2 09:57:10 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 12:57:10 -0500 Subject: Germans Use Nokia Phones in Wireless Ticket Trial Message-ID: Reuters Germans Use Nokia Phones in Wireless Ticket Trial Tue Nov 2, 2004 06:04 AM ET HELSINKI (Reuters) - The world's top mobile phone maker Nokia said on Tuesday its phones would be used in a project to test wireless public transport fares in Hanau, near Frankfurt in Germany, beginning early next year. The trial, in cooperation with the public transport authority for Frankfurt's greater area and electronics group Philips, begins next year. It will enable owners of Nokia's 3220 handset to equip their phone with a high-tech shell used to pay for and store electronic tickets. The shell, developed by Philips, contains technology that makes the phone compatible with Hanau's existing ticketing system. "Users will simply need to touch their phones against the contactless reader as they get on and off the bus to register their journey," Nokia said in a statement. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jrandom at i2p.net Tue Nov 2 13:35:10 2004 From: jrandom at i2p.net (jrandom) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 13:35:10 -0800 Subject: [i2p] weekly status notes [nov 2] Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi y'all, time for the weekly update * Index: 1) Net status 2) Core updates 3) Streaming lib 4) mail.i2p progress 5) BT progress 6) ??? * 1) Net status Pretty much as before - a steady number of peers, eepsites fairly reachable, and irc for hours on end. You can get a peek at the reachability of various eepsites through a few different pages: - http://gott.i2p/sites.html - http://www.baffled.i2p/links.html - http://thetower.i2p/pings.txt * 2) Core updates For those hanging out in the channel (or reading the CVS logs), you've seen a lot of things going on, even though its been a while since the last release. A full list of changes since the 0.4.1.3 release can be found online [1], but there are two major modifications, one good and one bad: The good one is that we've dramatically cut down on the memory churn caused by all sorts of insane temporary object creation. I finally got fed up with watching the GC go mad while debugging the new streaming lib, so after a few days of profiling, tweaking, and tuning, the ugliest parts are cleaned up. The bad one is a bugfix for how some tunnel routed messages are handled - there were some situations where a message was sent directly to the targeted router rather than tunnel routed prior to delivery, which could be exploited by an adversary who can do a little coding. We now properly tunnel route when in doubt. That may sound good, but the 'bad' part is that it means that there's going to be some increased latency due to the additional hops, though these are hops that needed to be used anyway. There are other debugging activities going on in the core as well, so there hasn't been an official release yet - CVS HEAD is 0.4.1.3-8. In the next few days we'll probably have a 0.4.1.4 release, just to get all that stuff cleared up. It won't contain the new streaming lib, of course. [1] http://dev.i2p.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/i2p/history.txt?rev=HEAD * 3) Streaming lib Speaking of the streaming lib, there has been a lot of progress here, and the side by side comparison of the old and new libs are looking good. However, there is still work to be done, and as I said last time, we're not going to rush it out the door. That does mean that the roadmap has slipped, likely in the range of 2-3 weeks. More details when they're available. * 4) mail.i2p progress Lots of new stuff this week - working in and out proxies! See www.postman.i2p for more information. * 5) BT progress There has been a flurry of activity regarding porting a BitTorrent client as of late, as well as updating some tracker settings. Perhaps we can get some updates from those involved during the meeting. * 6) ??? Thats it for me. Sorry for the delay, I forgot about that whole daylight savings thingamabob. Anyway, see y'all in a few. =jr -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.1 iQA/AwUBQYf9PBpxS9rYd+OGEQIoGQCgvDKydGRT42tO9bwWutAwnoolpj0AoNyX Z1ThyrjEZjAttC/wChPN43aD =SJDa -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ i2p mailing list i2p at i2p.net http://i2p.dnsalias.net/mailman/listinfo/i2p ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 2 05:27:38 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 14:27:38 +0100 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20041102132738.GM1457@leitl.org> On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 08:16:41AM -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: > No cypherpunks content. Just local politics. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 2 12:14:43 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 15:14:43 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 11:58 AM -0800 11/2/04, John Young wrote: >Grant, who >suicided himself with whiskey and self-pity, Actually, he "suicided" himself with cigars, having died of throat cancer... ;-) Seriously, any future crypto-anarchy / anarcho-capitalist society is probably not going to succeed unless it can project *more* force than we can project currently with force monopoly -- not less. That *doesn't* mean centralized, but it certainly means *more*. Peace Kills. Violence will always be conserved. More is more. :-). Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 2 13:23:09 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 16:23:09 -0500 Subject: IEEE Signs VoteHere's Jim Adler for Book on Electronic Voting Message-ID: Yahoo! Finance Press Release Source: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.; VoteHere, Inc. IEEE Signs VoteHere's Jim Adler for Book on Electronic Voting Tuesday November 2, 1:00 pm ET PISCATAWAY, N.J. and BELLEVUE, Wash., Nov. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE), under its Standards Press program, has engaged with VoteHere, Inc. Founder and CEO, Jim Adler, to write a book on electronic voting security and voter confidence. Tentatively titled: "Where's My Vote? A Framework for Securing the Electronic Ballot and Gaining Voter Confidence," the book will explain how technology can enhance electronic voting and prove that votes are counted properly. "Where's My Vote" will discuss the issues and analyze the technology behind electronic voting, verification, and audit. Electronic voting technology has ignited a national debate surrounding the security of our elections. This book will establish a framework for secure election systems, now and in the future. "A book on voting security is an important contribution to the current debate," said Susan Tatiner, Associate Managing Director for Technical Program Development in the IEEE Standards Association. "Mr. Adler is a recognized expert and pioneer in electronic voting technology." Upon their agreement Mr. Adler commented, "I believe these issues are very timely and my hope is that the security solutions discussed in this book can help guide election reform, so that election leaders and voters might better understand the fundamental science of elections and the proper role of technology in providing transparent and auditable elections." What has been missing in the electronic voting and ballot verification debate is a scientific framework to break through the issues regarding the current election system. "Where's My Vote" provides this framework in the context of providing a unified theory of elections for verification and confidence. Jim Adler is Founder and CEO of VoteHere, the leading worldwide provider of electronic voting security technology. Mr. Adler is widely regarded as an authority on the subjects of cryptography, Internet security and e-voting. Mr. Adler co-chairs the IEEE voter-verifiable standards group and served on California's groundbreaking 1999 Internet Voting Task Force. He has testified before U.S. Congress, the European Parliament, and state legislatures on the subject of e-voting security. About IEEE The IEEE has more than 360,000 members in approximately 175 countries. Through its members, the organization is a leading authority on areas ranging from aerospace, computers and telecommunications to biomedicine, electric power and consumer electronics. The IEEE produces nearly 30 percent of the world's literature in the electrical and electronics engineering, computing and control technology fields, and has over 870 active standards and 400+ in development. This nonprofit organization also sponsors or cosponsors more than 300 technical conferences each year. Additional information about the IEEE can be found at http://www.ieee.org/. About VoteHere VoteHere, Inc. is an industry leader in secure, patented voter verification and election audit technology. VoteHere technology has been used in over 90 elections in the U.S. and Europe, for over 50 worldwide clients and partners, reaching nearly 13 million voters. For more information about VoteHere, visit the company's website at http://www.votehere.com. Source: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.; VoteHere, Inc. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From mv at cdc.gov Tue Nov 2 22:04:24 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 22:04:24 -0800 Subject: Musings on "getting out the vote" Message-ID: <418874E8.C98523F9@cdc.gov> At 12:11 PM 11/2/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: >And they seem to believe there's going to be a huge difference between Kang >and Kodos. If you vote for Kang, the terrorists have won! Besides, without paper (ie physical) evidence, how're you gonna prove that Kang won? At least I live in a blue state. The reds, you've earned what you've earned. Those FONY baseball caps were getting passe, anyway. From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 2 19:37:50 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 22:37:50 -0500 Subject: Florida 2.0 Message-ID: At the moment, the (no paper backup) touch-screen machines in Florida aren't matching their manual voter counts. In the meantime Ohio has the highest punch-card voting machine count in the country. Are we having fun yet? Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 2 13:38:44 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 22:38:44 +0100 Subject: [i2p] weekly status notes [nov 2] (fwd from jrandom@i2p.net) Message-ID: <20041102213844.GC1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from jrandom ----- From emc at artifact.psychedelic.net Tue Nov 2 22:54:22 2004 From: emc at artifact.psychedelic.net (Eric Cordian) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 22:54:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: So Who Won? Message-ID: <200411030654.iA36sMv7023030@artifact.psychedelic.net> So who won the US election? The turd sandwich, or the giant douche? -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law" From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz Tue Nov 2 02:30:36 2004 From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 23:30:36 +1300 Subject: "Scan design called portal for hackers" In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20041028232133.00867a30@pop.west.cox.net> Message-ID: David Honig writes: >EETimes 25 Oct 04 has an article about how the testing structures on ICs >makes them vulnerable to attacks. A link (http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=51200146) would have been useful... >The basic idea is that to test a chip, you need to see inside it; this can >also reveal crypto details (e.g., keys) which compromise the chip. The JTAG interface is your (that is, the reverse engineer's) friend. This is why some security devices let you disconnect it using a security-fuse type mechanism before you ship your product. Of course that only works if (a) the device allows it, (b) you remember to activate it, and (c) your attacker isn't sufficiently motivated/funded to use something like microprobing or a FIB workstation to bypass the disconnect. Peter. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com From chuckw at quantumlinux.com Tue Nov 2 23:54:48 2004 From: chuckw at quantumlinux.com (Chuck Wolber) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 23:54:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: So Who Won? In-Reply-To: <200411030654.iA36sMv7023030@artifact.psychedelic.net> References: <200411030654.iA36sMv7023030@artifact.psychedelic.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 2 Nov 2004, Eric Cordian wrote: > So who won the US election? The turd sandwich, or the giant douche? Which witch is which... Ohio is still in play, all the rest are pretty much decided. Ohio has 120,000-ish provisional ballots and about 300,000 regular votes yet to be counted. The spread is about 120,000 in favor of Bush. -Chuck -- http://www.quantumlinux.com Quantum Linux Laboratories, LLC. ACCELERATING Business with Open Technology "The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." - FDR From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 2 20:59:50 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 23:59:50 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 5:21 PM +1300 11/3/04, Peter Gutmann wrote: >another super-power in the >mid 1940s about winning an unwinnable war because God/righteousness/whatever >was on their side Relativism does not a fact make, Peter. Germany 1944 does not equal USA 2004, no matter how hard you twist the kaleidoscope. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 2 21:04:17 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 00:04:17 -0500 Subject: Swiss Banks Can Still Say " " [but not really...] Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 3, 2004 HEARD ON THE STREET DOW JONES Swiss Banks Can Still Say " " Confidentiality Remains Intact, But That Might Derail Mergers With Firms Outside the Country By EDWARD TAYLOR Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL November 3, 2004 FRANKFURT -- The famed Swiss bank account is still open for discreet deposits, and that might become a problem for some Swiss banks. Despite concerns within the European Union that banking secrecy encourages tax evasion, Switzerland retained its right to client confidentiality by signing agreements with the EU last week. That move could dim the prospects for Swiss banks to participate in mergers with financial firms outside the country. While the accords secure the small Alpine country's status as a banking haven -- Swiss banks manage about 3.2 trillion Swiss francs, or about $2.7 trillion, in assets -- they also could handicap the likes of Credit Suisse Group, Julius Baer Holding Ltd. and Vontobel Group if those companies decide to participate in pan-European banking consolidation. The EU was pushing hard for the Swiss to abolish Switzerland's extreme version of confidentiality during the bilateral accords -- a raft of proposals aimed at easing the movement of goods, services and people between the EU and Switzerland. In the end, a compromise was reached. The Swiss agreed to impose a withholding tax on interest payments made to EU citizens with deposits in Switzerland, beginning in mid-2005. The Swiss also agreed to lift the veil of banking secrecy in the event of a criminal investigation for fraud and money laundering. The Swiss Bankers Association says the agreement will help Switzerland attract more funds, most of which already come from outside Switzerland. Around 56% of the assets held in Swiss banks come from outside the country, Swiss bankers say. But, with banking consolidation finally under way, Swiss banks are faced with a tough choice: Stay put and watch as European banks consolidate around them or take the plunge with a cross-border deal and risk compromising banking secrecy. If a Swiss bank was engaged in a merger or was taken over by a foreign bank, it could end up having to hand over confidential client data to a foreign regulator, particularly as tax authorities gain increased powers to seek out money launderers and tax dodgers. So far the Swiss have successfully defended their home turf. "There are no examples of a major merger or acquisition between a Swiss and a non-Swiss bank that wasn't arranged according to Swiss terms," says Ray Soudah, founder of mergers-and-acquisitions boutique Millenium Associates and a former managing director of UBS AG. Indeed, just the idea that client data could wind up in the hands of a foreign regulator makes Swiss bankers shudder. "The proportion of foreign assets would suffer" as clients closed their accounts, says Thomas Sutter, spokesman of the Swiss Bankers Association. But not doing a cross-border deal could see Swiss banks left on the sidelines as European banks consolidate in an attempt to keep up with U.S. giants such as Citigroup Inc., which has a market value of $230 billion. Among those that could be left behind: Bank Julius Baer, whose parent, Julius Baer Holding has a market value of 2.95 billion Swiss francs; Credit Suisse Group, with a market value of 45.9 billion Swiss francs; and Bank Vontobel, whose parent, Vontobel , has a market value of about 1.64 billion Swiss francs. UBS, the other giant Swiss bank, likely wouldn't be affected as much as other financial institutions in Switzerland. With a market capitalization of 95.8 billion Swiss francs, it may be large enough to be an acquirer rather than a merger partner or takeover target. If so, UBS would be able to continue abiding by Swiss confidentiality requirements for operations located in Switzerland. Already, fears that client data could be compromised have proved a deterrent for cross-border deals, says Merrill Lynch analyst Jacques-Henri Gaulard. "Banking secrecy is one of the things that prevents an alliance between Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank," he contends. Spokesmen for Germany's Deutsche Bank AG and Credit Suisse declined to comment. Both banks have pledged to pursue a strategy of concentrating on organic growth and improving profitability. Concern over the sanctity of client data also undermined a proposed deal earlier this year to combine Deutsche Boerse AG, operator of the Frankfurt stock exchange, and SWX Group, operator of the Swiss stock exchange. SWX supervisory-board members worried that a German supervisory authority would be in a position to ask which Swiss client had instigated a share trade, potentially breaching Swiss client confidentiality, people familiar with the matter say. The need to protect Swiss client data may also prove to be a deterrent to creating economies of scale if a merger or takeover deal is reached, because a newly merged entity would have trouble centralizing risk management, implementing an overall technology system and maintaining a centralized customer database, unless it was done in Switzerland, a high-cost location. Swiss banking-secrecy laws make even domestic mergers a chore, says Hans Geiger, professor of banking at Zurich University's Swiss Banking Institute. When Credit Suisse took over Schweizerische Volksbank in 1993, customer data couldn't be exchanged. Switzerland's insistence on secrecy could put it on a collision course with European regulators. "International pressure on Switzerland's financial center should ease off, and this is likely to foster renewed faith in Switzerland's stability and legal security among clients, whose confidence may have been shaken over recent years as a result of the repeated verbal attacks from the EU," says Pierre G. Mirabaud, Swiss Bankers Association chairman. Write to Edward Taylor at edward.taylor at wsj.com1 URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109943463679262716,00.html Hyperlinks in this Article: (1) mailto:edward.taylor at wsj.com Copyright 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 2 21:42:28 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 00:42:28 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 6:29 PM +1300 11/3/04, Peter Gutmann wrote: >Do you seriously think the war on bogey^H^H^Hterrorism can ever be won? You're gonna love this one: You can't have "terrorism" without state sponsors. We take out (by whatever means at hand...) state sponsors of terrorism, and, hey, presto, no terrorism. Iraq. Syria. Iran. Libya. Doesn't look so hard to me. Oh. That's right. Libya rolled over. Americans -- actually westerners in general -- may win ugly, Peter, but, so far, they win. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From bill.stewart at pobox.com Wed Nov 3 01:30:16 2004 From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 01:30:16 -0800 Subject: So Who Won? In-Reply-To: <200411030654.iA36sMv7023030@artifact.psychedelic.net> References: <200411030654.iA36sMv7023030@artifact.psychedelic.net> Message-ID: <6.0.3.0.0.20041103012956.037ed8f8@pop.idiom.com> At 10:54 PM 11/2/2004, Eric Cordian wrote: >So who won the US election? The turd sandwich, or the giant douche? Cthulhu appears to be way ahead. From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz Tue Nov 2 06:32:42 2004 From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 03:32:42 +1300 Subject: This Memorable Day Message-ID: Eugen Leitl writes: >On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 08:16:41AM -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >> >No cypherpunks content. Just local politics. And it's not even original, they've mostly just translated it into English, updated it a bit (e.g. League of Nations -> UN), and changed the Russian names and references to Middle Eastern ones. Peter. From jya at pipeline.com Wed Nov 3 07:33:34 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 07:33:34 -0800 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: <0843e1af1e7707ac6a97b80ea6afb65a@dizum.com> Message-ID: The US has not won since WW2. Rebellions, now called terrorist wars, have been far more successful. If you want to be a winner do not enlist in military forces of states, rather get a spin contract far from danger, arguing the virtues of mightily fearsome hardware and sacrificial patriotism. The US, a hidebound state, engages in limited combat, dithers, gets youngsters killed, parades the funerals and heroes, eventually pulls out, and the apologists for warmongering do their dirty. Still, it can be said of US military might: more servicemen die of military and civilian accidents, ill health, murders and suicide than in combat. Worse, deaths and maimings from friendly fire and bad medical care, not to say military justice, remain a high hazard of high technology and a natsec/military policy of acceptance and/or denial of responsibility for self- caused casualties and homicidal behavior in abused and abandoned service members -- Tim McVeigh one of tens of thousands who attack at home due to momentum rigged by inept military training and ethics. Bob Hettinga is just baiting by putting up flimsy arguments for western supremacy, evangelizing brand USA. Hoovering the yokels who cannot not believe their kind are chosen people. Standard fare of US (Western, all) state-sponsored education and religion and, oh my god, journalism. Quote of the day from the NY Times: "every journalist should spend a month in jail to appreciate the freedom of the press." This from a reporter for the Far Eastern Economic Report, to be closed shortly by Dow Jones. From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 3 05:42:08 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 08:42:08 -0500 Subject: So Who Won? In-Reply-To: <200411030654.iA36sMv7023030@artifact.psychedelic.net> References: <200411030654.iA36sMv7023030@artifact.psychedelic.net> Message-ID: At 10:54 PM -0800 11/2/04, Eric Cordian wrote: >So who won the US election? The turd sandwich, or the giant douche? The Turd Sandwich, of course... Vote Turd Sandwich!!! Advancing the cause of jingoism and darkness, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 3 06:49:16 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 09:49:16 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: <0843e1af1e7707ac6a97b80ea6afb65a@dizum.com> References: <0843e1af1e7707ac6a97b80ea6afb65a@dizum.com> Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 12:50 PM +0100 11/3/04, Nomen Nescio wrote: >Nonsense! Are you in junior high? Are you high, junior? Or is it just your politics that sound so... sophomoric? :-) >This post gave me a big laugh. So naive. There are a few basic >forces feeding extremism and terrorism around the world and those >are inequalities and injustice anywhere. Ah. That's right. Inequality, instead of causing progress, causes damnation. Where's Robespierre when we really need him? Another useful idiot for "equality". >As long as the most powerful >nations of the world continues to exploit the earth's resources >without taking appropriate considerations to other nations the wrath >and dismay of people elsewhere will always persist. Communism, Fuck Yeah!!! States are People Too!!!! Please. Take the towel out from under the dorm-room door and quit regurgitating what you learned passing the bong around. "Groups" are not people. They don't have rights, for instance. Only people have rights. Nation-states are not people either. More the point, they aren't people in a dialectical struggle to free themselves from the Oppressive Industrial West, any more than "the workers" are in a dialectical struggle to free themselves from some guy in a top-hat and spats. If you'd learned any history, you'd know that the first argument is the result of the complete failure of the *premises* of the first to happen at all, and that both arguments have been demonstrated wrong in the face of *evidence*: the explosion of the "bourgeoisie" in the West (that's "middle-class" to those of us with a state-school education; the group including *you*, bunky, unless your name is Bush or "Kerry" [really Forbes or Cohn, take your pick] and you went to say, Andover and Yale), and the explosion of gross domestic product in the very countries you now claim the west exploits. If you don't believe that, ask that Sidekick-wearing software engineer in Bangalore the next time you're talking to a help-desk sometime about how Nehru, the great Indian Leveller, was such a wonderful guy that millions of his own countrymen starved during his tenure as the Indian more equal than all the others. It wasn't until Indians actually started to free their markets that people stopped starving in the streets. Our culture -- yours, too, bunky, since I bet you don't shit into a hole in the floor and pray 5 times a day for, as Hanson appropriately calls it, a nuclear caliphate --- has figured out a way to make more new stuff cheaper, and to continually do it for the last 2500 years or so. And, guess what? As a result, we can kill more people cheaper, too. That means we win wars. That means we'll win this one, too. Because, if you hadn't noticed, they have to use *our* stuff to fight *us*. Some around here see that as a bug, of course, but I see that much more as a feature: I'll see that "bug", raise you a couple of MOABs, and call the bet. >Not understanding >this or simply neglecting it will further add to the negative >feelings and opinions and fuel extremism. Ah. That's right. I'm not "nuanced" enough. It's too *complicated* for anyone who didn't take your sophomore (cryptomarxist) "History Studies" class, or whatever. Please. >The only way to move towards a more friendly world is to make people >feel they are able to share the wealth and prosperity of the world. >As long as there is one single person anywhere in the world >hungering to death there is still a basis for fundamentalism and all >the problem that leads to. "If we would all just get along", the lion would still eat the lamb for a mid-afternoon snack, bunky, and then lie down for a nap. Singing "Kumbaya" in Arabic won't make it happen any different. More to the point, some mook in chi-pants marching in a black-block in Seattle advocating the confiscation of what someone *earns* by *working* is not going to make some *other* islamist mook, who also got his way paid through college by *his* daddy, to stop building bombs and crashing airplanes into skyscrapers. What *will* stop mooks of the latter persuasion is to kill as many of them as possible, and as quickly as possible. Maybe their parents, too, for raising an entire generation of ignorant superstitious children. It was ever thus, however. The Meijii Japanese could *copy*, even perfect, aircraft and aircraft carriers, but they couldn't *invent* new stuff, like, say, atom bombs. Only markets can do that, bunky. More to the point, only markets full of free people arguing their heads off about what's right and wrong can do that. >Continuing being arrogant and policing the world without listening >to the oppressed people in the middle east and elsewhere will never >ever eradicate terrorism. You may may or may not be able to >reasonable confidently hinder most terror deeds (but only after >having turned also the western civilization into police states) but >you cannot stop the oppressed man from growing the hatred i his >mind. Hint: "policing" the world is what happens when, after 30 years of attacks we actually *ignore* because we're too busy to care, someone kills enough people to get our attention. Then we kill them back. A lot. >If you do not understand this you are not only unintelligent IMNSHO >but also part of the problem itself. Ah. Stupid me. I should have been in the dorm room that day. Do you have notes? Dude, I was *in* that dorm room, once. Then something marvellous happened maybe 10 years later. I grew up. >You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face >reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it. (Malcolm >X) There we go. Wisdom from a thug. How about this thug, instead, kid, quoted just about as much out of context as you have yours: "When the hares made speeches in the assembly and demanded that all should have equality, the lions replied, "Where are your claws and teeth?" -- attributed to Antisthenes in Aristotle, 'Politics', 3.7.2 Oh. That's right. One shouldn't read Aristotle. He was a White Male Oppressor... >Johnny Doelittle Little Johnny Doe? Stand in the headlights, dude. It's waaay brighter over there... Sheesh. When will September ever end? Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQYjv5cPxH8jf3ohaEQIu9gCfTG/jokeSyqyQtB62bWVynThGgIIAnirf HxrqsKmF2LmkIgZZRtlC2ddZ =6Irp -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "When the hares made speeches in the assembly and demanded that all should have equality, the lions replied, "Where are your claws and teeth?" -- attributed to Antisthenes in Aristotle, 'Politics', 3.7.2 From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com Wed Nov 3 06:53:57 2004 From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 09:53:57 -0500 (GMT-05:00) Subject: This Memorable Day Message-ID: <15186162.1099493638744.JavaMail.root@ernie.psp.pas.earthlink.net> >From: "R.A. Hettinga" >Sent: Nov 2, 2004 10:55 AM >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: This Memorable Day ... >Expect more carnage than culture when Bush is elected. I gather we waited to start the offensive in Fallujah(sp?) until the polls were all closed. I'm not sure how much of this was trying to time things not to interfere with the election (the buildup has been going on for awhile, and Kerry could have squawked about this but didn't, so presumably he didn't think it was unfair for the attack to be delayed a bit), and how much was trying to bury the coverage of a pretty bloody battle with a lot of civilians dying and a lot of peoples homes destroyed, behind the whole election coverage. >Cheers, >RAH --John From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 3 07:05:19 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 10:05:19 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 7:33 AM -0800 11/3/04, John Young wrote: >The US has not won since WW2. Nope. Not at all. 1. Korea we lost by shoving the commies all the way up to the Yalu river. And then leaving them to fester behind a still-extant DMZ until they're almost enough of a "nuisance", to lots of people, including the now-almost-former-communist Chinese to worry over. 2. Vietnam we lost by kicking their asses so badly that our campuses "revolted", at the behest of a bunch of marxists. Whereupon we packed up, partied for about 15 years, and killed their communist sugar daddies in Moscow with just the *possibility* we could invent something strategic missile defense, they couldn't copy fast enough. The Cold War we lost by... Wait a minute. We didn't lose. See 1., and 2., above. That leaves us, what, John? Grenada? Panama? Hell, Columbia? Oh. Right. Lebanon. Tell ya what. Let's start the clock on this war at, say, the assasination of Bobby Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan, include the Beiruit truck bombing by reference as a battle, and see how we stand in a decade or so, shall we? C'mon, John. Think faster, or something. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQYjzo8PxH8jf3ohaEQLrKACgpPVvDmuAS+ZE/9OAwZBAneLGztIAn2TK eVqIGmJf1iLvKLe55TuIgQYf =SOlw -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From pcapelli at gmail.com Wed Nov 3 07:29:45 2004 From: pcapelli at gmail.com (Pete Capelli) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 10:29:45 -0500 Subject: Musings on "getting out the vote" In-Reply-To: <418874E8.C98523F9@cdc.gov> References: <418874E8.C98523F9@cdc.gov> Message-ID: On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 22:04:24 -0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > At least I live in a blue state. The reds, you've earned what you've > earned. So ... don't blame you, you voted for Kodos? -- Pete Capelli pcapelli at ieee.org http://www.capelli.org PGP Key ID:0x829263B6 "Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin, 1759 From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 3 07:45:38 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 10:45:38 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: <0843e1af1e7707ac6a97b80ea6afb65a@dizum.com> Message-ID: ObPedantry: At 9:49 AM -0500 11/3/04, R.A. Hettinga wrote: >If you'd learned any history, you'd know that the first argument is xxxxx second >the result of the complete failure of the *premises* of the first to >happen at all -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Wed Nov 3 07:50:14 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 10:50:14 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day Message-ID: "2. Vietnam we lost by kicking their asses so badly that our campuses "revolted", at the behest of a bunch of marxists. Whereupon we packed up, partied for about 15 years, and killed their communist sugar daddies in Moscow with just the *possibility* we could invent something strategic missile defense, they couldn't copy fast enough." Are you trollin' m'friend, or have you been smokin' James Donald's ground up toenails? -TD Mao accused the US of being a "paper tiger", and there may be some truth to that. >From: "R.A. Hettinga" >To: John Young , cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: This Memorable Day >Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 10:05:19 -0500 > >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >Hash: SHA1 > >At 7:33 AM -0800 11/3/04, John Young wrote: > >The US has not won since WW2. > >Nope. Not at all. > >1. Korea we lost by shoving the commies all the way up to the Yalu >river. And then leaving them to fester behind a still-extant DMZ >until they're almost enough of a "nuisance", to lots of people, >including the now-almost-former-communist Chinese to worry over. > >2. Vietnam we lost by kicking their asses so badly that our campuses >"revolted", at the behest of a bunch of marxists. Whereupon we packed >up, partied for about 15 years, and killed their communist sugar >daddies in Moscow with just the *possibility* we could invent >something strategic missile defense, they couldn't copy fast enough. > >The Cold War we lost by... Wait a minute. We didn't lose. See 1., and >2., above. > >That leaves us, what, John? Grenada? Panama? Hell, Columbia? Oh. >Right. Lebanon. Tell ya what. Let's start the clock on this war at, >say, the assasination of Bobby Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan, include the >Beiruit truck bombing by reference as a battle, and see how we stand >in a decade or so, shall we? > >C'mon, John. Think faster, or something. > >Cheers, >RAH > > > >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- >Version: PGP 8.0.3 > >iQA/AwUBQYjzo8PxH8jf3ohaEQLrKACgpPVvDmuAS+ZE/9OAwZBAneLGztIAn2TK >eVqIGmJf1iLvKLe55TuIgQYf >=SOlw >-----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > >-- >----------------- >R. A. Hettinga >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation >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' _________________________________________________________________ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee. Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 From jya at pipeline.com Wed Nov 3 11:02:09 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:02:09 -0800 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Bob, But your defenses of the fatherland are hollow formulas. There has been no war to win, a war the US is forever stealing from the citizenry to prepare for, and then fucking up with the minor skirmishes by having no doctrine or training to apply its mythical might, except, as always, to explain away abject failure with fairy tales like you're telling. Deterence is bullshit, but it worked to keep the Soviet and US militarists and their supplies in top level comfort. Now, the US has no complicit partner in raiding the public till, so it fabricates the terrorist threat, and lockstepping right along comes Russia, the UK and all the natsec bullshitters (slanted intelligence addicts) to march to the beat of bucks aflowing imperially. Dig deeper, middle-aged spinner, your history seems to have been framed by the Cold War and its bastard mini-me terrorism racket here lately. Do you by any chance have a contract with the tomfoolers? Or is it just natural to believe sugar daddy's tales of conquest and invulnerability? And, what is this shit about needing to kill as many of the varmints as possible? Have you ever tried to do that, these mean sumbitches are not birds and rabbits and women and children. Beware the May/Donald megadeath syndrome which always indicates a yellow stripe down the back of those who love to advocate others dying for their comfort and safety -- in large numbers, as if big bragging makes it braver. Weenies do that. From jamesd at echeque.com Wed Nov 3 11:11:15 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:11:15 -0800 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <41892D53.6050207@echeque.com> -- R.A. Hettinga wrote: > Seriously, any future crypto-anarchy / anarcho-capitalist society is > probably not going to succeed unless it can project *more* force > than we can project currently with force monopoly -- not less. That > *doesn't* mean centralized, but it certainly means *more*. It is often argued that since war, violence, etc, are public goods, only a state can efficiently defend against states. Yet in most wars since 1980, non state entities have done most of the heavy lifting -loose coalitions containing many independent groups, for example the contras, the holy warriors that overthrew the Taliban. Looking at the events of World War II, it looks to me that it does indeed require a state to conquer and occupy a hostile government, as the US conquered and occupied Germany, but the Japanese army was broken by a thousand small groups. Defeating a large scale evildoer is a public good - but large scale evil consists of many acts of small scale evil, and defeating each particular small scale evil act is a private good. When it came to the part of the war that was purely a public good, conquering the German and Japanese homelands, America did indeed bear almost the whole burden, but when it came to defending Australia against the Japanese, the Australians bore the major burden, and similarly for most other battlefields outside of the aggressors' homelands. Most German troops died fighting Russians in Russia, not Americans in Germany. The particular victims of particular Japanese or German acts of aggression counter attacked those particular Japanese or Germans attacking them. National defense, or at least some forms of national defense, such as destroying Hitler's Germany, is a public good, and genuinely anarchist societies are apt to under provide public goods. On the other hand governments tend to provide the wrong kind of public goods, providing what serves their purposes rather than the supposed purpose of the public good, Further, when a government gets in the business of providing a some supposed public good, it creates a lobby, which results in the public good being over provided, thus for example ever lengthening copyright, ever more expansive patents for ever more trivial "inventions", and, of course, the infamous military/industrial complex, such as Haliburton. War, for example destroying Hitler's Germany, is the most plausibly essential public good, the strongest justification for the state. But when we look at the defeat of the Soviet Union, or the defeat of the Taliban, this argument looks considerably weaker. The heavy lifting in those wars was done by loose alliances of small groups, for example the holy warriors and the contras, which did not rely on a single large centralized authority to support the public good of defeat of an oppressive regime. In the second world war, public good theory would lead us to expect that the most powerful state, America would bear almost the whole burden of defeating the threat, and smaller states would hang back and cheer the winner. The holy warriors were probably effective against the Soviets because each holy warrior was defending his home, and each small group of holy warriors were defending their village. Among the contras, it appears that the Indian contras defended the Indians against forced collectivization, breaking up collectives with extreme violence and killing the collectives functionaries and administrators, often in disturbingly unpleasant ways, but failed to participate in other contra struggles. Thus anarchic forms of society appear to be capable of waging war defensively with considerably effectiveness, but are considerably less capable of taking the war to places far away. This is not such a severe limitation as it might appear, since the Soviet Union was overthrown by essentially defensive wars, leading to the dominoes falling all the way to Moscow. It is the nature of Islam to impose dhimmitude on nonbelievers, without much regard for official state boundaries. "Dhimmitude" being a dangerously inferior status where one's property is insecure, and women are apt to be raped. Existing Muslim states often fail to prosecute crimes against infidels, and when crimes are prosecuted, penalties are slight. The West has tried to confine Dhimmitude inside a system of states - the Muslims can oppress their minorities inside Muslim state boundaries all they like, but cannot oppress outside Muslim state boundaries. This artificial boundary bends under pressure, creating the conflict we now see. The anarchic equivalent of the current policy of imperial state building, would be to enter mutual defense arrangements with dhimmi, without regard to state boundaries. The Taliban had imposed Dhimmi status on Muslims they did not agree with in Afghanistan. An anarchic America would not be able to occupy Iraq, nor would it be capable of "building democracy" in Afghanistan, but it would be able to do the equivalent of sending special forces to assist the Northern Alliance. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Jyneib4EqTRVeeBY0/BjpjdEidDWCmp8YSQkckag 47p0ym1TCnknVRDL2q1wHz9ykyIr4wMdZjZBin9s/ From jamesd at echeque.com Wed Nov 3 11:11:56 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:11:56 -0800 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <41892D7C.6030309@echeque.com> -- Peter Gutmann wrote: > Well it wasn't the point I was trying to make, which was comparing > it to predictions made by (the propaganda division of) another > super-power in the mid 1940s about winning an unwinnable war because > God/righteousness/whatever was on their side, and all they had to do > was hold out a bit longer. Compare the general tone of the WSJ > article to the one in e.g. the first half of > http://www.humanitas-international.org/showcase/chronography/documen > ts/htestmnt.htm. > But it is hardly a matter of "holding out". So far the Pentagon has shattered the enemy while suffering casualties of about a thousand, which is roughly the same number of casualties as the British empire suffered doing regime change on the Zulu empire - an empire of a quarter of a million semi naked savages mostly armed with spears. As quagmires go, this one has not yet got shoelaces muddy. The enemies are the one's that have heroic fantasies of holding out against hopeless odds, as for example Fallujah. The question is not whether the terrorists keep Falljah, but merely whether Pentagon gets a city or a pile of rubble. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 9M6CeBC9wwBisQe3JNJvnnu758kvx8Rq2e2KM9b2 41XkwhnPAbRy29/XaMnNedLxI40PWmNEk4y2tUdn7 From lindac at dimacs.rutgers.edu Wed Nov 3 08:15:50 2004 From: lindac at dimacs.rutgers.edu (Linda Casals) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 11:15:50 -0500 (EST) Subject: DIMACS Workshop on Markets as Predictive Devices (Information Markets) Message-ID: ************************************************* DIMACS Workshop on Markets as Predictive Devices (Information Markets) February 2-4, 2005 DIMACS Center, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ Organizers: Robin Hanson, George Mason University, rhanson at gmu.edu John Ledyard, California Institute of Technology, jledyard at hss.caltech.edu David Pennock, Overture Services, David.Pennock at overture.com Presented under the auspices of the Special Focus on Computation and the Socio-Economic Sciences. ************************************************ For decades, economists have studied an astonishing "side effect'' of financial and wagering markets: their ability to serve as highly accurate forecasting devices. This workshop aims to explore the use of markets as a substitute for, or complement to, more traditional forecasting tools. We will examine how information flows from traders to the market and back again, how market mechanisms process information, how market prices communicate information and forecasts, and what mechanisms best foster accurate and statistically-testable predictions. The workshop will bring together researchers and practitioners from a variety of relevant fields, including economics, finance, computer science, and statistics, in both academia and industry, to discuss the state of the art today, and the challenges and prospects for tomorrow. A market designed from the outset for information gathering and forecasting is called an information market. Information markets can be used to elicit a collective estimate of the expected value or probability of a random variable, reflecting information dispersed across an entire population of traders. The market prediction is not usually an average or median of individual opinions, but is a complex summarization reflecting the game-theoretic interplay of traders as they obtain and leverage information, and as they react to the actions of others obtaining and leveraging their own information, etc. In the best case scenario, the market price reflects a forecast that is a perfect Bayesian integration of all the information spread across all of the traders, properly accounting even for redundancy. This is the equilibrium scenario called rational expectations in the economics literature, and is the assumption underlying the strong form of the efficient markets hypothesis in finance. The degree to which market forecasts approach optimality in practice, or at least surpass other known methods of forecasting, is remarkable. Supporting evidence can be found in empirical studies of options markets, commodity futures markets, political stock markets, sports betting markets, horse racing markets, market games, laboratory investigations of experimental markets, and field tests. In nearly all these cases, to the extent that the financial instruments or bets are tied to real-world events, market prices reveal a reliable forecast about the likely unfolding of those events, often beating expert opinions or polls. Despite a growing experimental literature, many questions remain regarding how best to design, deploy, analyze, and understand information markets, including both technical challenges (e.g., designing combinatorial exchanges and social challenges (e.g., overcoming legal and ethical concerns). The search for answers will benefit from input from economists (including specialists in mechanism design, experimental economics, financial markets, wagering markets, and rational expectations theory), statisticians and decision theorists (including experts in forecasting, belief aggregation, group decision making, Bayesian updating, and opinion polling), and computer scientists (including experts in combinatorial exchanges, distributed computing, information theory, and mixing worst-case and Bayesian analysis). This workshop will seek to bring together a variety of experts representing these fields, to engage in a dialog describing current and future research directions to facilitate the design, refinement, and proliferation of markets as predictive devices. As part of the workshop, one or more tutorials are planned for the benefit of students and other newcomers to the field; little or no background knowledge will be assumed. ************************************************************** Call for Participation: This workshop will include talks on information markets (a.k.a, prediction markets, event markets, or idea futures) by a number of distinguished invited speakers. Speakers will cover a range of topics including mechanism design, experiments, analysis, policy, and industry experience. Speakers will include representatives from academia, industry, and government. The workshop will feature research talks, opinions, reports of industry experience, and discussion of government policy from the perspective of a number of fields, including economics, business, finance, computer science, gambling/gaming, and policy. See the workshop program for more details. The workshop will feature a tutorial session on Wednesday afternoon (Feb. 2, 2005) to help those new to the field get up to speed. The workshop will include a panel discussion on the Policy Analysis Market (a.k.a., "Terror Futures") and a "rump" session where anyone who requests time can have the floor for five minutes to speak on any relevant topic. To participate in the rump session, please email David Pennock at pennockd at yahoo-inc.com. ************************************************************** Registration Fees: (Pre-registration deadline: January 26, 2005) Please see website for additional registration information. ********************************************************************* Information on participation, registration, accomodations, and travel can be found at: http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/Workshops/Markets/ **PLEASE BE SURE TO PRE-REGISTER EARLY** ******************************************************************* --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jamesd at echeque.com Wed Nov 3 11:20:52 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:20:52 -0800 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <41892F94.3080607@echeque.com> -- Peter Gutmann wrote: > Fighting an unwinnable war always seems to produce the same type of > rhetoric, It is a little premature to call this war unwinnable. The kill ratio so far is comparable with Britain's zulu war. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 9YCccdHmWgBxj3a1UFFKM7Xyl1qKvkQYJoNuuZEw 4pOgjIzTXDiWQ1xXvdwBxCk93EgSXiZfQ29ag+5sW From jamesd at echeque.com Wed Nov 3 11:27:43 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:27:43 -0800 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: <0843e1af1e7707ac6a97b80ea6afb65a@dizum.com> References: <0843e1af1e7707ac6a97b80ea6afb65a@dizum.com> Message-ID: <4189312F.7000000@echeque.com> -- > This post gave me a big laugh. So naive. There are a few basic > forces feeding extremism and terrorism around the world and those > are inequalities and injustice anywhere. You are quite right, it is unjust that people like Bin Laden are so immensely rich with oil wealth. To remedy this problem, Bush should confiscate the Middle Eastern oil reserves. You are using stale old communist rhetoric - but today's terrorists no longer not even pretend to fight on behalf of the poor and oppressed. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG hB70Rn/r/Izz2zUYn/rVfOyEDZVqu1UUzdNLVJJe 4inRuB429RCVLG1VVfP9Z5CBGfL+mE/dNmP+GZvcb From nobody at dizum.com Wed Nov 3 03:50:04 2004 From: nobody at dizum.com (Nomen Nescio) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 12:50:04 +0100 (CET) Subject: This Memorable Day Message-ID: <0843e1af1e7707ac6a97b80ea6afb65a@dizum.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 R.A. Hettinga: > You're gonna love this one: You can't have "terrorism" without > state sponsors. Nonsense! Are you in junior high? > We take out (by whatever means at hand...) state sponsors of > terrorism, and, hey, presto, no terrorism. Iraq. Syria. Iran. > Libya. Doesn't look so hard to me. Oh. That's right. Libya rolled > over. > > Americans -- actually westerners in general -- may win ugly, Peter, > but, so far, they win. This post gave me a big laugh. So naive. There are a few basic forces feeding extremism and terrorism around the world and those are inequalities and injustice anywhere. As long as the most powerful nations of the world continues to exploit the earth's resources without taking appropriate considerations to other nations the wrath and dismay of people elsewhere will always persist. Not understanding this or simply neglecting it will further add to the negative feelings and opinions and fuel extremism. The only way to move towards a more friendly world is to make people feel they are able to share the wealth and prosperity of the world. As long as there is one single person anywhere in the world hungering to death there is still a basis for fundamentalism and all the problem that leads to. Continuing being arrogant and policing the world without listening to the oppressed people in the middle east and elsewhere will never ever eradicate terrorism. You may may or may not be able to reasonable confidently hinder most terror deeds (but only after having turned also the western civilization into police states) but you cannot stop the oppressed man from growing the hatred i his mind. If you do not understand this you are not only unintelligent IMNSHO but also part of the problem itself. You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it. (Malcolm X) Johnny Doelittle -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: Tom Ridge Special v1.01 iQA/AwUBQYicHzVaKWz2Ji/mEQJ/KgCeJaL0A7KEtXrdg6DmER5yGHwhJWEAoNA/ 96lJo2JRLf4zWoOTjELrPQB4 =Uq+t -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From alan at clueserver.org Wed Nov 3 12:55:58 2004 From: alan at clueserver.org (alan) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 12:55:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 3 Nov 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: > Well, this may actually be less hard than we thought. Indeed, it's the one > vaguely silver lining in this toxic cloud. Outsourcing to India will > actually add a lot to world stability. Of course, we'll loose a lot of jobs > in the process, but in the long run we'll eventually have another strong > trading partner like Japan or France or the Dutch. Bush will sell us out to > big business and all of the less-well-off will suffer like crazy in the > process, but it will actually make things better in the long run. The only > thing we need to worry about is not melting the ice caps in the process. You forget that Bush and his cronies are Evangelical Christians. They believe that the world is going to end *soon* and that it is a good thing. These are people who are doing everything they can to make the world a less stable place because in doing so they bring about armagedon. (Then Jesus will come back and they will be rewarded for bringing about the deaths of billions. Sometimes i wonder if they worship Jesus or Cthulhu. (Maybe they are the same. How else could he walk on water?) -- Q: Why do programmers confuse Halloween and Christmas? A: Because OCT 31 == DEC 25. From emc at artifact.psychedelic.net Wed Nov 3 14:01:09 2004 From: emc at artifact.psychedelic.net (Eric Cordian) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 14:01:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: Why you keep losing to this idiot In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200411032201.iA3M19wK018789@artifact.psychedelic.net> > I think this is the answer: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. Isn't that what Democracy is all about? The 51% simpletons imposing their will on the 49% non-simpletons? Proportional representation is our friend. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law" From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 3 12:07:44 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 15:07:44 -0500 Subject: Why you keep losing to this idiot Message-ID: This comes from an old joke. A grand master, in the middle of a chess match, jumps up onto the table, kicks off all the pieces, and screams, almost unintelligibly, "Why must I *lose*, to such *idiots*!!!". :-). Cheers, RAH ------- Simple but Effective Why you keep losing to this idiot. By William Saletan Updated Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004, at 12:05 AM PT 12:01 a.m. PT: Sigh. I really didn't want to have to write this. George W. Bush is going to win re-election. Yeah, the lawyers will haggle about Ohio. But this time, Democrats don't have the popular vote on their side. Bush does. If you're a Bush supporter, this is no surprise. You love him, so why shouldn't everybody else? But if you're dissatisfied with Bush-or if, like me, you think he's been the worst president in memory-you have a lot of explaining to do. Why don't a majority of voters agree with us? How has Bush pulled it off? I think this is the answer: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. Bush is a very simple man. You may think that makes him a bad president, as I do, but lots of people don't-and there are more of them than there are of us. If you don't believe me, take a look at those numbers on your TV screen. Think about the simplicity of everything Bush says and does. He gives the same speech every time. His sentences are short and clear. "Government must do a few things and do them well," he says. True to his word, he has spent his political capital on a few big ideas: tax cuts, terrorism, Iraq. Even his electoral strategy tonight was powerfully simple: Win Florida, win Ohio, and nothing else matters. All those lesser states-Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire-don't matter if Bush reels in the big ones. This is what so many people like about Bush's approach to terrorism. They forgive his marginal and not-so-marginal screw-ups, because they can see that fundamentally, he "gets it." They forgive his mismanagement of Iraq, because they see that his heart and will are in the right place. And while they may be unhappy about their economic circumstances, they don't hold that against him. What you and I see as unreflectiveness, they see as transparency. They trust him. Now look at your candidate, John Kerry. What quality has he most lacked? Not courage-he proved that in Vietnam. Not will-he proved that in Iowa. Not brains-he proved that in the debates. What Kerry lacked was simplicity. Bush had one message; Kerry had dozens. Bush had one issue; Kerry had scores. Bush ended his sentences when you expected him to say more; Kerry went on and on, adding one prepositional phrase after another, until nobody could remember what he was talking about. Now Bush has two big states that mean everything, and Kerry has a bunch of little ones that add up to nothing. If you're a Democrat, here's my advice. Do what the Republicans did in 1998. Get simple. Find a compelling salesman and get him ready to run for president in 2008. Put aside your quibbles about preparation, stature, expertise, nuance, and all that other hyper-sophisticated garbage that caused you to nominate Kerry. You already have legions of people with preparation, stature, expertise, and nuance ready to staff the executive branch of the federal government. You don't need one of them to be president. You just need somebody to win the White House and appoint them to his administration. And that will require all the simplicity, salesmanship, and easygoing humanity they don't have. The good news is, that person is already available. His name is John Edwards. If you have any doubt about his electability, just read the exit polls from the 2004 Democratic primaries. If you don't think he's ready to be president-if you don't think he has the right credentials, the right gravitas, the right subtlety of thought-ask yourself whether these are the same things you find wanting in George W. Bush. Because evidently a majority of the voting population of the United States doesn't share your concern. They seem to be attracted to a candidate with a simple message, a clear focus, and a human touch. You might want to consider their views, since they're the ones who will decide whether you're sitting here again four years from now, wondering what went wrong. In 1998 and 1999, Republicans cleared the field for George W. Bush. Members of Congress and other major officeholders threw their weight behind him to make sure he got the nomination. They united because their previous presidential nominee, a clumsy veteran senator, had gone down to defeat. They were facing eight years out of power, and they were hungry. Do what they did. Give Edwards a job that will position him to run for president again in a couple of years. Clear the field of Hillary Clinton and any other well-meaning liberal who can't connect with people outside those islands of blue on your electoral map. Because you're going to get a simple president again next time, whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that president will be from your party or the other one. 9:33 p.m. PT: That proviso about the exit polls matching the returns is looking quite a bit more important now than it did three hours ago. Bush has Florida and Colorado in the bag. All scenarios for a Kerry victory now require Ohio. Kerry led 51-49 in the Ohio exit poll this afternoon. But he also led 51-49 in the Florida exit poll, and we've seen what happened there. Nationwide, the exit polls had Kerry up 51-48. But with 80 million votes counted already, it's Bush who has a 51-48 lead. So at this point, the exit polls are at best meaningless. Or worse, if you're a Democrat, the six-point gap between what the exit polls predicted for Kerry nationally and what the returns show so far means that in Ohio, a two-point lead for Kerry in the exit poll foreshadows a Bush win by as many as four points. In New Mexico, two-thirds of the precincts have reported, and it doesn't look good for Kerry: He's down 51-48. So even if he takes Iowa, where he's now leading with two-thirds of the vote tallied, he'll have to win either Nevada, which has just begun counting, or Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, he's hanging on to a 14,000-vote lead-that's a single percentage point-with half the precincts reporting. If Kerry holds that lead in Wisconsin and closes what is now a 120,000-vote Bush lead in Ohio, he's the next president. Or if he holds his lead in Iowa and picks off Nevada, he can get the same result-but not without Ohio. Three-quarters of the precincts in Ohio have now reported, and Kerry still trails by 126,000 votes, about 3 percent of the total. I don't think he can pull it off. But I've been wrong so many times now that I'd be happy-no, really, in this case I would be positively delighted-to be proved wrong again. 7:38 p.m. PT: I should have mentioned before that if Bush wins both Ohio and Florida, he needs only Colorado to get to 269. So that's just two states where he needs the exit polls to be off. But in both cases the error has to be at least two points, in each case it has to be in his direction, and the Colorado exit poll can't be off in the other direction. Let's simplify the calculations. Bush starts with a floor of 213. He leads by one point in the exit poll in Colorado, so let's assume he takes that state, putting him at 222. Here are the remaining states in which Bush trails in the exit polls by fewer than 6 points: Nevada (Bush down 1), Iowa (Bush down 1), Florida (Bush down 2), Ohio (Bush down 2), New Mexico (Bush down 2), and Wisconsin (Bush down 3). That's it. Those are all the states Bush has to work with. If he wins them all, he gets to 296. So Kerry can lock up the election by taking any 28 electoral votes from that group. Here are the combinations that will do the job for Kerry: 1) Florida and any other state. 2) Ohio and Wisconsin. 3) Ohio and any two of the little three: Nevada, New Mexico, and Iowa. Two other variables could be in play. If Kerry takes Colorado, he can wrap up the election by taking a combination of Wisconsin and two of the little three. He won't have to win Ohio or Florida. But if Bush stages an upset in Hawaii, Kerry will have to take one of the little three in addition to Ohio and Wisconsin-or he'll have to take Ohio, Iowa, and either Nevada or New Mexico. Those are the scenarios for now. I'll revisit them as the returns come in and the options narrow. 6:08 p.m. PT: We can't be sure how far tonight's returns will ultimately vary from the late-afternoon exit-poll numbers (see this "Press Box"). But with that understood, let's talk about what the numbers mean, if true, for the electoral map. Bush gets to 189 electoral votes with no problem. Assuming he takes Virginia, he's at 202. With Missouri, where he's 5 points up in the exit polls, he's at 213. Now he needs Colorado. I never took this state seriously as a problem for him, but the afternoon numbers suggest it might be: He's up just a point there. Let's assume he takes it. Now he's at 222. At this point, he has run out of states where he's leading in the exit polls, and he's still looking for a combination of 47 electoral votes to get him to 269. (He wins in the House if it's a tie.) The next best shots are Nevada and Iowa, where he's down a point. Let's say he takes them, too. Now he's at 234, still 35 electoral votes away-and he has run out of states where he's trailing by a single point. He'll have to start winning in places where he's trailing by two. How about New Mexico? Let's give him that. Now he's at 239, but that's still not enough to win the election even if Florida comes around. He'll have to capture the other state where he's down two in the exit polls: Ohio. It seems a bit unfair, making him win a state with 20 electoral votes just to get the three he needs for a tie. Wouldn't it be easier to package Florida or Ohio with Wisconsin? Either combination gets him to 269 or beyond, so let's try that. Colorado plus Nevada plus Iowa plus New Mexico plus Wisconsin plus either Ohio or Florida. For those of you doing the math at home, that's a Bush sweep of five states where the exit polls have him trailing, without losing a single state in which he leads. In three of those states, Bush's winning scenario requires the exit polls to be at least two points off. In Wisconsin, it requires the exit polls to be at least three points off. And it gets uglier from there. Because if even one of these breaks doesn't go Bush's way, there is no remaining state on the board in which he trails by less than six in the exit polls. Bush can win this thing, but he'll need a lot of luck. More than he'll get, if you ask me. William Saletan is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com Wed Nov 3 12:13:28 2004 From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 15:13:28 -0500 (GMT-05:00) Subject: This Memorable Day Message-ID: <13853217.1099512814152.JavaMail.root@bigbird.psp.pas.earthlink.net> >From: Nomen Nescio >Sent: Nov 3, 2004 6:50 AM >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: This Memorable Day ... > The only way to move towards a more friendly world is to make >people feel they are able to share the wealth and prosperity of the >world. As long as there is one single person anywhere in the world >hungering to death there is still a basis for fundamentalism and all >the problem that leads to. Ahh. So all we have to do to end terrorism is to end poverty, injustice, and inequality all over the world. *Phew*. I thought it was going to take something hard. --John From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 3 12:13:45 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 15:13:45 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: <41892D53.6050207@echeque.com> References: <41892D53.6050207@echeque.com> Message-ID: At 11:11 AM -0800 11/3/04, James A. Donald wrote: >It is often argued that since war, violence, etc, are public goods This is my favorite retort to that: "Externalities are the last refuge of the derigistes." -- Friedrich Hayek An otherwise excellent rant elided... Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Externalities are the last refuge of the derigistes." -- Friedrich Hayek From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 3 12:16:22 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 15:16:22 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: <41892D53.6050207@echeque.com> References: <41892D53.6050207@echeque.com> Message-ID: At 11:11 AM -0800 11/3/04, James A. Donald wrote: >"Dhimmitude" being >a dangerously inferior status where one's property is insecure, and >women are apt to be raped. ObSmartAssComment: That's why they call it "Dhimmicracy", much less the "Dhimmicratic" Party... :-). Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 3 12:21:13 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 15:21:13 -0500 Subject: U.S. stocks surge as Bush heads for victory Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text Midday Report http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?column=Newswatch&dist=nwtam&siteid=mktw Current levels on US market indices at 11:40 am ET Nov 3, 2004 Last Change DJIA 10,182.39 +146.66 S&P 500 1,146.41 +15.85 NASDAQ 2,013.30 +28.51 10-Year U.S. T-Bond 4.13% +0.053 --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 3 12:23:50 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 15:23:50 -0500 Subject: DIMACS Workshop on Markets as Predictive Devices (Information Markets) Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Wed Nov 3 13:18:39 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 16:18:39 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day Message-ID: Well, this may actually be less hard than we thought. Indeed, it's the one vaguely silver lining in this toxic cloud. Outsourcing to India will actually add a lot to world stability. Of course, we'll loose a lot of jobs in the process, but in the long run we'll eventually have another strong trading partner like Japan or France or the Dutch. Bush will sell us out to big business and all of the less-well-off will suffer like crazy in the process, but it will actually make things better in the long run. The only thing we need to worry about is not melting the ice caps in the process. -TD >From: John Kelsey >To: Nomen Nescio , cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: This Memorable Day >Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 15:13:28 -0500 (GMT-05:00) > > >From: Nomen Nescio > >Sent: Nov 3, 2004 6:50 AM > >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net > >Subject: Re: This Memorable Day > >... > > The only way to move towards a more friendly world is to make > >people feel they are able to share the wealth and prosperity of the > >world. As long as there is one single person anywhere in the world > >hungering to death there is still a basis for fundamentalism and all > >the problem that leads to. > >Ahh. So all we have to do to end terrorism is to end poverty, injustice, >and inequality all over the world. *Phew*. I thought it was going to take >something hard. > >--John _________________________________________________________________ Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx From bill.stewart at pobox.com Wed Nov 3 16:43:57 2004 From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 16:43:57 -0800 Subject: the new Keyser Sose (was Re: "Do androids dream of electric camels?") In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.0.3.0.0.20041103164105.04080858@pop.idiom.com> Not sure if the old Keyser Sose was limping or not, but he came out last week to give George Bush's campaign a helpful "Booga booga booga" to remind the sheeple that he's still there. Bush's speech had bragged that Osama could "run, but he can't hide", and Kerry neglected the chance to remind the public that Osama ran, and he's hidden real well, and that Bush has been too busy with the war on Saddam to bother catching him. From david.koontz at alliedtelesyn.co.nz Tue Nov 2 20:01:12 2004 From: david.koontz at alliedtelesyn.co.nz (david koontz) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 17:01:12 +1300 Subject: "Scan design called portal for hackers" Message-ID: >>> Peter Gutmann 2/11/2004 11:30:36 p.m. >>> >David Honig writes: >>EETimes 25 Oct 04 has an article about how the testing structures on ICs >>makes them vulnerable to attacks. >A link ) would >have been useful... >>The basic idea is that to test a chip, you need to see inside it; this can >>also reveal crypto details (e.g., keys) which compromise the chip. >The JTAG interface is your (that is, the reverse engineer's) friend. This is >why some security devices let you disconnect it using a security-fuse type >mechanism before you ship your product. Of course that only works if (a) the >device allows it, (b) you remember to activate it, and (c) your attacker isn't >sufficiently motivated/funded to use something like microprobing or a FIB >workstation to bypass the disconnect. Historically BIST has been more attractive for crypto hardware because you can also use it for assurance testing prior to use. Invoking it can be hard coded into device initialization. If JTAG is present, you don't have to have internal scan. If you have internal scan you could have a zeroize on entering test mode. This prevents scan chains from being capable of being used to save as well as restore state. If and when is it a problem? If you were to examine FIPS PUB 140-2, 4.5 'Physical Security', 'Table 2 Summary of physical security requirements' and section: 4.5.1 General Physical Security Requirements ... SECURITY LEVEL 1 The following requirements shall apply to all cryptographic modules for Security Level 1. * The cryptographic module shall consist of production-grade components that shall include standard passivation techniques (e.g., a conformal coating or a sealing coat applied over the module's circuitry to protect against environmental or other physical damage). * When performing physical maintenance, all plaintext secret and private keys and other unprotected CSPs contained in the cryptographic module shall be zeroized. Zeroization shall either be performed procedurally by the operator or automatically by the cryptographic module. --- Meaning for a cryptographic module boundary at the chip level, the keys should have been zeroized before physical access. ---- ... SECURITY LEVEL 3 In addition to the general requirements for Security Levels 1 and 2, the following requirements shall apply to all cryptographic modules for Security Level 3. * If the cryptographic module contains any doors or removable covers or if a maintenance access interface is defined, then the module shall contain tamper response and zeroization circuitry. The tamper response and zeroization circuitry shall immediately zeroize all plaintext secret and private keys and CSPs when a door is opened, a cover is removed, or when the maintenance access interface is accessed. The tamper response and zeroization circuitry shall remain operational when plaintext secret and private cryptographic keys or CSPs are contained within the cryptographic module. --- Meaning that physical access will cause zeroization. This would imply zeroization on test mode activation on a JTAG interface on a single chip cryptographic module. You start getting real security at levels 3 and 4, the certification criteria comes from the Commercial COMSEC Evaluation Program (CCEP). Am I worried someone is producing chips that aren't protected? No. I'm more concerned that implementations (systems) aren't properly designed, tested and certified. "They got AES, we got AES" is just a form of snake oil. NOTICE: This message contains privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the addressee named above. If you are not the intended recipient of this message you are hereby notified that you must not disseminate, copy or take any action in reliance on it. If you have received this message in error please notify Allied Telesyn Research Ltd immediately. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender has the authority to issue and specifically states them to be the views of Allied Telesyn Research. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz Tue Nov 2 20:21:19 2004 From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 17:21:19 +1300 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: Message-ID: "R.A. Hettinga" writes: >At 3:32 AM +1300 11/3/04, Peter Gutmann wrote: >>Eugen Leitl writes: >>>On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 08:16:41AM -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: >>>> >>>No cypherpunks content. Just local politics. >> >>And it's not even original, they've mostly just translated it into English, >>updated it a bit (e.g. League of Nations -> UN), and changed the Russian names >>and references to Middle Eastern ones. > >Yup. That's Davis' point, actually. Fuck with the West, we kick your ass. Well it wasn't the point I was trying to make, which was comparing it to predictions made by (the propaganda division of) another super-power in the mid 1940s about winning an unwinnable war because God/righteousness/whatever was on their side, and all they had to do was hold out a bit longer. Compare the general tone of the WSJ article to the one in e.g. the first half of http://www.humanitas-international.org/showcase/chronography/documents/htestmnt.htm. Peter. From roy at rant-central.com Wed Nov 3 14:24:14 2004 From: roy at rant-central.com (Roy M. Silvernail) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 17:24:14 -0500 Subject: Why you keep losing to this idiot In-Reply-To: <200411032201.iA3M19wK018789@artifact.psychedelic.net> References: <200411032201.iA3M19wK018789@artifact.psychedelic.net> Message-ID: <1099520654.718.2.camel@mesmer.rant-central.com> On Wed, 2004-11-03 at 14:01 -0800, Eric Cordian wrote: > > I think this is the answer: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. > > Isn't that what Democracy is all about? The 51% simpletons imposing their > will on the 49% non-simpletons? > > Proportional representation is our friend. Kornbluth was right. -- Roy M. Silvernail is roy at rant-central.com, and you're not "It's just this little chromium switch, here." - TFS SpamAssassin->procmail->/dev/null->bliss http://www.rant-central.com From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 3 14:45:37 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 17:45:37 -0500 Subject: the new Keyser Sose (was Re: "Do androids dream of electric camels?") In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 8:34 PM +0000 11/3/04, POPBITCH wrote: > >> Hardline Honeyz 2 << > Al Zarqawi: the unusual suspect > > Mysterious Jordanian celebrity executioner Abu > Musab Al Zarqawi is a huge hit with lovers of > Hardline Honeyz. With a $25m price tag on his > head, al Zarqawi shot to fame as the star of > "Sheik Abu Musab Al Zarqawi slaughters an > American infidel with his own hands", a video > showing the death of Iraq hostage Nicholas Berg. > But is Al Zarqawi for real? > > A Jordanian of that name did fight in Afganistan > in the 80s and in Kurdish Iraq in the 90s, > with a group called Ansar al-Islam, but no more > was heard of him until Colin Powell's famous > warmongering speech to the UN named him as the > link between Saddam and Osama. Since then Al > Zarqawi has become a mythic bogeyman blamed for > almost every real or imagined terrorist threat. > > *Suddenly he was al-Qaeda's bioterrorism expert > and head of terror camps in Saddam-era Iraq; he'd > never previously been linked to either. > * US intelligence experts say Berg's executioner > clearly didn't have a Jordanian accent. > * Iraqi insurgents claimed Al Zarqawi was dead, > and all new captured operatives from Ansar > al-Islam say they've never laid eyes on him. > * CIA said he only had one leg after an operation > in Baghdad, but since the executioner in the > video clearly had two they now say, er, he has > two after all. > > So... Al Zarqawi: he's the new Keyser Sose. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 3 08:57:10 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 17:57:10 +0100 Subject: Diebold Message-ID: <20041103165709.GJ1457@leitl.org> So, we know Diebold commited vote fraud. Irregularities, my ass. Why did Kerry just roll over? The second time, after Gore? This just doesn't make sense. There's been over a year to prepare. Or is the entire process just a charade? -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz Tue Nov 2 21:29:45 2004 From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2004 18:29:45 +1300 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: Message-ID: "R.A. Hettinga" writes: >Germany 1944 does not equal USA 2004, no matter how hard you twist the >kaleidoscope. Fighting an unwinnable war always seems to produce the same type of rhetoric, whether it's the war on some drugs, the war on anyone Bush doesn't like, or the war on anything non-German. The only thing that changes over time are the identities of the bogeymen that are used to justify it. (Do you seriously think the war on bogey^H^H^Hterrorism can ever be won? Leaving aside the obvious debate that you can't even tell who you're at war with, how do you know when you've won?. We have always been at war with Terroristia) Peter. From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 3 16:24:43 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 19:24:43 -0500 Subject: Your source code, for sale Message-ID: - ADTmag.com Your source code, for sale By Mike Gunderloy Well, maybe not yet. But what does the future hold for those who consider their source code an important proprietary asset? Halloween this year featured more scary stuff than just ghosts and ghouls. It was also the day (at least in the Pacific time zone) when the Source Code Club posted their second Newsletter in a public Usenet group. Despite their innocent-sounding name, the Source Code Club is a group of hackers who are offering to sell the source to commercial products. Their current menu of source code for sale looks like this: * Cisco Pix 6.3.1 - $24,000 * Enterasys Dragon IDS - $19.200 * Napster - $12,000 They also claim to have the source code for many other packages that they haven't announced publicly. "If you are requesting something from a Fortune 100 company, there is a good chance that we might already have it, they say. Now, you might think this business is blatantly illegal, and no doubt it is. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's impossible. They're posting their newsletter to Usenet, probably from an Internet cafe somewhere, so that's not traceable. They'll take orders the same way, and require orders to be encrypted using their PGP key, which is at least reasonably unbreakable at the moment. (As of this writing, I don't see any encrypted messages posted to the newsgroup they use, though). For payment, they're using e-gold, which claims to protect the anonymity of its account holders. Now, it seems reasonably likely that the Source Code Club folks will eventually get caught; going up against Cisco's resources displays at least a strong conviction of invulnerability. But even if these guys get caught, there are deeper issues here. Ten years ago, no one could have dreamed of trying to set up such a business. Ten years from now, advances in cryptography, more forms of currency circulating on the Internet, and improvements in anonymity software are likely to make it impossible to catch a similar operation. What will it mean when hacker groups can in fact do business this way with impunity? First, it's important to note that the ability to sell wares anonymously won't necessarily imply the ability to get inventory. Your best defense against having your own source code leaked is to pay careful attention to its physical security. These days, if I were developing an important commercial product, I'd make sure there was no path between my development or build machines and the public Internet. Hackers can do lots of things, but they still can't leap over physical disconnections. Second, I'd use software that prevents temporary storage devices (like USB sticks) from connecting to the network, and keep CD and DVD burners out of the development boxes as well. It's also worth making sure that your business doesn't depend entirely on source code. While the intellectual property that goes into making software is certainly a valuable asset, it shouldn't be your only asset. Think about ancillary services like training, support, and customization in addition to simply selling software. Finally, note that the Source Code Club business model is based on taking advantage of people wanting to know what's in the software that they purchase. About the pix code, they say "Many intelligence agencies/government organizations will want to know if those 1's and 0's in the pix image really are doing what was advertised. You must ask yourself how well you trust the pix images you download to your appliance from cisco.com." Microsoft (among other companies) has demonstrated how to remove this particular fear factor from customers: share your source code under controlled circumstances. That doesn't mean that you need to adapt an open source model, but when a big customer comes calling, why not walk their engineers through how things work and let them audit their own areas of concern? Given the shifting landscape of intellectual property, and the threat from groups such as the Source Code Club, these are matters you need to think about sooner rather than later. Otherwise you may wake up some morning and find that your major asset has vanished without your even knowing it was in danger. Mike Gunderloy, MCSE, MCSD .NET, MCDBA is an independent software consultant and author working in eastern Washington. He's the editor of ADT's Developer Central newsletter and author of numerous books and articles. You can reach him at MikeG1 at larkfarm.com. This article originally appeared in the November 2004 issue of Application Development Trends. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 3 18:20:49 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 21:20:49 -0500 Subject: the new Keyser Sose (was Re: "Do androids dream of electric camels?") In-Reply-To: <6.0.3.0.0.20041103164105.04080858@pop.idiom.com> References: <6.0.3.0.0.20041103164105.04080858@pop.idiom.com> Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 4:43 PM -0800 11/3/04, Bill Stewart wrote: >Not sure if the old Keyser Sose was limping or not, >but he came out last week to give George Bush's campaign a helpful >"Booga booga booga" to remind the sheeple that he's still there. Karl Rove did it. Walter Cronkite says so. [Bwahahahaha!] >Bush's speech had bragged that Osama could "run, but he can't hide", >and Kerry neglected the chance to remind the public that >Osama ran, and he's hidden real well, and that Bush has been >too busy with the war on Saddam to bother catching him. Two words, Bill: Whitey Bulger. Boo! Mirthfully yours, RAH Glee. It's not just for breakfast, anymore. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQYmR38PxH8jf3ohaEQItdwCggwC+AQIB1gCdz1WSAcan9IAjVWwAn3rQ Uzn3hZfNOEn8x7P2fqT7Bk5v =O7v+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 3 20:30:05 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 23:30:05 -0500 Subject: Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal Message-ID: HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE: The National Conservative Weekly Since 1944 Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal It's Time to Reconfigure the United States by Mike Thompson Posted Nov 3, 2004 [From the author: This is an essay I've been working on for the past several weeks, updated moments ago with what appears to be Bush's final number of victory states (31) once the nonsense of provisional votes in Ohio is overcome. As an admitted "modest proposal" (a la Swift's satiric story of the same name), it is nevertheless serious in pointing out the cancer that continues to threaten our body politic.] Branded unconstitutional by President Abraham Lincoln, the South's secession from the American Union ultimately sparked "The Civil War" (a name that was rejected by Southerners, who correctly called it "The War Between the States," for the South never sought to 1] seize the central government or 2] rule the other side, two requisites for a civil war). No state may leave the Union without the other states' approval, according to Lincoln's doctrine--an assertion that ignores the Declaration of Independence, which was the vital basis for all 13 American colonies' unilateral secession from the British Union eight decades earlier. Lincoln's grotesque legal argument also disregards a state's inherent right of secession which many scholars believe is found in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Meantime, America has become just as divided as it was a century and a half ago, when it writhed in Brother-vs.-Brother War. Instead of wedge issues like slavery, federal subsidies for regional business, and high tariffs, society today is sundered by profound, insoluble Culture War conflicts (such as abortion and gay marriage), and debate about our role abroad (shall we remain the world's leader, or become an unprincipled chump for the cabal of globalist sybarites who play endless word-games inside the United Nations and European Union sanctuaries?). For many decades, conservative citizens and like-minded political leaders (starting with President Calvin Coolidge) have been denigrated by the vilest of lies and characterizations from hordes of liberals who now won't even admit that they are liberals--because the word connotes such moral stink and political silliness. As a class, liberals no longer are merely the vigorous opponents of the Right; they are spiteful enemies of civilization's core decency and traditions. Defamation, never envisioned by our Founding Fathers as being protected by the First Amendment, flourishes and passes today for acceptable political discourse. Movies, magazines, newspapers, radio/TV programs, plays, concerts, public schools, colleges, and most other public vehicles openly traffic in slander and libel. Hollywood salivated over the idea of placing another golden Oscar into Michael Moore'sfat hands, for his Fahrenheit 9/11 jeremiad, the most bogus, deceitful film documentary since Herr Hitler and Herr Goebbels gave propaganda a bad name. When they tire of showering conservative victims with ideological mud, liberals promote the only other subjects with which they feel conversationally comfortable: Obscenity and sexual perversion. It's as if the genes of liberals have rendered them immune to all forms of filth. As a final insult, liberal lawyers and judges have become locusts of the Left, conspiring to destroy democracy itself by excreting statutes and courtroom tactics that fertilize electoral fraud and sprout fields of vandals who will cast undeserved and copious ballots on Election Day. The truth is, America is not just broken--it is becoming irreparable. If you believe that recent years of uncivil behavior are burdensome, imagine the likelihood of a future in which all bizarre acts are the norm, and a government-booted foot stands permanently on your face. That is why the unthinkable must become thinkable. If the so-called "Red States" (those that voted for George W. Bush) cannot be respected or at least tolerated by the "Blue States" (those that voted for Al Gore and John Kerry), then the most disparate of them must live apart--not by secession of the former (a majority), but by expulsion of the latter. Here is how to do it. Having been amended only 17 times since 10 vital amendments (the Bill of Rights) were added at the republic's inception, the U.S. Constitution is not easily changed, primarily because so many states (75%, now 38 of 50) must agree. Yet, there are 38 states today that may be inclined to adopt, let us call it, a "Declaration of Expulsion," that is, a specific constitutional amendment to kick out the systemically troublesome states and those trending rapidly toward anti-American, if not outright subversive, behavior. The 12 states that must go: California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware. Only the remaining 38 states would retain the name, "United States of America." The 12 expelled mobs could call themselves the "Dirty Dozen," or individually keep their identity and go their separate ways, probably straight to Hell. A difficult-to-pass constitutional amendment, however, is not necessary. There is an equally lawful route that mercifully would be both easier and faster. Inasmuch as Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution specifies that "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union," it is reasonable that the same congressional majority may expel a state from the Union. Is there, after all, any human organization in existence (including a family or law firm) that may not disown, disinherit, ostracize, alienate or expel diabolical members? Whether the nation is purged of these 12 states via the Constitution or statute, the process of elimination must begin now, for the need of societal detoxification has waxed so overwhelmingly clear. Examine the "Mostly Mainstream 38" and "Fringe 12." Of the 50 states, Bush won 30 in the 2000 presidential election against Gore, and 31 in 2004 against Kerry. More dramatic is the huge disparity among counties. Of 3,112 counties nationwide, Bush in 2000, for example, won 2,434, a crushing 78% majority. (In the counties composing "Bush USA" live approximately 150 million persons; in the 678 of "Gore/Kerry USA," 140 million.) Gore/Kerry denizens are concentrated in the metropolises of the East and West Coasts and those big cities on the Great Lakes or Mississippi River. Other significant pockets of ultraliberal extremists may be found in intellectually incestuous college towns and pro-big-government state capitals, along the estranged and overwhelmed Mexican border, and in Dixie's welfare-addicted Cotton Belt. The demographics revealed by the two most recent presidential elections are radically different and have resulted in "Two Americas" (but not the simplistic "Two Americas" [one rich, one poor] envisioned by Kerry'sMarxist-tongued running mate, John Edwards): * BUSH USA is predominantly white; devoutly Christian (mostly Protestant); openly, vigorously heterosexual; an open land of single-family homes and ranches; economically sound (except for a few farms), but not drunk with cyberworld business development, and mainly English-speaking, with a predilection for respectfully uttering "yes, ma'am" and "yes, sir." * GORE/KERRY USA is ethnically diverse; multi-religious, irreligious or nastily antireligious; more sexually liberated (if not in actual practice, certainly in attitude); awash with condo canyons and other high-end real estate bordered by sprawling, squalid public housing or neglected private homes, decidedly short of middle-class neighborhoods; both high tech and oddly primitive in its commerce; very artsy, and Babelesque, with abnormally loud speakers. Bush USA also is far safer, its murder rate being about 16% of the homicidal binge that plagues Gore/Kerry USA--2.1 per 100,000 residents, compared with 13.2 per 100,000 (from a study by Professor Joseph Olson, Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota). A downsized, post-expulsion United States still would be geographically big enough (and personally generous enough) to welcome millions of authentic refugees from the ousted former states, real Americans who crave lower taxes, smaller government, safer neighborhoods, more secure borders, greater moral leadership, and all the other aspects of a markedly better society-- one that spawns harmony, not cacophony; excellence, not dependence; justice, not histrionics; education, not brainwashing; enterprise, not welfare, and Godliness, not devilishness. As for the dozen ex-American states, they could always petition the UN and EU for foreign aid. Moreover, with any good luck (or bon chance), socialist Canada would annex our jettisoned territory, eh? Still Relevant After All These Years Language of the 1776 Declaration of Independence that rings true today for expulsion: When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another . . . Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness . . . Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes . . . but when a long train of abuses . . . evinces a design to reduce them [the people] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Language of Barry Goldwater, 1964 Republican presidential nominee that also rings true: Sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off the eastern seaboard and let it float out to sea. ---------- Copyright ) 2004 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.? -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From roy at rant-central.com Wed Nov 3 21:20:05 2004 From: roy at rant-central.com (Roy M. Silvernail) Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 00:20:05 -0500 Subject: Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1099545605.29415.5.camel@mesmer.rant-central.com> On Wed, 2004-11-03 at 23:30 -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > > > HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE: The National Conservative Weekly Since 1944 > > Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal > It's Time to Reconfigure the United States Chuckle-worthy, if not outright funny. Interestingly, I could see a liberal making exactly the same case, but without the ad hominem attacks. -- Roy M. Silvernail is roy at rant-central.com, and you're not "It's just this little chromium switch, here." - TFS SpamAssassin->procmail->/dev/null->bliss http://www.rant-central.com From chris.kuethe at gmail.com Thu Nov 4 01:00:37 2004 From: chris.kuethe at gmail.com (Chris Kuethe) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 02:00:37 -0700 Subject: campus network admins In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <91981b3e041104010041e50646@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 02:34:46 -0500, cypher at tediouspath.com wrote: > > I recently violated the network user agreement (they packet-sniffed and > got the username/password for my FTP server and didn't like what I was > sharing with myself) and was informed by the admin that I am now 'under > observation' and that they "hope I don't like privacy". Considering > this admin was an NSA employee, I tend to take that threat a little > seriously. Two questions: Yes, it's not wise to mock the people who busted you to their faces. Scheming requires more subtlety. Kinda like doing a big smoky burnout and leaving a hundred feet of rubber on the road in front of the cop who just gave you a speeding ticket is a bad idea. > 1) I'm assuming they can legally look at anything that comes in or out > of my computer, but is that the case? Can they look at my computer > itself, or take me off the network for the private contents of my > computer? Read the agreement and see. Are you doing something illegal? Are you doing something that exposes the network owners to risk of some sort? Is it your personal hardware or was it provided to you by the network owners. Was there a clause in your terms of service that says the network owners can monitor/audit use, yadda yadda yadda...? Depending on the perceived severity of the infraction, your local security or police officers may be coming to pay a visit and impound your machine. Depending on which political backwater or fascist/EpithetOfChoice regime you live under, they could very well be doing you a favor. Or they could be covering their butts. Whatever - you got the short end of the stick. > 2) Is there some sort of service I can use to have everything I do on the > network encrypted, such as a tunneling service to the internet? In other words "I did something that got me in trouble, I know what I'm doing is wrong, or at least if I do it again, I'll get in more trouble. Please help me to do these bad things and stay out of trouble." Be honest. It's OK to say yes. Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: SSH tunnels, IPSec tunnels, ssl-ized protocols, mixmasters, freenets, onion routers, and buying your own network connection from a 3rd party are all valid options. I'm sure that if you google for things like internet privacy service, the likes of anonymizer (just the first one that came to mind) will turn up. There are plenty of very low cost solutions if you're willing to try stuff that may break your machine for a while causing you to learn stuff the hard way. :) If there's stuff I shouldn't be doing at work (like consulting), well, that's what my home net is for. Perhaps you might want to carefully consider why your administration doesn't want you doing stuff with their network in light of what it costs to have their class of network activity. Now let's run that kind of pipe to your house, and bridge in an open wireless access point. I bet it wouldn't make you very happy to find other people abusing your network connection. Pretend you've been downloading 5 gigs of movies a day over cleartext bittorrent. You get busted, so rather than not doing that, you switch to an encrypted protocol, but continue to generate 5 gigs a day with your computer, and you're still talking to a similar bunch of hosts. Traffic analysis says we suspect you of being up to your old tricks. In this case one technical countermeasure does not help because the problem is higher up the stack... at the chair-to-keyboard interface layer. This may be a bit vague - no idea who you are or where you live, so I am generalizing. Simple truths: You have pissed off The Man - assume for the next little while that he's watching (and is seeing this). There are certain technologies available which may help you, but consider the behavioural, economic, legal and political factors as well. -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too? From isn at c4i.org Thu Nov 4 00:13:44 2004 From: isn at c4i.org (InfoSec News) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 02:13:44 -0600 (CST) Subject: [ISN] Online payment firm in DDoS drama Message-ID: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/03/protx_ddos_attack/ By John Leyden 3rd November 2004 Online payments processing firm Protx is continuing to fight a sustained internet attack which has severely impacting its services for the fourth successive day. Since Sunday (31 October), Protx's systems have been reduced to a crawl because of a malicious DDoS attack. Although Protx felt it was on top of the problem by Monday (1 November) the attack once again intensified, prompting the company to draft in heavy duty DDoS defences which it hopes will finally thwart the assault. In a statement, Mat Peck, chief technical officer, Protx said: "Earlier today [1 November] the parties responsible for the Distributed Denial of Service attack on our systems stepped up their assault, this time pushing our systems beyond their capacity to cope. A large number of compromised machines from a wide range of spoofed IP addresses have been attacking our site in a varied and well structured manner. We have been working all day with Globix, our ISP, to implement a specific DDoS solution which can burst up to 1Gb connectivity during periods of peak load whilst also analysing and killing traffic generated by zombie machine on the Net." "We have migrated the WWW site across to this system first to check the functionality and now that's working, we will be moving the payment servers in the next few hours. This new service, whilst expensive, still mainly developmental and bleeding edge, should enable us to continue to process transactions even under DDoS attacks ten times the size we've seen so far. Future attacks will be dealt with in a matter of minutes instead of hours (or days as many victims of such attacks have found). We're continuing to work closely with the National High Tech Crimes Unit (NHTCU) to bring the perpetrators to task," he added. On 2 November Globix said it was also beefing up the hardware used by its systems in the process of moving across to a new platform. "Whilst all the payment services are available, some of the auxiliary services will not be available until tomorrow," Peck wrote in an update. However Register readers report problems processing payments through the service today. "Thousands of small transactional websites, like mine, have been affected," Reg reader Bruce Stidston tells us. At the time of writing Protx's website was unavailable but you can get an insight into what's going on through Google's cache of the firm's status page. _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From cypher at tediouspath.com Wed Nov 3 23:34:46 2004 From: cypher at tediouspath.com (cypher at tediouspath.com) Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 02:34:46 -0500 Subject: campus network admins Message-ID: I recently violated the network user agreement (they packet-sniffed and got the username/password for my FTP server and didn't like what I was sharing with myself) and was informed by the admin that I am now 'under observation' and that they "hope I don't like privacy". Considering this admin was an NSA employee, I tend to take that threat a little seriously. Two questions: 1) I'm assuming they can legally look at anything that comes in or out of my computer, but is that the case? Can they look at my computer itself, or take me off the network for the private contents of my computer? 2) Is there some sort of service I can use to have everything I do on the network encrypted, such as a tunneling service to the internet? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This message was sent from The Tedious Path Are you ready to travel The Tedious Path? http://www.tediouspath.com http://forum.tediouspath.com From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 4 04:35:18 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 07:35:18 -0500 Subject: [ISN] Online payment firm in DDoS drama Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 4 04:48:33 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 07:48:33 -0500 Subject: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 4, 2004 BOOKS In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down By NED CRABB November 4, 2004; Page D10 The opening slaughter of what came to be known as the Hundred Years' War took place on Aug. 26, 1346, near the village of Crecy in northern France. There King Philip VI's French army bore down on a much smaller English force commanded by Edward III. What happened in the ensuing few hours still lives, in the French national consciousness, as one of the most painful blots on the proud escutcheon of France. As described in Hugh D.H. Soar's "The Crooked Stick" (Westholme Yardley, 241 pages, $24.95), a fascinating study of a forgotten weapon, King Philip's shining knights, encased in magnificent armor and thundering toward the enemy on huge war horses, were practically annihilated by an enormous black cloud of thousands of arrows that rose from the English lines and descended with murderous effect. These were not the sort of sporting arrows skillfully shot toward gayly colored targets by Victorian archery societies (charmingly described by Mr. Soar in later chapters) but heavy "bodkin pointed battle shafts" that went through the armor of man and horse. And the black cloud wasn't just one surge, it kept coming and coming, arching high over the battlefield, as each of the 6,000 archers released an average three or four arrows a minute. For centuries the longbow dominated battle, affecting the fates of nations. Royal blood soaked the ground, and with frightening suddenness King Philip's now much reduced 27,000-man army was in desperate retreat from Edward's 9,000 Englishmen. Sixty-nine years later, at Agincourt, similar clouds of battle shafts released by the archers in Henry V's small, wet, hungry and sick army devastated a French army so badly that scores of ancient aristocratic lineages were ended in a few hours of battle. The English longbowman had emerged from centuries of hunting in the dark forests of his native land and into the glare of battle to end the dominance of the mounted knight. The knight and his "destrier" horse, also armored, were the medieval equivalent of an Abrams tank, owning the battlefield for centuries and vulnerable only to other knights and crossbowmen (who had to stop and rewind their weapons) at close range. And now here was this peasant fellow in his hooded cloth shirt, leather jerkin (close-fitting, sleeveless jacket), soft leather boots and crude helmet bringing him down into the mud. Whence came this man, with a great bow taller than himself? As Mr. Soar fascinatingly elucidates, he and his weapon have a long history. Over centuries, the English archer had developed an extra-long bow hewn from the yew tree. Many types of wood possessed the essential power-making qualities of tension and compression, but yew was by far the best. "Though notoriously difficult to work with because of its often tortuous grain," Mr. Soar writes, "yew has an elasticity superior to all other timber." Yew gave the warbow tremendous thrust, sending feathered (fletched) shafts 250 yards, compared with the shorter handbow's 50 or so and the crossbow's 100. To this day, as Mr. Soar shows later when he describes longbow archery's evolution into a garden-party pastime and Olympic sport, no superior wood has been discovered. Examining the longbow's heritage, Mr. Soar takes us to Paleolithic and Neolithic prehistory for a vivid reconstruction of the ancient bowman ancestors of the men who stood at Crecy in 1346. He begins with a typically pithy statement: "Matters were not easy for our early ancestors. It was their fate to be at once both predator and prey. At best, this was an unattractive lifestyle and one fraught with inevitable uncertainty and danger." To improve the odds, early man devised the pointed stick with which to skewer his food and his enemies. From the pointed stick came the spear with its sharp stone point, and then the need to give it propulsion other than by simply throwing it -- and thus, inevitably, the crooked stick with its primitive string of plaited grass, sinew or hemp. Eventually the bow was strengthened by the use of horn on the tips, where the string was either tied or slipped into a groove at the shaft, and sinew and hemp gave way to linen thread or silk, a far more elastic means of projecting arrows. The longbow's supremacy lasted about two centuries, shifting the balance of power mostly to England, whose kings issued royal decrees banning certain "idle" games and demanding that all able-bodied young men in every village and town diligently practice archery. The English were especially deft at instituting battlefield discipline for archers, training them to move in formation on command, usually by horn signals. The French never equaled them in either training longbow archers or in disciplining them in battlefield tactics. Some things never change. It was not until the advent of gunpowder and artillery, with a much longer range and much greater killing power, that the longbow lost its decisive role. It remained a residual weapon in the Tudor era, especially for aristocratic gentleman to demonstrate their athletic prowess at games and tournaments. (King Henry VIII was particularly fond of the longbow, and there are drawings of him shooting.) But on the battlefield, the bow could not compete with the gun, which from the first exceeded the arrow's velocity if not its precision. By the beginning of the 17th century, however, cannons and muskets had found a deadly range and accuracy. The battle of Pinkie Cleugh, in 1547, the last battle to be fought between the Scottish and English royal armies, was also the "last occasion," notes Mr. Soar, "when [the longbow] was used tactically en masse." The Scots suffered defeat, with 15,000 men slain. Mr. Crabb is the Journal's letters editor. URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109953591903164550,00.html Copyright 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 4 04:58:23 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 07:58:23 -0500 Subject: Bush and a Butterfly Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 4, 2004 COMMENTARY Bush and a Butterfly By MICHIO KAKU November 4, 2004; Page A14 Another squeaker -- almost. Once again, the presidential election seemed to teeter -- if only briefly -- on a razor's edge. But for scientists, even political events can raise scientific questions. Here, one is tempted to ask something that no one raised on Fox News or CNN: What is the smallest event necessary to tip the balance? Meteorologists sometimes talk about the butterfly effect, that even the flapping of a butterfly's wings might, at critical junctures, tip a storm cloud into unleashing a downpour. But quantum physicists ask a deeper question: Can even tiny quantum events tip a presidential election? If so, then perhaps the entire universe itself splits in half. In one universe, there is rejoicing in the White House. In another quantum universe, there is rejoicing in the streets of Paris and Berlin. Both would be possible universes. * * * According to the quantum theory, which rules the sub-atomic world, one can only calculate probabilities, not definite outcomes. According to the "many worlds" quantum theory, the universe splits in half each time a quantum event takes place, creating a cascading "multiverse" of possible universes. Even the smallest quantum event (like the impact of a cosmic ray) can have catastrophic consequences. What might have happened if a cosmic ray went through the womb of Hitler's mother. She might have suffered a miscarriage, and Hitler would never have been born. Imagine a world in which Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Gandhi, Churchill -- or even George W. Bush -- were never born due to a tiny quantum event. The mind is sent swimming by the possibilities. (We physicists like to tell the story of a Russian physicist who, witnessing the decadence of Las Vegas for the first time, put all his money on the first bet. When told what a foolish strategy that was, he replied, "Yes, but in one quantum universe, I shall be rich beyond imagination!") But since we cannot make contact with these parallel universes it might appear that this is just idle talk. Instead of debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, it seems as if physicists are asking how many universes can spin off from one quantum event. But there is one very important practical application: the future of computers and the wealth of nations. By 2020, Silicon Valley may become a Rust Belt. Moore's law will finally collapse, causing massive disruption in the world's economy. All things must pass, even the miniaturization of computer chips, the engine of the world's prosperity. Why? The Pentium chip today is so compact that it has a layer only about 20 atoms across. By 2020, this layer might become only five atoms across, in which case the Uncertainty Principle takes over, you don't know where the electrons are any more, and the chip short-circuits. Silicon chips are useless at the atomic level. Instead, physicists are frantically investigating "quantum computers," which compute on individual atoms. Spinning atoms are like tops, and their axis can be aligned up, down, or to any angle in between. Bits (like 0s and 1s) are replaced by "qubits" (quantum bits, which can be 0, 1, and anything in between). What makes quantum computers so powerful is that they compute not just in our universe, but in other quantum universes simultaneously. Even the CIA is interested in quantum computers, since they are so incredibly powerful they might be able to crack any known code. Quantum computers are still many decades away. But eventually, the nation which dominates the world economy may be the one which masters the nano world of atomic, and quantum computing. Then quantum events, instead of being the idle talk of quantum philosophers, will be the source of the world's wealth. The Silicon Age is coming to a close. Welcome to the Quantum Age, where even button-down bankers will have to learn the mysteries of the multiverse. Not to mention those who do the exit polls at American presidential elections! Mr. Kaku, the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York, is the author of "Parallel Worlds," forthcoming in January from Doubleday. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jya at pipeline.com Thu Nov 4 08:02:05 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 08:02:05 -0800 Subject: Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal In-Reply-To: <1099545605.29415.5.camel@mesmer.rant-central.com> References: Message-ID: A map of the expulsion civil war declaration: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/ninjagurl/new_map.jpg From roy at rant-central.com Thu Nov 4 05:31:14 2004 From: roy at rant-central.com (Roy M. Silvernail) Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 08:31:14 -0500 Subject: Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <418A2F22.3010403@rant-central.com> John Young wrote: >A map of the expulsion civil war declaration: > > >http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v331/ninjagurl/new_map.jpg > > There seems to be an assumption that Alaska will be included in Jesusland. Whoever is advancing this theory clearly never lived in Alaska (or if they did, only lived in Anchorage, which isn't *really* Alaska). -- Roy M. Silvernail is roy at rant-central.com, and you're not "It's just this little chromium switch, here." - TFS SpamAssassin->procmail->/dev/null->bliss http://www.rant-central.com From pcapelli at gmail.com Thu Nov 4 07:20:32 2004 From: pcapelli at gmail.com (Pete Capelli) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 10:20:32 -0500 Subject: Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal In-Reply-To: <1099545605.29415.5.camel@mesmer.rant-central.com> References: <1099545605.29415.5.camel@mesmer.rant-central.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 00:20:05 -0500, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: > Chuckle-worthy, if not outright funny. Interestingly, I could see a > liberal making exactly the same case, but without the ad hominem > attacks. Like calling Bush an idiot? That door swings both ways. -- Pete Capelli pcapelli at ieee.org http://www.capelli.org PGP Key ID:0x829263B6 "Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin, 1759 From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 4 07:47:22 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 10:47:22 -0500 Subject: Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal In-Reply-To: <418A2F22.3010403@rant-central.com> References: <418A2F22.3010403@rant-central.com> Message-ID: At 8:31 AM -0500 11/4/04, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: >There seems to be an assumption that Alaska will be included in >Jesusland. Whoever is advancing this theory clearly never lived in >Alaska (or if they did, only lived in Anchorage, which isn't *really* >Alaska). Ahhh... Los Anchorage. It's just most of the people there, of course. Cheers, RAH Who went to Fairview and Roger's Park elementary, and Wendler Jr. Hi., while his old man built 1500sf tract houses on spec, and then an apartment complex or two, before he retired to Hillsboro, NM, pop 19. Anchorage was too *big*, you see... -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 4 07:54:29 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 10:54:29 -0500 Subject: Gigabit Ethernet board for TCP/IP security Message-ID: Thursday 4 November 2004 Gigabit Ethernet board for TCP/IP security SDC Systems offers a range of Gigabit Ethernet single board computers designed by ADI Engineering and based on Intel XScale and Intel IXA technologies. Designed for network security devices such as TCP/IP Offload Engines (TOE), firewalls, VPN equipment, IPSec and SSL accelerators, intrusion detection, and cryptography equipment, Shadwell supports line wire speed in both single and dual port versions. The board features an Intel 80200 processor, running at 733MHz, 256MB SDRAM (128Mbyte in the single mode), Intel 82545/82546 fourth-generation GbE MAC/PHY, and Intel 21555 PCI-PCI bridge. The board is implemented in a half size PCI form factor, and only dissipates 6W of power in the single port version. A Virtex-II FPGA can be used to offload of time-critical tasks including cryptography, firewall filtering, and virus scanning. www.sdcsystems.com Tel: 01462 473928 -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From mfidelman at ntcorp.com Thu Nov 4 08:14:58 2004 From: mfidelman at ntcorp.com (mfidelman at ntcorp.com) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 11:14:58 -0500 (EST) Subject: Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I expect quite a few of us in the Northeast would be happy to join with Canada. It might be problematic that DC went blue :-) On Wed, 3 Nov 2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > > > HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE: The National Conservative Weekly Since 1944 > > Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal > It's Time to Reconfigure the United States > > by Mike Thompson > Posted Nov 3, 2004 > [From the author: This is an essay I've been working on for the past > several weeks, updated moments ago with what appears to be Bush's final > number of victory states (31) once the nonsense of provisional votes in > Ohio is overcome. > > As an admitted "modest proposal" (a la Swift's satiric story of the same > name), it is nevertheless serious in pointing out the cancer that continues > to threaten our body politic.] > > Branded unconstitutional by President Abraham Lincoln, the South's > secession from the American Union ultimately sparked "The Civil War" (a > name that was rejected by Southerners, who correctly called it "The War > Between the States," for the South never sought to 1] seize the central > government or 2] rule the other side, two requisites for a civil war). > > No state may leave the Union without the other states' approval, according > to Lincoln's doctrine--an assertion that ignores the Declaration of > Independence, which was the vital basis for all 13 American colonies' > unilateral secession from the British Union eight decades earlier. > Lincoln's grotesque legal argument also disregards a state's inherent right > of secession which many scholars believe is found in the Ninth and Tenth > Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. > > Meantime, America has become just as divided as it was a century and a > half ago, when it writhed in Brother-vs.-Brother War. Instead of wedge > issues like slavery, federal subsidies for regional business, and high > tariffs, society today is sundered by profound, insoluble Culture War > conflicts (such as abortion and gay marriage), and debate about our role > abroad (shall we remain the world's leader, or become an unprincipled chump > for the cabal of globalist sybarites who play endless word-games inside the > United Nations and European Union sanctuaries?). > > For many decades, conservative citizens and like-minded political leaders > (starting with President Calvin Coolidge) have been denigrated by the > vilest of lies and characterizations from hordes of liberals who now won't > even admit that they are liberals--because the word connotes such moral > stink and political silliness. As a class, liberals no longer are merely > the vigorous opponents of the Right; they are spiteful enemies of > civilization's core decency and traditions. > > Defamation, never envisioned by our Founding Fathers as being protected by > the First Amendment, flourishes and passes today for acceptable political > discourse. Movies, magazines, newspapers, radio/TV programs, plays, > concerts, public schools, colleges, and most other public vehicles openly > traffic in slander and libel. Hollywood salivated over the idea of placing > another golden Oscar into Michael Moore'sfat hands, for his Fahrenheit 9/11 > jeremiad, the most bogus, deceitful film documentary since Herr Hitler and > Herr Goebbels gave propaganda a bad name. > > When they tire of showering conservative victims with ideological mud, > liberals promote the only other subjects with which they feel > conversationally comfortable: Obscenity and sexual perversion. It's as if > the genes of liberals have rendered them immune to all forms of filth. > > As a final insult, liberal lawyers and judges have become locusts of the > Left, conspiring to destroy democracy itself by excreting statutes and > courtroom tactics that fertilize electoral fraud and sprout fields of > vandals who will cast undeserved and copious ballots on Election Day. > > The truth is, America is not just broken--it is becoming irreparable. If > you believe that recent years of uncivil behavior are burdensome, imagine > the likelihood of a future in which all bizarre acts are the norm, and a > government-booted foot stands permanently on your face. > > That is why the unthinkable must become thinkable. If the so-called "Red > States" (those that voted for George W. Bush) cannot be respected or at > least tolerated by the "Blue States" (those that voted for Al Gore and John > Kerry), then the most disparate of them must live apart--not by secession > of the former (a majority), but by expulsion of the latter. Here is how to > do it. > > Having been amended only 17 times since 10 vital amendments (the Bill of > Rights) were added at the republic's inception, the U.S. Constitution is > not easily changed, primarily because so many states (75%, now 38 of 50) > must agree. Yet, there are 38 states today that may be inclined to adopt, > let us call it, a "Declaration of Expulsion," that is, a specific > constitutional amendment to kick out the systemically troublesome states > and those trending rapidly toward anti-American, if not outright > subversive, behavior. The 12 states that must go: California, Illinois, New > York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode > Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware. Only the remaining 38 states > would retain the name, "United States of America." The 12 expelled mobs > could call themselves the "Dirty Dozen," or individually keep their > identity and go their separate ways, probably straight to Hell. > > A difficult-to-pass constitutional amendment, however, is not necessary. > There is an equally lawful route that mercifully would be both easier and > faster. Inasmuch as Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution specifies > that "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union," it is > reasonable that the same congressional majority may expel a state from the > Union. Is there, after all, any human organization in existence (including > a family or law firm) that may not disown, disinherit, ostracize, alienate > or expel diabolical members? Whether the nation is purged of these 12 > states via the Constitution or statute, the process of elimination must > begin now, for the need of societal detoxification has waxed so > overwhelmingly clear. > > Examine the "Mostly Mainstream 38" and "Fringe 12." Of the 50 states, Bush > won 30 in the 2000 presidential election against Gore, and 31 in 2004 > against Kerry. More dramatic is the huge disparity among counties. Of 3,112 > counties nationwide, Bush in 2000, for example, won 2,434, a crushing 78% > majority. (In the counties composing "Bush USA" live approximately 150 > million persons; in the 678 of "Gore/Kerry USA," 140 million.) Gore/Kerry > denizens are concentrated in the metropolises of the East and West Coasts > and those big cities on the Great Lakes or Mississippi River. Other > significant pockets of ultraliberal extremists may be found in > intellectually incestuous college towns and pro-big-government state > capitals, along the estranged and overwhelmed Mexican border, and in > Dixie's welfare-addicted Cotton Belt. > > The demographics revealed by the two most recent presidential elections > are radically different and have resulted in "Two Americas" (but not the > simplistic "Two Americas" [one rich, one poor] envisioned by > Kerry'sMarxist-tongued running mate, John Edwards): > * BUSH USA is predominantly white; devoutly Christian (mostly > Protestant); openly, vigorously heterosexual; an open land of single-family > homes and ranches; economically sound (except for a few farms), but not > drunk with cyberworld business development, and mainly English-speaking, > with a predilection for respectfully uttering "yes, ma'am" and "yes, sir." > > > > * GORE/KERRY USA is ethnically diverse; multi-religious, > irreligious or nastily antireligious; more sexually liberated (if not in > actual practice, certainly in attitude); awash with condo canyons and other > high-end real estate bordered by sprawling, squalid public housing or > neglected private homes, decidedly short of middle-class neighborhoods; > both high tech and oddly primitive in its commerce; very artsy, and > Babelesque, with abnormally loud speakers. > Bush USA also is far safer, its murder rate being about 16% of the > homicidal binge that plagues Gore/Kerry USA--2.1 per 100,000 residents, > compared with 13.2 per 100,000 (from a study by Professor Joseph Olson, > Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota). > > A downsized, post-expulsion United States still would be geographically > big enough (and personally generous enough) to welcome millions of > authentic refugees from the ousted former states, real Americans who crave > lower taxes, smaller government, safer neighborhoods, more secure borders, > greater moral leadership, and all the other aspects of a markedly better > society-- one that spawns harmony, not cacophony; excellence, not > dependence; justice, not histrionics; education, not brainwashing; > enterprise, not welfare, and Godliness, not devilishness. As for the dozen > ex-American states, they could always petition the UN and EU for foreign > aid. Moreover, with any good luck (or bon chance), socialist Canada would > annex our jettisoned territory, eh? > > > Still Relevant After All These Years > > Language of the 1776 Declaration of Independence that rings true today for > expulsion: > > When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to > dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another . . . > > > Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the > consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes > destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to > abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such > principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem > most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness . . . > > > Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not > be changed for light and transient causes . . . but when a long train of > abuses . . . evinces a design to reduce them [the people] under absolute > Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such > Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. > > Language of Barry Goldwater, 1964 Republican presidential nominee that > also rings true: > > > Sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off > the eastern seaboard and let it float out to sea. > > > ---------- > > > Copyright ) 2004 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.? > > -- From nobody at dizum.com Thu Nov 4 04:40:04 2004 From: nobody at dizum.com (Nomen Nescio) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 13:40:04 +0100 (CET) Subject: This Memorable Day Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 James A. Donald: > You are quite right, it is unjust that people like Bin Laden are so > immensely rich with oil wealth. To remedy this problem, Bush > should confiscate the Middle Eastern oil reserves. > > You are using stale old communist rhetoric - but today's terrorists > no longer not even pretend to fight on behalf of the poor and > oppressed. This was quite lame and doesn't really deserve a response. To label any argument that points out the obvious circumstance that injustice feeds hatred as communist propaganda, is really only ridiculous, even if it's also dangerously incompetent and as such no real laughing matter. Why do you mention Bin Laden anyway? There are thousands of bigger and smaller groups around the world (they exists in every country more or less) that we'd label as terrorists in the western part of the world. You think every one of these hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of recruits and followers are millionaires? Fantastically lame comment to a real and important issue. Should we take you seriously when you write these childish rants? I don't know what to fear the most, the dangerous ignorance of those of your kind or what dictatorial rulers may accomplish using your ignorant kind as followers who do not question the truths from the authorities. Hitler did it in the 30's election where some 37% voted for the nazis, in a democratic multi-party election I might add. Some of the ingrediences present then in Hitler's rhetoric are also present today in Bush's rhetoric, even though I don't mean to make the comparison . We just cannot afford to be this naive. I can't help thinking about the fact that we usually portray Americans as a religious and church going people. Perhaps some 25% attend church on a somewhat regular basis. To make matters worse those people seem to vote for Bush(?). One can't help wonder if they're literate and if they actually read the bible and it's message of love, understanding, forgiveness and compassion for their fellow man. May god bless the world, we may need it. Johnny Doelittle Men willingly believe what they wish. (Julius Caesar) There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity. (von Goethe) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: Tom Ridge Special v1.01 iQA/AwUBQYoO4jVaKWz2Ji/mEQKzWACfTEUN6ENT9/kbzMEOQVuvM4txtpIAnRI2 pU5RbBMeBggUCWf2ZW4rBQYG =EiIW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From ocorrain at yahoo.com Thu Nov 4 06:11:39 2004 From: ocorrain at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Tiarn=E1n_=D3_Corr=E1in?=) Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 14:11:39 +0000 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: <41892D53.6050207@echeque.com> (James A. Donald's message of "Wed, 03 Nov 2004 11:11:15 -0800") References: <41892D53.6050207@echeque.com> Message-ID: "James A. Donald" writes: > When it came to the part of the war that was purely a public good, > conquering the German and Japanese homelands, America did indeed bear > almost the whole burden, but when it came to defending Australia > against the Japanese, the Australians bore the major burden, and > similarly for most other battlefields outside of the aggressors' > homelands. Nonsense. The Russians (for example) conquered Hitler's capital, Berlin. And I believe the Russian zone in Germany was larger than any of the others, reflecting the fact that Stalin bore most of entire burden of defeating Germany, uncomfortable as it may be. -- Tiarnan From nobody at dizum.com Thu Nov 4 05:40:05 2004 From: nobody at dizum.com (Nomen Nescio) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 14:40:05 +0100 (CET) Subject: This Memorable Day Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 R.A. Hettinga: > Are you high, junior? Or is it just your politics that sound so... > sophomoric? > Communism, Fuck Yeah!!! States are People Too!!!! Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. (Euripides) You too. Sad it is. Howcome the Americans became so egocentrical and cynical that anyone who dares to speak up and support compassion for his fellow man automatically is a communist? It's a sincere question, no doubt in my mind that we won't get a sincere answer though. Reading your email actually reminds me of those of Tim May, he also seemed to be full of bigotry and hatred and deeply disliked anyone who were unfortunate enough to be poor. > Our culture -- yours, too, bunky, since I bet you don't shit into a > hole in the floor and pray 5 times a day for, as Hanson > appropriately No I don't shit into a hole, but I can still try to be unbiased and extend a though or two to other people who are not so fortunate as we are to be born in the rich part of the world. > Ah. That's right. I'm not "nuanced" enough. It's too *complicated* > for anyone who didn't take your sophomore (cryptomarxist) "History > Studies" class, or whatever. Please. To me it's enough to at least try to understand and try live by the spirit of the Bible. It's also quite ironical that all those right wing voters actually read communist propaganda in church, since that is the logical conclusion of your arguments made here. > There we go. Wisdom from a thug. How about this thug, instead, kid, > quoted just about as much out of context as you have yours: > > "When the hares made speeches in the assembly and demanded that all > should have equality, the lions replied, "Where are your claws and > teeth?" -- attributed to Antisthenes in Aristotle, 'Politics', > 3.7.2 > > Oh. That's right. One shouldn't read Aristotle. He was a White Male > Oppressor... You like quotes, ok here I have a small collection for you, maybe one or two of them qualifies as white oppressors too, I don't know. Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. (Nietzsche) An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens. (Thomas Jefferson) I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts. (Abraham Lincoln) It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. (Voltaire) What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? (Mahatma Gandhi) Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. (Martin Luther King) > Sheesh. When will September ever end? In my calendar it's November already, I don't know about yours. Johnny Doelittle -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: Tom Ridge Special v1.01 iQA/AwUBQYoOvDVaKWz2Ji/mEQLUvgCfZJiR4Nmtvpe00RHmsfJujf1opfYAn289 PIgwc3xyE+/RolLAFBqAc6Ks =cwYX -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From hal at finney.org Thu Nov 4 15:01:15 2004 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 15:01:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: Your source code, for sale Message-ID: <20041104230115.6A1CD57E2A@finney.org> "Tyler Durden" writes: > So my newbie-style question is, is there an eGold that can be verified, but > not accessed, until a 'release' code is sent? > > In other words, say I'm buying some hacker-ed code and pay in egold. I don't > want them to be able to 'cash' the gold until I have the code. Meanwhile, > they will want to see that the gold is at least "there", even if they can't > cash it yet. > > Is there a way to send a 'release' to an eGold (or other) payment? Better > yet, a double simultaneous release feature makes thing even more > interesting. I've been thinking about how to do this kind of thing with ecash. One project I'm hoping to work on next year is a P2P gambling game (like poker or something) using my rpow.net which is a sort of play-money ecash. You'd like to be able to do bets and have some kind of reasonable assurance that the other guy would pay up if he loses. In the case of your problem there is the issue of whether the source code you are buying is legitimate. Only once you have inspected it and satisfied yourself that it will suit your needs would you be willing to pay. But attaining that assurance will require examing the code in such detail that maybe you will decide that you don't need to pay. You could imagine a trusted third party who would inspect the code and certify it, saying "the source code with hash XXX appears to be legitimate Cisco source code". Then they could send you the code bit by bit and incrementally show that it matches the specified hash, using a crypto protocol for gradual release of secrets. You could simultaneously do a gradual release of some payment information in the other direction. If you don't have a TTP, one idea for using ecash is Markus Jakobsson's "Ripping Coins for a Fair Exchange". Basically you withdraw ecash from your account and in effect "rip it in half" and give half to the seller. Now he gives you the product and you give him the other half of the coin. The idea is that once you have given him the "ripped" ecash ("torn" would be a better word because ripping means something else today), you are out the value of the cash. You have no more incentive to cheat, as giving him the other half won't cost you anything additional. (Even without ecash, a service like egold could mimic this functionality. You'd create an escrow account with two passwords, one known to each party. Only with both passwords could data be withdrawn from the account. Then the buyer would transfer funds into this account. After receiving the goods, the buyer would send his password to the seller.) The problem is that if the source code you are purchasing is bogus, or if the other side doesn't come through, you're screwed because you've lost the value of the torn cash. The other side doesn't gain anything by this fraud, but they harm you, and if they are malicious that might be enough. And likewise you might be malicious and harm them by refusing to give them your half of the coin even after you have received the goods. Again, this doesn't benefit you, you're still out the money, but maybe you like causing trouble. Another idea along these lines is gradual payment for gradual release of the goods. You pay 10% of the amount and they give you 10% of the source code. You pay another 10% and you get the next 10% of the source, and so on. (Or it could be nonlinear; maybe they give out half the code for free, but the final 10% requires a large payment.) The idea is that you can sample and make sure they do appear to have the real thing with a fairly small investment. If there is some mechanism for the seller to have a reputation (like Advogato's perhaps, with some spoofing immunity) then the problem is easier; the seller won't want to screw buyers because it hurts his rep. In that case it may be reasonable to ask the buyer to pay in advance, perhaps using the partial payment system just discussed. These various ideas all have tradeoffs, and in general this kind of problem is hard to solve because of the complexity of what constitutes a successful transaction. A reputation system helps a great deal to resolve the issues, but opens up problems of its own. The betting problem I want to work on is relatively easy because there is no ambiguity about who wins, but even then it is hard to make sure that neither party can maliciously harm the other. Hal F. From ianf at dreamscape.com.au Wed Nov 3 21:10:19 2004 From: ianf at dreamscape.com.au (Ian Farquhar) Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 16:10:19 +1100 Subject: "Scan design called portal for hackers" In-Reply-To: References: <3.0.5.32.20041028232133.00867a30@pop.west.cox.net> Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.2.20041104160643.072a1458@mail.cia.com.au> At 09:30 PM 2/11/2004, Peter Gutmann wrote: >The JTAG interface is your (that is, the reverse engineer's) friend. This is >why some security devices let you disconnect it using a security-fuse type >mechanism before you ship your product. Of course that only works if (a) the >device allows it, (b) you remember to activate it, and (c) your attacker isn't >sufficiently motivated/funded to use something like microprobing or a FIB >workstation to bypass the disconnect. I've heard comments about using laser scribes (ie. the types which used to be used to program fuse links on nonce-style "serial number" registers) being used to totally disconnect and/or destroy BIST circuitry from the rest of the chip in "sensitive" devices. Of course, this wouldn't prevent a microprobing attack, but it certainly makes sure the security fuse hasn't been forgotten. Ian. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Thu Nov 4 13:58:34 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 16:58:34 -0500 Subject: Your source code, for sale Message-ID: Hum. So my newbie-style question is, is there an eGold that can be verified, but not accessed, until a 'release' code is sent? In other words, say I'm buying some hacker-ed code and pay in egold. I don't want them to be able to 'cash' the gold until I have the code. Meanwhile, they will want to see that the gold is at least "there", even if they can't cash it yet. Is there a way to send a 'release' to an eGold (or other) payment? Better yet, a double simultaneous release feature makes thing even more interesting. -TD >From: "R.A. Hettinga" >To: cryptography at metzdowd.com, cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Your source code, for sale >Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 19:24:43 -0500 > > > > - ADTmag.com > >Your source code, for sale > >By Mike Gunderloy > >Well, maybe not yet. But what does the future hold for those who consider >their source code an important proprietary asset? > >Halloween this year featured more scary stuff than just ghosts and ghouls. >It was also the day (at least in the Pacific time zone) when the Source >Code Club posted their second Newsletter in a public Usenet group. Despite >their innocent-sounding name, the Source Code Club is a group of hackers >who are offering to sell the source to commercial products. Their current >menu of source code for sale looks like this: > * Cisco Pix 6.3.1 - $24,000 > * Enterasys Dragon IDS - $19.200 > * Napster - $12,000 > >They also claim to have the source code for many other packages that they >haven't announced publicly. "If you are requesting something from a Fortune >100 company, there is a good chance that we might already have it, they >say. Now, you might think this business is blatantly illegal, and no doubt >it is. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's impossible. They're posting >their newsletter to Usenet, probably from an Internet cafe somewhere, so >that's not traceable. They'll take orders the same way, and require orders >to be encrypted using their PGP key, which is at least reasonably >unbreakable at the moment. (As of this writing, I don't see any encrypted >messages posted to the newsgroup they use, though). For payment, they're >using e-gold, which claims to protect the anonymity of its account holders. > >Now, it seems reasonably likely that the Source Code Club folks will >eventually get caught; going up against Cisco's resources displays at least >a strong conviction of invulnerability. But even if these guys get caught, >there are deeper issues here. Ten years ago, no one could have dreamed of >trying to set up such a business. Ten years from now, advances in >cryptography, more forms of currency circulating on the Internet, and >improvements in anonymity software are likely to make it impossible to >catch a similar operation. > >What will it mean when hacker groups can in fact do business this way with >impunity? First, it's important to note that the ability to sell wares >anonymously won't necessarily imply the ability to get inventory. Your best >defense against having your own source code leaked is to pay careful >attention to its physical security. These days, if I were developing an >important commercial product, I'd make sure there was no path between my >development or build machines and the public Internet. Hackers can do lots >of things, but they still can't leap over physical disconnections. Second, >I'd use software that prevents temporary storage devices (like USB sticks) >from connecting to the network, and keep CD and DVD burners out of the >development boxes as well. > >It's also worth making sure that your business doesn't depend entirely on >source code. While the intellectual property that goes into making software >is certainly a valuable asset, it shouldn't be your only asset. Think about >ancillary services like training, support, and customization in addition to >simply selling software. > >Finally, note that the Source Code Club business model is based on taking >advantage of people wanting to know what's in the software that they >purchase. About the pix code, they say "Many intelligence >agencies/government organizations will want to know if those 1's and 0's in >the pix image really are doing what was advertised. You must ask yourself >how well you trust the pix images you download to your appliance from >cisco.com." Microsoft (among other companies) has demonstrated how to >remove this particular fear factor from customers: share your source code >under controlled circumstances. That doesn't mean that you need to adapt an >open source model, but when a big customer comes calling, why not walk >their engineers through how things work and let them audit their own areas >of concern? > >Given the shifting landscape of intellectual property, and the threat from >groups such as the Source Code Club, these are matters you need to think >about sooner rather than later. Otherwise you may wake up some morning and >find that your major asset has vanished without your even knowing it was in >danger. > > >Mike Gunderloy, MCSE, MCSD .NET, MCDBA is an independent software >consultant and author working in eastern Washington. He's the editor of >ADT's Developer Central newsletter and author of numerous books and >articles. You can reach him at MikeG1 at larkfarm.com. > >This article originally appeared in the >November 2004 issue of Application Development Trends. > > >-- >----------------- >R. A. Hettinga >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation >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' _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 4 13:59:33 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 16:59:33 -0500 Subject: File-sharing network thrives beneath the radar Message-ID: Yahoo! Thursday November 4, 3:01 AM LIVEWIRE - File-sharing network thrives beneath the radar By Adam Pasick LONDON (Reuters) - A file-sharing program called BitTorrent has become a behemoth, devouring more than a third of the Internet's bandwidth, and Hollywood's copyright cops are taking notice. For those who know where to look, there's a wealth of content, both legal -- such as hip-hop from the Beastie Boys and video game promos -- and illicit, including a wide range of TV shows, computer games and movies. Average users are taking advantage of the software's ability to cheaply spread files around the Internet. For example, when comedian Jon Stewart made an incendiary appearance on CNN's political talk show "Crossfire," thousands used BitTorrent to share the much-discussed video segment. Even as lawsuits from music companies have driven people away from peer-to-peer programs like KaZaa, BitTorrent has thus far avoided the ire of groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America. But as BitTorrent's popularity grows, the service could become a target for copyright lawsuits. According to British Web analysis firm CacheLogic, BitTorrent accounts for an astounding 35 percent of all the traffic on the Internet -- more than all other peer-to-peer programs combined -- and dwarfs mainstream traffic like Web pages. "I don't think Hollywood is willing to let it slide, but whether they're able to (stop it) is another matter," Bram Cohen, the programmer who created BitTorrent, told Reuters. John Malcolm, director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the MPAA, said that his group is well aware of the vast amounts of copyrighted material being traded via BitTorrent. "It's a very efficient delivery system for large files, and it's being used and abused by a hell of a lot of people," he told Reuters. "We're studying our options, as we do with all new technologies which are abused by people to engage in theft." FOR GOOD OR EVIL BitTorrent, which is available for free on http://bittorrent.com, can be used to distribute legitimate content and to enable copyright infringement on a massive scale. The key is to understand how the software works. Let's say you want to download a copy of this week's episode of "Desperate Housewives." Rather than downloading the actual digital file that contains the show, instead you would download a small file called a "torrent" onto your computer. When you open that file on your computer, BitTorrent searches for other users that have downloaded the same "torrent." BitTorrent's "file-swarming" software breaks the original digital file into fragments, then those fragments are shared between all of the users that have downloaded the "torrent." Then the software stitches together those fragments into a single file that a users can view on their PC. Sites like Slovenia-based Suprnova (http://www.suprnova.org) offer up thousands of different torrents without storing the shows themselves. Suprnova is a treasure trove of movies, television shows, and pirated games and software. Funded by advertising, it is run by a teen-age programmer who goes only by the name Sloncek, who did not respond to an e-mailed interview request. Enabling users to share copyrighted material illicitly may put Suprnova and its users on shaky legal ground. "They're doing something flagrantly illegal, but getting away with it because they're offshore," said Cohen. He is not eager to get into a battle about how his creation is used. "To me, it's all bits," he said. But Cohen has warned that BitTorrent is ill-suited to illegal activities, a view echoed by John Malcolm of MPAA. "People who use these systems and think they're anonymous are mistaken," Malcolm said. Asked if he thought sites like Suprnova were illegal, he said: "That's still an issue we're studying, that reasonable minds can disagree on," he said. GOING LEGIT Meanwhile, BitTorrent is rapidly emerging as the preferred means of distributing large amounts of legitimate content such as versions of the free computer operating system Linux, and these benign uses may give it some legal protection. "Almost any software that makes it easy to swap copyrighted files is ripe for a crackdown BitTorrent's turn at bat will definitely happen," said Harvard University associate law professor Jonathan Zittrain. "At least under U.S. law, it's a bit more difficult to find the makers liable as long as the software is capable of being used for innocent uses, which I think (BitTorrent) surely is." Among the best legitimate sites for movies and music: -- Legal Torrents (http://www.legaltorrents.com/), which includes a wide selection of electronic music. It also has the Wired Magazine Creative Commons CD, which has songs from artists like the Beastie Boys who agreed to release some of their songs under a more permissive copyright that allows free distribution and remixing. -- Torrentocracy (http://torrentocracy.com/torrents/) has videos of the U.S. presidential debates and other political materials. -- File Soup (http://www.filesoup.com) offers open-source software and freeware, music from artists whose labels don't belong to the Recording Industry Association of America trade group, and programs from public television stations like PBS or the BBC. -- Etree (http://bt.etree.org) is for devotees of "trade-friendly" bands like Phish and the Dead, who encourage fans to share live recordings, usually in the form of large files that have been minimally compressed to maintain sound quality. Email this article to your friend - View most popular Prev Story: Web calls may be more popular than thought - survey ( Reuters) Next Story: Net banking fraudsters step up the "phishing" scam ( Reuters) More Technology Stories 7 Time Warner's AOL unit to cut 700 jobs - source ( Reuters) 7 Time Warner's AOL unit to cut 700 jobs - WashPost ( Reuters) -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From bill.stewart at pobox.com Thu Nov 4 18:34:39 2004 From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart) Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 18:34:39 -0800 Subject: Love It or Leave It Message-ID: <6.0.3.0.0.20041104183355.0408ce48@pop.idiom.com> Bob continues to forward entertaining and occasionally insightful articles to the list. From the bluesy side of the fence, Moby wrote: > can someone remind me why secession is not an option at this point? Meanwhile, on the Commie-colored side of the fence, Mike Thompson of HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE took several weeks to write a "modest proposal" to kick the states that didn't get with the program out of the union. Those of us who remember the Vietnam-era redneck taunt about "America: Love It or Leave It" also remember that if anybody *did* leave, the right wing got immensely offended by it and wanted to hunt them traitors down like dawgs. Then of course there was that unpleasantness of the War Between the States, aka the War of Northern Aggression, in which the Red States left because they didn't like the liberal northerners and their activist judges and politicians disrupting the core of their traditional values, and the Blue States insisted that Nationalism was more important than the right to secede and attacked them. So no, it probably won't fly... Unfortunately, I have to agree with the critics of Kerry who said that he was aloof and out of touch with Middle America; his campaign clearly didn't recognize that Bush had succeeded at telling them that Kerry didn't share their values, and Kerry didn't realize it and demonstrate otherwise, nor did he do an adequate job of talking about Democratic values in a way that would draw them in. And the Republicans and the Democrat establishment had pretty much gotten together to take out Howard Dean, who was building an actual political party inside the hollowed-out shell of the current party. ---- Bill Stewart bill.stewart at pobox.com From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 4 15:42:05 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:42:05 -0500 Subject: OK, It's Done Message-ID: Moby Tour Diary Updates OK, It's Done 11/3/2004 - New York City can someone remind me why secession is not an option at this point? i mean let's be realistic, we live in a divided country. can't we have the breakaway republics of 'north-east-istan' and 'pacific-stan'? wouldn't the red states be happier without us? we could still travel freely and trade freely with them, but can't we just leave? then you could have 3 countries: northeastistan pacificstan redstateistan one other option would be for us to all join the republican party en masse and make it socially liberal and fiscally conservative(as opposed to it's current 'socially puritanical/fiscally insane' status). ok, it's done. john kerry has seceded. if you need us, my friends and i will be drunk for the next 4 years. -moby << | Close | >> Email to a friend -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 4 15:42:23 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:42:23 -0500 Subject: 'dear rest of america, Message-ID: Moby Tour Diary Updates Dear.... 11/4/2004 - New York City 'dear rest of america, can't you please let little old new york city secede from the rest of the nation? please? we're very little and you probably wouldn't even notice that we were gone. please? pretty please? how about if we buy you guys donkeys? will you let us secede if we buy each and every person in the rest of the united states a donkey? you'd like to have your own friendly donkey, wouldn't you? wouldn't you rather have a friendly donkey than a small insignificant city that no one really likes anyway? we will be good neighbors, and you can come visit whenever you like(considering you have a valid passport). again, please? thank you very much, and i look forward to hearing your response. -moby' << | Close | >> Email to a friend -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 4 15:42:29 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 18:42:29 -0500 Subject: Dear Canada Message-ID: Moby Tour Diary Updates Dear Canada 11/4/2004 - New York City 'dear canada, now, more than ever, your neighbor to the south(aka-the blue states)needs you. most of us living in the northern and western parts of the united states don't feel very connected to the rest of the u.s, so can we bring our states and become part of canada? we have a lot of money and some interesting cities and we promise not to be too much trouble. the benefits to you: a-in one fell swoop you can have southern california and new york city! surfing in canada! suddenly the u.n is on canadian soil! broadway is suddenly in canada! you could then say that canada is the birthplace of jazz and hip-hop! b-money. cold hard cash. the red states in the u.s might have the voting power, but guess who has the money? yup, your friendly neighborhood blue states. so when/if you accept our offer you will instantly become the richest country in the world! that sounds pretty good, right? c-karma. accepting this offer will give you more good karma than you'd know what to do with(because you would instantly make 120 million people VERY happy). so you get warm beaches, tons of cash, and good karma. who can say no to that? please let us know if you accept the offer. given our enthusiasm to join canada it's safe to say that the details of the offer could probably be worked out in an afternoon. thank you very much, moby p.s-just to put your minds at ease, we do know that we can't bring our assault weapons with us.' << | Close | >> Email to a friend -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From measl at mfn.org Thu Nov 4 18:05:34 2004 From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 20:05:34 -0600 (CST) Subject: Finding Galt's Gulch (fwd) Message-ID: <20041104200518.V57518@ubzr.zsa.bet> So, it's the night of the day of the morning after, and all around us are masses milling in despair over the destruction of freedom that has occurred here over the last four years. Given that the US was the "Gulch" to the brain drain of the Soviet Union, where does a true capitalist, or even just a closet objectivist flee today? France? Spain? The "EU"? Where does one go today, if they are unwilling to participate in the Failed Experiment? (BTW: No, Lichtenstein does not accept immigrants, and yes, I have reverified this recently). -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin at mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time From shaddack at ns.arachne.cz Thu Nov 4 11:28:42 2004 From: shaddack at ns.arachne.cz (Thomas Shaddack) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 20:28:42 +0100 (CET) Subject: campus network admins In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0411042012100.12336@somehost.domainz.com> On Thu, 4 Nov 2004 cypher at tediouspath.com wrote: > > I recently violated the network user agreement (they packet-sniffed and > got the username/password for my FTP server and didn't like what I was > sharing with myself) and was informed by the admin that I am now 'under > observation' and that they "hope I don't like privacy". Considering > this admin was an NSA employee, I tend to take that threat a little > seriously. Depending on how trivial the violation was, it may be worth checking the FTP server logs, identifying the bad ones and collecting the evidence, and eventually, preferably after consultation with a lawyer, nail the admin with hacking charges. (Alternatively just threat with the same, with a remark that you hope he likes lawyers. I suppose you're located in the Land of Lawyers.) If it is better to play a repentant sinner, or go to a confrontation, depends on many more factors unknown to us, including the exact text of the network AUPs, the personality profile of the admin (he may be just power-tripping at you, but the severity of his threats depends on the exact content of your disk which you didn't specify), and other factors like if you are an employee or a student and how much risk you want to go through. Violating AUPs with cleartext protocols isn't a good idea, especially with nazi admins. Next time you may like to prefer ssh/scp, or WebDAV over HTTPS, or a simple password-protected upload/download interface written in PHP or as a CGI script, again over HTTPS (you may like to use one-time passwords for added security). If the admin in question can have physical access to your machine, put the sensitive/objectionable data on an encrypted partition. > Two questions: > > 1) I'm assuming they can legally look at anything that comes in or out > of my computer, but is that the case? Can they look at my computer > itself, or take me off the network for the private contents of my > computer? That depends a lot. If you're in a suitable uni campus, you may try to consult with local law students. This question is something a mere technician can't reliably answer. > 2) Is there some sort of service I can use to have everything I do on the > network encrypted, such as a tunneling service to the internet? Yes. Depends on what you want to do; if you want to be independent on any special software installed on the computers you're operating from, I suggest a HTTPS server, with a self-signed certificate (cheaper), and manually check its fingerprint when connecting. For upload you may use a web file upload form. Don't neglect the certificate check; the admin may like to start playing games with you and launch MITM attack at your connections. Do the fingerprint check even when the browser claims all is OK. > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > This message was sent from The Tedious Path > Are you ready to travel The Tedious Path? > http://www.tediouspath.com > http://forum.tediouspath.com From jamesd at echeque.com Thu Nov 4 21:13:02 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 21:13:02 -0800 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <418B0BDE.40605@echeque.com> -- Nomen Nescio wrote: > To label any argument that points out the obvious circumstance that > injustice feeds hatred as communist propaganda, is really only > ridiculous, even if it's also dangerously incompetent and as such no > real laughing matter. > > Why do you mention Bin Laden anyway? There are thousands of bigger > and smaller groups around the world (they exists in every country > more or less) that we'd label as terrorists in the western part of > the world. And all of them are instruments of the affluent and well connected. For example Shining Path was not poor peasants, but academics and students. For the most part using terror are not those suffering injustice, and all of them are those inflicting injustice. This is particularly the case with Islamic terror. For the most part it is not those suffering Dhimmi status that engage in terrorism, but those who in their native countries are successful in inflicting Dhimmi status on those of the incorrect religion, and who apply terror in the hope of expanding this success. Al Quaeda attacked westerners because of their considerable success in murdering and raping Afghans. Jemaah Islamiyah because of their considerable success in murdering and raping Timorese and Ambionese. Today's Islamic terrorism, like yesterday's communist terrorism, is the actions of evil men whose considerably privilege and comfort arises from the injustice and oppression that they have successfully inflicted, and that they intend to inflict a great deal more of. Back before the fall of communism, wherever the master's boot smashed into the face of a child, you lot would loudly praise the master, and demonize the child as a CIA agent. Now, after the fall of communism, you are still at it, even though the masters no longer even pretend to be acting to defend the poor and oppressed. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG QeJ5sNOExxqx0Vq7NTG0bDDnwEip8vKbsX9+9d8i 4IDiep3tuDmwKA77n4H3u9nHRV2g6oqOWQkRYfFcW From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 4 18:55:58 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 21:55:58 -0500 Subject: Love It or Leave It In-Reply-To: <6.0.3.0.0.20041104183355.0408ce48@pop.idiom.com> References: <6.0.3.0.0.20041104183355.0408ce48@pop.idiom.com> Message-ID: At 6:34 PM -0800 11/4/04, Bill Stewart wrote: >I have to agree with the critics of Kerry who said >that he was aloof and out of touch with Middle America ... and it's a big middle this year: Of course, there's the "nuanced" version, but, hey, it's a winner-take-all country, ain't it?: Proportional representation is for Europeans, of course... In the meantime "moby" should learn to spell... Channeling Andy Jackson this evening, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz Thu Nov 4 01:31:31 2004 From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) Date: Thu, 04 Nov 2004 22:31:31 +1300 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: <41892D7C.6030309@echeque.com> Message-ID: "James A. Donald" writes: >But it is hardly a matter of "holding out". So far the Pentagon has >shattered the enemy while suffering casualties of about a thousand, We're talking about different things, the War on Bogeymen vs. the War for Oil. In its war on bogeymen, the most notable thing the USG has achieved to date is to create vastly more of them. Its strategy is about as effective as the paras were on Bloody Sunday, i.e. its actions serve mostly as a recruitment drive for the opposition: I swear by Almighty God [...] to fight until we die in the field of red gore of the infidel tyrants and murderers. Of our glorious faith, if spared to fight until not a single trace is left to tell that the Holy soil of our country was trodden by these infidels. Also these robbers and brutes, these unbelievers of our faith, will be driven into the sea, by fire, the knife or by poison cup until we of the true faith clear these infidels from our lands. (Whoever wrote the original was definitely no English lit major). Peter. From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 4 20:06:57 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 23:06:57 -0500 Subject: Number One on Blacknet -- with a Bullet Message-ID: The Sun Newspaper Online - UK's biggest selling newspaper Thursday, November 4, 2004 By DEREK BROWN Deputy Showbiz Editor RAPPER Eminem's new album Encore has been leaked on to the internet. The Real Slim Shady star's hotly-anticipated fourth album was stolen nearly two weeks before its release date. The theft has sparked panic at his record label Interscope who have brought forward the worldwide release date. An illegal website called RNS put the entire album on the net two days ago. Thousands of fans instantly downloaded it and could pass it on to countless others. It could lose the 32-year-old rapper MILLIONS of pounds in royalties from CD sales. Interscope bosses were locked in meetings all day yesterday. They decided to bring forward Encore's release date by three days to next Friday November 12. Unveiling the album on a Friday rather than a Monday is virtually unprecedented - and a sign of how panicked bosses are. An insider at the label said: "This is catastrophic news. Security has been so tight on this album nobody can figure out how the album has got out there. "We now think thousands of people around the world are downloading it. "This is a very, very serious issue for us." Encore features 20 tracks with titles including Mosh, Puke and Big Weenie. Eighties star Martika features on Like Toy Soldiers. Despite the theft, experts still predict Encore - the follow up to The Eminem Show - will be the biggest selling album in the world this year. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From measl at mfn.org Thu Nov 4 21:30:13 2004 From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson) Date: Thu, 4 Nov 2004 23:30:13 -0600 (CST) Subject: Your source code, for sale In-Reply-To: <20041104230115.6A1CD57E2A@finney.org> References: <20041104230115.6A1CD57E2A@finney.org> Message-ID: <20041104232925.F57518@ubzr.zsa.bet> On Thu, 4 Nov 2004, Hal Finney wrote: > Another idea along these lines is gradual payment for gradual release > of the goods. You pay 10% of the amount and they give you 10% of the > source code. You pay another 10% and you get the next 10% of the source, > and so on. Just as an aside, this is in fact how it was being initially marketed. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin at mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time From Michael_Heyman at McAfee.com Fri Nov 5 04:20:24 2004 From: Michael_Heyman at McAfee.com (Michael_Heyman at McAfee.com) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 07:20:24 -0500 Subject: Your source code, for sale Message-ID: <5856CEA9F0E6244CB2A8F77162041781D19E9C@rocexmb1.corp.nai.org> > From: owner-cryptography at metzdowd.com > [mailto:owner-cryptography at metzdowd.com] On Behalf Of Finney, Hal (CR) > > [SNIP discussion on ripping cash] > > The problem is that if the source code you are purchasing is > bogus, or if the other side doesn't come through, you're > screwed because you've lost the value of the torn cash. The > other side doesn't gain anything by this fraud, but they harm > you, and if they are malicious that might be enough. > Quick fix for seller incentive: the seller rips some amount of their own cash in such a way that they cannot recover it unless the buyer provides the remainder of the buyer's ripped cash. -Michael Heyman From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 05:17:45 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 08:17:45 -0500 Subject: Cryptography: Beginning with a Simple Communication Game Message-ID: Click the link to see various formulae. Cheers, RAH ------- InformIT Cryptography: Beginning with a Simple Communication Game Date: Nov 5, 2004 By Wenbo Mao. Sample Chapter is provided courtesy of Prentice Hall PTR. In this introductory chapter from his book, Wenbo Mao uses a simple game to demonstrate the complexity of cryptography, and its utility for your business. We begin this book with a simple example of applying cryptography to solve a simple problem. This example of cryptographic application serves three purposes from which we will unfold the topics of this book: * To provide an initial demonstration on the effectiveness and practicality of using cryptography for solving subtle problems in applications * To suggest an initial hint on the foundation of cryptography * To begin our process of establishing a required mindset for conducting the development of cryptographic systems for information security To begin with, we shall pose a trivially simple problem and then solve it with an equally simple solution. The solution is a two-party game which is very familiar to all of us. However, we will realize that our simple game soon becomes troublesome when our game-playing parties are physically remote from each other. The physical separation of the game-playing parties eliminates the basis for the game to be played fairly. The trouble then is, the game-playing parties cannot trust the other side to play the game fairly. The need for a fair playing of the game for remote players will "inspire" us to strengthen our simple game by protecting it with a shield of armor. Our strengthening method follows the long established idea for protecting communications over open networks: hiding information using cryptography. After having applied cryptography and reached a quality solution to our first security problem, we shall conduct a series of discussions on the quality criteria for cryptographic systems ('1.2). The discussions will serve as a background and cultural introduction to the areas in which we research and develop technologies for protecting sensitive information. 1.1 A Communication Game Here is a simple problem. Two friends, Alice and Boba, want to spend an evening out together, but they cannot decide whether to go to the cinema or the opera. Nevertheless, they reach an agreement to let a coin decide: playing a coin tossing game which is very familiar to all of us. Alice holds a coin and says to Bob, "You pick a side then I will toss the coin." Bob does so and then Alice tosses the coin in the air. Then they both look to see which side of the coin landed on top. If Bob's choice is on top, Bob may decide where they go; if the other side of the coin lands on top, Alice makes the decision. In the study of communication procedures, a multi-party-played game like this one can be given a "scientific sounding" name: protocol. A protocol is a well-defined procedure running among a plural number of participating entities. We should note the importance of the plurality of the game participants; if a procedure is executed entirely by one entity only then it is a procedure and cannot be called a protocol. 1.1.1 Our First Application of Cryptography Now imagine that the two friends are trying to run this protocol over the telephone. Alice offers Bob, "You pick a side. Then I will toss the coin and tell you whether or not you have won." Of course Bob will not agree, because he cannot verify the outcome of the coin toss. However we can add a little bit of cryptography to this protocol and turn it into a version workable over the phone. The result will become a cryptographic protocol, our first cryptographic protocol in this book! For the time being, let us just consider our "cryptography" as a mathematical function f(x) which maps over the integers and has the following magic properties: Property 1.1: Magic Function f I. For every integer x, it is easy to compute f(x) from x, while given any value f(x) it is impossible to find any information about a pre-image x, e.g., whether x is an odd or even number. Protocol 1.1: Coin Flipping Over Telephone PREMISE Alice and Bob have agreed: i. a "magic function" f with properties specified in Property 1.1 ii. an even number x in f(x) represents HEADS and the other case represents TAILS (* Caution: due to (ii), this protocol has a weakness, see Exercise 1.2 *) 1. Alice picks a large random integer x and computes f(x); she reads f(x) to Bob over the phone; 2. Bob tells Alice his guess of x as even or odd; 3. Alice reads x to Bob; 4. Bob verifies f(x) and sees the correctness/incorrectness of his guess. II. It impossible to find a pair of integers (x, y) satisfying x  y and f(x) = f(y). In Property 1.1, the adjectives "easy" and "impossible" have meanings which need further explanations. Also because these words are related to a degree of difficulty, we should be clear about their quantifications. However, since for now we view the function f as a magic one, it is safe for us to use these words in the way they are used in the common language. In Chapter 4 we will provide mathematical formulations for various uses of "easy" and "impossible" in this book. One important task for this book is to establish various quantitative meanings for "easy," "difficult" or even "impossible." In fact, as we will eventually see in the final technical chapter of this book (Chapter 19) that in our final realization of the coin-flipping protocol, the two uses of "impossible" for the "magic function" in Property 1.1 will have very different quantitative measures. Suppose that the two friends have agreed on the magic function f. Suppose also that they have agreed that, e.g., an even number represents HEADS and an odd number represents TAILS. Now they are ready to run our first cryptographic protocol, Prot 1.1, over the phone. It is not difficult to argue that Protocol "Coin Flipping Over Telephone" works quite well over the telephone. The following is a rudimentary "security analysis." (Warning: the reason for us to quote "security analysis" is because our analysis provided here is far from adequate.) 1.1.1.1 A Rudimentary "Security Analysis" First, from "Property II" of f, Alice is unable to find two different numbers x and y, one is odd and the other even (this can be expressed as x  y (mod 2)) such that f(x) = f(y). Thus, once having read the value f(x) to Bob over the phone (Step 1), Alice has committed to her choice of x and cannot change her mind. That's when Alice has completed her coin flipping. Secondly, due to "Property I" of f, given the value f(x), Bob cannot determine whether the pre-image used by Alice is odd or even and so has to place his guess (in Step 2) as a real guess (i.e., an uneducated guess). At this point, Alice can convince Bob whether he has guessed right or wrong by revealing her pre-image x (Step 3). Indeed, Bob should be convinced if his own evaluation of f(x) (in Step 4) matches the value told by Alice in Step 1 and if he believes that the properties of the agreed function hold. Also, the coin-flipping is fair if x is taken from an adequately large space so Bob could not have a guessing advantage, that is, some strategy that gives him a greater than 50-50 chance of winning. We should notice that in our "security analysis" for Prot 1.1 we have made a number of simplifications and omissions. As a result, the current version of the protocol is far from a concrete realization. Some of these simplifications and omissions will be discussed in this chapter. However, necessary techniques for a proper and concrete realization of this protocol and methodologies for analyzing its security will be the main topics for the remainder of the whole book. We shall defer the proper and concrete realization of Prot 1.1 (more precisely, the "magic function" f) to the final technical chapter of this book (Chapter 19). There, we will be technically ready to provide a formal security analysis on the concrete realization. 1.1.2 An Initial Hint on Foundations of Cryptography Although our first protocol is very simple, it indeed qualifies as a cryptographic protocol because the "magic function" the protocol uses is a fundamental ingredient for modern cryptography: one-way function. The two magic properties listed in Property 1.1 pose two computationally intractable problems, one for Alice, and the other for Bob. From our rudimentary security analysis for Prot 1.1 we can claim that the existence of one-way function implies a possibility for secure selection of recreation venue. The following is a reasonable generalization of this claim: The existence of a one-way function implies the existence of a secure cryptographic system. It is now well understood that the converse of this claim is also true: The existence of a secure cryptographic system implies the existence of a one-way function. It is widely believed that one-way function does exist. Therefore we are optimistic on securing our information. Our optimism is often confirmed by our everyday experience: many processes in our world, mathematical or otherwise, have a one-way property. Consider the following phenomenon in physics (though not an extremely precise analogy for mathematics): it is an easy process for a glass to fall on the floor and break into pieces while dispersing a certain amount of energy (e.g., heat, sound or even some dim light) into the surrounding environment. The reverse process, recollecting the dispersed energy and using it to reintegrate the broken pieces back into a whole glass, must be a very hard problem if not impossible. (If possible, the fully recollected energy could actually bounce the reintegrated glass back to the height where it started to fall!) In Chapter 4 we shall see a class of mathematical functions which provide the needed one-way properties for modern cryptography. 1.1.3 Basis of Information Security: More than Computational Intractability We have just claimed that information security requires certain mathematical properties. Moreover, we have further made an optimistic assertion in the converse direction: mathematical properties imply (i.e., guarantee) information security. However, in reality, the latter statement is not unconditionally true! Security in real world applications depends on many real world issues. Let us explain this by continuing using our first protocol example. We should point out that many important issues have not been considered in our rudimentary security analysis for Prot 1.1. In fact, Prot 1.1 itself is a much simplified specification. It has omitted some details which are important to the security services that the protocol is designed to offer. The omission has prevented us from asking several questions. For instance, we may ask: has Alice really been forced to stick to her choice of x? Likewise, has Bob really been forced to stick to his even-odd guess of x? By "forced," we mean whether voice over telephone is sufficient for guaranteeing the strong mathematical property to take effect. We may also ask whether Alice has a good random number generator for her to acquire the random number x. This quality can be crucially important in a more serious application which requires making a fair decision. All these details have been omitted from this simplified protocol specification and therefore they become hidden assumptions (more on this later). In fact, if this protocol is used for making a more serious decision, it should include some explicit instructions. For example, both participants may consider recording the other party's voice when the value f(x) and the even/odd guess are pronounced over the phone, and replay the record in case of dispute. Often cryptographic systems and protocols, in particular, those introduced by a textbook on cryptography, are specified with simplifications similar to the case in Protocol "Coin Flipping Over Telephone." Simplifications can help to achieve presentation clarity, especially when some agreement may be thought of as obvious. But sometimes a hidden agreement or assumption may be subtle and can be exploited to result in a surprising consequence. This is somewhat ironic to the "presentation clarity" which is originally intended by omitting some details. A violation of an assumption of a security system may allow an attack to be exploited and the consequence can be the nullification of an intended service. It is particularly difficult to notice a violation of a hidden assumption. In '1.2.5 we shall provide a discussion on the importance of explicit design and specification of cryptographic systems. A main theme of this book is to explain that security for real world applications has many application related subtleties which must be considered seriously. 1.1.4 Modern Role of Cryptography: Ensuring Fair Play of Games Cryptography was once a preserve of governments. Military and diplomatic organizations used it to keep messages secret. Nowadays, however, cryptography has a modernized role in addition to keeping secrecy of information: ensuring fair play of "games" by a much enlarged population of "game players." That is part of the reasons why we have chosen to begin this book on cryptography with a communication game. Deciding on a recreation venue may not be seen as a serious business, and so doing it via flipping a coin over the phone can be considered as just playing a small communication game for fun. However, there are many communications "games" which must be taken much more seriously. With more and more business and e-commerce activities being and to be conducted electronically over open communications networks, many cases of our communications involve various kinds of "game playing." (In the Preface of this book we have listed various business and services examples which can be conducted or offered electronically over open networks; all of them involve some interactive actions of the participants by following a set of rules, which can be viewed as "playing communication games".) These "games" can be very important! In general, the "players" of such "games" are physically distant from each other and they communicate over open networks which are notorious for lack of security. The physical distance combined with the lack of security may help and/or encourage some of the "game players" (some of whom can even be uninvited) to try to defeat the rule of game in some clever way. The intention for defeating the rule of game is to try to gain some unentitled advantage, such as causing disclosure of confidential information, modification of data without detection, forgery of false evidence, repudiation of an obligation, damage of accountability or trust, reduction of availability or nullification of services, and so on. The importance of our modern communications in business, in the conduct of commerce and in providing services (and many more others, such as securing missions of companies, personal information, military actions and state affairs) mean that no unentitled advantage should be gained to a player who does not conform the rule of game. In our development of the simple "Coin-Flipping-Over-Telephone" cryptographic protocol, we have witnessed the process whereby an easy-to-sabotage communication game evolves to a cryptographic protocol and thereby offers desired security services. Our example demonstrates the effectiveness of cryptography in maintaining the order of "game playing." Indeed, the use of cryptography is an effective and the only practical way to ensure secure communications over open computers and communications networks. Cryptographic protocols are just communication procedures armored with the use of cryptography and thereby have protective functions designed to keep communications in good order. The endless need for securing communications for electronic commerce, business and services coupled with another need for anticipating the ceaseless temptation of "breaking the rules of the game" have resulted in the existence of many cryptographic systems and protocols, which form the subject matter of this book. 1.2 Criteria for Desirable Cryptographic Systems and Protocols We should start by asking a fundamental question: What is a good cryptographic system/protocol? Undoubtedly this question is not easy to answer! One reason is that there are many answers to it depending on various meanings the word good may have. It is a main task for this book to provide comprehensive answers to this fundamental question. However, here in this first chapter we should provide a few initial answers. 1.2.1 Stringency of Protection Tuned to Application Needs Let us begin with considering our first cryptographic protocol we designed in '1.1.1. We can say that Protocol "Coin Flipping Over Telephone" is good in the sense that it is conceptually very simple. Some readers who may already be familiar with many practical one-way hash functions, such as SHA-1 (see '10.3.1), might further consider that the function f(x) is also easy to implement even in a pocket calculator. For example, an output from SHA-1 is a bit string of length of 160 bits, or 20 bytes (1 byte = 8 bits); using the hexadecimal encoding scheme (see Example 5.17) such an output can be encoded into 40 hexadecimal charactersb and so it is just not too tedious for Alice (Bob) to read (and jot down) over the phone. Such an implementation should also be considered sufficiently secure for Alice and Bob to decide their recreation venue: if Alice wants to cheat, she faces a non-trivial difficulty in order to find x  y (mod 2) with f(x) = f(y); likewise, Bob will also have to face a non-trivial difficulty, that is, given f(x), to determine whether x is even or odd. However, our judgement on the quality of Protocol "Coin Flipping Over Telephone" realized using SHA-1 is based on a level of non-seriousness that the game players expect on the consequence of the game. In many more serious applications (e.g., one which we shall discuss in '1.2.4), a fair coin-flipping primitive for cryptographic use will in general require much stronger one-way and commitment-binding properties than a practical one-way hash function, such as SHA-1, can offer. We should notice that a function with the properties specified in Property 1.1, if we take the word "impossible" literally, is a completely secure one-way function. Such a function is not easily implementable. Worse, even its very existence remains an open question (even though we are optimistic about the existence, see our optimistic view in '1.1.2, we shall further discuss the condition for the existence of a one-way function in Chapter 4). Therefore, for more serious applications of fair coin-flipping, practical hash functions won't be considered good; much more stringent cryptographic techniques are necessary. On the other hand, for deciding a recreation venue, use of heavyweight cryptography is clearly unnecessary or overkill. We should point out that there are applications where a too-strong protection will even prevent an intended security service from functioning properly. For example, Rivest and Shamir propose a micropayment scheme, called MicroMint [242], which works by making use of a known deficiency in an encryption algorithm to their advantage. That payment system exploits a reasonable assumption that only a resourceful service provider (e.g., a large bank or financial institute) is able to prepare a large number of "collisions" under a practical one-way function, and do so economically. This is to say that the service provider can compute k distinct numbers (x1, x2, . . ., xk) satisfying The numbers x1, x2, . . ., xk, are called collision under the one-way function f. A pair of collisions can be checked efficiently since the one-way function can be evaluated efficiently, they can be considered to have been issued by the resourceful service provider and hence can represent a certified value. The Data Encryption Standard (DES, see '7.6) is suggested as a suitable algorithm for implementing such a one-way function ([242]) and so to achieve a relatively small output space (64 binary bits). Thus, unlike in the normal cryptographic use of one-way functions where a collision almost certainly constitutes a successful attack on the system (for example, in the case of Protocol "Coin Flipping Over Telephone"), in MicroMint, collisions are used in order to enable a fancy micropayment service! Clearly, a strong one-way function with a significantly larger output space (i.e., 64 bits, such as SHA-1 with 160 bits) will nullify this service even for a resourceful service provider (in '3.6 we will study the computational complexity for finding collisions under a hash function). Although it is understandable that using heavyweight cryptographic technologies in the design of security systems (for example, wrapping with layers of encryption, arbitrarily using digital signatures, calling for online services from a trusted third party or even from a large number of them) may provide a better feeling that a stronger security may have been achieved (it may also ease the design job), often this feeling only provides a false sense of assurance. Reaching the point of overkill with unnecessary armor is undesirable because in so doing it is more likely to require stronger security assumptions and to result in a more complex system. A complex system can also mean an increased difficulty for security analysis (hence more likelihood to be error-prone) and secure implementation, a poorer performance, and a higher overhead cost for running and maintenance. It is more interesting and a more challenging job to design cryptographic or security systems which use only necessary techniques while achieving adequate security protection. This is an important element for cryptographic and security systems to qualify as good. 1.2.2 Confidence in Security Based on Established "Pedigree" How can we be confident that a cryptographic algorithm or a protocol is secure? Is it valid to say that an algorithm is secure because nobody has broken it? The answer is, unfortunately, no. In general, what we can say about an unbroken algorithm is merely that we do not know how to break it yet. Because in cryptography, the meaning of a broken algorithm sometimes has quantitative measures; if such a measure is missing from an unbroken algorithm, then we cannot even assert whether or not an unbroken algorithm is more secure than a known broken one. Nevertheless, there are a few exceptions. In most cases, the task of breaking a cryptographic algorithm or a scheme boils down to solving some mathematical problems, such as to find a solution to an equation or to invert a function. These mathematical problems are considered "hard" or "intractable." A formal definition for "hard" or "intractable" will be given in Chapter 4. Here we can informally, yet safely, say that a mathematical problem is intractable if it cannot be solved by any known methods within a reasonable length of time. There are a number of well-known intractable problems that have been frequently used as standard ingredients in modern cryptography, in particular, in public-key or asymmetric cryptography (see '8.3-'8.14). For example, in public-key cryptography, intractable problems include the integer factorization problem, the discrete logarithm problem, the Diffie-Hellman problem, and a few associated problems (we will define and discuss these problems in Chapter 8). These problems can be referred to as established "pedigree" ones because they have sustained a long history of study by generations of mathematicians and as a result, they are now trusted as really hard with a high degree of confidence. Today, a standard technique for establishing a high degree of confidence in security of a cryptographic algorithm is to conduct a formal proof which demonstrates that an attack on the algorithm can lead to a solution to one of the accepted "pedigree" hard problems. Such a proof is an efficient mathematical transformation, or a sequence of such transformations, leading from an attack on an algorithm to a solution to a hard problem. Such an efficient transformation is called a reduction which "reduces" an attack to a solution to a hard problem. Since we are highly confident that the resultant solution to the hard problem is unlikely to exist (especially under the time cost measured by the attack and the reduction transformation), we will be able to derive a measurable confidence that the alleged attack should not exist. This way of security proof is therefore named "reduction to contradiction:" an easy solution to a hard problem. Formally provable security, in particular under various powerful attacking model called adaptive attacks, forms an important criterion for cryptographic algorithms and protocols to be regarded as good. We shall use fit-for-application security to name security qualities which are established through formal and reduction-to-contradiction approach under powerful attacking models. As an important topic of this book, we shall study fit-for-application security for many cryptographic algorithms and protocols. 1.2.3 Practical Efficiency When we say that a mathematical problem is efficient or is efficiently solvable, we basically assert that the problem is solvable in time which can be measured by a polynomial in the size of the problem. A formal definition for efficiency, which will let us provide precise measures of this assertion, will be provided in Chapter 4. Without looking into quantitative details of this assertion for the time being, we can roughly say that this assertion divides all the problems into two classes: tractable and intractable. This division plays a fundamental role in the foundations for modern cryptography: a complexity-theoretically based one. Clearly, a cryptographic algorithm must be designed such that it is tractable on the one hand and so is usable by a legitimate user, but is intractable on the other hand and so constitutes a difficult problem for a non-user or an attacker to solve. We should however note that this assertion for solubility covers a vast span of quantitative measures. If a problem's computing time for a legitimate user is measured by a huge polynomial, then the "efficiency" is in general impractical, i.e., can have no value for a practical use. Thus, an important criterion for a cryptographic algorithm being good is that it should be practically efficient for a legitimate user. In specific, the polynomial that measures the resource cost for the user should be small (i.e., have a small degree, the degree of a polynomial will be introduced in Chapter 4). In Chapter 14 we will discuss several pioneering works on provably strong public-key cryptosystems. These works propose public-key encryption algorithms under a common motivation that many basic versions of public-key encryption algorithms are insecure (we name those insecure schemes "textbook crypto" because most textbooks in cryptography introduce them up to their basic and primitive versions; they will be introduced in Part III of this book). However, most pioneering works on provably strong public-key cryptosystems resort to a bit-by-bit encryption method, [125, 210, 241], some even take extraordinary steps of adding proofs of knowledge on the correct encryption of each individual bit [210] plus using public-key authentication framework [241]. While these early pioneering works are important in providing insights to achieve strong security, the systems they propose are in general too inefficient for applications. After Chapter 14, we will further study a series of subsequent works following the pioneering ones on probably strongly secure public-key cryptosystems and digital signature schemes. The cryptographic schemes proposed by these latter works propose have not only strong security, but also practical efficiency. They are indeed very good cryptographic schemes. A cryptographic protocol is not only an algorithm, it is also a communication procedure which involves transmitting of messages over computer networks between different protocol participants under a set of agreed rules. So a protocol has a further dimension for efficiency measure: the number of communication interactions which are often called communication rounds. Usually a step of communication is regarded to be more costly than a step of local computation (typically an execution of a set of computer instructions, e.g. a multiplication of two numbers on a computing device). Therefore it is desirable that a cryptographic protocol should have few communication rounds. The standard efficiency criterion for declaring an algorithm as being efficient is if its running time is bounded by a small polynomial in the size of the problem. If we apply this efficiency criterion to a protocol, then an efficient protocol should have its number of communication rounds bounded by a polynomial of an extremely small degree: a constant (degree 0) or at most a linear (degree 1) function. A protocol with communication rounds exceeding a linear function should not be regarded as practically efficient, that is, no good for any practical use. In '18.2.3 we will discuss some zero-knowledge proof protocols which have communication rounds measured by non-linear polynomials. We should note that those protocols were not proposed for real applications; instead, they have importance in the theory of cryptography and computational complexity. In Chapter 18 we will witness much research effort for designing practically efficient zero-knowledge protocols. 1.2.4 Use of Practical and Available Primitives and Services A level of security which is good for one application needn't be good enough for another. Again, let us use our coin-flipping protocol as an example. In '1.2.1 we have agreed that, if implemented with the use of a practical one-way hash function, Protocol "Coin Flipping Over Telephone" is good enough for Alice and Bob to decide their recreation venue over the phone. However, in many cryptographic applications of a fair coin-flipping primitive, security services against cheating and/or for fairness are at much more stringent levels; in some applications the stringency must be in an absolute sense. For example, in Chapter 18 we will discuss a zero-knowledge proof protocol which needs random bit string input and such random input must be mutually trusted by both proving/verification parties, or else serious damages will occur to one or both parties. In such zero-knowledge proof protocols, if the two communication parties do not have access to, or do not trust, a third-party-based service for supplying random numbers (such a service is usually nicknamed "random numbers from the sky" to imply its impracticality) then they have to generate their mutually trusted random numbers, bit-by-bit via a fair coin-flipping protocol. Notice that here the need for the randomness to be generated in a bit-by-bit (i.e., via fair coin-flipping) manner is in order to satisfy certain requirements, such as the correctness and zero-knowledge-ness of the protocol. In such a situation, a level of practically good (e.g., in the sense of using a practical hash function in Protocol "Coin Flipping Over Telephone") is most likely to be inadequate. A challenging task in applied research on cryptography and cryptographic protocols is to build high quality security services from practical and available cryptographic primitives. Once more, let us use a coin-flipping protocol to make this point clear. The protocol is a remote coin-flipping protocol proposed by Blum [43]. Blum's protocol employs a practically secure and easily implementable "one-way" function but achieves a high-quality security in a very strong fashion which can be expressed as: * First, it achieves a quantitative measure on the difficulty against the coin flipping party (e.g., Alice) for cheating, i.e., for preparing a pair of collision x  y satisfying f(x) = f(y). Here, the difficulty is quantified by that for factoring a large composite integer, i.e., that for solving a "pedigree" hard problem. * Second, there is absolutely no way for the guessing party to have a guessing strategy biased away from the 50-50 chance. This is in terms of a complete security. Thus, Blum's coin-flipping protocol is particularly good in the sense of having achieved a strong security while using only practical cryptographic primitives. As a strengthening and concrete realization for our first cryptographic protocol, we will describe Blum's coin-flipping protocol as the final cryptographic protocol of this book. Several years after the discovery of public-key cryptography [97, 98, 246], it became gradually apparent that several basic and best-known public-key encryption algorithms (we will refer to them as "textbook crypto") generally have two kinds of weakness: (i) they leak partial information about the message encrypted; (ii) they are extremely vulnerable to active attacks (see Chapter 14). These weaknesses mean that "textbook crypto" are not fit for applications. Early approaches to a general fix for the weaknesses in "textbook crypto" invariantly apply bit-by-bit style of encryption and even apply zero-knowledge proof technique at bit-by-bit level as a means to prevent active attacks, plus authentication framework. These results, while valuable in the development of provably secure public-key encryption algorithms, are not suitable for most encryption applications since the need for zero-knowledge proof or for authentication framework is not practical for the case of encryption algorithms. Since the successful initial work of using a randomized padding scheme in the strengthening of a public key encryption algorithm [24], a general approach emerges which strengthens popular textbook public-key encryption algorithms into ones with provable security by using popular primitives such as hash functions and pseudorandom number generators. These strengthened encryption schemes are practical since they use practical primitives such as hash functions, and consequently their efficiency is similar to the underlying "textbook crypto" counterparts. Due to this important quality element, some of these algorithms enhanced from using practical and popular primitives become public-key encryption and digital signature standards. We shall study several such schemes in Chapters 15 and 16. Designing cryptographic schemes, protocols and security systems using available and popular techniques and primitives is also desirable in the sense that such results are more likely to be secure as they attract a wider interest for public scrutiny. 1.2.5 Explicitness In the late 1960's, software systems grew very large and complex. Computer programmers began to experience a crisis, the so-called "software crisis." Large and complex software systems were getting more and more error prone, and the cost of debugging a program became far in excess of the cost of the program design and development. Soon computer scientists discovered a few perpetrators who helped to set-up the crisis which resulted from bad programming practice. Bad programming practice includes: * Arbitrary use of the GOTO statement (jumping up and down seems very convenient) * Abundant use of global variables (causing uncontrolled change of their values, e.g., in an unexpected execution of a subroutine) * The use of variables without declaration of their types (implicit types can be used in Fortran, so, for example, a real value may be truncated to an integer one without being noticed by the programmer) * Unstructured and unorganized large chunk of codes for many tasks (can be thousands of lines a piece) * Few commentary lines (since they don't execute!) These were a few "convenient" things for a programmer to do, but had proved to be capable of causing great difficulties in program debugging, maintenance and further development. Software codes designed with these "convenient" features can be just too obscure to be comprehensible and maintained. Back then it was not uncommon that a programmer would not be able to to understand a piece of code s/he had written merely a couple of months or even weeks ago. Once the disastrous consequences resulting from the bad programming practice were being gradually understood, Program Design Methodology became a subject of study in which being explicit became an important principle for programming. Being explicit includes limiting the use of GOTO and global variables (better not to use them at all), explicit (via mandatory) type declaration for any variables, which permits a compiler to check type flaws systematically and automatically, modularizing programming (dividing a large program into many smaller parts, each for one task), and using abundant (as clear as possible) commentary material which are texts inside a program and documentation outside. A security system (cryptographic algorithm or protocol) includes program parts implemented in software and/or hardware, and in the case of protocol, the program parts run on a number of separate hosts (or a number of programs concurrently and interactively running on these hosts). The explicitness principle for software engineering applies to a security system's design by default (this is true in particular for protocols). However, because a security system is assumed to run in a hostile environment in which even a legitimate user may be malicious, a designer of such systems must also be explicit about many additional things. Here we list three important aspects to serve as general guidelines for security system designers and implementors. (In the rest of the book we will see many attacks on algorithms and protocols due to being implicit in design or specification of these systems.) 1. Be explicit about all assumptions needed. A security system operates by interacting with an environment and therefore it has a set of requirements which must be satisfied by that environment. These requirements are called assumptions (or premises) for a system to run. A violation of an assumption of a protocol may allow the possibility of exploiting an attack on the system and the consequence can be the nullification of some intended services. It is particularly difficult to notice a violation of an assumption which has not been clearly specified (a hidden assumption). Therefore all assumptions of a security system should be made explicit. For example, it is quite common that a protocol has an implicit assumption or expectation that a computer host upon which the protocol runs can supply good random numbers, but in reality few desktop machines or hand-held devices are capable of satisfying this assumption. A so-called low-entropy attack is applicable to protocols using a poor random source. A widely publicized attack on an early implementation of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Protocol (an authentication protocol for World Wide Web browser and server, see '12.5) is a well-known example of the low-entropy attack [123]. Explicit identification and specification of assumptions can also help the analysis of complex systems. DeMillo et al. (Chapter 4 of [91]), DeMillo and Merritt [92] suggest a two-step approach to cryptographic protocol design and analysis, which are listed below (after a modification by Moore [204, 205]): i. Identify all assumptions made in the protocol. ii. For each assumption in step (i), determine the effect on the security of the protocol if that assumption were violated. 2. Be explicit about exact security services to be offered. A cryptographic algorithm/protocol provides certain security services. Examples of some important security services include: confidentiality (a message cannot be comprehended by a non-recipient), authentication (a message can be recognized to confirm its integrity or its origin), non-repudiation (impossibility for one to deny a connection to a message), proof of knowledge (demonstration of evidence without disclosing it), and commitment (e.g., a service offered to our first cryptographic protocol "Coin Flipping Over Telephone" in which Alice is forced to stick to a string without being able to change). When designing a cryptographic protocol, the designer should be very clear regarding exactly what services the protocol intends to serve and should explicitly specify them as well. The explicit identification and specification will not only help the designer to choose correct cryptographic primitives or algorithms, but also help an implementor to correctly implement the protocol. Often, an identification of services to the refinement level of the general services given in these examples is not adequate, and further refinement of them is necessary. Here are a few possible ways to further refine some of them: Confidentiality privacy, anonymity, invisibility, indistinguishability Authentication data-origin, data-integrity, peer-entity Non-repudiation message-issuance, message-receipt Proof of knowledge knowledge possession, knowledge structure A misidentification of services in a protocol design can cause misuse of cryptographic primitives, and the consequence can be a security flaw in the protocol. In Chapter 2 and Chapter 11 we will see disastrous examples of security flaws in authentication protocols due to misidentification of security services between confidentiality and authentication. There can be many more kinds of security services with more ad hoc names (e.g., message freshness, non-malleability, forward secrecy, perfect zero-knowledge, fairness, binding, deniability, receipt freeness, and so on). These may be considered as derivatives or further refinement from the general services that we have listed earlier (a derivative can be in terms of negation, e.g., deniability is a negative derivative from non-repudiation). Nevertheless, explicit identification of them is often necessary in order to avoid design flaws. 3. Be explicit about special cases in mathematics. As we have discussed in '1.2.2, some hard problems in computational complexity theory can provide a high confidence in the security of a cryptographic algorithm or protocol. However, often a hard problem has some special cases which are not hard at all. For example, we know that the problem of factorization of a large composite integer is in general very hard. However the factorization of a large composite integer N = PQ where Q is the next prime number of a large prime number P is not a hard problem at all! One can do so efficiently by computing (? is called the floor function and denotes the integer part of 7) and followed by a few trial divisions around that number to pinpoint P and Q. Usual algebraic structures upon which cryptographic algorithms work (such as groups, rings and fields, to be studied in Chapter 5) contain special cases which produce exceptionally easy problems. Elements of small multiplicative orders (also defined in Chapter 5) in a multiplicative group or a finite field provide such an example; an extreme case of this is when the base for the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol (see '8.3) is the unity element in these algebraic structures. Weak cases of elliptic curves, e.g., "supersingular curves" and "anomalous curves," form another example. The discrete logarithm problem on "supersingular curves" can be reduced to the discrete logarithm problem on a finite field, known as the Menezes-Okamoto-Vanstone attack [197] (see '13.3.4.1). An "anomalous curve" is one with the number of points on it being equal to the size of the underlying field, which allows a polynomial time solution to the discrete logarithm problem on the curve, known as the attack of Satoh-Araki [252], Semaev [258] and Smart [278]. An easy special case, if not understood by an algorithm/protocol designer and/or not clearly specified in an algorithm/protocol specification, may easily go into an implementation and can thus be exploited by an attacker. So an algorithm/protocol designer must be aware of the special cases in mathematics, and should explicitly specify the procedures for the implementor to eliminate such cases. It is not difficult to list many more items for explicitness (for example, a key-management protocol should stipulate explicitly the key-management rules, such as separation of keys for different usages, and the procedures for proper key disposal, etc.). Due to the specific nature of these items we cannot list all of them here. However, explicitness as a general principle for cryptographic algorithm/protocol design and specification will be frequently raised in the rest of the book. In general, the more explicitly an algorithm/protocol is designed and specified, the easier it is for the algorithm/protocol to be analyzed; therefore the more likely it is for the algorithm/protocol to be correctly implemented, and the less likely it is for the algorithm/protocol to suffer an unexpected attack. 1.2.6 Openness Cryptography was once a preserve of governments. Military and diplomatic organizations used it to keep messages secret. In those days, most cryptographic research was conducted behind closed doors; algorithms and protocols were secrets. Indeed, governments did, and they still do, have a valid point in keeping their cryptographic research activities secret. Let us imagine that a government agency publishes a cipher. We should only consider the case that the cipher published is provably secure; otherwise the publication can be too dangerous and may actually end up causing embarrassment to the government. Then other governments may use the provably secure cipher and consequently undermine the effectiveness of the code-breakers of the government which published the cipher. Nowadays, however, cryptographic mechanisms have been incorporated in a wide range of civilian systems (we have provided a non-exhaustive list of applications in the very beginning of this chapter). Cryptographic research for civilian use should take an open approach. Cryptographic algorithms do use secrets, but these secrets should be confined to the cryptographic keys or keying material (such as passwords or PINs); the algorithms themselves should be made public. Let's explore the reasons for this stipulation. In any area of study, quality research depends on the open exchange of ideas via conference presentations and publications in scholarly journals. However, in the areas of cryptographic algorithms, protocols and security systems, open research is more than just a common means to acquire and advance knowledge. An important function of open research is public expert examination. Cryptographic algorithms, protocols and security systems have been notoriously error prone. Once a cryptographic research result is made public it can be examined by a large number of experts. Then the opportunity for finding errors (in design or maybe in security analysis) which may have been overlooked by the designers will be greatly increased. In contrast, if an algorithm is designed and developed in secret, then in order to keep the secret, only few, if any, experts can have access to and examine the details. As a result the chance for finding errors is decreased. A worse scenario can be that a designer may know an error and may exploit it secretly. It is now an established principle that cryptographic algorithms, protocols, and security systems for civilian use must be made public, and must go through a lengthy public examination process. Peer review of a security system should be conducted by a hostile expert. 1.3 Chapter Summary In this chapter we began with an easy example of applied cryptography. The three purposes served by the example are: i. Showing the effectiveness of cryptography in problem solving ii. Aiming for a fundamental understanding of cryptography iii. Emphasizing the importance of non-textbook aspects of security They form the main topics to be developed in the rest of this book. We then conducted a series of discussions which served the purpose for an initial background and cultural introduction to the areas of study. Our discussions in these directions are by no means of complete. Several other authors have also conducted extensive study on principles, guidelines and culture for the areas of cryptography and information security. The following books form good further reading material: Schneier [254], Gollmann [129] and Anderson [14]. Schneier's monthly distributed "Crypto-Gram Newsletters" are also good reading material. To subscribe for receiving the newsletters, send an email to schneier at counterpane.com. Exercises 1.1 What is the difference between a protocol and an algorithm? 1.2 In Prot 1.1 Alice can decide HEADS or TAILS. This may be an unfair advantage for some applications. Modify the protocol so that Alice can no longer have this advantage. Hint: let a correct guess decide the side. 1.3 Let function f map from the space of 200-bit integers to that of 100-bit ones with the following mapping rule: here "?" denotes bit-by-bit XOR operation, i.e., i. Is f efficient? ii. Does f have the "Magic Property I"? iii. Does f have the "Magic Property II"? iv. Can this function be used in Prot 1.1? 1.4 Is an unbroken cryptographic algorithm more secure than a known broken one? If not, why? 1.5 Complex systems are error-prone. Give an additional reason for a complex security system to be even more error-prone. ) 2004 Pearson Education, Inc. InformIT. All rights reserved. 800 East 96th Street Indianapolis, Indiana 46240 -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 05:45:03 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 08:45:03 -0500 Subject: A Gangster With Politics Message-ID: "A prince is a bandit who doesn't move." --Mancur Olsen Cheers, RAH -------- The Wall Street Journal November 5, 2004 COMMENTARY A Gangster With Politics By BRET STEPHENS November 5, 2004; Page A12 In 1993, the British National Criminal Intelligence Service commissioned a report on the sources of funding of the Palestine Liberation Organization. For years, it had been Chairman Yasser Arafat's claim that he'd made a fortune in construction as a young engineer in Kuwait in the 1950s, and that it was this seed money, along with a 5% levy on the Palestinian workers in Arab League countries, which kept the PLO solvent. But British investigators took a different view: The PLO, they concluded, maintained sidelines in "extortion, payoffs, illegal arms-dealing, drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud," bringing its estimated fortune to $14 billion. In retrospect, it would seem amazing that 1993 was also the year in which the head of this criminal enterprise would be feted on the White House lawn for agreeing peace with Israel. But then, so much about the 1990s was amazing, which is perhaps why Arafat, of all people, thrived in that time. The ra'is, as he is commonly spoken of among Palestinians, may basically have been a gangster with politics, but he was also one of the 20th century's great political illusionists. He conjured a persona, a cause, and indeed a people virtually ex nihilo, then rallied much of the world to his side. Now that he is dead, or nearly so -- news reports vary as of this writing -- it will be interesting to see what becomes of his legacy. Who was Yasser Arafat? For starters, he was not a native Palestinian, although his parents were and he variously claimed to have been born in Gaza or Jerusalem. In fact, he was born and schooled in Cairo, spoke Arabic with an Egyptian accent, and took no part in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the Nakba (catastrophe) which Palestinians regard as their formative national experience. Nor did Arafat take part in the Suez War, again despite later claims to the contrary. But this was the period of Third World ferment -- of the "anti-colonialist" Bandung politics of Indonesia's Sukarno, Algeria's Ben Bela, Cuba's Fidel and Egypt's Nasser -- and at the University of Cairo Arafat became a student activist and head of the Palestine Student Union. He also began developing the Arafat persona -- kaffiyah, uniform, half-beard and later the holstered pistol -- to compensate for his short stature and pudginess. The result, as his astute biographers Judith and Barry Rubin write, "was his embodiment of a combination of roles: fighter, traditional patriarch, and typical Palestinian." Around 1960, Arafat co-founded Fatah, or "conquest," the political movement that would later come to be the dominant faction of the PLO. Aside from its aim to obliterate Israel, the group had no particular political vision: Islamists, nationalists, Communists and pan-Arabists were equally welcome. Instead, the emphasis was on violence: "People aren't attracted to speeches but to bullets," Arafat liked to say. In 1964, Fatah began training guerrillas in Syria and Algeria; in 1965, they launched their first attack within Israel, on a pumping station. But the bomb didn't detonate, and most of the other Fatah raids were also duds. From this experience, Arafat took the lesson to focus on softer targets, like civilians. So began the era of modern terrorism: the 1972 Munich massacre, the 1973 murder of American diplomats in Khartoum, the 1974 massacre of schoolchildren at Ma'alot, and so on. Yet as the atrocities multiplied, Arafat's political star rose. Partly this had to do with European cravenness in the face of the implied threat; partly with the Left's secret love affair with the authentic man of violence. Whatever the case, by 1980 Europe had recognized the PLO, with Arafat as its leader, as the "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people. The U.S. held out for another decade, but eventually it too caved in to international pressure under the first Bush administration. For the Palestinians themselves, however, this was not such a good development. If Arafat's violence against Jews and Israelis was shocking, his violence against fellow Palestinians was still worse. In the manner of other would-be national liberators, he did not look kindly on dissenters within his ranks. In 1987, for instance, Palestinian cartoonist Ali Naji Adhami was murdered on a London street; his crime was to have insinuated in a drawing that the ra'is was having an affair with a married woman. Once in power in Ramallah, the abuses became much worse. Critics of his government were routinely imprisoned and often tortured. In 1999, Muawiya Al-Masri, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, gave an interview to a Jordanian newspaper denouncing Arafat's corruption. He was later attacked by a gang of masked men and shot three times. (He survived.) Yet for all this, Arafat continued to ride the wave of international goodwill. The Europeans gave him the Nobel Peace Prize. The Clinton administration saw him as the one man who could "deliver" the Palestinians to make peace with Israel. The peace camp in Israel, championed by the late Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, more or less agreed: to them, Arafat was the thug who'd keep the Palestinian street quiet. Arafat strung them along, more or less, until his bluff was called by the Israeli peace offer at Camp David in July 2000. After that, there was just no point in keeping up appearances, and so came the intifada. It was a premeditated act. As Arafat had already told an Arab audience in Stockholm in 1996, "We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion . . . . We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem." It goes without saying that Arafat failed in that endeavor. The Israelis belatedly realized that the maximum they could concede was less than the minimum Arafat would accept, and refused to deal with him. For its part, the Bush administration cut off the international life support. In this sense, Arafat's illness -- so far undisclosed by his doctors -- can easily be diagnosed: He died of political starvation. What remains? Very little, I suspect. None of his deputies can possibly fill his shoes, which are those of a personality cult, not a political or national leader. There is nothing to unite Palestinians anymore, either: their loyalties to the cause will surely dissipate in his absence. Arafat was remarkable in that he sustained the illusion he created till the very end. But once the magician walks off the stage, the chimera vanishes. Mr. Stephens, former editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post, is a member of the Journal's editorial board. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Camels, fleas, and princes exist everywhere." -- Persian proverb From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 05:45:14 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 08:45:14 -0500 Subject: Arafat: Where's his money? Message-ID: Mrs. Arafat keeps husband on life support Where's his money? Special to World Tribune.com GEOSTRATEGY-DIRECT.COMThursday, November 4, 2004 RAMALLAH - Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat has died. He was 75 years old. Israeli and Palestinian officials said Arafat died on Thursday in a military hospital in Paris. They said Arafat was deemed clinically dead, but is still attached to life support systems on the insistence of his wife, Suha. Palestinan Authority's Yasser Arafat: Abbas and Qurei sought to acquire his power to allocate money as the PA chairman departed for Paris. But as he boarded a Jordanian Air Force helicopter, Arafat refused. "I'm still alive, thank God, so don't worry," Arafat was quoted as saying. Reuters/Loay Abu Haykel "He is dead, but neither Arafat's wife nor the Palestinian leadership is ready to announce this," a PA official said. "The announcement could take place on Friday." The problem is that Arafat is still the only Palestinian official who can pay the bills. And it is unclear who, if anyone, has access to the estimated $2-3 billion in his personal Swiss bank accounts, according to a report in the current edition of Geostrategy-Direct.com. Even his wife is said to be unaware of how to access the funds. Arafat continues to hold the purse strings to the Palestinian finances. For the last decade, he has been the final, and often only word on payment to everybody from the suicide bomber to the janitor. Not a dime was paid without Arafat's okay. Before he left for Paris, Arafat approved a three-member emergency committee to operate the PA and PLO in his absence. Officials said Ahmed Qurei was meant to run the PA's daily affairs while Mahmoud Abbas was appointed acting chairman of the PLO. Palestine National Council chairman Salim Zaanoun, the third member of the committee, was said to be a symbolic figure. Abbas and Qurei sought to acquire Arafat's power to allocate money during the absence of the PA chairman. But as he boarded a Jordanian Air Force helicopter for Amman, Arafat refused. "I'm still alive, thank God, so don't worry," Arafat was quoted as saying. Israeli officials confirmed that Arafat died on Thursday, Middle East Newsline reported. They said Arafat was termed brain dead and physicians have stopped attending to him. For Palestinians, the main question is where is Arafat's money? Issam Abu Issa knows how Arafat appropriated and concealed money. Abu Issa was the founder and chairman of the Palestine International Bank from 1996 until he fled to Qatar in 2000. "Rather than use donor funds for their intended purposes, Arafat regularly diverted money to his own accounts," Abu Issa said in a report for Middle East Quarterly. "It is amazing that some U.S. officials still see the Palestinian Authority as a partner even after U.S. congressional records revealed authenticated PLO papers signed by Arafat in which he instructed his staff to divert donors' money to projects benefiting himself, his family and his associates." Arafat controls billions of dollars meant for the Palestinian people. In a word, he stole it, intelligence sources said, according to the Geostrategy-Direct report. His personal fortune has been estimated at between $2 and $3 billion, most of it in Swiss bank accounts. In 1997, the PA auditor's office said in its financial report that $326 million, or 43 percent of the annual budget, was "missing." The United States has been supporting former PA security chief Mohammed Dahlan as Arafat's successor. To his friends in the Bush administration, Dahlan, 43, has all the qualities for Arab leadership: a smooth talker and brutal cop. Arafat asked Dahlan to accompany him to Paris in a move designed to keep him out of the Gaza Strip and any coup plot. Another challenger has been Fatah Secretary-general Marwan Barghouti, sentenced to life in prison for a series of terrorist attacks. Barghouti, 44, has followers in the West Bank but does not appear to have the iron will necessary to face Arafat loyalists. Neither Israeli nor PA officials have been told much about Arafat's condition, and the only one authorized to issue information from his hospital bedside is the chairman's wife, Suha. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 05:45:17 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 08:45:17 -0500 Subject: Arafat's Swiss Bank Account Message-ID: ? - Middle East Quarterly - Fall 2004 FALL 2004 * VOLUME XI: NUMBER 4 Arafat's Swiss Bank Account by Issam Abu Issa Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are known internationally for the violence between Israelis and Palestinians. As ruinous as that violence has been, another cancer permeates Arafat's administration; its name is corruption. From firsthand experience, I understand just how deep it is. Here is what I know. >From Optimism to Dismay On July 1, 1994, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman, Yasir Arafat, arrived triumphant in the Gaza Strip, watched by millions on television across the world. I was already in Ramallah, having traveled there from my family's exile in Qatar in the weeks after Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and President Bill Clinton had signed the Oslo accords in September 1993. Between 1994 and 1996, I and fellow Palestinian businessmen and intellectuals spent many days brainstorming to see what contributions we could make to a Palestinian state. My family was originally from Haifa, and I hoped to witness an Israeli withdrawal of forces and the birth of a democratic Palestinian state. It was a time of optimism among Palestinians. I gathered with friends and business partners around the television in Ramallah and watched Arafat's arrival in the Gaza Strip. In 1996, I founded the Palestine International Bank (PIB). Thousands of Palestinians in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the diaspora supported me financially or morally. My investors and I hoped to build a thriving economy in the newly autonomous PA areas. The PIB was truly Palestinian. Headquartered in Ramallah, it used mostly Palestinian capital, although it did receive support from other Arabs. All its reserves were kept inside Palestinian areas, and our shares traded actively on the Palestinian stock exchange. From nothing, we expanded our customer base to more than 15,500. Among those licensed by the newly established Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA), we were the largest bank in the Palestinian territories. I first met Arafat in April 1995 while trying to secure a banking license for the PIB. This meeting at his Gaza office, though brief, was cordial and encouraging. I thought things would go smoothly. But, as the PIB grew more popular, Arafat's inner circle and, specifically, Muhammad Rashid, a PA official, also known as Khalid Salam and often described as an economic advisor to Arafat and manager of a small percentage of PIB stocks, made it difficult for us to branch out and move forward.[1] The PA, which strictly controls Palestinian media, launched a negative media blitz against us in a bid to suppress our growth. The systematic effort to undermine PIB came after I refused to cede power to Muhammad Rashid.[2] Over the course of fifteen meetings, I became better acquainted with Arafat and grew increasingly concerned with his leadership style. Arafat and top PA officials did not respect the rule of law; many were corrupt. Arafat believed neither in separation of powers nor in checks and balances. His animosity toward accountability thwarted efforts to establish a responsible leadership. By 1996, Palestinians in the PA were saying they had traded one occupation for two, the one by Israel and the one by Arafat and his cronies. Rather than use donor funds for their intended purposes, Arafat regularly diverted money to his own accounts. It is amazing that some U.S. officials still see the Palestinian Authority as a partner even after U.S. congressional records revealed authenticated PLO papers signed by Arafat in which he instructed his staff to divert donors' money to projects benefiting himself, his family, and his associates.[3] How did Arafat's inner circle benefit? In 1994, he instructed the Palestinian Authority official in charge of finances, Muhammad Nashashibi, to fund secretly-to the tune of $50,000 per month-a Jerusalem publicity center for Raymonda Tawil, Arafat's mother-in-law, and Ibrahim Qar'in, an associate of Arafat's family.[4] He also ordered the investment in the computer companies of 'Ali and Mazzan Sha'ath, sons of Nabil Sha'ath, the PA's key negotiator in talks with Israel. Amin Haddad, Arafat's designated governor of the Palestine Monetary Authority, established several import-export companies acting as the front man for Arafat. The Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction financed these activities.[5] Thus, an organization meant to channel funds from donor countries like France and Germany became a mechanism by which to enrich Arafat. Arafat's men flagrantly displayed corruption. Arriving penniless in Gaza and the West Bank from exile in Tunisia, many PLO members amassed wealth, built villas in Gaza, Ramallah, Amman, and other places, and sent their children to the best schools in the United Kingdom and the United States. Hisham Makki, former head of the Palestine Broadcasting Services, assassinated in January 2001, earned a monthly salary of $1,500 but became a millionaire within a few years. Immediately after his assassination, Arafat froze Makki's personal bank accounts, estimated at $17 million. Makki was alleged to have taken bribes and sold government-owned equipment. However, it was rumored that he had a dispute with another PA official over the sharing of profits gained on illegal business transactions. His assailants, believed to be members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a shady group affiliated with Fatah, have never been caught.[6] Palestinians complained. The corruption of Arafat and the Palestinian Authority were blatant, but it appeared as if their status quo policies caused Israel and the United States to turn a blind eye. Diplomats downplayed flagrant corruption. In August 2001, Israel seized close to a half million documents from Palestinian offices in Jerusalem and elsewhere. Subsequent State Department reports on Palestinian governance and terrorism made little use or even mention of these documents.[7] European and U.S. policymakers assumed Arafat's critics to be against the Oslo accord. That may have been the case with members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but it was not the case among more liberal-minded Palestinians and investors like me. Arafat's corruption reached its peak in 1999 via the monster of "twelve security forces that nobody could control,"[8] in addition to the disorganized Tanzim (Fatah's militia). He played these services off each other, never allowing a subordinate to gain power. Between 1995 and 2000, Arafat's thugs beat up at least eleven elected members of the 88-member Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) because they voiced views in private and in public that were opposed to Arafat's on how the PA is run. The victims included PLC Human Rights Committee head Qaddoura Fares, Azmi ash-Shoaibi, Abdul Jawad Saleh, Hatem Abdul Kader, among others. Arafat wanted to terrorize and silence his critics. Indeed, one of his favorite slogans was Dimuqratiyat al-Banadiq (Democracy of the Guns). Arafat believes true power lies in force, whether directed against Israelis or against his own people. How popular is Arafat among Palestinians? At times of crisis, television crews show cheering Palestinians demonstrating and greeting their leader outside his Ramallah headquarters. In better days, Palestinian television regularly broadcasts pro-Arafat rallies across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But rallies aren't always what they seem. PA funds are used to buy loyalty and drum up support.[9] The PA hires crowds, stages promotional media campaigns, and distributes Arafat's pictures in the streets and alleys of the Palestinian territories. Rather than build a viable state, Arafat sought only to amass wealth and power. I myself heard his entourage and close associates refer to him as al-Arrab, meaning "the Godfather." At the end of 1997, when the PA Auditor's Office released its end of the year financial report, $326 million-43 percent of the annual budget-was "missing."[10] Only 57 percent of the budget was accounted for, spent on security forces (35 percent), office of the president (12.5 percent), and public allocation (9.5 percent). A special committee appointed by the PLC conducted an investigation and released a report accusing the PA of financial mismanagement. The findings of this panel exposed many official misgivings and abuses such as the use of government money for personal purposes by ministers Nabil Sha'ath, Talal Sidr, and Yasir Abd Rabboh; excessive expenditure on rent, salaries, and cost of travel in various ministries; receipt of bribes by ministry officials in the Ministry of Civil Affairs; illegal and unreported collection of taxes by the Ministry of Postal Services; granting illegal customs exemptions on cars, furniture, and material donations entering the PA, etc. It concluded that anyone involved in corruption should be taken to court, regardless of his position as minister, undersecretary, or director-general. The report demanded the ouster of at least two ministers: civil affairs minister Jamil at-Tarifi, and planning and international cooperation minister Nabil Sha'ath.[11] The PLC voted 51-1 in favor of dissolving Arafat's appointed 18-member limited self-rule cabinet. Sixteen ministers gave letters to Arafat signaling readiness to resign if asked. But Arafat confirmed the corrupt ministers in their positions rather than firing them. Additionally, PLC member Haider Abdel Shafi resigned due to "frustration with the performance of the PLC and with the executive's total lack of concern for its recommendations," and added, "The PLC is a marginal body and not a true parliament."[12] Even as the PLC committee was conducting its investigation, Arafat appointed Tayeb Abd al-Rahim, general secretary of the Presidential Office, to make a detailed inquiry into acts of corruption. His report remains secret. In practice the reports were meaningless. Since Arafat does not honor rule of law, decisions by auditors or the Palestinian Legislative Council fall by the wayside. Corruption continues. More than six years after the report's issuance, Tarifi remains in the cabinet. Rather than face charges, Sha'ath has won promotion. In another case, Salam Fayyad, the official in charge of finance, again said in August 2003 that there were many "irregularities" in the work of the Petroleum Authority, which has been siphoning money to secret bank accounts for years.[13] When Nablus legislator Mu'awyah al-Masri asked for details and figures about the revenues from oil products, Fayyad shocked the lawmakers by declaring, "Unfortunately, the documents related to the revenues from oil products-or how the money was used-can't be found. They have disappeared from the ministry."[14] The bank accounts of Harbi Sarsour, head of the Petroleum Authority, were frozen by the PA pending investigation into the scandal. But an initial investigation by Fayyad's office and the PLC showed that much of the oil profits had been deposited into a bank account under Arafat's name.[15] For sheer scale, few allegations match up to a deal allegedly struck between Muhammad Rashid, one of Arafat's economic advisors, and the late Yossi Ginosar, a former Israeli security officer. Ginosar's company, ARC, helped open Swiss bank accounts and deposit funds into them derived from both PA-financed companies and Israeli tax rebates to the Palestinian Authority.[16] Over a period of five years, approximately US$900 million was diverted to these accounts.[17] In early 2002, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducted a poll in which they surveyed 1,320 Palestinians. Eighty-five percent believed that there was corruption in PA institutions; only 16 percent gave a positive evaluation to democracy under the Palestinian Authority. Eighty-four percent expressed support for fundamental reforms in the PA.[18] Arafat Robs the Palestine International Bank On November 28, 1999, I became a victim of Arafat's abuse of power and flagrant disregard for the law. That's when, in direct breach of the law, Arafat issued a decree dissolving the Palestine International Bank's board of directors. The state-controlled Palestine Monetary Authority took over the bank, and with Arafat's blessing and written approval,[19] formed a new supervisory board of directors, including at least one convicted and Interpol-wanted felon. The unlawful takeover was a confiscation of my own, my shareholders', and my clients' private assets for Arafat's personal use. At the date of seizure, PIB total assets amounted to $105 million. Since the takeover, they have neither called for a shareholders' meeting nor disclosed the bank's balance sheet. The PLC investigated the seizure of the bank after I lodged a complaint in 2000 about the PIB's unlawful takeover. The PMA governor then threatened the bank's auditing firm, Talal Abu Ghazaleh International (TAGI), for revealing facts and figures that implicated the Palestinian leadership. The PMA governor took punitive measures against them but was unanimously condemned by the PLC.[20] Meanwhile, the PMA altered, hid, or destroyed bank records in their campaign to demonstrate malfeasance on my part retroactively. They supplied false information to the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) group leading to a faulty audit. PWC seems to have taken for granted the accuracy of material that PMA governor Amin Haddad supplied, but he both provided some fraudulent documents and omitted others. The Qatari government, which has remained interested in the case because of my Qatari citizenship, rejected the PWC Report.[21] As they seized the bank, Arafat's security services harassed me. I fled to the Qatari mission in Gaza. Arafat's staff confiscated my private belongings, including my car, which Arafat took for himself.[22] My brother Issa accompanied a Qatari Foreign Ministry delegation to Gaza in order to resolve the stalemate. But, upon his arrival, Palestinian police acting on orders from Arafat arrested him. The PA said they would trade his freedom for mine. Only after the State of Qatar threatened Arafat with financial sanctions and severing of diplomatic ties did the PA give us free passage to leave Gaza for Qatar. In recent months, there has been some movement on my case. After months of investigation and deliberation, the Palestinian Legislative Council ruled all decisions taken by the PMA on the matter of PIB to be illegal, and hence subsequent actions to be illegitimate.[23] Chiefly because of his mismanagement of the PIB case and citing corruption, in May 2004, the PLC fired Amin Haddad from his position in the Palestinian Monetary Authority.[24] Hassan Khreisheh, Palestinian deputy parliament speaker, said, "This is part of the parliament's war against corruption in the PA."[25] He pointed out that Haddad had been pocketing unauthorized bonuses and profiting illegally from his management of the PIB. In spite of this, Arafat continues to back Haddad. As Khreisheh says, "Arafat resists any change, but pressure is building against him."[26] Arafat's support for Haddad is magnified in his August 5, 2004 letter to the PLC Reform Committee. He stated, "Firing the governor of the PMA would serve our enemies."[27] By "enemies," he was referring to, among others, myself and the deputy prime minister of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor ath-Thani, whom he mentioned more than three times before several PLC members. The PLC also indicted Arafat's relative, Jarrar al-Kudwa, who headed the General Monitoring Board that functions as the PA's Controller's Office, for corruption and misleading the investigation into the seizure of the PIB.[28] On June 18, 2004, the evening after the Jordanian daily Ad-Dustur published the Khreisheh interview cited above, Arafat ordered his Special Security Apparatus to arrest one of my sympathizers in Ramallah. Thus does Arafat continue to use the Palestinian security forces to harass and intimidate anyone who questions his pocketbook. It is no surprise then that he issued clear instructions to PA officials not to discuss openly the PIB issue. To him, the matter is an extremely important issue.[29] I have very little faith in the Palestinian judicial system, which is fully under Arafat's thumb. The PA disregards many court decisions unless they serve Arafat's purposes. Chief Justice Zuhair as-Sourani usually acts on Arafat's orders.[30] Arafat and Sourani handpicked Judge Talaat Taweel in order to pass the civil judgment against me in absentia. Taweel has been implicated in criminal cases.[31] Likewise, the PLC's Human Rights Committee condemned Sourani's illegal actions. Earlier, while an attorney general, Sourani issued an arrest warrant against me but failed to produce any legal basis before the PLC; he merely acted on Arafat's verbal instruction.[32] Arafat subsequently promoted him to chief justice. The continuing decay of the judicial system prompted the Union of Palestinian Lawyers to launch a short boycott of the Palestinian court system on June 28, 2004.[33] Union leader Hatem Abbas remains a vocal critical of judicial corruption. On September 26, 2004, he sent a strongly worded letter regarding Sourani's malpractice. And just recently, the PLC decided to suspend all sessions from September 7 to October 7, 2004, in an attempt to pressure Arafat to accelerate the approval of a reform package that he publicly adopted on August 18, 2004, and in protest against the Palestinian cabinet for not implementing the decisions and bills approved by the PLC.[34] The PLC wants to stress that the council's decisions have to be taken seriously. The Cement Scandal Abuse of power among Arafat's associates and Palestinian ministers is not the exception but rather the rule, as shown by the cement scandal: PA officials were accused of selling cement to Israel for use in constructing the West Bank wall and for Israeli construction in the disputed territories, then pocketing the money. On February 11, 2004, Israel's Channel 10 television reported that the Al-Quds Cement Factory supplied the cement for these purposes. Television footage showed cement mixers leaving company headquarters and driving to Maale Adumim, an Israeli settlement a few kilometers away. The family of Prime Minister Ahmad Qureia co-owns the Al-Quds company. When confronted by the allegations at a June 2004 press conference in Rome, Qureia denied personal involvement.[35] On June 9, 2004, the PLC held a debate in which some legislators accused Maher Masri, who held the Palestinian Authority's economy portfolio, of negligence and fraud. Council members called for an investigation on "corruption and tax evasion" charges.[36] Despite the charges, the debate itself was stilted. Palestinian security ejected PLC deputy and anti-corruption campaigner Jawad Saleh from the debate after the PLC speaker prevented nine deputies who had conducted the investigation from participating in the debate.[37] The scandal reportedly started with an Israeli-German businessman named Zeev Blenski. Blenski sought to import 120,000 tons of Egyptian concrete but, the Egyptian firms, under pressure from Egypt's anti-Israel lobby, refused to provide it. Blenski then turned to the Tarifi Ready Mix Cement Company, owned by Civil Affairs Minister Jamil Tarifi and his brother Jamal and two other Palestinian cement companies, Intisar Barakeh Company for General Trade and the Yusef Barakeh Company for General Trade.[38] Tarifi got Masri to sign an import permit. In fact, "senior PA officials had received bribes to issue import licenses to several importers and businessmen working on behalf of Israelis."[39] The permits directed the cement to be used to rebuild homes in the Rafah refugee camp, which had been razed by Israeli troops.[40] Instead, Blenski sold the cement to build parts of the separation fence, as well as new houses in Jewish communities in the West Bank and Gaza.[41] The PLC report concluded that the cement scandal went against PA objectives by indirectly contributing to the separation barrier but also by undermining the Palestinian treasury through the failure to collect tax on the imported cement. Lastly, because the Palestinians still operate under annual cement importation quotas, PA officials' greed undercut the Palestinian construction sector.[42] The PLC passed the report to the district attorney, but no action has yet been taken. Few Palestinians expect that action will be taken. Surprise in New York Pressure for reform is waning, and Palestinian democrats are caught in the middle. On February 13, 2004, I arrived at JFK International Airport in New York on my way to testify about PA corruption before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee. It was not my first trip to Washington; I have been there a half dozen times and have never faced any difficulties. My most recent visit had been a year before when I addressed both the Hudson Institute and The Foundation for the Defense of Democracy on democracy and Palestinian reform.[43] But, this trip was different. Instead of breezing through customs as I had in the past, agents from the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept me in custody for seventeen hours. At some point, I was cuffed at the wrists and ankles and repeatedly interrogated by agents who accused me of laundering $6 million from the PIB on behalf of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They let me go, but I now cannot gain entry to the United States. While dozens of academics signed petitions in support of a visa for Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, my case generated only silence in American universities.[44] Why the change? PA officials passed the charge to the State Department, which forwarded the information uncritically to Homeland Security.[45] This is ironic since the PIB leadership installed after my ouster was implicated in money laundering for Saddam Hussein.[46] The U.S. embassy in Doha has sought to rectify the matter, and I was allowed to reapply for a new visa; the case is still pending. But splashed across the Arabic press, the message was clear: Foggy Bottom supports Arafat and will turn a blind eye toward the concerns of dissidents.[47] It is counterproductive for Washington to indulge Arafat to the extent that they pull the rug out from anyone trying to make a change. Recent chaos in Gaza reinforces that Washington should not put all its eggs in one basket. But, how can Palestinian administration improve if the U.S. government allows Arafat to use its bureaucracy to do his dirty work? Accountability is key. Conclusion For four years, there has been violence and unmasked hostility between Israeli and Palestinians. Palestinian security forces and Israeli soldiers, who once jointly patrolled the streets of West Bank and Gaza towns, now fight each other. The conflict has taken a heavy toll on human life and on resources, both among Palestinians and Israelis. Israeli authorities and Palestinian organizations estimate the total dead at almost 4,000 and the wounded at more than 32,000.[48] The ailing Palestinian economy has declined 25 percent in 2003[49] while Israel has lost billions of dollars due to recession in the tourism sector and declining investor confidence. When I see cars blown apart by missiles, buses and cafes on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv destroyed, as well as destruction and death in Gaza and the West Bank, or pictures of grieving mothers and daughters, it is hard to believe that it has been only eleven years since the world celebrated the promise of the Oslo accords. I have problems with Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but Arafat's leadership for too long has used Israel as an excuse for failure to clean our own house. Arafat's failed leadership is one factor responsible for the evolution of Palestinian extremism and fundamentalism, as well as a culture of death and despair among the Palestinians. While Clinton feted Arafat at the White House as a peace partner, many of us who worked with or lived under Arafat disagreed, seeing him instead as a man exclusively concerned with power, money, and personal gratification. He heads a dictatorial regime staffed by gangsters.[50] I and increasing numbers of Palestinians also blame U.S. and Israeli officials who, in the wake of the Oslo accords, calculated that a Palestinian dictatorship would make a better negotiating partner than a Palestinian democracy.[51] They were very wrong. When growing pressure in the Palestinian territories forced Arafat to find a scapegoat for his political failure, mismanagement, and economic plunder, he turned his guns toward the Israelis. Reform and Arafat are like oil and water. Arafat instigates violence to deflect blame for his own corruption. No amount of dialogue or diplomatic dinners will change this fact. On the positive side, there are still persons who can move the peace-building process ahead. Many Palestinians seek change and welcome democratization and good governance. The Palestinians have the wealth, talent, and skills to carry out major functions for the needed transformation. Young economic leaders could spearhead the process since economic growth and development are fruits of peace. The Palestinian private sector and civil society organizations can be mobilized and empowered in order to foster the democratization process. With the right support, the Palestinians are capable of leading a real transformation towards a democratic state, one characterized by a separation of powers, the rule of law, a free market economy, and a strong civil society. America should not be discouraged by what is going on in the Middle East today. Signs of freedom and reform abound. But, Washington must look forward and not revert to the formulas of the past. Palestinians want not only to be freed from Israeli control but also, as importantly, to end the occupation by Arafat and his cronies. Issam Abu Issa, former chairman of the Palestine International Bank, currently resides in Qatar. He is founder of the Palestinian National Coalition for Democracy and Independence, a Palestinian democratic reform movement. [1] Interview with Palestinian deputy speaker, Ad-Dustur (Amman), June 17, 2004. [2] Lamis Andoni, "Palestine Banking Trouble," Middle East International, Jan. 28, 2000, p. 10. [3] "Scandalous PLO Letters Authenticated by Congressional Task Force," Manfred and Anne Lehmann Foundation (New York), at http://www.manfredlehmann.com/sieg429.html. [4] Ibid. [5] Ibid. [6] Khaled Abu Toameh, "Corrupt Palestinian Officials Said Fleeing in Fear for Their Lives," The Israel Report, Jan./Feb. 2001, at http://www.christianactionforisrael.org/isreport. [7] Matthew Levitt, "PLOCCA 2002: Empty Words," The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Peacewatch #384, May 24, 2002, at http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/watch/Peacewatch/peacewatch2002/384.htm. [8] Mahmoud Abbas, ex-Palestinian prime minister, quoted in Newsweek, June 21, 2004. [9] Nathan Vardi, "Auditing Arafat," Forbes.com, Mar. 17, 2003, at http://www.forbes.com/global/2003/0317/014.html. [10] The Washington Post, Dec. 2, 1998. [11] PLC Special Committee Report (The Corruption Report,) May 1997, at http://www.jmcc.org/politics/pna/plc/plccorup.htm; Stacey Lakind and Yigal Carmon, "The PA Economy," The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Inquiry and Analysis Series, no. 11, Jan. 8, 1999, at http://www.memri.org/bin/opener.cgi?Page=archives&ID=IA1199. [12] Arjan El Fassed, "Cement and Corruption," The Electronic Intifada, June 11, 2004, at http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2813.shtml. [13] Khaled Abu Aker, "Where Has All the Oil Money Gone?" Arabic Media Internet Network, Aug. 11, 2003, at http://www.amin.org. [14] The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 3, 2003. [15] Ibid. [16] Ma'ariv (Tel Aviv), Dec. 2, 2002, Mar. 7, 2004. [17] Press briefing, International Monetary Fund, Dubai, UAE, Sept. 20, 2003, at http://www.imf.org/external/np/tr/2003/tr030920.htm. [18] The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Public Opinion Poll #5, Aug. 18-21, 2002, at http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2002/p5a.html. [19] Appointment letter signed by Arafat, May 24, 2003, Palestinian Court of First Instance. [20] PLC decision, no. 626/1/8, Oct. 25, 2003. [21] Letter, signed by Muhammad Jeham al-Kuwari, then-director of the Office of the Foreign Minister of Qatar, to the late Yassin Shareef, Palestinian ambassador to the state, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Qatar, Aug. 30, 2000, at http://www.palestine77.net/kuwari.pdf. [22] Focus Magazine (Munich), Dec. 16, 2002, p. 208. [23] PLC decision, no. 642/1/8, Dec. 30, 2003. [24] Associated Press, May 5, 2004. [25] Ibid. [26] Newsweek International, Aug. 30, 2004. [27] "Report of the Special Reform Committee," PLC, Aug. 25, 2004, p. 6. [28] The Jerusalem Post, Jan. 18, 2004. [29] Tahseen Al Miqati, Palestinian ambassador to Qatar, quoted in Forbes (Arabic edition), May 2004, p. 88. [30] "Position Paper -Re: The Case of Palestine International Bank," Jan. 23, 2004, co-signed by four Palestine-based NGOs: the Mandela Institute for Human Rights, Al-Haq, Al-Quds Human Rights Center, Al-Dustour, at http://www.palestine77.net/ngoenglish.doc. [31] Ad-Dustur, June 17, 2004. [32] "Report of the Human Rights Committee," PLC, Dec. 2, 2003, p. 34. [33] Al-Quds (Jerusalem), June 27, 2004. [34] Palestine Media Center, Sept. 2, 2004, at http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=1&id=1422. [35] Arjan El Fassed, "Cement and Corruption," The Electronic Intifada, June 11, 2004, at http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2813.shtml. [36] Rouhi Fatouh, PLC speaker, quoted in The Jerusalem Times, June 18, 2004. [37] The Jerusalem Post, June 21, 2004. [38] The Jewish Tribune (Toronto), June 17, 2004. [39] The Jerusalem Post, June 10, 2004. [40] The Jewish Week (New York), June 25, 2004. [41] Israel National News, June 13, 2004, at http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=63989. [42] The Jerusalem Times, June 17, 2004. [43] Feb. 6, 2003. [44] "Tariq Ramadan: American and European Scholars Respond," Campus-Watch.org, Sept. 23, 2004. [45] Amber Pawlik, "Exporting Freedom," May 9, 2004, at http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/p/pawlik/2004/pawlik050904.htm. [46] The Peninsula (Doha), Apr. 13, 2003. [47] "A Critic of Arafat Is Turned away at the U.S. Border-Reformer Detained at Kennedy Was Headed to Meet Congress," The New York Sun, Feb. 17, 2004; "Standing up to Arafat," The Fox News, Feb. 23, 2004; Adam Daifallah, "Arabs Who Believe in Democracy," The New York Sun, Feb. 23, 2004; "New York Authorities Detain PIB Chairman for 17 Hours at JFK Airport," Ar-Raya (Doha), Feb. 19, 2004; "Story of the Detention of PIB Chairman at the JFK Airport on Allegations of Financing Hamas and Jihad," Al-Hayat (London), Feb. 16, 2004. [48] Casualty updates from Palestinian Red Crescent Society, at http://www.palestinercs.org/crisistables/table_of_figures.htm, and Magen David Adom of Israel, at http://www.magendavidadom.org/casualtyitem.asp?Update=41. [49] Palestine Investment Promotion Agency, at http://www.pipa.gov.ps/economic_indicators.asp. [50] Rafiq an-Natsheh, former PLC speaker, quoted in Asharq (Doha), July 20, 2004. [51] Natan Sharansky, "From Helsinki to Oslo," Journal of International Security Affairs, Summer 2001, at http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/1383/documentid/1690/history/3,2359,947,1383,1690; "Yasser Arafat: An Asset or a Burden. A Confidential Israeli Document," summarized by Mohammed Salah al-Attar, Nida Younis, trans., Ma'ariv, July 6, 2001, at http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2004%20News%20archives/Jan/13n/Yasser%20Arafat%20an%20asset%20or%20a%20burden,%20a%20confidential%20Israeli%20document%20By%20Mohammed%20Salah%20Al-Attar%20and%20Nida%20Younis.htm. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 05:49:05 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 08:49:05 -0500 Subject: Cryptography Research Takes Aim at Content Pirates Message-ID: Yahoo! Finance Source: Cryptography Research, Inc. Cryptography Research VP Benjamin Jun Takes Aim at Content Pirates Friday November 5, 6:02 am ET Discusses Technology Trends and Responses at Upcoming RSA Conference Europe 2004 SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite piracy's high public profile as a threat to intellectual property owners, surprisingly little has been done to understand the range of technical solutions that are feasible, according to security expert Benjamin Jun. With piracy plaguing deployments of pay TV, optical media, console video games and other content, Jun, vice president of engineering at Cryptography Research, Inc., believes content publishers facing these issues have a number of tools and technologies at their disposal to take aim at the pirates, and will discuss solutions and the findings of his recent research on piracy in his seminar on Friday, November 5 at the RSA Conference Europe 2004 being held in Barcelona, Spain. According to Jun, pirates will grow bolder and more effective with advances in CPU processing power, Internet bandwidth and hard drive storage. Although piracy cannot be stopped completely, Jun believes a combination of proactive and reactive security approaches can mitigate the risk and reduce losses to survivable levels. Content publishers facing piracy can apply methods for high-assurance design that anticipate attacks and employ architectures that enable a response after attacks happen. Jun's talk discusses recent piracy trends, describes industry techniques and presents current research in content security. "Although numerous products and technologies have been advertised as solutions to the problem of piracy, most commercial security systems fail catastrophically once an implementation is compromised, making them inappropriate solutions for deployment as part of a major standard, said Jun. "Piracy, like credit card fraud and computer virus security, is a problem that cannot be solved completely, and requires a flexible solution that combines programmable security and 'smart content' with risk management techniques such as forensic marking and attack response capabilities." Proactive security combines tamper resistance with high-assurance design to combat known security vulnerabilities. Reactive systems provide effective tools for responding to piracy after a problem develops. These results are findings of the Cryptography Research Content Security Initiative, a CRI-sponsored, multi-year research effort focusing on understanding and controlling piracy, technology trends in consumer electronics and next-generation applied techniques for high-assurance security. "Content providers must face next-generation pirates by selecting technology that avoids a repeat of painful past lessons," said Carter Laren, senior security architect at Cryptography Research. "We are proud that results from our Content Security Research Initiative are helping leading companies secure their most valuable content." Benjamin Jun's talk, "Piracy: Technology Trends and Responses," part of the Implementers Educational Track at the RSA Conference Europe 2004, will be presented on Friday, November 5, at 11:00 a.m. at the Princesa Sofia Hotel in Barcelona, Spain. Benjamin Jun is a vice president of engineering at Cryptography Research, where he heads the consulting practice and the company's Content Security Research Initiative. He leads engineering groups in the design, evaluation and repair of high-assurance security modules for software, ASIC and embedded systems. Ben holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from Stanford University, where he is a Mayfield Entrepreneurship Fellow. About Cryptography Research, Inc. Cryptography Research, Inc. provides consulting services and technology to solve complex security problems. In addition to security evaluation and applied engineering work, CRI is actively involved in long-term research in areas including tamper resistance, content protection, network security and financial services. The company has a broad portfolio of patents covering countermeasures to differential power analysis and other vulnerabilities, and is committed to helping companies produce secure smart cards and other tamper-resistant devices. Security systems designed by Cryptography Research engineers annually protect more than $60 billion of commerce for wireless, telecommunications, financial, digital television and Internet industries. For additional information or to arrange a consultation with a member of the technical staff, please contact Jen Craft at 415-397-0123, ext. 329 or visit www.cryptography.com. Source: Cryptography Research, Inc. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 06:09:12 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 09:09:12 -0500 Subject: Blue Democrats Lost Red America Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 5, 2004 WONDER LAND By DANIEL HENNINGER Blue Democrats Lost Red America Back in 1965 November 5, 2004; Page A12 "And you tell me over, and over, and over again my friend Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction." --Vietnam War Protest Song, 1965 How did the 2004 election map of the United States come to look like a color-field painting by Barnett Newman? In fact, if you adjust the map's colors for votes by county (as at the Web sites for CNN and USA Today), even the blue states turn mostly red. Pennsylvania is blue, but between blue Philadelphia and Pittsburgh every county in the state is red. California, except for the coastline, is almost entirely red. This didn't happen last Tuesday. The color-coding of the 2004 election began around 1965 in the politics of the Vietnam era. The Democratic Party today is the product of a generational shift that began in those years. The formative years of the northern wing of the Democratic Old Guard go back to World War II. It included political figures like Tip O'Neill, Pat Moynihan and Lane Kirkland. It was men such as these whose experiences, both political and personal, informed and shaped the Democrats before the mid-'60s. Over time the party passed into the hands of a generation, now in their 50s and early 60s, whose broad view of America and its politics was formed as young men and women opposing the Vietnam War. That would include the party's current leading lights -- John Kerry, Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi. And its most influential strategists, such as Bob Shrum, Mary Beth Cahill and James Carville. The old industrial unions, whose members went over to Ronald Reagan, gave way to the more dependable public-employee unions run by John Sweeney and Gerald McEntee. These Baby Boomers -- the generation of John Kerry, Al Gore and Bill and Hillary Clinton -- transformed the world view of the Democrats, on everything from foreign policy to cultural issues. This new ethos -- instinctively oppositional, aggressively secular -- sank its roots deep on the East and West coasts, but it never really spread into the rest of the country, then or now. Early on, the military became a focus. Democrats belonging to the World War II generation believed that one "served." There was a nonpartisan pact of reverence for the services. After Vietnam, Democratic partisans worked hard, and successfully, to eradicate ROTC from elite, coastal campuses and to adopt an ethos that no longer revered the services, but held them suspect of doing harm. Bill Clinton's relations with the military were strained. John Kerry tried to use his service biography to erase the Vietnam-era legacy of Democratic opposition to things military. It didn't work. Expressed emotion matters greatly for this generation. The most notable phenomenon of the 2004 election was widespread liberal "hatred" of George Bush. Many wondered what sleeping volcano brought this lava to the surface. It came from the style of protest politics born in the 1960s. A famous liberal political phrase then was "the personal is political." Letting oneself become emotionally unhinged during a protest, as at Columbia, Harvard and Berkeley, became a litmus of authenticity. It became the norm, and it still is. But again, only for people who scream themselves blue. Another phrase heard often in the campaign just ended was, "I'm frightened." Admiration for childlike fears in politics received approval in 1970 from Charles Reich's bestseller "The Greening of America," a paean to youth and "a new and liberated individual." Reich's book, by the way, also popularized the notion then that something called the "Corporate State" was blotting out the Aquarian sunshine. This is the mindset that just produced the Democrats' weird obsession with "Halliburton," as if anyone would care beyond the people who were long ago baptized into the blue faith. But the politics of the Vietnam generation wasn't just about Vietnam. It was about changing everything, most notably the culture. This generation really opened up the culture. The old pre-Vietnam strictures on behavior and comportment -- Tip O'Neill's old Boston Catholic world of Mass on Sunday and at least a working if not functioning knowledge of the Baltimore catechism -- got hammered down till the moral landscape became flat and fast. Now you can drive anything at all into theaters, music or movies. This post-Vietnam culture of non-restraint, now almost 40 years old, produced Whoopi Goldberg's double-entendre jokes about George Bush's name at Radio City Music Hall, the Massachusetts Supreme Court's sudden decision on gay marriage, and hard-to-defend support for partial-birth abortion. George Bush, age 58, was a reproach. He personifies everything they have fought since they drove LBJ and Richard Nixon out of politics. And this week they are trying to discover why most of the people who live between the Hudson River and Hollywood Freeway don't agree with them. Expect documentaries soon about Christian evangelicals on the Discovery Channel. There is no hope that the Vietnam generation braintrust who just lost this election will ever understand Red America. Until someone in the party recognizes this, the tides of demography will inexorably erode the blue islands that remain on the map. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From chris.kuethe at gmail.com Fri Nov 5 08:37:00 2004 From: chris.kuethe at gmail.com (Chris Kuethe) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 09:37:00 -0700 Subject: Your source code, for sale In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <91981b3e041105083727015040@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, 05 Nov 2004 10:01:41 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: > ... > My photo-bundle receives the releases and opens, and then shoots off a > message that activates the pre-release on your end, giving you the cash. > > Is a 3rd party necessary here? I don't see it, but then again I could be > wrong. What if I block the outbound "release the money" message after I unbundle the images. Sure, I've already committed my money, but you can't get to it. In effect I've just ripped you off, because I have usable product and you don't have usable money. The proof of delivery comes in handy here, so that as soon as I can prove to the bank that my product has arrived within your administrative area, they'll pay me. And the bank sends me a key to unlock the product as soon as it sends you the money. And what *GUARANTEE* do I have that the blob of bits you sent me with the Geri Ryan photos on the outside isn't something from goatse.cx or tubgirl...? Let's say there are 24000 items in the tarball of the IOS code. Do you want to pay $24K for all of them (once) or $12K for half of them (twice) or $1 per file or directory (24000 times)? Do you want to pay per committed bit or character? How can you protect yourself from me committing to sell you /dev/random? I'm sure everyone has this bit committed to memory, but the beginning of Applied Crypto, chapter 2 says: ============================================= Protocols have other characteristics as well: -- Everyone involved in the protocol must know the protocol and all of the steps to follow in advance. -- Everyone involved in the protocol must agree to follow it. -- The protocol must be unambiguous; each step must be well defined and there must be no chance of a misunderstanding. -- The protocol must be complete; there must be a specified action for every possible situation. ... The whole point of using cryptography in a protocol is to prevent or detect eavesdropping and cheating. ============================================= That last property is critical: what does the protocol do when someone isn't playing by the rules? Of course, there's nothing that crypto can do to prevent you from selling me garbage, only the fact that you intentionally did so can be proven. Comment about bribing the dockside worker at the shipping line deleted. -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too? From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 5 00:49:37 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 09:49:37 +0100 Subject: Finding Galt's Gulch (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20041104200518.V57518@ubzr.zsa.bet> References: <20041104200518.V57518@ubzr.zsa.bet> Message-ID: <20041105084937.GT1457@leitl.org> On Thu, Nov 04, 2004 at 08:05:34PM -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote: > Where does one go today, if they are unwilling to participate in the > Failed Experiment? (BTW: No, Lichtenstein does not accept immigrants, and > yes, I have reverified this recently). Go East. Fortunes are made there. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From ben at algroup.co.uk Fri Nov 5 01:54:46 2004 From: ben at algroup.co.uk (Ben Laurie) Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 09:54:46 +0000 Subject: Your source code, for sale In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <418B4DE6.7060009@algroup.co.uk> Tyler Durden wrote: > Hum. > So my newbie-style question is, is there an eGold that can be verified, > but not accessed, until a 'release' code is sent? proof-of-delivery protocols might help (but they're patented, as I discovered when I reinvented them a few years back). > In other words, say I'm buying some hacker-ed code and pay in egold. I > don't want them to be able to 'cash' the gold until I have the code. > Meanwhile, they will want to see that the gold is at least "there", even > if they can't cash it yet. > > Is there a way to send a 'release' to an eGold (or other) payment? > Better yet, a double simultaneous release feature makes thing even more > interesting. Simultaneous release is (provably?) impossible without a trusted third party. I think this is one of the interesting applications of capabilities. Using them, you can have a TTP who is ignorant of what is running - you and your vendor agree some code that the TTP will run, using capability based code. In your case, this code would verify the eGold payment and the code (difficult to do this part with certainty, of course) and release them when both were correct. Because of the capabilities, the TTP could run the code without fear, and you would both know that it performed the desired function, but neither of you could subvert it. Cheers, Ben. -- ApacheCon! 13-17 November! http://www.apachecon.com/ http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html http://www.thebunker.net/ "There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 07:01:10 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 10:01:10 -0500 Subject: Corporate governance goals impossible - RSA Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register ; Business ; Management ; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/04/rsa_redux/ Corporate governance goals impossible - RSA By John Leyden (john.leyden at theregister.co.uk) Published Thursday 4th November 2004 16:43 GMT Companies are struggling to cope with tighter corporate governance regimes, which might even work against the goal of achieving improved IT security they are partly designed to promote. The need to comply with requirements such as data protection, Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II and other corporate governance reforms is tying up IT managers in red tape, according to a banking security expert. "Recent legislation is having a negative impact on risk management," said Michael Colao, director of Information Management at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. In some cases, the law has made IT managers legally responsible for adherence to corporate governance rules. Colao says that this may not necessarily be a good thing. "CIOs are now relying on convoluted processes rather than using sound business judgement based on years of experience. A process is easier to defend in court than personal judgement. This means that in many cases unnecessarily cautious decisions are being taken because the CIO is focusing on their own personal liability, rather than what is best for the business," he said.? Different implementations of the European Data Protection Directive in different countries are creating a headache for multinational firms, according to Colao. "This legislation was brought in as part of the EU common market and was supposed to provide clarity and harmony across Europe. Because each country implements legislation in very different ways, the result is a very fragmented and disjointed approach which causes all sorts of problems, particularly for global organisations," he said. Colao made his comments at the Axis Action Forum, a meeting of IT directors sponsored by RSA Security, in Barcelona this week. RSA Security said differences in European legislation highlighted by Colao were a real problem for its clients. Tim Pickard, strategic marketing director at RSA Security EMEA, said: "The nature of implementation of EU directives in member states means that it is almost impossible for today's global CIO to be fully compliant and is therefore likely to be breaking the law in at least one member state." Business managers becoming fed up with FUD In a separate study, more than a third of the 30 delegates to the Axis Action Forum admitted that their Board had never asked for an update on security or implications of security breaches. The finding suggests widespread boardroom indifference to security issues despite the high profile security has been given in the media and by numerous industry initiatives. Firms only take security seriously in the aftermath of attacks, according to one delegate. Part of the reason could be that business managers are becoming inured to alarmist security pitches. Simon Linsley, head of consultancy and development, Philips said: "For years we have had to go to the Board with messages that create the Fear of God. We can no longer rely on these doom and gloom messages - we have to go to the Board with solutions that add value to the business." The Axis Action Forum attended by more than 30 CIOs, IT directors and heads of security from a range of medium to large businesses. . Related stories UK corporate governance bill to cost millions (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/08/companies_bill_it_costs/) Hackers cost UK.biz billions (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/28/dti_security_survey/) IT voices drowned in corporate governance rush (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/22/it_in_corporate_governance/) Big.biz struggles against security threats (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/27/netsec_security_survey/) ) Copyright 2004 -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jya at pipeline.com Fri Nov 5 10:01:23 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 10:01:23 -0800 Subject: Blue Democrats Lost Red America In-Reply-To: Message-ID: A shallow, stale spin, unduly sanctimonious, and highly presumptive of the legitimacy of election reports. Same vapid shit to fill news void would have been written if Kerry squeaked by. From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Fri Nov 5 07:01:41 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 10:01:41 -0500 Subject: Your source code, for sale Message-ID: Ben Laurie made a lot of useful points. However,... >Simultaneous release is (provably?) impossible without a trusted third >party. I don't think I believe this. Or at least, I don't think it's true to the extent necessary to make the original application impossible. Consider: I send you money for naked photos of Geri Ryan (that Borg chick with the ASS-KICKING hips). The money is "encapsulated"...you can its there, but you can't get at it. You send me encapsulated photos, perhaps with thumbnails on the outside. I see the thumbnails and click to send the pre-release. You see the pre-release arrive and click the release for the photos. My photo-bundle receives the releases and opens, and then shoots off a message that activates the pre-release on your end, giving you the cash. Is a 3rd party necessary here? I don't see it, but then again I could be wrong. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/ From hal at finney.org Fri Nov 5 10:12:48 2004 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 10:12:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: Your source code, for sale Message-ID: <20041105181248.7F09757E2A@finney.org> Enzo Michelangeli writes: > In the world of international trade, where mutual distrust between buyer > and seller is often the rule and there is no central authority to enforce > the law, this is traditionally achieved by interposing not less than three > trusted third parties: the shipping line, the opening bank and the > negotiating bank. Interesting. In the e-gold case, both parties have the same bank, e-gold ltd. The corresponding protocol would be for the buyer to instruct e-gold to set aside some money which would go to the seller once the seller supplied a certain receipt. That receipt would be an email return receipt showing that the seller had sent the buyer the content with hash so-and-so, using a cryptographic email return-receipt protocol. > > You could imagine a trusted third party who would inspect the code and > > certify it, saying "the source code with hash XXX appears to be > > legitimate Cisco source code". Then they could send you the code bit > > by bit and incrementally show that it matches the specified hash, > > using a crypto protocol for gradual release of secrets. You could > > simultaneously do a gradual release of some payment information in the > > other direction. > > But it's hard to assess the value of partially-released code. If the > gradual transfer bits-against-cents is aborted, what is left to the buyer > is likely to be unusable, whereas the partial payment still represents > good value. Actually you can arrange it so that neither the partially-released code nor the partially-transferred ecash is of any value until the whole transfer finishes. For example, send the whole thing first in encrypted form, then release the encryption keys bit-by-bit. If someone aborts the protocol early, the best each side can do is a brute force search over the untransferred bits to try to find the key to unlock the data they received. > A more general issue is that source code is not a commodity, and > intellectual property is not "real" property: so the traditional "cash on > delivery" paradigm just doesn't work, and looking for protocols > implementing it kind of moot. If the code is treated as trade secret, > rather than licensed, an anonymous buyer may make copies and resell them > on the black market more than recovering his initial cost, at the same > time undercutting your legitimate sales (see e.g. the cases of RC4 and > RC2). This can cause losses order of magnitude larger than refusing to pay > for his copy. That's a good point. Maybe you could use some kind of DRM or trusted computing concept to try to force the buyer to lock up his received data. For source code that would be pretty difficult though, it needs to be handled in flexible ways. Hal From hal at finney.org Fri Nov 5 10:18:22 2004 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 10:18:22 -0800 (PST) Subject: Your source code, for sale Message-ID: <20041105181822.77DE857E2A@finney.org> Michael_Heyman writes: > Finney, Hal (CR): > > The problem is that if the source code you are purchasing is > > bogus, or if the other side doesn't come through, you're > > screwed because you've lost the value of the torn cash. The > > other side doesn't gain anything by this fraud, but they harm > > you, and if they are malicious that might be enough. > > > Quick fix for seller incentive: the seller rips some amount of their own > cash in such a way that they cannot recover it unless the buyer provides > the remainder of the buyer's ripped cash. Yes, I'm looking at ideas like this for ecash gambling, but you have a who-goes-first problem. One side or the other has to "rip" their own cash first, and then the other side can just go away and leave the first side screwed. The act of ripping cash is relatively atomic and involves a transaction with the ecash mint, so they can't both do it at the same time. I guess the best fix is for each side to rip a little bit of cash at a time, so that the guy who goes first only loses a trivial amount if the other side aborts. Then after a few rounds both sides are sunk pretty deep and both have a strong incentive to complete the transaction. Hal From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 07:25:30 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 10:25:30 -0500 Subject: The oldest fraud Message-ID: Townhall.com The oldest fraud Thomas Sowell (back to web version) | Send November 5, 2004 Election frauds are nothing new and neither are political frauds in general. The oldest fraud is the belief that the political left is the party of the poor and the downtrodden. The election results in California are only the latest evidence to give the lie to that belief. While the state as a whole went for Kerry, 55 percent versus 44 percent for Bush, the various counties ranged from 71 percent Bush to 83 percent Kerry. The most affluent counties were where Kerry had his strongest support. In Marin County, where the average home price is $750,000, 73 percent of the votes went for Kerry. In Alameda County, where Berkeley is located, it was 74 percent Kerry. San Francisco, with the highest rents of any major city in the country, gave 83 percent of its votes to Kerry. Out where ordinary people live, it was a different story. Thirty-six counties went for Bush versus 22 counties for Kerry, and usually by more balanced vote totals, though Bush went over 70 percent in less fashionable places like Lassen County and Modoc County. If you have never heard of them, there's a reason. It was much the same story on the votes for Proposition 66, which would have limited the "three strikes" law that puts career criminals away for life. Affluent voters living insulated lives in places well removed from high-crime neighborhoods have the luxury of worrying about whether we are not being nice enough to hoodlums, criminals and terrorists. They don't like the "three strikes" law and want it weakened. While most California voters opposed any weakening of that law, a majority of the voters in the affluent and heavily pro-Kerry counties mentioned wanted us to stop being so mean to criminals. This pattern is not confined to California and it is not new. There were limousine liberals before there were limousines. The same pattern applies when you go even further left on the political spectrum, to socialists and communists. The British Labor Party's leader in the heyday of its socialist zealotry was Clement Attlee, who grew up in a large home with servants -- and this was not the only home his family owned. Meanwhile, Margaret Thatcher's family ran a grocery store and lived upstairs over it. While the British Labor Party was affiliated with labor unions, it was the affluent and the intellectuals in the party who had the most left-wing ideologies and the most unrealistic policies. In the years leading up to World War II, the Labor Party was for disarmament while Hitler was arming Germany to the teeth across the Channel. Eventually, it was the labor union component of the party that insisted on some sanity, so that Britain could begin preparing to defend itself militarily -- not a moment too soon. When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto, they were a couple of spoiled young men from rich families. All their talk about the working class was just talk, but it appealed to other such young men who liked heady talk. As Engels himself put it, when the Communist group for whom the Manifesto was written was choosing delegates, "a working man was proposed for appearances sake, but those who proposed him voted for me." This may have been the first rigged election of the Communist movement but it was certainly not the last. All sorts of modern extremist movements, such as the Weathermen in the United States or the Bader-Meinhof gang in Germany, have attracted a disproportionate number of the affluent in general and the intellectuals in particular. Such people may speak in the name of the downtrodden but they themselves are often people who have time on their hands to nurse their pet notions about the world and their fancies about themselves as leaders of the poor, saviors of the environment or whatever happens to be the Big Deal du jour. Osama bin Laden is not someone embittered by poverty. He is from a very rich family and has had both the time to nurse his resentments of the West and the money to organize terrorists to lash out in the only way that can give them any significance. The belief that liberal, left-wing or extremist movements are for the poor may or may not be the biggest fraud but it is certainly the oldest. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it." -- Thomas Sowell From taral at taral.net Fri Nov 5 10:12:54 2004 From: taral at taral.net (Taral) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 12:12:54 -0600 Subject: Your source code, for sale In-Reply-To: <20041104230115.6A1CD57E2A@finney.org> References: <20041104230115.6A1CD57E2A@finney.org> Message-ID: <20041105181254.GA8871@yzma.clarkk.net> On Thu, Nov 04, 2004 at 03:01:15PM -0800, "Hal Finney" wrote: > Another idea along these lines is gradual payment for gradual release > of the goods. You pay 10% of the amount and they give you 10% of the > source code. You pay another 10% and you get the next 10% of the source, > and so on. (Or it could be nonlinear; maybe they give out half the code > for free, but the final 10% requires a large payment.) The idea is that > you can sample and make sure they do appear to have the real thing with > a fairly small investment. > > If there is some mechanism for the seller to have a reputation (like > Advogato's perhaps, with some spoofing immunity) then the problem is > easier; the seller won't want to screw buyers because it hurts his rep. > In that case it may be reasonable to ask the buyer to pay in advance, > perhaps using the partial payment system just discussed. The mojonation file sharing system had an implementation like this originally... -- Taral This message is digitally signed. Please PGP encrypt mail to me. A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail? -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 09:42:11 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 12:42:11 -0500 Subject: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue Message-ID: Here ya go, John and Bill, Knock yourselves out... :-) Cheers, RAH ------- Slate politics Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue The unteachable ignorance of the red states. By Jane Smiley Updated Thursday, Nov. 4, 2004, at 3:24 PM PT The day after the election, Slate's political writers tackled the question of why the Democratic Party-which has now lost five of the past seven presidential elections and solidified its minority status in Congress-keeps losing elections. Chris Suellentrop says that John Kerry was too nuanced and technocratic, while George W. Bush offered a vision of expanding freedom around the world. William Saletan argues that Democratic candidates won't win until they again cast their policies the way Bill Clinton did, in terms of values and moral responsibility. Timothy Noah contends that none of the familiar advice to the party-move right, move left, or sit tight-seems likely to help. Slate asked a number of wise liberals to take up the question of why Americans won't vote for the Democrats. Click here to read previous entries. I say forget introspection. It's time to be honest about our antagonists. My predecessors in this conversation are thoughtful men, and I honor their ideas, but let's try something else. I grew up in Missouri and most of my family voted for Bush, so I am going to be the one to say it: The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. I suppose the good news is that 55 million Americans have evaded the ignorance-inducing machine. But 58 million have not. (Well, almost 58 million-my relatives are not ignorant, they are just greedy and full of classic Republican feelings of superiority.) Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. There used to be a kind of hand-to-hand fight on the frontier called a "knock-down-drag-out," where any kind of gouging, biting, or maiming was considered fair. The ancestors of today's red-state voters used to stand around cheering and betting on these fights. When the forces of red and blue encountered one another head-on for the first time in Kansas Territory in 1856, the red forces from Missouri, who had been coveting Indian land across the Missouri River since 1820, entered Kansas and stole the territorial election. The red news media of the day made a practice of inflammatory lying-declaring that the blue folks had shot and killed red folks whom everyone knew were walking around. The worst civilian massacre in American history took place in Lawrence, Kan., in 1862-Quantrill's raid. The red forces, known then as the slave-power, pulled 265 unarmed men from their beds on a Sunday morning and slaughtered them in front of their wives and children. The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America. Listen to what the red state citizens say about themselves, the songs they write, and the sermons they flock to. They know who they are-they are full of original sin and they have a taste for violence. The blue state citizens make the Rousseauvian mistake of thinking humans are essentially good, and so they never realize when they are about to be slugged from behind. Here is how ignorance works: First, they put the fear of God into you-if you don't believe in the literal word of the Bible, you will burn in hell. Of course, the literal word of the Bible is tremendously contradictory, and so you must abdicate all critical thinking, and accept a simple but logical system of belief that is dangerous to question. A corollary to this point is that they make sure you understand that Satan resides in the toils and snares of complex thought and so it is best not try it. Next, they tell you that you are the best of a bad lot (humans, that is) and that as bad as you are, if you stick with them, you are among the chosen. This is flattering and reassuring, and also encourages you to imagine the terrible fates of those you envy and resent. American politicians ALWAYS operate by a similar sort of flattery, and so Americans are never induced to question themselves. That's what happened to Jimmy Carter-he asked Americans to take responsibility for their profligate ways, and promptly lost to Ronald Reagan, who told them once again that they could do anything they wanted. The history of the last four years shows that red state types, above all, do not want to be told what to do-they prefer to be ignorant. As a result, they are virtually unteachable. Third, and most important, when life grows difficult or fearsome, they (politicians, preachers, pundits) encourage you to cling to your ignorance with even more fervor. But by this time you don't need much encouragement-you've put all your eggs into the ignorance basket, and really, some kind of miraculous fruition (preferably accompanied by the torment of your enemies, and the ignorant always have plenty of enemies) is your only hope. If you are sufficiently ignorant, you won't even know how dangerous your policies are until they have destroyed you, and then you can always blame others. The reason the Democrats have lost five of the last seven presidential elections is simple: A generation ago, the big capitalists, who have no morals, as we know, decided to make use of the religious right in their class war against the middle class and against the regulations that were protecting those whom they considered to be their rightful prey-workers and consumers. The architects of this strategy knew perfectly well that they were exploiting, among other unsavory qualities, a long American habit of virulent racism, but they did it anyway, and we see the outcome now-Cheney is the capitalist arm and Bush is the religious arm. They know no boundaries or rules. They are predatory and resentful, amoral, avaricious, and arrogant. Lots of Americans like and admire them because lots of Americans, even those who don't share those same qualities, don't know which end is up. Can the Democrats appeal to such voters? Do they want to? The Republicans have sold their souls for power. Must everyone? Progressives have only one course of action now: React quickly to every outrage-red state types love to cheat and intimidate, so we have to assume the worst and call them on it every time. We have to give them more to think about than they can handle-to always appeal to reason and common sense, and the law, even when they can't understand it and don't respond. They cannot be allowed to keep any secrets. Tens of millions of people didn't vote-they are watching, too, and have to be shown that we are ready and willing to fight, and that the battle is worth fighting. And in addition, we have to remember that threats to democracy from the right always collapse. Whatever their short-term appeal, they are borne of hubris and hatred, and will destroy their purveyors in the end. Jane Smiley is the author of many novels and essays. She lives in California. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 10:00:13 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 13:00:13 -0500 Subject: When A Pencil And Paper Makes Sense Message-ID: Forbes Ten O'Clock Tech When A Pencil And Paper Makes Sense Arik Hesseldahl, 11.05.04, 10:00 AM ET Thank goodness, it's over. Sometime around 4:30 A.M. Wednesday I went to bed, not the least bit uncertain that George W. Bush had been re-elected. But the one thing during this election cycle about which I have been uncertain is electronic voting. Florida in 2000 was a mess, and in reaction, some states and counties have turned to newfangled electronic voting machines, thinking that computer technology is the answer to a voting system that has started to creak under pressure. It seems that despite much worry about a repeat of Florida in other states, voting has gone pretty smoothly. Electronic voting methods are getting high marks. Of the 27,500 voting problems reported to the Verified Voting Project, a San Francisco-based group that monitored the election for voting problems, less than 6% of the issues reported stemmed from electronic voting machines. Election officials in states like Nevada, Georgia and Hawaii gave electronic voting systems a try. There were some problems: a memory card on an electronic voting machine in Florida failed; five machines in Reno, Nev., malfunctioned, causing lines to back up. Overall voter turnout was high. The Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, a nonprofit, nonpartisan outfit based in Washington, D.C., estimated that 120.2 million people, or 59.6% of those eligible to vote, cast ballots in this election, which would be an improvement of 5% and 15 million people, compared with the 2000 elections, and would make 2004's turnout the highest since 1968. Still, that's not as high as voter participation in my home state of Oregon, where 1.7 million people, or nearly 82% of those eligible, voted. In Oregon, voters cast their votes from home rather than going to a polling place. They submit their ballots by mail. The state abolished polling places in 1998 and has been voting entirely by mail ever since. Voters get their ballots roughly two weeks before election day. This year some were delayed because of an unexpectedly high number of voter registrations. Ballots must be received by county elections offices by 8 P.M. on the day of the election. Drop boxes are located throughout the state, as well. Voting should indeed take time and effort. It's undoubtedly important. But I like Oregon's common-sense approach. Voting from the comfort of your own home eliminates the inherent disincentive that comes from having to stand on a long line, for example. It's pretty simple. Oregon voters fill out their ballots using a pencil, just like those standardized tests everyone took in high school. If they want to write in a candidate, the ballot allows for that, too. I thought of this as I stood for about 45 minutes in a long, cold line at 6:30 A.M. to vote in my neighborhood in New York's Upper East Side. Throughout the day I heard reports from around the country of people who had to stand in line for as long as eight hours so they could vote, and I wondered how many others just threw up their hands in frustration because they had someplace else to be. The mail-in ballot also gives the voter a little time to consider his or her choice. Too often, voters will enter a voting booth knowing a few of the people they intend to vote for, but read about some ballot initiative or amendment for the first time. Rather than having to make a snap decision in the voting booth, having a ballot handy at home can give voters time to educate themselves and make a more informed decision. Sometimes, the best solution isn't a computer at all, but a good old-fashioned pencil and paper. Click here for more Ten O'Clock Tech Columns -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jya at pipeline.com Fri Nov 5 13:05:22 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 13:05:22 -0800 Subject: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Well, this is just commie propaganda. Bob, you know this is against list rules, everybody knows what's right, stop blue-baiting, you fucking nazi. From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 10:15:48 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 13:15:48 -0500 Subject: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 1:05 PM -0800 11/5/04, John Young wrote: >Bob, you know this is against list rules, everybody knows >what's right, stop blue-baiting, you fucking nazi. :-) Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 10:35:27 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 13:35:27 -0500 Subject: Your source code, for sale In-Reply-To: <20041105181822.77DE857E2A@finney.org> References: <20041105181822.77DE857E2A@finney.org> Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 10:18 AM -0800 11/5/04, Hal Finney wrote: >Yes, I'm looking at ideas like this for ecash gambling, but you have >a who-goes-first problem. Whenever we talk about financial applications, where the assets represented by one bearer certificate are exchanged for those represented by another, what's really happening is a redeem-reissue process anyway. Since it's the underwriters' reputations you're trusting anyway, we've always assumed that there would be communication between the underwriters in order to execute, clear, and settle the trade all at once. For streaming stuff, we figured that since we were streaming cash for streaming bits, like movies, or content of some kind, you'd just do tit for tat, one stream (cash, probably signed probabalistically tested "coins" in the last iteration that we called "Nicko-mint" :-)) against another, the movie, song, etc being streamed. There's the "missing last 5 minutes" problem, but I think that, in recursive auction-settled cash market for digital goods like this (Eric Hughes' institutional 'pirate' scheme, the 'silk road' stuff, whatever), that there will always be another source to buy what's left from, once the intellectual property issues solve themselves because of the auction process. For things that aren't useful except in their entirety, like code, or executables, (or storing money :-)), I've always been a fan of the Mojo/BitTorrent stuff, where you hash the file into bits, ala m-of-n Shamir secret splitting, and store/buy them from lots of places at once. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQYvH6cPxH8jf3ohaEQIGGACgiS/Uv3KxDK4rM9lozOoxfI5Fg1QAoP7d 4Xw6/SwfaBOqgyh9uQTS/5oa =XMiK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Fri Nov 5 10:38:31 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 13:38:31 -0500 Subject: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue Message-ID: I dunno...a lot of it made sense to me. You don't have to be a Commie in order to believe that someone ELSE believes there's a "class war", and that they gotta keep us black folks po', or else we'll soon be having sex with their wives and daughters and competing with their sons for decent jobs. And as long as that somebody else believes there's a class war, they're probably going to vote like there's one, and try to dupe as many others as they can into voting like there's one, and that they're in the in-crowd. And then of course they'll open a military base everynow and then to demonstrate their largesse. -TD >From: "R.A. Hettinga" >To: John Young , cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue >Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 13:15:48 -0500 > >At 1:05 PM -0800 11/5/04, John Young wrote: > >Bob, you know this is against list rules, everybody knows > >what's right, stop blue-baiting, you fucking nazi. > >:-) > >Cheers, >RAH > >-- >----------------- >R. A. Hettinga >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation >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' _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Fri Nov 5 10:43:35 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 13:43:35 -0500 Subject: Your source code, for sale Message-ID: >What if I block the outbound "release the money" message after I >unbundle the images. Sure, I've already committed my money, but you >can't get to it. In effect I've just ripped you off, because I have >usable product and you don't have usable money. Well, yes, but this would be a very significant step forward from the current situation. As t-->infinity the vast majority of non-payments are going to be for the purpose of greed. If the payment is already 'gone', then you need a whole different set of motives for wanting to screw somebody even if you get nothing out of it. So in other words, you have at least solved the payment problem "to the first order", with no 3rd party. With fancier mechanisms I would think you can solve it to 2nd order too. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Check out Election 2004 for up-to-date election news, plus voter tools and more! http://special.msn.com/msn/election2004.armx From jya at pipeline.com Fri Nov 5 14:12:18 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 14:12:18 -0800 Subject: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Tyler, Commie is the term used here like is nazi used elsewhere as the most fearsome if thoughtless epithet. Nazi here is a term of endearment, and also admirable role model by some. Calling someone both is not allowed, check the FAQ under impurity. Tim May, praise Allah, always claimed cypherpunks was a fair and balanced forum thanks to the one person of the left here who was fingered affectionately like a house rodent, an easy target for errant shooters. CJ is not to be recalled, ever. Jim Bell still sends "very important" legal papers, the latest yesterday, which describe the way things should be understood. But who can believe an MIT chemist political prisoner. CJ and Jim jailed by the Democratic freedom-fighters. From macavity at well.com Fri Nov 5 06:32:08 2004 From: macavity at well.com (Will Morton) Date: Fri, 05 Nov 2004 14:32:08 +0000 Subject: Cryptography Research Takes Aim at Content Pirates In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <418B8EE8.3010702@well.com> R.A. Hettinga wrote: > > >Yahoo! Finance > > >Source: Cryptography Research, Inc. > >Cryptography Research VP Benjamin Jun Takes Aim at Content Pirates >Friday November 5, 6:02 am ET > >Discusses Technology Trends and Responses at Upcoming RSA Conference Europe >2004 > > > Yes, we can protect you from those eeeeeeeeeeeevil commie pirates. Our product is a "flexible solution that combines programmable security and 'smart content' with risk management techniques such as forensic marking and attack response capabilities." And yes, the icon comes in cornflower blue. Meanwhile, Bittorrent now takes up 35% of global bandwidth (http://in.tech.yahoo.com/041103/137/2ho4i.html) and 4Mb DSL lines are now available in the UK mass market (http://www.bulldogbroadband.com/general/landing.asp) for #40 ($73) per month with T&Cs that scream 'P2P-OK'. Good luck with those 'attack response capabilities'. W From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 11:39:37 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 14:39:37 -0500 Subject: Election with Hunter Message-ID: Last blue-baiting post, I swear. Gotta love HST, especially after the ether kicks in... Cheers, RAH ------- Aspen Daily News Friday, November 5, 2004 11/4/04 Election with Hunter By Troy Hooper/Aspen Daily News Staff Writer WOODY CREEK - It was Bailey's Irish Cream and Royal Salute Scotch Whiskey at the Thompson household on Election Night. A bottle of Cristal intended for a John Kerry victory remained uncorked, chilling on ice in a backroom. A hungry smell of anticipation hung in the kitchen at Owl Farm, which morphed into a makeshift Democratic headquarters as Hunter S. Thompson hunkered down with a small group of friends and manned what seemed like a global switchboard as calls came pouring in from some of the biggest names in modern American lore. Even a few pollsters dialed up The Good Doctor in search of the most up-to-minute score. Whether they were calling to ascertain Thompson's classified political knowledge or gauge his gambler's instinct was unclear. But without question, his phone was chiming more often than the Liberty Bell. "I don't mean to pop the bad news on you Bubba but John Kerry is getting beat just like George McGovern did in 1972 - or worse," Thompson proclaimed to his nephew well before the news networks gave any hint that Bush Nation was marching toward a second term. "The tide turned so quickly it was difficult to breathe." Actor Sean Penn, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, Kerry press secretary David Wade and others checked in with Thompson who sat on a chair inhaling cigarettes and stiff drinks in between bites of breakfast, which wasn't served to the late-awakening writer until after the sun went down. Asked for a candid assessment of the election, Thompson put it plainly to Penn. "I've got the worst possible news. Colorado has gone to hell like all the other states," Thompson said into the speakerphone. "They must have all voted the same way they prayed." The way Thompson's neighbors voted was far removed from the national outcome. Bush mustered just 2,750 of Pitkin County's electorate while Kerry received 6,275. Nationally, Bush garnered the highest total number of votes ever, winning 51 percent of the record voter turnout, which preliminary estimates have put at roughly 117 million. He is the first president to win a majority of the vote since 1988 when his father beat another Democrat from Massachusetts: Michael Dukakis. "The news is getting logarithmically more horrible," Thompson told another caller as the night wore on. "They're all committing suicide up in Boston." Thompson has always had a keen eye for politics. His best-known work on the subject is "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72" - an up-close study of South Dakota Senator George McGovern's effort to unseat President Richard Nixon. Over the weekend, McGovern and Thompson discussed the election: The two old friends suggested Bush might be more dangerous than Nixon. Kerry would make a fine president, they both agreed, as they noted the similarities between the two eras. This year's Democratic presidential candidate must have seen some similarities between now and then, too. When Kerry visited Aspen last June for a fund-raiser, he brought three hardcover copies of "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72" to have them autographed. Thompson obliged and struck a friendship with Kerry, serving as his unofficial Aspen tour guide, meeting the candidate on a rain-soaked tarmac at Sardy Field and riding in a Secret Service procession up Red Mountain, showing Kerry the sights and conferring with him on national affairs. Now, five months later, Kerry has met the same fate as McGovern. "I feel like somebody's died," Thompson lamented as the sun was preparing to rise early Wednesday morning. "I'm just not sure who it was." He deemed the election "another failure of the youth vote." "Yeah, we rocked the vote all right. Those little bastards betrayed us again." But despite his disappointment, Thompson remained remarkably upbeat. "Their army is how much bigger than mine? Three percent? Well shucks, Bubba. Now is the time to establish a network and an attitude," he said. "You make friends in moments of defeat. People in defeat tend to bond because they need each other. We can't take the attitude that it's over and we give up. We're still here." Thompson added: "I'm proud to have known John Kerry." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 5 11:56:46 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 14:56:46 -0500 Subject: Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes Message-ID: Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes Email this Story Nov 5, 11:56 AM (ET) COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said. Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush actually received 365 votes in the precinct, Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told The Columbus Dispatch. State and county election officials did not immediately respond to requests by The Associated Press for more details about the voting system and its vendor, and whether the error, if repeated elsewhere in Ohio, could have affected the outcome. Bush won the state by more than 136,000 votes, according to unofficial results, and Kerry conceded the election on Wednesday after acknowledging that 155,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted in Ohio would not change the result. The Secretary of State's Office said Friday it could not revise Bush's total until the county reported the error. The Ohio glitch is among a handful of computer troubles that have emerged since Tuesday's elections. In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. And in San Francisco, a malfunction with custom voting software could delay efforts to declare the winners of four races for county supervisor. In the Ohio precinct in question, the votes are recorded onto a cartridge. On one of the three machines at that precinct, a malfunction occurred in the recording process, Damschroder said. He could not explain how the malfunction occurred. (AP) Voters waited up to three hours to cast ballots after one of two voting machines failed to work at... Full Image Damschroder said people who had seen poll results on the election board's Web site called to point out the discrepancy. The error would have been discovered when the official count for the election is performed later this month, he said. The reader also recorded zero votes in a county commissioner race on the machine. Workers checked the cartridge against memory banks in the voting machine and each showed that 115 people voted for Bush on that machine. With the other machines, the total for Bush in the precinct added up to 365 votes. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, a glitch occurred with software designed for the city's new "ranked-choice voting," in which voters list their top three choices for municipal offices. If no candidate gets a majority of first-place votes outright, voters' second and third-place preferences are then distributed among candidates who weren't eliminated in the first round. When the San Francisco Department of Elections tried a test run on Wednesday of the program that does the redistribution, some of the votes didn't get counted and skewed the results, director John Arntz said. "All the information is there," Arntz said. "It's just not arriving the way it was supposed to." A technician from the Omaha, Neb. company that designed the software, Election Systems & Software Inc., was working to diagnose and fix the problem. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From em at em.no-ip.com Fri Nov 5 00:10:56 2004 From: em at em.no-ip.com (Enzo Michelangeli) Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 16:10:56 +0800 Subject: Your source code, for sale References: <20041104230115.6A1CD57E2A@finney.org> Message-ID: <01b801c4c30f$0c4cc4e0$0200a8c0@em.noip.com> ----- Original Message ----- From: ""Hal Finney"" Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 7:01 AM > "Tyler Durden" writes: > > So my newbie-style question is, is there an eGold that can be > > verified, but not accessed, until a 'release' code is sent? > > > > In other words, say I'm buying some hacker-ed code and pay in egold. > > I don't want them to be able to 'cash' the gold until I have the > > code. Meanwhile, they will want to see that the gold is at least > > "there", even if they can't cash it yet. > > > > Is there a way to send a 'release' to an eGold (or other) payment? > > Better yet, a double simultaneous release feature makes thing even > > more interesting. In the world of international trade, where mutual distrust between buyer and seller is often the rule and there is no central authority to enforce the law, this is traditionally achieved by interposing not less than three trusted third parties: the shipping line, the opening bank and the negotiating bank. First, the buyer asks his bank to open an irrevocable letter of credit (L/C), which is a letter sent to the seller's bank instructing it to pay the seller once the latter presents a given set of documents: these usually include the "bill of lading" (B/L), issued by the shipping line to declare that the desired cargo was indeed loaded on board. The seller gets the letter of gredit from his bank and is now sure that he will be paid by the latter (which he trusts); so he purchases or manufactures the goods, delivers them to the shipping line getting the B/L, passes it together with the other documents to his bank, and draws the payment. The seller's bank sends by mail the documents to the buyer's bank (which it trusts due to long-standing business relationships), knowing that it will eventually receive the settlement money. The buyer's bank receives the documents, debits the buyer's account, remits the monies to the seller's bank, and delivers the documents to the buyer. When the ship arrives to the buye's seaport, the buyer goes to the shipping line, presents to it the B/L and in exchange gets the cargo (in sea shipments, the B/L represents title to the goods). > I've been thinking about how to do this kind of thing with ecash. That's way trickier because there are no trusted third parties, not even e-gold Ltd. / G&SR, Inc. The trust chain with the L/C works well because delegation of trust is unnecessary: every link in the chain bears responsibility only to its adjacent links. [...] > In the case of your problem there is the issue of whether the source > code you are buying is legitimate. Only once you have inspected it and > satisfied yourself that it will suit your needs would you be willing > to pay. But attaining that assurance will require examing the code in > such detail that maybe you will decide that you don't need to pay. Interestingly, with L/C's this problem is addressed by involving yet another third party: an internationally-recognized inspection company (e.g., the Swiss SGS) that issues a document certifying that the cargo is indeed what the buyer expects and not, i.e., bricks. Banks and shipping lines don't want to get involved in these issues; the seller's bank will only check all the documents requested by the L/C (possibly including the inspection certificate). > You could imagine a trusted third party who would inspect the code and > certify it, saying "the source code with hash XXX appears to be > legitimate Cisco source code". Then they could send you the code bit > by bit and incrementally show that it matches the specified hash, > using a crypto protocol for gradual release of secrets. You could > simultaneously do a gradual release of some payment information in the > other direction. But it's hard to assess the value of partially-released code. If the gradual transfer bits-against-cents is aborted, what is left to the buyer is likely to be unusable, whereas the partial payment still represents good value. A more general issue is that source code is not a commodity, and intellectual property is not "real" property: so the traditional "cash on delivery" paradigm just doesn't work, and looking for protocols implementing it kind of moot. If the code is treated as trade secret, rather than licensed, an anonymous buyer may make copies and resell them on the black market more than recovering his initial cost, at the same time undercutting your legitimate sales (see e.g. the cases of RC4 and RC2). This can cause losses order of magnitude larger than refusing to pay for his copy. Enzo From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 6 04:23:27 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 07:23:27 -0500 Subject: The Values-Vote Myth Message-ID: The New York Times November 6, 2004 OP-ED COLUMNIST The Values-Vote Myth By DAVID BROOKS Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a story line to explain the result, and the story line has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them. In past years, the story line has involved Angry White Males, or Willie Horton-bashing racists. This year, the official story is that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls to put George Bush over the top. This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is certainly wrong. Here are the facts. As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center points out, there was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate this year as they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life. Sixteen percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily. It's true that Bush did get a few more evangelicals to vote Republican, but Kohut, whose final poll nailed the election result dead-on, reminds us that public opinion on gay issues over all has been moving leftward over the years. Majorities oppose gay marriage, but in the exit polls Tuesday, 25 percent of the voters supported gay marriage and 35 percent of voters supported civil unions. There is a big middle on gay rights issues, as there is on most social issues. Much of the misinterpretation of this election derives from a poorly worded question in the exit polls. When asked about the issue that most influenced their vote, voters were given the option of saying "moral values." But that phrase can mean anything - or nothing. Who doesn't vote on moral values? If you ask an inept question, you get a misleading result. The reality is that this was a broad victory for the president. Bush did better this year than he did in 2000 in 45 out of the 50 states. He did better in New York, Connecticut and, amazingly, Massachusetts. That's hardly the Bible Belt. Bush, on the other hand, did not gain significantly in the 11 states with gay marriage referendums. He won because 53 percent of voters approved of his performance as president. Fifty-eight percent of them trust Bush to fight terrorism. They had roughly equal confidence in Bush and Kerry to handle the economy. Most approved of the decision to go to war in Iraq. Most see it as part of the war on terror. The fact is that if you think we are safer now, you probably voted for Bush. If you think we are less safe, you probably voted for Kerry. That's policy, not fundamentalism. The upsurge in voters was an upsurge of people with conservative policy views, whether they are religious or not. The red and blue maps that have been popping up in the papers again this week are certainly striking, but they conceal as much as they reveal. I've spent the past four years traveling to 36 states and writing millions of words trying to understand this values divide, and I can tell you there is no one explanation. It's ridiculous to say, as some liberals have this week, that we are perpetually refighting the Scopes trial, with the metro forces of enlightenment and reason arrayed against the retro forces of dogma and reaction. In the first place, there is an immense diversity of opinion within regions, towns and families. Second, the values divide is a complex layering of conflicting views about faith, leadership, individualism, American exceptionalism, suburbia, Wal-Mart, decorum, economic opportunity, natural law, manliness, bourgeois virtues and a zillion other issues. But the same insularity that caused many liberals to lose touch with the rest of the country now causes them to simplify, misunderstand and condescend to the people who voted for Bush. If you want to understand why Democrats keep losing elections, just listen to some coastal and university town liberals talk about how conformist and intolerant people in Red America are. It makes you wonder: why is it that people who are completely closed-minded talk endlessly about how open-minded they are? What we are seeing is a diverse but stable Republican coalition gradually eclipsing a diverse and stable Democratic coalition. Social issues are important, but they don't come close to telling the whole story. Some of the liberal reaction reminds me of a phrase I came across recently: The rage of the drowning man. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From pique at netspace.net.au Fri Nov 5 13:02:50 2004 From: pique at netspace.net.au (Tim Benham) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 08:02:50 +1100 Subject: Singin' this'll be the day that it died Message-ID: <200411060802.50796.pique@netspace.net.au> A long, long time agob& I can still remember How the dollar used to make me smile. And I knew if I had my chance I'd sell the currency of France And, maybe, I'd be happy for awhile. But all our spending made me shiver With every T-bill we'd deliver. Bad news on the doorstep; I couldn't take one more step. I can't remember if I cried When I heard our politicians lied But something touched me deep inside The day the dollar died. So bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died This'll be the day that it died. Did you write Whitehouse.gov Or have you a Yen to fall in love If Japan will tell you so? Now, do you believe in oil 'n coal Can China fill our import hole And can we teach them how to grow real slow? Well I know the country's fit and trim 'Cause the jobs are in the Pacific Rim. We all knew savers lose Man, I dug not having to choose. We were living off the almighty buck We got their goods and they were stuck But I knew we were out of luck The day the dollar died. I started singin' Bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died This'll be the day that it died. Now for ten years we were sure we owned All the stocks and bonds and mortgage loans But that's not how it's gonna be. When we've spent it all like kings and queens In clothes we bought from The Philippines The Asians pick the reserve currency. Oh, and while the king was looking down, Their central bankers came to town. Our stocks and bonds were spurned Those dollars were returned. And while unions filled their books with Marx The President said drill in parks Our thermostats froze in the dark The day the dollar died. We were singin' Bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died This'll be the day that it died. . Helter skelter in a summer swelter The equity's gone from your leveraged shelter Fannie and Freddie are falling fast. Crash, they landed, but in a new class Full faith and credit have long since passed With Congress, in denial, out of gas. Now the Wal-Mart there has cheap perfume With imports filling every room. We all got up to dance Oh, but we never got the chance. The consumers tried to take the field The central banks refused to yield Do you recall what was revealed The day the dollar died? We started singin' Bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died This'll be the day that it died. Oh, and there we were all in one place Our credit rating in disgrace With no time left to start again. So come on: Al be nimble, Al be quick! Al, cut rates by 50 ticks 'cause credit is the debtor's only friend. Oh, and as I watched him on the stage My hands were clenched in fists of rage No congressman in hell Could buy what he would sell. And as the rates climbed high into the night To stem the U.S. asset flight The IMF said, "Yes, that's right" The day the dollar died They were singin' Bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died This'll be the day that it died. I met a girl who sang the blues And I asked her if we still could choose But she just smiled and turned away. I went down to the Medicare store Where we'd spent our dollars years before But the man there said those dollars wouldn't pay. And in the streets the children screamed The seniors cried and the workers steamed But not a word was spoken The commitments all were broken. And the three men I admire most: Faber, Rogers, and Bill Gross Were at the forex trading post The day the dollar died. And they were singin' Bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died This'll be the day that it died. They were singin' Bye-bye, dollar assets good-bye Sold my Chevy at the levee 'cause my pension ran dry. Them good old boys were drinkin' sake to try Singin' this'll be the day that it died. -- Harry Chernoff is an independent economist in Great Falls, VA (with apologies to Don McLean) From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 6 05:23:12 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 08:23:12 -0500 Subject: Broward machines count backward Message-ID: Palm Beach Post Broward machines count backward By Eliot Kleinberg Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Friday, November 05, 2004 FORT LAUDERDALE - It had to happen. Things were just going too smoothly. Early Thursday, as Broward County elections officials wrapped up after a long day of canvassing votes, something unusual caught their eye. Tallies should go up as more votes are counted. That's simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone . . . down. Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward. Why a voting system would be designed to count backward was a mystery to Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman. She was on the phone late Wednesday with Omaha-based Elections Systems and Software. Bad numbers showed up only in running tallies through the day, not the final one. Final tallies were reached by cross-checking machine totals, and officials are confident they are accurate. The glitch affected only the 97,434 absentee ballots, Broward Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes said. All were placed in their own precincts and optical scanners totaled votes, which were then fed to a main computer. That's where the counting problems surfaced. They affected only votes for constitutional amendments 4 through 8, because they were on the only page that was exactly the same on all county absentee ballots. The same software is used in Martin and Miami-Dade counties; Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties use different companies. The problem cropped up in the 2002 election. Lieberman said ES&S told her it had sent software upgrades to the Florida Secretary of State's office, but that the office kept rejecting the software. The state said that's not true. Broward elections officials said they had thought the problem was fixed. Secretary of State spokeswoman Jenny Nash said all counties using this system had been told that such problems would occur if a precinct is set up in a way that would allow votes to get above 32,000. She said Broward should have split the absentee ballots into four separate precincts to avoid that and that a Broward elections employee since has admitted to not doing that. But Lieberman said later, "No election employee has come to the canvassing board and made the statements that Jenny Nash said occurred." Late Thursday, ES&S issued a statement reiterating that it learned of the problems in 2002 and said the software upgrades would be submitted to Hood's office next year. The company was working with the counties it serves to make sure ballots don't exceed capacity and said no other counties reported similar problems. "While the county bears the ultimate responsibility for programming the ballot and structuring the precincts, we . . . regret any confusion the discrepancy in early vote totals has caused," the statement said. After several calls to the company during the day were not returned, an ES&S spokeswoman said late Thursday she did not know whether ES&S contacted the secretary of state two years ago or whether the software is designed to count backward. While the problem surfaced two years ago, it was under a different Br oward elections supervisor and a different secretary of state. Snipes said she had not known about the 2002 snafu. Later, Lieberman said, "I am not passing judgments and I'm not pointing a finger." But she said that if ES&S is found to be at fault, actions might include penalizing ES&S or even defaulting on its contract. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Sat Nov 6 05:46:17 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 08:46:17 -0500 Subject: The Values-Vote Myth Message-ID: "He won because 53 percent of voters approved of his performance as president. Fifty-eight percent of them trust Bush to fight terrorism. They had roughly equal confidence in Bush and Kerry to handle the economy. Most approved of the decision to go to war in Iraq. Most see it as part of the war on terror." In other words, he won because some hillbilly was afraid that the guy at the local 7-11 was going to blow up his chicked farm. Those of us living close enough to "Ground Zero" to smell it back in those days are apprarently less than convinced. So: A 'moral values' question for Cypherpunks. Does this election indict the American people as being complicit in the crime known as "Operation Freedom"? (I notice everyone forgot about that name.) -TD _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ From jya at pipeline.com Sat Nov 6 08:59:08 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 08:59:08 -0800 Subject: Why Americans Hate Dissenters In-Reply-To: <68af3a36547b5a13efcf330e080e2ef8@dizum.com> Message-ID: On CJ (Carl Johnson) and Jim Bell: There was a time when the greatest terrorist threat to the US was located in the northwestern part of the country, Idaho, Washington State and Oregon, some of California. Militia the infidels were called. The US Attorney's Office in Tacoma, WA, was a center of counterterrorist activity, aided by FBI, Treasury, IRS, US Marshals, DEA and others. Jim Bell was twice busted, tried, convicted and jailed, by the Tacoma USA, for alleged acts against the USG, primarily the IRS, but knowledgeable citizens presume the assault was the result of his essay, Assassination Politics (AP), which descibed a system for anonymous killing of varmints, government officials especially, but not limited to those. CJ defended Jim with a series of online statements on his behalf, and for allegedly running an online version of AP. For this misbehavior he was busted, tried, convicted and jailed, also by the Tacoma USA. Jim served his first term, allegedly misbehaved again, and was sent to jail again, where he remains and continues to file appeals of his railroading. CJ served a term and is now free, pursuing among other wonders his career as the King of Country Porn. Bell and CJ posted regularly to cypherpunks during their days of pre-jailing, and some of their messages here were used against them during trial. An agent of the IRS, Jeff Gordon was a known subscriber of cypherpunks for the purpose of surveilling members and stashing useful email evidence to advance his career -- Jeff was indeed awarded honors for his investigation and jailing of the heroes of the revolution. Here's a US Marshal report on Jeff's snooping: ----- http://cryptome.org/jdb/usms020499.htm On November 25, 1997, Inspector Jeff GORDAN with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Portland, Oregon, contacted the U.S. Marshals Service, Tacoma, Washington, regarding an internet posting he had obtained on this day (see attached). [http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.97.11.20-97.11.26/msg00274.html] On the same date, Deputy U.S. Marshal STEPHENSON contacted Inspector GORDAN in an attempt obtain further details regarding the individuals mentioned in the internet posting. Inspector GORDAN related the following: On May 17, 1997, the IRS in Vancouver, Washington, arrested James Dalton BELL (#26906-086) for threats, assaults, obstruction, and intimidation of employees and officers of the IRS. During IRS's initial investigation of BELL, the IRS discovered that BELL was associated with the Multnomah County Common Law Court as well as the author of "Assassination Politics", an essay that describes and advocates the development and use of a system to reward people who kill selected Government employees. BELL was also known to transmit his beliefs via internet services (see W/WA case #CR97-5270FDB). Inspector GORDON indicated that since BELL's arrest his office has been monitoring internet postings by the Cypherpunks, one of the groups BELL was known to be communicating with. Many of the postings are simply communications between members of the group regarding their dissatisfaction with the Government. Inspector GORDAN related that this posting was a concern due to the statement made by the author, indicating that Tim MAY announced he would be murdering Jim Bell's judge (known to be U.S. District Judge Franklin BURGESS or Magistrate J. Kelly ARNOLD) on Friday, at 4;00 p.m. Inspector GORDAN indicated that he is not familiar with the author of the posting, Bad BobbyH, however he was familiar with Tim MAY. Inspector GORDAN described MAY as being an anarchist/survivalist who seems to spend much of his time communicating his beliefs via the internet. According to Inspector GORDAN, MAY is retired and fairly "well off", making his fortune years ago by developing computer programs. May also has a tendency to attempt to "goat" or "bait" law enforcement officers into taking action and has repeatedly stated he would shoot any law enforcement officers who attempted to arrest him. Inspector GORDAN provided the following information regarding the individuals mentioned in the posting: Timothy C. MAY (DoB: 12/21/51 & SSN: XXX-XX-XXX) XXX Corralltos, CA 95078 Robert HETTINGA XXX Boston, MA 02131 Inspector GORDAN disclosed that his office is unable to trace the posting because the address, Robert Heidegger (rh at dev.null), is false/untraceable. On November 25, 1997, U.S. District Judge Franklin BURGESS and Magistrate Judge J. Kelly ARNOLD were notified by Supervisory Deputy Glenn WHALEY and Deputy STEPHENSON reference the internet posting. A copy of the internet posting was forwarded to FBI Special Agent Ron Stankye (360) 695-5661. Attached is a copy of another posting by the Cypherpunks previously received on June 23, 1997 regarding Magistrate J. Kelly ARNOLD. If you have any questions regarding this matter, please call Deputy STEPHENSON at (253) 593-6344. ----- Several cypherpunks were subpoenaed for the three trials for eithering hosting the list, being named as correspondents with Bell and/or CJ, reporting about the two, or allegedly having information about their seditious activity -- then known as tormenting officials eager to boost counterterrorism funding long before the field went ballistic with Homeland Security golden windfall, praise Allah's generosity. Here are some files on the trials of the two: http://cryptome.org/jdb/jdbfiles.htm (Jim Bell) http://cryptome.org/jdb/cejfiles.htm (CJ) http://danenright.com/mirror/cj/ (CJ) Ever In struggle, Your Commie/Nazi Reporter From jamesd at echeque.com Sat Nov 6 09:31:24 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James Donald) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 09:31:24 -0800 Subject: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue Message-ID: <200411060931.AA659620004@echeque.com> -- John Young wrote: > Commie is the term used here like is nazi used elsewhere as the most > fearsome if thoughtless epithet. Nazi here is a term of endearment, > and also admirable role model by some. > > Calling someone both is not allowed, check the FAQ under impurity. I routinely call people like you nazi-commies. As George Orwell observed, anyone who thinks there is a significant difference between nazis and commies is in favor of one or the other. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG tcPPLhn9aMTaLb/hq3C0TK4TWGyDiUmRgFC+48C2 4sa/dBFoKxqt/B8oRTgvooxp3PmvXeSL3LjqpFI+W ___________________________________________________________ $0 Web Hosting with up to 120MB web space, 1000 MB Transfer 10 Personalized POP and Web E-mail Accounts, and much more. Signup at www.doteasy.com From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 6 06:46:29 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 09:46:29 -0500 Subject: 'Perilous Times': War of Words Message-ID: The New York Times November 7, 2004 'Perilous Times': War of Words By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS PERILOUS TIMES Free Speech in Wartime, From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism. By Geoffrey R. Stone. llustrated. 730 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $35. OWEVER seductively it may be phrased, the offer of an exchange of liberty for security has a totalitarian hook sticking out of its protectively colored bait. Societies that make the trade have very often ended up with neither liberty nor security. But on the other hand (as Fay Wray entitled her own memoir of monstrousness in New York) totalitarianism can present a much more menacing threat from without. I have heard serious people describe the reign of our pious present attorney general as fascistic. Given that jihadist armed forces could still be in our midst, that might be looking for fascism in all the wrong places. What this argument has long needed is the discipline of historical perspective, and Geoffrey R. Stone, a professor of law and former dean at the University of Chicago, has come forward at precisely the right moment with an imposing book that offers precisely that. In ''Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime, From the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism,'' he shows how the United States has balanced (and unbalanced) the scale of freedom versus the exigencies of self-defense. And he also demonstrates a kind of evolutionary learning curve, whereby the courts have distilled some of our dearly bought experience. America's first experiment with a national-security state was at once its most unambivalently disastrous and its shortest lived. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were, to begin with, flagrantly partisan. The easiest proof of this is the exemption of the vice president from the list of official persons who could be calumniated, simply because the anti-Federalist Thomas Jefferson was at that time the holder of the office. They also vastly exaggerated the threat from revolutionary France and flatly negated the spirit and letter of the First Amendment. Editors were imprisoned; foreign-born friends of America like Thaddeus Kosciusko had already felt compelled to leave the country. So great was the eventual revulsion from this that, six and a half decades after the acts were repealed, President Lincoln had no choice but to read the most viperous editorials in the Democratic press, describing him as a demented tyrant bent upon a bloody war of self-aggrandizement. Stone's pages on this period are completely absorbing. He shows that Lincoln did imprison or fine the occasional editor, but with scant relish for the business, and that wartime censorship was so easily evaded as to be no censorship at all. The crisis came, rather, over conscription and the concomitant suspension of habeas corpus. Lincoln's secretary of state, William Seward, was widely quoted as having told the British minister: ''I can touch a bell on my right hand and order the arrest of a citizen in Ohio. I can touch the bell again and order the imprisonment of a citizen of New York, and no power on earth but that of the president can release them. Can the queen of England, in her dominions, say as much?'' This boastful inversion of the original purposes of the American Revolution may have been overstated for effect, but not by much. Lincoln did order nighttime arrests, and did ignore Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's ruling that a president had no power to deny habeas corpus. Taney's position is that the Constitution reserves such extreme measures only for the Congress. If a president wants to assume such powers, he cannot do so without at least resorting to the courts, which Lincoln steadily declined to do. Instead, he rather demagogically demanded to know why the law should force him to shoot ''a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert.'' The cause celebre here became that of Clement Vallandigham, a leader of the Copperheads, northern Democrats sympathetic to the South, who spiritedly opposed both conscription and emancipation. He was arrested, then exiled from the Union. I have never seen it argued that this measure had any influence on the desertion rate (improbable in any case, given that the thought of the firing squad probably had a greater effect on the mind of the simple-minded soldier boy). The best that can be said is that Lincoln seems to have sensed the absurdity of his own logic, and regularly urged local commanders not to embarrass him by locking up people who merely uttered anti-Union sentiments. The next two wartime crises involved the killing of foreigners rather than Americans, and in both cases the ''loyalty'' of ethnic or national minorities was in question. During World War I, the persecution of German-Americans put H. L. Mencken in a permanent state of alienated rage, while Woodrow Wilson outdid Lincoln in vindictiveness by refusing to release Eugene V. Debs, America's finest socialist, until well after the war was over. Debs had been imprisoned for urging Americans to take no part in an imperialist war; but against recent immigrants, mainly Jews, the weapon of deportation was also employed. It's from this period that we have Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's notorious observation about shouting ''fire'' in a crowded theater as a symbolic limitation on free expression. (The antiwar forces might have retorted that the theater actually was on fire.) Holmes, however, became disgusted by some of the excesses of authority, and made some important rulings the other way. In the run-up to World War II, Franklin Roosevelt swung out against the antiwar isolationists with Lincoln's vigor, denouncing Charles Lindbergh as a second Vallandigham. The trial of William Dudley Pelley, leader of the fascist Silver Shirt militia, provided the war years' test case. Pelley had taken the Nazi side, proclaimed an administration conspiracy to exploit Pearl Harbor and announced that Americans were being drafted to fight a Jewish war. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and served 10, which meant that he also stayed inside until after the war was over. (Stone does not notice the irony that he served his time in the penitentiary at Terre Haute, Ind., birthplace of Debs and today the site of his museum.) In a fascinating discussion of the case, Stone shows that Pelley was right in one respect about Pearl Harbor: the Roosevelt administration really did cover up the extent of the damage inflicted by the Japanese. Official statements described burned and sunken battleships as still afloat. Stone also provides a meticulous discussion of the internment of the Japanese-American population, even though this was not exactly a ''free speech'' question. If this argument ran in a straight line, one would expect the United States, after one civil war and two global conflicts, to have many fewer liberties than it had in the 1850's. But the effect is as much dialectical as it is cumulative, if not more so. As Stone demonstrates, the courts have made concessions based on precedent. In the Pelley case, a court of appeals reconsidered the Espionage Act of 1917, under which Pelley had been charged, to refine and dilute the definition of subversive speech. There was a line to be observed, demarcating the propagation of deliberate falsehood from the circulation of disputable opinions. By the time the United States was next divided in wartime, during the Vietnam years, the courts were ready to rule that speech and action should in effect be considered separately. In one case, it was ordered that Julian Bond, the charismatic young civil-rights campaigner, could be seated in the Georgia legislature despite his opposition to the draft. In another, it was decided that an Ohio Klansman named Clarence Brandenburg should be allowed to go on yelling his head off. So the cases of Bond and Brandenburg are now cited as joint precedents and, as Stone points out, there have been no federal prosecutions for speech or ''incitement'' since Sept. 11, 2001. It might be too soon, not to say too complacent, to make a case for American exceptionalism in this regard. And Stone does not take up the peacetime panic after the 1995 bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City that produced the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which is still employed for prosecutions and deportations. There was enough law already on the books, you might say, before the passage of the Patriot Act. And surely one central part of that act -- the correct decision to allow the sharing of intelligence between foreign and domestic agencies -- could have been made for its own sake. One closes this admirable book more than ever determined that the authors of the Constitution were right the first time, and that the only amendment necessary might be a prohibition on the passage of any law within six months of any atrocity, foreign or domestic. CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS is a columnist for Vanity Fair and a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School University. His new collection of essays, ''Love, Poverty and War,'' is forthcoming this winter. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 6 06:57:22 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 09:57:22 -0500 Subject: No, Canada! Message-ID: The Boston Globe THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING No, Canada! You don't want to go there By Alex Beam, Globe Staff | November 6, 2004 You have probably heard the idle chatter: ''I'm thinking of moving to Canada." You may have received the JPEG Sent 'Round the World, labeling the northern part of North America -- the right-thinking part, as liberals would have it -- as the United States of Canada, and the pro-Bush leaning ''red" US states as Jesusland. It sounds so alluring. Good beer. Cheap Viagra. Hardly any crime. Friendly, if somewhat ineffectual, people. Terrific, if underappreciated, novelists. (This means you, Rohinton Mistry.) Secure borders, courtesy of the US Department of Defense. But before you pack, consider this: There are plenty of reasons not to move to Canada. Let me count the ways. 1. They don't really want you. Canada is full of losers like you. If you're really rich, or a brain surgeon, maybe. But if you are, say, a newspaper reporter, be prepared to wait at least a year just to live there legally, and several more years to become a citizen. If you have some special qualifications, like a PhD, plus a lot of work experience, and if you are under 50, you have a better chance of crashing the gates of Snow Mexico. Or if you're loaded. That's right. If you have a net worth of $800,000 Canadian or more, and are willing to invest $400,000 of it in Canada, come on in! And you thought George Bush's America was a plutocracy. . . . Think again. 2. Speaking of brain surgery -- have you tried Buffalo? Here is what John Kerry didn't tell you: The problem with free, single-payer health care is that you get what you pay for. Even the Canadians acknowledge that their health system is in crisis. (Sound familiar?) They speak about the inequities of their two-tiered system, where publicly funded patients wait weeks, if not months, to consult specialists or have routine surgery, while private patients get quick service. In fact, it's a three-tiered system. The very well-to-do travel to the United States for some procedures. We refer you to a recent editorial in The Windsor (Ontario) Star: ''A growing number of sick and tired Canadians are beginning to look to the US for ideas on how to improve our failing health-care system. But Kerry, inexplicably, is looking north for health care ideas." 3. Parlez-vous francais? Somehow I doubt it. And yet if you want to work for the Canadian government -- the country's largest employer -- chances are that you have to be bilingual. And the private sector is following suit. C'est dur, eh? 4. How do you like your free speech -- well chilled? Canada has no First Amendment and adheres to primitive British-style libel laws. Here is a hilarious definition of defamation la Canadienne, from the Media Libel website: ''A defamatory statement exists if the publication tends to lower the plaintiff's reputation in the estimation of those who are commonly referred to as 'right thinking' members of society." Allow me to reiterate my widely known position: Celine Dion is the greatest singer who ever lived. Just this year, the Canadian Parliament passed what the religious right has branded a ''Chill Bill," or ''The Bible as Hate Speech Bill," effectively preventing churches from using the Bible to preach against homosexuality. ''With the passage of Bill C-250, Canada has now embarked upon a course of criminalization of dissent," according to a statement released this spring by the Catholic Civil Rights League. Fine, you say. Enough gay-bashing by Bible-waving Christian loonies. But remember John Ashcroft's motto: Your rights are next. 5. It's the black hole of sports fandom. You would seriously consider leaving the home of North America's greatest baseball team -- ever -- and of North America's greatest football team, for . . . what? Canadian football is played on a field that's too long (that's why each team has 12 players), and there are only three downs. Huh? Fifty percent of Canada's Major League Baseball infrastructure -- les Montral Expos just decamped for Washington, D.C., because of audience indifference. Canada's one great sports treasure, professional hockey, isn't being played this year. You hadn't noticed? And you can't even name its national sport, can you? What if that question is on the citizenship application? 6. Have you heard the joke about the Canadian dollar? Not lately. Without putting too fine a point on this, Canadian currency has been laying a Euro-style smackdown on the US greenback. What this means to you: less purchasing power. Wait, there's more. You think you're living in a high-tax state right now? Hahahahahaha. 7. The biggest argument against immigrating to Canada is: You're going in the wrong direction! With all due respect to our northern neighbors, anyone who is anyone bolted years ago. Peter Jennings, Mike Myers, Joni Mitchell, Jim Carrey, Frank Gehry (would they take him back?) -- the list goes on and on. Have talent, will travel -- southward. You might want to ask yourself why. So please, think twice. They don't want you, and we would prefer that you stay. If the new administration is a problem, just don't turn on your television for the next four years. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 6 08:26:21 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 11:26:21 -0500 Subject: Kerry Kept Money Coming With the Internet as His ATM Message-ID: The New York Times November 6, 2004 FUND-RAISING Kerry Kept Money Coming With the Internet as His ATM By GLEN JUSTICE WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 - The power of the Internet in this year's election can be summed up in the story of Sam Warren, an Alabama voter who had never made a political contribution before but found himself donating 21 times to Senator John Kerry - all without opening his checkbook. Mr. Warren gave when the senator won the Super Tuesday primaries. He gave when the campaign sent him an e-mail message. He gave during the Democratic convention. By Election Day, Mr. Warren had given almost $2,000. "I surprised even myself," he said. "It's so easy to do. All you do is click-click with a Visa card." The emergence of the Internet as a major fund-raising tool is arguably the largest single change to the campaign finance system to come from this year's presidential race, allowing thousands of contributors like Mr. Warren to react instantly to campaign events as they happen. Although Howard Dean set the pace during the primaries, raising roughly $20 million, no one capitalized more on Internet fund-raising than Mr. Kerry. With a sophisticated marketing effort to keep people clicking, he emerged as the largest online fund-raiser in politics, bringing in about $82 million over the Internet - more than the $50 million Al Gore raised from all individual contributors in 2000. The Bush campaign, which used its Internet site primarily to organize voters, raised about $14 million online. The Internet helped Mr. Kerry cut President Bush's financial lead substantially. Mr. Bush raised about $273 million, while Mr. Kerry raised about $249 million. The amount Mr. Kerry raised online virtually ensures that few presidential and Congressional campaigns will develop in the future without the Internet in mind. "This is arguably the most powerful tool for political engagement we've ever seen," said Simon Rosenthal, president of the New Democratic Network. "It made it easier for the average citizen to participate in politics. Every moment they interact with the campaign can be a direct-response moment. They can watch a speech on TV, get motivated and give money." And they did. Though there is no precise tally of how many people gave to the candidates over the Internet, the amount of cash from people giving less than $200 increased fourfold from 2000, according to the Campaign Finance Institute, which studies presidential financing. Online fund-raising spread quickly, allowing candidates, parties and advocacy groups a low-cost supplement to big-donor fund-raising. The Internet pioneer MoveOn.org, which advocated Mr. Bush's defeat, raised millions. At the popular liberal Web log Daily Kos, its founder, Markos Moulitsas, directed more than $750,000 to the Democratic party and candidates from 6,500 contributors. Just a mention on the blog was worth thousands to a campaign. Even Amazon.com got involved, offering links that raised $300,000 for presidential candidates. "We were happy to make it as easy for people to contribute as it is to buy the latest Harry Potter book," the company said in a letter to customers. It was just four years ago that Senator John McCain made headlines when he raised more than $1 million online after winning the New Hampshire primary. This year, Dr. Dean created his entire campaign around the Internet, relying on it for fund-raising and organization and pioneering many of the techniques that have become standard practice. The campaign posted its fund-raising goals, long a taboo in the political world, and sent a relentless stream of fund-raising e-mail messages, liberally sharing information about why it needed the money and what it would pay for. And it took chances. "The Dean campaign really experimented a lot," said Nicco Mele, the campaign's Webmaster. "The Kerry campaign doesn't have that approach." Mr. Kerry's campaign came late to online fund-raising. He raised just $1.2 million in 2003, with an Internet team in the basement of a Washington townhouse. But the campaign awoke to the possibilities when Dr. Dean's fund-raising began to soar. Josh Ross, a 32-year-old former Republican with a Silicon Valley background, came aboard in late November 2003 to marshal the effort, but it was a period when Mr. Kerry was sagging in the polls and fund-raising had slowed. "Josh was building a car, but he didn't have a whole lot of gas," said David Thorne, Mr. Kerry's longtime friend and former brother-in-law, who was instrumental in creating the campaign's Internet program. The situation turned when Mr. Kerry won in Iowa. The Internet team persuaded campaign leaders to insert a mention of the Web site in the victory speech. Mr. Thorne made a late-night run to Kinko's to create a JohnKerry.com placard for the lectern. When the candidate mentioned the site, hits shot skyward. "There were never any nonbelievers after that," said Mary Beth Cahill, Mr. Kerry's campaign manager. When the campaign moved its headquarters, Mr. Ross ultimately found himself overseeing more than 30 people from a corner office on the sixth floor. Mr. Ross talked about running the operation like a business, with a heavy focus on quantifiable results. "We're not here to entertain," he said. The results often shattered records. The campaign raised $2.3 million online the day after Super Tuesday and $2.7 million the day after that. The one-day record of $5.7 million was set when Mr. Kerry accepted the Democratic nomination. Some campaign finance experts say that Mr. Kerry simply inherited the energetic donors whom Dr. Dean created, and that the campaign did not go far enough to engage them. Others say that anti-Bush sentiment drove the large numbers, and that any Democratic nominee was bound to make millions online. "Part of it is that they had the sizzle," said Ellen Malcolm, a veteran Democratic fund-raiser. "That's a very short-term fund-raising thing. We still all have a lot to learn about these sizzle donors." But the Kerry campaign made great strides to engage its online supporters. It publicized a petition calling for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's resignation that drew hundreds of thousands of signatures. When Senator John Edwards joined the ticket, the decision was first announced online. The campaign challenged supporters to raise $10 million in 10 days online, and succeeded. It also spent a lot of time testing which wording in e-mail messages and on the Web site drew the most contributions. With 2.6 million supporters on the campaign's e-mail list and a Web page averaging 250,000 daily visitors during peak times, even small increases in the percentage of people who donated could equal large gains. "You start adding those nickels up and it makes a dramatic, dramatic difference," Mr. Ross said. The campaign learned that fund-raising letters do poorly on Monday. E-mail messages are best sent around 11 a.m., after people have cleared their mailbox of unwanted "spam." And contributions swell at lunchtime on both coasts, when people spend time online. Mr. Ross's team also tested e-mail subject lines. On the day of Mr. Kerry's convention speech in July - which was also the last day the campaign could raise private money before switching to public financing - the campaign sent out a long letter and a shorter letter, some carrying the subject line "this is it" and some saying "last chance." The short version with the "last chance" heading did best and was delivered en masse. The Web page was also engineered to bring in money. One example was the "splash page," the first thing that new visitors see. At one point, Mr. Ross and his colleagues had 30 versions of the page up on a wall. They tested photos until they settled on a picture of Mr. Kerry flashing the thumbs up. They tested headlines until they chose "Make history with us." Even a small contribution button toward the bottom, which was bringing in more than $75,000 a day at its peak, was maximized. The campaign tested four different versions before finding that the label "contribute before deadline" increased the number of donations by 35 percent. "We have no problem testing our own assumptions," Mr. Ross said. "We don't do anything based on a guess." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From pcapelli at gmail.com Sat Nov 6 08:32:45 2004 From: pcapelli at gmail.com (Pete Capelli) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 11:32:45 -0500 Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, 06 Nov 2004 08:46:17 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: > In other words, he won because some hillbilly was afraid that the guy at the > local 7-11 was going to blow up his chicked farm. Those of us living close > enough to "Ground Zero" to smell it back in those days are apprarently less > than convinced. As the article notes, GWB *improved* his showing in NY over the 2000 election. Are you implying that the US won't be attacked again? I could follow your ad-hominem attack with one about mincing homosexuals, but we both know that singlularity of voters on either side is incorrect, and does nothing to forward the discussion. > So: A 'moral values' question for Cypherpunks. Does this election indict the > American people as being complicit in the crime known as "Operation > Freedom"? (I notice everyone forgot about that name.) Of course it does. That's what a republic is. But who's going to 'indict' us? The UN? Maybe after we finish the trials for their self-dealing on the 'Oil for Food' program (as Orwellian a title as the Patriot Act had). -- Pete Capelli pcapelli at ieee.org http://www.capelli.org PGP Key ID:0x829263B6 "Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin, 1759 From jya at pipeline.com Sat Nov 6 11:42:17 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 11:42:17 -0800 Subject: No, Canada! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Fair enough. Canada is a role model for the US, as is the US for the world: nobody is wanted unless they are willing to pay for the mistakes and messes the locals have made, or best, work for starvation wages, usually off the books, long the prime source of penal-grade labor in the Echelon nations, not to say the, spit, Western and Eastern cultures -- out-sourcing has always been first in line right at home: wives, kids and the invisible caste-classes who swab your puke and dump your garbage and bail you out of the drunk tank. Contamination by settlement of North America (and man-woman marriage): pay for it, new immigrants (wives and kids), with cheap labor and keeping your thoughts very, very quiet, and don't bitch about master's eccentricities about sex. The first New World, as Old, settlers set these conditions for the natives and for anybody who came afterwards. That's how you succeed in the New Worlds, behave like Calvinist cum Libertarian cum Roman cum Roman Church pretend aristocrats: if you dont'have it you don't deserve it, but you can always steal it the legal way, stock market and tithe basket, praise Allah for his valorizing wealth as salvation. But, more of the defense budget goes for clean-up of its messes in the US than for military health-care and benefits (overseas it has hardly begun). The clean-up corporations are mostly the same ones which made the messes (this is the pattern since the Revolutionary War), and they are not doing the job worth a shit, overruns and performance failures as bad as for unworkable but richly bragged-about armaments. If the bitching about contamination gets too loud, why start another war. The DC-area is one of the most contaminated parts of the US due to the plethora of toxic-puking mil installations. One of the worst is under American University and surrounding neighborhoods, across Nebraska Avenue from the headquarters of Homeland Security, itself once home of the military's oldest comsec unit. As sleazy Hitchens and slews of other suck-ups of the rich and powerful have demonstrated, especially those predating from Canada: defend and flatter and amuse the privileged of the US-supremacist model of the New World as if the Old in new clothing, and you'll do quite well. But do not engage in dissent or your product won't move and your wise ass will be banished -- thanks to the scoundrels' patriotism embedded in the capitalist regime since day one. From jya at pipeline.com Sat Nov 6 12:23:11 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 12:23:11 -0800 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The US made a bundle from WW1 and WW2 warfare, in both cases being rescued from an economic slump, and some have argued the US delayed sending troops as long as possible to extend the demand for supplies, supplies which appeared to always be insufficient but enough to keep the warring parties going at it. To be sure, the US Civil War provided the same beneficence to its overseas exploiters, not to say domestic entrpreneurs, not to say hordes of today's reenactors. Historians have noted that Northern generals in particular worked hard to avoid battle while begging for more troops and supplies. Shrewd commentators write there could have been Southern-general complicity in this paradic churning before it got out of hand due to Lincoln demanding action to keep his comfy future -- kapow! went the prez to his virgins. It is a truism that power in leaders is enlarged during wartime, no matter their ideology, so it is a surefire way to boost flagging support (60 million can be that DUMB). And the more humans slaughtered the greater the support as each homeland, praise Allah's cloven hooves, and seeks revenge for the loss of its prime beef, and if all goes well, the fighting never comes home to roost in hilltop mansions, damn those paraplegics who won't parade their grotesqueries: axe their meds. Red poppies, how do they bloom in November, remember Fallujah. Halls of Montezuma, Shores of Tripoli, yadda. From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Sat Nov 6 10:18:49 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 13:18:49 -0500 Subject: No, Canada! Message-ID: Wow. What kind of fucking idiot wrote this thing? A piece like this can actually get published? This is the biggest set of arguments I've seen yet for moving TO Canada! BTW: I always thought that "Economic Immigration" was an excellent idea....it siphoned off tons of Hong Kong millionares before the PRC took over. The US should have been doing it in addition to the non-Express route. -TD >From: "R.A. Hettinga" >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: No, Canada! >Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 09:57:22 -0500 > > > >The Boston Globe >THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING >No, Canada! > >You don't want to go there > >By Alex Beam, Globe Staff | November 6, 2004 > >You have probably heard the idle chatter: ''I'm thinking of moving to >Canada." You may have received the JPEG Sent 'Round the World, labeling the >northern part of North America -- the right-thinking part, as liberals >would have it -- as the United States of Canada, and the pro-Bush leaning >''red" US states as Jesusland. > >It sounds so alluring. Good beer. Cheap Viagra. Hardly any crime. Friendly, >if somewhat ineffectual, people. Terrific, if underappreciated, novelists. >(This means you, Rohinton Mistry.) Secure borders, courtesy of the US >Department of Defense. > >But before you pack, consider this: There are plenty of reasons not to >move to Canada. Let me count the ways. > >1. They don't really want you. Canada is full of losers like you. If you're >really rich, or a brain surgeon, maybe. But if you are, say, a newspaper >reporter, be prepared to wait at least a year just to live there legally, >and several more years to become a citizen. > >If you have some special qualifications, like a PhD, plus a lot of work >experience, and if you are under 50, you have a better chance of crashing >the gates of Snow Mexico. Or if you're loaded. That's right. If you have a >net worth of $800,000 Canadian or more, and are willing to invest $400,000 >of it in Canada, come on in! And you thought George Bush's America was a >plutocracy. . . . Think again. > >2. Speaking of brain surgery -- have you tried Buffalo? Here is what John >Kerry didn't tell you: The problem with free, single-payer health care is >that you get what you pay for. > >Even the Canadians acknowledge that their health system is in crisis. >(Sound familiar?) They speak about the inequities of their two-tiered >system, where publicly funded patients wait weeks, if not months, to >consult specialists or have routine surgery, while private patients get >quick service. In fact, it's a three-tiered system. The very well-to-do >travel to the United States for some procedures. > >We refer you to a recent editorial in The Windsor (Ontario) Star: ''A >growing number of sick and tired Canadians are beginning to look to the US >for ideas on how to improve our failing health-care system. But Kerry, >inexplicably, is looking north for health care ideas." > >3. Parlez-vous francais? Somehow I doubt it. And yet if you want to work >for the Canadian government -- the country's largest employer -- chances >are that you have to be bilingual. And the private sector is following >suit. C'est dur, eh? > >4. How do you like your free speech -- well chilled? Canada has no First >Amendment and adheres to primitive British-style libel laws. > >Here is a hilarious definition of defamation la Canadienne, from the Media >Libel website: ''A defamatory statement exists if the publication tends to >lower the plaintiff's reputation in the estimation of those who are >commonly referred to as 'right thinking' members of society." Allow me to >reiterate my widely known position: Celine Dion is the greatest singer who >ever lived. > >Just this year, the Canadian Parliament passed what the religious right has >branded a ''Chill Bill," or ''The Bible as Hate Speech Bill," effectively >preventing churches from using the Bible to preach against homosexuality. >''With the passage of Bill C-250, Canada has now embarked upon a course of >criminalization of dissent," according to a statement released this spring >by the Catholic Civil Rights League. > >Fine, you say. Enough gay-bashing by Bible-waving Christian loonies. But >remember John Ashcroft's motto: Your rights are next. > >5. It's the black hole of sports fandom. You would seriously consider >leaving the home of North America's greatest baseball team -- ever -- and >of North America's greatest football team, for . . . what? Canadian >football is played on a field that's too long (that's why each team has 12 >players), and there are only three downs. Huh? > >Fifty percent of Canada's Major League Baseball infrastructure -- les >Montral Expos just decamped for Washington, D.C., because of audience >indifference. Canada's one great sports treasure, professional hockey, >isn't being played this year. You hadn't noticed? > >And you can't even name its national sport, can you? What if that question >is on the citizenship application? > >6. Have you heard the joke about the Canadian dollar? Not lately. Without >putting too fine a point on this, Canadian currency has been laying a >Euro-style smackdown on the US greenback. What this means to you: less >purchasing power. > >Wait, there's more. You think you're living in a high-tax state right now? >Hahahahahaha. > >7. The biggest argument against immigrating to Canada is: You're going in >the wrong direction! With all due respect to our northern neighbors, anyone >who is anyone bolted years ago. > >Peter Jennings, Mike Myers, Joni Mitchell, Jim Carrey, Frank Gehry (would >they take him back?) -- the list goes on and on. Have talent, will travel >-- southward. You might want to ask yourself why. > >So please, think twice. They don't want you, and we would prefer that you >stay. If the new administration is a problem, just don't turn on your >television for the next four years. > > >-- >----------------- >R. A. Hettinga >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation >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' _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ From pcapelli at gmail.com Sat Nov 6 10:39:13 2004 From: pcapelli at gmail.com (Pete Capelli) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 13:39:13 -0500 Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: <20041106182519.GA10341@arion.soze.net> References: <20041106153941.GX1457@leitl.org> <20041106182519.GA10341@arion.soze.net> Message-ID: On Sat, 6 Nov 2004 18:25:19 +0000, Justin wrote: > Not true. Saddam had 100% turnout, and won 100% of the vote. Does that make his election more legitimate to you? -- Pete Capelli pcapelli at ieee.org http://www.capelli.org PGP Key ID:0x829263B6 "Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin, 1759 From nobody at dizum.com Sat Nov 6 04:40:02 2004 From: nobody at dizum.com (Nomen Nescio) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 13:40:02 +0100 (CET) Subject: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue Message-ID: <68af3a36547b5a13efcf330e080e2ef8@dizum.com> John Young: > Tyler, > > Commie is the term used here like is nazi used elsewhere > as the most fearsome if thoughtless epithet. Nazi here is a > term of endearment, and also admirable role model by some. > > Calling someone both is not allowed, check the FAQ under impurity. > > Tim May, praise Allah, always claimed cypherpunks was a fair and > balanced forum thanks to the one person of the left here who > was fingered affectionately like a house rodent, an easy target for > errant shooters. > > CJ is not to be recalled, ever. > > Jim Bell still sends "very important" legal papers, the latest > yesterday, which describe the way things should be understood. But > who can believe an MIT chemist political prisoner. > > CJ and Jim jailed by the Democratic freedom-fighters. "CJ" is "CJ Parker", who posted a few emails to this list back in early 2003? I guess I haven't been around long enough to know all famous cpunks who have been posting to the list. Maybe someone could tell in short who those were, I guess there are one or two on the list who weren't around and would appreciate the stories. I think I remember having read about Bell, something about him having threatened FBI agents or something? Does Jim Bell post emails somewhere today? From mv at cdc.gov Sat Nov 6 09:52:42 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Mv) Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 14:52:42 -0300 Subject: Hi Message-ID: :) [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/octet-stream which had a name of price.scr] From emc at artifact.psychedelic.net Sat Nov 6 14:57:20 2004 From: emc at artifact.psychedelic.net (Eric Cordian) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 14:57:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: <20041106160732.W61334@ubzr.zsa.bet> Message-ID: <200411062257.iA6MvKb0003204@artifact.psychedelic.net> J.A. Terranson wrote: > The fact is that those who did not vote effectively voted for Shrub. You > are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem. Inaction > is not good enough. This would only be true if the President were elected by popular vote. In states where one candidate had a huge majority, the results would not have been changed. Also, voting is in some sense political manipulation to blame the population for the actions of their government. Everyone who votes is a co-conspirator, and the argument is made that those who don't vote have no right to dissent. Any government that requires that I vote, or the torture and war crimes are "my fault", is broken to start with. The fundamental definition of Democracy is still "Your neighbors tell you what to do." I don't tolerate my neighbors telling me what to do, particularly my neighbors in the Confederacy, which we should have let keep their Negro guest-workers and drop out of the union when the opportunity presented itself. Now they outnumber us, and we are paying for it. The only government I need is "Leave me alone, or face serious consequences." Similarly, I leave others alone. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law" From measl at mfn.org Sat Nov 6 14:07:05 2004 From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 16:07:05 -0600 (CST) Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20041106160544.O61334@ubzr.zsa.bet> On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: > In other words, he won because some hillbilly was afraid that the guy at the > local 7-11 was going to blow up his chicked farm. Precisely. > So: A 'moral values' question for Cypherpunks. Does this election indict the > American people as being complicit in the crime known as "Operation > Freedom"? (I notice everyone forgot about that name.) Complicit? Thats *technically* correct, but not nearly strong enough. > -TD -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin at mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time From measl at mfn.org Sat Nov 6 14:08:29 2004 From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 16:08:29 -0600 (CST) Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: <20041106182519.GA10341@arion.soze.net> References: <20041106153941.GX1457@leitl.org> <20041106182519.GA10341@arion.soze.net> Message-ID: <20041106160732.W61334@ubzr.zsa.bet> On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Justin wrote: > On 2004-11-06T16:39:41+0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 08:46:17AM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: > > > > > So: A 'moral values' question for Cypherpunks. Does this election indict > > > the American people as being complicit in the crime known as "Operation > > > > Of course. What kind of question is that? Regardless of voting fraud, about > > half of US has voted for four more years of the same. Guilty. > > Not true. The fact is that those who did not vote effectively voted for Shrub. You are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem. Inaction is not good enough. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin at mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time From eugen at leitl.org Sat Nov 6 07:39:41 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 16:39:41 +0100 Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20041106153941.GX1457@leitl.org> On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 08:46:17AM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: > So: A 'moral values' question for Cypherpunks. Does this election indict > the American people as being complicit in the crime known as "Operation Of course. What kind of question is that? Regardless of voting fraud, about half of US has voted for four more years of the same. Guilty. > Freedom"? (I notice everyone forgot about that name.) Huh? What was the question, again? -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From justin-cypherpunks at soze.net Sat Nov 6 10:25:19 2004 From: justin-cypherpunks at soze.net (Justin) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 18:25:19 +0000 Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: <20041106153941.GX1457@leitl.org> References: <20041106153941.GX1457@leitl.org> Message-ID: <20041106182519.GA10341@arion.soze.net> On 2004-11-06T16:39:41+0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 08:46:17AM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: > > > So: A 'moral values' question for Cypherpunks. Does this election indict > > the American people as being complicit in the crime known as "Operation > > Of course. What kind of question is that? Regardless of voting fraud, about > half of US has voted for four more years of the same. Guilty. Not true. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/03/voter.turnout.ap/ "[Curtis] Gans puts the total turnout at nearly 120 million people. That represents just under 60% of eligible voters..." 120m * 100%/60% = 200 million eligible voters (The U.S. population according to census.gov was 290,809,777 as of 2003-07-01 http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/ "Bush Vote: 59,459,765" Let's generously round that up to 65 million. 65m/200m = 32.5% of eligible voters voted for Bush 65m/290.8m = 22.4% of the U.S. population voted for Bush I can't find an accurate number of registered voters, but one article suggests 15% of registered voters don't vote. That means there are probably around 141m registered voters. Bush didn't even win majority support from /those/. 65m/141m = 46% of registered voters voted for Bush -- The old must give way to the new, falsehood must become exposed by truth, and truth, though fought, always in the end prevails. -- L. Ron Hubbard From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 6 15:38:21 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 18:38:21 -0500 Subject: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue In-Reply-To: <200411060931.AA659620004@echeque.com> References: <200411060931.AA659620004@echeque.com> Message-ID: At 9:31 AM -0800 11/6/04, James Donald wrote: >As George Orwell observed, anyone who thinks there is a significant >difference between nazis and commies is in favor of one or the other. I'm going to have hunt that one up for my .sig file. Thank you. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From sunder at sunder.net Sat Nov 6 16:10:11 2004 From: sunder at sunder.net (Sunder) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 19:10:11 -0500 (est) Subject: Broward machines count backward In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It sounds suspiciously like an int16 issue. 32K is close enough to 32767 after which a 16 bit integer goes negative when incremented. Which is odd because it should roll over, not count backwards. perhaps they did something like this: note the use of abs on reporting. int16 votes[MAX_CANDIDATES]; void add_a_vote(uint8 candidate) { if (candidate>MAX_CANDIDATES) return; votes[candidate]++; } void report(void) { int i; for (i=0; i:and our people, and neither do we." -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + : War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > > > > Palm Beach Post > > Broward machines count backward > > By Eliot Kleinberg > > Palm Beach Post Staff Writer > > Friday, November 05, 2004 > > > FORT LAUDERDALE - It had to happen. Things were just going too smoothly. > > Early Thursday, as Broward County elections officials wrapped up after a > long day of canvassing votes, something unusual caught their eye. Tallies > should go up as more votes are counted. That's simple math. But in some > races, the numbers had gone . . . down. > > > Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes > per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward. From chris.kuethe at gmail.com Sat Nov 6 18:40:47 2004 From: chris.kuethe at gmail.com (Chris Kuethe) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 19:40:47 -0700 Subject: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue In-Reply-To: References: <200411060931.AA659620004@echeque.com> Message-ID: <91981b3e041106184057d0a87b@mail.gmail.com> Fun bits to read, somewhat related to Owell and the perceived notional differences between various... extremists. http://www.campusprogram.com/reference/en/wikipedia/f/fa/fascism.html http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/opinion/essays/storgaard1.html http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm Certainly one could infer from reading "Politics and the English Language" that Orwell could've or would've thought such a thing. If anyone finds it before I do, post a link, will ya? CK On Sat, 6 Nov 2004 18:38:21 -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > > At 9:31 AM -0800 11/6/04, James Donald wrote: > >As George Orwell observed, anyone who thinks there is a significant > >difference between nazis and commies is in favor of one or the other. > > I'm going to have hunt that one up for my .sig file. > > Thank you. > > > > Cheers, > RAH > > -- > ----------------- > R. A. Hettinga > The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation > 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' > > -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too? From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 6 16:42:10 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 19:42:10 -0500 Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: <20041106182519.GA10341@arion.soze.net> References: <20041106153941.GX1457@leitl.org> <20041106182519.GA10341@arion.soze.net> Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 6:25 PM +0000 11/6/04, Justin wrote: >65m/141m = 46% of registered voters voted for Bush Of course, you can invert the math and say the same about Kerry, plus Bush's 3-something million margin, I'm afraid. Hell, Rush said exactly the same thing on Friday. :-). Numerology doesn't win elections, I'm afraid. Remember, boys and girls, government itself is the not-so-polite fiction that the highwayman is acting in our best interest at all times if we pay him enough to leave us, individually, alone. So, as Brooks indirectly proves, rather than blathering here, or elsewhere, about "values", or "equality", or "fairness", or "justice", or other lofty nonsense, electoral or otherwise, look at how well a given *culture* and its implicit force-control mechanism, does *economically* for its citizenry (a parasite doesn't kill its own host, and all that...), besides just being able to kill more and better soldiers on the other side of the battlefield is actually putting the cart before the horse. The fact that increasing personal liberty results in such higher per-capita income, and thus the ability to project force than reducing liberty does isn't necessarily the same level of metaphysical mystery as the fact that some kinds of mathematics predict reality, but it's close enough for, heh, government work. Someday, hopefully, financial cryptography will reduce transaction costs by actually *increasing* privacy (see math and reality, liberty and income, above), the *economic* rationale for force-monopoly will go away, and *then* we can all exhume Lysander Spooner, prop him up, and talk about constitutions of no authority, or whatever. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQY1vN8PxH8jf3ohaEQKyGACbB6XlMBht53x48ugBvJQqOUJ/4P8AnRlX 4M/JvqrHdU9LvnTlrEilGzoK =D4M9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 6 16:43:23 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 19:43:23 -0500 Subject: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue In-Reply-To: <20041106190808.GH1457@leitl.org> References: <200411060931.AA659620004@echeque.com> <20041106190808.GH1457@leitl.org> Message-ID: At 8:08 PM +0100 11/6/04, Eugen Leitl wrote: >Cypherpunks write code. Right. That's it. Wanna write me a bearer mint? For free? ;-) Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 6 16:45:19 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 19:45:19 -0500 Subject: No, Canada! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 11:42 AM -0800 11/6/04, John Young wrote: >capitalist There you go, speaking marxist again... ;-) Cheers, RAH "Capitalism" is totalitarian for "economics"... -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From eugen at leitl.org Sat Nov 6 11:08:08 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 20:08:08 +0100 Subject: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue In-Reply-To: <200411060931.AA659620004@echeque.com> References: <200411060931.AA659620004@echeque.com> Message-ID: <20041106190808.GH1457@leitl.org> On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 09:31:24AM -0800, James Donald wrote: > I routinely call people like you nazi-commies. How novel and interesting. Cut the rhetoric, get on with the program. Cypherpunks write code. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz Fri Nov 5 23:10:49 2004 From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 20:10:49 +1300 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: Message-ID: ocorrain at yahoo.com (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Tiarn=E1n_=D3_Corr=E1in?=) writes: >The Russians (for example) conquered Hitler's capital, Berlin. And I believe >the Russian zone in Germany was larger than any of the others, reflecting the >fact that Stalin bore most of entire burden of defeating Germany, >uncomfortable as it may be. The figure that's usually quoted is that 80% of German's military force was directed against Russia. Of the remaining 20%, a lot had already been engaged by France, the UK (via the BEF, the RAF, North Africa), Greece, etc etc before the US got involved in Europe. So the Russians should get most of the credit. Peter. From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz Fri Nov 5 23:20:05 2004 From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 20:20:05 +1300 Subject: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down In-Reply-To: Message-ID: "R.A. Hettinga" writes: >These were not the sort of sporting arrows skillfully shot toward gayly >colored targets by Victorian archery societies (charmingly described by Mr. >Soar in later chapters) but heavy "bodkin pointed battle shafts" that went >through the armor of man and horse. That's the traditional Agincourt interpretation. More modern ones (backed up by actual tests with arrows of the time against armour, in which the relatively soft metal of the arrows was rather ineffective against the armour) tend to favour the muddy ground trapping men and horses, lack of room to manoeuver/compression effects, and arrows killing horses out from under the knights, at which point see the muddy ground section. Obviously the machine- gun effect of the arrows was going to cause a number of minor injuries, and would be lethal to unarmoured troops, but they weren't quite the wonder-weapon they're made out to be. (There were other problems as well, e.g. the unusually high death toll and removal of "ancient aristocratic lineages" was caused by English commoners who weren't aware of the tradition of capturing opposing nobles and having them ransomed back, rather than hacking them to pieces on the spot. Again, arrows didn't have much to do with the loss of so many nobles). Peter. From jamesd at echeque.com Sat Nov 6 21:31:27 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 21:31:27 -0800 Subject: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <418DB32F.8050804@echeque.com> -- Peter Gutmann wrote: > That's the traditional Agincourt interpretation. More modern ones > (backed up by actual tests with arrows of the time against armour, > in which the relatively soft metal of the arrows was rather > ineffective against the armour) I find this very hard to believe. Post links, or give citations. > (There were other problems as well, e.g. the unusually high death > toll and > removal of "ancient aristocratic lineages" was caused by English > commoners who weren't aware of the tradition of capturing opposing > nobles and having them ransomed back, rather than hacking them to > pieces on the spot. Wrong French nobles were taken prisoner in the usual fashion, but executed because the English King commanded them executed. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG R2tc27UGwjykTsUjBSVNU/VakHCZzthZfJpceSzP 49ifULPODBC+M+WzhF3jxg1W5+UV7ABaMjvVW7R8b From jamesd at echeque.com Sat Nov 6 21:44:08 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 21:44:08 -0800 Subject: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down In-Reply-To: <418DB32F.8050804@echeque.com> References: <418DB32F.8050804@echeque.com> Message-ID: <418DB628.8050203@echeque.com> -- Peter Gutmann wrote: > That's the traditional Agincourt interpretation. More modern ones > (backed up by actual tests with arrows of the time against armour, > in which the relatively soft metal of the arrows was rather > ineffective against the armour) You have this garbled. According to http://www.royalarmouries.org/extsite/view.jsp?sectionId=1025 by the fifteen hundreds, the very finest armor could deflect almost all bodkin arrows - but very few could afford a complete set of the very finest armor - and the battle of Agincourt occurred well before the fifteen hundreds. Presumably the armor improved (and became heavier and more expensive) in response to the battle of Agincourt. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG wY4Gt1+GdEkqgNLQxKrMduPJSg/k6DEUpWEGeADc 48Orz+xAb/+RsojnqG7H/GLzb+Ll5QWvCCvF9MkuG From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 6 18:48:49 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 21:48:49 -0500 Subject: Believe it or not, it wasn't just rednecks who voted for Bush Message-ID: The Telegraph Believe it or not, it wasn't just rednecks who voted for Bush By Mark Steyn (Filed: 07/11/2004) The big question after Tuesday was: will it just be more of the same in George W Bush's second term, or will there be a change of tone? And apparently it's the latter. The great European thinkers have decided that instead of doing another four years of lame Bush-is-a-moron cracks they're going to do four years of lame Americans-are-morons cracks. Inaugurating the new second-term outreach was Brian Reade in the Daily Mirror, who attributed the President's victory to: "The self-righteous, gun-totin', military-lovin', sister-marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', non-passport-ownin' rednecks, who believe God gave America the biggest dick in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land 'free and strong'." Well, that's certainly why I supported Bush, but I'm not sure it entirely accounts for the other 59,459,765. Forty five per cent of Hispanics voted for the President, as did 25 per cent of Jews, and 23 per cent of gays. And this coalition of common-or-garden rednecks, Hispanic rednecks, sinister Zionist rednecks, and lesbian rednecks who enjoy hitting on their gay-loathin' sisters expanded its share of the vote across the entire country - not just in the Bush states but in the Kerry states, too. In all but six states, the Republican vote went up: the urinating rednecks have increased their number not just in Texas and Mississippi but in Massachusetts and California, both of which have Republican governors. You can drive from coast to coast across the middle of the country and never pass through a single county that voted for John Kerry: it's one continuous cascade of self-righteous urine from sea to shining sea. States that were swing states in 2000 - West Virginia, Arkansas - are now solidly Republican, and once solidly Democrat states - Iowa, Wisconsin - are now swingers. The redneck states push hard up against the Canadian border, where if your neck's red it's frostbite. Bush's incontinent rednecks are everywhere: they're so numerous they're running out of sisters to bunk up with. Who exactly is being self-righteous here? In Britain and Europe, there seem to be two principal strains of Bush-loathing. First, the guys who say, if you disagree with me, you must be an idiot - as in the Mirror headline "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" Second, the guys who say, if you disagree with me, you must be a Nazi - as in Oliver James, who told The Guardian: "I was too depressed to even speak this morning. I thought of my late mother, who read Mein Kampf when it came out in the 1930s [sic] and thought, 'Why doesn't anyone see where this is leading?' " Mr James is a clinical psychologist. If smug Europeans are going to coast on moron-Fascist sneers indefinitely, they'll be dooming themselves to ever more depressing mornings-after in the 2006 midterms, the 2008 presidential election, 2010, and beyond: America's resistance to the conventional wisdom of the rest of the developed world is likely to intensify in the years ahead. This widening gap is already a point of pride to the likes of B J Kelly of Killiney, who made the following observation on Friday's letters page in The Irish Times: "Here in the EU we objected recently to high office for a man who professed the belief that abortion and gay marriages are essentially evil. Over in the US such an outlook could have won him the presidency." I'm not sure who he means by "we". As with most decisions taken in the corridors of Europower, the views of Killiney and Knokke and Krakow didn't come into it one way or the other. B J Kelly is referring to Rocco Buttiglione, the mooted European commissioner whose views on homosexuality, single parenthood, etc would have been utterly unremarkable for an Italian Catholic 30 years ago. Now Europe's secular elite has decided they're beyond the pale and such a man should have no place in public life. And B J Kelly sees this as evidence of how much more enlightened Europe is than America. That's fine. But what happens if the European elite should decide a whole lot of other stuff is beyond the pale, too, some of it that B J Kelly is quite partial to? In affirming the traditional definition of marriage in 11 state referenda, from darkest Mississippi to progressive enlightened Kerry-supporting Oregon, the American people were not expressing their "gay-loathin' ", so much as declining to go the Kelly route and have their betters tell them what they can think. They're not going to have marriage redefined by four Massachusetts judges and a couple of activist mayors. That doesn't make them Bush theo-zombies marching in lockstep to the gay lynching, just freeborn citizens asserting their right to dissent from today's established church - the stifling coercive theology of political correctness enforced by a secular episcopate. As Americans were voting on marriage and marijuana and other matters, the Rotterdam police were destroying a mural by Chris Ripke that he'd created to express his disgust at the murder of Theo van Gogh by Islamist crazies. Ripke's painting showed an angel and the words "Thou Shalt Not Kill". Unfortunately, his workshop is next to a mosque, and the imam complained that the mural was "racist", so the cops arrived, destroyed it, arrested the television journalists filming it and wiped their tape. Maybe that would ring a bell with Oliver James's mum. The restrictions on expression that B J Kelly sees as evidence of European enlightenment are regarded as profoundly unhealthy by most Americans. When one examines Brian Reade's anatomy of redneck disfigurements - "gun-totin', military-lovin', abortion-hatin' " - most of them are about the will to survive, as individuals and as a society. Americans tote guns because they're assertive citizens, not docile subjects of a permanent governing class. They love their military because they think there's something contemptible about Europeans preening and posing as a great power when they can't even stop some nickel'n'dime Balkan genital-severers piling up hundreds of thousands of corpses on their borders. And, if Americans do "hate abortion", is Mr Reade saying he loves it? It's at least partially responsible for the collapsed birthrates of post-Christian Europe. However superior the EU is to the US, it will only last as long as Mr Reade's generation: the design flaw of the radical secular welfare state is that it depends on a traditionally religious society birthrate to sustain it. True, you can't be a redneck in Spain or Italy: when the birthrates are 1.1 and 1.2 children per couple, there are no sisters to shag. What was revealing about this election campaign was how little the condescending Europeans understand even about the side in American politics they purport to agree with - witness The Guardian's disastrous intervention in Clark County. Simon Schama last week week defined the Bush/Kerry divide as "Godly America" and "Worldly America", hailing the latter as "pragmatic, practical, rational and sceptical". That's exactly the wrong way round: it's Godly America that is rational and sceptical - especially of Euro-delusions. Uncowed by Islamists, undeferential to government, unshrivelled in its birthrates, Bush's redneck America is a more reliable long-term bet. Europe's media would do their readers a service if they stopped condescending to it. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jamesd at echeque.com Sat Nov 6 21:50:29 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 21:50:29 -0800 Subject: Why Americans Hate Democrats-A Dialogue In-Reply-To: <20041106190808.GH1457@leitl.org> References: <200411060931.AA659620004@echeque.com> <20041106190808.GH1457@leitl.org> Message-ID: <418DB7A5.5030207@echeque.com> -- James Donald: > > I routinely call people like you nazi-commies. Eugen Leitl wrote: > How novel and interesting. > > Cut the rhetoric, get on with the program. Cypherpunks write code. I also write code, unlike people like you. See for example www.echeque.com/Kong --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG iRF6jCg0M9tIDOFv9wmxaZxcMi0N2C6vQn8oF4IO 42OhxMux7d4g+wGUgQBqxmiP8H6QXmmOGpbq5bqCd From iang at systemics.com Sat Nov 6 19:21:42 2004 From: iang at systemics.com (Ian Grigg) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 22:21:42 -0500 (EST) Subject: Your source code, for sale In-Reply-To: <20041105181248.7F09757E2A@finney.org> References: <20041105181248.7F09757E2A@finney.org> Message-ID: <1576.82.70.142.134.1099797702.squirrel@82.70.142.134> > Enzo Michelangeli writes: >> In the world of international trade, where mutual distrust between buyer >> and seller is often the rule and there is no central authority to >> enforce >> the law, this is traditionally achieved by interposing not less than >> three >> trusted third parties: the shipping line, the opening bank and the >> negotiating bank. > > Interesting. In the e-gold case, both parties have the same bank, > e-gold ltd. The corresponding protocol would be for the buyer to instruct > e-gold to set aside some money which would go to the seller once the > seller supplied a certain receipt. That receipt would be an email return > receipt showing that the seller had sent the buyer the content with hash > so-and-so, using a cryptographic email return-receipt protocol. This is to mix up banking and payment systems. Enzo's description shows banks doing banking - lending money on paper that eventually pays a rate of return. In contrast, in the DGC or digital gold currency world, the issuers of gold like e-gold are payment systems and not banks. The distinction is that a payment system does not issue credit. So, in the e-gold scenario, there would need to be similar third parties independent of the payment system to provide the credit moving in the reverse direction to the goods. In the end it would be much like Enzo's example, with a third party with the seller, a third party with the buyer, and one or two third parties who are dealing the physical goods. There have been some thoughts in the direction of credit creation in the gold community, but nothing of any sustainability has occurred as yet. iang From eugen at leitl.org Sat Nov 6 13:40:47 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2004 22:40:47 +0100 Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: <20041106182519.GA10341@arion.soze.net> References: <20041106153941.GX1457@leitl.org> <20041106182519.GA10341@arion.soze.net> Message-ID: <20041106214047.GP1457@leitl.org> On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 06:25:19PM +0000, Justin wrote: > Not true. > > http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/03/voter.turnout.ap/ > > "[Curtis] Gans puts the total turnout at nearly 120 million people. > That represents just under 60% of eligible voters..." You didn't vote against a candidate, you tacitly accept whatever other voters decide. For you. There isn't "none of the above" option, unfortunately. > 120m * 100%/60% = 200 million eligible voters (The U.S. population > according to census.gov was 290,809,777 as of 2003-07-01 > > http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/ > "Bush Vote: 59,459,765" > Let's generously round that up to 65 million. > > 65m/200m = 32.5% of eligible voters voted for Bush > 65m/290.8m = 22.4% of the U.S. population voted for Bush > > I can't find an accurate number of registered voters, but one article > suggests 15% of registered voters don't vote. That means there are > probably around 141m registered voters. Bush didn't even win majority > support from /those/. > > 65m/141m = 46% of registered voters voted for Bush Don't mince numbers. About half of those who could and could be bothered to vote voted for more of the same. At least that's how the rest of the world is going to see it. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From jtrjtrjtr2001 at yahoo.com Sun Nov 7 03:35:13 2004 From: jtrjtrjtr2001 at yahoo.com (Sarad AV) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 03:35:13 -0800 (PST) Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20041107113513.69820.qmail@web21203.mail.yahoo.com> --- "R.A. Hettinga" wrote: > When asked about > the issue that most > influenced their vote, voters were given the option > of saying "moral > values." But that phrase can mean anything - or > nothing. Who doesn't vote > on moral values? If you ask an inept question, you > get a misleading result. An american lady during the iraq war told me-"How do you think we will continue to get government benifits without the war?" What it means is open for interpretation. Sarath. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com From justin-cypherpunks at soze.net Sat Nov 6 20:34:01 2004 From: justin-cypherpunks at soze.net (Justin) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 04:34:01 +0000 Subject: Supreme Court Issues In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20041107043401.GA25622@arion.soze.net> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/politics/07court.html?partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print We're going to get some extremist anti-abortion, pro-internment, anti-1A, anti-4A, anti-5A, anti-14A, right-wing wacko. Imagine Ashcroft as Chief Justice. I really hope I'm wrong. What happens when the Chief Justice is dead? Can someone close to him (like his secretary) pull the strings on his corpose and "send in" his votes indefinitely, without his being in attendance during the conferences, receiving case briefs from his law clerks, or attending oral arguments? > In the two weeks that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, has been > treated for a serious form of thyroid cancer, life at the court has > proceeded without a sense of crisis. The judicial function is shared > by eight other people, with Justice John Paul Stevens, the senior > associate justice, presiding over courtroom sessions and the justices' > private conferences. The administrative tasks are carried out, as they > usually are under the chief justice's direction, by his administrative > assistant, Sally M. Rider, a former federal prosecutor and State > Department lawyer. > > These arrangements can continue almost indefinitely. Nonetheless, as it > has become evident that Chief Justice Rehnquist will not be returning > soon, a sense of sadness and uncertainty has spread throughout the court > and into the wider community of federal judges who have received no more > information than the general public about the chief justice's condition > and prospects. > > Judges have refrained from calling either Chief Justice Rehnquist or Ms. > Rider. "I don't have the nerve," one judge who has worked closely with > the chief justice said Friday. "The vibes I get just aren't good." > > A judge who did call the chief justice's chambers in anticipation of a > visit to Washington was steered away from visiting his home in > Arlington, Va. The justices have sent notes, but it is not clear whether > any have seen or even talked to him. > > Information from official channels has been minimal. The court's press > office would not say whether the chief justice was present for the > justices' regular Friday morning conference, at which they review new > cases and decide which to grant. (He was not.) Nor would the press > office say whether, if he did not attend, he sent in his votes. (He > did.) > The chief justice, it appears, has functioned as his own press > officer. Surely a professional would have cautioned him, on the day it > was announced that he had just undergone a tracheotomy, against making > a public promise to be back at work in a week. Every cancer specialist > whom reporters consulted after the announcement found that prediction > highly implausible. > > And when the chief justice found on Monday that he could not fulfill the > promise, he subtly but unmistakably indicated that the error had been > his own and not his doctors': "According to my doctors, my plan to > return to the office today was too optimistic." > > Chief Justice Rehnquist's statement on Monday said that he was receiving > radiation and chemotherapy on an outpatient basis. Both the aggressive > treatment and the observations of those who have seen him in recent > weeks suggest that the disease is advanced and rapidly progressing. > > A judge who attended a meeting with him in late September said the chief > justice looked well and spoke without the hoarseness that was apparent > by the time the court's new term began Oct. 4; a spreading thyroid tumor > can impinge on the nerves that control the vocal cords. By mid-October, > one court employee who saw the chief justice in his street clothes was > struck by his frailty. "That robe can hide a lot," this employee said. > > The court will hear arguments in this coming week and then again in the > two weeks following the Thanksgiving weekend. It will then go on recess > until Jan. 10. During that substantial interval, people at the court now > appear to think, the chief justice will have a chance to assess his > situation and decide whether to retire. > > Although there seems to be widespread public confusion on this point - > memories have faded in the 18 years since Chief Justice Rehnquist's > contentious confirmation hearing - a chief justice must be separately > nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, even if the > person is already sitting on the Supreme Court. If the president wants > to choose a sitting justice, he can pick any of them, without regard to > seniority. > > Historically, promotion from within has been the exception; only 5 of > the 16 chief justices previously served as associate justices, > including Chief Justice Rehnquist, who spent his first 14 years on > the court as an associate before President Ronald Reagan offered him > a promotion in 1986. > > The timing of his illness, more than two months before the start of the > 109th Congress, raises another prospect: that of a recess appointment to > the court. The Constitution gives the president the power to make > appointments to fill "vacancies that may happen during the recess of the > Senate," although whether and under what circumstances this authority > applies to judges is open to some debate. > > A case recently appealed to the Supreme Court on which the court could > act as early as Monday challenges the validity of President Bush's > appointment of William H. Pryor to a federal appeals court during an > 11-day Congressional recess last February. > > A recess appointment expires at the end of the following session of > Congress unless confirmed by the Senate in the interval - in late 2005 > for any appointments made in the remaining weeks of 2004, or at the > end of the second session of the new Congress, in late 2006, for > appointments made after Jan. 1. > > While there have been 12 recess appointments to the Supreme Court, 9 of > them occurred in the early years of the country. The only 3 recess > appointments in modern times, those of Chief Justice Earl Warren and > Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Potter Stewart, were all made by > President Eisenhower in the 1950's. > > Although the Senate subsequently confirmed those three justices, the > experience left many senators uneasy. While some simply resented the > exercise of presidential power, others argued also that judicial > independence was compromised by the recess-appointed justices' knowledge > that they would be confirmed to lifetime appointments only if the Senate > was satisfied with their performance. > > In 1960, the Senate passed a resolution opposing the practice on a > largely party-line vote, with most Democrats voting for the resolution > and all the Republicans opposed. -- The old must give way to the new, falsehood must become exposed by truth, and truth, though fought, always in the end prevails. -- L. Ron Hubbard From jei at cc.hut.fi Sat Nov 6 20:02:01 2004 From: jei at cc.hut.fi (Jei) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 06:02:01 +0200 (EET) Subject: More Evidence The Vote Was Rigged Message-ID: http://www.rense.com/general59/rig.htm More Evidence The Vote Was Rigged >From Wayne Nash 11-5-4 I don't want rain on the parade but I am getting quite a few emails from various sources citing possible irregularities with the voting process. So, I did a little research myself on the net to see what I could find. As a political scientist I could not resist. Regardless of the veracity of any claim to possible irregularities I suggest that this question of legitimacy of the process needs to be addressed if everyone casting their vote is to feel that their vote is being properly counted. No one can feel disenfranchised in a real democracy. Otherwise, you end up with a dictatorship and not a democracy at all. Unless BOTH sides feel the system is verifiable then you may end up with a banana republic 'democracy'. This is not question of who won the election. It is a matter of much greater importance; the legitimacy of the democratic process itself. Here are a couple of sites which address the issue: 1. http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/ 2. http://www.electoral-vote.com/ On this last web site I found this interesting bit of information: "Various people sent me mail saying that it is awfully fishy that the exit polls and final results were substantially different in some places. I hope someone will follow this up and actually do a careful analysis. Does anyone know of a Website containing all the exit poll data? If we go to computerized voting without a paper trail and the machines can be set up to cheat, that is the end of our democracy. Switching 5 votes per machine is probably all it would take to throw an election and nobody would ever see it unless someone compares the computer totals and exit polls. I am still very concerned about the remark of Walden O'Dell a Republican fund raiser and CEO of Diebold, which makes voting machines saying he would deliver Ohio for President Bush. Someone (not me) should look into this carefully. The major newspapers actually recounted all the votes in Florida last time. Maybe this year's project should be looking at the exit polls. If there are descrepancies between the exit polls and the final results in touch-screen counties but not in paper-ballot counties, that would be a signal. At the very least it could be a good masters thesis for a political science student. The Open voting consortium is a group addressing the subject of verifiable voting." Could there be a possible problem here? Let's see... * In states where there were paper ballots the results exactly matched the exit polls. * In states where there were only electronic 'touch-screen' paperless voting machines Bush showed an inexplicable 5-8 point or more difference from the polls, contradicting otherwise accurate exit polls. * The software used in these voting machines is so sophisticated that you can't even check out the programming because it disappears leaving nothing to verify, no source code, no nothing. Below are 3 articles explaining how these E-voting programs work. The man who published these articles is apparently an expert on this E-voting subject and a computer scientist. Article 1 http://www.southbaymobilization.org/newsroom/ articles/04.0303.ADeafeningSilence_article.htm Article 2 http://www.southbaymobilization.org/newsroom/ articles/04.0618.SecretAgentPrograms_article.htm Article 3 http://www.southbaymobilization.org/newsroom/ articles/04.0701.EVoting_TheNewCloseUpMagic_article.htm Another site takes the subject seriously... http://www.rense.com/general59/steI.HTM Highlight: * SoCalDem has done a statistical analysis... ...on several swing states, and EVERY STATE that has EVoting but no paper trails has an unexplained advantage for Bush of around +5% when comparing exit polls to actual results. * In EVERY STATE that has paper audit trails on their EVoting, the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the margin of error. * Analysis of the polling data vs actual data and voting systems supports the hypothesis that evoting may be to blame in the discrepancies. * The media was a bit taken aback that the results didn't match the exit polls AT ALL. Most of the commentators were scratching their head in disbelief at the results. The media has gracefully claimed they "just got it wrong." Some examples? WISCONSIN: Kerry leads Female voters by 7%, Bush leads male voters by 7%. Male vs. Female voter turnout is 47% M, 53% F. That means Kerry statistically has a 7% edge in exit polling in Wisconsin. Actual results however show Bush ahead by 1%, an unexplained difference of 8%. NEVADA: Kerry leads in the exit polls by a clear margin, but is still behind in the reported results. This state is even closer. Actual is just 1% favor of Bush. Exit polls show Kerry with a wider margin. Women favored Kerry by 8% here out of 52% of total voters. Men favored Bush by just 6% out of 48% of total voters. Actual reported results don't match exit polling AT ALL in Nevada. Easy Programming? According to the programmer cited above here is how easy it is to "make magic" ... We need COUNTERS - (B) = Bush; (K) = Kerry; (V) = Vote; (T) =Tally 1. If V = B, add 1 to B 2. If T = 8, add 1 to B; Clear T; Skip 3 3. If V = K, add 1 to K; Add 1 to T This extremely simple bit of programming would shift 12% of the vote from Kerry to Bush, it would defy exit polls, and it would make it look like Bush had a huge popular win. _____ Feel free to pass this on to your Republican and Democratic friends. If you are American, this should concern you regardless of who won this election or wins future elections. If your process is flawed your democracy is flawed and everything you believe in is on the line. I am sure that people on the ground are acting in good faith and voting according to their values and beliefs. It is the people at the top that concern me. From jei at cc.hut.fi Sat Nov 6 20:02:15 2004 From: jei at cc.hut.fi (Jei) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 06:02:15 +0200 (EET) Subject: Observable Elections Message-ID: http://www.infosecwriters.com/hhworld/hh9/voting.txt Hitchhiker's World (Issue #9) http://www.infosecwriters.com/hhworld/ Observable Elections -------------------- Vipul Ved Prakash November 2004 This is an interesting time for electronic voting. India, the largest democracy in the world, went completely paper- free for its general elections earlier this year. For the first time, some 387 million people expressed their electoral right electronically. Despite initial concerns about security and correctness of the system, the election process was a smashing success. Over a million electronic voting machines (EVMs) were deployed, 8000 metric tonnes of paper saved[1] and the results made public within few hours of the final vote. Given the quarrelsome and heavily litigated nature of Indian democracy, a lot of us were expecting post-election drama, but only a few, if any, fingers were found pointing. Things didn't fare so well in the United States. The Dieobold electronic machines, slated for use in many states for the November 2004 Federal elections, turned out to have rather large security holes. Cryptography experts, Avi Rubin et al, did a formal analysis of the machines and found that they could be subverted to introduce votes that were never casted[2]. An independent government-backed analysis confirmed this[3] and concluded that the Diebold voting system "as implemented in policy, procedure, and technology, is at a high risk of compromise." It is clear, even to a cursory observer, that Diebold systems are sloppily designed, never mind the sloppiness is a function of incompetence or intent. The recent controversy from the "Black Box Voting" security advisory titled "the Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole"[4] has added to the confusion. It claims that a code entered at a remote location can replace the real vote count with a fabricated one. This security hole, discovered last year, is still not fixed says the advisory. In response, Diebold claims that this is possible, but only in debug mode, which does little to make people confortable. What is disturbing to me as a technologist is the burgeoning public opinion that electronics is an unviable medium for conducting the serious business of elections. Over the last year I've seen numerous formal reports and articles in popular press[5] equating the failures of Diebold systems with the untenability of electronic voting. This is rather silly. Diebold systems are not only poorly engineered, they are also seriously flawed in design. Even if they were immaculately bug-free, they are so far from what electronic voting systems should be, that I have trouble categorizing them as "voting systems". "Electronic counters" is more accurate. Various augmentations have been proposed to Diebold systems; most revolve around parallel paper trails. Verified Voting[6] for example proposes that a vote be printed based on the voter's touch-screen selection, so the voter can touch, feel and verify their vote before casting it into a traditional ballet box. These votes would then be processed with an OCR type machine to compute a cumulative result and the physical votes would be saved so an independent party can verify the electronic result at a latter date. This is a reasonable tradeoff -- after all integrity of elections is way more important than saving trees and time. While this is the best recommendation for the upcoming elections, it subtly promotes the primacy of paper and distrust in electrons. We know that paper elections are no more secure. The history of vote tampering in paper based elections is quite illustrious (I'll simply refer the gentle reader to [7]) and the reason electronics was considered in the first place was to eliminate such tampering. Verified Voting recommends that count of the physical votes is to be considered superior than that of the electronic counterparts in case of a difference. What happens if the process of this count is tampered using traditional methods? We are back to square one. The central point that I want to get across in this paper is that the promise of electronic voting is not merely a quicker, slightly more secure and ecologically enlightened replacement for paper elections. Electronic voting, if implemented correctly, could be a major qualitative leap, not only changing the way in which we approach democratic elections, but also the the way in which we expect a democratic government to function. Cryptographic Integrity I want to draw attention to the work done by cryptographic community in the last 20 years to study, formalize and solve many of the problems of Internet Voting. This area of work is focused on building election systems that leave behind a trail of mathematical proofs of the integrity of the voting process. With mathematical solutions to the common issues of vote tampering, it becomes unnecessary to trust election officials and it becomes possible to build voting systems that are open and universally verifiable. A voting system for appointing a democratic government has certain "ideal properties". These are rather obvious, but I recount them for the purpose of this discussion. First, all votes must be counted exactly like they were casted. Altering a vote, or leaving one out from the final tally must be impossible. Ballot stuffing, ie. artificial injection of invalid votes must be impossible as well. The system should reject non-eligible voters, and ensure eligible users can cast only a single vote. And, finally, votes must be absolutely anonymous -- even the voter should be unable to prove the way in which they voted. Systems like Diebold's depend on large-scale observation to uphold the ideal properties. Large-scale observation is hard, and once an act of tampering is done, there is little that can be done to detect or correct it. The attacks such as the one described by the Black Box Voting advisory are particularly heinous, since they compromise the entire election process. The ideal properties are true in paper elections when they are implemented perfectly, but the nature of paper precludes proofs of correctness without compromising anonymity. The problems are much the same as in the "Electronic Counter" systems; without correctness proofs, it is largely infeasible to detect and correct tampering. Cryptographers have been trying to emulate the property of anonymity that is inherent to paper when it us used as cash or votes. The research in the field has led to invention of several mathematical primitives and computing systems that not only model paper but go beyond to provide proofs of the properties they emulate. Techniques like blind signatures, homomorphic encryption, digital mixes and onion routing have been used to build systems that provide strong anonymity. The pioneering cryptographer David Chaum introduced the blind signature in order to build permit truly anonymous interaction on the Internet[8]. Since then, they have been applied to all manner of problems from untraceable electronic cash to electronic voting schemes. Blind signatures are a class of digital signatures that allow a document to be signed without revealing its contents. The effect is similar to placing a document and a sheet of carbon paper inside an envelope. When the envelope is signed, the signature transfers to the document and remains on it even when the envelope is removed. In his paper, Chaum hinted that blind signatures could be used for secret ballot elections. Fujioka, Okamoto, and Ohta[9] created the first significant blind signature based voting protocol, which made it practical to use blind signatures in democratic elections. However, some problems were discovered in their work, most notably the system's vulnerablity to a corrupt election authority. I present a system, dubbed ``Athens'', that builds on their work, but solves several problems in their model. I also focus on a real-world election system, rather than an Internet one, and adopt a pragmatic approach, in that I make use of physical resources like volunteers and physical infrastructure usually available for large-scale democratic elections. Athens also borrows elements and thinking from the Sensus[10] system and David Chaum's recent work on Visual Cryptography[11]. Design of Athens The basic procedure for conducting a democratic election is fairly standard. The procedure has four tasks: Registration, Validation, Collection and Tallying. In Athens, these four tasks are carried out with a few specialized machines and software, most of which are connected through the Internet. While Athens employs an Election Authority to oversee the process of elections, it does away with the dependence on trustworthiness of one. Athens philosophy is that there are no truly non-partisan parties; even the Election Authority can't be completely trusted. The Athens model is closer to a "game" between contesting parties, such that the only way to cheat in the game is for all competitors to collude - an axiomatic impossibility. The Election Authority performs tactical tasks to optimize the election process, but all tasks performed by the Authority are open to review by competing parties. Registration Registration is the process of determining eligible voters, and is conducted by the "Registrar" -- a distributed authority put in place by the Election Authority. The Athens registration process involves validating voters (through traditional means) and registering their "Voter Public Key" in the "Register." The corresponding "Voter Secret Key" remains with the voter, magnetically encoded (or bar coded for cheaper implementation) on a "Voting Card". The keys are generated through the "Voting Card Creator Machine". The Card Creator Machine is also implemented as software that can be used by a voter on their home computer. It is not hard to imagine Card Creators installed in local registration offices or even at Kinko's and shopping malls, where they charge a few dollars for generating a card. Fairness in design is important, because Card Creators could compromise the security of the system by storing the key pairs they generate. A card creator is mostly an RSA key generator - it needs computing power of a 300 Mhz PC, and is constructed fairly cheaply. Once the voter enters their personal information into the machine, it spits out two cards: one with the public key, that is handed over to the Registrar and the other with the secret key and identification information required by the Election Authority (like the social security number of the voter.) The second card is known as the "Voting Card" and is used to validate the voter at the time of elections. Both cards also contain a large random number, known as the Voter Id. This is used throughout the voting process to facilitate lookups in the Register without compromising the privacy of the voter. Once all voters have handed their Voter Public Key Card over to the Registrar, the registration process is considered to be complete. As with traditional elections, there is a cut- off date for this process. On completion of registration, the Election Authority hands the Register over to all the competitors. The competitors then check every 1 in 1000 entries (or more according to their capacity) to ensure that they belong to a legitimate voter, i.e. it isn't a fake entry inserted by a corrupt competitor to stuff the ballot. This process is woefully lacking in elections of today, and a hence a major vector for election fraud. Mathematics can do little to alleviate the dangers of registering fake voters, but competitors who depend on the correctness of the Register and raise funds for the purpose can easily perform this task. Register verification would be a lucrative business for independent professional services organizations, so it is not hard to imagine such organizations sprouting up to assume delegation of this responsibility. The competitors also put the Register on the Internet before the election so that voters can ensure their voter key is present in all copies of the Register. When requested, each competing party provides a digitally signed proof that the voter is registered to vote, i.e. their key is present in the Register. The voter, if denied the right to vote, can take this proof to a court of law. A pre-voting verification of eligibility limits the kind of fiasco that occurred in Florida during the Presidential elections of 2000, where a large number of people were denied vote. Validation In most electronic voting protocols, there exists the notion of the "Validator" - a party that holds the Register and validates voters during the election. In Athens, the competing parties, that were handed a copy of the Register in the previous step, all serve as Validators. Athens, therefore, is a multi-validator system. It is reasonable to assume that independents or fiscally constrained parties would team up and have a single Validator represent them. Validators are connected to the Internet and run Validation software, that accepts validation requests over a TCP port. The Validators are firewall'ed off to accept data only from certain IP addresses. The Electronic Voting Machines talk to the Validators via a Proxy. EVMs could theoretically talk directly to Validators, but the reasons for using a proxy will become apparent later. The Proxy is operated by the Election Authority and observed by representatives from all competing parties. Validators have their own RSA key pair, the public portion of which is published widely over the Internet. They also maintain two lists (other than the Register). This is the list of voters who have casted a vote and a list of corresponding validation requests. Before the commencement of the election, the Election Authority chooses a a random number which is known as the "Election Number". The only property of this number is its uniqueness to the election - it should not have been used in a previous election. The Election Number is distributed to all Validators. Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) used in Athens are quite unlike Diebold's or the ones used in the Indian elections. Athens' EVMs are simply "agents" that vote on behalf of the voter. Each EVM has an Id and a RSA key pair. The public part of the EVM key is published widely over the Internet. Communications initiated by the EVM are signed with EVMs secret key. The elections are considered formally commenced, when the Validators broadcast the Election Number and their public keys to EVMs via the Proxy. The Athens Voting Protocol The voter enters a private booth and swipes their Voting Card on the EVM. The EVM reads the secret key and the Voter Id off the Card. The EVM has a little printer attached to it, much like a cash register receipt printer, on which it prints out the Voter Id. It the sends the voter Id off to the Validators via the proxy to initiate a "voting session" on behalf of the voter. If the voter has already casted a vote, Validators return a "proof" of previously casted vote. The proof and its implications are discussed a little later. If there's no previous vote, the Validators send a positive acknowledgment and the EVM asks the voter to cast a ballot. The voter enters their vote using the on-screen display. The EVM concatenates the Voter's choice with the Election Number (EN) and the result is encrypted with a secret key (randomly generated) using a symmetric cipher like AES. The encrypted ballot is then blinded. At this point, the EVM has: Voter Id + Blind(Encrypted(Ballot . EN)) The blinded ballot is then signed with the voter's secret key. The EVM also signs the EN with the Voter's key. The EVM now has: Voter Id + VoterSignature(EN) + VoterSignature(Blind(Encrypted(Ballot . EN))) + Blind(Encrypted(Ballot . EN)) The EVM sends the signed, blinded ballot over to the the Proxy, that sends it to all Validators. Upon receipt, a Validator looks up the public key corresponding to the Voter Id and uses it to check the voter signature. If the voter signature is valid the Validator signs the blind with its own key. It adds the Voter Id to the list of voters who have casted a vote and keeps, in another list, the original blinded request, the signed EN, and the timestamp of request as a proof of the casted vote. It sends the signed blinded ballot back to the Proxy, that forwards it to the originating EVM. The data packet contains: EVM Id + Voter Id + ValidatorSignature(Blind(Encrypted(Ballot . EN))) If the Validator can't validate the signature, it sends a VERIFY_FAILURE error to the EVM: EVM Id + Voter Id + VERIFY_FAILURE + ValidatorSignature( VERIFY_FAILURE + Blind(Encrypted(Ballot . EN)) ) If the Validator can't find the Voter Id, it sends an INVALID_VOTERID_FAILURE error to the EVM: EVM Id + Voter Id + INVALID_VOTERID_FAILURE + ValidatorSignature( INVALID_VOTERID_FAILURE + Blind(Encrypted(Ballot . EN)) ) As described earlier, if the Voter has already casted a vote, the Validator sends a proof of the vote, which contains: REPEAT_VOTE_FAILURE + Proof Where Proof is: EVM Id + Voter Id + Request_Timestamp + PreviousBlind(Encrypted(Ballot . EN)) + VoterSignature(PreviousBlind(Encrypted(Ballot . EN))) + VoterSignature(EN) Once the EVM has received responses from all Validators, it informs the voter that their vote was casted. If all Validators sent a positive response the EVM prints out the message "Vote successfully casted" (immediately following the previously printed Voter Id), and instructs the voter to take the printed receipt. If any of the Validators return a failure, the EVM prints out all Validator responses, including the steps for unblinding and decrypting the original vote. A little later I will demonstrate how this receipt can be used to detect various types of tampering and attacks on the system. For now, we will assume validation was successful. For a successful validation, the EVM removes the blind and is left with ``n' validated encrypted ballots: Validator_1_Signature(Encrypted(Ballot . EN))) .. Validator_n_Signature(Encrypted(Ballot . EN))) + Encrypted(Ballot . EN) This data encapsulates a secret vote by a voter whose eligibility has been attested to by all competing Validators, none of whom know the way in which the vote was cast. Additionally, any independent party can now confirm the integrity of the vote by checking the Validator signatures. The EVM places the signatures, the ballot and the secret key used to encrypted the Ballot on a "Tally Queue". For votes that failed, the failure messages are placed on the Tally Queue instead. Tallying When the Election is over, several pieces of data are published over the Internet in a public forum that has properties of a Usenet group (ie. published information can't be retracted). First, the Validators publish their list of Voter Ids that casted a vote along with "proofs" of validation request, where the proof is exactly the same as one described above. This includes all the data on the two lists maintained by the Validators. Once Validators have published their lists, the proxy opens up the constraints on EVM communication, such that they can all talk to each other and read and write in the public forum. The proxy informs EVMs of this event and sends them a list of IP addresses all EVMs. The EVMs then participate in an Onion Routing protocol[12] to publish the encrypted ballots and Validator signatures on these ballots from their Tallying Queue. Once encrypted votes and Validator signatures are faithfully transmitted over to the public forum, EVMs enter a second round of Onion routing to publish the AES passwords to decrypt the votes. The Onion Routing protocol strips the origination information, so it becomes impossibly hard to corelate votes to EVMs, thereby making the publication anonymous. At this point, all data required to do a tally is available publically. It should be noted that almost everything that transpires during the election process, with the exception of the data that links the voters to their votes, is made public at the end of the election. This level of transparency is one of the greatest benefits of a well designed electronic voting system. In Athens, the tallying is done by the Election Authority, but anyone equiped with Tallying software can check the tally independently. Athens tally is straightforward. Ballots that have valid signatures from _all_ Validators are selected as countable votes. These are decrypted with the published AES secret keys, votes are separated from the Election Number, and counted to produce a final tally. Security of Athens To analyse the security of Athens, I will show how various common attacks are made trivially detectable by the Athens architecture. Denial of Vote Attacks The pre-election registration verification keeps the Registrar honest. If the registrar drops people from the Register, there's a high probability that the drop will be detected and the Registrar will be answerable in a court of law. Since competing parties are independently undertaking the verification, it is in everyones interest to keep the process honest. During the election, two different types of denial attacks are possible. The first attack is where one of the competitors know (based on the Voter Id, or region), the way in which the voter will cast a vote. Outspoken supporters, representatives and volunteers of a party are vulnerable to this attack. A competing Validator could try to deny them the vote by raising one of the three possible errors: INVALID_VOTERID_FAILURE, VERIFY_FAILURE or REPEAT_VOTE_FAILURE. To protect from the INVALID_VOTERID_FAILURE denial attack, a copy of the register is published widely prior to the commencement of the elections. A receipt generated by the EVM with a valid Voter Id and an INVALID_VOTERID_FAILURE notice is an easily established proof of Validators' corruption. VERIFY_FAILURE is also trivially established with help of the positive validation requests from competing Validators (also on the receipt), the public Register and the voter's Voting Card. The attack based on the third error, REPEAT_FAILURE is more interesting. What if a Validator refuses to Validate a vote by claiming that the Voter has already voted? In that case, the Validator must provide a proof of the previous Validation request. Since the proof contains a signature made on both the EM and the Blinded ballot by Voter's secret key, the Validator cannot provide such a proof with the knowledge of the key - which is unavailable to the Validator. This is why Athens requires Validators to keep a copy of all validation requests, and conducts the validation process in 2-steps, so the first validation request can't be used as a proof. Also, since the Election Number is encoded in the ballot, and a signed EN is part of the proof, validation requests from previous elections can't be cited as proofs. An incorrect proof is easily verifiable by the EVM as well as the voter and a court of law with help of the printed receipt. A different kind of denial of vote attack can be mounted by the EVMs. In this attack the EVMs withhold publication of validated votes. However, such withholding is easily discovered in Athens because the list of proofs published by the Validators indicate the number of casted and verified votes. Ballot Stuffing Attacks There are several ways in which an attacker can try to stuff ballots. The first method, that was discussed earlier, is by registering fake voters during the registration process. Since the Register is open to independent scrutiny by all competitors, the risks of adding fake voters is high and hence discouraged. Another ballot stuffing attack is to cast votes for absentees. This attack is very hard in Athens, since it requires the knowledge of absentees' secret keys. The third way to stuff the ballot is for an eligible voter to cast multiple votes. This is made impossible in Athens with help of Validation proofs. Even when the Validators of n-1 colluding parties (where n is the number of competing parties), validate multiple requests from Mallory (a colluding voter), the non-colluding party is able to present a proof of Mallory's first vote and deny all subsequent requests with impunity. The Tallying process requires an affirmation from _all_ Validators, so such votes are not counted. Vote Alteration Attacks The Athens protocol requires that EVMs act honestly on the behalf of the Voter. A corrupt EVM could easily display to the voter that it has casted a vote their choice, but actually cast the vote for another party. This attack would be impossible if the EVM was required to print out a receipt of every vote that included the blinded ballot, signed by Voter's secret key, the steps to unblind it and the secret AES key with which the actual vote was encrypted. The voter could then look up the encrypted ballot after it was published and ensure the vote was cast and counted correctly. Doing this, however, would leave the voter with a proof of vote that could lead to vote coercion or vote buying. It is not sufficient to blindly trust the EVM either. Code reviews, or open source development of the EVM software (while should be encouraged) do not guarantee that the code running on the deployed EVM is the one that was reviewed. To keep the EVMs honest, Athens implements a sub-protocol for EVM verification. All competing parties add a few thousand fake voters to their own copy of the Register, and generate corresponding voting cards. These voting cards are then used by designated verifiers (volunteers) to cast arbitrary votes (usually for the party that runs the Validator) to test the EVMs. The volunteers are normal, eligible voters with multiple voting cards - they first vote with their real card, and then pull out the fake ones to run a series of tests. When the designated verifier casts a vote with one of the faked card, the vote is verified correctly by the Verifying Validator (the one who has the fake keys on it copy of the Register), while other n-1 Validators decline validation with an INVALID_VOTERID_FAILURE. This causes the EVM to print out the entire transaction, down to the selection of the actual vote that the EVM tried to validate. If the EVM is systematically altering votes, the designated verifier ends up with a receipt showing a selection that was different from his actual selection. If the EVM attempts to cover up its deception by printing a receipt that says "Vote successfully casted", the designated verified immediately knows the EVM is lying, since the n-1 Validators would have failed the verification. If the EVM tries to back paddle and cast a correct vote after it receives the INVALID_VOTERID_FAILUREs, the duplicate vote attempt is detected by (at least) the Verifying Validator, who responds with a proof of the previous validation request. Unable to differentiate a normal voter from a designated verifier before sending a verification request, the EVM is forced to act honestly. Athens requires the physical constraint of using a proxy for all communications originating from the EVMs, to ensure EVMs have no out-of-bound, out-of-protocol communications with Validators and other parties. This provides a single, focused point of observation for the competing parties, and can be performed fairly easily with a protocol decoder. In sum, Athens uses cryptographic primitives to build an electronic voting system that ties in the processes of registration, voting, and tallying into a protocol that is secure, anonymous and truly transparent. Since all aspects of the protocol are verifiable the potential for fraud is greatly reduced. Even more importantly, open systems like Athens inspire confidence and promote participation in the election process - the very foundation of democracy. Partial Observability "Participation" brings us to the one of the topics that originally led to my interest in electronic voting. I know many intelligent and politically sensitive Indians who have never casted a vote in Indian democratic elections. I am one of them. My reason for electoral inaction is not apathy, but simple statistics. In a country of a billion people, my vote doesn't really count. To be more precise, if one party wins by 80% then my vote, in either direction, is not useful. However, if a party that I don't support happens to win by a small margin, my vote (and those of others like me) could have made all the difference. Of course, I have no way of knowing this till it is too late. I could pay attention to gallop and exit polls, but those can be quite wrong as demonstrated in the Indian general elections earlier this year. It is no surprise that the voter turnout in what is perceived to be a hotly contested election is higher than expected. A comprehensive IDEA survey[13] on voter turnout failed to find corelations between turnout and various factors they studied, but they found that "there does seem to be a clear link between voter turnout and the competitiveness of electoral politics in a political system. In the 542 elections where the largest party won less than half of the votes turnout was a full 10% higher than the 263 elections where a single party won over 50% of the popular vote." Publishing partial results is a tactical nightmare in paper based or electronic counter based elections. However, a system like Athens could enter the Tally phase several times during the election at no additional cost to provide an "intermediate tally". The frequency and timing of the intermidiate tallies could be function of the size of the electorate and number of uncounted votes - large enough to protect the anonymity of the voters and small enough to provide an updating sense of the final result. The intermediate tallies could be broadcastd on TV, Radio and the Internet (much like Stock tickers), and would functions as "get out the vote" campaigns, to encourage the statistically informed to go out and vote. This property of elections that I like to call "partial observability", could greatly boost participation and otherwise alter the dynamics of the election process. It is just one of the ways in which electronic voting could qualitative change the elections and democracy. Bibliography [1] Indian Election 2004, Facts and Figures http://www.indian-elections.com/facts-figures.html How Stuff Works, How many sheets of paper can be produced from a single tree? http://science.howstuffworks.com/question16.htm [2] T. Kohno, A. Stubblefield, A. Rubin, D. Wallach, Analysis of an Electronic Voting System, May 2004. http://avirubin.com/vote/analysis/index.html [3] Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Risk Assessment Report: Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting System and Processes, SAIC-6099-2003-261, 2 September 2003. http://www.dbm.maryland.gov/DBM%20Taxonomy/Tech- nology/Policies%20&%20Publications/State%20Voting%20- System%20Report/stateVotingSystemReport.html [4] Black Box Voting, Consumer Report Part 1: The Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole, 26 August 2004 http://www.blackboxvoting.org/?q=node/view/78 [5] Paul O'Donnell, Why you are still voting on paper, WIRED, August 2004. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.08/start.html?pg=7 [6] VerifiedVoter.org [7] CRS Report for Congress, Election Reform and Electronic Voting Systems: Analysis of Security Issues. http://www.epic.org/privacy/voting/crsreport.pdf [8] D. Chaum, Achieving Electronic Privacy http://ntrg.cs.tcd.ie/mepeirce/Project/Chaum/sciam.html [9] A. Fujioka, T. Okamoto, and K. Ohta, A Practical Secret Voting Scheme for Large Scale Elections. 1992. http://theory.csail.mit.edu/~rivest/voting/papers/- FujiokaOkamotoOhta-APracticalSecretVotingSchemeFor- LargeScaleElections.pdf [10] L. Cranor, R. Cytron, Sensus: A security conscious electronic polling system for the Internet. http://lorrie.cranor.org/pubs/hicss/ [11] D. Chaum, Secret Ballot Receipts and Transparent Integrity. http://www.vreceipt.com/article.pdf [12] R. Dingledine, N. Mathewson, P. Syverson, Tor: The Second- Generation Onion Router. http://www.freehaven.net/tor/cvs/doc/design-paper/tor-design.html [13] IDEA, Voter Turnout: A Global Survey http://www.idea.int/voter_turnout/voter_turnout.html From iang at systemics.com Sun Nov 7 06:11:56 2004 From: iang at systemics.com (Ian Grigg) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 09:11:56 -0500 (EST) Subject: L/Cs, e-gold and regulated banking In-Reply-To: <013a01c4c4bf$69dff8a0$0200a8c0@em.noip.com> References: <20041105181248.7F09757E2A@finney.org> <1576.82.70.142.134.1099797702.squirrel@82.70.142.134> <013a01c4c4bf$69dff8a0$0200a8c0@em.noip.com> Message-ID: <1724.82.70.142.134.1099836716.squirrel@82.70.142.134> (Guys, this has drifted out of crypto into finance, so I have a feeling that it will disappear of the crypto list. But the topics that are raised are interesting and important enough to carry on, I think.) >> > [Hal:] >> > Interesting. In the e-gold case, both parties have the same bank, >> > e-gold ltd. The corresponding protocol would be for the buyer to >> > instruct e-gold to set aside some money which would go to the >> > seller once the seller supplied a certain receipt. That receipt >> > would be an email return receipt showing that the seller had sent >> > the buyer the content with hash so-and-so, using a cryptographic >> > email return-receipt protocol. >> [iang:] >> This is to mix up banking and payment systems. Enzo's >> description shows banks doing banking - lending money >> on paper that eventually pays a rate of return. In >> contrast, in the DGC or digital gold currency world, >> the issuers of gold like e-gold are payment systems and >> not banks. The distinction is that a payment system >> does not issue credit. > [enzo:] > Actually, seeing issuance and acceptance of L/C's only as a money-lending > activity is not 100% accurate. "Letter of credit" is a misnomer: an L/C > _may_ be used by the seller to obtain credit, but if the documents are > "sent for collection" rather than "negotiated", the payment to the seller > is delayed until the opening bank will have debited the buyer's account > and remitted the due amount to the negotiating bank. To be precise: when > the documents are submitted to the negotiating bank by the seller, the > latter also draws under the terms of the L/C a "bill of exchange" to be > accepted by the buyer; that instrument, just like any draft, may be either > sent for collection or negotiated immediately, subject, of course, to > final settlement. Also, depending on the agreements between the seller and > his bank, the received L/C may be considered as collateral to get further > allocation of credit, e.g. to open a "back-to-back L/C" to a seller of raw > materials. > > However, if the documents and the draft are sent for collection, and no > other extension of credit are obtained by the buyer, the only advantage of > an L/C for the seller is the certainty of being paid by _his_ > (negotiating) bank, which he trusts not to collude with the buyer to claim > fictitious discrepancies between the actual documents submitted and what > the L/C was requesting. (And even in case such discrepancies will turn out > to be real, the opening bank will not surrender the Bill of Lading, and > therefore the cargo, to the buyer until the latter will have accepted all > the discrepancies: so in the worst case the cargo will remain under the > seller's control, to be shipped back and/or sold to some other buyer. > If it acted differently, the opening bank would go against the standard > practice defined in the UCP ICC 500 > (http://internet.ggu.edu/~emilian/PUBL500.htm) and its reputation would be > badly damaged). So, the L/C mechanism, independently from allocation of > credit, _does_ provide a way out of the dilemma "which one should come > first, payment or delivery?"; and this is achieved by leveraging on the > reputation of parties separately trusted by the endpoints of the > transaction. An excellent description; I was unaware that the system could be used in a non-credit fashion. Thanks for correcting me. > Generally speaking, it is debatable whether "doing banking" only means > "accepting deposits and providing credit" or also "handling payments for a > fee": There are many definitions of "banking" and unfortunately they are different enough that one will make mistakes routinely. Here are the most useful three that I know of: 1. borrowing from the public as deposits and lending those deposits to the public. This is the favoured definition for economists, because it concentrates on the specialness that is banking, which is the foundation for its special regulatory structure. 2. Banking is what banks do, and banks do banking. This is the favoured definition of banks, and often times, regulators, because it gives them a free hand to exploit their special franchise / subsidy. It was codified in law in many countries as just this, but I believe it is out of favour to write it down these days. However, the Fed and other US regulators have from time to time resorted to this definition, when convenient. 3. Banking is what the regulator says is banking. This is the favoured definition of regulators, and sometimes of banks. It means that there is little or no argument or discussion in protecting the flock. This is the much more prevalent in smaller countries, where the notion of "sending in the lawyers" is simply too expensive. 4. There is a popular definition that says something like, if it is to do with money it is banking. That's not a very useful one, but it's prevalent enough to need to be aware of it. > ... surely banks routinely do both, although they do not usually enjoy a > _regulatory franchise_ on payments because failures in that field are not > usually argued to be capable of snowballing into systemic failures. > (Austrian economists argue that that's also the case with provision of > credit, but it's a much more controversial issue). In the US, as we know, > Greenspan's FED decided several years ago against heavy regulation of the > payments business, and most industrialized countries chose to follow suit. Right! (Although, I'd suggest that the "payment systems regulatory" question is polarised between the Fed and the German model. In the German model, payment systems are part of banking, and are subject to heavy regulation. I've not heard of the Germans and their followers accepting the Fed model. This debate is played out in the EU over and over again, and there it can be loosely characterised as the Germans + supporters versus the Brits plus supporters.) >> So, in the e-gold scenario, there would need to be >> similar third parties independent of the payment system >> to provide the credit moving in the reverse direction to >> the goods. In the end it would be much like Enzo's >> example, with a third party with the seller, a third >> party with the buyer, and one or two third parties who >> are dealing the physical goods. There have been some >> thoughts in the direction of credit creation in the >> gold community, but nothing of any sustainability has >> occurred as yet. > > That would probably end up attracting unwelcome attention by the > regulators. Well, one could speculate on that and many other things. Perhaps an anecdote would illustrate that better than I can in more speculation: in the very early days, e-gold did go to the Fed and ask them if they considered e-gold to be ... within interest. The Fed said, "gold is not money and therefore it is not of interest." This would have been back in 97 or so. Now, that's what the Fed said then. Obviously they are using definition #3 above. And, just as obviously, things can change... > Besides, wouldn't that require some sort of fractional > banking, resulting in a money supply multiple of the monetary base by an > unstable multiplier, and ultimately bringing back the disadvantages of > fiat currencies? If the separate party were to hold and create credit based on contracts of deposit, using e-gold as the money and as the accounts system, this would be doing banking according to definition #1 above. However, note that it would have both the advantages of both a hard money - 100% reserved digital gold - and the advantages of fractional reserve. The bank could only lend out what it had attracted in deposits, which would result in a stable multiplier. The trick is to separate the payment system from the bank! The easiest way to do this is to ban payment systems from being near or related to credit systems, which is what we espouse in our unregulated finance systems governance models. (This is why e-gold is a payment system in Nevis, and G&SR is a seller of e-gold for dollars in Florida. On paper at least, G&SR can go bankrupt and e-gold carries on.) The offerers of credit and loans were all third parties that more or less had nothing to do with e-gold. Such separation, in theory, allows the creation of a stable credit expansion system which is only limited by the efficiency of the players. iang From rah at shipwright.com Sun Nov 7 06:36:32 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 09:36:32 -0500 Subject: Plane passengers shocked by their x-ray scans Message-ID: The Times of London CLICK HERE TO PRINTCLOSE WINDOW? November 07, 2004 Plane passengers shocked by their x-ray scans Dipesh Gadher,Transport Correspondent AN X-RAY machine that sees through air passengers' clothes has been deployed by security staff at London's Heathrow airport for the first time. The device at Terminal 4 produces a "naked" image of passengers by bouncing X-rays off their skin, enabling staff instantly to spot any hidden weapons or explosives. But the graphic nature of the black and white images it generates - including revealing outlines of men and women - has raised concerns about privacy both among travellers and aviation authorities. In America, transport officials are refusing to deploy the device until it can be further refined to "mask" passengers' modesty. The Terminal 4 trial - being conducted jointly by the British Airports Authority and the Department for Transport - became fully operational last month and is intended to run until the end of the year. Its deployment has not been reported until now since new security measures at airports are not normally publicised. If the new body scanner is able to cope with large volumes of passengers, improves detection rates and, crucially, receives public acceptance, it is likely to be rolled out across all Britain's airports. At Heathrow, passengers are picked to go through the body scanner on a random and voluntary basis. Those who refuse are subjected to an automatic hand search. The scanner, which resembles a tall, grey filing cabinet, operates in a curtained area and passengers are asked to stand in front of it, adopting several poses, for their "naked" image to be registered. Once checked, the images are immediately erased. Security officials claim it is a far more effective way of countering potential terrorists because it detects the outline of any solid object - such as plastic explosives or ceramic knives - which conventional metal detectors would miss. Managers at Heathrow also say the new technology does away with the need to subject passengers to potentially intrusive hand searches. However, travellers who have been screened - and have asked to see the images - have been surprised by their clarity. "I was quite shocked by what I saw," said Gary Cook, 40, a graphic designer from Shaftesbury, Dorset. "I felt a bit embarrassed looking at the image. A female passenger, who did not want to be named, said: "It was really horrible. It doesn't leave much to the imagination because you're virtually naked, but I guess it's less intrusive than being hand searched." In a similar trial at Orlando international airport in Florida in 2002, passengers were shown a dummy image before going through, and at least a quarter of them refused to volunteer. In America last year, Susan Hallowell, director of the US Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) security laboratory, showed off her own x-ray image to demonstrate the technology to reporters. "It basically makes you look fat and naked, but you see all this stuff," said Hallowell, who had deliberately hidden a gun and a bomb under her clothes. The TSA has decided not to deploy the device at American airports until manufacturers can develop an electronic means of masking sensitive body parts. Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and Conditions . Please read our Privacy Policy . To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from The Times, visit the Syndication website . -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jamesd at echeque.com Sun Nov 7 11:19:44 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 11:19:44 -0800 Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: <20041106160732.W61334@ubzr.zsa.bet> References: <20041106153941.GX1457@leitl.org> <20041106182519.GA10341@arion.soze.net> <20041106160732.W61334@ubzr.zsa.bet> Message-ID: <418E7550.7050006@echeque.com> -- J.A. Terranson wrote: > The fact is that those who did not vote effectively voted for Shrub. > You are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem. > Inaction is not good enough. Voting is not a solution. Voting only encourages them. If you vote for a candidate, and he wins, he will then proceed to commit various crimes, and you, by voting, have given him a "mandate" for those crimes. Further, suppose you think, as I think, that candidate A is a lesser evil than candidate B, but the difference is not much. If you vote for the lesser evil, you will start to rationalize and excuse all the crimes he commits, identifying with him, and his actions. Nor is Kerry a solution. I cannot understand why you Bush haters are so excited about this election when on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Kerry promised to continue all Bush's policies only more effectually. You vote for Kerry because you think he is a liar? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG EDbRclDc5acD10EGJi0ScHZfE2IslIbsawTQvj54 4jjneZ53XniQe2NYlNlFO5PGLTN5vTyDLI5okTjKv From rah at shipwright.com Sun Nov 7 10:38:15 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 13:38:15 -0500 Subject: Tom Wolfe: 'Talk to someone in Cincinnati? Are you crazy?' Message-ID: My mother's family's name is Sanders. It's Scots-Irish. Apparently, I like to have my "rock fights" on the net... :-). Cheers, RAH ------- The Times of London November 07, 2004 Focus: US Election Special 'Talk to someone in Cincinnati? Are you crazy?'. . . and so the Democrats blew it Tom Wolfe on the elite that got lost in middle America Over the past few days I've talked to lots of journalists and literary types in New York. I've grown used to the sound of crushed, hushed voices on the end of the phone. The weight of George Bush's victory seems almost too much. But what did they expect, I ask myself. They don't like the war and the way the war is going, they don't like Bush and they don't like what this election says about America. But where's their sense of reality? The liberal elite showed it was way out of touch even before the election. I was at a dinner party in New York and when everyone was wondering what to do about Bush I suggested they might do like me and vote for him. There was silence around the table, as if I'd said "by the way, I haven't mentioned this before but I'm a child molester". Now, like Chicken Licken after an acorn fell on his head, they think the sky is falling. I have to laugh. It reminds me of Pauline Kael, the film critic, who said, "I don't know how Reagan won - I don't know a soul who voted for him." That was a classic and reflects the reaction of New York intellectuals now. Note my definition of "intellectual" here is what you often find in this city: not people of intellectual attainment but more like car salesmen, who take in shipments of ideas and sell them on. I think the results in Ohio, the key state this time, tell us everything we need to know. Overall, the picture of Republican red and Democratic blue across the country remained almost unchanged since last time. The millions of dollars spent and miles travelled on the Bush and Kerry campaigns made no difference at all. But look at Ohio and the different voting patterns in Cleveland and Cincinnati. Cleveland, in the north of the state, is cosmopolitan, what we would think of as an "eastern" city, and Kerry won by two votes to one. Cincinnati, in the southeast corner of Ohio, is a long way away both geographically and culturally. It's Midwestern and that automatically means "hicksville" to New York intellectuals. There Bush won by a margin of 150,000 votes and it was southern Ohio as a whole that sent him back to the White House. The truth is that my pals, my fellow journos and literary types, would feel more comfortable going to Baghdad than to Cincinnati. Most couldn't tell you what state Cincinnati is in and going there would be like being assigned to a tumbleweed county in Mexico. They can talk to sheikhs in Lebanon and esoteric radical groups in Uzbekistan, but talk to someone in Cincinnati . . . are you crazy? They have no concept of what America is made of and even now they won't see that. So who are the people who voted for Bush? I think the most cogent person on this is James Webb, the most decorated marine to come out of Vietnam. Like John Kerry he won the Silver Star, but also the Navy Cross, the equivalent of our highest honour, the Congressional Medal. He served briefly under Reagan as secretary for the navy, but he has since become a writer. His latest book, Born Fighting, is the most important piece of ethnography in this country for a long time. It's about that huge but invisible group, the Scots-Irish. They're all over the Appalachian mountains and places like southern Ohio and Tennessee. Their theme song is country music and when people talk about rednecks, this is the group they're talking about: this is the group that voted for Bush. Though they've had successes, the Scots-Irish generally haven't done well economically. They're individualistic, they're stubborn and they value their way of life more then their financial situation. If a politician comes out for gun control they take it personally. It's not about guns, really: if you're against the National Rifle Association you're against them as a people. They take Protestantism seriously. It tickles me when people talk about "the Christian right". These people aren't right wing, they're just religious. If you're religious, of course, you're against gay marriage and abortion. You're against a lot of things that have become part of the intellectual liberal liturgy. Everyone who joins the military here thinks, "Where did all these Southerners come from?" These people love to fight. During the French and Indian wars, before there was a United States, recruiters would turn up in the Carolinas and in the Appalachians and say, "Anyone want to go and fight Indians?" There was a bunch of boys who were always up for it and they haven't lost that love of battle. My family wasn't Scots-Irish but my father was from the Shenendoah Valley, in the Blue Ridge mountains in western Virginia, so I know the kind of folks Webb is talking about. They do like fighting: many's the time I was visiting there and I'd get taken down to town to watch the rock fights on a Saturday night. All the men would hit the bar, drink beer - the only drink you could buy out there - come out of the saloon, pick up rocks, throw them at each other and then go home. Bush, despite his wealthy and refined lineage, in terms of family and where he went to school, manages to come across to people like that as one of them. He walks like them, he talks like them, he likes cattle and he says he likes stock car racing, the most popular sport in the United States, not that you'd know it from reading the New York papers - they don't cover it. There's an annual race in a little place, Bristol Tennessee, a place full of Scots-Irish, that draws 165,000 people every year, 55,000 more than go to the biggest football game. Bush reflects this America - the real America - and that is maybe what the liberal elite and his critics abroad can't stomach. He honestly seems to believe in God, whereas Kerry says, "I'm a Roman Catholic so I must believe in God." It's as if he turns to James Carville (the Democratic strategist) and says, "Don't I?" It obviously doesn't play a part in his life. The values of middle America don't play well in New York. Among American writers, with few exceptions, you don't say anything patriotic and you don't say anything generally good about the country. I must finish now because I need to get to Kennedy airport to wave goodbye to all those writers and journalists who've told me they can't take another four years of Bush. Triumphalism is not my style but I can't help an "I told you so" smile. Oh, by the way, most of them are leaving for London. Heaven help you when they get there. Tom Wolfe was talking to Margarette Driscoll -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From measl at mfn.org Sun Nov 7 13:54:47 2004 From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 15:54:47 -0600 (CST) Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: <418E7550.7050006@echeque.com> References: <20041106153941.GX1457@leitl.org> <20041106182519.GA10341@arion.soze.net> <20041106160732.W61334@ubzr.zsa.bet> <418E7550.7050006@echeque.com> Message-ID: <20041107154950.M67091@ubzr.zsa.bet> On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, James A. Donald wrote: > J.A. Terranson wrote: > > The fact is that those who did not vote effectively voted for Shrub. > > You are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem. > > Inaction is not good enough. > > Voting is not a solution. > > Voting only encourages them. If you vote for a candidate, and he > wins, he will then proceed to commit various crimes, and you, by > voting, have given him a "mandate" for those crimes. This is the position I maintained, word for word, since Carter. However, where as you may have "mandated" the crimes you voted for, you have also "mandated" the crimes you failed to prevent, since you KNEW those crimes would be committed. > Further, suppose you think, as I think, that candidate A is a lesser > evil than candidate B, but the difference is not much. If you vote for > the lesser evil, you will start to rationalize and excuse all the > crimes he commits, identifying with him, and his actions. Bullshit. That may be *you*, but that does not cover all of us. > Nor is Kerry a solution. Agreed. > I cannot understand why you Bush haters are so excited about this > election when on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Kerry promised to > continue all Bush's policies only more effectually. This was the reason the vote was (a) so close amongst voters, and (b) likely decided for Shrub. > You vote for Kerry because you think he is a liar? No. I voted for Kerry because unlike George, he has at least two brain cells - so there's a *chance* (remote, I grant you), that he can be made to see reason. Bush however, (a) has no brain whatsoever, (b) *enjoys* fucking things up and praying that his good buddy Jesus will fix his fuckups, and (c) seeing people needlessly suffer. This is why people are so upset that he was finally elected: nobody wants a sadist in a position where he can deliberately and with impunity hurt whoever he turns his sick little gaze to. > --digsig > James A. Donald -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin at mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time From jya at pipeline.com Sun Nov 7 15:59:58 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 15:59:58 -0800 Subject: Tom Wolfe: 'Talk to someone in Cincinnati? Are you crazy?' In-Reply-To: Message-ID: What is characteristic of all these Bush-winning stories is that the writers uniformly seem surprised it happened. More surpised than the Democrats. Their post-election commentary conveys that it is hard to believe by most Americans that Bush seems to have won, if you read the winners and losers accounts carefully. Wolfe's piece shows the common feature of dumbfoundness, as if not quite clear how it happened, despite all the cliches being bruited, especially the one about the Bush campaign reaching all those millions who liked him and what he is doing. There a nervousness in the winners' stories, an unsureness that there was a legitimate win, that something might be discovered to invalidate it, so its best to push the good news before it evaporates or is transformed into bad news so closely associated with the Bush administration. The Bush-win proponents sound like they are whistling in the dark. And their whistling keeps getting louder and more persistent and more hysterical, if you bother to read the anxious urgings Herr Dr. Heidegger is posting here. Your Nazi-Commie-Faith-Based Code-Whistler From rah at shipwright.com Sun Nov 7 13:07:43 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 16:07:43 -0500 Subject: Faith in democracy, not government Message-ID: The San Francisco Chronicle Election Fallout Faith in democracy, not government - Victor Davis Hanson Sunday, November 7, 2004 Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were the only two Democrats to be elected president since 1976. Both were Southerners. Apparently, the only assurance that the electorate has had that a Democrat was serious about national security or social sobriety was his drawl. More disturbing still for liberal Democrats is that George W. Bush is the first Republican Southerner ever elected to the presidency, another indicator that a majority of the citizenry no longer finds conservatism and Texas such a scary mix. The fate of third-party candidates was also instructive in the election. Left-wing alternatives like Ralph Nader go nowhere. Conservative populists, on the other hand, can capture 10 percent or more of the electorate, as Ross Perot did in 1992 and almost again in 1996. Indeed, Perot's initial run probably accounts for Clinton's first election, and helped his second as well. In short, Kerry's 3.5 million shortfall in the popular vote underestimates the degree to which the country has drifted to the right. Over a decade ago, it took a third-party candidate, political consultant Dick Morris' savvy triangulation and Bill Clinton's masterful political skills to stave off the complete loss of Democratic legislative, executive and judicial power of the sort that we witnessed last week. Something else is going on in the country that has been little remarked upon. It is not just that an endorsement of a Michael Moore does not translate into votes or that Rathergate loses viewers for CBS. It has become perhaps far worse: A Hollywood soiree with a foul-mouthed Whoopee Goldberg or a Tim Robbins rant can turn toxic for liberal candidates. We are nearly reaching the point where approval from the New York Times or a CBS puff-piece hurts a candidate or cause, as do the billions in contributions from a George Soros. Television commentators Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers, Andy Rooney or Ted Koppel have morphed from their once sober and judicious personas into highly partisan figures that now carry political weight among most Americans only to the degree that they harm any cause or candidate with whom they are associated. Readers do not just disagree with spirited columns by a Molly Ivins, Paul Krugman or Maureen Dowd, but rather are turned off when they revert to hysterics and condescension. To the degree that the messages, proposals or endorsements of a delinquent like Ben Affleck, an incoherent Bruce Springsteen, or a reprobate like Eminem were comprehensible, John Kerry should have run from them all. This election also involved perceived hypocrisy. No one in Bakersfield or Fresno thinks that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld espouses views at odds with the privileged lives that they live; they, of course, unabashedly celebrate and benefit from free enterprise and corporate capitalism. In contrast, Teresa Heinz Kerry and John Kerry, George Soros or John Edwards even more so enjoy the fruits of the very system they at times seem to question. Thus, concern for two Americas is not discernable in John Edwards' multimillion-dollar legal fees, the Kerry jet, or Soros Inc.'s global financial speculation. It is easy for a Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore to trash Halliburton, but Red America wonders about the source of university contracts that subsidize privileged professors' sermons or why corporate recording, cinema and advertising conglomerates that enrich celebrities are exempt from Hollywood's Pavlovian censure of big business. That the man who nearly destroyed the small depositors of Great Britain also fueled MoveOn.org seemed to say it all. Where does this leave us? After landmark legislation of the last 40 years to ensure equality of opportunity, the public has reached its limit in using government to press on to enforce an equality of result. In terms of national security, the Republicans, more so than the Democrats after the Cold War -- in Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq -- oddly are now the party of democratic change, while liberals are more likely to shrug about the disturbing status quo abroad. Conservatives have also made the argument that poverty is evolving into a different phenomenon from what it was decades ago when outhouses, cold showers and no breakfasts were commonplace and we were all not awash in cheap Chinese-imported sneakers, cell phones and televisions. Like it or not, the public believes that choices resulting in breaking of the law, drug use, illegitimate births, illiteracy and victimhood can induce poverty as much as exploitation, racism or sexism can. After trillions of dollars of entitlement programs, most voters are unsure that the answers lie with bureaucrats and social programs, especially when the elite architects of such polices rarely experience firsthand the often unintended, but catastrophic results of their own well-meant engineering. So we all know the cure for the Democratic Party: More moderate, populist candidates who don't talk down to voters or live one life and profess another; more explicit faith in American democracy and values; and a little more humility in accepting the tragic limitations of human nature. Yet for many,that medicine of reappraisal will be far worse than the disease of chronic defeat. Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From measl at mfn.org Sun Nov 7 14:09:03 2004 From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 16:09:03 -0600 (CST) Subject: Blackbox: Elections fraud in 2004 Message-ID: <20041107160555.Q67091@ubzr.zsa.bet> http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ BREAKING -- SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: Freedom of Information requests at http://www.blackboxvoting.org have unearthed two Ciber certification reports indicating that security and tamperability was NOT TESTED and that several state elections directors, a secretary of state, and computer consultant Dr. Britain Williams signed off on the report anyway, certifying it. Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history. ----------------------------------------------- SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: We.re awaiting independent analysis on some pretty crooked-looking elections. In the mean time, here.s something to chew on. Your local elections officials trusted a group called NASED -- the National Association of State Election Directors -- to certify that your voting system is safe. This trust was breached. NASED certified the systems based on the recommendation of an .Independent Testing Authority. (ITA). What no one told local officials was that the ITA did not test for security (and NASED didn.t seem to mind). The ITA reports are considered so secret that even the California Secretary of State.s office had trouble getting its hands on one. The ITA refused to answer any questions about what it does. Imagine our surprise when, due to Freedom of Information requests, a couple of them showed up in our mailbox. The most important test on the ITA report is called the .penetration analysis.. This test is supposed to tell us whether anyone can break into the system to tamper with the votes. .Not applicable,. wrote Shawn Southworth, of Ciber Labs, the ITA that tested the Diebold GEMS central tabulator software. .Did not test.. Shawn Southworth .tested. whether every candidate on the ballot has a name. But we were shocked to find out that, when asked the most important question -- about vulnerable entry points -- Southworth.s report says .not reviewed.. Ciber .tested.whether the manual gives a description of the voting system. But when asked to identify methods of attack (which we think the American voter would consider pretty important), the top-secret report says .not applicable.. Ciber .tested. whether ballots comply with local regulations, but when Bev Harris asked Shawn Southworth what he thinks about Diebold tabulators accepting large numbers of .minus. votes, he said he didn.t mention that in his report because .the vendors don.t like him to put anything negative. in his report. After all, he said, he is paid by the vendors. Shawn Southworth didn.t do the penetration analysis, but check out what he wrote: .Ciber recommends to the NASED committee that GEMS software version 1.18.15 be certified and assigned NASED certification number N03060011815.. Was this just a one-time oversight? Nope. It appears to be more like a habit. Here is the same Ciber certification section for VoteHere; as you can see, the critical security test, the .penetration analysis. was again marked .not applicable. and was not done. Maybe another ITA did the penetration analysis? Apparently not. We discovered an even more bizarre Wyle Laboratories report. In it, the lab admits the Sequoia voting system has problems, but says that since they were not corrected earlier, Sequoia could continue with the same flaws. At one point the Wyle report omits its testing altogether, hoping the vendor will do the test. Computer Guys: Be your own ITA certifier. Here is a copy of the full Ciber report (part 1, 2, 3, 4) on GEMS 1.18.15. Here is a zip file download for the GEMS 1.18.15 program. Here is a real live Diebold vote database. Compare your findings against the official testing lab and see if you agree with what Ciber says. E-mail us your findings. TIPS: The password for the vote database is .password. and you should place it in the .LocalDB. directory in the GEMS folder, which you.ll find in .program files.. Who the heck is NASED? They are the people who certified this stuff. You.ve gotta ask yourself: Are they nuts? Some of them are computer experts. Well, it seems that several of these people suddenly want to retire, and the whole NASED voting systems board is becoming somewhat defunct, but these are the people responsible for today's shoddy voting systems. If the security of the U.S. electoral system depends on you to certify a voting system, and you get a report that plainly states that security was .not tested. and .not applicable. -- what would you do? Perhaps we should ask them. Go ahead. Let's hold them accountable for the election we just had. (Please, e-mail us their answers) They don't make it very easy to get their e-mail and fax information; when you find it, let us know and we'll post it here. NASED VOTING SYSTEMS/ITA ACCREDITATION BOARD Thomas R. Wilkey, Executive Director, New York State Board of Elections David Elliott, (former) Asst. Director of Elections, Washington State James Hendrix, Executive Director, State Election Commission, South Carolina Denise Lamb, Director, State Bureau of Elections, New Mexico Sandy Steinbach, Director of Elections, Iowa Donetta Davidson, Secretary of State, Colorado Connie Schmidt, Commissioner, Johnson County Election Commission, Kansas (the late) Robert Naegele, President Granite Creek Technology, Pacific Grove, California Brit Williams, Professor, CSIS Dept, Kennesaw State College, Georgia Paul Craft, Computer Audit Analyst, Florida State Division of Elections Florida Steve Freeman, Software Consultant, League City, Texas Jay W. Nispel, Senior Principal Engineer, Computer Sciences Corporation Annapolis Junction, Maryland Yvonne Smith (Member Emeritus), Former Assistant to the Executive Director Illinois State Board of Elections, Illinois Penelope Bonsall, Director, Office of Election Administration, Federal Election Commission, Washington, D.C. Committee Secretariat: The Election Center, R. Doug Lewis, Executive Director Houston, Texas, Tele: 281-293-0101 # # # # # THURSDAY Nov. 4 2004: If you are concerned about what happened Tuesday, Nov. 2, you have found a home with our organization. Help America Audit. Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history. We need: Lawyers to enforce public records laws. Some counties have already notified us that they plan to stonewall by delaying delivery of the records. We need citizen volunteers for a number of specific actions. We need computer security professionals willing to GO PUBLIC with formal opinions on the evidence we provide, whether or not it involves DMCA complications. We need funds to pay for copies of the evidence. TUESDAY Nov 2 2004: BREAKING NEWS: New information indicates that hackers may have targeted the central computers that are counting our votes. Freedom of Information requests are not free. We need to raise $50,000 as quickly as possible to pay for records and the fees some states charge for them. We launched one major FOIA action last night, and have two more on the way, pell-mell. Now is the time. If you can't donate funds, please donate time. E-mail to join the Cleanup Crew. Important: Watch this 30-minute film clip Voting without auditing. (Are we insane?) SEATTLE, WASHINGTON Nov 3 2004 -- Did the voting machines trump exit polls? There.s a way to find out. Black Box Voting (.ORG) is conducting the largest Freedom of Information action in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit. America: We have permission to say No to unaudited voting. It is our right. Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting systems -- optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal records request for internal audit logs, polling place results slips, modem transmission logs, and computer trouble slips. An earlier FOIA is more sensitive, and has not been disclosed here. We will notify you as soon as we can go public with it. Such a request filed in King County, Washington on Sept. 15, following the primary election six weeks ago, uncovered an internal audit log containing a three-hour deletion on election night; .trouble slips. revealing suspicious modem activity; and profound problems with security, including accidental disclosure of critically sensitive remote access information to poll workers, office personnel, and even, in a shocking blunder, to Black Box Voting activists. Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer protection group for elections. You may view the first volley of public records requests here: Freedom of Information requests here Responses from public officials will be posted in the forum, is organized by state and county, so that any news organization or citizens group has access to the information. Black Box Voting will assist in analysis, by providing expertise in evaluating the records. Watch for the records online; Black Box Voting will be posting the results as they come in. And by the way, these are not free. The more donations we get, the more FOIAs we are empowered to do. Time's a'wasting. We look forward to seeing you participate in this process. Join us in evaluating the previously undisclosed inside information about how our voting system works. Play a part in reclaiming transparency. It.s the only way. # # # # # Public Records Request - November 2, 2004 From: Black Box Voting To: Elections division Pursuant to public records law and the spirit of fair, trustworthy, transparent elections, we request the following documents. We are requesting these as a nonprofit, noncommercial group acting in the capacity of a news and consumer interest organization, and ask that if possible, the fees be waived for this request. If this is not possible, please let us know which records will be provided and the cost. Please provide records in electronic form, by e-mail, if possible - crew at blackboxvoting.org. We realize you are very, very busy with the elections canvass. To the extent possible, we do ask that you expedite this request, since we are conducting consumer audits and time is of the essence. We request the following records. Item 1. All notes, emails, memos, and other communications pertaining to any and all problems experienced with the voting system, ballots, voter registration, or any component of your elections process, beginning October 12, through November 3, 2004. Item 2. Copies of the results slips from all polling places for the Nov. 2, 2004 election. If you have more than one copy, we would like the copy that is signed by your poll workers and/or election judges. Item 3: The internal audit log for each of your Unity, GEMS, WinEds, Hart Intercivic or other central tabulating machine. Because different manufacturers call this program by different names, for purposes of clarification we mean the programs that tally the composite of votes from all locations. Item 4: If you are in the special category of having Diebold equipment, or the VTS or GEMS tabulator, we request the following additional audit logs: a. The transmission logs for all votes, whether sent by modem or uploaded directly. You will find these logs in the GEMS menu under .Accuvote OS Server. and/or .Accuvote TS Server. b. The .audit log. referred to in Item 3 for Diebold is found in the GEMS menu and is called .Audit Log. c. All .Poster logs.. These can be found in the GEMS menu under .poster. and also in the GEMS directory under Program Files, GEMS, Data, as a text file. Simply print this out and provide it. d. Also in the Data file directory under Program Files, GEMS, Data, please provide any and all logs titled .CCLog,. .PosterLog., and Pserver Log, and any logs found within the .Download,. .Log,. .Poster. or .Results. directories. e. We are also requesting the Election Night Statement of Votes Cast, as of the time you stopped uploading polling place memory cards for Nov. 2, 2004 election. Item 5: We are requesting every iteration of every interim results report, from the time the polls close until 5 p.m. November 3. Item 6: If you are in the special category of counties who have modems attached, whether or not they were used and whether or not they were turned on, we are requesting the following: a. internal logs showing transmission times from each voting machine used in a polling place b. The Windows Event Viewer log. You will find this in administrative tools, Event Viewer, and within that, print a copy of each log beginning October 12, 2004 through Nov. 3, 2004. Item 7: All e-mails, letters, notes, and other correspondence between any employee of your elections division and any other person, pertaining to your voting system, any anomalies or problems with any component of the voting system, any written communications with vendors for any component of your voting system, and any records pertaining to upgrades, improvements, performance enhancement or any other changes to your voting system, between Oct. 12, 2004 and Nov. 3, 2004. Item 8: So that we may efficiently clarify any questions pertaining to your specific county, please provide letterhead for the most recent non-confidential correspondence between your office and your county counsel, or, in lieu of this, just e-mail us the contact information for your county counsel. Because time is of the essence, if you cannot provide all items, please provide them in increments as soon as you have them, and please notify us by telephone (206-335-7747) or email (Bevharrismail at aol.com) as soon as you have any portion of the above public records request available for review. Thank you very much, and here.s hoping for a smooth and simple canvass which works out perfectly for you. We very, very much appreciate your help with this, and we do realize how stressful this election has been. If you need a local address, please let me know, and we will provide a local member for this public records request. In the interest of keeping your life simple, we thought it best to coordinate all records through one entity so that you don.t get multiple local requests. # # # # # We now have evidence that certainly looks like altering a computerized voting system during a real election, and it happened just six weeks ago. MONDAY Nov 1 2004: New information indicates that hackers may be targeting the central computers counting our votes tomorrow. All county elections officials who use modems to transfer votes from polling places to the central vote-counting server should disconnect the modems now. There is no down side to removing the modems. Simply drive the vote cartridges from each polling place in to the central vote-counting location by car, instead of transmitting by modem. .Turning off. the modems may not be sufficient. Disconnect the central vote counting server from all modems, INCLUDING PHONE LINES, not just Internet. In a very large county, this will add at most one hour to the vote-counting time, while offering significant protection from outside intrusion. It appears that such an attack may already have taken place, in a primary election 6 weeks ago in King County, Washington -- a large jurisdiction with over one million registered voters. Documents, including internal audit logs for the central vote-counting computer, along with modem .trouble slips. consistent with hacker activity, show that the system may have been hacked on Sept. 14, 2004. Three hours is now missing from the vote-counting computer's "audit log," an automatically generated record, similar to the black box in an airplane, which registers certain kinds of events. COMPUTER FOLKS: Here are the details about remote access vulnerability through the modem connecting polling place voting machines with the central vote-counting server in each county elections office. This applies specifically to all Diebold systems (1,000 counties and townships), and may also apply to other vendors. The prudent course of action is to disconnect all modems, since the downside is small and the danger is significant. The central servers are installed on unpatched, open Windows computers and use RAS (Remote Access Server) to connect to the voting machines through telephone lines. Since RAS is not adequately protected, anyone in the world, even terrorists, who can figure out the server's phone number can change vote totals without being detected by observers. The passwords in many locations are easily guessed, and the access phone numbers can be learned through social engineering or war dialing. ELECTION OFFICIALS: The only way to protect tomorrow's election from this type of attack is to disconnect the servers from the modems now. Under some configurations, attacks by remote access are possible even if the modem appears to be turned off. The modem lines should be physically disconnected. We obtained these documents through a public records request. The video was taken at a press conference held by the King County elections chief Friday Oct 29. The audit log is a computer-generated automatic record similar to the "black box" in an airplane, that automatically records access to the Diebold GEMS central tabulator (unless, of course, you go into it in the clandestine way we demonstrated on September 22 in Washington DC at the National Press club.) The central tabulator audit log is an FEC-required security feature. The kinds of things it detects are the kinds of things you might see if someone was tampering with the votes: Opening the vote file, previewing and/or printing interim results, altering candidate definitions (a method that can be used to flip votes). Three hours is missing altogether from the Sept. 14 Washington State primary held six weeks ago. Here is a copy of the GEMS audit log. Note that all entries from 9:52 p.m. until 1:31 a.m. are missing. One report that GEMS automatically puts in the audit log is the "summary report." This is the interim results report. We obtained the actual Sept. 14 summary reports, printed directly from the King County tabulator GEMS program, because we went there and watched on election night and collected these reports. These reports were also collected by party observers, candidates, and were on the Web site for King County. Here are summary reports which are now missing from the audit log. Note the time and date stamps on the reports. Note also that they are signed by Dean Logan, King County elections chief. We have the original reports signed in ink on election night. What does all this mean? We know that summary reports show up in the audit log. There are other audit logs, like the one that tracks modem transmissions, but this audit log tracks summary reports. Dean Logan held a press conference Friday morning, Oct. 29. Kathleen Wynne, a citizen investigator for Black Box Voting, attended the press conference and asked Dean Logan why three hours are missing from the audit log. Here is a video clip Logan said the empty three hours is because no reports were printed. OK. But we have summary reports from 10:34 p.m., 11:38 p.m., 12:11 a.m., 12:46 a.m., and 1:33 p.m. These reports were during the time he said no reports were run. Either the software malfunctioned, or audit log items were deleted. Because remote access through the modems is possible, the system may have been hacked, audit log deleted, without Logan realizing it. Perhaps there are two of this particular kind of audit log? Perhaps this is an incomplete one? Bev Harris called King County elections office records employee Mary Stoa, asking if perhaps there are any other audit logs at all. Mary Stoa called back, reporting that according to Bill Huennikens of King County elections, the audit log supplied to us in our public records request is the only one and the comprehensive and complete one. Perhaps it is a computer glitch? The audit log is 168 pages long and spans 120 days, and the 3 hours just happen to be missing during the most critical three hours on election night. Diebold says altering the audit log cannot be done. Of course, we know a chimpanzee can't get into an elections office and play with the computer, but to demonstrate how easy it is to delete audit log entries, we taught a chimpanzee to delete audit records using an illicit "back door" to get into the program, Diebold told reporters it was a "magic show." Yet, Diebold's own internal memos show they have known the audit log could be altered since 2001! Here is a Diebold memo from October 2001, titled "Altering the audit log," written by Diebold principal engineer Ken Clark: "King County is famous for it" [altering the audit log] Here is Dean Logan, telling a Channel 5 King-TV News reporter that there were no unexpected problems with the Diebold programs. This was at the "MBOS" central ballot counting facility in King County in the wee hours of Sept. 15, on Election Night. Dean Logan on Election Night, Sept 14 2004 Note that he says there were no problems with modem transmission. When we obtained the trouble slips, in a public records request -- documentation that indeed the modems were not working fine, we were accidentally given the access phone number for King County. Were we so inclined, if we had simply kept this under our hat, we could take control of your central server on election night from our living room. Here are the trouble slips showing problems with modems. Note that King County generously provided us with the "secret" information needed to hack in by remote access. We did redact the specific information that gives this information to you. Here are more trouble tickets. One that is a concern: "OK to format memory card?" (This would wipe out the votes in the electronic ballot box.) Election officials: Disconnect those modems NOW. If you don't: You gotta be replaced. Reporters: Some election officials will lie to you. Show your kids what bravery looks like. Be courageous. Report the truth. Citizens: Please help us by joining the Cleanup Crew. For now, e-mail crew at blackboxvoting.org to join, since our signup form has been taken out. Candidates: Make a statement. Do not concede on Election Night. Wait until audits and records can be examined. # # # # # HOW TO MONITOR THE CENTRAL TABULATOR: Black Box Voting developed these guidelines to help you create an audit log, which can then be compared with the FEC-required computer-generated audit log inside the computer. Yes, this is a lot of stuff, and it might feel overwhelming, but whatever you can do -- it is very much appreciated. THINGS TO BRING WITH YOU - A notebook and pen. Preferably a notebook with a sewn binding, if you can find one. Do not take notes on a computer. - A cell phone - Binoculars If you can, also bring these: - A camera - A small tape recorder - A video camera, with a zoom lens if possible Note that some counties will require you to turn off your video camera during the entering of passwords, a valid request. You should, however, be able to videotape the rest. Don.t pull your camera out right away. Avoid confrontation by leaving your video camera in the bag -- better yet, a purse. Pull it out only when there is an event of significance. HUMAN FACTORS You can.t be effective if you make assumptions or let others intimidate you. - Don.t let others make you feel dumb. - Make no assumptions about security. It might be worse than you expect. - Don.t count on the accuracy of anything other people tell you, even if they work for the county or the vendor. - About party observers, techies, or lawyers: Remember that they have not examined the actual software or setup, and they are operating on assumptions, hearsay, or in some cases, may be trying to misdirect your attention. - Vendor contracts prohibit county officials from examining their own software. Elections officials may just be repeating what someone else (the vendor) has told them. YOUR ROLE AS AN OBSERVER: CREATE YOUR OWN AUDIT LOG so it can be compared to the real audit log. Write down the following. For every event, write the date, time, including minutes. 1. NAMES & AFFILIATIONS: Get the names of everyone there. Find out affiliation. 2. WHERE ARE THE COMPUTERS: Establish the number and location of all vote tabulation computers. They call them different things: tabulators, servers. What you want is the computer that adds up all the votes from everywhere in the county. - Some counties have only one. If there are more than one, find out where each one is. If there is more than one tabulator, ask if they are networked together and find out if any of them are in places you can.t observe. 3. SYNCHRONIZE YOUR WATCH with the central vote-tally computer. Ask officials to tell you the time on the computer. If more than one, ask for the time of each and the ID number of each. log the date and time, to the minute, in this format: Nov 02 2004 11:25 p.m. Nov. 03 2004 01:15 a.m. CREATE A LOG FOR THE FOLLOWING: People: Ask names and affiliations for, and log the START and STOP time for: a. Who accesses the terminal (the keyboard and screen) b. Who sits at the terminal c. Who accesses the server (the computer the screen is hooked up to) d. Who enters and leaves the room COMPUTER ACTIVITIES: Log the START and STOP time for the following events and write down the name of the person involved: a. Putting disks, CDs, or any other item in the computer b. Taking disks, CDs, or any other item out of the computer c. Uploading disks, CDs, or any other item d. Viewing a preview of a report e. Putting a report on the Web, even if this is done from another computer f. Printing a report g. NOTE WHAT.S ON THE SCREEN: Use binoculars to view the screen. - Note upload icons. - Use binoculars to read and record error messages. Note the time. - Note indicators of processes, when a status bar shows how much is left to do h. PROGRAM CRASHES: - Watch to see if the program suddenly disappears from the screen (a program crash) or any system error message appears. If so, note the time and other details, and see below for how to record system crashes. - Get the date and time and note who was at the computer - Note whether any results were being transmitted or uploaded at the time the crash occurred. - Did the crash take down the whole computer or did it just close the tabulator program unexpectedly. - Log all activities and conversations that occur just after the crash. If have a tape recorder, leave it in your purse, now is the time to turn it on. But keep making notes regardless of whether you have tape, and trust your gut. What you think might be important is probably important. WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING YOU CAN FIND OUT ABOUT MODEMS. i. Note when, where, and who feeds ballot data into the computer in the central office. Describe what they are feeding the cards into, where the items are located, who does it, and when. j. DISK MANAGEMENT: - Note what kind of data storage device is used to move data around. You are looking for floppy disks, CDs, USB keys (about the size of a pack of gum). - Note where they get the disk from originally (whether it was from the machine, meaning it could have a program or data on it already, or out of a package of new disks). - Track the chain of custody: Where it is taken, and have someone watch it when taken to any other machine, note what programs you can see on the other machine - Note whether (and what time) it comes back and if it is put into the machine again. k. Moving the results: They have to move the results somehow. Ask questions about their procedures. - Is someone coming and going every hour or so with paper results? - Are they moving results to the Internet with a floppy or CD or USB key (looks like a little piece of plastic, about the size of a piece of gum) - If no one is leaving the machine to post the results, chances are they are doing this at the computer, meaning they are probably hooked up to a network or the Internet. Ask questions about the details and record what they say, and the name of the person who says it. l. If you see somebody open a web page or they do something that lets you know there has been Internet access, write it down. m. BEHAVIORAL CUES: - Note whether people look worried or stressed. Log the time it begins and the time it ends and who they are. - A now a word about .wranglers.. Some elections offices appoint a person -- sometimes a party observer they are chummy with -- to act as .wranglers.. They identify any person who might ask troublesome questions, and if an event occurs that could cause embarrassment, the appointed wrangler then goes over to distract the observers. Really. This is an elections procedure in some jurisdictions. They actually call it a wrangler. - If someone comes over and engages you in conversation, look around, and see if officials have suddenly congregated into an office or people are huddling over a computer. See if you can find out what you are not supposed to see. - Log behavior that is distracting, noting the time and person. - Log time and people involved in other distraction events, for example: The lights suddenly go out; a fire alarm goes off; someone spills something, loud noises, someone knocks something over. RECORDS TO REQUEST: Each state has a public records act, but in most cases, you can get records you ask for if you are nice. Here are important records you.ll want: 1. Get a copy of each INTERIM RESULTS REPORT. Stand guard over what you have. If someone comes in to remove or .replace one with a better copy. hang onto the first and take the replacement, marking it. Make sure all interim reports are time-stamped by the computer. If they aren.t, note the exact time you see them appear. 2. Request the COMPUTER AUDIT LOG for Oct. 29-Nov 2 (actually, it is important to get the printout BEFORE YOU LEAVE that night. It will only be a few pages, and can be printed from the vote-tally program.s menu. 3. Ask for a copy of all the POLLING PLACE RESULTS SLIPS. These are sent in with the results cartridges. Try to get copies before you leave that night. If they won.t give copies to you then, put in a public records request and ask how soon you can pick them up. 4. Ask for a copy of THE UPLOAD LOGS. These are on the computer and can be printed out on election night. They list each polling place and the time results were uploaded. 5. There are ADDITIONAL LOGS in the Diebold GEMS programs you can request: >From the GEMS folder .data., ask for the poster logs. There may be folders in the GEMS .data. directory titled .download., .log., .poster. and .results.. Ask for copies of these logs. 6. Here.s a report that is very long but incredibly important and valuable. Ask if you can have the ELECTION NIGHT DETAIL REPORT -- the precinct by precinct results as of the time all memory cards are uploaded from all precincts. Depending on the system, they.ll call it different things -- in Diebold, it is called the Statement of Votes Cast (SOVC) report. 7. Let us know which REPORTS THEY REFUSE to give you on Election Night. We can then put in Freedom of Information (public records) requests formally. Once we have your observation log, and the records you obtain on Election Night, we can start matching up events and data to audit for anomalies. # # # # # Post information in the county and state at BlackBoxVoting.ORG. If the site is hacked out, come back as soon as it is up and post the information. Thank you, and let.s have an orderly election. # # # # # Now, there is a film crew who has been brave enough to capture what's really going on: THIS IS THE ONE: Here's the film that's breaking new ground on voting machine investigations. Includes never before seen footage and information: download 30 minute preview of the upcoming feature film. NOTE: Please give your attention to the real film by the real investigators: Russell Michaels, Simon Ardizzone, and Robert Carrillo Cohen -- they are the real deal. (Someone who ran off with a portion of the proprietary footage has been pitching a similarly named, inferior production which is missing most of the good stuff.) By the way, we've worked with most of the documentary producers out there, and Russell Michaels, Simon Ardizzone and Robert Carrillo Cohen are in a class by themselves -- In my opinion, they are the only filmmakers who have been doing real, in-depth, long-term in-the-field investigations on this issue -- Bev Harris. Remember: - Don't concede: Candidates, make a statement about voting without auditing. Hold off on your concession until the canvass is done - Gotta be replaced: If your county melts down into litigation, hold officials accountable if they chose to ignore warnings and failed to mitigate risks with preventive actions (like disconnecting telephone modems). Note that most voting machine problems will be found between Nov. 3-12, during the canvass, and a few weeks later, when public records requests are obtained. From measl at mfn.org Sun Nov 7 16:32:46 2004 From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 18:32:46 -0600 (CST) Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20041107183134.S67091@ubzr.zsa.bet> On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: > Well, every people deserve the government they get, and these hillbillies > are no exception. Bush will dominate them, take away their rights, make them > poor and scared, and they'll deserve every bit of it. (Where's a Tim May > rant when you need one?) This election *proves* that at least half the electorate, about 60 million people, are just Useless Eaters, who should be eagerly awaiting their Trip Up The Chimneys. > -TD ;-) -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin at mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time From jya at pipeline.com Sun Nov 7 18:59:00 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 18:59:00 -0800 Subject: Faith in democracy, not government In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Excellent humor, this Hooverismo, got all the usual targets in his insulting-like-Lenny-Bruce jibe. Probably high on narcotics like Lenny. Imagined victory turns on losers. A bit excessive with hyperbole, but that's code by comics. Remember the CIA Comic from the late 90s? Told hilarious inside the agency jokes that made everyone outside the cocoon blanche and puke, sorry, Bob blew coke through his nose. That comic has not been heard since 9/11, thanks to DoD takeover of the howler stage. Your Nazi-Commie-Crank-Yanker From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Sun Nov 7 16:07:12 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 19:07:12 -0500 Subject: The Values-Vote Myth Message-ID: Holy Crap! Am I on crack? I think I agree with everything here! However... (James Donald wrote...) >I cannot understand why you Bush haters are so excited about this >election when on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Kerry promised to >continue all Bush's policies only more effectually. That's basically why Kerry lost. He didn't seem to challenge anything Bush did, only the way he carried things out. That means the republicans successfully caused any debate to happen on their terms. Kerry's willingness to kowtow to the idea of a benevolent invasion of Iraq just made him seem like a scumbag to me, no matter what he actually believed. However, there are some things that Bush did that, symbolically at least, he should have been drummed out for. The fact that he won and with large voter turnout is more or less a vindication of his crimes. It means that Bush won't be afraid of doing even more, and then the countless mountains of hillbillies out there will watch his back and take the inevitable bullet or two for him. Well, every people deserve the government they get, and these hillbillies are no exception. Bush will dominate them, take away their rights, make them poor and scared, and they'll deserve every bit of it. (Where's a Tim May rant when you need one?) -TD _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/ From em at em.no-ip.com Sun Nov 7 03:46:20 2004 From: em at em.no-ip.com (Enzo Michelangeli) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 19:46:20 +0800 Subject: Your source code, for sale References: <20041105181248.7F09757E2A@finney.org> <1576.82.70.142.134.1099797702.squirrel@82.70.142.134> Message-ID: <013a01c4c4bf$69dff8a0$0200a8c0@em.noip.com> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ian Grigg" To: "Hal Finney" Cc: ; ; Sent: Sunday, November 07, 2004 11:21 AM [Hal:] > > Interesting. In the e-gold case, both parties have the same bank, > > e-gold ltd. The corresponding protocol would be for the buyer to > > instruct e-gold to set aside some money which would go to the > > seller once the seller supplied a certain receipt. That receipt > > would be an email return receipt showing that the seller had sent > > the buyer the content with hash so-and-so, using a cryptographic > > email return-receipt protocol. > > This is to mix up banking and payment systems. Enzo's > description shows banks doing banking - lending money > on paper that eventually pays a rate of return. In > contrast, in the DGC or digital gold currency world, > the issuers of gold like e-gold are payment systems and > not banks. The distinction is that a payment system > does not issue credit. Actually, seeing issuance and acceptance of L/C's only as a money-lending activity is not 100% accurate. "Letter of credit" is a misnomer: an L/C _may_ be used by the seller to obtain credit, but if the documents are "sent for collection" rather than "negotiated", the payment to the seller is delayed until the opening bank will have debited the buyer's account and remitted the due amount to the negotiating bank. To be precise: when the documents are submitted to the negotiating bank by the seller, the latter also draws under the terms of the L/C a "bill of exchange" to be accepted by the buyer; that instrument, just like any draft, may be either sent for collection or negotiated immediately, subject, of course, to final settlement. Also, depending on the agreements between the seller and his bank, the received L/C may be considered as collateral to get further allocation of credit, e.g. to open a "back-to-back L/C" to a seller of raw materials. However, if the documents and the draft are sent for collection, and no other extension of credit are obtained by the buyer, the only advantage of an L/C for the seller is the certainty of being paid by _his_ (negotiating) bank, which he trusts not to collude with the buyer to claim fictitious discrepancies between the actual documents submitted and what the L/C was requesting. (And even in case such discrepancies will turn out to be real, the opening bank will not surrender the Bill of Lading, and therefore the cargo, to the buyer until the latter will have accepted all the discrepancies: so in the worst case the cargo will remain under the seller's control, to be shipped back and/or sold to some other buyer. If it acted differently, the opening bank would go against the standard practice defined in the UCP ICC 500 (http://internet.ggu.edu/~emilian/PUBL500.htm) and its reputation would be badly damaged). So, the L/C mechanism, independently from allocation of credit, _does_ provide a way out of the dilemma "which one should come first, payment or delivery?"; and this is achieved by leveraging on the reputation of parties separately trusted by the endpoints of the transaction. Generally speaking, it is debatable whether "doing banking" only means "accepting deposits and providing credit" or also "handling payments for a fee": surely banks routinely do both, although they do not usually enjoy a _regulatory franchise_ on payments because failures in that field are not usually argued to be capable of snowballing into systemic failures. (Austrian economists argue that that's also the case with provision of credit, but it's a much more controversial issue). In the US, as we know, Greenspan's FED decided several years ago against heavy regulation of the payments business, and most industrialized countries chose to follow suit. > So, in the e-gold scenario, there would need to be > similar third parties independent of the payment system > to provide the credit moving in the reverse direction to > the goods. In the end it would be much like Enzo's > example, with a third party with the seller, a third > party with the buyer, and one or two third parties who > are dealing the physical goods. There have been some > thoughts in the direction of credit creation in the > gold community, but nothing of any sustainability has > occurred as yet. That would probably end up attracting unwelcome attention by the regulators. Besides, wouldn't that require some sort of fractional banking, resulting in a money supply multiple of the monetary base by an unstable multiplier, and ultimately bringing back the disadvantages of fiat currencies? Enzo From measl at mfn.org Sun Nov 7 19:13:39 2004 From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 21:13:39 -0600 (CST) Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20041107211146.C67091@ubzr.zsa.bet> On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: > Received: from 24.90.217.26 by by24fd.bay24.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; > JAT wrote... > > >This election *proves* that at least half the electorate, about 60 million > >people, are just Useless Eaters, who should be eagerly awaiting their Trip > >Up The Chimneys. > > Ahhhh...I need a cigarette. Was it as good for you as it was for me? :-) > But I suspect it's far more likely that some large batch of USA-ians will > end up having a surprise meeting with Allah as the result of a big ole > stinky dirty bomb. And with Iraq II we'll have an endless supply of suicide > bombers ready to deliver. The only drawback is that there's a solid chance > it'll be set off a few hundred feet from where I work. Manhattan, eh? > Received: from 24.90.217.26 by by24fd.bay24.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Yeah, you'll probably be one of the first. Bummer. > Ah well. Dems da breaks. We had a good run. 200 years is about average actually, at least as far as imperialist empires go. > -TD -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin at mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time From jamesd at echeque.com Sun Nov 7 21:14:43 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 21:14:43 -0800 Subject: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <418F00C3.5060600@echeque.com> -- Peter Gutmann wrote: > Nobles expected to surrender to other nobles and be ransomed. > Commoners didn't respect this, and almost never took prisoners. > Henry's orders didn't make that much difference, at best they were a > "we'll turn a blind eye" notification to his troops. The english army was well disciplined, and in battle did what it what it was told. About half way through the battle of Agincourt, King Henry decided he could not afford so many troops guarding so many prisoners, and told them kill-em-all. Nobility had nothing to do with it. It did not matter who took you prisoner. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG QwzmnNSSaHhQhQItWATHwnWB7cLchcXDK+wV1pDP 4p0FRureqYrveRbFxz5h7VDonlv9au7JlTFdp/2BL From measl at mfn.org Sun Nov 7 19:29:13 2004 From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 21:29:13 -0600 (CST) Subject: Supreme Court Issues In-Reply-To: <20041107043401.GA25622@arion.soze.net> References: <20041107043401.GA25622@arion.soze.net> Message-ID: <20041107212719.P67091@ubzr.zsa.bet> On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, Justin wrote: > http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/politics/07court.html?partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print > > We're going to get some extremist anti-abortion, pro-internment, > anti-1A, anti-4A, anti-5A, anti-14A, right-wing wacko. You mean Shrub is going to elevate Clarence Thomas? Did we bring a new secretary for him to harrass? > Imagine Ashcroft as Chief Justice. Oh. My. God. Don't even *think* of such a thing. Seriously, I don't believe he could make it through confirmation, although he would likely (a) be a recess appointment, and (b) serve till the filibuster ended in 2006 :-( -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin at mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time From measl at mfn.org Sun Nov 7 19:40:22 2004 From: measl at mfn.org (J.A. Terranson) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 21:40:22 -0600 (CST) Subject: The St. Louis Pledge Message-ID: <20041107214009.K67091@ubzr.zsa.bet> On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Jason wrote: > Republican Lists > > http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/contrib.asp?Cmte=RPC&cycle=2004 > http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/contrib.asp?Cmte=RNC&cycle=2004 > http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/contrib.asp?Cmte=NRCC&cycle=2004 > http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/contrib.asp?Cmte=NRSC&cycle=2004 For those of you familiar with the Boulder Pledge against spam (see http://www.panix.com/~tbetz/boulder.shtml), I submit the St. Louis Pledge Against Fascism: "Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered by a contributor to George Bush's campaign. This is my contribution to the survival of freedom in the United States." -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin at mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time From rah at shipwright.com Sun Nov 7 18:42:42 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 21:42:42 -0500 Subject: Worse Than 2000: Tuesday's Electoral Disaster Message-ID: Worse Than 2000: Tuesday's Electoral Disaster By William Rivers Pitt t r u t h o u t | Report Monday 08 November 2004 Everyone remembers Florida's 2000 election debacle, and all of the new terms it introduced to our political lexicon: Hanging chads, dimpled chads, pregnant chads, overvotes, undervotes, Sore Losermans, Jews for Buchanan and so forth. It took several weeks, battalions of lawyers and a questionable decision from the U.S. Supreme Court to show the nation and the world how messy democracy can be. By any standard, what happened in Florida during the 2000 Presidential election was a disaster. What happened during the Presidential election of 2004, in Florida, in Ohio, and in a number of other states as well, was worse. Some of the problems with this past Tuesday's election will sound all too familiar. Despite having four years to look into and deal with the problems that cropped up in Florida in 2000, the 'spoiled vote' chad issue reared its ugly head again. Investigative journalist Greg Palast, the man almost singularly responsible for exposing the more egregious examples of illegitimate deletions of voters from the rolls, described the continued problems in an article published just before the election, and again in an article published just after the election. Four years later, and none of the Florida problems were fixed. In fact, by all appearances, they spread from Florida to Ohio, New Mexico, Michigan and elsewhere. Worse, these problems only scratch the surface of what appears to have happened in Tuesday's election. The fix that was put in place to solve these problems - the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002 after the Florida debacle - appears to have gone a long way towards making things worse by orders of magnitude, for it was the Help America Vote Act which introduced paperless electronic touch-screen voting machines to millions of voters across the country. At first blush, it seems like a good idea. Forget the chads, the punch cards, the archaic booths like pianos standing on end with the handles and the curtains. This is the 21st century, so let's do it with computers. A simple screen presents straightforward choices, and you touch the spot on the screen to vote for your candidate. Your vote is recorded by the machine, and then sent via modem to a central computer which tallies the votes. Simple, right? Not quite. A Diebold voting machine. Is there any evidence that these machines went haywire on Tuesday? Nationally, there were more than 1,100 reports of electronic voting machine malfunctions. A few examples: * In Broward County, Florida, election workers were shocked to discover that their shiny new machines were counting backwards. "Tallies should go up as more votes are counted," according to this report. "That's simple math. But in some races, the numbers had gone down. Officials found the software used in Broward can handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting backward." * In Franklin County, Ohio, electronic voting machines gave Bush 3,893 extra votes in one precinct alone. "Franklin County's unofficial results gave Bush 4,258 votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry's 260 votes in Precinct 1B," according to this report. "Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct. Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, said Bush received 365 votes there. The other 13 voters who cast ballots either voted for other candidates or did not vote for president." * In Craven County, North Carolina, a software error on the electronic voting machines awarded Bush 11,283 extra votes. "The Elections Systems and Software equipment," according to this report, "had downloaded voting information from nine of the county's 26 precincts and as the absentee ballots were added, the precinct totals were added a second time. An override, like those occurring when one attempts to save a computer file that already exists, is supposed to prevent double counting, but did not function correctly." * In Carteret County, North Carolina, "More than 4,500 votes may be lost in one North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did. Local officials said UniLect Corp., the maker of the county's electronic voting system, told them that each storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes. Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost." * In LaPorte County, Indiana, a Democratic stronghold, the electronic voting machines decided that each precinct only had 300 voters. "At about 7 p.m. Tuesday," according to this report, "it was noticed that the first two or three printouts from individual precinct reports all listed an identical number of voters. Each precinct was listed as having 300 registered voters. That means the total number of voters for the county would be 22,200, although there are actually more than 79,000 registered voters." * In Sarpy County, Nebraska, the electronic touch screen machines got generous. "As many as 10,000 extra votes," according to this report, "have been tallied and candidates are still waiting for corrected totals. Johnny Boykin lost his bid to be on the Papillion City Council. The difference between victory and defeat in the race was 127 votes. Boykin says, 'When I went in to work the next day and saw that 3,342 people had shown up to vote in our ward, I thought something's not right.' He's right. There are not even 3,000 people registered to vote in his ward. For some reason, some votes were counted twice." Stories like this have been popping up in many of the states that put these touch-screen voting machines to use. Beyond these reports are the folks who attempted to vote for one candidate and saw the machine give their vote to the other candidate. Sometimes, the flawed machines were taken off-line, and sometimes they were not. As for the reports above, the mistakes described were caught and corrected. How many mistakes made by these machines were not caught, were not corrected, and have now become part of the record? The flaws within these machines are well documented. Professors and researchers from Johns Hopkins performed a detailed analysis of these electronic voting machines in May of 2004. In their results, the Johns Hopkins researchers stated, "This voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We identify several problems including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. We show that voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal software." "Furthermore," they continued, "we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered and executed without access to the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable, showing that not only can an insider, such as a poll worker, modify the votes, but that insiders can also violate voter privacy and match votes with the voters who cast them. We conclude that this voting system is unsuitable for use in a general election." Many of these machines do not provide the voter with a paper ballot that verifies their vote. So if an error - or purposefully inserted malicious code - in the untested machine causes their vote to go for the other guy, they have no way to verify that it happened. The lack of a paper ballot also means the end of recounts as we have known them; now, on these new machines, a recount amounts to pushing a button on the machine and getting a number in return, but without those paper ballots to do a comparison, there is no way to verify the validity of that count. Worst of all is the fact that all the votes collected by these machines are sent via modem to a central tabulating computer which counts the votes on Windows software. This means, essentially, that any gomer with access to the central tabulation machine who knows how to work an Excel spreadsheet can go into this central computer and make wholesale changes to election totals without anyone being the wiser. Bev Harris, who has been working tirelessly since the passage of the Help America Vote Act to inform people of the dangers present in this new process, got a chance to demonstrate how easy it is to steal an election on that central tabulation computer while a guest on the CNBC program 'Topic A With Tina Brown.' Ms. Brown was off that night, and the guest host was none other than Governor Howard Dean. Thanks to Governor Dean and Ms. Harris, anyone watching CNBC that night got to see just how easy it is to steal an election because of these new machines and the flawed processes they use. "In a voting system," Harris said on the show, "you have all the different voting machines at all the different polling places, sometimes, as in a county like mine, there's a thousand polling places in a single county. All those machines feed into the one machine so it can add up all the votes. So, of course, if you were going to do something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it be more convenient to do it to each of the 4000 machines, or just come in here and deal with all of them at once? What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer." Harris then proceeded to open a laptop computer that had on it the software used to tabulate the votes by one of the aforementioned central processors. Journalist Thom Hartman describes what happened next: "So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS tabulation software, go back to the normal Windows PC desktop, click on the 'My Computer' icon, choose 'Local Disk C:,' open the folder titled GEMS, and open the sub-folder 'LocalDB' which, Harris noted, 'stands for local database, that's where they keep the votes.' Harris then had Dean double-click on a file in that folder titled Central Tabulator Votes,' which caused the PC to open the vote count in a database program like Excel. 'Let's just flip those,' Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, 'We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds.'" Any system that makes it this easy to steal or corrupt an election has no business being anywhere near the voters on election day. The counter-argument to this states that people with nefarious intent, people with a partisan stake in the outcome of an election, would have to have access to the central tabulation computers in order to do harm to the process. Keep the partisans away from the process, and everything will work out fine. Surely no partisan political types were near these machines on Tuesday night when the votes were counted, right? One of the main manufacturers of these electronic touch-screen voting machines is Diebold, Inc. More than 35 counties in Ohio alone used the Diebold machines on Tuesday, and millions of voters across the country did the same. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Diebold gave $100,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2000, along with additional contributions between 2001 and 2002 which totaled $95,000. Of the four companies competing for the contracts to manufacture these voting machines, only Diebold contributed large sums to any political party. The CEO of Diebold is a man named Walden O'Dell. O'Dell was very much on board with the Bush campaign, having said publicly in 2003 that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." So much for keeping the partisans at arm's length. Is there any evidence that vote totals were deliberately tampered with by people who had a stake in the outcome? Nothing specific has been documented to date. Jeff Fisher, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District, claims to have evidence that the Florida election was hacked, and says further that he knows who hacked it and how it was done. Such evidence is not yet forthcoming. There are, however, some disturbing and compelling trends that indicate things are not as they should be. This chart displays a breakdown of counties in Florida. It lists the voters in each county by party affiliation, and compares expected vote totals to the reported results. It also separates the results into two sections, one for 'touch-screen' counties and the other for optical scan counties. Over and over in these counties, the results, based upon party registration, did not come close to matching expectations. It can be argued, and has been argued, that such results indicate nothing more or less than a President getting cross-over voters, as well as late-breaking undecided voters, to come over to his side. These are Southern Democrats, and the numbers from previous elections show that many have often voted Republican. Yet the news wires have been inundated for well over a year with stories about how stridently united Democratic voters were behind the idea of removing Bush from office. It is worth wondering why that unity did not permeate these Democratic voting districts. If that unity was there, it is worth asking why the election results in these counties do not reflect this. Most disturbing of all is the reality that these questionable Diebold voting machines are not isolated to Florida. This list documents, as of March 2003, all of the counties in all of the 37 states where Diebold machines were used to count votes. The document is 28 pages long. That is a lot of counties, and a lot of votes, left in the hands of machines that have a questionable track record, that send their vote totals to central computers which make it far too easy to change election results, that were manufactured by a company with a personal, financial, and publicly stated stake in George W. Bush holding on to the White House. This map indicates where different voting devices were used nationally. The areas where electronic voting machines were used is marked in blue. A poster named 'TruthIsAll' on the DemocraticUnderground.com forums laid out the questionable results of Tuesday's election in succinct fashion: "To believe that Bush won the election, you must also believe: That the exit polls were wrong; that Zogby's 5pm election day calls for Kerry winning Ohio and Florida were wrong (he was exactly right in his 2000 final poll); that Harris' last-minute polling for Kerry was wrong (he was exactly right in his 2000 final poll); that incumbent rule #1 - undecideds break for the challenger - was wrong; That the 50% rule - an incumbent doesn't do better than his final polling - was wrong; That the approval rating rule - an incumbent with less than 50% approval will most likely lose the election - was wrong; that it was just a coincidence that the exit polls were correct where there was a paper trail and incorrect (+5% for Bush) where there was no paper trail; that the surge in new young voters had no positive effect for Kerry; that Kerry did worse than Gore against an opponent who lost the support of scores of Republican newspapers who were for Bush in 2000; that voting machines made by Republicans with no paper trail and with no software publication, which have been proven by thousands of computer scientists to be vulnerable in scores of ways, were not tampered with in this election." In short, we have old-style vote spoilage in minority communities. We have electronic voting machines losing votes and adding votes all across the country. We have electronic voting machines whose efficiency and safety have not been tested. We have electronic voting machines that offer no paper trail to ensure a fair outcome. We have central tabulators for these machines running on Windows software, compiling results that can be demonstrably tampered with. We have the makers of these machines publicly professing their preference for George W. Bush. We have voter trends that stray from the expected results. We have these machines counting millions of votes all across the country. Perhaps this can all be dismissed. Perhaps rants like the one posted by 'TruthIsAll' are nothing more than sour grapes from the side that lost. Perhaps all of the glitches, wrecked votes, unprecedented voting trends and partisan voting-machine connections can be explained away. If so, this reporter would very much like to see those explanations. At a bare minimum, the fact that these questions exist at all represents a grievous undermining of the basic confidence in the process required to make this democracy work. Democracy should not ever require leaps of faith, and we have put the fate of our nation into the hands of machines that require such a leap. It is unacceptable across the board, and calls into serious question not only the election we just had, but any future election involving these machines. Representatives John Conyers, Jerrold Nadler and Robert Wexler, all members of the House Judiciary Committee, posted a letter on November 5th to David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States. In the letter, they asked for an investigation into the efficacy of these electronic voting machines. The letter reads as follows: November 5, 2004 The Honorable David M. Walker Comptroller General of the United States U.S. General Accountability Office 441 G Street, NW Washington, DC 20548 Dear Mr. Walker: We write with an urgent request that the Government Accountability Office immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election, how election officials responded to difficulties they encountered and what we can do in the future to improve our election systems and administration. In particular, we are extremely troubled by the following reports, which we would also request that you review and evaluate for us: In Columbus, Ohio, an electronic voting system gave President Bush nearly 4,000 extra votes. ("Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes," Associated Press, November 5) An electronic tally of a South Florida gambling ballot initiative failed to record thousands of votes. "South Florida OKs Slot Machines Proposal," (Id.) In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots could hold more data that it did. "Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes," (Id.) In San Francisco, a glitch occurred with voting machines software that resulted in some votes being left uncounted. (Id.) In Florida, there was a substantial drop off in Democratic votes in proportion to voter registration in counties utilizing optical scan machines that was apparently not present in counties using other mechanisms. The House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff has received numerous reports from Youngstown, Ohio that voters who attempted to cast a vote for John Kerry on electronic voting machines saw that their votes were instead recorded as votes for George W. Bush. In South Florida, Congressman Wexler's staff received numerous reports from voters in Palm Beach, Broward and Dade Counties that they attempted to select John Kerry but George Bush appeared on the screen. CNN has reported that a dozen voters in six states, particularly Democrats in Florida, reported similar problems. This was among over one thousand such problems reported. ("Touchscreen Voting Problems Reported," Associated Press, November 5) Excessively long lines were a frequent problem throughout the nation in Democratic precincts, particularly in Florida and Ohio. In one Ohio voting precinct serving students from Kenyon College, some voters were required to wait more than eight hours to vote. ("All Eyes on Ohio," Dan Lothian, CNN, November 3) We are literally receiving additional reports every minute and will transmit additional information as it comes available. The essence of democracy is the confidence of the electorate in the accuracy of voting methods and the fairness of voting procedures. In 2000, that confidence suffered terribly, and we fear that such a blow to our democracy may have occurred in 2004. Thank you for your prompt attention to this inquiry. Sincerely, John Conyers, Jr., Jerrold Nadler, Robert Wexler Ranking Member, Ranking Member, Member of Congress House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution cc: Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner, Chairman "The essence of democracy," wrote the Congressmen, "is the confidence of the electorate in the accuracy of voting methods and the fairness of voting procedures. In 2000, that confidence suffered terribly, and we fear that such a blow to our democracy may have occurred in 2004." Those fears appear to be valid. John Kerry and John Edwards promised on Tuesday night that every vote would count, and that every vote would be counted. By Wednesday morning, Kerry had conceded the race to Bush, eliciting outraged howls from activists who were watching the reports of voting irregularities come piling in. Kerry had said that 10,000 lawyers were ready to fight any wrongdoing in this election. One hopes that he still has those lawyers on retainer. According to black-letter election law, Bush does not officially get a second term until the electors from the Electoral College go to Washington D.C on December 12th. Perhaps Kerry's 10,000 lawyers, along with a real investigation per the request of Conyers, Nadler and Wexler, could give those electors something to think about in the interim. In the meantime, soon-to-be-unemployed DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe sent out an email on Saturday night titled 'Help determine the Democratic Party's next steps.' In the email, McAuliffe states, "If you were involved in these grassroots activities, we want to hear from you about your experience. What did you do? Did you feel the action you took was effective? Was it a good experience for you? How would you make it better? Tell us your thoughts." He provided a feedback form where such thoughts can be sent. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Sun Nov 7 19:05:48 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 22:05:48 -0500 Subject: The Values-Vote Myth Message-ID: JAT wrote... >This election *proves* that at least half the electorate, about 60 million >people, are just Useless Eaters, who should be eagerly awaiting their Trip >Up The Chimneys. Ahhhh...I need a cigarette. But I suspect it's far more likely that some large batch of USA-ians will end up having a surprise meeting with Allah as the result of a big ole stinky dirty bomb. And with Iraq II we'll have an endless supply of suicide bombers ready to deliver. The only drawback is that there's a solid chance it'll be set off a few hundred feet from where I work. Ah well. Dems da breaks. We had a good run. -TD _________________________________________________________________ On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement From pcapelli at gmail.com Sun Nov 7 20:32:39 2004 From: pcapelli at gmail.com (Pete Capelli) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 23:32:39 -0500 Subject: The St. Louis Pledge In-Reply-To: <20041107214009.K67091@ubzr.zsa.bet> References: <20041107214009.K67091@ubzr.zsa.bet> Message-ID: On Sun, 7 Nov 2004 21:40:22 -0600 (CST), J.A. Terranson wrote: > St. Louis Pledge Against Fascism: > > "Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered by a > contributor to George Bush's campaign. This is my contribution to the > survival of freedom in the United States." I guess this is your last Internet usage, then, as Cisco is a major GWB contributor, as well as a contributor to his inaugural fund(s). -- Pete Capelli pcapelli at ieee.org http://www.capelli.org PGP Key ID:0x829263B6 "Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin, 1759 From isn at c4i.org Mon Nov 8 02:32:09 2004 From: isn at c4i.org (InfoSec News) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 04:32:09 -0600 (CST) Subject: [ISN] Velva Klaessy, government code breaker, dies at 88 Message-ID: http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5072390.html Trudi Hahn Star Tribune November 7, 2004 Velva Klaessy, a government cryptanalyst who accomplished some firsts for female code breakers -- with accompanying problems in the male-dominated field -- died Sept. 16 in Golden Valley. She was 88. "She could never talk about it," said her brother Dale Klaessy of Minnetonka. "It was a lonely, lonely job." Born to a farm couple in 1915 in Renwick, Iowa, Klaessy got a scholarship during the Depression to attend what is now Northern Iowa University. With no money to buy clothes, her father bought her 500 baby chicks to raise. When she sold them, she bought fabric and made her wardrobe. She received her degree in math in 1937 and took her first job in a small town dominated by a Protestant congregation. It decreed that the public-school teachers weren't allowed to play cards or go to the movies. After the town protested that she was insulting its sons by dating a young man from a different town, she left at the end of the year. In 1944, she was teaching high school math and science in Cherokee, Iowa, when a government recruiter came to ask if she had any students good in math who might want to join the war effort as a cryptologist in the Army Signal Corps. Her best students were all headed for college, so she didn't want to recommend them, but she took the job herself. After World War II she stayed in the field as the Armed Forces Security Agency and the National Security Agency (NSA) were formed. Although much of her work remains classified, information from the National Cryptologic Museum of the NSA, based at Fort Meade, Md., states that she was a member for many years of the highly respected Technical Consultants group, which assisted other analytic offices with their most difficult problems. In the summer of 1953, she and a male officer were posted temporarily to the Far East to train military personnel. According to oral tradition, the museum said, female NSA employees had never gotten temporary posts in that part of the world. Before she left the consultants group, she was posted temporarily to the United Kingdom. Her British counterpart threw a welcoming party -- in a men's club from which women were barred, her brother said. Female NSA employees battled for recognition at home, too. At one point a supervisor told her that she had earned a promotion but he was giving it to a male co-worker "because he had a family," her brother said. From 1958 to 1967, Klaessy finally received positions of high responsibility in sectors dealing with cutting-edge technology, the museum said, including being named chief in 1964 of the New and Unidentified Signals Division. She returned in 1967 to what is now called the extended enterprise when she was named deputy senior U.S. liaison officer in Ottawa, Canada. In 1970 she was named senior liaison officer in Ottawa, becoming the first woman to hold the senior post anywhere in the world. As senior officer, she represented the U.S. Intelligence Board and the NSA with appropriate organizations in Canada in all matters about signal intelligence and communications security. She returned to Fort Meade in 1975 but retired shortly afterward to care for ill relatives, her brother said. She was found to have Parkinson's disease about 1987 and moved to the Twin Cities to be close to relatives. In addition to her brother Dale, survivors include another brother, Earl of Spencer, Iowa. Services have been held in Iowa. _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From isn at c4i.org Mon Nov 8 02:32:34 2004 From: isn at c4i.org (InfoSec News) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 04:32:34 -0600 (CST) Subject: [ISN] E-gold Tracks Cisco Code Thief Message-ID: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1713878,00.asp By Michael Myser November 5, 2004 The electronic currency site that the Source Code Club said it will use to accept payment for Cisco Systems Inc.'s firewall source code is confident it can track down the perpetrators. Dr. Douglas Jackson, chairman of E-gold Ltd., which runs www.e-gold.com, said the company is already monitoring accounts it believes belong to the Source Code Club, and there has been no activity to date. "We've got a pretty good shot at getting them in our system," said Jackson, adding that the company formally investigates 70 to 80 criminal activities a year and has been able to determine the true identity of users in every case. On Monday, a member of the Source Code Club posted on a Usenet group that the group is selling the PIX 6.3.1 firewall firmware for $24,000, and buyers can purchase anonymously using e-mail, PGP keys and e-gold.com, which doesn't confirm identities of its users. "Bad guys think they can cover their tracks in our system, but they discover otherwise when it comes to an actual investigation," said Jackson. The purpose of the e-gold system, which is based on 1.86 metric tons of gold worth the equivalent of roughly $25 million, is to guarantee immediate payment, avoid market fluctuations and defaults, and ease transactions across borders and currencies. There is no credit line, and payments can only be made if covered by the amount in the account. Like the Federal Reserve, there is a finite value in the system. There are currently 1.5 million accounts at e-gold.com, 175,000 of those Jackson considers "active." To have value, or e-gold, in an account, users must receive a payment in e-gold. Often, new account holders will pay cash to existing account holders in return for e-gold. Or, in the case of SCC, they will receive payment for a service. The only way to cash out of the system is to pay another party for a service or cash trade, which Jackson said creates an increasingly traceable web of activity. He did offer a caveat, however: "There is always the risk that they are clever enough to figure out an angle for offloading their e-gold in a way that leads to a dead end, but that tends to be much more difficult than most bad guys think." This is all assuming the SCC actually receives a payment, or even has the source code in the first place. It's the ultimate buyer bewarethe code could be made up, tampered with or may not exist. And because the transaction through e-gold is instantaneous and guaranteed, there is no way for the buyer to back out. Dave Hawkins, technical support engineer with Radware Inc. in Mahwah, N.J., believes SCC is merely executing a publicity stunt. "If they had such real code, it's more likely they would have sold it in underground forums to legitimate hackers rather than broadcasting the sale on Usenet," he said. "Anyone who did have the actual code would probably keep it secret, examining it to build private exploits. By selling it, it could find its way into the public, and all those juicy vulnerabilities [would] vanish in the next version." "There's really no way to tell if this is legitimate," said Russ Cooper, senior scientist with security firm TruSecure Corp. of Herndon, Va. Cooper, however, believes there may be a market for it nonetheless. By posting publicly, SCC is able to get the attention of criminal entities they otherwise might not reach. "It's advertising from one extortion team to another extortion team," he said. "These DDOS [distributed denial of service] extortionists, who are trying to get betting sites no doubt would like to have more ways to do that." _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 05:38:22 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 08:38:22 -0500 Subject: Single Field Shapes Quantum Bits Message-ID: Technology Review Single Field Shapes Quantum Bits November 8, 2005 Quantum computers, which tap the properties of particles like atoms, photons and electrons to carry out computations, could potentially use a variety of schemes: individual photons controlled by optical networks, clouds of atoms linked by laser beams, and electrons trapped in quantum dots embedded in silicon chips. Due to the strange nature of quantum particles, quantum computers are theoretically much faster than ordinary computers at solving certain large problems, like cracking secret codes. Chip-based quantum computers would have a distinct advantage - they could leverage the manufacturing infrastructure of the semiconductor industry. Controlling individual electrons, however, is extremely challenging. Researchers have recently realized that it may be possible to control the electrons in a quantum computer using a single magnetic field rather than having to produce extremely small, precisely focused magnetic fields for each electron. Researchers from the University of Toronto and the University of Wisconsin at Madison have advanced this idea with a scheme that allows individual electrons to serve as the quantum bits that store and process computer information. Electrons have two magnetic orientations, spin up and spin down, which can represent the 1s and 0s of computing. The researchers' scheme relies on the interactions of pairs of electrons. Tiny electrodes positioned near quantum dots -- bits of semiconductor material that can trap single electrons - can draw neighboring electrons near enough that they exchange energy. The researchers' scheme takes a pair of electrons through eleven incremental steps that involve the electron interaction and a global magnetic field to flip one of the bits from a 0 to a 1 or vice versa. The technique could be used practically in 10 to 20 years, according to the researchers. The work appeared in the July 15, 2004 issue of Physical Review Letters. Technology Research News -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 05:59:29 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 08:59:29 -0500 Subject: Hedge Funds Are Bringing Democracy to the Financial World Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 8, 2004 BUSINESS EUROPE Hedge Funds Are Bringing Democracy to the Financial World By JEAN-MICHEL PAUL November 8, 2004 Assets under management by hedge funds have reached the $1 trillion mark, having grown at 20% a year since 1990. Hardly a day goes by without a new hedge fund being set up by a former trader or portfolio manager. This is the largest single structural change in the financial world since the coming of age of mutual funds at the beginning of the '80s. What we are in effect looking at is the beginning of a fundamental shift: the disintermediation of the role played by investment banks and their trading floors in particular. As technology allows set-up costs to dwindle and economies of scale to disappear, successful traders and portfolio managers, attracted by higher rewards, will continue to leave the large trading floors to set up shop offering formerly exclusive products to investors at large. In the process, a new market is being created and transaction costs decreased. Why and how is this happening? First and foremost, the hedge-fund revolution has been made possible by new technology that translated into a lower cost base. The sunk cost of starting and establishing a new investment and trading platform fund has literally collapsed -- as day traders well know. The Internet, together with the ever-increased capabilities of ever-cheaper computers and the democratization of programming and software skills, are enabling a few people to team up and create an efficient office at low cost. A team of two or three with a limited budget can now achieve what it would have taken dozens of people to do at considerably higher cost. Second, hedge funds are characterized by their asymmetric payoff. Managers typically get 2% of management fees and 20% of any performance achieved over a given benchmark. This incentive encourages the managers to perform, aligning investors' and managers' interest. It also means that the best traders will have an irrepressible incentive to set up their own hedge funds. The best performers will also have every interest in taking in as much money under management as they can without decreasing their performance. This means that asset allocation to traders and trading strategies is democratized and optimized. Investment banks have responded by embracing what they cannot prevent. They try to limit the brain drain by creating internal hedge-fund structures and to limit profitability decline by increasing the trading capital at risk. But beyond these defensive moves, they are inventing new roles for themselves as "platform provider," "prime broker" and even "capital introducers." This further modifies the financial landscape by allowing hedge funds to capitalize on the banks' distribution networks and customer access while maintaining their investment-decision independence. The keys to the banks' old trading-room environments were economies of scale, high sunk costs -- and professional asset allocation and supervision. Allocation is about optimal allocation of resources, chiefly capital, to the different strategies offered by the trading teams as opportunities come and go as the economic cycle unfolds. Risk control is about a constant independent review of the traders' positions, an ongoing assessment of the risk involved in the strategy. Upstart hedge funds have no risk-management departments but as traders set up independent hedge funds, risk control and asset allocation have been taken over by so-called funds of funds. These funds of funds, which receive funds from institutional investors and private banks, carry out repeated due diligence on hedge funds, looking for best of breeds. They also make regular quantitative and qualitative supervision control, so as to monitor ongoing risk-taking. Thanks to the expansion of the hedge-fund universe, trades and strategies that were yesterday the private backyard of investment banks are now, through hedge funds, available to traditional investors. This in itself creates for investors at large -- and chief among them pension funds and insurance -- a seemingly new asset class, that is a set of financial instruments whose payoff is fundamentally different and decorrelated from the traditional long-only approach. But the hedge fund world is not problem free. A question often associated with the hedge-fund transformation is capacity. By this, it is meant that the ability of a hedge fund to accommodate new investors while maintaining returns will diminish. There is no doubt that for "traditional" investments this is true. Similarly, as more and more "traders" arbitrage the same inefficiencies, these disappear, together with the arbitrage profits. This phenomenon explains a significant part of the lackluster results of the hedge-fund industry as a whole so far this year compared to former years. But because of the lower set-up costs, the lighter structure and higher incentives, ideas for new strategies are appearing and being deployed faster than ever before. This enables a continuous stream of new, if temporary, superior returns as start-up fund exploit new strategies. In other words, the law of creative destruction applies to hedge funds too, ensuring that new "alternative" funds will continuously replace overcrowded traditional alternative strategies. A related genuine concern is the increased level of leverage observed in the industry. As the industry develops to play its role as a significant asset class, some hedge funds, and indeed funds of funds, unable to find new markets to generate the uncorrelated alpha, the industry holy grail, continue to play their traditional market in an ever increasing leveraged way. But a leveraged position is bound to increase volatility. This, in turn, as was shown in the famous LTCM debacle, is bound to translate into failures from time to time. This is all the more the case because most positions will exhibit a strong correlation in a liquidity crisis. Indeed, hedge-fund failures are likely to become more common going forward, if only because the sheer number of hedge funds has increased. Similarly, pressure on hedge-fund margins is bound to increase. These corrections are also part of the market maturing and should be welcomed. Hedge funds are here to stay. The investment-disintermediation paradigm is based on a financial-industry reorganization that offers the prospect for a more efficient and transparent market as well as access to new investable asset classes. Its implications are as important to the financial sector as the appearance of the high-yield market in the 1980s was to the corporate-bond industry. Mr. Paul is a senior analyst at Atlas Capital Group. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 06:07:27 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 09:07:27 -0500 Subject: Did electronic voting pass the test? Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register ; Internet and Law ; eGovernment ; Did electronic voting pass the test? By Robin Bloor, Bloor Research (robin.lettice at theregister.co.uk) Published Friday 5th November 2004 12:38 GMT At about the time that Senator John Kerry had accepted defeat and phoned President Bush to congratulate him, stories were circulating on the Internet claiming that the electronic voting machines in Florida and Ohio and some other states might have been rigged for a Bush victory. The claim stems from the fact that exit polls were indicating a marginal Kerry victory in those key states, but his apparent exit poll advantage was not reflected in the total vote count. This indeed was the shape of the story if you sat through the election night telethon. At first it looked as though Kerry was doing well, but as the night wore on a Bush victory became more and more likely. So what are we to think of the claim? Despite the "conspiracy theory", there is good reason to believe that it was a genuine Bush victory. First of all, the final outcome reflected the fact that Bush held a small lead in the opinion polls right up to election day. Although all of the individual polls were subject to a margin of error greater than Bush's lead, the aggregation of the polls was still slightly in favour of Bush (and this reduces the statistical error margin). The pollsters had been plagued by suggestions that they were not properly accounting for the youth vote and most, if not all of them, examined, re-examined and adjusted their weighting parameters in an attempt to account for the expected high youth vote for Kerry. The pollsters have a big self-interest in not being too far wrong. The indications, on election night itself, were that the level of disenfranchisement through technology failure, long lines of voting and voters being turned away from the polls for lack of proper credentials, was much lower than in 2000 and, although there may have been one or two areas where there were problems, there is no reason to believe that the election was skewed by such incidents. Another straw in the wind was the gambling money - which has historically provided a reasonable guide to an election's outcome. While it is illegal for most American's to place bets over the Internet (on anything), many of them do. Throughout the whole campaign the betting odds were in Bush's favour - in effect predicting a Bush victory simply by the weight of money that was gambling on that outcome. The figures for the total bets placed (on Betfair one of the leading sites for such bets) was $4.2m on Bush and $1.2m on Kerry. Finally, the results from Florida and Ohio, which were only marginally in Bush's favour were not particularly out of line with the voting in the US as a whole. As it worked out, these results seemed to reflect the mood of America. So what are we to think of the electronic voting "conspiracy theory"? Here too there are reasons to pause for thought. The companies that supply the machines (Diebold Election Systems, Election Systems & Software, Hart InterCivic, and Sequoia Voting Systems) would destroy their own business if it were ever discovered that the technology was compromised. Would they take the risk? I personally doubt it, especially as it would involve bringing more than one or two people into the "conspiracy", any one of whom could go public on what was going down. Also, bending the software to affect the result in a very subtle way (and get it right) is probably very difficult to achieve. The margin for failure is high and the whole scheme is very risky. There is however legitimate cause for concern in the simple fact that many of the electronic voting machines that were deployed did not have audit trails that validated the figures they gave. If there were any kind of malfunction in any of these, there was simply no way to validate the figures. The justification for complete transparency and validation of voting technology is not only desirable but necessary. Indeed if ever there was a case for the open sourcing of program code then this is it. One hopes that by the time the next major elections in the US come round, there will be paper audit trails on every voting machine deployed. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 06:08:08 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 09:08:08 -0500 Subject: 37 arrested in net gun swoop Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT 37 arrested in net gun swoop By Tim Richardson (tim.richardson at theregister.co.uk) Published Friday 5th November 2004 15:02 GMT Thirty-seven people have been arrested after the Metropolitan Police seized more than 100 firearms in a crackdown on weapons traded online. Some 700 addresses have been raided over the last four days as officers mounted the UK-wide operation. In all, 86 handguns, ten rifles, three machine guns, seven shotguns, 13 stun guns and a crossbow were nabbed in Operation Bembridge. Class A drugs were also seized during the raids. Said Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, Head of the Met's Specialist Crime Directorate: "This is the climax of a long-term intelligence operation where we have identified weaponry purchased over the Internet. I am delighted by its success and the sheer number of firearms, ammunition and other weapons seized will make London a safer city." The apparent ease to which guns are available online was highlighted this week by a Labour MP who compiled a list of handguns he claims were for sale on internet auction site, eBay. Steve McCabe, MP for Birmingham Hall Green, has called on eBay to pay closer attention to goods for sale on its pages after he was able to buy an air rifle on the auction site last month. He told the House of Commons: "The other week, it was possible for me to buy a gun from the eBay internet site. The way in which the sellers work is simple. They advertise an empty bag or box. The buyer bids for that bag or box, and when that is done, the seller throws in the gun for free. "This site is being used to facilitate a trade in illegal weapons," he said in a call for the Home Secretary to take action. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com Mon Nov 8 06:12:34 2004 From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 09:12:34 -0500 (GMT-05:00) Subject: This Memorable Day Message-ID: <23625318.1099923155248.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> >From: Peter Gutmann >Sent: Nov 6, 2004 2:10 AM >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net, ocorrain at yahoo.com >Subject: Re: This Memorable Day >The figure that's usually quoted is that 80% of German's military force was >directed against Russia. Of the remaining 20%, a lot had already been engaged >by France, the UK (via the BEF, the RAF, North Africa), Greece, etc etc before >the US got involved in Europe. So the Russians should get most of the credit. Yep. I think to a first approximation, the US defeated Japan and the USSR defeated Germany. My impression is that a lot of the push to do the D-Day invasion was to make sure the USSR didn't end up in possession of all of Europe at the end of the war. (Given how things developed, this was a pretty sensible concern.) >Peter. --John From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 06:15:11 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 09:15:11 -0500 Subject: Nerd party needed to replace 'left-wing' Democrats, says area man Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT Nerd party needed to replace 'left-wing' Democrats, says area man By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco (andrew.orlowski at theregister.co.uk) Published Friday 5th November 2004 17:20 GMT Election 2004 A newspaper columnist has called for the old-fashioned, "left wing" Democratic Party to be replaced by a new, emergent party of computer nerds. Free-marketeer Dan Gillmor of Silicon Valley's San Jose Mercury urges the Democrats to abandon "old, discredited politics", while an "increasingly radical middle" needs a new party with some "creative thinking". From where will this come? In a column (http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/10086652.htm) published the same day, he tells us. Writing before the outcome was known, Gillmor enthuses about "the most exciting development ... the new world of cyber-politics," where the "expanded horizons" on offer should cancel out the groupthink, which he briefly acknowledges, and lead to greater accountability and participation. Such settler rhetoric - "new world", "horizons" - is familiar stuff from techno utopians. So too is the hope, amongst many intelligent, impatient people with a reluctance to develop their social skills, that we must be able to do better. (Bill Gates doesn't have the patience or inclination to watch TV, and many internet activists don't have the patience or inclination to persuade a stranger, which is a lot more difficult and unrewarding.) We briefly heard about "Emergent Democracy" last Spring, although it disappeared in about the time it takes you to say "Second Superpower". But we're sure to hear more about this itchy, push-button, "interactive" version of democracy, a kind of thumbs down at the Roman Coliseum, in the future. Maybe Dan will become its Arthur Schlesinger. But for now, how can a computer-savvy nerd party help? We don't see Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, having trouble being re-elected, and the man's been described as a "one-man socialist Torquemada." Because politics is n-dimensional, based on values and not some right-left scale, his "old fashioned" efforts to remind corporations of their social responsibilities may well be very popular if put to the public. [*]So it isn't clear that the Democrats must abandon the idea that we're happier when the corporations are left to manage themselves. Nor is it clear that the internet is a net civic good, yet, or that it increased voter turnout more than other factors did in the 2004 election. So the conclusion that we're then invited to draw - that the Democrats are doomed because they're lagging in some kind of technological arms race - doesn't necessarily follow. But let's take each one of these ideas in turn. Man machine Such settler rhetoric flourishes where a sensible grasp of what humans can do, and what the machines can do, is out of kilter. Wild and improbable visions often follow. When something good happens, people are quick to praise the machines. "If people are more moved than ever to participate, I'm betting that the Net played a big role," writes Dan. But if something bad happens, we blame stupid humans for not "getting it". Voters in Texas using machines from Hart InterCivic, discovered that their votes were nullified when they browsed the ballot by turning a wheel. "It's not a machine issue," Shafer said. "It's voters not properly following the instructions." And you might ask, who's fault is it that the Jim Crow boxes were so badly designed? (Dan, to his great credit, urged Californian voters to demand an auditable paper ballot this week, and castigated election officials for not making voters aware that they had the option.) But the echo chamber effect won't go away, because it's a defining characteristic of computer-mediated communications everywhere, and not just in this deeply polarized country. My colleague Thomas Greene puts it most succinctly. "You can say something someone disagrees with at a party, and they'll talk to you. Try doing this online." Where the barriers to participation are low, the barriers to making a hurried exit are equally low. There are no social obligations to sticking around, unlike in the real world. (There are subtle factors within the overall trend. Today's thin-skinned ego-driven weblogger may simply have been yesterday's Usenet faint heart, for example. And well-designed software can encourage better online participation: the DailyKos abandoned weblog software for the much more community-orientated Scoop system, and became the Slashdot of politics - only one where people say interesting things politely.) The settler iconography is no accident: the idea that everything "old fashioned" must be discarded, and everything is new again. "Like the American settlers, internet dwellers create a myth that there was no politics before they arrived," Will Davies pointed out, in a brilliant talk at NotCon this year. They needed to do this to ignore the fact that the land was already occupied. "To the same end, internet settlers choose to ignore the historical and sociological facts of how the internet is run, and who can't get on to it and why, and the mechanisms used online to divide people." Gated communities substitute group for social, and "cease to question the macro institutions and systems around them." The gated communities have already gone up, on the internet. One of its founding engineers, Karl Auerbach told your reporter earlier this year that physically, as well as sociologically, "The internet is balkanizing. Communities of trust are forming in which traffic is accepted only from known friends." Remind you of anything? What this leads to is a false sense of reality. Howard Dean supporters had a tremendous disappointment when man and message failed to resonate in Meatspace. The noise of online participation isn't a very reliable indicator of what people are really thinking or doing. "Everyone I know voted Democrat," people asked yesterday "How could this happen?" In fact, voter turnout rose little in prosperous areas with high broadband penetration, but dramatically in areas where broadband penetration was lowest: up over ten per cent in Mississippi, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico. Meanwhile, the cornerstones of civic life - community and church groups - were far more effective in getting out the vote. These delivered a Republican victory. So for Doctor Gillmor to prescribe the ailing patient 'more internet' is a strange choice. For him to advocate abandoning the US left's organizational vehicle (with one current useless owner, but a proven track record of some moderate success, if you look at the log book) makes senses only if, like Dan, you don't think think the left should have an effective vehicle at all. (He wants a "radical center", remember . On being asked to abandon the project, progressives might be tempted to echo Gandhi, who when asked what he thought of western civilization, replied "I think it would be a good idea!" Giving up barely after we've started, on a center ground defined by others, or by nothing but technology, isn't an adequate replacement. For some people, technology is the answer, no matter what the question may be. But Gillmor's reasons for wanting a new net party are rather like, to paraphrase Kennedy, asking not "what can the machines do for me?" but asking "what can I do for the machines?" . -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 06:18:35 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 09:18:35 -0500 Subject: How organized religion, not net religion, won it for Bush Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT How organized religion, not net religion, won it for Bush By Ashlee Vance in Chicago (ashlee.vance at theregister.co.uk) Published Friday 5th November 2004 17:21 GMT Election 2004 Technophobes and luddites won the election for George W Bush in 2004, not technology-toting bloggers, by turning out the vote. The giant, self-congratulatory humpfest that is the blogger nation really didn't do much at all for the Democrats, despite Joe Trippi telling anyone who'll listen that the internet transformed politics. For voter turn-out was markedly higher in the states with the lowest broadband penetration. Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York and California have the highest broadband penetration and all went to Kerry. Meanwhile, Mississippi, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico have the lowest penetration and all went to Bush. But the rise in votes was proportionately higher in states where the internet doesn't reach so many people. In blogless Mississippi, Bush received 666,000 votes in 2004 compared to 549,000 in 2000. That's more than a 20 per cent increase in votes. (Somehow we doubt that P. Diddy threatening youngsters in Mississippi to "Vote or Die" did much to inspire youth turnout.) Kerry picked up 440,000 in Mississippi compared to Gore's 400,000 votes - about a 10 per cent difference. What about a battleground, internet-wary state like New Mexico? The Land of Enchantment chucked 370,000 votes Bush's way in 2004 compared to 286,000 in 2000, when Bush lost the state. Kerry picked up 362,000 compared to Gore's 286,000. These numbers prove little other than that voting totals increased handily and always in Bush's favor in states largely considered lacking in IT but strong in Jesus. In broadband rich Connecticut, Kerry picked up 848,000 votes compared to Gore's 796,000. That's close to a 6 per cent rise. Bush earned 687,000 votes in 2004 compared to 546,000 in 2000. That's a handy 26 per cent gain. In New Jersey, the story is similar. Kerry pulled in 1.8m votes compared to Gore's 1.75m. Bush, however, nabbed 1.6m votes in 2004 versus 1.3m in 2000. With all those statistics out of the way, we're left with one conclusion. A year ago we were told (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/14/one_blogger_is_worth_ten/) that One Blogger is Worth Ten Votes. In reality, however, it may be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for bloggers to deliver you the election. This is the most obvious and frivolous takeaway from this year's election/revival. For months, the internet was buzzed by so-called citizen journalists - otherwise known as message board tools - who convinced each other that they were making a difference. They often analyzed their own convincing and then concluded that they were indeed right. Then W. won and did so by a larger margin than in 2000. But has anyone told Joe Trippi? A long strange Trippi "What has been amazing this year is the creativity of Generation E's members to spur and engage more of its generation to become involved and make a difference," Trippi claims in his blog. And later on, (http://www.joetrippi.com/node/view/753) he writes - "Young Americans are awake like never before and studies show the earlier a voter becomes an active voter the more likely they are to be active voters throughout their life. Politicians beware. A generational giant has been awakened." There are so many things wrong with this, and with Trippi himself, that it's hard to know where to begin. Let's at least start by looking at what the droopy god of blog scum was trying to explain. Trippi questions the numerous analysts who don't believe the youth vote was all that spectacular this election. There were more young voters, but there were more voters period as a result of population increases and shared hatred. Trippi tells us that the pundits are missing the point. Close to 10 per cent more young voters showed up this time around, the youngsters "were especially active in battleground states," and many voted with absentee ballots, meaning they were missed by exit polls. If, however, more young people did show up, they weren't terribly impressive. All week long, Joe Trippi dangled his jowls on MSNBC, on the basis of an unsuccessful campaign, and we seem to remember (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01/28/dean_campaign_waves_net_guru/), for getting himself sacked after boosting his favorite DRM company while getting the dumb Doc to advocate TCPA: the lock-down computing Microsoft wants to build into Windows to stop you sharing music. Again and again, he promised that the internet and bloggers would bring out the youth vote. NPR gladly repeated this almost every day. And then, like Zogby, he stuck to his promises despite so much evidence to the contrary. Again and again, he told America that Kerry had pulled in eight times as much money as Bush online. The perky MSNBC drones next to him guffawed at the rich evidence of web success. The blogger army fell right into line behind Trippi. It told itself how awful W was. It told itself how much "it" matters - how it showed those swift boat veterans a thing or two. How the internet is freedom and how rapid communication is "pretty awesome," as our president might say. "I've written a lot in my "Trippi's Take" columns about how the Internet empowers the bottom, and how that empowerment energizes citizen involvement that can create real change in an otherwise top-down world," Trippi again writes. Trippi isn't the only one to blame. All the blogging believers are at fault. Even if Jesus set up a blogging cafe in the center of Rockport, Texas and extolled the virtues of a woman's right to choose while snapping pictures of gay weddings with his Nokia, it would have made no difference to this election. All of the bloggers would have told themselves about the miracle, while Bobby and Bobby Sue went right along with their business. The longer the Democrats pretend that their vacuum of righteousness is actually reaching the public at large, helped by NPR, the more trouble they will be in. Be it an internet wasteland like New Mexico or fat pipe rich Connecticut, it doesn't matter. George W. Bush kicked your blogging ass. Now internet zombies need to take lessons from those Dems that actually got out and participated in the world. Most of the evangelicals in Alabama certainly weren't reading georgeisthebest.typepad.com to summon up their inspiration to vote. No, they had a fearless leader screaming at them about fear and impending doom. If the Democrats want to make some gains over the next four years, they'd be well suited to get a message with some substance and weight instead hoping that empty technology will somehow save them. . -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 06:36:27 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 09:36:27 -0500 Subject: Dimpled Chips Message-ID: The Harvard Crimson Online :: Print Article Originally published on Monday, November 08, 2004 in the Opinion section of The Harvard Crimson. Dimpled Chips By MATTHEW A. GLINE MATTHEW A. GLINE It seems perfectly reasonable that election officials in Palm Beach County, Fla. would have wanted a change in their voting equipment after the 2000 election. And touchscreen voting machines seemed like an obvious choice: Confusing butterfly ballots that had made the state a national laughing-stock were replaced by clear, well-labeled, brightly colored buttons; the machines were backed by the latest developments in counting technology (a field which has, somewhat counter-intuitively, apparently seen a fair bit of action in recent years); and most importantly of all, the nearest Chad would now be the one in North Africa. What the election officials were probably not expecting, however, was the experience of one particular Palm Springs voter, who after patiently tapping through screen after screen of national and local officials fulfilling her civic duty was presented with an unsatisfying message of all too familiar a form: "Vote save error #1," the machine said, "use back-up voting procedure." Voteprotect.org is a website run by a handful of nonprofit organizations including VerifiedVoting.org and the Electronic Frontier Foundation which collected and organized reports of voting irregularities during last Tuesday's election. A cursory look at their data on problems related to the voting machines themselves reveals some interesting trends. The entire state of Massachusetts, where votes are recorded in large part by older optical scanning equipment, reported a total of 7 such incidents out of nearly 3 million ballots-one for every 500,000 or so votes cast. Palm Beach County had 27 machine related incidents out of their 550,000 votes-each voter there was roughly three times more likely to report trouble with their equipment than a voter was here. These incidents ran the severity gamut. In Georgia, where all voting is done on touchscreen machines, voters complained of long lines due to malfunctioning machines or machines with dead batteries. There were complaints of slow machines, and machines which at first refused to accept the "smart cards" each voter used to identify themselves. Some machines crashed or went blank while they were being used. Some machines, however, had bigger issues: "Voter's machine defaulted to Republican candidate each time she voted for a Democrat," one report from Cobb County, Georgia reads. "She told the precinct supervisor about the problem. It continued to happen 7 times." Similar incidents occurred in reasonably large numbers-some voters tried to push a button for Kerry or Bush and found that the X would appear next to the name of the other candidate. These problems were probably not due to a vast right-wing conspiracy in the voting machine industry. (Though it's not entirely clear that such a conspiracy doesn't exist-a board member of Diebold Election Systems, the company which makes most of the touchscreen voting systems that have been deployed, did at one point guarantee he would deliver Ohio to Bush in 2004. The promise sounds even more ominous in hindsight.) Rather, most of the issues surrounded poor "calibration" of the touchscreen inputs-the machines would register taps on one part of the screen as if they had been taps at some slightly different point. There were technicians on hand who could recalibrate the machines, and this tended to fix the problems for subsequent voters. Still, as a result these machines relied on voters' being sufficiently astute to notice when the confirmation said something different than what they had chosen, and sufficiently persistent to duke it out with the machines and complain to overworked officials when things went wrong. And for all the effort on the part of Florida officials to escape "close calls" due to fuzzy voting tools, these errors sound a lot like the dimpled chads they endeavored to replace. Or they would, were it not for one more disquieting feature of most touchscreen voting equipment deployed in this election. Senator Kerry graciously conceded on Wednesday morning. But had he decided to fight it out and asked for hand recounts, it's not clear what this would mean with respect to the new machines: They produce no printed receipt. In fact, they leave no paper trail at all. A lawsuit fought out in the Florida court system over the past six months tried to change this fact, but election officials have ultimately refused to deploy such equipment, calling it a frivolous expense. I don't mean to doubt that President Bush won this election fairly, and I don't think touchscreen voting machines, for all their irregularities, tipped any balances. They even carried some ancillary benefits: Disabled persons, the blind in particular, were able to vote unassisted in a presidential election in large numbers for the first time in American history. Still, we need to be able to trust the machines we use to vote. This doesn't mean we need to understand how they work-no one should have to know that their voting machine employs strong cryptography to keep their votes safe. It does, however, mean that in our fleeting interaction with the machines, we have to be made confident they're doing what they're supposed to do. We don't, for the most part, trust our computers. We save often, we're told to run virus-scanning software-and still, we hear stories about lost theses and long treks in the snow to find working printers. But I think it's quite clear at this point that while it takes a few days (and maybe a letter grade or two hit) to rewrite a history paper, it can take years to recover from a presidential election. Matthew A. Gline '06 is a physics concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears on alternate Mondays. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 06:38:13 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 09:38:13 -0500 Subject: Atlanta will be test site for health card Message-ID: MSNBC.com Atlanta will be test site for health card Transaction titan First Data will put credit-card machines in doctors' offices By Justin Rubner Atlanta Business Chronicle Updated: 7:00 p.m. ET Nov. 7, 2004 One of the nation's leading money movers now wants to move your medical information. Denver-based First Data Corp. has picked Atlanta as the first city to test a beefed-up credit-card machine it hopes will do nothing short of revolutionize the health-care industry. The financial transaction titan (NYSE: FDC) plans to start the pilot in January after completing several rounds of focus-group studies here during the next couple of months. The machine eventually would allow a doctor to find out everything about a patient's health benefits -- from claims status to eligibility to co-pay specifics -- with a swipe of a card. The information could then be printed out of the terminal, much like a credit-card receipt. Currently, a doctor or assistant has to photocopy a patient's insurance card and then call the patient's insurance company for specific information, check each insurance provider's Web site for more general information, or flat-out guess. "While the patient is still in care, we can immediately say how much the doctor needs to collect from the patient and the insurance company," said Beverly Kennedy, president of First Data's health-care division. Many in the health-care industry see an automated, nationwide system to process payments and transfer medical records as long overdue. For one, there's the mountain of paper records associated with the current way of doing business. Second, there's more complex government regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Adding to the complexity are increasingly complex health-care plans. Then, the costs of medical administration itself also are rising. Kennedy said $275 billion is spent each year on such administrative costs. Eventually, the hope is, an automated system would reduce such expenses. First Data wouldn't be the first player to attempt such an ambitious project. There is a program in Wyoming, North Dakota and Nevada that uses "smart cards" to store medical records, according to published reports. In addition, First Data competitor HealthTransaction Network Corp. is pushing insurance companies to issue debit cards that would be linked to medical spending accounts. But an inclusive nationwide system has been hard to come by, primarily because of the high number of small, loosely connected doctors' offices. Real-time intelligence First Data's machine, manufactured by Phoenix-based Hypercom Corp. (NYSE: HYC), will have smart-chip technology as well as the familiar magnetic strips. Such chips, which are not being tested in the pilot, allow a greater amount of information to be passed through and allow that information to be stored. There are privacy concerns that need to be ironed out. However, when policy intersects with technology, the terminals will be ready with the chips, which already have been used in Europe, Kennedy said. Insurance companies participating in the program will give their customers special cards to be used at participating health-care facilities. One of the state's biggest insurance companies, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia Inc., could be one such participant. Spokesman Charlie Harman said the company is in talks with First Data but declined to give specifics, saying it was too "proprietary" in nature. "This is an important concept," Harman said. "We need to marry technology to the health-care system." Harman said Blue Cross Blue Shield already is on the cutting edge of technology; for example, it is actively involved with a system that allows physicians to send prescriptions to pharmacists electronically. Some hospitals also are involved with "e-prescribing," including Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. To make it seemingly risk-free for doctors, First Data will give the terminals away, Kennedy said. But that doesn't mean the company won't make money -- First Data collects transaction fees, as it owns the network the information travels over. First Data, Western Union Financial Services Inc.'s parent company, processes all sorts of financial transactions over its network. The company provides electronic commerce and payment services for approximately 3.1 million merchant locations, 1,400 card issuers and millions of consumers. The terminals will plug into the wall just like the current generation of credit-card terminals and will be easy to use, Kennedy said. "It's got to be 'simple-stupid,' " Kennedy said. "It's got to be intuitive." Initially, the terminals will be tested in medical doctors' offices and will offer only eligibility data. The doctors have not yet been chosen. Eventually, Kennedy said, officials plan to expand the program nationally to opticians and dentists and it would offer a complete suite of medical information -- referrals, authorization, claims status. The "light at the end of the tunnel" would be for the program to offer real-time claims adjudication. Kennedy said Atlanta was a clear choice for the pilot primarily due to its size and diverse mix of insurance companies and government programs. The company wanted a large player -- like Blue Cross Blue Shield -- and a good "sprinkling" of national players and small insurance companies. Another important factor is Atlanta's fairly large number of provider groups, or administrative offices that run several doctors' offices. So far, tests have gone smoothly, the company says. "They absolutely love this," Kennedy said. "They keep asking when they can get their own terminals." ) 2004 Atlanta Business Chronicle -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 06:41:14 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 09:41:14 -0500 Subject: [ISN] E-gold Tracks Cisco Code Thief Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text From chuckw at quantumlinux.com Mon Nov 8 09:41:16 2004 From: chuckw at quantumlinux.com (Chuck Wolber) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 09:41:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: Faith in democracy, not government In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: %< SNIP %< > More disturbing still for liberal Democrats is that George W. Bush is > the first Republican Southerner ever elected to the presidency, another > indicator that a majority of the citizenry no longer finds conservatism > and Texas such a scary mix. *SIGH* Is it really so hard for people to remember that George W. Bush was born and educated in Massachusetts? John F. Kerry is more southerner than Bush. -Chuck -- http://www.quantumlinux.com Quantum Linux Laboratories, LLC. ACCELERATING Business with Open Technology "The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." - FDR From seberino at spawar.navy.mil Mon Nov 8 09:41:48 2004 From: seberino at spawar.navy.mil (seberino at spawar.navy.mil) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 09:41:48 -0800 Subject: [p2p-hackers] MixMinion vs. onion routing & GNUnet question Message-ID: > These may be naive questions (I don't know GNUnet too well), but > hopefully I am about to learn something: GNUnet tries to achieve at > least three goals at the same time that are not perfectly understood > and should rather be treated individually: > > - anonymity > - censor resistance > - high-performance document distribution Performance is a secondary goal to the first 2 in GNUnet. The first 2 are related so I'm not sure how or why they need to be treated separately. > Also, don't the shortcomings of mix networks also apply to Freenet- / > GNUnet-style anonymization schemes? > I suspect that no matter what (existing) adversary > model you pick, plugging a good mix network into your design on the > transport layer gives you the highest anonymity possible. I don't know how GNUnet's architecture compares to mix networks. I *do* know that GNUnet attempts to protect against traffic analysis. If you think mix networks are better, they better have good protection against traffic analysis. Can you point us to any good URLs or papers on how mix networks protect against traffic analysis? Chris _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers at zgp.org http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers _______________________________________________ Here is a web page listing P2P Conferences: http://www.neurogrid.net/twiki/bin/view/Main/PeerToPeerConferences ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 06:43:07 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 09:43:07 -0500 Subject: [ISN] Velva Klaessy, government code breaker, dies at 88 Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text From nobody at dizum.com Mon Nov 8 00:50:06 2004 From: nobody at dizum.com (Nomen Nescio) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 09:50:06 +0100 (CET) Subject: The Values-Vote Myth Message-ID: <11333f79a0677bc8c4e80bf3c425a4a1@dizum.com> J.A. Terranson schrieb: > This election *proves* that at least half the electorate, about 60 > million people, are just Useless Eaters, who should be eagerly > awaiting their Trip Up The Chimneys. Wow! A Tim May copycat! (Both the 'useless eaters' and the 'chimney'!) From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Mon Nov 8 06:58:34 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 09:58:34 -0500 Subject: Your source code, for sale Message-ID: Oh, I assumed that this verification 'layer' was disjoint from the e$ layer. In other words, you might have a 3rd party e$ issuer, but after that they shouldn't be necessary....or, there's a different 3rd party for the verification process. I think that's reasonable, but of course one could argue "what's the point if you already need a 3rd party for the e$". But I think that's a disjoint set of issues. -TD >From: Ben Laurie >To: Tyler Durden >CC: chris.kuethe at gmail.com, cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: Your source code, for sale >Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 11:50:28 +0000 > >Tyler Durden wrote: >> >>>What if I block the outbound "release the money" message after I >>>unbundle the images. Sure, I've already committed my money, but you >>>can't get to it. In effect I've just ripped you off, because I have >>>usable product and you don't have usable money. >> >> >>Well, yes, but this would be a very significant step forward from the >>current situation. As t-->infinity the vast majority of non-payments are >>going to be for the purpose of greed. If the payment is already 'gone', >>then you need a whole different set of motives for wanting to screw >>somebody even if you get nothing out of it. So in other words, you have at >>least solved the payment problem "to the first order", with no 3rd party. >>With fancier mechanisms I would think you can solve it to 2nd order too. > >How do you make the payment already "gone" without using a third party? _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com Mon Nov 8 07:09:41 2004 From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 10:09:41 -0500 (GMT-05:00) Subject: The Values-Vote Myth Message-ID: <25961287.1099926581610.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> >From: Eric Cordian >Sent: Nov 6, 2004 5:57 PM >To: cypherpunks at minder.net >Subject: Re: The Values-Vote Myth ... >Also, voting is in some sense political manipulation to blame the population for the >actions of their government. Everyone who votes is a co-conspirator, and the >argument is made that those who don't vote have no right to dissent. Yep, I always get a kick out of this line. Alice says "if you don't vote, you have no right to complain about the outcome." Bob says "if you don't volunteer for a campaign, man the phone banks, go door to door, and give till it hurts, you have no right to complain about the outcome." Carol says "If you don't stockpile weapons, organize into cells, and run a campaign of terror bombing and assassination, you have no right to complain about the outcome." Why is one of these people more obviously right than the others? [I know you weren't agreeing with the quoted statement either.] In practice, Alice's strategy has almost no impact on the result--nothing I did as a Maryland voter could have given Bush fewer electoral votes than he already got, and that's true almost everywhere for an individual voter. This is especially true if you're an individual voter whose major issues are just not very important to most other voters. Kerry spent essentially no time talking about the creepy implications of the Jose Padilla case (isn't he still being held incommunicado, pending filing in the right district?), or the US government's use of torture in the war on terror despite treaties and the basic obligations of civilized people not to do that crap. I see little indication that Kerry would have disclaimed the power to do those things, had the vote swung a couple percentage points the other way. Bob's strategy has more going for it, but it comes down to a tradeoff between alternate uses of your time. You could devote your time to the Bush or Kerry or Badnarik campaigns, or you could improve your ability to survive whatever ugliness may come in other ways--maybe by making more money and banking it against future problems, or improving your standing in your field, so you're likely to be employable even in a massive post-terror-attack recession. Maybe just spending quality time with your wife and kids, on the theory that the bad guys may manage to vaporize you tomorrow whichever clown gets elected Bozo-in-Chief. Carol's strategy seems doomed to fail to me--look how much damage has been done to the pro-life movement by the very small number of wackos willing to shoot abortion doctors and bomb clinics. I'm always amazed at the revolutionary talk from people on this list, as though libertarian/anarchocapitalist ideas weren't an almost invisibly small minority in the US, as though some kind of unrest leading to a civil war would lead anywhere any of us would like. (Is it the secular police state that comes out on top, or the religious police state?) >Eric Michael Cordian 0+ --John From paul at paulbaranowski.org Mon Nov 8 07:20:53 2004 From: paul at paulbaranowski.org (Paul Baranowski) Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 10:20:53 -0500 Subject: [p2p-hackers] Anti-censorship Proxy Networks (without the HTML this time - sorry!) Message-ID: First I want to thank everyone for posting such good papers on this mailing list - it has given me lots of good reading material! Now I have a chance to give back to the community...I've been researching the problem of web censorship and how to design a system to get around it. Initially I wanted to build a P2P mixnet so that the users would also have anonymity. It turns out that due to various attacks that it isnt possible to build a "totally decentralized" P2P network - instead it looks more like a star where one server manages many proxy nodes. This is one example where p2p just isnt possible (I know, blasphemy on this mailing list!). Zooko encouraged me to write down my findings, and this is what I came up with: Not Too Few, Not Too Many: Enforcing Minimum Network Knowledge In Distributed Systems http://www.peek-a-booty.org/pbhtml/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid= 12 Comments are welcome. Abstract: Some distributed systems require that each node know as few other nodes as possible while still maintaining connectivity to the system. We define this state as "minimum network knowledge". In particular, this is a requirement for Internet censorship circumvention systems. We describe the constraints on such systems: 1) the Sybil attack, 2) the man-in-the-middle attack, and 3) the spidering attack. The resulting design requirements are thus: 1) An address receiver must discover addresses such that the network Node Arrival Rate <= Node Discovery Rate <= Node Departure Rate, 2) There must be a single centralized trusted address provider, 3) The address provider must uniquely identify address receivers, and 4) The discovery mechanism must involve reverse Turing tests (A.K.A. CAPTCHAs). The "minimum network knowledge" requirement also puts limits on the type of routing the network can perform. We describe a new attack, called the Boomerang attack, where it is possible to discover all the nodes in a network if the network uses mixnet routing. Two other well-known attacks limit the types of routing mechanisms: the distributed denial-of-service attack and the untraceable cracker attack. We describe three routing mechanisms that fit within the constraints: single, double, and triple-hop routing. Single-hop is a basic proxy setup, double-hop routing protects the user's data from snooping proxies, and triple hop hides proxy addresses from trusted exit nodes. _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers at zgp.org http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers _______________________________________________ Here is a web page listing P2P Conferences: http://www.neurogrid.net/twiki/bin/view/Main/PeerToPeerConferences ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com Mon Nov 8 07:28:33 2004 From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 10:28:33 -0500 (GMT-05:00) Subject: The Values-Vote Myth Message-ID: <23177925.1099927714999.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> >From: "J.A. Terranson" >Sent: Nov 6, 2004 5:07 PM >To: Tyler Durden >Cc: rah at shipwright.com, cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: RE: The Values-Vote Myth >On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: ... >> So: A 'moral values' question for Cypherpunks. Does this election indict the >> American people as being complicit in the crime known as "Operation >> Freedom"? (I notice everyone forgot about that name.) >Complicit? Thats *technically* correct, but not nearly strong enough. Similarly, if I hold some stock in Exxon, am I complicit in every crime done by the management of Exxon? How does this change if I'm a child whose trust fund contains the stock? Or if I hold a mutual fund I inherited with a little Exxon stock, which can be sold off only if I'm willing to move thousands of miles from my home, learn a new language, uproot my family, etc.? Is there any outcome of the election that would have made it immoral to attack Americans? (Certainly not electing Kerry, who planned to continue holding down Iraq for the forseeable future, though he correctly stated that invading it was a mistake in the first place.) And if we accept this kind of collective guilt logic, why is, say, flattening Fallujah to make an example for the rest of Iraq, wrong? > -TD >J.A. Terranson --John From hal at finney.org Mon Nov 8 10:51:24 2004 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 10:51:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: Your source code, for sale Message-ID: <20041108185124.9125057E2A@finney.org> Ben Laurie writes: > How do you make the payment already "gone" without using a third party? Of course there has to be a third party in the form of the currency issuer. If it is someone like e-gold, they could do as I suggested and add a feature where the buyer could transfer funds irrevocably into an escrow account which would be jointly controlled by the buyer and the seller. This way the payment is already "gone" from the POV of the buyer and if the seller completes the transaction, the buyer has less incentive to cheat him. In the case of an ecash mint, a simple method would be for the seller to give the buyer a proto-coin, that is, the value to be signed at the mint, but in blinded form. The buyer could take this to the mint and pay to get it signed. The resulting value is no good to the buyer because he doesn't know the blinding factors, so from his POV the money (he paid to get it signed) is already "gone". He can prove to the seller that he did it by using the Guillou-Quisquater protocol to prove in ZK that he knows the mint's signature on the value the seller gave him. The seller thereby knows that the buyer's costs are sunk, and so the seller is motivated to complete the transaction. The buyer has nothing to lose and might as well pay the seller by giving him the signed value from the mint, which the seller can unblind and (provably, verifiably) be able to deposit. Hal From fis at wiwi.hu-berlin.de Mon Nov 8 02:14:49 2004 From: fis at wiwi.hu-berlin.de (fis at wiwi.hu-berlin.de) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 11:14:49 +0100 Subject: [p2p-hackers] MixMinion vs. onion routing & GNUnet question Message-ID: seberino at spawar.navy.mil writes: > From: seberino at spawar.navy.mil > Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 21:24:14 -0800 > Subject: [p2p-hackers] MixMinion vs. onion routing & GNUnet question > [...] > GNUnet seems like a very good project. Probably the > best I've seen. It is a modular framework so pieces can be > borrowed and built upon at many levels. These may be naive questions (I don't know GNUnet too well), but hopefully I am about to learn something: GNUnet tries to achieve at least three goals at the same time that are not perfectly understood and should rather be treated individually: - anonymity - censor resistance - high-performance document distribution What makes you believe the GNUnet-solution for any of these aims can be factored out and used somewhere else? Also, don't the shortcomings of mix networks also apply to Freenet- / GNUnet-style anonymization schemes? In Freenet (at least in some ancient version that I once had a closer look at), I know security is even worse (though still not too bad in my eyes), because the packets don't all travel well-specified mix paths but take shortcuts. To put it more clearly: A network has "perfect anonymity" if any peer in that network can send and receive (variants: a - send only; b - receive only) packets without the contents of the packets being associated with its IP address by the adversary, and it has "high anonymity" if it has perfect anonymity in every transaction with high probability. Then I suspect that no matter what (existing) adversary model you pick, plugging a good mix network into your design on the transport layer gives you the highest anonymity possible. (And at a very good price, too: You can throw more resources at other design requirements, you get more mature anonymity technology, and you can profit from improvements in the field without changing your design at all.) Of course I'd need to define "good mix network" now. But perhaps somebody can already counter or confirm this as is? -matthias _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers at zgp.org http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers _______________________________________________ Here is a web page listing P2P Conferences: http://www.neurogrid.net/twiki/bin/view/Main/PeerToPeerConferences ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 8 02:16:03 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 11:16:03 +0100 Subject: [p2p-hackers] MixMinion vs. onion routing & GNUnet question (fwd from fis@wiwi.hu-berlin.de) Message-ID: <20041108101603.GE1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from fis at wiwi.hu-berlin.de ----- From ben at algroup.co.uk Mon Nov 8 03:50:28 2004 From: ben at algroup.co.uk (Ben Laurie) Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 11:50:28 +0000 Subject: Your source code, for sale In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <418F5D84.5060100@algroup.co.uk> Tyler Durden wrote: > >> What if I block the outbound "release the money" message after I >> unbundle the images. Sure, I've already committed my money, but you >> can't get to it. In effect I've just ripped you off, because I have >> usable product and you don't have usable money. > > > Well, yes, but this would be a very significant step forward from the > current situation. As t-->infinity the vast majority of non-payments are > going to be for the purpose of greed. If the payment is already 'gone', > then you need a whole different set of motives for wanting to screw > somebody even if you get nothing out of it. So in other words, you have > at least solved the payment problem "to the first order", with no 3rd > party. With fancier mechanisms I would think you can solve it to 2nd > order too. How do you make the payment already "gone" without using a third party? From psilo at spunge.org Sun Nov 7 16:50:51 2004 From: psilo at spunge.org (Ben) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 11:50:51 +1100 Subject: [Full-Disclosure] Blackbox: Elections fraud in 2004 In-Reply-To: <20041107160555.Q67091@ubzr.zsa.bet> Message-ID: <200411080050.iA80oqCn022939@sys-s02.qmnsw> See also. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm > -----Original Message----- > From: J.A. Terranson [mailto:measl at mfn.org] > Sent: Monday, 8 November 2004 9:09 AM > To: antisocial at mfn.org > Cc: full-disclosure at lists.netsys.com; cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net > Subject: [Full-Disclosure] Blackbox: Elections fraud in 2004 > > > http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ > > BREAKING -- SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: Freedom of Information requests at > http://www.blackboxvoting.org have unearthed two Ciber certification > reports indicating that security and tamperability was NOT TESTED and that > several state elections directors, a secretary of state, and computer > consultant Dr. Britain Williams signed off on the report anyway, > certifying it. > > Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 > election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard > evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside > information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic > voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We > are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red > flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in > the most massive Freedom of Information action in history. > > ----------------------------------------------- > > SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: We.re awaiting independent analysis on some pretty > crooked-looking elections. In the mean time, here.s something to chew on. > > Your local elections officials trusted a group called NASED -- the > National Association of State Election Directors -- to certify that your > voting system is safe. > > This trust was breached. > > NASED certified the systems based on the recommendation of an .Independent > Testing Authority. (ITA). > > What no one told local officials was that the ITA did not test for > security (and NASED didn.t seem to mind). > > The ITA reports are considered so secret that even the California > Secretary of State.s office had trouble getting its hands on one. The ITA > refused to answer any questions about what it does. Imagine our surprise > when, due to Freedom of Information requests, a couple of them showed up > in our mailbox. > > The most important test on the ITA report is called the .penetration > analysis.. This test is supposed to tell us whether anyone can break into > the system to tamper with the votes. > > .Not applicable,. wrote Shawn Southworth, of Ciber Labs, the ITA that > tested the Diebold GEMS central tabulator software. .Did not test.. > > Shawn Southworth .tested. whether every candidate on the ballot has a > name. But we were shocked to find out that, when asked the most important > question -- about vulnerable entry points -- Southworth.s report says .not > reviewed.. > > Ciber .tested.whether the manual gives a description of the voting > system. But when asked to identify methods of attack (which we think the > American voter would consider pretty important), the top-secret report > says .not applicable.. > > Ciber .tested. whether ballots comply with local regulations, but when Bev > Harris asked Shawn Southworth what he thinks about Diebold tabulators > accepting large numbers of .minus. votes, he said he didn.t mention that > in his report because .the vendors don.t like him to put anything > negative. in his report. After all, he said, he is paid by the vendors. > > Shawn Southworth didn.t do the penetration analysis, but check out what he > wrote: > > .Ciber recommends to the NASED committee that GEMS software version > 1.18.15 be certified and assigned NASED certification number > N03060011815.. > > Was this just a one-time oversight? > > Nope. It appears to be more like a habit. Here is the same Ciber > certification section for VoteHere; as you can see, the critical security > test, the .penetration analysis. was again marked .not applicable. and was > not done. > > Maybe another ITA did the penetration analysis? > > Apparently not. We discovered an even more bizarre Wyle Laboratories > report. In it, the lab admits the Sequoia voting system has problems, but > says that since they were not corrected earlier, Sequoia could continue > with the same flaws. At one point the Wyle report omits its testing > altogether, hoping the vendor will do the test. > > Computer Guys: Be your own ITA certifier. > > Here is a copy of the full Ciber report (part 1, 2, 3, 4) on GEMS 1.18.15. > Here is a zip file download for the GEMS 1.18.15 program. Here is a real > live Diebold vote database. Compare your findings against the official > testing lab and see if you agree with what Ciber says. E-mail us your > findings. > > TIPS: The password for the vote database is .password. and you should > place it in the .LocalDB. directory in the GEMS folder, which you.ll find > in .program files.. > > Who the heck is NASED? > > They are the people who certified this stuff. > > You.ve gotta ask yourself: Are they nuts? Some of them are computer > experts. Well, it seems that several of these people suddenly want to > retire, and the whole NASED voting systems board is becoming somewhat > defunct, but these are the people responsible for today's shoddy voting > systems. > > If the security of the U.S. electoral system depends on you to certify a > voting system, and you get a report that plainly states that security was > .not tested. and .not applicable. -- what would you do? > > Perhaps we should ask them. Go ahead. Let's hold them accountable for the > election we just had. (Please, e-mail us their answers) They don't make it > very easy to get their e-mail and fax information; when you find it, let > us know and we'll post it here. > > NASED VOTING SYSTEMS/ITA ACCREDITATION BOARD > > Thomas R. Wilkey, Executive Director, New York State Board of Elections > > David Elliott, (former) Asst. Director of Elections, Washington State > > James Hendrix, Executive Director, State Election Commission, South > Carolina > > Denise Lamb, Director, State Bureau of Elections, New Mexico > > Sandy Steinbach, Director of Elections, Iowa > > Donetta Davidson, Secretary of State, Colorado > > Connie Schmidt, Commissioner, Johnson County Election Commission, Kansas > > (the late) Robert Naegele, President Granite Creek Technology, Pacific > Grove, California > > Brit Williams, Professor, CSIS Dept, Kennesaw State College, Georgia > > Paul Craft, Computer Audit Analyst, Florida State Division of Elections > Florida > > Steve Freeman, Software Consultant, League City, Texas > > Jay W. Nispel, Senior Principal Engineer, Computer Sciences Corporation > Annapolis Junction, Maryland > > Yvonne Smith (Member Emeritus), Former Assistant to the Executive Director > Illinois State Board of Elections, Illinois > > Penelope Bonsall, Director, Office of Election Administration, Federal > Election Commission, Washington, D.C. > > Committee Secretariat: The Election Center, R. Doug Lewis, Executive > Director Houston, Texas, Tele: 281-293-0101 > > # # # # # > > THURSDAY Nov. 4 2004: If you are concerned about what happened Tuesday, > Nov. 2, you have found a home with our organization. Help America Audit. > > Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 > election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard > evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside > information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic > voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We > are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red > flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in > the most massive Freedom of Information action in history. > > We need: Lawyers to enforce public records laws. Some counties have > already notified us that they plan to stonewall by delaying delivery of > the records. We need citizen volunteers for a number of specific actions. > We need computer security professionals willing to GO PUBLIC with formal > opinions on the evidence we provide, whether or not it involves DMCA > complications. We need funds to pay for copies of the evidence. > > TUESDAY Nov 2 2004: BREAKING NEWS: New information indicates that hackers > may have targeted the central computers that are counting our votes. > > Freedom of Information requests are not free. We need to raise $50,000 as > quickly as possible to pay for records and the fees some states charge for > them. We launched one major FOIA action last night, and have two more on > the way, pell-mell. Now is the time. If you can't donate funds, please > donate time. E-mail to join the Cleanup Crew. > > Important: Watch this 30-minute film clip > Voting without auditing. (Are we insane?) > > SEATTLE, WASHINGTON Nov 3 2004 -- Did the voting machines trump exit > polls? There.s a way to find out. > > Black Box Voting (.ORG) is conducting the largest Freedom of Information > action in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed > the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain > internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties > and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to > perform even the most rudimentary audit. > > America: We have permission to say No to unaudited voting. It is our > right. > > Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting > systems -- optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal records > request for internal audit logs, polling place results slips, modem > transmission logs, and computer trouble slips. > > An earlier FOIA is more sensitive, and has not been disclosed here. We > will notify you as soon as we can go public with it. > > Such a request filed in King County, Washington on Sept. 15, following the > primary election six weeks ago, uncovered an internal audit log containing > a three-hour deletion on election night; .trouble slips. revealing > suspicious modem activity; and profound problems with security, including > accidental disclosure of critically sensitive remote access information to > poll workers, office personnel, and even, in a shocking blunder, to Black > Box Voting activists. > > Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer protection group for > elections. You may view the first volley of public records requests here: > Freedom of Information requests here > > Responses from public officials will be posted in the forum, is organized > by state and county, so that any news organization or citizens group has > access to the information. Black Box Voting will assist in analysis, by > providing expertise in evaluating the records. Watch for the records > online; Black Box Voting will be posting the results as they come in. And > by the way, these are not free. The more donations we get, the more FOIAs > we are empowered to do. Time's a'wasting. > > We look forward to seeing you participate in this process. Join us in > evaluating the previously undisclosed inside information about how our > voting system works. > > Play a part in reclaiming transparency. It.s the only way. > > # # # # # > > Public Records Request - November 2, 2004 > From: Black Box Voting > To: Elections division > > Pursuant to public records law and the spirit of fair, trustworthy, > transparent elections, we request the following documents. > > We are requesting these as a nonprofit, noncommercial group acting in the > capacity of a news and consumer interest organization, and ask that if > possible, the fees be waived for this request. If this is not possible, > please let us know which records will be provided and the cost. Please > provide records in electronic form, by e-mail, if possible - > crew at blackboxvoting.org. > > We realize you are very, very busy with the elections canvass. To the > extent possible, we do ask that you expedite this request, since we are > conducting consumer audits and time is of the essence. > > We request the following records. > > Item 1. All notes, emails, memos, and other communications pertaining to > any and all problems experienced with the voting system, ballots, voter > registration, or any component of your elections process, beginning > October 12, through November 3, 2004. > > Item 2. Copies of the results slips from all polling places for the Nov. > 2, 2004 election. If you have more than one copy, we would like the copy > that is signed by your poll workers and/or election judges. > > Item 3: The internal audit log for each of your Unity, GEMS, WinEds, Hart > Intercivic or other central tabulating machine. Because different > manufacturers call this program by different names, for purposes of > clarification we mean the programs that tally the composite of votes from > all locations. > > Item 4: If you are in the special category of having Diebold equipment, or > the VTS or GEMS tabulator, we request the following additional audit logs: > > a. The transmission logs for all votes, whether sent by modem or uploaded > directly. You will find these logs in the GEMS menu under .Accuvote OS > Server. and/or .Accuvote TS Server. > > b. The .audit log. referred to in Item 3 for Diebold is found in the GEMS > menu and is called .Audit Log. > > c. All .Poster logs.. These can be found in the GEMS menu under .poster. > and also in the GEMS directory under Program Files, GEMS, Data, as a text > file. Simply print this out and provide it. > > d. Also in the Data file directory under Program Files, GEMS, Data, please > provide any and all logs titled .CCLog,. .PosterLog., and Pserver Log, and > any logs found within the .Download,. .Log,. .Poster. or .Results. > directories. > > e. We are also requesting the Election Night Statement of Votes Cast, as > of the time you stopped uploading polling place memory cards for Nov. 2, > 2004 election. > > Item 5: We are requesting every iteration of every interim results report, > from the time the polls close until 5 p.m. November 3. > > Item 6: If you are in the special category of counties who have modems > attached, whether or not they were used and whether or not they were > turned on, we are requesting the following: > > a. internal logs showing transmission times from each voting machine used > in a polling place > > b. The Windows Event Viewer log. You will find this in administrative > tools, Event Viewer, and within that, print a copy of each log beginning > October 12, 2004 through Nov. 3, 2004. > > Item 7: All e-mails, letters, notes, and other correspondence between any > employee of your elections division and any other person, pertaining to > your voting system, any anomalies or problems with any component of the > voting system, any written communications with vendors for any component > of your voting system, and any records pertaining to upgrades, > improvements, performance enhancement or any other changes to your voting > system, between Oct. 12, 2004 and Nov. 3, 2004. > > Item 8: So that we may efficiently clarify any questions pertaining to > your specific county, please provide letterhead for the most recent > non-confidential correspondence between your office and your county > counsel, or, in lieu of this, just e-mail us the contact information for > your county counsel. > > Because time is of the essence, if you cannot provide all items, please > provide them in increments as soon as you have them, and please notify us > by telephone (206-335-7747) or email (Bevharrismail at aol.com) as soon as > you have any portion of the above public records request available for > review. > > Thank you very much, and here.s hoping for a smooth and simple canvass > which works out perfectly for you. We very, very much appreciate your help > with this, and we do realize how stressful this election has been. > > If you need a local address, please let me know, and we will provide a > local member for this public records request. In the interest of keeping > your life simple, we thought it best to coordinate all records through one > entity so that you don.t get multiple local requests. > > # # # # # > > We now have evidence that certainly looks like altering a computerized > voting system during a real election, and it happened just six weeks ago. > > MONDAY Nov 1 2004: New information indicates that hackers may be targeting > the central computers counting our votes tomorrow. All county elections > officials who use modems to transfer votes from polling places to the > central vote-counting server should disconnect the modems now. > > There is no down side to removing the modems. Simply drive the vote > cartridges from each polling place in to the central vote-counting > location by car, instead of transmitting by modem. .Turning off. the > modems may not be sufficient. Disconnect the central vote counting server > from all modems, INCLUDING PHONE LINES, not just Internet. > > In a very large county, this will add at most one hour to the > vote-counting time, while offering significant protection from outside > intrusion. > > It appears that such an attack may already have taken place, in a primary > election 6 weeks ago in King County, Washington -- a large jurisdiction > with over one million registered voters. Documents, including internal > audit logs for the central vote-counting computer, along with modem > .trouble slips. consistent with hacker activity, show that the system may > have been hacked on Sept. 14, 2004. Three hours is now missing from the > vote-counting computer's "audit log," an automatically generated record, > similar to the black box in an airplane, which registers certain kinds of > events. > > COMPUTER FOLKS: > > Here are the details about remote access vulnerability through the modem > connecting polling place voting machines with the central vote-counting > server in each county elections office. This applies specifically to all > Diebold systems (1,000 counties and townships), and may also apply to > other vendors. The prudent course of action is to disconnect all modems, > since the downside is small and the danger is significant. > > The central servers are installed on unpatched, open Windows computers and > use RAS (Remote Access Server) to connect to the voting machines through > telephone lines. Since RAS is not adequately protected, anyone in the > world, even terrorists, who can figure out the server's phone number can > change vote totals without being detected by observers. > > The passwords in many locations are easily guessed, and the access phone > numbers can be learned through social engineering or war dialing. > > ELECTION OFFICIALS: The only way to protect tomorrow's election from this > type of attack is to disconnect the servers from the modems now. Under > some configurations, attacks by remote access are possible even if the > modem appears to be turned off. The modem lines should be physically > disconnected. > > We obtained these documents through a public records request. The video > was taken at a press conference held by the King County elections chief > Friday Oct 29. > > The audit log is a computer-generated automatic record similar to the > "black box" in an airplane, that automatically records access to the > Diebold GEMS central tabulator (unless, of course, you go into it in the > clandestine way we demonstrated on September 22 in Washington DC at the > National Press club.) > > The central tabulator audit log is an FEC-required security feature. The > kinds of things it detects are the kinds of things you might see if > someone was tampering with the votes: Opening the vote file, previewing > and/or printing interim results, altering candidate definitions (a method > that can be used to flip votes). > > Three hours is missing altogether from the Sept. 14 Washington State > primary held six weeks ago. > > Here is a copy of the GEMS audit log. > > Note that all entries from 9:52 p.m. until 1:31 a.m. are missing. > > One report that GEMS automatically puts in the audit log is the "summary > report." This is the interim results report. We obtained the actual Sept. > 14 summary reports, printed directly from the King County tabulator GEMS > program, because we went there and watched on election night and collected > these reports. These reports were also collected by party observers, > candidates, and were on the Web site for King County. > > Here are summary reports which are now missing from the audit log. > > Note the time and date stamps on the reports. Note also that they are > signed by Dean Logan, King County elections chief. We have the original > reports signed in ink on election night. > > What does all this mean? > > We know that summary reports show up in the audit log. > > There are other audit logs, like the one that tracks modem transmissions, > but this audit log tracks summary reports. > > Dean Logan held a press conference Friday morning, Oct. 29. Kathleen > Wynne, a citizen investigator for Black Box Voting, attended the press > conference and asked Dean Logan why three hours are missing from the audit > log. > > Here is a video clip > > Logan said the empty three hours is because no reports were printed. OK. > But we have summary reports from 10:34 p.m., 11:38 p.m., 12:11 a.m., 12:46 > a.m., and 1:33 p.m. These reports were during the time he said no reports > were run. Either the software malfunctioned, or audit log items were > deleted. Because remote access through the modems is possible, the system > may have been hacked, audit log deleted, without Logan realizing it. > > Perhaps there are two of this particular kind of audit log? Perhaps this > is an incomplete one? > > Bev Harris called King County elections office records employee Mary Stoa, > asking if perhaps there are any other audit logs at all. Mary Stoa called > back, reporting that according to Bill Huennikens of King County > elections, the audit log supplied to us in our public records request is > the only one and the comprehensive and complete one. > > Perhaps it is a computer glitch? > > The audit log is 168 pages long and spans 120 days, and the 3 hours just > happen to be missing during the most critical three hours on election > night. > > Diebold says altering the audit log cannot be done. Of course, we know a > chimpanzee can't get into an elections office and play with the computer, > but to demonstrate how easy it is to delete audit log entries, we taught a > chimpanzee to delete audit records using an illicit "back door" to get > into the program, Diebold told reporters it was a "magic show." Yet, > Diebold's own internal memos show they have known the audit log could be > altered since 2001! > > Here is a Diebold memo from October 2001, titled "Altering the audit log," > written by Diebold principal engineer Ken Clark: > > "King County is famous for it" [altering the audit log] > > Here is Dean Logan, telling a Channel 5 King-TV News reporter that there > were no unexpected problems with the Diebold programs. This was at the > "MBOS" central ballot counting facility in King County in the wee hours of > Sept. 15, on Election Night. > > Dean Logan on Election Night, Sept 14 2004 > > Note that he says there were no problems with modem transmission. > > When we obtained the trouble slips, in a public records request -- > documentation that indeed the modems were not working fine, we were > accidentally given the access phone number for King County. > > Were we so inclined, if we had simply kept this under our hat, we could > take control of your central server on election night from our living > room. > > Here are the trouble slips showing problems with modems. Note that King > County generously provided us with the "secret" information needed to hack > in by remote access. We did redact the specific information that gives > this information to you. > > Here are more trouble tickets. One that is a concern: "OK to format memory > card?" (This would wipe out the votes in the electronic ballot box.) > > Election officials: Disconnect those modems NOW. If you don't: You gotta > be replaced. > Reporters: Some election officials will lie to you. Show your kids what > bravery looks like. Be courageous. Report the truth. > Citizens: Please help us by joining the Cleanup Crew. For now, e-mail > crew at blackboxvoting.org to join, since our signup form has been taken out. > Candidates: Make a statement. Do not concede on Election Night. Wait until > audits and records can be examined. > > # # # # # > > HOW TO MONITOR THE CENTRAL TABULATOR: Black Box Voting developed these > guidelines to help you create an audit log, which can then be compared > with the FEC-required computer-generated audit log inside the computer. > > Yes, this is a lot of stuff, and it might feel overwhelming, but whatever > you can do -- it is very much appreciated. > > THINGS TO BRING WITH YOU > - A notebook and pen. Preferably a notebook with a sewn binding, if you > can find one. Do not take notes on a computer. > - A cell phone > - Binoculars > If you can, also bring these: > - A camera > - A small tape recorder > - A video camera, with a zoom lens if possible > > Note that some counties will require you to turn off your video camera > during the entering of passwords, a valid request. You should, however, be > able to videotape the rest. Don.t pull your camera out right away. Avoid > confrontation by leaving your video camera in the bag -- better yet, a > purse. Pull it out only when there is an event of significance. > > HUMAN FACTORS > > You can.t be effective if you make assumptions or let others intimidate > you. > - Don.t let others make you feel dumb. > - Make no assumptions about security. It might be worse than you expect. > - Don.t count on the accuracy of anything other people tell you, even if > they work for the county or the vendor. > - About party observers, techies, or lawyers: Remember that they have not > examined the actual software or setup, and they are operating on > assumptions, hearsay, or in some cases, may be trying to misdirect your > attention. > - Vendor contracts prohibit county officials from examining their own > software. Elections officials may just be repeating what someone else (the > vendor) has told them. > > YOUR ROLE AS AN OBSERVER: CREATE YOUR OWN AUDIT LOG so it can be compared > to the real audit log. > > Write down the following. For every event, write the date, time, including > minutes. > > 1. NAMES & AFFILIATIONS: Get the names of everyone there. Find out > affiliation. > > 2. WHERE ARE THE COMPUTERS: Establish the number and location of all vote > tabulation computers. They call them different things: tabulators, > servers. What you want is the computer that adds up all the votes from > everywhere in the county. > - Some counties have only one. If there are more than one, find out where > each one is. If there is more than one tabulator, ask if they are > networked together and find out if any of them are in places you can.t > observe. > > 3. SYNCHRONIZE YOUR WATCH with the central vote-tally computer. Ask > officials to tell you the time on the computer. If more than one, ask for > the time of each and the ID number of each. > > log the date and time, to the minute, in this format: > Nov 02 2004 11:25 p.m. > Nov. 03 2004 01:15 a.m. > > CREATE A LOG FOR THE FOLLOWING: > > People: Ask names and affiliations for, and log the START and STOP time > for: > > a. Who accesses the terminal (the keyboard and screen) > b. Who sits at the terminal > c. Who accesses the server (the computer the screen is hooked up to) > d. Who enters and leaves the room > > COMPUTER ACTIVITIES: Log the START and STOP time for the following events > and write down the name of the person involved: > > a. Putting disks, CDs, or any other item in the computer > b. Taking disks, CDs, or any other item out of the computer > c. Uploading disks, CDs, or any other item > d. Viewing a preview of a report > e. Putting a report on the Web, even if this is done from another computer > f. Printing a report > g. NOTE WHAT.S ON THE SCREEN: Use binoculars to view the screen. > - Note upload icons. > - Use binoculars to read and record error messages. Note the time. > - Note indicators of processes, when a status bar shows how much is left > to do > > h. PROGRAM CRASHES: > - Watch to see if the program suddenly disappears from the screen (a > program crash) or any system error message appears. If so, note the time > and other details, and see below for how to record system crashes. > - Get the date and time and note who was at the computer > - Note whether any results were being transmitted or uploaded at the time > the crash occurred. > - Did the crash take down the whole computer or did it just close the > tabulator program unexpectedly. > - Log all activities and conversations that occur just after the crash. If > have a tape recorder, leave it in your purse, now is the time to turn it > on. But keep making notes regardless of whether you have tape, and trust > your gut. What you think might be important is probably important. > > WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING YOU CAN FIND OUT ABOUT MODEMS. > > i. Note when, where, and who feeds ballot data into the computer in the > central office. Describe what they are feeding the cards into, where the > items are located, who does it, and when. > > j. DISK MANAGEMENT: > > - Note what kind of data storage device is used to move data around. You > are looking for floppy disks, CDs, USB keys (about the size of a pack of > gum). > - Note where they get the disk from originally (whether it was from the > machine, meaning it could have a program or data on it already, or out of > a package of new disks). > - Track the chain of custody: Where it is taken, and have someone watch it > when taken to any other machine, note what programs you can see on the > other machine > - Note whether (and what time) it comes back and if it is put into the > machine again. > k. Moving the results: They have to move the results somehow. Ask > questions about their procedures. > - Is someone coming and going every hour or so with paper results? > - Are they moving results to the Internet with a floppy or CD or USB key > (looks like a little piece of plastic, about the size of a piece of gum) > - If no one is leaving the machine to post the results, chances are they > are doing this at the computer, meaning they are probably hooked up to a > network or the Internet. Ask questions about the details and record what > they say, and the name of the person who says it. > l. If you see somebody open a web page or they do something that lets you > know there has been Internet access, write it down. > > m. BEHAVIORAL CUES: > > - Note whether people look worried or stressed. Log the time it begins and > the time it ends and who they are. > - A now a word about .wranglers.. Some elections offices appoint a person > -- sometimes a party observer they are chummy with -- to act as > .wranglers.. They identify any person who might ask troublesome questions, > and if an event occurs that could cause embarrassment, the appointed > wrangler then goes over to distract the observers. Really. This is an > elections procedure in some jurisdictions. They actually call it a > wrangler. > - If someone comes over and engages you in conversation, look around, and > see if officials have suddenly congregated into an office or people are > huddling over a computer. See if you can find out what you are not > supposed to see. > - Log behavior that is distracting, noting the time and person. > - Log time and people involved in other distraction events, for example: > The lights suddenly go out; a fire alarm goes off; someone spills > something, loud noises, someone knocks something over. > > RECORDS TO REQUEST: > > Each state has a public records act, but in most cases, you can get > records you ask for if you are nice. Here are important records you.ll > want: > > 1. Get a copy of each INTERIM RESULTS REPORT. Stand guard over what you > have. If someone comes in to remove or .replace one with a better copy. > hang onto the first and take the replacement, marking it. Make sure all > interim reports are time-stamped by the computer. If they aren.t, note the > exact time you see them appear. > > 2. Request the COMPUTER AUDIT LOG for Oct. 29-Nov 2 (actually, it is > important to get the printout BEFORE YOU LEAVE that night. It will only be > a few pages, and can be printed from the vote-tally program.s menu. > > 3. Ask for a copy of all the POLLING PLACE RESULTS SLIPS. These are sent > in with the results cartridges. Try to get copies before you leave that > night. If they won.t give copies to you then, put in a public records > request and ask how soon you can pick them up. > > 4. Ask for a copy of THE UPLOAD LOGS. These are on the computer and can be > printed out on election night. They list each polling place and the time > results were uploaded. > > 5. There are ADDITIONAL LOGS in the Diebold GEMS programs you can request: > From the GEMS folder .data., ask for the poster logs. There may be folders > in the GEMS .data. directory titled .download., .log., .poster. and > .results.. Ask for copies of these logs. > > 6. Here.s a report that is very long but incredibly important and > valuable. Ask if you can have the ELECTION NIGHT DETAIL REPORT -- the > precinct by precinct results as of the time all memory cards are uploaded > from all precincts. Depending on the system, they.ll call it different > things -- in Diebold, it is called the Statement of Votes Cast (SOVC) > report. > > 7. Let us know which REPORTS THEY REFUSE to give you on Election Night. We > can then put in Freedom of Information (public records) requests formally. > > Once we have your observation log, and the records you obtain on Election > Night, we can start matching up events and data to audit for anomalies. > > # # # # # > > Post information in the county and state at BlackBoxVoting.ORG. If the > site is hacked out, come back as soon as it is up and post the > information. > > Thank you, and let.s have an orderly election. > > # # # # # > > Now, there is a film crew who has been brave enough to capture what's > really going on: > > THIS IS THE ONE: Here's the film that's breaking new ground on voting > machine investigations. Includes never before seen footage and > information: > > download 30 minute preview of the upcoming feature film. > > NOTE: Please give your attention to the real film by the real > investigators: Russell Michaels, Simon Ardizzone, and Robert Carrillo > Cohen -- they are the real deal. (Someone who ran off with a portion of > the proprietary footage has been pitching a similarly named, inferior > production which is missing most of the good stuff.) By the way, we've > worked with most of the documentary producers out there, and Russell > Michaels, Simon Ardizzone and Robert Carrillo Cohen are in a class by > themselves -- In my opinion, they are the only filmmakers who have been > doing real, in-depth, long-term in-the-field investigations on this issue > -- Bev Harris. > > Remember: > > - Don't concede: Candidates, make a statement about voting without > auditing. Hold off on your concession until the canvass is done > - Gotta be replaced: If your county melts down into litigation, hold > officials accountable if they chose to ignore warnings and failed to > mitigate risks with preventive actions (like disconnecting telephone > modems). > > Note that most voting machine problems will be found between Nov. 3-12, > during the canvass, and a few weeks later, when public records requests > are obtained. > > _______________________________________________ > Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. > Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html From Euseval at aol.com Mon Nov 8 09:50:23 2004 From: Euseval at aol.com (Euseval at aol.com) Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 12:50:23 -0500 Subject: [p2p-hackers] Re: anon-layer comparison Message-ID: jetiants http://www.jetiants.tk Gnu-net http://www.ovmj.org/GNUnet/ I2p http://www.i2p.net/ Tor http://freehaven.net/tor/ These may be naive questions (I don't know GNUnet too well), but > hopefully I am about to learn something: GNUnet tries to achieve at > least three goals at the same time that are not perfectly understood > and should rather be treated individually: > > - anonymity > - censor resistance > - high-performance document distribution Performance is a secondary goal to the first 2 in GNUnet. The first 2 are related so I'm not sure how or why they need to be treated separately. > Also, don't the shortcomings of mix networks also apply to Freenet- / > GNUnet-style anonymization schemes? > I suspect that no matter what (existing) adversary > model you pick, plugging a good mix network into your design on the > transport layer gives you the highest anonymity possible. I don't know how GNUnet's architecture compares to mix networks. I *do* know that GNUnet attempts to protect against traffic analysis. If you think mix networks are better, they better have good protection against traffic analysis. Can you point us to any good URLs or papers on how mix networks protect against traffic analysis? Chris _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers at zgp.org http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers _______________________________________________ Here is a web page listing P2P Conferences: http://www.neurogrid.net/twiki/bin/view/Main/PeerToPeerConferences ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Mon Nov 8 12:27:30 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 15:27:30 -0500 Subject: Your source code, for sale Message-ID: Well, I guess once you need a 3rd party for the e$, it's only going to make sense that the issuer offer a "value added" service like you're talking about. A 3rd party verifier is probably going to be too costly. But I'm not 100% convinced that you HAVE TO have a 3rd party verifier, but it's looking like that's what's going to make sense 99% of the time anyway. -TD >From: hal at finney.org ("Hal Finney") >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: Your source code, for sale >Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 10:51:24 -0800 (PST) > >Ben Laurie writes: > > How do you make the payment already "gone" without using a third party? > >Of course there has to be a third party in the form of the currency >issuer. If it is someone like e-gold, they could do as I suggested and >add a feature where the buyer could transfer funds irrevocably into >an escrow account which would be jointly controlled by the buyer and >the seller. This way the payment is already "gone" from the POV of the >buyer and if the seller completes the transaction, the buyer has less >incentive to cheat him. > >In the case of an ecash mint, a simple method would be for the seller to >give the buyer a proto-coin, that is, the value to be signed at the mint, >but in blinded form. The buyer could take this to the mint and pay to >get it signed. The resulting value is no good to the buyer because he >doesn't know the blinding factors, so from his POV the money (he paid >to get it signed) is already "gone". He can prove to the seller that >he did it by using the Guillou-Quisquater protocol to prove in ZK that >he knows the mint's signature on the value the seller gave him. > >The seller thereby knows that the buyer's costs are sunk, and so the >seller is motivated to complete the transaction. The buyer has nothing >to lose and might as well pay the seller by giving him the signed value >from the mint, which the seller can unblind and (provably, verifiably) >be able to deposit. > >Hal _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/ From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz Sun Nov 7 19:12:53 2004 From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 16:12:53 +1300 Subject: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down In-Reply-To: <418DB32F.8050804@echeque.com> Message-ID: "James A. Donald" writes: >I find this very hard to believe. Post links, or give citations. Normally I'd dig up various refs, but since this topic has been beaten to death repeatedly in places like soc.history.medieval, and the debate could well go on endlessly in the manner of the standard "What would have happened if the North/South had done X?", I'll just handwave and invite you to dig up whatever sources you feel like yourself. >>(There were other problems as well, e.g. the unusually high death toll and >> removal of "ancient aristocratic lineages" was caused by English >> commoners who weren't aware of the tradition of capturing opposing >> nobles and having them ransomed back, rather than hacking them to >> pieces on the spot. > >Wrong > >French nobles were taken prisoner in the usual fashion, but executed because >the English King commanded them executed. Nobles expected to surrender to other nobles and be ransomed. Commoners didn't respect this, and almost never took prisoners. Henry's orders didn't make that much difference, at best they were a "we'll turn a blind eye" notification to his troops. When you have English commoner men-at-arms (front row) meeting French nobles (front row, hoping to nab Henry and other for- ransom nobles, and to some extent because it was unseemly to let the commoners do the fighting, although they should have learned their lesson for that at Courtrai) there's going to be a bloodbath no matter what your leader orders. For the peasants it's "get him before he gets me", not a chivalric jousting match for the landed gentry. In addition the enemy nobles had weapons and armour that was worth something, while a ransom was useless to a non-noble (if Bob the Archer did manage to captured Sir Fromage, his lord would grab him, collect the ransom, and perhaps throw Bob a penny for his troubles). (There's a lot more to it than that, but I really don't want to get into an endless debate over this. Take it to soc.history if you must, and if anyone's still interested in debating this there). Peter. From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 8 07:39:43 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 16:39:43 +0100 Subject: [p2p-hackers] Anti-censorship Proxy Networks (without the HTML this time - sorry!) (fwd from paul@paulbaranowski.org) Message-ID: <20041108153943.GR1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Paul Baranowski ----- From chuckw at quantumlinux.com Mon Nov 8 18:13:36 2004 From: chuckw at quantumlinux.com (Chuck Wolber) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 18:13:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: Faith in democracy, not government In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 8 Nov 2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > At 9:41 AM -0800 11/8/04, Chuck Wolber wrote: > >*SIGH* Is it really so hard for people to remember that George W. Bush was > >born and educated in Massachusetts? > > Give me a child until the age of 7, &cet. 'er huh? > Which he spent in Midland, TX. > > Being the son of a family of West-Texans myself, he comes by his > "bidness" honestly, as far as I'm concerned. I think a little line noise crept in here somewhere. Care to clarify? -Chuck -- http://www.quantumlinux.com Quantum Linux Laboratories, LLC. ACCELERATING Business with Open Technology "The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." - FDR From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 8 09:45:57 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 18:45:57 +0100 Subject: [p2p-hackers] MixMinion vs. onion routing & GNUnet question (fwd from seberino@spawar.navy.mil) Message-ID: <20041108174557.GX1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from seberino at spawar.navy.mil ----- From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz Sun Nov 7 21:47:55 2004 From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 18:47:55 +1300 Subject: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down In-Reply-To: <418F00C3.5060600@echeque.com> Message-ID: "James A. Donald" writes: >Peter Gutmann wrote: >>Nobles expected to surrender to other nobles and be ransomed. >>Commoners didn't respect this, and almost never took prisoners. >>Henry's orders didn't make that much difference, at best they were a >>"we'll turn a blind eye" notification to his troops. > >The english army was well disciplined, and in battle did what it what it was >told. About half way through the battle of Agincourt, King Henry decided he >could not afford so many troops guarding so many prisoners, and told them >kill-em-all. Nobility had nothing to do with it. It did not matter who >took you prisoner. As I said in my previous message, this is the topic of endless debate, and in particular the high death toll among the nobles could arisen from any number of causes. For example at Crecy the French king (Philip the something'th) had the oriflamme (French war banner indicating that no prisoners could be taken) displayed because he was worried that the gold-rush for enemy nobles to ransom would screw up the French battle order, resulting in huge losses when the French ended up at the losing end. There's speculation that they did the same thing at Agincourt, because no French chronicler of the time raised even a murmur about the killings. So something like that could have been just as much the cause as any order given by Henry V to dispatch leftovers after the battle (for example the mass slaughter of the first and second lines ("battles") of French, bogged down in mud (the battle was fought in a rain- soaked freshly-ploughed field), by English commoners occurred very early in the battle, while the killing of stragglers under Henry's orders didn't happen until the following day, or the very end of the battle for prisoners). If you really want to continue this, please do it in soc.history medieval, there are already thousand-odd-message threads going over every nuance of this. Peter. From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 8 10:09:47 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 19:09:47 +0100 Subject: [p2p-hackers] Re: anon-layer comparison (fwd from Euseval@aol.com) Message-ID: <20041108180947.GY1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Euseval at aol.com ----- From chuckw at quantumlinux.com Mon Nov 8 19:11:04 2004 From: chuckw at quantumlinux.com (Chuck Wolber) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 19:11:04 -0800 (PST) Subject: Faith in democracy, not government In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 8 Nov 2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > At 6:13 PM -0800 11/8/04, Chuck Wolber wrote: > >> Give me a child until the age of 7, &cet. > > > >'er huh? > > Jesuit Maxim. Or Michael Apted film premise. Take your pick. Google is > your friend. "&cet" is an HTMl element, I ass-u-me-d that some HTML garbage was injected into your message. May I assume you meant "etc." ? In that case, yes, I'm familiar with the maxim you *meant* to say. > >> Which he spent in Midland, TX. > >> > >> Being the son of a family of West-Texans myself, he comes by his > >> "bidness" honestly, as far as I'm concerned. > > > >I think a little line noise crept in here somewhere. Care to clarify? > > Yes, and, apparently, by your inability to parse something that is a > rudimentary part of modern culture, you generated it. Or perhaps it's your lack of command of the modern QWERTY keyboard... -Chuck -- http://www.quantumlinux.com Quantum Linux Laboratories, LLC. ACCELERATING Business with Open Technology "The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." - FDR From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 16:12:48 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 19:12:48 -0500 Subject: Faith in democracy, not government In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 9:41 AM -0800 11/8/04, Chuck Wolber wrote: >*SIGH* Is it really so hard for people to remember that George W. Bush was >born and educated in Massachusetts? Give me a child until the age of 7, &cet. Which he spent in Midland, TX. Being the son of a family of West-Texans myself, he comes by his "bidness" honestly, as far as I'm concerned. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jya at pipeline.com Mon Nov 8 20:20:59 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 20:20:59 -0800 Subject: Faith in democracy, not government In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: West Texas is where kids learn to fuck jackrabbits by slitting their guts to fashion a pokehole. The jacks' death kicking of the cojones is what leaves an urge in them as adults to spread the practice to the state, the nation, the world, any place to hunt gash. You thought dove hunting is what drew visitors to the state. Heh. Think of the joy of hurling inseminated rabbit guts at depleted confreres. From mv at cdc.gov Mon Nov 8 20:38:38 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 20:38:38 -0800 Subject: CIA Comic Message-ID: <419049CE.24C2E6A3@cdc.gov> At 06:59 PM 11/7/04 -0800, John Young wrote: >Remember the CIA Comic from the late 90s? Told hilarious >inside the agency jokes that made everyone outside the >cocoon blanche and puke, sorry, Bob blew coke through >his nose. Cointelpro If you don't know what it was Then it's still happening Cointelpro http://www.covertcomic.com/CCSchool.htm From mv at cdc.gov Mon Nov 8 20:42:33 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 20:42:33 -0800 Subject: Collateral damage? Message-ID: <41904AB9.6BCACD9C@cdc.gov> >How does this change if I'm a child whose trust fund contains the stock? Or if I hold a >mutual fund I inherited with a little Exxon stock What part of "collateral damage" don't you understand? From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 18:35:43 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 21:35:43 -0500 Subject: Faith in democracy, not government In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 8:20 PM -0800 11/8/04, John Young wrote: >West Texas is where kids learn to fuck jackrabbits >by slitting their guts to fashion a pokehole. The jacks' >death kicking of the cojones is what leaves an urge in >them as adults to spread the practice to the state, the >nation, the world, any place to hunt gash. Spoken like someone with practice? Or maybe someone from *east* Texas? ;-) An here yew Yankees thawt all us texins are the say'm... Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 18:49:15 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 21:49:15 -0500 Subject: Faith in democracy, not government In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 6:13 PM -0800 11/8/04, Chuck Wolber wrote: >> Give me a child until the age of 7, &cet. > >'er huh? Jesuit Maxim. Or Michael Apted film premise. Take your pick. Google is your friend. >> Which he spent in Midland, TX. >> >> Being the son of a family of West-Texans myself, he comes by his >> "bidness" honestly, as far as I'm concerned. > >I think a little line noise crept in here somewhere. Care to clarify? Yes, and, apparently, by your inability to parse something that is a rudimentary part of modern culture, you generated it. ;-). Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 19:42:46 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 22:42:46 -0500 Subject: Kennedy School: Freedom, not wealth, squelches terrorist violence Message-ID: Nice to know Camelot High is good for *something*. Cheers, RAH ------- Harvard Gazette: Current Issue: November 04, 2004 Alberto Abadie: 'In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty, but ... when you look at the data, it's not there. This is true not only for events of international terrorism ... but ... also for the overall level of terrorism, both of domestic and of foreign origin.' (Staff photo Jon Chase/Harvard News Office) Freedom squelches terrorist violence KSG associate professor researches freedom-terrorism link By Alvin Powell Harvard News Office A John F. Kennedy School of Government researcher has cast doubt on the widely held belief that terrorism stems from poverty, finding instead that terrorist violence is related to a nation's level of political freedom. Associate Professor of Public Policy Alberto Abadie examined data on terrorism and variables such as wealth, political freedom, geography, and ethnic fractionalization for nations that have been targets of terrorist attacks. Abadie, whose work was published in the Kennedy School's Faculty Research Working Paper Series, included both acts of international and domestic terrorism in his analysis. Though after the 9/11 attacks most of the work in this area has focused on international terrorism, Abadie said terrorism originating within the country where the attacks occur actually makes up the bulk of terrorist acts each year. According to statistics from the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base for 2003, which Abadie cites in his analysis, there were 1,536 reports of domestic terrorism worldwide, compared with just 240 incidents of international terrorism. Before analyzing the data, Abadie believed it was a reasonable assumption that terrorism has its roots in poverty, especially since studies have linked civil war to economic factors. However, once the data was corrected for the influence of other factors studied, Abadie said he found no significant relationship between a nation's wealth and the level of terrorism it experiences. "In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty, but in fact when you look at the data, it's not there. This is true not only for events of international terrorism, as previous studies have shown, but perhaps more surprisingly also for the overall level of terrorism, both of domestic and of foreign origin," Abadie said. Instead, Abadie detected a peculiar relationship between the levels of political freedom a nation affords and the severity of terrorism. Though terrorism declined among nations with high levels of political freedom, it was the intermediate nations that seemed most vulnerable. Like those with much political freedom, nations at the other extreme - with tightly controlled autocratic governments - also experienced low levels of terrorism. Though his study didn't explore the reasons behind the trends he researched, Abadie said it could be that autocratic nations' tight control and repressive practices keep terrorist activities in check, while nations making the transition to more open, democratic governments - such as currently taking place in Iraq and Russia - may be politically unstable, which makes them more vulnerable. "When you go from an autocratic regime and make the transition to democracy, you may expect a temporary increase in terrorism," Abadie said. Abadie's study also found a strong connection in the data between terrorism and geographic factors, such as elevation or tropical weather. "Failure to eradicate terrorism in some areas of the world has often been attributed to geographic barriers, like mountainous terrain in Afghanistan or tropical jungle in Colombia. This study provides empirical evidence of the link between terrorism and geography," Abadie said. In Abadie's opinion, the connection between geography and terrorism is hardly surprising. "Areas of difficult access offer safe haven to terrorist groups, facilitate training, and provide funding through other illegal activities like the production and trafficking of cocaine and opiates," Abadie wrote in the paper. A native of Spain's Basque region, Abadie said he has long been interested in terrorism and related issues. His past research has explored the effect of terrorism on economic activity, using the Basque country as a case study. Abadie is turning his attention to the effect of terrorism on international capital flows. Some analysts have argued that terrorist attacks wouldn't have much of an impact on the economy, since unlike a war's widespread damage, the damage from terrorist attacks tends to be relatively small or confined to a small area. In an era of open international capital markets, however, Abadie said terrorism may have a greater chilling effect than previously thought, since even a low risk of damage from a terrorist attack may be enough to send investors looking elsewhere. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From justin-cypherpunks at soze.net Mon Nov 8 15:00:49 2004 From: justin-cypherpunks at soze.net (Justin) Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 23:00:49 +0000 Subject: The Values-Vote Myth In-Reply-To: <25961287.1099926581610.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> References: <25961287.1099926581610.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <20041108230049.GA20235@arion.soze.net> On 2004-11-08T10:09:41-0500, John Kelsey wrote: > Kerry spent essentially no time talking about the creepy implications > of the Jose Padilla case (isn't he still being held incommunicado, > pending filing in the right district?), or the US government's use of > torture in the war on terror despite treaties and the basic > obligations of civilized people not to do that crap. Padilla is still in the naval brig in SC, I suppose. The media seems to think he's still there, or at least thought so as of mid-September. They might be trying to do to him what they did to Hamdi, who's in Saudi Arabia as of a month ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaser_Hamdi#Release http://www.mail-archive.com/conlawprof at lists.ucla.edu/thrd2.html (search for Hamdi, there are 8-10 messages about it) I don't know if Padilla has dual citizenship, so there may not be another country that would take him. Apparent citizen-less individuals (mostly citizens of other countries who won't re-accept them when the U.S. tries to deport them) end up being incarcerated indefinitely by the INS. -- The old must give way to the new, falsehood must become exposed by truth, and truth, though fought, always in the end prevails. -- L. Ron Hubbard From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 8 21:17:49 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 00:17:49 -0500 Subject: Faith in democracy, not government In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 7:11 PM -0800 11/8/04, Chuck Wolber wrote: >"&cet" is an HTMl element Wrong again. Mere hyperlatinate British public school affectation, & = et, and, um, all that... At 7:11 PM -0800 11/8/04, Chuck Wolber wrote: >> Yes, and, apparently, by your inability to parse something that is a >> rudimentary part of modern culture, you generated it. > >Or perhaps it's your lack of command of the modern QWERTY keyboard... Nope. See above, and, again, thank you for playing. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 9 05:55:03 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 08:55:03 -0500 Subject: [osint] Leftist, Islamic terrorist lawyer cites need for violence Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text To: "Bruce Tefft" Thread-Index: AcTGW926BrmmPrOpQHC2HrbnSiYYSw== From: "Bruce Tefft" Mailing-List: list osint at yahoogroups.com; contact osint-owner at yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list osint at yahoogroups.com Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 07:58:54 -0500 Subject: [osint] Leftist, Islamic terrorist lawyer cites need for violence Reply-To: osint at yahoogroups.com http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35232-2004Nov8.html Lawyer Facing Terror Charge Cites Need for Violence By Michelle Garcia Special to The Washington Post Tuesday, November 9, 2004; Page A08 A New York lawyer facing charges of supporting terrorism told a federal jury that she viewed violence as essential to dismantling institutions that perpetuate "sexism and racism." As a federal prosecutor questioned her statements and support for a "people's revolution," Lynne Stewart, 65, testified that her lifelong philosophy included fighting "entrenched ferocious capitalism that is in this country today." Lynne Stewart emphasized that she does not support terrorism. "I believe that entrenched institutions will not be changed except by violence," Stewart said. "I believe in the politics that lead to violence being exerted by people on their own behalf to effectuate change." Stewart cited the American Revolution and the struggle to end slavery as such examples but emphasized that she did not support terrorism, saying, "I do not believe in civilian deaths or wanton massacres." Federal prosecutors presented Stewart's statements in an effort to show that Stewart sought to aid a militant group. If convicted, she could face a 40-year sentence. The case centers on her role in delivering a communique from her client, blind cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence after a jury convicted him in 1995 of seditious conspiracy in a plot to blow up New York bridges, tunnels and landmarks. That communication, expressing the sheik's disapproval of a cease-fire between the Islamic Group and the Egyptian government, is at the heart of the government's case. Prosecutors say that by conveying the message, Stewart violated her agreement to special prison rules that restricted the sheik's communication to the public and allowed him access to his followers in the Islamic Group, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Her attorney, Michael Tigar, objected to the prosecution's focus on her beliefs, saying "everyone of us is protected by the First Amendment." U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl said Stewart's view of violence was not "irrelevant" or "straying into an impermissible area." U.S. Attorney Andrew Dember methodically recounted the events that led up to Stewart reading a handwritten statement to a Reuters reporter. Dember pointed to excerpts from a transcript from taped conversations in which Stewart referred to Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney who prosecuted Rahman, as a "devil" and showed that Stewart viewed her relationship with the government as "adversarial." At times, Stewart sparred with Dember over terminology. She took issue with his suggestion that by signing an agreement to the prison rules she had agreed with their intent. She said she viewed it as necessary to gaining access to her client. When Dember showed the jury a copy of the agreement specifying restrictions over mail, she said she understood the term to mean envelopes delivered by the Postal Service. Dember asked Stewart to explain her motivation for continuing to visit Rahman in a Minnesota prison after he had exhausted his appeals. "I think that our legal system reacts differently to people who are paid attention to," she said. "I think the worst thing is the way it treats people who are nobody." ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-osint at yahoogroups.com. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor bisoldi at intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint at yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 9 06:16:26 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 09:16:26 -0500 Subject: Faith in democracy, not government In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 12:17 AM -0500 11/9/04, R.A. Hettinga wrote: >At 7:11 PM -0800 11/8/04, Chuck Wolber wrote: >>"&cet" is an HTMl element > >Wrong again. Mere hyperlatinate British public school affectation, & = et, >and, um, all that... It dawns on me that between Berners-Lee and Hallam-Baker, that the latter, above, had it's origin in the former? Nawwwww... Now *that's* noise... Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From justin-cypherpunks at soze.net Tue Nov 9 03:46:53 2004 From: justin-cypherpunks at soze.net (Justin) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 11:46:53 +0000 Subject: Collateral damage? In-Reply-To: <41904AB9.6BCACD9C@cdc.gov> References: <41904AB9.6BCACD9C@cdc.gov> Message-ID: <20041109114653.GA22981@arion.soze.net> On 2004-11-08T20:42:33-0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > > >How does this change if I'm a child whose trust fund contains the > >stock? Or if I hold a >mutual fund I inherited with a little Exxon > >stock > > What part of "collateral damage" don't you understand? Yep. When we shoot at people we think are terrorists and they turn out to be an innocent Iraqis, we're acting maliciously and we want to turn Iraq in to an American empire. When radial islamists attack us and hit U.S. citizens many of whose only connection to the government is voting biennially, it's collateral damage. -- The old must give way to the new, falsehood must become exposed by truth, and truth, though fought, always in the end prevails. -- L. Ron Hubbard From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 9 13:05:36 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 16:05:36 -0500 Subject: No mandate for e-voting, computer scientist says Message-ID: No mandate for e-voting, computer scientist says 11/09/04 By William Jackson, GCN Staff Despite wide use in last week's presidential election, direct-recording electronic voting still is a faulty method of casting ballots, one computer scientist says. "Paperless electronic-voting systems are completely unacceptable," said Dan Wallach, assistant professor of computer science at Rice University. Assurances about the machines' accuracy and reliability are not based on verifiable data, Wallach said today at the Computer Security Institute's annual conference in Washington. Wallach was one of a team of computer scientists who in 2003 examined source code for voting machines from Diebold Election Systems Inc. of North Canton, Ohio, and reported numerous security flaws. Cryptography implementation and access controls showed an "astonishingly naive design," he said. "As far as we know, these flaws are still there today." Diebold has defended its technology and said the computer scientists examined an outdated version of the code. Wallach countered that without access to current code for any voting machines, it's impossible to verify manufacturers' claims. The proprietary nature of the code and a lack of government standards for voting technology also make certification of the hardware and software meaningless, he said. The IT Association of America hailed the Nov. 2 election as a validation of direct-recording technology. But Wallach said sporadic problems with the systems have been reported, and a thorough analysis of Election Day procedures and results is under way. Plus, a paper ballot that can be recounted is essential to a reliable system, he said. "Probably the best voting system we have today is the optical scan system, with a precinct-based scanner," Wallach said. "It is very simple, it is accurate, and it is auditable." He suggested that a hybrid voting system that produces a verifiable paper ballot would be as reliable as optical systems and would offer convenience and accessibility for disabled voters. A number of states, including California and Nevada, have laws or legislation pending to require that voting machines produce paper ballots. Wallach said technical standards that demand transparent certification processes would go a long way toward increasing voting reliability. "I think the Common Criteria would be a good place to start," he said, referring to the set of internationally recognized standards for evaluating security technology, either against vendor claims or against a set of needs specified by a user. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 9 13:10:52 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 16:10:52 -0500 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks Message-ID: China's wealthy bypass the banks By Keith Bradsher The New York Times Wednesday, November 10, 2004 WENZHOU, China The Wenzhou "stir-fry" is not a dish you eat. But it is giving indigestion to Chinese regulators and could prove troublesome to many investors worldwide, from New York money managers, Pennsylvania steelworkers and Midwestern farmers to Australian miners. Here in this freewheeling city at the forefront of capitalism in China, the dish is prepared when a group of wealthy friends pool millions of dollars' worth of Chinese yuan and put them into a hot investment like Shanghai real estate, where they are stirred and flipped for a hefty profit. The friends often lend each other large amounts on the strength of a handshake and a handwritten IOU. Both sides then go to an automated teller machine or bank branch to transfer the money, which is then withdrawn from the bank. Or sometimes they do it the old-fashioned way: exchanging burlap sacks stuffed with cash. The worry for Chinese regulators is that everyone in China will start cooking the Wenzhou stir-fry and do it outside the banking system. In the last few months, borrowing and lending across the rest of China is looking more and more like what is taking place in Wenzhou. The growth of this shadow banking system poses a stiff challenge to China's state-owned banks, already burdened with bad debt, and makes it harder for the nation's leaders to steer a fast-growing economy. The problem starts with China's low interest rates. More and more families with savings have been snubbing 2 percent interest on bank deposits for the double-digit returns from lending large amounts on their own. They lend to real estate speculators or to small businesses without the political connections to obtain loans from the banks. Not only is the informal lending rate higher, but the income from that lending, because it is semilegal at best, is not taxed. For fear of shame, ostracism and the occasional threat from thugs, borrowers are more likely to pay back these loans than those from the big banks. Tao Dong, chief China economist at Credit Suisse First Boston, calculates that Chinese citizens withdrew $12 billion to $17 billion from their bank deposits in August and September. The outflow turned into a flood last month, reaching an estimated $120 billion, or more than 3 percent of all deposits at the country's financial institutions. If the bank withdrawals are not stemmed in the months ahead, Tao warned, "this potentially could be a huge risk for financial stability and even social stability." And with China now accounting for more than a quarter of the world's steel production and nearly a fifth of soybean production, as well as some of the largest initial public offerings of stock, any shaking of financial confidence here could ripple quickly through markets in the United States and elsewhere. For instance, if the steel girders now being lifted into place by hundreds of tower cranes in big cities across China are no longer needed, that would produce a worldwide glut of steel and push down prices. On Oct. 28, when China's central bank raised interest rates for one-year loans and deposits by a little more than a quarter of a percentage point, it cited a need to keep money in the banking system. Higher official rates should "reduce external cycling of credit funds," the bank said in a statement. Eswar Prasad, the chief of the China division of the International Monetary Fund, expressed concern about bank withdrawals in a speech in Hong Kong three days before the central bank acted. The main Chinese banks have fairly substantial reserves, but they need those reserves to cover huge write-offs of bad debts some day. The hub of informal lending in China is here in Wenzhou, 370 kilometers, or 230 miles, south of Shanghai. Some of China's first experiments with the free market began here in the late 1970s, and the result has been a flourishing economy together with sometimes questionable business dealings. Depending on how raw they like their capitalism, people elsewhere in China describe Wenzhou as either a center of financial innovation or a den of loan sharks. But increasingly, Wenzhou is also a microcosm of the kind of large-scale yet informal financial dealings now going on across the country. The withdrawals by depositors and the informal money lending has spread so swiftly here that it is only in Wenzhou that the Chinese central bank releases monthly statistics on average rates for direct loans between individuals or companies. The rate hovered at 1 percent a month for years until April, when the authorities began limiting the volume of bank loans. Borrowers default on nearly half the loans issued by the state-owned banks, but seldom do so here on money that is usually borrowed from relatives, neighbors or people in the same industry. Residents insist that the risk of ostracism for failing to repay a loan is penalty enough to ensure repayment of most loans. Although judges have ruled that handwritten IOUs are legally binding, creditors seldom go to court to collect. "If it is a really good friend, I would lose face if I sued them in court," said Tu Shangyun, the owner of a local copper smelter and a part-time "silver bearer," a broker who puts lenders and borrowers in touch with each other, "and if it weren't a good friend, I wouldn't lend the money in the first place." Violence is extremely rare, but the threat of it does exist as the ultimate guarantor that people make every effort to repay debts. "Someone can hire a killer who will chase you down, beat you up and maybe even kill you," said Ma Jinlong, who oversaw market-driven financial changes in the 1990s in Wenzhou as director of the municipal economic reform committee and is now an economics professor at Wenzhou University. An austerity policy was invoked, its goal to slow rapid economic growth in the hope of stopping a spiral in the inflation rate. With consumer prices rising at 5.2 percent a year despite price controls on many goods and services, and with less-regulated prices for goods traded between companies climbing nearly twice as fast, people lose buying power while their money is on deposit at a bank. The interest rate for informal loans jumped last spring to 1.2 percent a month, or 15.4 percent compounded over a year, and has stayed there ever since. According to the nation's central bank, total bank deposits in Wenzhou have been dropping by $250 million a month since April as companies and individuals withdraw money, either because they can no longer obtain bank loans for their investments or because they want to lend the money at higher rates to each other. For lenders, these interest rates are much more attractive than earning a meager 2.25 percent a year, even after the recent rate increase, on a deposit at a government-owned bank. And while Beijing assesses a 20 percent tax on all interest from bank deposits, nobody pays tax on the income they receive from lending money on their own, Ma said. Most informal loans have traditionally gone to relatives or neighbors to finance the starting of small local businesses. Wenzhou is now one of the world's largest producers of no-brand sunglasses; Dong Ganming, the owner of a 350-employee sunglasses factory here, said that his plant was just one of almost 1,000 here involved in making glasses. Fierce competition has prompted local residents to borrow money to exploit every possible niche in the industry, with some factories making nothing but bridges for sunglasses so that they will not slide down customers' noses, other factories making only the lenses, and so forth. Any government crackdown on informal loans would carry the risk of stifling highly efficient small and medium-size businesses that have little hope of obtaining loans from the state-owned banks, which still allocate credit based partly on political connections. Dong said that loans from friends and family allowed him to start his sunglasses company with 10 employees a decade ago; he quickly paid off the loans and has been reinvesting most of the profits ever since, putting very little into bank deposits. "The interest in the bank is very low," he said. "If you invest the money, you can get much more money." But more recently, residents here say, a lot of money has been flowing into real estate here and in other big cities, especially Shanghai, helping to fuel double-digit increases in interest rates. Deals increasingly involve people who have no family or neighborhood connection, raising the risk of disputes. Kellee Tsai, a specialist in Chinese informal banking at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, said that many overseas emigrants from Wenzhou had also been sending their savings back here to be lent at much higher rates than are available in the countries they have moved to. Some local investors have been able to pay for their investments with profits from businesses here, like Chen Shen, the owner of four shops that sell shoe-manufacturing equipment to the hundreds of shoe factories that have popped up in this area. She said she paid cash for an apartment near Shanghai's Bund, its riverfront district, that had appreciated as much as 60 percent in less than two years. Still, Chinese regulators do not like the practice, and officials have been trying to stamp out such operations with limited success. They have outlawed the practice of pooling savings into various kinds of informal banks that make loans for real estate and other investments: Organizers are subject to the death penalty but are rarely caught unless the informal banks collapse. Oriental Outlook, a Chinese current affairs magazine, reported late last month on the trial of a man accused of operating an illegal bank northeast of here that collapsed a year ago, leading to the filing of more than 200 civil lawsuits. Another man who lost money in the scheme and went bankrupt as a result assaulted the defendant outside the courtroom, the magazine said. The extent of such pooling is unclear. But it poses the greatest risks of damage to financial confidence if bank runs occur at these informal institutions, economists agree. Bank runs, with depositors lined up clamoring for their money back, have been an occasional problem around China for years, but are always quickly contained as the authorities rush to distribute as much cash as necessary. "The policy with bank runs, even with illegal banks in some cases, has been to flood the bank with liquidity and pay everyone off," said Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Beijing University, who criticized as ill advised the Chinese policy of bailing out even illegal banks. "One of the most salutary ways to let people know not to put money in these is to let two or three go bankrupt." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 9 16:01:41 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 19:01:41 -0500 Subject: A hard case resists a makeover for the new age Message-ID: The Philadelphia Inquirer Posted on Sun, Nov. 07, 2004 Center Square | A hard case resists a makeover for the new age By Chris Satullo Guantanamo Bay Nov. 7 My dear wife, They are letting me write one letter to let you know that I am alive. I am at the new Liberal Media Re-Education Camp here at Gitmo; I am not allowed to see a lawyer or make phone calls. They are afraid that if I talk to a lawyer, I'll pass a coded message to my old colleagues on the Editorial Board, telling them to oppose the flat tax or support Arlen for Judiciary Committee chairman or something. This letter will be censored, so I have to be careful. First thing: I am OK. I am not harmed. There has been no torture. Yet. We're not in those steel cages in the sun or anything. It's a simple barracks, Spartan but not filthy. We get three squares a day, though the fare isn't doing much for my South Beach diet. It's all takeout from Cracker Barrel, Hardees, Bojangles. They say we've got to learn to eat like real Americans. You must have been worried sick. I don't know what they told you, but here's what happened: Wednesday afternoon, the gang and I were on our way to a mourning lunch at that French/Arab/gay fusion bistro where we like to go and plot our liberal propaganda. Suddenly, guys in dark glasses swooped up in black vans and snatched us. They didn't take the black hoods off our heads until we got to Gitmo. I haven't seen Trudy Rubin since we got here. I hear she's being treated as a "high-value" prisoner. The high values are in a cell block across the compound. Rumor has it she's in a cell with Molly Ivins and Maureen Dowd. Word is some torture goes on over there. Bill Moyers supposedly was gagged and forced to listen to Chris Matthews talk for two hours straight. Today, the guy next to me at mess, used to be a columnist at the Fresno Bee, told me they flew Paul Krugman and Michael Moore out of here by chopper last night. To Pakistan, is what I hear. Some good news: Bob Shrum, Kerry's campaign consultant, is being held somewhere in the compound, too. May he rot in his cell, the idiot. I'm not considered high value, thank God. Just a run-of-the-mill lib-symp. They chuckle when I explain I'm really a centrist. My "trainer" says nobody wants to hurt me; as soon as I show I've seen The Light and can cover the news "objectively," "without bias" and "with proper appreciation for all the President has done for the nation," I can come home to you. I'm working on it, my love. But you know those character traits that made me spend most of high school in detention? They keep coming back. Like, I'm in this seminar today called "Christian Nation: How the Bible and the Constitution Are Really One and the Same." And I raise my hand and ask: "If one candidate is a practicing Catholic who carries a rosary in his pocket, and the other one is some vague evangelical who doesn't even freaking go to church on Sunday, why did the Catholic bishops order the flock to vote for the non-Catholic?" My trainer was upset with me. So tonight I have to read three Tim LaHaye novels and write an essay on why George W. Bush is the doorway to the Rapture. Have to say, these LaHaye books are crisply plotted. Got in trouble yesterday, too, during a lecture class, "Living in Fear, and Loving It." Right after the Cheney video, I asked, "How come the states where terror attacks have actually happened or been planned went big for Kerry, while the states that Osama bin Laden's never heard of, the ones with more sheep than people, went for Bush?" For that, I had to sit through a double session of Remedial NASCAR 101. Did you know, that, of the 249,982 laps possible in 781 career starts, Terry Labonte has completed more than 90 percent (226,729)? I think of you all the time, and the kids. I know I should submit and scour my brain of the horrible addiction to facts and reality-based analysis that landed me in this hellhole. If I can do that, maybe I can come home. I'll have to get a job writing obituaries or jingles or something. They've made it quite clear my days as a pundit are over. But they tell me that if I sign the Bush loyalty pledge, my pension is safe. As safe as anybody's, anyway. But, hon, there's this guerrilla voice inside my head that just won't shut up. The Boss keeps singing in my mind: No retreat, no surrender. Even &%$!#@ Kerry couldn't spoil that song for me. Sorry, babe. Vive la Resistance! When not immersed in paranoid fantasy, Chris Satullo is still (he thinks) editorial page editor of The Inquirer. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 9 16:47:08 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 19:47:08 -0500 Subject: Mark Shuttleworth Interview: Open source is the business Message-ID: Mail and Guardian Online: Wednesday, November 10, 2004, 2:39 Africa's first online newspaper est. 1994 TEN QUESTIONS Open source is the business 09 November 2004 14:33 Mark Shuttleworth gives a thumbs up for Africa and open source software. (Photograph: Mikhail Grachyev, AFP) Open-source software: what difference will it make to my life? If you're new to computers, then open source is a whole new universe waiting to be discovered, at no real cost. Almost every kind of application is freely available as open-source software -- from business applications such as word processors, presentation software and spreadsheets to specialist tools such as programming languages and databases. Open source is the best way for a student or child to discover the world of the computer, because there is no limit or restriction on your ability to learn how the software works, since it comes with full source code. So, for new computer users, open source is "the business". If you're in the software industry, then open source is interesting because all indications are that it will come to be the default on the desktop, just as it has come to dominate the server software scene. Why should I change from Windows, Microsoft Word or Internet Explorer to open-source products such as Linux and the likes? If what you have works for you, then I would not recommend changing. If, however, you are considering an upgrade or buying new computers, then open source is certainly worth considering. If you need to run Windows, then there is a lot of open-source software for Windows too -- you don't have to switch to a Linux-based operating system such as Ubuntu to get the benefits of open source. For example, on my Windows PC I don't have Microsoft Office, I use OpenOffice from www.openoffice.org, which is freely available and has a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation package that are compatible with Microsoft Office. I also use the Firefox web browser and Thunderbird e-mail software, from www.mozilla.org, which have had very few, if any, virus attacks against them. In general, open-source software is cheaper to acquire and manage, improves faster, has better support for internationalisation and is more secure than the older proprietary alternatives. If open source takes hold, what will our desktops/computers look like in 10 years' time? Hopefully they'll look pretty familiar! Open-source software looks just like older proprietary software, it's just produced and licensed freely. Also, it tends to be easier to get different pieces of open-source software to talk to one another, because the people who produce it have an interest in making collaboration happen and using open standards rather than locking you into their software. A big area of innovation in open source is collaborative work, allowing you to work on a document simultaneously with other people, and I think this sort of open-source innovation will be the main driver of new products and concepts in the information technology industry over the next 10 years. As much as people moan about Microsoft, aren't Microsoft products superior and easier to use than many open-source programmes available today? Certainly not. Of course, it depends on the application. For example, the open-source Apache web server is generally considered to be much better than any web-server software from Microsoft, and as a result, Apache is the most widely used web-server software on the internet. In desktop office applications, I think Microsoft still has an edge, but the gap is narrowing so fast and innovation in the open-source environment is so rapid that I am confident any gap will have disappeared in two or three years. That's why I'm advocating that South Africans embrace open source now, ahead of the curve. Is Bill Gates enemy number one? Not at all -- few people in the world have been effective at managing a small business and a large business, and Gates has been brilliant throughout Microsoft's history. In the 1980s, we didn't have the internet, so a single company was probably the most efficient way to produce software that worked well together. Nowadays, the internet allows collaboration between companies and volunteers, which has resulted in the rise of open-source software. You just couldn't make open source work in the 1980s because too few people were connected, but today it's proving to be the best way to produce software. You are a capitalist, yet you preach open-source software? How do you reconcile that? The emergence of open source isn't the end of the software industry by any means, it's just yet another big change in an industry that thrives on change. I think open source is the way of the future, so I put that into practice as much through my non-profit foundation work in education as through my business investments. I believe the business model in the software industry will have to evolve, so I'm investing in companies like Canonical that have newer business models that might (or might not) work in a world without software licensing fees. Only time will tell which ideas will prosper. Was your very successful business that made you billions based on open-source software? Yes, entirely. The web server and database software that held the business together was all open source (in those days I used the Apache web server and the MySQL database, though now I prefer the PostgreSQL database). A lot of the core cryptography at Thawte was also handled by open-source tools. How have you come to terms with your wealth? It's a struggle, but... :-) I can't seriously pretend that it's a hardship, but it is a sword with several sharp edges and no real handle. Certainly, it's changed my material life, but I'm constantly reminded that the things which make me happiest are only complicated by wealth, particularly new personal relationships. Being able to do whatever I want, in many ways, creates the responsibility to try to do the right thing for me and for the people I care about. And what's really interesting is the extent to which time is a great leveller. No matter how wealthy you are, you get exactly the same amount of time in your teens, twenties, thirties and so on. Instead of being locked into a specific job, I have to choose very carefully what I do with every single day -- there are more projects that I can dream about than I have time to do properly, or even funds to do, oddly enough. So it's a great privilege and at the same time a great responsibility. Are you the Bill Gates of Africa? No, I'm one of a few Mark Shuttleworths of Africa, and apologies to the other guys who had the name first, I hope I'm not wearing it out! As to comparisons with Bill Gates, I think he's achieved far more than me in the way he has steered a large and ultimately huge company through several decades of change, and I admire that skill greatly. It's something I don't think I'd have been able to achieve; I don't have the same stamina. Even if open source is now going to dominate the industry, it doesn't detract at all from the accomplishments of Gates and the Microsoft team in the past. When are you going to the moon? Have you been in touch with Richard Branson about more space travel? For the next space mission, which I hope one day to have the opportunity to fly, the moon wouldn't be out of the question. But I think it would involve more "Nazdarovya" than "Virgin". -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 9 20:02:38 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 23:02:38 -0500 Subject: Morgan Stanley website breach Message-ID: Guardian | Morgan Stanley website breach Rupert Jones Wednesday November 10, 2004 The Guardian A credit card company with more than 1 million customers has closed an online security loophole that could have allowed people to access account holders' details and move money about. Yesterday it emerged that the Morgan Stanley website had allowed users to access their credit card information after entering just the first digit of their credit card number. The incident comes four days after internet bank Cahoot closed down its website for 10 hours following a tip-off that users could view other customers' private details. Cyber crime experts said banks and other companies must take more responsibility for providing their online customers with security or run the risk that people will steer clear of these services. Morgan Stanley had permitted customers to let their PC "remember" their password so they only had to enter the first digit of their card number before the "autocomplete" facility provided the rest. This meant that someone using the same computer could potentially access another's accounts. The Association for Payment Clearing Services (Apacs) recommends that companies disable the auto function to remove the risk of this happening. The problem was reported to Morgan Stanley by the BBC after a viewer contacted a programme about the flaw. A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman said it had "taken immediate steps to turn off the auto function to ensure there are no possible security issues". "Morgan Stanley has received no customer complaints or calls on this issue to date, and to our knowledge no accounts have been accessed improperly," she said. But Philippsohn Crawfords Berwald, a city law firm, said the loophole "potentially enabled users to shift money across accounts with incredible ease". -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 9 20:09:08 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 23:09:08 -0500 Subject: Sunrise in the West Message-ID: Tech Central Station Sunrise in the West By William J. Stuntz Published 11/09/2004 The conventional wisdom holds that America is and always has been divided between North and South. Actually, there is a bigger and deeper divide: between East and West. The West is winning, hands down. Consider these facts. Thirteen times since World War II, the country has elected a President from West of the Mississippi River. Easterners have won the White House twice in that time, and one of those -- Georgian Jimmy Carter -- beat another Easterner, Michigan's Gerald Ford, the only Eastern nominee of his party in the past fifty years. Eight times, an Eastern candidate squared off against a son of the West. The West won seven out of eight. Four of the seven victories were landslides. The East's one win -- John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon in 1960 -- was a squeaker. In today's more Western America, it would probably squeak the other way. The West's growing dominance has a lot to do with the Republican Party's. Thirteen of its last fifteen nominations have gone to Westerners. Nine of those candidates won; six won at least forty states. The two Easterners, New York's Thomas E. Dewey and Ford, both lost. The Democrats have been more geographically balanced: seven nominees from West of the Mississippi, eight from the East. Also less successful. Easterners Kennedy and Carter won, barely; Carter later lost massively to Californian Ronald Reagan. The other five Eastern Democrats, along with three of the seven Westerners, lost to Western Republicans. Another way to measure the country's Western tilt is this: Since World War II, tickets with two Westerners have run seven times. They won all seven elections, five by landslides. Tickets with two Easterners have run, and lost, four times. Six of the seven West-West tickets were Republican. All four of the all-East tickets were Democratic. Some of this can be chalked up to geographical coincidence. But not all, and probably not most. Deep differences of attitude and spirit separate America's two halves. Easterners like theory and process. Westerners care more about outcomes than procedures, and they like whatever works. Easterners are cautious; Westerners take chances. Easterners like universities, legislatures, and the U.N. Westerners like businesses, the executive branch, and the Army. Eastern politicians are more likely to talk down to voters -- think of Dewey, Adlai Stevenson, or John Kerry -- because they are instinctively less democratic; they come from a world where social and educational class matters and where institutions seem to outlast people. (I teach at a university that is nearly four centuries old.) Western politicians are more optimistic, believe that problems can be solved and limits surpassed. Also that institutions are temporary things: they are the creatures; people are their creators, and creators matter more than the things they create. The flip side of optimism is rootlessness: if life isn't working out, go somewhere else and reinvent yourself, like Easterner-turned-Westerner (and Democrat-turned-Republican) Ronald Reagan. Easterners are more likely to be defined, and confined, by place. Eastern candidates want to protect a lead and play it safe -- Dewey, anyone? -- while Westerners roll the dice, not only in campaigns but in the White House: Reagan's simultaneous tax cuts and defense buildup (Howard Baker called it "a riverboat gamble," and it was), Bush's war in Iraq and his decision to wrap his arms around the third rail of American politics. The patterns don't always hold. Bob Dole comes from Kansas and is a small-d democrat to his core, but most of his political instincts are Eastern. The elder George Bush voted in Texas but lived most of his life in New England and Washington, D.C., and it shows. John F. Kennedy was Eastern through and through, but his politics showed a Western optimism: cut taxes and revenues will rise; promise that we will walk on the moon, then make it happen. Today, New Yorker Rudy Giuliani is one of the nation's most Western politicians -- like a New Yorker of the last century who loved the West (the West loved him back) and had a Giuliani-like executive temperament: Theodore Roosevelt. And the regional breakdowns are more complex than first appears. The Pacific Coast votes with the Northeast in national elections, though it still has a different political feel: One can hardly imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger, a classic Westerner, rocketing to the top of Massachusetts politics. So, too, the South -- including its Eastern seaboard -- usually lines up with the West in national elections, a pattern that goes back to William Jennings Bryan, and maybe to Andrew Jackson. But the West dominates this West-South political alliance, at least in presidential politics. The current President Bush is a good example. Though he is sometimes called a Southerner, Bush's orientation is more West than South. White Southerners (the modifier is important) are instinctive pessimists, perhaps because their ancestors lost a great war. They are rooted, not just to the land but to one particular piece of it, in a way Westerners aren't. Even their religion is different, more respectful of church authorities. Bush's Methodism is fiercely independent; it draws more inspiration from the Pope than from his own church's bishops. And Bush is Reagan-like in his fondness for taking big chances, rolling the dice. John Kerry, meanwhile, is a classic Easterner. Kerry may not have shaped the Senate during the past twenty years; he does not appear to have had much influence there. But the Senate has shaped him. His outlook on governance is quintessentially legislative -- and quintessentially legal. Legislators, like lawyers (Kerry is both), believe that if you get the process right, if the right people are consulted along the way and the right arguments are made at the right times, good decisions will follow. Executives know better. Sometimes more process only gums up the works. Consultation helps only if those who are consulted give wise advice. The bottom line matters more than what steps one takes to get there. Perhaps Kerry's critique of Bush's approach to terrorism didn't sell because it boiled down to two inconsistent claims about process: Don't consult allies in Afghanistan; that's outsourcing. Consult everyone in the world -- well, everyone in the United Nations -- about Iraq. On the campaign trail, Kerry often said that he "might" have gone to war in Iraq, but that if he had, "I'd have done it right." Meaning, he would have gotten the right process. There is a very different critique that one could make of Bush's presidency: The process has been fine, but too many bottom lines are wrong. Maybe going to war in Iraq was too risky a venture. (Al Gore was right about one thing: George W. Bush really does like "risky schemes.") Today, Bush's massive tax cuts coupled with equally massive spending increases -- and we haven't even begun to fix entitlement programs, which will cost a bundle -- look like a losing bet. The problem with Bush is not that he prays, not that he takes chances or shoots from the hip, not that he doesn't listen to Jacques Chirac or Gerhard Schroeder. It's that he often makes bad decisions. An executive critique rather than a legislative one might have won the election. We'll never know. For my part, I'm torn, as I suspect many Americans are: Eastern and Western blood flows through a lot of the same veins. I don't like risk; huge deficits terrify me. I'm a lawyer by training and so tend to value process too highly. But when I look at the broad sweep of American history, I see a country that, time and again, ignored process and took gambles that paid off big. Westerner Abraham Lincoln -- in his America, Illinois was definitely the West -- fought and won a long, hard war that freed millions and saved mankind's last, best hope. Westerners Truman, Eisenhower, and Reagan fought and won another long, hard war, and millions more taste freedom because of it -- and they did it without incinerating half the planet. The sheer size of those achievements boggles the mind. Maybe, just maybe, two decades from now the Near East will be filled with Muslim democracies; young men and women (women!) will fight their battles with ballots rather than bombs. If so, that too will be a mind-boggling achievement, the happy bequest of a Westerner who once ran a baseball team, and loved to swing for the fences. William J. Stuntz is a Professor at Harvard Law School. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 9 20:20:44 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 23:20:44 -0500 Subject: What Next for Libertarians? Message-ID: Tech Central Station Ryan H. Sager What Next for Libertarians? By Ryan Sager Published 11/09/2004 Libertarianism is in a bad way following the 2004 presidential election -- and not just because Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik failed to overtake Ralph Nader for third place (though, if it's any consolation, he tied the erstwhile consumer advocate in the Electoral College). No, the problem is that both parties proved themselves able to ignore libertarian ideas almost completely this year and are only likely to do so increasingly going forward. Now, make no mistake about it, this was an election mainly about foreign policy (a topic to which libertarian philosophy has traditionally been difficult to apply). While much has been made of the fact that 22 percent of voters chose "moral values" as their "most important issue" when asked in exit polls -- making it the most popular of the options given -- that was only because "terrorism" and "Iraq" were listed as separate choices. Together, those foreign-policy topics, inextricably linked in the minds of many, were the deciding factor for 34 percent of voters. But the utter irrelevance of libertarian ideas this year can't be written off simply because of the nation's current foreign-policy concerns. It's impossible to ignore the fact that the domestic agendas of both parties this year were based firmly on expanding the power of the state. The Kerry-Edwards campaign, in its only small-government gambit, opposed certain provisions of the Patriot Act; but, for fear of looking soft on terror, that position was, shall we say, deemphasized. Otherwise, the Democrats pushed a pretty standard, statist line: "rolling back" tax cuts (otherwise known as "raising taxes," be it only on the rich), nationalizing health care, leaving Social Security to fester, spending more on education, increasing the amount of environmental regulation and putting a flu shot in every pot. The Bush-Cheney team had its version, a little lighter on economic statism but heavier on cultural statism: leaving in place its own move toward socialized medicine (a.k.a., the colossally expensive Medicare prescription drug benefit), cracking down on "indecency" and banning gay marriage. Tax cuts were also promised, though not paired with any cuts in programs to pay for them. Social Security reform may have been the only bright spot. So, what can we expect from the Republicans going forward? More of the same -- but worse. Karl Rove is already out in the press promising President Bush's evangelical base a renewed push to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. And there can be absolutely no doubt that such an amendment, if not passed soon, will become a central issue in the 2006 midterm elections, used as a wedge issue to paint any Democratic senator or congressman who doesn't go along as a hopelessly out-of-touch liberal. And what can we expect from the Democrats? It's too soon to tell definitively, of course, but there are really only two directions the party can move, neither of them terribly favorable to the libertarian-minded. The party could begin playing to its liberal base -- MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, etc. -- but that would only pull it further out of the mainstream, leaving the Republicans to run the country unchallenged. More likely, we'll see a serious move by the party to close the "values gap" that supposedly cost its candidates so dearly this election cycle. There are any number of ways this could happen. Suddenly, Democrats in Congress could join Republicans in supporting a flag-burning amendment. They could suddenly become quite attached to the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. They could roll over on the anti-gay marriage amendment. And it would be completely unsurprising if Americans woke up suddenly to find the Democrats initiating new hearings into violence and sex in the music industry, television, movies, video games, Web pages, comic books or wherever. Libertarianism never flourishes during times of war, but that's exactly why people concerned with economic liberalism and social freedom should be concerned. With the War on Terror likely to be the defining issue of a generation, libertarians must begin to grapple with it seriously instead of pretending it doesn't exist. The forces of statism in this country have grabbed onto this war to move the center of gravity in our politics to the left economically and to the right socially. Karl Rove and the forces of "national-greatness conservatism" embodied in places such as The Weekly Standard have seen the chance to create a "permanent Republican majority" -- a platform combining traditional Republican strength on national security with a radical expansion of the size of the federal government, designed to rob the Democrats of their natural constituency. The Republican Party under Bush, in short, has ceased to be a hospitable environment for libertarians, and the alternative looks no better. The party that came in second isn't the only one with some thinking to do right now. Those of us in fourth need to wake up as well. Ryan Sager is a member of the editorial board of The New York Post. He also edits the blog Miscellaneous Objections and can be reached at editor at rhsager.com. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 10 06:41:33 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 09:41:33 -0500 Subject: Why we're a divided nation Message-ID: This is one of the best arguments for minimal government I've heard. Like most good arguments, it's blindingly simple. Cheers, RAH ------- Townhall.com Why we're a divided nation Walter E. Williams (back to web version) | Send November 10, 2004 Recent elections pointed to deepening divisions among American people, but has anyone given serious thought to just why? I have part of the answer, which starts off with a simple example. Different Americans have different and intensive preferences for cars, food, clothing and entertainment. For example, some Americans love opera and hate rock and roll. Others have opposite preferences, loving rock and roll and hating opera. When's the last time you heard of rock-and-roll lovers in conflict with opera lovers? It seldom, if ever, happens. Why? Those who love operas get what they want, and those who love rock and roll get what they want, and both can live in peace with one another. Suppose that instead of freedom in the music market, decisions on what kind of music people could listen to were made in the political arena. It would be either opera or rock and roll. Rock and rollers would be lined up against opera lovers. Why? It's simple. If the opera lovers win, rock and rollers would lose, and the reverse would happen if rock and rollers won. Conflict would emerge solely because the decision was made in the political arena. The prime feature of political decision-making is that it's a zero-sum game. One person or group's gain is of necessity another person or group's loss. As such, political allocation of resources is conflict enhancing while market allocation is conflict reducing. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena, the greater is the potential for conflict. There are other implications of political decision-making. Throughout most of our history, we've lived in relative harmony. That's remarkable because just about every religion, racial and ethnic group in the world is represented in our country. These are the very racial/ethnic/religious groups that have for centuries been trying to slaughter one another in their home countries, among them: Turks and Armenians, Protestant and Catholic, Muslim and Jew, Croats and Serbs. While we haven't been a perfect nation, there have been no cases of the mass genocide and religious wars that have plagued the globe elsewhere. The closest we've come was the American Indian/European conflict, which pales by comparison. The reason we've been able to live in relative harmony is that for most of our history government was small. There wasn't much pie to distribute politically. When it's the political arena that determines who gets what goodies, the most effective coalitions are those with a proven record of being the most divisive -- those based on race, ethnicity, religion and region. As a matter of fact, our most costly conflict involved a coalition based upon region -- namely the War of 1861. Many of the issues that divide us, aside from the Iraq war, are those best described as a zero-sum game, where one group's gain is of necessity another's loss. Examples are: racial preferences, Social Security, tax policy, trade restrictions, welfare and a host of other government policies that benefit one American at the expense of another American. You might be tempted to think that the brutal domestic conflict seen in other countries at other times can't happen here. That's nonsense. Americans are not super-humans; we possess the same frailties of other people in other places. If there were a severe economic calamity, I can imagine a political hustler exploiting those frailties here, just as Adolf Hitler did in Germany, blaming it on the Jews, the blacks, the East Coast, Catholics or free trade. The best thing the president and Congress can do to heal our country is to reduce the impact of government on our lives. Doing so will not only produce a less divided country and greater economic efficiency but bear greater faith and allegiance to the vision of America held by our founders -- a country of limited government. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From chuckw at quantumlinux.com Wed Nov 10 09:54:41 2004 From: chuckw at quantumlinux.com (Chuck Wolber) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 09:54:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: Faith in democracy, not government In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > At 7:11 PM -0800 11/8/04, Chuck Wolber wrote: > >"&cet" is an HTMl element > > Wrong again. Mere hyperlatinate British public school affectation, & = > et, and, um, all that... Strange, you called that a rudimentary part of modern culture. Are you aware of any territories outside of that which the queen et. al. has jurisdiction? > >> Yes, and, apparently, by your inability to parse something that is a > >> rudimentary part of modern culture, you generated it. > > > >Or perhaps it's your lack of command of the modern QWERTY keyboard... > > Nope. See above, and, again, thank you for playing. Bad form. Rude and dismissive. Tsk tsk. I guess it's a good way of redirecting the argument when you're getting desperate though... -Chuck -- http://www.quantumlinux.com Quantum Linux Laboratories, LLC. ACCELERATING Business with Open Technology "The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." - FDR From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Wed Nov 10 06:54:49 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 09:54:49 -0500 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks Message-ID: Fascinating. And typical of the unusual Chinese seesaw that has occurred throuout the aeons between hyper-strict centralized control and something approaching a lite version of anarchy. There's no good mapping of this into Western ideas of fascism, marxism, and economics. Interesting too that there's a ganster base in Wenzhou. This is precisely where the young Chiang Kai Shek consolidated his power early on as a local gangster/warlord. -TD >From: "R.A. Hettinga" >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks >Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 16:10:52 -0500 > > > > > > > >China's wealthy bypass the banks > >By Keith Bradsher The New York Times > Wednesday, November 10, 2004 > > >WENZHOU, China The Wenzhou "stir-fry" is not a dish you eat. But it is >giving indigestion to Chinese regulators and could prove troublesome to >many investors worldwide, from New York money managers, Pennsylvania >steelworkers and Midwestern farmers to Australian miners. > > Here in this freewheeling city at the forefront of capitalism in China, >the dish is prepared when a group of wealthy friends pool millions of >dollars' worth of Chinese yuan and put them into a hot investment like >Shanghai real estate, where they are stirred and flipped for a hefty >profit. The friends often lend each other large amounts on the strength of >a handshake and a handwritten IOU. > > Both sides then go to an automated teller machine or bank branch to >transfer the money, which is then withdrawn from the bank. Or sometimes >they do it the old-fashioned way: exchanging burlap sacks stuffed with >cash. > > The worry for Chinese regulators is that everyone in China will start >cooking the Wenzhou stir-fry and do it outside the banking system. > > In the last few months, borrowing and lending across the rest of China is >looking more and more like what is taking place in Wenzhou. The growth of >this shadow banking system poses a stiff challenge to China's state-owned >banks, already burdened with bad debt, and makes it harder for the nation's >leaders to steer a fast-growing economy. > > The problem starts with China's low interest rates. More and more >families >with savings have been snubbing 2 percent interest on bank deposits for the >double-digit returns from lending large amounts on their own. > > They lend to real estate speculators or to small businesses without the >political connections to obtain loans from the banks. > > Not only is the informal lending rate higher, but the income from that >lending, because it is semilegal at best, is not taxed. For fear of shame, >ostracism and the occasional threat from thugs, borrowers are more likely >to pay back these loans than those from the big banks. > > Tao Dong, chief China economist at Credit Suisse First Boston, calculates >that Chinese citizens withdrew $12 billion to $17 billion from their bank >deposits in August and September. > > The outflow turned into a flood last month, reaching an estimated $120 >billion, or more than 3 percent of all deposits at the country's financial >institutions. > > If the bank withdrawals are not stemmed in the months ahead, Tao warned, >"this potentially could be a huge risk for financial stability and even >social stability." > > And with China now accounting for more than a quarter of the world's >steel >production and nearly a fifth of soybean production, as well as some of the >largest initial public offerings of stock, any shaking of financial >confidence here could ripple quickly through markets in the United States >and elsewhere. > > For instance, if the steel girders now being lifted into place by >hundreds >of tower cranes in big cities across China are no longer needed, that would >produce a worldwide glut of steel and push down prices. > > On Oct. 28, when China's central bank raised interest rates for one-year >loans and deposits by a little more than a quarter of a percentage point, >it cited a need to keep money in the banking system. Higher official rates >should "reduce external cycling of credit funds," the bank said in a >statement. > > Eswar Prasad, the chief of the China division of the International >Monetary Fund, expressed concern about bank withdrawals in a speech in Hong >Kong three days before the central bank acted. > > The main Chinese banks have fairly substantial reserves, but they need >those reserves to cover huge write-offs of bad debts some day. > > The hub of informal lending in China is here in Wenzhou, 370 kilometers, >or 230 miles, south of Shanghai. Some of China's first experiments with the >free market began here in the late 1970s, and the result has been a >flourishing economy together with sometimes questionable business dealings. > > Depending on how raw they like their capitalism, people elsewhere in >China >describe Wenzhou as either a center of financial innovation or a den of >loan sharks. But increasingly, Wenzhou is also a microcosm of the kind of >large-scale yet informal financial dealings now going on across the >country. > > The withdrawals by depositors and the informal money lending has spread >so >swiftly here that it is only in Wenzhou that the Chinese central bank >releases monthly statistics on average rates for direct loans between >individuals or companies. The rate hovered at 1 percent a month for years >until April, when the authorities began limiting the volume of bank loans. > > Borrowers default on nearly half the loans issued by the state-owned >banks, but seldom do so here on money that is usually borrowed from >relatives, neighbors or people in the same industry. > > Residents insist that the risk of ostracism for failing to repay a loan >is >penalty enough to ensure repayment of most loans. > > Although judges have ruled that handwritten IOUs are legally binding, >creditors seldom go to court to collect. "If it is a really good friend, I >would lose face if I sued them in court," said Tu Shangyun, the owner of a >local copper smelter and a part-time "silver bearer," a broker who puts >lenders and borrowers in touch with each other, "and if it weren't a good >friend, I wouldn't lend the money in the first place." > > > > Violence is extremely rare, but the threat of it does exist as the >ultimate guarantor that people make every effort to repay debts. > > "Someone can hire a killer who will chase you down, beat you up and maybe >even kill you," said Ma Jinlong, who oversaw market-driven financial >changes in the 1990s in Wenzhou as director of the municipal economic >reform committee and is now an economics professor at Wenzhou University. > > An austerity policy was invoked, its goal to slow rapid economic growth >in >the hope of stopping a spiral in the inflation rate. With consumer prices >rising at 5.2 percent a year despite price controls on many goods and >services, and with less-regulated prices for goods traded between companies >climbing nearly twice as fast, people lose buying power while their money >is on deposit at a bank. > > The interest rate for informal loans jumped last spring to 1.2 percent a >month, or 15.4 percent compounded over a year, and has stayed there ever >since. According to the nation's central bank, total bank deposits in >Wenzhou have been dropping by $250 million a month since April as companies >and individuals withdraw money, either because they can no longer obtain >bank loans for their investments or because they want to lend the money at >higher rates to each other. > > For lenders, these interest rates are much more attractive than earning a >meager 2.25 percent a year, even after the recent rate increase, on a >deposit at a government-owned bank. And while Beijing assesses a 20 percent >tax on all interest from bank deposits, nobody pays tax on the income they >receive from lending money on their own, Ma said. > > Most informal loans have traditionally gone to relatives or neighbors to >finance the starting of small local businesses. Wenzhou is now one of the >world's largest producers of no-brand sunglasses; Dong Ganming, the owner >of a 350-employee sunglasses factory here, said that his plant was just one >of almost 1,000 here involved in making glasses. > > Fierce competition has prompted local residents to borrow money to >exploit >every possible niche in the industry, with some factories making nothing >but bridges for sunglasses so that they will not slide down customers' >noses, other factories making only the lenses, and so forth. Any government >crackdown on informal loans would carry the risk of stifling highly >efficient small and medium-size businesses that have little hope of >obtaining loans from the state-owned banks, which still allocate credit >based partly on political connections. > > Dong said that loans from friends and family allowed him to start his >sunglasses company with 10 employees a decade ago; he quickly paid off the >loans and has been reinvesting most of the profits ever since, putting very >little into bank deposits. "The interest in the bank is very low," he said. >"If you invest the money, you can get much more money." > > But more recently, residents here say, a lot of money has been flowing >into real estate here and in other big cities, especially Shanghai, helping >to fuel double-digit increases in interest rates. > > Deals increasingly involve people who have no family or neighborhood >connection, raising the risk of disputes. > > Kellee Tsai, a specialist in Chinese informal banking at Johns Hopkins >University in the United States, said that many overseas emigrants from >Wenzhou had also been sending their savings back here to be lent at much >higher rates than are available in the countries they have moved to. > > Some local investors have been able to pay for their investments with >profits from businesses here, like Chen Shen, the owner of four shops that >sell shoe-manufacturing equipment to the hundreds of shoe factories that >have popped up in this area. She said she paid cash for an apartment near >Shanghai's Bund, its riverfront district, that had appreciated as much as >60 percent in less than two years. > > > > Still, Chinese regulators do not like the practice, and officials have >been trying to stamp out such operations with limited success. > > They have outlawed the practice of pooling savings into various kinds of >informal banks that make loans for real estate and other investments: >Organizers are subject to the death penalty but are rarely caught unless >the informal banks collapse. > > Oriental Outlook, a Chinese current affairs magazine, reported late last >month on the trial of a man accused of operating an illegal bank northeast >of here that collapsed a year ago, leading to the filing of more than 200 >civil lawsuits. Another man who lost money in the scheme and went bankrupt >as a result assaulted the defendant outside the courtroom, the magazine >said. > > The extent of such pooling is unclear. But it poses the greatest risks of >damage to financial confidence if bank runs occur at these informal >institutions, economists agree. Bank runs, with depositors lined up >clamoring for their money back, have been an occasional problem around >China for years, but are always quickly contained as the authorities rush >to distribute as much cash as necessary. > > "The policy with bank runs, even with illegal banks in some cases, has >been to flood the bank with liquidity and pay everyone off," said Michael >Pettis, a finance professor at Beijing University, who criticized as ill >advised the Chinese policy of bailing out even illegal banks. > > "One of the most salutary ways to let people know not to put money in >these is to let two or three go bankrupt." > >-- >----------------- >R. A. Hettinga >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation >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' _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/ From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 10 07:09:35 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 10:09:35 -0500 Subject: Secession Message-ID: Townhall.com Secession Tony Blankley (back to web version) | Send November 10, 2004 I assume the Republican National Committee is busy recording and archiving the idiotic statements coming out of national Democratic Party leaders and commentators. There is no doubt that the election has not only yielded a victory for the Republicans, but also a bumper crop of self-destructive vitriol and bitterness from the Democrats. The opinion pages of the New York Times (that would be pages A-1- D 37 inclusive) have been running articles by prime cut liberals, the general themes of which have been that conservative Christians are the equivalent of Islamic terrorists and that the benighted provincials who voted for President Bush are simply hate-filled bigots who have no place in America. The apotheosis of this political dementia was put forward in my very presence on last week's "McLaughlin Group" by my friend and colleague Lawrence O'Donnell. Lawrence, in cool blood and in apparent full control of his senses, asserted that this election will give rise to a serious consideration of secession from the Union by the blue states. I should point out that though Lawrence has been barking more than usual in this election season's TV commentary, he is a brilliant political analyst and a serious Democratic Party player. He was the late Sen. Moynihan's top Senate staffer. He comes from one of the great Democratic Party families. I believe it was his uncle who was President John Kennedy's White House chief of staff. He is also the most gifted writer/producer on the NBC show, "West Wing." He is not one of those no name nitwits who the cable shows pull from obscurity to recite Democratic Party talking points. I elaborate on his enviable pedigree and qualities of mind and experience because if he says such a thing to a television audience of six million viewers, it must surely reflect some measurable body of senior Democratic Party sentiment. And although it is inconceivable that any senior elected Democratic Party officials would ever repeat or act on such a deranged notion, it is a measure of how deep is the Democratic Party elite's contempt of and estrangement from the American public. In this regard, I couldn't help thinking of the founding election of the modern Democratic Party -- the election of 1828, when General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee defeated John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts by 139,000 votes out of 1.1 million cast. That election, which defined the Democratic Party that we have known for almost two centuries, has been called the first triumph of the common man in American politics. It pitted the moneyed interests of the Northeast against the farmers and working free laborers of the South and West. It was the first election in which almost all of the states (22 of 24) used direct popular election rather than state legislatures to elect the presidential electors. It was capped with a raucous inaugural celebration during which "rustic" common people shocked Washington society as they wandered through the White House celebrating, drinking and shaking President Andy Jackson's hand. And so started a bond between the Democratic Party and the typical working American that lasted 176 years -- until last Tuesday. It's not that the Democrats lost an election; obviously both parties have lost numerous elections. But never before in my memory -- which goes back faintly to 1956 -- has either party in its loss reacted with such venomous contempt for the American people. When we conservatives got shellacked in 1964 -- with Goldwater losing 61 percent-39 percent to Lyndon Johnson -- we knew we had a lot of work ahead if we were going to educate the public to our views. But I can honestly say that although I remember thinking that the public was misguided in its judgment, I never hated or felt contemptuous of the majority electorate -- of my fellow countrymen. This dominant sentiment of the Democratic Party elite -- that scores of millions of Americans are categorically unacceptable as fellow countrymen -- is evidence of a cancer in the soul of that party. These Democrats, quite expressly, are asserting that "christers," people who believe in the teachings of Jesus as described in the inerrant words of the Bible, are un-American, almost subhuman. Some of these Democrats would rather secede than stay in the same country with such people. If they were in the majority with no need to secede, what would they do? Their bigoted and absolutist view of religious people is at least a second cousin to the Nazi view of the Jews. In Europe, the few remaining people of faith have recently taken to calling the increasingly more adamant European secularist majority "secular fundamentalists." While that phrase is unfair to the perfectly respectable fundamentalist religious sentiment -- it shows how much more harsh and filled with fear the religious/secular divide is becoming. Fortunately, most rank-and-file Democrats are not infected with such secular bigotry. Democrats don't need to secede. They just need to purge their party of such of their leaders and intellectual vanguard as spew forth such rubbish. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 10 07:44:37 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 10:44:37 -0500 Subject: Cryptography Research Expands Into Europe Message-ID: Yahoo! Finance Press Release Source: Cryptography Research, Inc. Cryptography Research Expands Into Europe Wednesday November 10, 8:09 am ET Industry Veteran Ken Warren Takes Reins as Smart Card Business Manager SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Recognizing the strategic significance of Europe in driving the deployment of smart cards, Cryptography Research, Inc. today announced it has set up operations in the United Kingdom to provide enhanced support for European licensees of its recently launched DPA Countermeasures Licensing Program. Cryptography Research also announced the appointment of smart card industry veteran Ken Warren to head up the effort as smart card business manager. Warren will ensure European customers can successfully implement CRI's patented countermeasures, and he will actively represent CRI in all European smart card industry activities. ADVERTISEMENT Although the smart card market is becoming increasingly global, the majority of the industry leaders have their headquarters, R&D facilities and design centers in Europe. By establishing representation in Europe, Cryptography research is again demonstrating its commitment to the smart card industry and to providing the necessary support to improve the security of smart card devices. In his position as smart card business manager, Ken Warren brings a wealth of industry expertise, and CRI's European customers will be able to benefit from his support at the local level. "With Ken Warren leading our European expansion, Cryptography Research has achieved a new milestone in its quest to reduce fraud and piracy in the smart card industry through effective DPA countermeasures," said Paul Kocher, president of Cryptography Research. "Europe is key to building on the early success of our DPA Countermeasures Licensing Program, and we are fortunate to have someone of Ken's stature at the helm and to represent us to the leaders in the smart card industry." Ken Warren has extensive experience in the smart card industry, having worked in a variety of roles for more than 12 years. Before joining CRI, Ken was group marketing manager at Renesas Technology Europe Ltd, the world's number-one supplier of microcontrollers and a leader in security IC products. Prior to that, Ken was smart card business development manager for Hitachi Europe Ltd. Ken has also held positions at NatWest Bank and Mondex International where he was responsible for IC security. "CRI has taken the lead in developing the technologies necessary for cryptographic device manufacturers, smart card vendors and smart card issuers to produce more secure, DPA-resistant products, and now we are bringing them directly to the major industry players in Europe," said Ken Warren. "I look forward to working with Kit Rodgers, director of licensing, and the others at CRI, and to supporting the smart card industry in its efforts to prevent DPA attacks and reduce fraud and piracy." Differential Power Analysis and related attacks were first discovered at Cryptography Research by Paul Kocher, Joshua Jaffe and Benjamin Jun. DPA involves monitoring the fluctuating electrical power consumption of smart cards and other secure cryptographic devices and applying advanced statistical methods to extract secret keys and other information. An attacker who successfully employs DPA can create fraudulent transactions, generate counterfeit digital cash, or receive unauthorized access to digital content. Cryptography Research's DPA-related patents provide the basis for implementing effective DPA countermeasures in smart cards and other devices, and a license is required to make, use or sell any DPA-resistant product. Organizations that join the Cryptography Research DPA Countermeasures Licensing Program receive priority access to Cryptography Research's experienced technical staff and research team. Licensees also gain the right to display the "DPA lock" logo on qualifying products. Early-adopter terms are being offered for a limited time to provide competitive advantages to early licensees, including superior pricing and forgiveness for infringement of CRI's countermeasure patents in already-deployed products with DPA countermeasures. About Cryptography Research, Inc. Cryptography Research, Inc. provides technology to solve complex security problems. In addition to security evaluation and applied engineering work, CRI is actively involved in long-term research in areas including tamper resistance, content protection, network security and financial services. The company has a broad portfolio of patents covering countermeasures to differential power analysis and other vulnerabilities, and is committed to helping companies produce secure smart cards and other tamper resistant devices. Security systems designed by Cryptography Research engineers annually protect more than $60 billion of commerce for wireless, telecommunications, financial, digital television and Internet industries. For additional information or to arrange a consultation with a member of the technical staff, please contact Jen Craft at 415-397-0123, ext. 329 or visit www.cryptography.com. Source: Cryptography Research, Inc. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From bill.stewart at pobox.com Wed Nov 10 12:40:34 2004 From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 12:40:34 -0800 Subject: Ashcroft resigns, America is Safer, at least for the moment In-Reply-To: <20041109174021.B5478@baltwash.com> References: <20041109174021.B5478@baltwash.com> Message-ID: <6.0.3.0.0.20041110093355.04061a40@pop.idiom.com> With Ashcroft going, America's a bit safer, unless of course his successor is just as bad. One of the candidates for Ashcroft's successor is Bush's White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales, who's been responsible for several memos suggesting that POWs from Afghanistan aren't protected by the Geneva Conventions and that torturing captives may be ok. So we may not be safer once he's in place. Another candidate is Larry Thompson, former deputy attorney general, who's currently the general counsel for Pepsico. He's black, which is for some reason still politically interesting, but he's also indicated that he likes working at Pepsico. NYT's latest rumors favor Gonzales. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Cabinet.html?oref=login (Requires free login - use some fake email address if you don't have one.) From jamesd at echeque.com Wed Nov 10 13:12:31 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 13:12:31 -0800 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4192843F.2060506@echeque.com> -- Tyler Durden wrote: > Fascinating. And typical of the unusual Chinese seesaw that has > occurred throuout the aeons between hyper-strict centralized control > and something approaching a lite version of anarchy. There's no good > mapping of this into Western ideas of fascism, marxism, and > economics. Maps near enough. The Chinese concept of "legalism" is barely distinguishable from German concepts of communism and nazism. However Confucianism vs Daoism/Taoism is rather different from what you would get in the west. Confucianism is somewhat similar to what you would get if western cultural conservatives allied themselves with nazi/commies, in the way that the commies are prone to imagine conservatives have supposedly allied themselves with nazis. Taoism somewhat similar to what you would get if anarcho capitalists allied themselves with pagans and wiccans, in the way that conservatives are prone to imagine that they have, though in reality the pagans and wiccans line up with the greenies and nazis, for the most part. This is the result of a Chinese heritage of politicide and mass murder, whereas the west has a heritage of compromise and negotiation. So in the west, we have ordinary people forbidden from doing banking stuff, but a pile of loopholes in that law, and we do not have the death penalty for unauthorized banking, whereas in China, they do have the death penalty, and despite the death penalty, massive defiance of the law. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG NWin7CjdJuYCUBbj9jwfYAiCHobTuUO1Bw3DLogP 4Unpss2ukPbY+HeKKDTu441IpswCXzfXLuU2FCphs From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 10 10:59:00 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 13:59:00 -0500 Subject: Faith in democracy, not government In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 9:54 AM -0800 11/10/04, Chuck Wolber wrote: >redirecting Ah. Yes. *That's* the word I was looking for... There. That should stop the bandwidth leak... Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 10 13:20:43 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 16:20:43 -0500 Subject: The Full Chomsky Message-ID: MensNewsDaily.com The Full Chomsky November 10, 2004 by Bernard Chapin Question: How could a linguist working as a college professor have omniscient insight regarding the inner-workings of the American government and exclusive knowledge concerning the hidden motivations of every government official in our nation's history? Answer: There's no way he could. Yet, such common sense does little to refute the fact that Noam Chomsky is one of the ten most quoted figures in the humanities. He has published screed after screed deconstructing American foreign policy positions and never has given any indication that his insinuations may somehow be limited by lack of connections or first hand evidence (or, in some cases, any evidence whatsoever). Since the 1960s, he has fully played the role of Wizard Professor and created an entire library's worth of "pseudo-academic smog" . Until recently, there have been few antidotes for his morass of accusations and allegations, but now we have The Anti-Chomsky Reader, edited by David Horowitz and Peter Collier, which offers purchasers the service of deconstructing the deconstructor. Once you've finished reading it, you'll be highly grateful as Chomsky's lies are so pervasive and counter-intuitive that it's a wonder anyone but the paranoid ever read him in the first place. The Anti-Chomsky Reader is a compilation of essays outlining and refuting the travesties that the M.I.T. linguist has passed off as truth. It does not confine itself to politics alone. Substantial space is given to the analysis of his scholarly publications in linguistics. These are addressed in two chapters called, "A Corrupted Linguistics" and "Chomsky, Language, World War II and Me." In the area of his chosen field, many have given him an intellectual pass but this work does not. His linguistic ideas may be as spurious as his political tomes. All sources give him initial credit for his core academic assumption about the "biological basis of grammar," but it seems that he has engaged in little in the way of scientifically verifiable work over the course of the last fifty years. Chomsky's creative terminology dazzles admirers but his new theories inevitably amount to nothing Overall, the compendium leaves no region of his reputation left unexamined. Anti-Americanism is central to his worldview. He never sees this nation as being superior to any other. At best, we mirror the pathologies of totalitarian states. We can discern this clearly in Stephen Morris's "Whitewashing Dictatorship in Communist Vietnam and Cambodia." The author sums up Chomsky's fetish for defending the Vietnamese and Democratic Kampuchea aptly when he argues that, "As a radical political ideologue, he is crippled by an intense emotional commitment to the cause of anti-Americanism. Operating on the principle that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend,' he wholeheartedly embraced the struggle of two of the world's most ruthlessly brutal regimes." Chomsky's hopes for mankind are vested in murderous revolutionaries and not in his own nation. It is our nation, and never the Khmer Rouge, which gives its citizens the freedom to vote, the freedom to trade, and, most obviously, the freedom to spread the type of sedition that Noam Chomsky has been disseminating for close to 40 years. He does not limit himself to Asia, however. The professor has constantly minimized the acts of many totalitarian states. Chomsky regarded Soviet control of eastern Europe, when compared to the American presence in Vietnam, as being "practically a paradise" We see a man who cares far more about Holocaust deniers than the six million who were exterminated in gas chambers or desolate Russian ravines. After 9/11, he was more concerned about a fictitious famine in Afghanistan than about the nearly 3,000 incinerated in The World Trade Center attacks. He predicted that the toppling of the Taliban would result in 3 to 4 million famine deaths. When no such famine occurred, he did not issue an apology or retraction. He simply chose to say nothing. There is not much about this world famous ideologue that is genuine. He has ardently defended the right of free speech for anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying cranks like Robert Faurisson and Pierre Guillaume but chose not to say anything, or sign any petitions, supporting Soviet intellectuals relegated to the gulag due to their ideas. Chomsky's self-proclaimed political orientation is preposterous. He is enthralled with the socialist ideal but describes himself as a libertarian. If this were true he would be the first libertarian in history who hated capitalism and the free market. He also claims to be an anarchist but seems to love nothing more than strong governments which redistribute the wealth of its citizens and coerce its people into complying with the socialist ideal. He is so deeply repulsed by our nation, and so entirely lacking in perspective, that he holds Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Truman to be war criminals but Pol Pot, who murdered 25 percent of all Cambodians, as creating "constructive achievements for much of the population." He has an easy answer for those who dare argue with him. We do not understand as we have false consciousness . Only he, the magician, can know the true workings of the American state. Stylistically, Chomsky's works are written with an obfuscating hand and penned in the language of the opaque. The mechanics of his style: "As a strategy for creating a Potemkin village of intellectual authenticity, [are] brilliant; as scholarship it is charlatanism." Chomsky litters his work with footnotes yet the footnotes are a parlor game because they often lead to more footnotes citing other assertions he made in earlier works. The most egregious passage of them all occurs in John Williamson's essay, "Chomsky, Language, World War II and Me." It concerns Chomsky's interview with The New Yorker magazine where he is quoted as saying to one of his classes that Russian archives proved that Britain and the United States supported Nazi armies in the hopes of holding back the Soviet's eastern advance. When questioned about the quotation by Williamson, Chomsky dismissed the reporter as having manufactured his statement and that she had printed "a ridiculous gossip column." He then, even though he claimed not to have said what he did, referred Williamson to a source that did not support his assertion in the least. Chomsky's statement about the reporter turned out to be slanderous as the lecture that the reporter quoted from is available online via videotape. In it, the linguist says exactly what the reporter says he did. When confronted with his mendacity, Chomsky changed tactics and pronounced how absurd it was for someone to quote from his lecture. The real absurdity is that anyone should take him seriously at all. In case one thinks that this was an isolated incident, Chomsky appears to have learned nothing from The New Yorker scandal as he lied last month in a speech at the University of Michigan when he said that the United States had planned an attack on Japan before Pearl Harbor. No evidence was offered to support his claim as no evidence exists. What can one say about Chomsky? As a scholar and shaper of young minds he is deplorable. He is a Jew hating Jew who views the Israelis as Nazis and their behavior will result in "a final solution from which few will escape." His country has made him rich and famous although he discerns no good in the sea of prosperity around him. His is a most disturbed, jealous, and depressed mind. Chomsky has tied his life's disappointments to officials in Washington. If the linguist would merely be content to hate himself rather than project his feelings upon the government, we would all be much better off. Phrase from "Chomsky and the Cold War" by Thomas M. Nichols, p. 48. Nichols, p.61. Argument made by Eli Lehrer in "Chomsky and the Media: A Kept Press and a Manipulated People." p.82 Recounted by John Williamson in "Chomsky, Language, World War II and Me." pp. 236-241 Chomsky quoted on page 94 of Paul Bogdanor's "Chomsky's War Against Israel." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Wed Nov 10 14:00:26 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 17:00:26 -0500 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks Message-ID: Oh No!!!! Way overly simplistic. Also, you are comparing apples to bushels of wheat. >However Confucianism vs Daoism/Taoism is rather different from what >you would get in the west. Confucianism is somewhat similar to what >you would get if western cultural conservatives allied themselves with >nazi/commies, in the way that the commies are prone to imagine >conservatives have supposedly allied themselves with nazis. Taoism >somewhat similar to what you would get if anarcho capitalists allied >themselves with pagans and wiccans... WOW! I'll skip the obvious comments and ask, In which centuries are you suggesting this applies? Now? If so, you are clearly NOT talking about mainland China. Please re-define the centuries/epochs during which you believe this to have been true, and then maybe I'll bother responding. -TD From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 10 14:03:13 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 17:03:13 -0500 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: <41928171.4040006@students.bbk.ac.uk> References: <41892D7C.6030309@echeque.com> <41928171.4040006@students.bbk.ac.uk> Message-ID: At 9:00 PM +0000 11/10/04, ken wrote: >Be fair. They had a trained and disciplined army. Most of whom >would obey orders to the death. That's worth a hell of a lot in >battle. Yeah, but the zulus had the wrong end of, well, the stick. Take a look at, again, Hanson's "Carnage and Culture" for a nice discussion of the Zulus in particular, and exactly why 18 brits in a hastily constructed breastwork could hold off several thousand, killing most. Cheers, RAH ------ -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 10 17:40:45 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 20:40:45 -0500 Subject: Calif. settles electronic voting suit against Diebold for $2.6M Message-ID: Ths San Francisco Chronicle Calif. settles electronic voting suit against Diebold for $2.6M RACHEL KONRAD, AP Technology Writer Wednesday, November 10, 2004 (11-10) 15:31 PST SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- California Attorney General Bill Lockyer announced Wednesday a $2.6 million settlement with Diebold Inc., resolving a lawsuit alleging that the company sold the state and several counties shoddy voting equipment. Although critics characterized the settlement as a slap on the wrist, Diebold also agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to partially reimburse Alameda, San Diego and other counties for the cost of paper backup ballots, ink and other supplies in last week's election. California's secretary of state banned the use of one type of Diebold machine in May, after problems with the machines disenfranchised an unknown number of voters in the March primary. Faulty equipment forced at least 6,000 of 316,000 voters in Alameda County, just east of San Francisco, to use backup paper ballots instead of the paperless voting terminals. In San Diego County, a power surge resulted in hundreds of touch-screens that wouldn't start when the polls opened, forcing election officials to turn voters away from the polls. According to the settlement, the North Canton, Ohio-based company must also upgrade ballot tabulation software that Los Angeles County and others used Nov. 2. Diebold must also strengthen the security of its paperless voting machines and computer servers and promise never to connect voting systems to outside networks. "There is no more fundamental right in our democracy than the right to vote and have your vote counted," Lockyer said in a statement. "In making false claims about its equipment, Diebold treated that right, and the taxpayers who bought its machines, cavalierly. This settlement holds Diebold accountable and helps ensure the future quality and security of its voting systems." The tentative settlement could be approved as soon as Dec. 10. The original lawsuit was filed a year ago by Seattle-based electronic voting critic Bev Harris and Sacramento-based activist Jim March, who characterized the $2.6 million settlement as "peanuts." March, a whistle blower who filed suit on behalf of California taxpayers, could receive as much as $75,000 because of the settlement. But he said the terms don't require Diebold to overhaul its election servers -- which have had problems in Washington's King County and elsewhere -- to guard them from hackers, software bugs or other failures. The former computer system administrator was also upset that the state announced the deal so quickly. Several activist groups, computer scientists and federal researchers are analyzing Nov. 2 election data, looking for evidence of vote rigging or unintentional miscounts in hundreds of counties nationwide that used touch-screen terminals. Results are expected by early December. "This settlement will shut down a major avenue of investigation before evidence starts trickling in," March said. "It's very premature." A Diebold executive said the settlement would allow the company to spend more money on improving software and avoid "the distraction and cost of prolonged litigation." Diebold earnings plunged 5 cents per share in the third quarter because of the California litigation, which could cost an additional 1 cent per share in the current quarter. Diebold shares closed Wednesday at $53.20, up 1.22 percent from Tuesday in trading on the New York Stock Exchange. "We've worked closely with California officials to come to an agreement that allows us to continue to move forward," Diebold senior vice president Thomas W. Swidarski said in a statement. "While we believe Diebold has strong responses to the claims raised in the suit, we are primarily interested in building an effective and trusting relationship with California election officials." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk Wed Nov 10 12:53:52 2004 From: bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk (ken) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 20:53:52 +0000 Subject: Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal In-Reply-To: <1099545605.29415.5.camel@mesmer.rant-central.com> References: <1099545605.29415.5.camel@mesmer.rant-central.com> Message-ID: <41927FE0.6020802@students.bbk.ac.uk> Roy M. Silvernail wrote: > On Wed, 2004-11-03 at 23:30 -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > >> >> >>Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal >>It's Time to Reconfigure the United States > > > Chuckle-worthy, if not outright funny. Interestingly, I could see a > liberal making exactly the same case, but without the ad hominem > attacks. You mean like http://www.fuckthesouth.com/ ? Funnier, more factual, and a damn sight more ad hominem. From bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk Wed Nov 10 13:00:33 2004 From: bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk (ken) Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 21:00:33 +0000 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: <41892D7C.6030309@echeque.com> References: <41892D7C.6030309@echeque.com> Message-ID: <41928171.4040006@students.bbk.ac.uk> James A. Donald wrote: > So far the Pentagon has > shattered the enemy while suffering casualties of about a thousand, > which is roughly the same number of casualties as the British empire > suffered doing regime change on the Zulu empire - an empire of a > quarter of a million semi naked savages mostly armed with spears. Be fair. They had a trained and disciplined army. Most of whom would obey orders to the death. That's worth a hell of a lot in battle. From admin at staffadministrator.com Wed Nov 10 22:40:58 2004 From: admin at staffadministrator.com (Administrator) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 04 06:40:58 GMT Subject: ADV: Staff Announcement Message-ID: Attention All Nonprofit Organizations: Members and Staff You Must Respond By 5 P.M. Friday, November 12, 2004. Through a special arrangement, Avtech Direct is offering a limited allotment of BRAND NEW, top of-the-line, name-brand desktop computers at more than 50% off MSRP to all Nonprofit Members and Staff who respond to this message before 5 P.M., Friday, November 12, 2004 All desktop computers are brand-new packed in their original boxes, and come with a full manufacturer's warranty plus a 100% satisfaction guarantee. These professional grade Desktops are fully equipped with 2005 next generation technology, making these the best performing computers money can buy. Avtech Direct is offering these feature rich, top performing Desktops with the latest technology at an amazing price to all who call: 1-800-795-8466 by 5 P.M. Friday, November 12, 2004 The fast and powerful AT-3200 series Desktop features: * IBM Processor for amazing speed and performance * 128MB DDR RAM, -- Upgradeable to 1024 * 20 GB UDMA Hard Drive, -- Upgradeable to 80 GB * 52X CD-Rom Drive, -- Upgradeable to DVD/CDRW * Next Generation 2005 Technology * Premium video and sound -- For enhanced colors and graphics * Full Connectivity with Fax modem/Lan/IEE 1394/USB 2.0 * Soft Touch Keyboard and scroll mouse * Internet Ready * Network Ready * 1 Year parts and labor warranty * Priority customer service and tech support MSRP $499 ........................................ Your Cost $227 How to qualify: 1. You must be a Member, Staff or Associate of a Nonprofit. 2. All desktop computers will be available on a first come first serve basis. 3. You must call 1-800-795-8466 by 5 P.M. Friday, November 12, 2004. and we will hold the desktops you request on will call. 4. You are not obligated in any way. 5. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed. 6. Ask for Department C. Call Avtech Direct 1-800-795-8466 before 5 P.M. Friday, November 12, 2004 Visit our website at http://www.avtechdirect-nonprofits.com If you wish to unsubscribe from this list, please go to http://www.computeradvice.org/unsubscribelink.asp Avtech Direct 22647 Ventura Blvd. Suite 374 Woodland Hills, CA 91364 From ericm at lne.com Thu Nov 11 06:50:56 2004 From: ericm at lne.com (Eric Murray) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 06:50:56 -0800 Subject: nyms being attacked by malware In-Reply-To: <93e78886fe6b61fe022e1dd43d48f079@remailer.privacy.at>; from mixmaster@remailer.privacy.at on Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 10:16:11AM +0100 References: <93e78886fe6b61fe022e1dd43d48f079@remailer.privacy.at> Message-ID: <20041111065056.A3026@slack.lne.com> On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 10:16:11AM +0100, privacy.at Anonymous Remailer wrote: > I've noticed a very high increase of incoming virii and malicious code of > various sorts to one of my nyms. Since the nym is not used anywhere > publically I really wonder if these are deliberate attacks to try to > compromise the machines of people using nyms to protect their identity. Is > this something that's a known strategy somehow? Obviously it could also be > that the nym was previously used by someone else online and that's partly > why it would be interesting to hear other's comments on this. Spammers probe SMTP servers for valid names using dictionary attacks. It's difficult to set up an SMTP server that will accept mail for an address and not also give up the information that the address is valid. From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Thu Nov 11 06:37:42 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 09:37:42 -0500 Subject: Arafat's last thoughts... Message-ID: "Damn! Just when this scrabbly beard was finally starting to grow in!" From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Thu Nov 11 06:48:57 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 09:48:57 -0500 Subject: The Full Chomsky Message-ID: Now I certainly don't agree with a lot of Chomsky, bvut this dude clearly has an axe to grind. For instance, "After 9/11, he was more concerned about a fictitious famine in Afghanistan than about the nearly 3,000 incinerated in The World Trade Center attacks." What a fucking idiot. The 3000 were already dead, the 'famine' was about-to-be. A Chomsky nut could say Chomsky helped avert complete catastrophe (though there apparently was a decent amount of famine after all, but nothing like 3MM.) But this misses the point. Mr Donald will no doubt chime in yammering on about Chomsky's "lies", but that also misses the point. Chomsky makes very strong arguments supporting a very different view of world events, and he often quotes primary and secondary sources. If you are going to disagree with Chomsky (and in many areas I do), then you've got to actually get off your lazy ass and look up the sources and do some f-in' homework. Only then are you qualified to refute him. -TD >From: "R.A. Hettinga" >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: The Full Chomsky >Date: Wed, 10 Nov 2004 16:20:43 -0500 > > > > MensNewsDaily.com > > >The Full Chomsky > > November 10, 2004 > by Bernard Chapin > > Question: How could a linguist working as a college professor have >omniscient insight regarding the inner-workings of the American government >and exclusive knowledge concerning the hidden motivations of every >government official in our nation's history? > > Answer: There's no way he could. > > Yet, such common sense does little to refute the fact that Noam Chomsky >is >one of the ten most quoted figures in the humanities. He has published >screed after screed deconstructing American foreign policy positions and >never has given any indication that his insinuations may somehow be limited >by lack of connections or first hand evidence (or, in some cases, any >evidence whatsoever). Since the 1960s, he has fully played the role of >Wizard Professor and created an entire library's worth of "pseudo-academic >smog" . > > Until recently, there have been few antidotes for his morass of >accusations and allegations, but now we have The Anti-Chomsky Reader, >edited by David Horowitz and Peter Collier, which offers purchasers the >service of deconstructing the deconstructor. Once you've finished reading >it, you'll be highly grateful as Chomsky's lies are so pervasive and >counter-intuitive that it's a wonder anyone but the paranoid ever read him >in the first place. > > The Anti-Chomsky Reader is a compilation of essays outlining and refuting >the travesties that the M.I.T. linguist has passed off as truth. It does >not confine itself to politics alone. Substantial space is given to the >analysis of his scholarly publications in linguistics. These are addressed >in two chapters called, "A Corrupted Linguistics" and "Chomsky, Language, >World War II and Me." In the area of his chosen field, many have given him >an intellectual pass but this work does not. His linguistic ideas may be as >spurious as his political tomes. All sources give him initial credit for >his core academic assumption about the "biological basis of grammar," but >it seems that he has engaged in little in the way of scientifically >verifiable work over the course of the last fifty years. Chomsky's creative >terminology dazzles admirers but his new theories inevitably amount to >nothing > > Overall, the compendium leaves no region of his reputation left >unexamined. Anti-Americanism is central to his worldview. He never sees >this nation as being superior to any other. At best, we mirror the >pathologies of totalitarian states. We can discern this clearly in Stephen >Morris's "Whitewashing Dictatorship in Communist Vietnam and Cambodia." The >author sums up Chomsky's fetish for defending the Vietnamese and Democratic >Kampuchea aptly when he argues that, > > "As a radical political ideologue, he is crippled by an intense emotional >commitment to the cause of anti-Americanism. Operating on the principle >that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend,' he wholeheartedly embraced the >struggle of two of the world's most ruthlessly brutal regimes." > > Chomsky's hopes for mankind are vested in murderous revolutionaries and >not in his own nation. It is our nation, and never the Khmer Rouge, which >gives its citizens the freedom to vote, the freedom to trade, and, most >obviously, the freedom to spread the type of sedition that Noam Chomsky has >been disseminating for close to 40 years. > > He does not limit himself to Asia, however. The professor has constantly >minimized the acts of many totalitarian states. Chomsky regarded Soviet >control of eastern Europe, when compared to the American presence in >Vietnam, as being "practically a paradise" We see a man who cares far more >about Holocaust deniers than the six million who were exterminated in gas >chambers or desolate Russian ravines. > > After 9/11, he was more concerned about a fictitious famine in >Afghanistan >than about the nearly 3,000 incinerated in The World Trade Center attacks. >He predicted that the toppling of the Taliban would result in 3 to 4 >million famine deaths. When no such famine occurred, he did not issue an >apology or retraction. He simply chose to say nothing. > > There is not much about this world famous ideologue that is genuine. He >has ardently defended the right of free speech for anti-Semitic, >Holocaust-denying cranks like Robert Faurisson and Pierre Guillaume but >chose not to say anything, or sign any petitions, supporting Soviet >intellectuals relegated to the gulag due to their ideas. > > Chomsky's self-proclaimed political orientation is preposterous. He is >enthralled with the socialist ideal but describes himself as a libertarian. >If this were true he would be the first libertarian in history who hated >capitalism and the free market. He also claims to be an anarchist but seems >to love nothing more than strong governments which redistribute the wealth >of its citizens and coerce its people into complying with the socialist >ideal. He is so deeply repulsed by our nation, and so entirely lacking in >perspective, that he holds Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Truman to be war >criminals but Pol Pot, who murdered 25 percent of all Cambodians, as >creating "constructive achievements for much of the population." He has an >easy answer for those who dare argue with him. We do not understand as we >have false consciousness . Only he, the magician, can know the true >workings of the American state. > > Stylistically, Chomsky's works are written with an obfuscating hand and >penned in the language of the opaque. The mechanics of his style: "As a >strategy for creating a Potemkin village of intellectual authenticity, >[are] brilliant; as scholarship it is charlatanism." Chomsky litters his >work with footnotes yet the footnotes are a parlor game because they often >lead to more footnotes citing other assertions he made in earlier works. > > The most egregious passage of them all occurs in John Williamson's essay, >"Chomsky, Language, World War II and Me." It concerns Chomsky's interview >with The New Yorker magazine where he is quoted as saying to one of his >classes that Russian archives proved that Britain and the United States >supported Nazi armies in the hopes of holding back the Soviet's eastern >advance. When questioned about the quotation by Williamson, Chomsky >dismissed the reporter as having manufactured his statement and that she >had printed "a ridiculous gossip column." He then, even though he claimed >not to have said what he did, referred Williamson to a source that did not >support his assertion in the least. Chomsky's statement about the reporter >turned out to be slanderous as the lecture that the reporter quoted from is >available online via videotape. In it, the linguist says exactly what the >reporter says he did. When confronted with his mendacity, Chomsky changed >tactics and pronounced how absurd it was for someone to quote from his >lecture. The real absurdity is that anyone should take him seriously at >all. > > In case one thinks that this was an isolated incident, Chomsky appears to >have learned nothing from The New Yorker scandal as he lied last month in a >speech at the University of Michigan when he said that the United States >had planned an attack on Japan before Pearl Harbor. No evidence was offered >to support his claim as no evidence exists. > > What can one say about Chomsky? As a scholar and shaper of young minds he >is deplorable. He is a Jew hating Jew who views the Israelis as Nazis and >their behavior will result in "a final solution from which few will >escape." His country has made him rich and famous although he discerns no >good in the sea of prosperity around him. His is a most disturbed, jealous, >and depressed mind. Chomsky has tied his life's disappointments to >officials in Washington. If the linguist would merely be content to hate >himself rather than project his feelings upon the government, we would all >be much better off. > > Phrase from "Chomsky and the Cold War" by Thomas M. Nichols, p. 48. > > Nichols, p.61. > > Argument made by Eli Lehrer in "Chomsky and the Media: A Kept Press and a >Manipulated People." p.82 > > Recounted by John Williamson in "Chomsky, Language, World War II and Me." >pp. 236-241 > > Chomsky quoted on page 94 of Paul Bogdanor's "Chomsky's War Against >Israel." > >-- >----------------- >R. A. Hettinga >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation >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' From mixmaster at remailer.privacy.at Thu Nov 11 01:16:11 2004 From: mixmaster at remailer.privacy.at (privacy.at Anonymous Remailer) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 10:16:11 +0100 (CET) Subject: nyms being attacked by malware Message-ID: <93e78886fe6b61fe022e1dd43d48f079@remailer.privacy.at> I've noticed a very high increase of incoming virii and malicious code of various sorts to one of my nyms. Since the nym is not used anywhere publically I really wonder if these are deliberate attacks to try to compromise the machines of people using nyms to protect their identity. Is this something that's a known strategy somehow? Obviously it could also be that the nym was previously used by someone else online and that's partly why it would be interesting to hear other's comments on this. From jamesd at echeque.com Thu Nov 11 11:02:52 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 11:02:52 -0800 Subject: The Full Chomsky In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4193B75C.5080604@echeque.com> -- Tyler Durden wrote: > What a fucking idiot. The 3000 were already dead, the 'famine' was > about-to-be. A Chomsky nut could say Chomsky helped avert complete > catastrophe [...] > > But this misses the point. Mr Donald will no doubt chime in > yammering on about Chomsky's "lies", but that also misses the point. > Chomsky makes very strong arguments supporting a very different view > of world events, and he often quotes primary and secondary sources. No he does not quote primary and secondary sources. He purports to paraphrase primary and secondary sources, When he actually quotes, as he rarely does, he quotes only very small fragments in elaborate and contrived false context, often using made up quotes which resemble, but differ from the original in vital ways. The "famine" in Afghanistan is a case in point, which has already been discussed in the newsgroups. The sources in original context did not make the claims he attributed to them. I have provided a paragraph by paragraph comparison of source materials with Chomsky's claims about source materials for the issue of the Khmer Rouge - see http://www.jim.com/chomsdis.htm, but the same story could be written, and indeed has been written, of everything he writes. If you complain that his lies in support of the Khmer Rouge are old news, I will do a similar number on his more recent lies about the Afghan famine. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 7d/sRxIb8lHa8J3zbt56pbk45oa+nV8y90GgLfGL 496eTnLDCz/ALgUZmdM3tMRnhmRw8AcO00m0wSerI From jya at pipeline.com Thu Nov 11 14:21:18 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 14:21:18 -0800 Subject: The Full Chomsky In-Reply-To: <4193B75C.5080604@echeque.com> References: Message-ID: But James, it is a no-brainer to refute an argument with selective use of an opponents words, phrases, quotations, arguments and beliefs. Debaters are trained and hired to do just this as are propagandists, spin doctors, psychiatrists, journalists, scholars, historians, pr pros, courtiers, literary critics, philosophers, logicians, priests, lovers, indeed most of language and discourse is made up of such mongrelian fabrications. Chomsky, the linguist, knows this better than most, and certainly more than you, an amateur by comparison. He makes no apology for his attacks on apologists for the powerful, he is merely better at it than they are. Not much is worth doing more than helping lance the giants' scrota. You could learn from his linguistic studies and his prowess at detumescing opponents surely more than you can learn by attempting to ramrod him, for you are sure to do so at a level much more superficial than his multi-level critiques and in the process miss the bulk of his argumentative substantiation -- as demonstrated by the biased, blind, vacuousness posted by Dr. Hettinga. Dr. Hettinga is having his fun posting a cornicopia of light-weight straw-men disputation, aw shit call it what it is, lazy-minded inarticulate like that spewed all across Blueland by preachers of blind faith in yelling the same old. Chomsky is one smart SOB, his serious critics readily agree he is surely the intelligent man in the USA, and they learn from him far more than they learn from those who think as they do: beware the adoring choir's roundheels. From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Thu Nov 11 13:19:30 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 16:19:30 -0500 Subject: Cell Phone Jammer? Message-ID: Anyone know from first-hand experience about cellphone jammers? I need... 1) A nice little portable, and 2) A higher-powered one that can black out cell phone calls within, say, 50 to 100 feet of a moving vehicle. -TD From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 11 13:20:59 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 16:20:59 -0500 Subject: E-Mail Authentication Will Not End Spam, Panelists Say Message-ID: The Washington Post washingtonpost.com E-Mail Authentication Will Not End Spam, Panelists Say By Jonathan Krim Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, November 11, 2004; Page E01 For consumers and businesses increasingly shaken by the growing onslaught of unwanted e-mail and the computer viruses and other nefarious hacking spam can bring, any hope for quick relief was soundly dashed yesterday during a government-hosted gathering of technology experts. Several executives and academics speaking at a forum sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission said criminals are already steps ahead of a major initiative by e-mail providers to counter those problems by creating a system to verify senders of e-mail. In theory, such an authentication system would make it harder for spammers to disguise their identities and locations in an attempt to avoid being shut down or prosecuted. But a majority of spam is launched by "zombies," or infected personal computers that are controlled by remote spammers. E-mail from a zombie looks as if it is coming from a legitimate source -- because it is. The owner of that source is simply unaware that his or her computer has been commandeered. "We'll be lucky if we solve 50 percent of the problem" with e-mail authentication, said Pavni Diwanji, chairman of MailFrontier Inc., a Silicon Valley provider of e-mail security systems. By some estimates, the problem is rapidly becoming a crisis. In the first half of this year, an average of 30,000 computers a day were turned into zombies, according to the computer security firm Symantec Corp. In addition to serving up unwanted or fraudulent messages, spam is used to deliver viruses and other malicious software code that can allow hackers to capture private data such as credit card or bank account numbers from personal computers. Hackers and spammers also have been able to exploit a lack of awareness among many computer users, tricking them into providing their passwords or account information in response to e-mails that appear to be coming from legitimate financial institutions or retailers, a tactic known as phishing. The information is then rapidly sold on a black market heavily populated by elements of organized crime in Eastern Europe, Asia and elsewhere. As incidents of the resulting identity fraud mount, "we're losing consumer confidence in this medium," said R. David Lewis, vice president of Digital Impact Inc., which provides bulk e-mail marketing services to large companies. Lewis and others said that if the public reaches a tipping point at which Internet commerce is no longer trusted, the economic consequences will be severe. Despite the authentication effort's shortcomings, none of yesterday's speakers suggested abandoning it, because it is seen as an essential building block for other solutions. But the forum demonstrated in stark terms the depth and complexity of the problem. Any e-mail authentication system, for example, would check that the block of Internet addresses assigned to an e-mail provider includes the specific numeric address of a sender of a piece of e-mail. Thus, a red flag would go up if a message seeming to come from bob at xyz-123.net is actually not coming from a computer that uses the xyz-123.net mail service. But Scott Chasin, chief technology officer of e-mail security firm MX Logic Inc., said the underlying Internet system that houses the necessary data is insecure and can be tricked by hackers. Chasin said the problem has been known for 10 years, but industry and Internet standard-setters have been unable or unwilling to fix the problem by encrypting the data. Getting agreement on an authentication system has been similarly difficult and is partly why the FTC held the summit. The major e-mail providers, America Online Inc., Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and EarthLink Inc., are still testing and pushing various plans. The Internet group assigned to endorse a standard disbanded recently, unable to resolve discord and uncertainty over whether licensing rights asserted by Microsoft would cut out a broad swath of organizations that use so-called open-source software. Chasin and other panelists also said the basic operating systems that power computers -- the most dominant of which is Microsoft Windows -- remain too vulnerable to hackers. He said a worm was recently discovered that lodges itself in Windows files and goes to work when a computer user tries to access the Web site of his or her bank. The malicious code automatically redirects the Web browser to a fake page that looks like the real thing. In this scenario, the user has not been duped by a fake phishing e-mail. Instead, the vulnerability in the operating system has allowed the code to redirect the user's browser to a phony page where a hacker can capture the user's name and password. Still, panelists insisted authentication is a vital first step. After that, they said, could come a system that evaluates the "reputation" of senders, perhaps using a process that marks good e-mail with an electronic seal of approval. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz Wed Nov 10 19:24:22 2004 From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 16:24:22 +1300 Subject: This Memorable Day In-Reply-To: <41928171.4040006@students.bbk.ac.uk> Message-ID: ken writes: >James A. Donald wrote: >> So far the Pentagon has >> shattered the enemy while suffering casualties of about a thousand, >> which is roughly the same number of casualties as the British empire >> suffered doing regime change on the Zulu empire - an empire of a >> quarter of a million semi naked savages mostly armed with spears. > >Be fair. They had a trained and disciplined army. Most of whom >would obey orders to the death. That's worth a hell of a lot in >battle. You also had to look at what they were up against. Witness the complete massacre at Isandlwana (the classic Zulu bull-and-horns overran the British camp because the troops were too far away from their ammunition to resupply, no doubt copying Elphinstone's tactic in Afghanistan) vs. post-Isandlwana use of Gatling batteries and massed field artillery (some of which was converted Naval artillery), e.g. Ulundi, where post-battle reports were of piles of Zulu dead mown down by Gatlings. The British only thought that the Zulus were just semi-naked savages until Isandlwana. Peter. From dgerow at afflictions.org Thu Nov 11 22:07:48 2004 From: dgerow at afflictions.org (Damian Gerow) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 01:07:48 -0500 Subject: Cell Phone Jammer? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20041112060748.GS8230@afflictions.org> Thus spake Tyler Durden (camera_lumina at hotmail.com) [11/11/04 16:25]: : Anyone know from first-hand experience about cellphone jammers? They're legal in France. That's all I know. (If you find anything out, please post it to the list. I'm also interested.) From dgerow at afflictions.org Thu Nov 11 22:16:39 2004 From: dgerow at afflictions.org (Damian Gerow) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 01:16:39 -0500 Subject: E-Mail Authentication Will Not End Spam, Panelists Say In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20041112061639.GT8230@afflictions.org> Thus spake R.A. Hettinga (rah at shipwright.com) [11/11/04 16:29]: : Several executives and academics speaking at a forum sponsored by the : Federal Trade Commission said criminals are already steps ahead of a major : initiative by e-mail providers to counter those problems by creating a : system to verify senders of e-mail. : : In theory, such an authentication system would make it harder for spammers : to disguise their identities and locations in an attempt to avoid being : shut down or prosecuted. (Having watched the IETF group for a while, and spent much time fighting spam...) No person who is pushing for SPF believes that it will reduce the volume of spam.[1] What SPF *does* do is make it easier to track it down -- the From address will actually match the domain it was sent from. This makes the Abuse department's job *much* easier, as in theory, any spam complaint you receive about your domain will be *from* your domain. While this doesn't always mean you have a spammer in your midst, it /does/ mean that the piece of mail in question /did/ come from your networks, hence it is something you can track down without worry about wasting time that would be better spent elsewhere. Arguably, this doesn't gain the anti-spam fighters anything, as the spam still comes from somewhere. But if you lay out the seriousness of the problem to your subscriber, the chances of a repeat offense (which, ideally, would result in account termination) drop to very close to zero. This is also something that ISPs can combat internally, such as forcing SMTP authentication (which, granted, opens up a whole other bucket of worms), not allowing outbound SMTP connections (unless explicitly granted), or having only a web interface to e-mail (thus blocking all outbound SMTP connects, even to their own mail servers, period). The 'criminals' aren't necessarily 'steps ahead' -- they're just working within the SPF framework, and doing exactly what SPF wanted them to do. SPF is *one* step towards limiting the volume of spam, but it in and of itself does not. There are a great number of other tools that, when combined with SPF, can and do make a difference in the spam volume being sent. Yes, each tool has drawbacks, and I'm not going to claim otherwise. But for the 95th percentile, they won't really notice a difference. Until their account is cut off, that is. [1] Any person who claims otherwise just plain doesn't understand SPF or its goals. Unfortunately, a few people have claimed that SPF will cut down on the spam volume, and this take was snapped up by the media and subsequently pushed out as the primary goal of SPF. It is, AFAIK, generally agreed that to cut down on spam volume, we need a whole different protocol from SMTP. From jamesd at echeque.com Fri Nov 12 02:49:12 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 02:49:12 -0800 Subject: The Full Chomsky In-Reply-To: References: <4193B75C.5080604@echeque.com> Message-ID: <419424A8.19066.5171E273@localhost> -- On 11 Nov 2004 at 14:21, John Young wrote: > Chomsky, [...] He makes no apology for his attacks on > apologists for the powerful, he is merely better at it than > they are. Wherever the master's boot smashes into the face of a child, we can rely on Chomsky to deny the master's crimes, while simultaneously justifying those crimes, and demonizing the child as a CIA agent. Always Chomsky is on the side of evil, of hatred, of the torturer, and against the torturer's victim, as he was on the issue of Pol Pot's Cambodia, when he spread and endorsed the lies of issued by Pol Pot's regime. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG w8wf5p0VKgycj9Ld3q9wBJikPRDq7/6mG2fem3Oi 481l46Enne+sD9gu1SutixMgpaZcYscUEn7FHAJPG From jamesd at echeque.com Fri Nov 12 02:54:35 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 02:54:35 -0800 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks In-Reply-To: <07d401c4c89d$7de99fe0$0200a8c0@em.noip.com> Message-ID: <419425EB.3502.5176CFB7@localhost> -- James Donald: > > However Confucianism vs Daoism/Taoism is rather different > > from what you would get in the west. Confucianism is > > somewhat similar to what you would get if western cultural > > conservatives allied themselves with nazi/commies, in the > > way that the commies are prone to imagine conservatives > > have supposedly allied themselves with nazis. Taoism > > somewhat similar to what you would get if anarcho > > capitalists allied themselves with pagans and wiccans... "Enzo Michelangeli" > Actually, that doesn't apply to any century. The ancient > philosophical school that inspired Mao Zedong was actually > Legalism, which provided the theoretic foundations to the > absolutist rule of Qin Shi Huangdi In my original post, I said that legalism was pretty much the same thing as communism/nazism, so you are not disagreeing with me, merely re - raising a point I had already raised. However, whereas legalism is much the same thing communism/nazism, confucianism is legalism moderated by conservatism > (to whom Mao liked to compare himself). Mao, as many other > Chinese reformers and writers of the early XX Century, hated > Confucianism as symbol of China's "ancien regime" and decay. And the commies hated the nazis, as well as other commies slightly different from themselves, and the nazis hated other nazis slightly different from themselves. The conflict between confucianism and legalism does not imply the difference betweent the two is very large, though it is a good deal larger than the miniscule difference between communism and nazism. > By comparison, Confucianism was remarkably enlightened, "by comparison". Well most things are pretty enlightened by comparison with communism/legalism/nazism. I am less impressed by this fact than you are. Confucianism is despotic and oppressive. Even if confucians do not bury scholars alives, they suppress their opponents by means less spectacular, but in the long run comparably effective. China stagnated because no thought other than official thought occurred. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG HNIR6uGQUMyllJLev2ryOe5xvv1qtUyvgvnFXy4J 4HfiAds3UvnSj3hJTTbW4uTzwvqIlszbh7H0gilkM From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Fri Nov 12 06:38:44 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 09:38:44 -0500 Subject: Cell Phone Jammer? Message-ID: Well, I googled up a whole batch, but I was wondering if anyone had had their grubby little hands on one of these things and could recommend one. Also, I know the standards are very different in Europe as compared to the US. And also, does a 'regular' jammer also jam CDMA signals? (CDMA was actually invented by Heddy Lamar to avoid jamming!) -TD >From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: Cell Phone Jammer? >Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 21:08:18 +1300 > >"Tyler Durden" writes: > > >Anyone know from first-hand experience about cellphone jammers? > > > >I need... > > > >1) A nice little portable, and > >Try the SH066PL, a nice portable that looks exactly like a cellphone, it's >one >of the few portables I know of. > > >2) A higher-powered one that can black out cell phone calls within, say, >50 > >to 100 feet of a moving vehicle. > >Google is your friend, there are tons of these around, with varying degrees >of >sophistication. These are definitely not portable, taking several amps at >6-12V to power them. > >None of them are exactly cheap. > >Peter. From jamesd at echeque.com Fri Nov 12 09:41:20 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 09:41:20 -0800 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <41948540.28638.52EB3281@localhost> -- On 12 Nov 2004 at 9:51, Tyler Durden wrote: > As far as I'm concerned, what Kung Tze does ca 5 BCE is > really consdolidate and codify a large and diverse body of > practices and beliefs under a fairly unified set of ethical > ideas. In that sense, the Legalists were merely a refocusing > of the same general body of mores, etc...into a somewhat > different direction. One might call it a competing school to > Kung Tze de Jiao Xun, but I would argue only because, at that > time, Kung Tze "authority" as it's known today was by no > means completely established. But in a sense, the early > legalists weren't a HECK of a lot different from Confucious. Which is a commie nazi way of saying that the the Confucians were not a heck of a lot different from the legalists - and the legalists set up an early version of the standard highly centralized totalitarian terror state, which doubtless appears quite enlightened to the likes of Tyler Durden. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG k9Dumf7XMAhNCRDuxNd2aKQtrN2PqD2p2l3TDcjw 4SMVqw0LGnr3oZKU5v0WQpooJ4tKHdZvNiokzj2e9 From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Fri Nov 12 06:51:26 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 09:51:26 -0500 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks Message-ID: Ah. A fellow knowledgeable China-hand. As far as I'm concerned, what Kung Tze does ca 5 BCE is really consdolidate and codify a large and diverse body of practices and beliefs under a fairly unified set of ethical ideas. In that sense, the Legalists were merely a refocusing of the same general body of mores, etc...into a somewhat different direction. One might call it a competing school to Kung Tze de Jiao Xun, but I would argue only because, at that time, Kung Tze "authority" as it's known today was by no means completely established. But in a sense, the early legalists weren't a HECK of a lot different from Confucious. As for Mr Donald's ramblings, the are in which they most closely approach reality is where filial obedience to the emperor is developed as an extension to his ethical system, but even here there are significant differences. For one, that filial loyalty is not portrayed as being ultimately political, but almost an extension of family (which is why the emperor was known as the "Son of Heaven"). Also, and this is fairly Cypherpunkish, unlike in the west the notin of Emperor was not ultimately a genetic one. That is, there's a "Mandate of Heaven", and when the mandate of heaven is removed from an Emperor and his line, it's time to bum-rush his show, which was done on a regular basis in China. As for the Taoists this comment by Mr Donald is almost completely nonsensical. -TD >From: "Enzo Michelangeli" >To: >Subject: Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks >Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 17:53:07 +0800 > >Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks >Tyler Durden >Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:56:08 -0800 > > > Oh No!!!! > > > > > > Way overly simplistic. Also, you are comparing apples to bushels of > > wheat. > > > > [James Donald:] > > However Confucianism vs Daoism/Taoism is rather different from what > > you would get in the west. Confucianism is somewhat similar to what > > you would get if western cultural conservatives allied themselves with > > nazi/commies, in the way that the commies are prone to imagine > > conservatives have supposedly allied themselves with nazis. Taoism > > somewhat similar to what you would get if anarcho capitalists allied > > themselves with pagans and wiccans... > > > > WOW! I'll skip the obvious comments and ask, In which centuries are > > you suggesting this applies? Now? If so, you are clearly NOT talking > > about mainland China. Please re-define the centuries/epochs during > > which you believe this to have been true, and then maybe I'll bother > > responding. > >Actually, that doesn't apply to any century. The ancient philosophical >school that inspired Mao Zedong was actually Legalism, which provided the >theoretic foundations to the absolutist rule of Qin Shi Huangdi (to whom >Mao liked to compare himself). Mao, as many other Chinese reformers and >writers of the early XX Century, hated Confucianism as symbol of China's >"ancien regime" and decay. Which is why the campaign against Zhou En-lai >of 1974-75 had an anti-Confucian theme (see e.g. the posters at >http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/plpk.html ) > >Legalists and Qin Shi Huangdi himself were pretty nasty types, and their >domination saw widespread confiscation of books, ridiculously harsh rule >(arriving late to work could bring the death penalty!) and large-scale >assassination or rivals: several Confucian philosophers were buried alive. >The ruthless methods of the Qin dinasty ultimately resulted in its >downfall: it only lasted one and half decade (221 - 206 BC), half of what >Maoism did. > >By comparison, Confucianism was remarkably enlightened, which is also why >Voltaire expressed a good opinion of it. Some Confucian philosophers like >Mencius (372-289 AC) were early theorists of people's sovereignty: > >"The people are the most important element in a nation; the spirits of the >land and grain are the next; the sovereign is the lightest [...] When a >prince endangers the altars of the spirits of the land and grain, he is >changed, and another appointed in his place." >[Mencius, Book 7: http://nothingistic.org/library/mencius/mencius27.html ] > >...and of the right to tyrannicide, justified by the loss of legitimacy >brought by misrule: > >"The king said, 'May a minister then put his sovereign to death?' Mencius >said, 'He who outrages the benevolence proper to his nature, is called a >robber; he who outrages righteousness, is called a ruffian. The robber and >ruffian we call a mere fellow." >[Mencius, Book 1: http://nothingistic.org/library/mencius/mencius04.html ] > >Enzo From jamesd at echeque.com Fri Nov 12 09:51:35 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 09:51:35 -0800 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks In-Reply-To: <4194D96B.7070006@students.bbk.ac.uk> References: <419425EB.3502.5176CFB7@localhost> Message-ID: <419487A7.13813.52F49429@localhost> -- James A. Donald. > > China stagnated because no thought other than official > > thought occurred. On 12 Nov 2004 at 15:40, ken wrote: > And when was this stagnation? Started soon after the Qing dynasty > And what were the reasons China did not "stagnate" for the > previous thousand years? When the Song dynasty attempted to appoint important people, they did not necessarily become important people, and when it attempted to dismiss important people, they did not stay dismissed - The Song dynasty was unable or unwilling to give full effect to Confucianism. The local potentates conspicuously failed to behave in a properly confucian manner towards the emperor. The Song emperor could not reliably make local authorities obey him, which mean that his confucian mandarins could not reliably stop anyone other than themselves from thinking - much as today the communists are unable to stop anyone other than themselves from banking - in part because they are reluctant to apply the rather drastic measures that they have frequently threatened to apply. China prospered under Song Confucianism for pretty much the same reasons as it is today prospering under "communism". --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Yv20dIxJj7Vr+GPh5ImGfq9c3N7OLh5qda5/qc+9 49HxvL6pJJ1duyj3afDTLVoAjtWFWKz322go1DD9I From jamesd at echeque.com Fri Nov 12 10:00:31 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 10:00:31 -0800 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <419489BF.24399.52FCC140@localhost> -- On 12 Nov 2004 at 11:12, Tyler Durden wrote: > However, blaming the Chinese response to the Meiji > restoration on officially unsanctioned thought illustrates a > complete cluelessness about China. During that time Chinese > intellectuals (which at the time meant practically anyone who > had any kind of an education) regularly debating notions of > "Ti Yung", or the tension between what is esentially Chinese > vs what's useful from the Western World (and by the 1860s it > was starting to become clear that the west had some advanced > ideas). This is far more than a top-down dictatorship in the > Stalinist sense, That is the revisionist version - that china was a free and capitalist society, therefore freedom is not enough to ensure modernity and industrialization - a proposition as ludicrous as similar accounts of more recently existent despotic states. China during that period was the classic exemplar of "oriental despotism", the place on which the idea is based. > just as the Cultural Revolution was far more than a bunch of > teenagers "obeying orders". But the Cultural Revolution was merely a bunch of teenagers obeying orders, merely the simulation of a mass movement, with mass compliance instead of mass initiative. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG A3r+IPhnwM5iwqn01H7AuV9g1K9PgqLsYSmZVb6P 4ewsr2ejzouasJCmgOSl3a3j3FucBkMACrPcAsosX From jamesd at echeque.com Fri Nov 12 10:11:09 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 10:11:09 -0800 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks In-Reply-To: References: <4194D96B.7070006@students.bbk.ac.uk> Message-ID: <41948C3D.12635.53067DEF@localhost> -- ken wrote: > > And when was this stagnation? R.A. Hettinga wrote: > Two words: Ming Navy For those who need more words, the Qing Dynasty forbade ownership or building of ocean going vessels, on pain of death - the early equivalent of the iron curtain. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Iw7Wkew4KTQWmS2lvvIMd7+fR3rWAWagnqJ4cF0k 4Ee4DcVaw474VQFVRrwVAXR4XZSXiaNtRuKXYpsBo From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Fri Nov 12 08:12:48 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 11:12:48 -0500 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks Message-ID: Mr Donald's comments are almost completely nonsensical. or rather, they vaguely reflect some aspects of reality glimpsed through a really fucked up mirror while on bad crack. Probably Mr Donald is referring to something he saw on TV about China's response (or relative lack of response) to Japan's Meiji Restoration. China definitely did not respond to foregin ideas of industrialization and technology like the Japanese did. (Or at least, not at the time!) But it should be remembered that China did slowly and steadily evolve it's technology, and was well ahead of the western world until the Enlightenment. However, blaming the Chinese response to the Meiji restoration on officially unsanctioned thought illustrates a complete cluelessness about China. During that time Chinese intellectuals (which at the time meant practically anyone who had any kind of an education) regularly debating notions of "Ti Yung", or the tension between what is esentially Chinese vs what's useful from the Western World (and by the 1860s it was starting to become clear that the west had some advanced ideas). This is far more than a top-down dictatorship in the Stalinist sense, just as the Cultural Revolution was for more than a bunch of teenagers "obeying orders". In the end, a simplistic (though not clueless) argument could be made that China decided to remain "Chinese" rather than embrace what would have been a big disruption to their way of life. As it turned out, the 20th century (and the Japanese) more or less forced this new way of life on them. Hell..come to think of it, the closest precedent to the US invasion of Iraq might be the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. -TD >From: ken >To: cypherpunks >Subject: Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks >Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 15:40:27 +0000 > >>China stagnated because no thought other than >>official thought occurred. > >And when was this stagnation? > >And what were the reasons China did not "stagnate" for the previous >thousand years? From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 12 08:55:30 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 11:55:30 -0500 Subject: Patriot Fixes Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 12, 2004 COMMENTARY Patriot Fixes By BOB BARR November 12, 2004; Page A12 The most common charge levied against critics of the Patriot Act -- one that Alberto Gonzales, the new face of Justice, is likely to repeat in his days ahead -- is that they're "misinformed." Well, as a former U.S. attorney appointed by President Reagan, a former CIA lawyer and analyst, and a former Congressman who sat on the Judiciary Committee, I can go mano a mano with any law-enforcement or intelligence official on the facts. And the facts say that the Patriot Act needs to be reviewed and refined by Congress. Critics of the Act are not calling for full repeal. Only about a dozen of the 150 provisions need to be reformed; these, however, do pose singular threats to civil liberties. Here's how to bring them back in line with the Constitution. The two most significant problems are sections 213 and 215. The first authorized the use of delayed-notification search warrants, which allow the police to search and seize property from homes and businesses without contemporaneously telling the occupants. The Justice Department often claims that this new statutory "sneak and peek" power is innocuous, because the use of such warrants was commonplace before. Actually, the Patriot Act's sneak and peek authority is a whole new creature. Before, law enforcement certainly engaged in delayed-notification searches, especially in drug investigations. Importantly, this authority was available in terrorism investigations. Courts, however, put specific checks on these warrants: They could only be authorized when notice would threaten life or safety (including witness intimidation), endanger evidence, or incite flight from prosecution. It was a limited and extraordinary power. The Patriot Act greatly expanded potential justifications for delay. The criminal code now allows secret search warrants whenever notice would "jeopardize" an investigation or "delay" a trial -- extremely broad rationales. The exception has become the rule. Congress should remove that catch-all justification and impose strict monitoring on the use of these secret warrants. The other primary problem is the "library records" provision, Section 215. This amended a minor section of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which created a specialized court for the review of spy-hunting surveillance and search requests. This "business records" section allowed agents to seize personal records held by certain types of third-parties, including common carriers and vehicle rental companies. The Patriot Act made two changes to this relatively limited power: It allowed the seizure of any "tangible thing" from any third-party record holder (including medical, library, travel and genetic records); and it removed the particularized suspicion required in the original statute. Pre-2001, investigators had to show "specific and articulable facts" -- a standard much lower than criminal probable cause -- that a target was a spy or terrorist. Now, that already low standard has been lowered further. Agents simply certify to the intelligence court that the records desired are relevant to an investigation -- any investigation -- and the judge has no real authority to question that assertion, rendering judicial review meaningless. Reformers on the left and right want two fixes to this section. First, reinstall the individualized suspicion requirement. This reflects the Fourth Amendment notion that the government cannot invade privacy and gather evidence unless it has reasonable suspicion that one has done wrong. The proposed "fix" would retain the section's broad "tangible things" scope, but with a safeguard against abuse. The authorities would still be able to go to a criminal grand jury to demand the production of the same records, providing additional flexibility for counterterrorism work. Second, Congress should require additional reporting requirements. There are other refinements desired by the Act's critics. The new definition of domestic terrorism in Section 802 can be used by prosecutors to turn on an array of invasive new authorities, including broad asset-forfeiture powers, even when the underlying crime does not rise to the level of "terrorism." The preferred legislative reform keeps the definition, but links it to specific crimes like assassination or kidnapping. Reasonable critics of the expansive provisions of the Patriot Act, on both sides of the aisle and in both Houses, have introduced legislation that would implement these modest changes. Far from gutting the Act, these would secure the important powers of the law, but place modest limits on their use. For most of us who voted for the Act, what sealed the deal was the inclusion of provisions that would require us to take a sober second look at the most contentious provisions in the Act by the end of 2005, before reauthorizing them. That time is coming, and the Justice Department does not want to lose the emergency powers it won in the aftermath of 9/11. But Congress should resist its overtures, move forward on the sunsets, and enact additional Patriot fixes if it believes them needed. Mr. Barr is a former Republican congressman. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 12 09:30:08 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 12:30:08 -0500 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks In-Reply-To: <4194D96B.7070006@students.bbk.ac.uk> References: <419425EB.3502.5176CFB7@localhost> <4194D96B.7070006@students.bbk.ac.uk> Message-ID: At 3:40 PM +0000 11/12/04, ken wrote: >And when was this stagnation? Two words: Ming Navy Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 12 10:05:32 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 13:05:32 -0500 Subject: Keeping Better Track From Factory to Checkout Message-ID: The New York Times November 11, 2004 HOW IT WORKS Keeping Better Track From Factory to Checkout By BARNABY J. FEDER IKE investing or hitting a baseball, using radio scanners to wirelessly identify consumer products is simple in concept but dauntingly complex in reality. The current form of the decades-old technology, now known as radio frequency identification, or RFID, has three building blocks: small tags built around microchips that carry a digital identification code; scanners, which are also known as readers; and networking hardware and software to link scanners to computer databases. The biggest challenge for retailers and their suppliers has been melding the building blocks into systems that are reliable without being cumbersome or unduly expensive. Unlike the RFID systems that automatically collect tolls from motorists or control access to buildings, those designed for commerce call for disposable, batteryless tags that are tiny and unobtrusive. And since the tags are meant to be slapped on every pallet or carton or even on every item, they must be cheap enough for businesses to buy them by the hundreds of millions. Perhaps most important, retailers need software capable of filtering out huge amounts of data while recognizing relevant information - when an item has unexpectedly disappeared from a shipment, for example. "It's been very hard to do an intelligent investigation into how you need to change the business because the technology is not good enough yet," said Simon Ellis, supply chain futurist for Unilever, the consumer products company. "It's costing over $1 a case, which is fine for a pilot test. But there is no technology to get labels onto our production-line products." The ultimate goal of an RFID system is to track individual products all the way from manufacture to sale. Under such a system, every item would have a tag embedded in its label or attached separately. The tag consists of a microchip and a flat ribbon of antenna; the microchip would contain a unique code identifying the manufacturer, type of product and individual serial number in a format approved by EPCglobal USA, a nonprofit group that has been developing retail RFID standards. As the item moved through the supply chain, scanners in doorways, on loading docks or at other handoff points would capture the movement. Radio waves from the scanners would be picked up by the tag's antenna, providing enough energy for the tag to broadcast its identity back to the scanner. Data would flow through the Internet or other networks to corporate computers, but if the tags had read-write capability, status updates on the item could be added to the tag itself as well. Once products reached the store, scanners in the stockroom could track how rapidly they are moved to shelves, and scanners on shelves could monitor when shoppers removed them. Finally a checkout scanner could ring up everything in a shopping cart as it was wheeled toward the door. Such technology could speed up checkouts and returns, but the bigger economic impact would be in keeping store shelves filled with the products consumers want. Right now, according to the Grocery Manufacturers Association, stores are missing products consumers want to buy about 8 percent of the time on average and up to 15 percent of the time when the product is being promoted. RFID tracking would also make a big dent in theft and counterfeiting, according to proponents of the technology. And, they say, the tags would be designed so that consumers could easily disable them after purchase. That will not mollify privacy advocates, who object to manufacturers and retailers building up electronic records of shoppers' buying habits, but it could calm fears that individuals or institutions outside the store could use the tags to spy on consumer behavior. So much for the vision. Today's tags are too expensive to put on every item (the cheapest cost about 20 cents each). An effort by Wal-Mart to force its suppliers to use RFID has focused on handling tagged cases, cartons and pallet loads of goods rather than individual items. "Even Wal-Mart is still discovering what this technology can and cannot do," said Omar Hijazi, an RFID specialist at the consulting firm A. T. Kearney. With standards not yet settled, few individual items being tagged and retailers not yet demanding RFID tags at more than a few test distribution centers, manufacturers have put off automating RFID tagging. Instead, most are resorting to "slap and ship" strategies in which tags are applied to items involved in tests just before they leave the warehouse. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 12 10:10:06 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 13:10:06 -0500 Subject: E-pass defeats HP, MS' case dismissal demand Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register ; Mobile ; Devices ; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/11/e-pass_vs_ms_hp_nov_04/ E-pass defeats HP, MS' case dismissal demand By Tony Smith (tony.smith at theregister.co.uk) Published Thursday 11th November 2004 16:27 GMT Microsoft and HP have suffered a set-back in their attempt to defend themselves against allegations made by a patent holding company that their PDA software and hardware violates its intellectual property. Last week, Judge Kenneth M Hoyt of the US District Court for Southern Texas in Houston rejected a request made by Microsoft and HP in July this year that a series of claims made in the patent, number 5,276,311 (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,276,311.WKU.&OS=PN/5,276,311&RS=PN/5,276,311), filed in 1989 and granted in 1994, were invalid due to prior art. ? E-pass' patent covers a "multifunction electronic card" which can be used to store information on a range of credit and debit cards, accessed securely through a password system. Essentially, it describes a single device that users can carry around in place of a multitude of cards. Long-time Register readers will recall that E-pass sued not only Microsoft and Compaq (now part of HP), but 3Com's Palm subsidiary (now PalmOne). In each case, it accused them of selling PDAs that duplicate functionality and techniques outlined in its patent, without authorisation. The Palm action was initiated in 2000 (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/03/01/smart_card_company_sues_over/), the Microsoft/HP case in 2002. E-pass is also suing the Visa organisation. It claims Visa met the company in 2000. After the meeting, it never heard from Visa again, until it spotted Visa's then VP for Product Development, Susan Gordon-Lathrop, appear with then Palm CEO Carl Yankowski to demo a Palm storing secure credit card details. The MS/HP case was put on hold pending the outcome of the Palm action, which initially saw Palm victorious - only to be defeated at appeal. Much of the legal toing and froing to date has centred on the patent's use of the word 'card' and what that word means exactly, in this context. 'Card', the defendants claimed, means a specific thing - something thin, flat and the size of a credit card. Our devices are no so sized, said Palm - ergo, they do not infringe E-pass' patent. The US District Court of Northern California agreed, but in August 2003, the appeal court rejected (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/08/22/judge_dismisses_palm_patent_case/) the verdict, sending the case back to the lower court. The Court of Appeal did not address Palm's infringement or otherwise of E-pass' patent, only that the lower court had been mistaken in its application of the law. The following November, E-pass won the right (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/12/epass_allowed_to_reopen_microsoft/) to re-commence its action against Microsoft and HP on the basis of that appeal court judgement. In February 2004, Judge Hoyt confirmed (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/27/judge_denies_ms_attempt/) the appeal court's ruling and its definition of the word 'card' - it's any "flat, rectangular piece of stiff material", in case you were wondering - and essentially brought the Microsoft/HP case into alignment with the Palm action. The latest judgement centres on a request for dismissal based on prior art. Microsoft and HP claim US patent number 4,701,601 (http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4,701,601.WKU.&OS=PN/4,701,601&RS=PN/4,701,601), the Visa SuperSmart card - which embodies that patent - and a manual designed for the SuperSmart both detail key elements of E-pass' patent before 5,276,311 was filed. However, Judge Hoyt ruled that in each of the three cases they did not anticipate the claims made in E-pass' patent. Assuming no further requests are made, the case is scheduled to go to trial in March 2005. . Related stories Judge denies MS attempt to re-define 'card' (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/27/judge_denies_ms_attempt/) E-Pass allowed to re-open Microsoft, HP patent lawsuits (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/12/epass_allowed_to_reopen_microsoft/) Judge dismisses Palm patent case win (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/08/22/judge_dismisses_palm_patent_case/) Smart card company sues over Palm patent piracy claim (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/03/01/smart_card_company_sues_over/) ) Copyright 2004 -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 12 10:15:40 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 13:15:40 -0500 Subject: FBI captures Intel staffer with Texas-sized gun cache Message-ID: Ha! Made you look! Cheers, RAH See .sig, below... ------------------- The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register ; Odds and Sods ; Bootnotes ; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/11/intel_gun_man/ FBI captures Intel staffer with Texas-sized gun cache By Ashlee Vance in Chicago (ashlee.vance at theregister.co.uk) Published Thursday 11th November 2004 19:18 GMT It's not often that "AK-47" and "Intel" make it into the same sentence, but that's exactly what just happened after it was learned that a former Intel employee has been charged with plotting to attack one of the company's plants in Arizona. Last month, David Dugan was arrested after agents observed him "picking up an AK-47 and 1000 rounds of ammunition" at an Arizona gun shop. Dugan had been under surveillance ever since he allegedly placed a phone call to a family member, suggesting that he planned to shoot up Intel's Chanlder, Arizona plant. Intel confirmed that Dugan was a former employee, and investigators suspect that the man was disgruntled after being fired and enduring a long-standing dispute over disability payments. "The criminal complaint charges that on October 16, 2004, Dugan communicated with a family member in Missouri via telephone, discussing that Dugan had received a letter of termination from Intel and describing ways in which Dugan would cause production at Intel to cease and that people would possibly be hurt at the production facility," the Arizona District Attorney said in a statement. Dugan has been charged with one count of of transmitting a threat via the telephone. He could face up five years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine. Agents searched Dugan's home and found an AK-47, a loaded rifle, a loaded shotgun, two handguns and 1800 rounds of ammunition. In Texas, that's known as "the executive weekend retreat package." The FBI alleges that Dugan planned to open up gas pipes in the basement of the Chandler plant and then to begin shooting at machinery. The former manufacturing technician was looking to cause millions in damages, according to the FBI's complaint. A reporter for the Arizona Republic travelled over to Dugan's home and interviewed some of his neighbors. "My daughter had seen him out walking his dog," one neighbor told the paper. "He had just had surgery, and he was very feeble in his walk." A sign on Dugan's front door said, "No trespassing. No solicitations. Place nothing on doorknob. Post no bills please," according to the paper. . Related links Arizona Republic breaks the story (http://www.azcentral.com/community/chandler/articles/1030cr-workplace30Z6.html) Follow up on assault weapons (http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/tempe/articles/1110gr-thomason10Z6.html) Related stories For sale: missiles, heroin and exploding Barbies (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/11/missiles_and_exploding_barbies/) Eight fined in eBay auction scam (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/08/ebay_auction/) 'See through clothes' scanner gets outing at Heathrow (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/08/heathrow_scanner_pilot/) 37 arrested in net gun swoop (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/05/met_guns_net/) Canada offers refuge to distraught Democrats (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/05/canada_offers_refuge/) ) Copyright 2004 -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "When I was your age we didn't have Tim May! We had to be paranoid on our own! And we were grateful!" --Alan Olsen From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 12 10:16:43 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 13:16:43 -0500 Subject: Banks brace for cashpoint attack Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register ; Security ; Network Security ; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/11/banks_prepare_for_atm_cyber_crime/ Banks brace for cashpoint attack By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus (klp at securityfocus.com) Published Thursday 11th November 2004 10:42 GMT An international group of law enforcement and financial industry associations hopes to prevent a new type of bank robbery before it gets off the ground: cyber attacks against automated teller machines. This fall the Global ATM Security Alliance (GASA) published what it says are the first international cyber security guidelines specifically tailored to cash machines. Experts see new dangers as legacy ATMs running OS/2 give way to modern terminals built on Microsoft Windows. "The recommendations presented in this manual are essentially designed to provide a common sense approach to ... the rapidly changing threat model that the introduction to the ATM channel of the Windows XP and other common use operating systems, as well as the TCP/IP network protocol suite, has created," said the manual's author, Ian Simpson, in a statement. The move comes one year after the Nachi worm compromised (http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7517) Windows-based automated teller machines at two financial institutions, in the only acknowledged case of malicious code penetrating ATMs. The cash machines, made by Diebold, were built on Windows XP Embedded, which suffered from the RPC DCOM security hole Nachi exploited. In response to the incident, Diebold began shipping new Windows-based ATMs preinstalled with host-based firewall software, and offered to add the program for existing customers. Though ATMs typically sit on private networks or VPNs, supposedly-isolated networks often have undocumented connections to the Internet, or can fall to a piece of malicious code inadvertently carried beyond the firewall on a laptop computer. Last year's Slammer worm indirectly shut down some 13,000 Bank of America ATMs by infecting database servers on the same network, and spewing so much traffic that the cash machines couldn't processes customer transactions. The goal of the ATM cyber security best practices document, which has not been made public, and a related white paper developed by GASA, is "to be proactive in fighting what might be the next wave of ATM crime - namely cyber attacks," said Mike Lee, founding coordinator of the group, in a statement. GASA's members include fraud prevention agencies, financial industry associations, the US Secret Service, Visa and MasterCard, and some ATM networks and manufacturers, including Diebold and NCR. Related stories ATMs in peril from computer worms? (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/20/atm_viral_peril/) The ATM keypad as security portcullis (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/21/atm_keypad_security/) Ukrainian teen fights the Rise of the Machines (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/13/girl_terminates_atm/) -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jamesd at echeque.com Fri Nov 12 13:58:27 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 13:58:27 -0800 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4194C183.15495.C1E33D@localhost> -- On 12 Nov 2004 at 14:29, Tyler Durden wrote: > OK, Mr Donald. You clearly imagine the China of 2,500 years > ago to operate like a modern 20th century nation-state. You > need to rethink this, given a few simple facts: My delusion is evidently widely shared: I did a google search for legalism. http://tinyurl.com/56n2m The first link, and many of the subsequent links, equated legalism with totalitarianism, or concluded that legalism resulted in totalitarianism. > 1. There were no telephones during Confucious' time. Pol Pot's goons mostly murdered people by killing them with a hoe, and mostly tortured people with burning sticks. Does this make Pol Pot's Cambodia not a modern nation state? What made the Ch'in empire a modern despotism was total centralized control of everything, and a multitude of regulations with drastic penalties for non compliance. Telephones are irrelevant. It was the liberal use of the death penalty for non compliance, not the telephone, that made it centralized. > 2. Several provinces of China are larger than all of Western > Europe. Even a very high-priority message could take months > to propagate. 3. "Control' of China 2500 years ago was almost > nonexistent. When a provincial commander marched fresh conscripts from place A to place B, he would do it in the time alloted, and be there on the date specified, or the Ch'in emperor would cut his head off. It is the cut-his-head off bit, and the minute and overly detailed instructions concocted by a far away bureaucracy, that made it a modern totalitarianism. Analogously, in the recent war, Iraqi troops failed to blow several bridges because they had to wait for orders from Saddam. Wireless and telephone did not help. > It was a geographically, ethnically, and linguistically > diverse set of quasi-nation-states. So was the Soviet empire. > "Law" in early China was NOTHING like what you imagine it to > be, and was a higly decentralized affair. So was Stalin's Soviet Empire, and Pol Pot's Cambodia, in the highly unusual sense of "decentralized" that commie/nazis use. Pol Pot's Cambodia was, like Ch'in dynasty china, decentralized in that they had twenty thousand separate killing fields, but was, like Ch'in dynasty china, highly centralized in that the man digging a ditch dug it along a line drawn by a man far away who had never seen the ground that was being dug. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG kIKFSkaq39tHojTf6+FAu2WFT3X6iHJMyTUNi7kx 4kLyg7PvSEfnbAOwjYFVGCmxNpP52VH6X9inrj6cM From jamesd at echeque.com Fri Nov 12 14:02:20 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 14:02:20 -0800 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4194C26C.2688.C57481@localhost> -- On 12 Nov 2004 at 15:08, Tyler Durden wrote: > The Qing were 1) Manchus (ie, not Han Chinese)...they were > basically a foreign occupation that stuck around for a while; > and 2) (Nominally Tibetan) Buddhists. Although they of course > adhered to the larger Confucian notions, they in many ways > deviated from mainstream Confucian beliefs. The mainstream Confucian belief, like the mainstream legalist belief, was that the emperor should have absolute power. The Qing dynasty was successful in giving effect to this belief, and justified that effect on confucian grounds. This makes them more confucian, not less confucian, than the Sung dynasty, for the Sung were confucian merely in intent, much as the current chinese regime is communist merely in intent. > Also, you need to get more specific about WHEN during the > Qing dynasty you believed this occurred. During the 19th > century this is most certainly NOT true, and there are many > famous naval battles that occurred between the British and > the Chinese navies (in fact, the famous Stone Boat in the > Summer palace was built using funds that were supposed to pay > for real ships). The Qing dynasty prohibited anyone other than themselves from owning seagoing boats - that is why I called it the equivalent of the iron curtain. > But this has nothing to do with Confucianism per se, but is > more directly related to good old traditional Chinese > xenophobia. The prohibition was not against foreigners sailing, but chinese sailing, so the intent was not fear of foreigners, but as with the iron curtain, fear of chinese wandering outside government control and being contaminated with unauthorized foreign thoughts. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG QpsnWCawMTxeL36my3kdz4SvKVqTYqmGh2nPCY2E 4vCwJru3POMcSWlMD2yDlvSJWTIOuNvDNItpg37fe From jamesd at echeque.com Fri Nov 12 14:08:37 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 14:08:37 -0800 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4194C3E5.2190.CB339A@localhost> -- Tyler Durden > To say that China was "despotic" would, on average, be > accurate. But then again, one must remember that a form of > despotism where the despots are months away is very different > from modern forms of despotism. But the despots are still months away. The joke used to be that it took a Russian six months to organize a date with a girl because he had to clear it with the Kremlin. When Vietnam attacked Cambodia in 1978, it took the left a year to suddenly come up with a venemous denunciation of Khmer Rouge Cambodia - they could not react until the Soviet Union reacted, and it took the Soviet Union near a year to react. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG /wF4zwpFvF9ac/DnBvXxdZOBgq+OgBH5WtuPImjY 4mzi4xYS1k3UR5wq20+FtKNGU4wV3pYRcCYMs0tjT From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Fri Nov 12 11:29:23 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 14:29:23 -0500 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks Message-ID: OK, Mr Donald. You clearly imagine the China of 2,500 years ago to operate like a modern 20th century nation-state. You need to rethink this, given a few simple facts: 1. There were no telephones during Confucious' time. 2. Several provinces of China are larger than all of Western Europe. Even a very high-priority message could take months to propagate. 3. "Control' of China 2500 years ago was almost nonexistent. It was a geographically, ethnically, and linguistically diverse set of quasi-nation-states. To even imagine them to be anything like a modern nation state indicates you are extrapolating your bizarre little philosophical universe well beyond the breaking point. (But then again, that wasn't too hard!) 4. Event the early Ryu-Jya (Legalists) were nothing like what you imagine modern laws to be. In fact, their activity probably centers on creating an established set of standardized weights (ie, for weighing food and whatnot). "Law" in early China was NOTHING like what you imagine it to be, and was a higly decentralized affair. Indeed, modern China is rapidly 'deteriorated' into the same. As for... >Which is a commie nazi way of saying that the the Confucians >were not a heck of a lot different from the legalists - and the >legalists set up an early version of the standard highly >centralized totalitarian terror state, which doubtless appears >quite enlightened to the likes of Tyler Durden. Again, you seem to visualize me as (-1) times yourself, or basically your old commie self. The point I continue to harp on (and that you fail to understand) is that, despite how well one may argue that one sees reality 'objectively' (and others don't), completely alternate viewpoints are possible and very often held by others throughout the world. An action like the US in Iraq (irregardless of what you believe the objective reality to be) is futile precisely because it only re-inforces the world view of the locals (ie, that the US is a giant, bullying oppressive regime that has stuck it's big dick into the holy land and needs force to remove it). In other words, perception is often reality, and until you (and others like you) accept that, then we'll continue to have bloodbath after bloodbath, initated by 'Christian' and 'Islamic' true believers alike. -TD >From: "James A. Donald" >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks >Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 09:41:20 -0800 > > -- >On 12 Nov 2004 at 9:51, Tyler Durden wrote: > > As far as I'm concerned, what Kung Tze does ca 5 BCE is > > really consdolidate and codify a large and diverse body of > > practices and beliefs under a fairly unified set of ethical > > ideas. In that sense, the Legalists were merely a refocusing > > of the same general body of mores, etc...into a somewhat > > different direction. One might call it a competing school to > > Kung Tze de Jiao Xun, but I would argue only because, at that > > time, Kung Tze "authority" as it's known today was by no > > means completely established. But in a sense, the early > > legalists weren't a HECK of a lot different from Confucious. > >Which is a commie nazi way of saying that the the Confucians >were not a heck of a lot different from the legalists - and the >legalists set up an early version of the standard highly >centralized totalitarian terror state, which doubtless appears >quite enlightened to the likes of Tyler Durden. > > --digsig > James A. Donald > 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG > k9Dumf7XMAhNCRDuxNd2aKQtrN2PqD2p2l3TDcjw > 4SMVqw0LGnr3oZKU5v0WQpooJ4tKHdZvNiokzj2e9 From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Fri Nov 12 12:08:20 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 15:08:20 -0500 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks Message-ID: Ah. This is an interesting point. The Qing were 1) Manchus (ie, not Han Chinese)...they were basically a foreign occupation that stuck around for a while; and 2) (Nominally Tibetan) Buddhists. Although they of course adhered to the larger Confucian notions, they in many ways deviated from mainstream Confucian beliefs. Also, you need to get more specific about WHEN during the Qing dynasty you believed this occurred. During the 19th century this is most certainly NOT true, and there are many famous naval battles that occurred between the British and the Chinese navies (in fact, the famous Stone Boat in the Summer palace was built using funds that were supposed to pay for real ships). But perhaps you meant ocean-going boat ownership by private individuals, and that is certainly something that was a BIG no-no during many epochs of Chinese civilization. And indeed, this is probably precisely why the Chinese had to defend themselves from British attack, rather than the other way around. But this has nothing to do with Confucianism per se, but is more directly related to good old traditional Chinese xenophobia. In the end, Chinese unification was probably a devil's bargain. It created a far more stable "nation", but at the cost of human freedom. But it's not precisely like this was imposed on the populace from without...that it was successful at all in a place as large and remote as China is a testimony to Chinese dislike of "Wai Guo" culture. -TD >From: "James A. Donald" >To: cypherpunks >Subject: Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks >Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 10:11:09 -0800 > > -- >ken wrote: > > > And when was this stagnation? > >R.A. Hettinga wrote: > > Two words: Ming Navy > >For those who need more words, the Qing Dynasty forbade >ownership or building of ocean going vessels, on pain of death >- the early equivalent of the iron curtain. > > --digsig > James A. Donald > 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG > Iw7Wkew4KTQWmS2lvvIMd7+fR3rWAWagnqJ4cF0k > 4Ee4DcVaw474VQFVRrwVAXR4XZSXiaNtRuKXYpsBo From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Fri Nov 12 12:14:51 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 15:14:51 -0500 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks Message-ID: >That is the revisionist version - that china was a free and >capitalist society, therefore freedom is not enough to ensure >modernity and industrialization - a proposition as ludicrous as >similar accounts of more recently existent despotic states. I can't tell if you're arguing me with or just yourself. You seem to equate disagreement with your assessment with a viewpoint that is completely opposite. To say that China was "despotic" would, on average, be accurate. But then again, one must remember that a form of despotism where the despots are months away is very different from modern forms of despotism. Today's China is in some ways similar to China during many dynasties. The emperor sleeps some insect with a big, fat stinger awakens him and then he gets mad, swats it, and then goes back to sleep. When the locals are fairly certain the emperor is sleeping soundly, they go about their business. Call it despotism if you want, but really it's essentially Chinese. -TD From bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk Fri Nov 12 07:40:27 2004 From: bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk (ken) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 15:40:27 +0000 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks In-Reply-To: <419425EB.3502.5176CFB7@localhost> References: <419425EB.3502.5176CFB7@localhost> Message-ID: <4194D96B.7070006@students.bbk.ac.uk> > China stagnated because no thought other than > official thought occurred. And when was this stagnation? And what were the reasons China did not "stagnate" for the previous thousand years? From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 12 13:02:48 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 16:02:48 -0500 Subject: Bin Laden Has "Religious Approval" To Use Nuke Message-ID: The Drudge Report Support The DrudgeReport; Visit Our Advertisers FORMER HEAD OF CIA'S OSAMA BIN LADEN UNIT SAYS THE QAEDA LEADER HAS SECURED RELIGIOUS APPROVAL TO USE A NUCLEAR BOMB AGAINST AMERICANS Fri Nov 12 2004 12:02:34 ET Osama bin Laden now has religious approval to use a nuclear device against Americans, says the former head of the CIA unit charged with tracking down the Saudi terrorist. The former agent, Michael Scheuer, speaks to Steve Kroft in his first television interview without disguise to be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, Nov. 14 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Scheuer was until recently known as the "anonymous" author of two books critical of the West's response to bin Laden and al Qaeda, the most recent of which is titled Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. No one in the West knows more about the Qaeda leader than Scheuer, who has tracked him since the mid-1980s. The CIA allowed him to write the books provided he remain anonymous, but now is allowing him to reveal himself for the first time on Sunday's broadcast; he formally leaves the Agency today (12). Even if bin Laden had a nuclear weapon, he probably wouldn't have used it for a lack of proper religious authority - authority he has now. "[Bin Laden] secured from a Saudi sheik...a rather long treatise on the possibility of using nuclear weapons against the Americans," says Scheuer. "[The treatise] found that he was perfectly within his rights to use them. Muslims argue that the United States is responsible for millions of dead Muslims around the world, so reciprocity would mean you could kill millions of Americans," Scheuer tells Kroft. Scheuer says bin Laden was criticized by some Muslims for the 9/11 attack because he killed so many people without enough warning and before offering to help convert them to Islam. But now bin Laden has addressed the American people and given fair warning. "They're intention is to end the war as soon as they can and to ratchet up the pain for the Americans until we get out of their region....If they acquire the weapon, they will use it, whether it's chemical, biological or some sort of nuclear weapon," says Scheuer. As the head of the CIA unit charged with tracking bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, Scheuer says he never had enough people to do the job right. He blames former CIA Director George Tenet. "One of the questions that should have been asked of Mr. Tenet was why were there always enough people for the public relations office, for the academic outreach office, for the diversity and multi-cultural office? All those things are admirable and necessary but none of them are protecting the American people from a foreign threat," says Scheuer. And the threat posed by bin Laden is also underestimated, says Scheuer. "I think our leaders over the last decade have done the American people a disservice...continuing to characterize Osama bin Laden as a thug, as a gangster," he says. "Until we respect him, sir, we are going to die in numbers that are probably unnecessary, yes. He's a very, very talented man and a very worthy opponent," he tells Kroft. Until today (12), Scheuer was a senior official in the CIA's counter terrorism unit and a special advisor to the head of the agency's bin Laden unit. Developing... -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From em at em.no-ip.com Fri Nov 12 01:53:07 2004 From: em at em.no-ip.com (Enzo Michelangeli) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 17:53:07 +0800 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks Message-ID: <07d401c4c89d$7de99fe0$0200a8c0@em.noip.com> Re: China's wealthy bypass the banks Tyler Durden Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:56:08 -0800 > Oh No!!!! > > > Way overly simplistic. Also, you are comparing apples to bushels of > wheat. > > [James Donald:] > However Confucianism vs Daoism/Taoism is rather different from what > you would get in the west. Confucianism is somewhat similar to what > you would get if western cultural conservatives allied themselves with > nazi/commies, in the way that the commies are prone to imagine > conservatives have supposedly allied themselves with nazis. Taoism > somewhat similar to what you would get if anarcho capitalists allied > themselves with pagans and wiccans... > > WOW! I'll skip the obvious comments and ask, In which centuries are > you suggesting this applies? Now? If so, you are clearly NOT talking > about mainland China. Please re-define the centuries/epochs during > which you believe this to have been true, and then maybe I'll bother > responding. Actually, that doesn't apply to any century. The ancient philosophical school that inspired Mao Zedong was actually Legalism, which provided the theoretic foundations to the absolutist rule of Qin Shi Huangdi (to whom Mao liked to compare himself). Mao, as many other Chinese reformers and writers of the early XX Century, hated Confucianism as symbol of China's "ancien regime" and decay. Which is why the campaign against Zhou En-lai of 1974-75 had an anti-Confucian theme (see e.g. the posters at http://www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/plpk.html ) Legalists and Qin Shi Huangdi himself were pretty nasty types, and their domination saw widespread confiscation of books, ridiculously harsh rule (arriving late to work could bring the death penalty!) and large-scale assassination or rivals: several Confucian philosophers were buried alive. The ruthless methods of the Qin dinasty ultimately resulted in its downfall: it only lasted one and half decade (221 - 206 BC), half of what Maoism did. By comparison, Confucianism was remarkably enlightened, which is also why Voltaire expressed a good opinion of it. Some Confucian philosophers like Mencius (372-289 AC) were early theorists of people's sovereignty: "The people are the most important element in a nation; the spirits of the land and grain are the next; the sovereign is the lightest [...] When a prince endangers the altars of the spirits of the land and grain, he is changed, and another appointed in his place." [Mencius, Book 7: http://nothingistic.org/library/mencius/mencius27.html ] ...and of the right to tyrannicide, justified by the loss of legitimacy brought by misrule: "The king said, 'May a minister then put his sovereign to death?' Mencius said, 'He who outrages the benevolence proper to his nature, is called a robber; he who outrages righteousness, is called a ruffian. The robber and ruffian we call a mere fellow." [Mencius, Book 1: http://nothingistic.org/library/mencius/mencius04.html ] Enzo From mv at cdc.gov Fri Nov 12 19:23:47 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 19:23:47 -0800 Subject: Stewart, Esq Message-ID: <41957E43.B7691AE3@cdc.gov> Moses Washington Sitting Bull Bin Laden Let my people go, Any Questions? >"I believe that entrenched institutions will not be changed except by violence," Stewart said. "I believe in the politics that lead to violence being exerted by people on their own behalf to effectuate change." Stewart cited the American Revolution and the struggle to end slavery as such examples but emphasized that she did not support terrorism, saying, "I do not believe in civilian deaths or wanton massacres."> From mv at cdc.gov Fri Nov 12 19:45:31 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 19:45:31 -0800 Subject: Freedom of Expression Message-ID: <4195835B.D4F5C210@cdc.gov> At 09:41 AM 11/10/04 -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: >Those who love operas get what they want, and those who love rock and roll >get what they want, and both can live in peace with one another. Not if that manic-depressive, mother of controlled-substance-abusing spawn named Tipper Gore had maintained the power that she rode when her "Internet-Inventing" husband was fighting for his moronic political life. She would have banned R&R, see the Mothers of Prevention album, by the premiere American composer of the 20th century, among others. Not that I wouldn't pay good money to see her, William Cohen's bipolar negress, and Condosleeza Rice duke it out, in a tub of Jello (tm), on pay-per-view, officiated by the elder lackey Powell's FCC son officiating, of course. My money's on Rice, she knows how to fight, damn the collateral damage, full speed ahead. From pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz Fri Nov 12 00:08:18 2004 From: pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 21:08:18 +1300 Subject: Cell Phone Jammer? Message-ID: "Tyler Durden" writes: >Anyone know from first-hand experience about cellphone jammers? > >I need... > >1) A nice little portable, and Try the SH066PL, a nice portable that looks exactly like a cellphone, it's one of the few portables I know of. >2) A higher-powered one that can black out cell phone calls within, say, 50 >to 100 feet of a moving vehicle. Google is your friend, there are tons of these around, with varying degrees of sophistication. These are definitely not portable, taking several amps at 6-12V to power them. None of them are exactly cheap. Peter. From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 12 18:16:50 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 21:16:50 -0500 Subject: Survey: People want receipt showing how they voted Message-ID: Las Vegas SUN Photo: Larry Lomax Las Vegas SUN Today: November 12, 2004 at 9:43:50 PST Survey: People want receipt showing how they voted LAS VEGAS SUN An Election Day poll in Las Vegas indicated that 81 percent of voters surveyed want to take home a private "ATM style" receipt to verify for themselves their vote was counted correctly, a consulting group said Wednesday. Lombardo Consulting Group said it surveyed 362 voters in conjunction with political science professor Michael John Burton of Ohio University. Given a choice between leaving a voter-verified paper ballot at the polling place or taking home a receipt, 60 percent of those asked said they preferred take-home receipts and self-verification, and 36 percent said they preferred the idea of leaving a paper ballot with election officials. Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller, the man responsible for overseeing elections throughout the state, opposes giving voters a printed receipt, however. He said that while it may sound like a good idea, it could lead to many problems. An employer could require a worker to show his receipt to prove he voted a certain way, or the worker could be subject to loss of his job if he didn't follow the wishes of the employer, Heller said. Unions could require a member to verify he voted a certain way in order to keep his membership, said Heller. Any of those actions would be illegal, however. Heller also said the printed receipts could lead to electioneering problems. He referred to a ruling from his office that a casino could not give free meals to customers who showed records that they had cast their ballots. None of the problems he cited would be caused by voters themselves, however. Nevada was the only state to use "statewide" voter-verified paper ballot printers attached to electronic voting machines on Election Day. In a press release, Burton said that "many voters thought a private receipt that they could take home would be the best way to know if their vote was counted correctly. People are used to getting receipts from ATMs or gas stations -- and they liked the idea of getting a receipt from the voting booth." During the election in Nevada, voters were instructed by poll workers to compare their vote selections on the electronic screen with what was printed on the voter verified paper ballot scroll. The paper ballot scrolls were retained by election officials for use in post-election audits or recounts. The survey also examined voter interaction with Nevada's voter-verified paper ballot machines and found that only 31 percent of the voters actually compared the entire paper ballot to the machine ballot in order to ensure their vote was recorded accurately. Lombardo Consulting Group is a corporate and political public opinion research firm with offices in Washington, D.C., and New York City. Complete survey results can be found at http://www.lombardo consulting group.com /docs/ nvvotersurvey.pdf -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 12 18:30:10 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 21:30:10 -0500 Subject: Gov't Orders Air Passenger Data for Test Message-ID: Yahoo! Gov't Orders Air Passenger Data for Test Fri Nov 12, 2:35 PM ET By LESLIE MILLER, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - The government on Friday ordered airlines to turn over personal information about passengers who flew within the United States in June in order to test a new system for identifying potential terrorists. The system, dubbed "Secure Flight," will compare passenger data with names on two government watch lists, a "no fly" list comprised of people who are known or suspected to be terrorists, and a list of people who require more scrutiny before boarding planes. "Secure Flight represents a significant step in securing domestic air travel and safeguarding national security information, namely, the watchlists," the Transportation Security Administration said in a notice announcing the order. Currently, the federal government shares parts of the list with airlines, which are responsible for making sure suspected terrorists don't get on planes. People within the commercial aviation industry say the lists have the names of more than 100,000 people on them. The order follows a 30-day period during which the public was allowed to comment on the Secure Flight proposal. About 500 people commented on the plan; the overwhelming majority opposed it, saying it would invade their privacy and infringe on their civil liberties. An airline industry representative said the carriers, which support the plan, are studying the order. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 12 19:16:19 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 22:16:19 -0500 Subject: Mr. Blue Goes Deaf When He Sees Red Message-ID: Mostly because I sent his "Declaration of Expulsion" here... It's entirely possible that, absent a physical threat to keep the country together, we have all the necessary ingredients to go the way of the Soviet Union someday, and devolve. Cheers, RAH ------ HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE: The National Conservative Weekly Since 1944 Mr. Blue Goes Deaf When He Sees Red by Mike Thompson Posted Nov 12, 2004 Twenty-four hours after the dramatic U.S. presidential-election results were validated, Human Events Online published my essay (which I had been hatching for two weeks), "Declaration of Expulsion," a slightly satiric proposal to kick out of the Union the 12 most liberal states, either to join the People's Socialist Dominion of Canada or, on their own, go straight to Hell. Within hours (and I do not claim that my piece was a causal effect), liberal voices formed into an enthusiastic chorus for roughly the same idea: Democrat gurus Lawrence O'Donnell and Robert Beckel, as angry talking heads on two separate TV news shows, taunted the newly solid-Republican South (all states of which actually are overfed "welfare clients" of the affluent, heavily taxed North, huffed O'Donnell) to secede, for the second time since 1860; The reliably opportunistic Internet erupted with "I Seceded" T-shirts for sale, plus the mocking map of a 31-Red-state nation called "Jesusland," and An e-mail rapidly circulating among liberals touted creation of the country of "American Coastopia," whose upscale Atlantic- and Pacific-rim inhabitants joyfully would (what else?) fly over Fly-Over Country to get away from "rednecks in Oklahoma and homophobic knuckle-draggers in Wyoming." Then came confirmation of the growing fascination for dividing what once was "one nation indivisible," when Manhattan-based liberal talk-show host Alan Colmes invited me to be a guest for 15 minutes on his late-night radio program. My on-air "15 minutes of fame" would mushroom into 45 minutes of defamation: "Why are you so intolerant of liberals?" asked Herr Colmes, who apparently had forgotten that he was supposed to ask me when I had stopped beating my wife. I explained to him factually that more liberals than conservatives publicly are advocating dissolution of the Union, and that the issue, in either event, is not intolerance but rather insolubility--that is, there is no middle ground, no compromise possible on most CultureWar issues. "That's exactly what intolerance is!" asserted the intolerant talkmeister. "Listen carefully, Alan," I urged. "If you want Congress to pass a 10-dollar minimum wage and I want an eight-dollar cap, it's possible for us to compromise at nine dollars. But how do we compromise on abortion? Shall we kill only half as many babies? How do we compromise on gay marriage? Shall we allow a lesbian to marry a lesbian but forbid a man to marry a man? There are too many of these insoluble differences between the Red states and the Blue states." "I can't believe how intolerant you are!" screamed Alan. Soon a self-identified lesbian called in breathlessly to confess "intense fear of intolerant Red states." (Why, I thought, was she phoning a radio show in the middle of the night instead of her local 911 operator?) The perceptive host again verbally pounced on me, his guest, who safely lives in the brimstone warmth of Red Florida: "Do you think, Mr. Thompson, that this woman is evil or immoral?" "Alan, I have no idea who the woman is," I answered. "I have just met her anonymously over the phone. All I know is that she has made a bad choice of lifestyle, because lesbians have a documented higher rate of alcoholism, a higher rate of mental problems and a higher rate of suicide than heterosexual women." Alan, who apparently is aurally challenged, now was in the full-boost stage of liberal ballistics: "What do you mean, this woman RAPES other women? You are filled with hate! How DARE you say such a thing!" "Rape?" I asked, flabbergasted. "I said RATE--as in 'suicide rate.' RATE--as in 'alcoholism rate'! Please listen to me, Alan. Is your phone bad?" With no apology to his mystified guest, Alan disconnected the lesbian's call and radically changed the subject: "Do you think John Kerry is a traitor?" "Yes, Alan. One who commits treason," I observed coolly, "by definition is a traitor. Kerry went to Paris and consulted with our Communist Vietnam enemies, not with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Subsequently, Kerry publicly endorsed the outrageous Communist 'peace plan,' not his own country's plan. "In uniform, Kerry during the war and under oath before the U.S. Senate also accused his fellow American soldiers of indiscriminately raping and killing Vietnamese civilians and destroying their villages just for the fun of it--false charges that were welcomed and used by the Communist nation's cruel jailers for years to torture American prisoners. Therefore, Mr. Kerry is a double traitor." Unguided-missile Colmes finally reached the smoking-burnout stage, spewing invectives and ridicule at me as fast as his facile, bifurcated tongue could wag. "How can you just sit there and libel a statesman like John Kerry?" he sputtered. "How dare you sit in judgment of a great American patriot!" My answer: "Apparently you have forgotten, Alan, but you asked me to 'sit in judgment' of John Kerry--you asked me if I thought he was a traitor. I didn't bring up the subject." Pausing, I asked, "By the way, can you tell your audience how the Constitution defines a traitor? Go ahead. Surely you must know." Retorted Prof. Colmes testily: "I'm not going to play your little quiz game!" "It's not a game, Alan," I said. "Are you ignorant and don't know the answer, or are you afraid to speak the truth? The Constitution defines a traitor as someone who in time of war adheres to our enemy and gives the enemy 'aid and comfort'--those are the exact words. Listen, Alan, listen." His response was a curt good-bye before going to the final break of the hour to promote rupture-easers and get-rich-quick books from unknown con-artists. When I submitted "Declaration of Expulsion," I felt a bit like Jonathan Swift must have when he wrote "A Modest Proposal," a tongue-in-dark-cheek suggestion that the "excess" babies born to Irish Catholics should be eaten by Englishmen as a cheap source of meat. After my 45-minute broadcast encounter with a typical American liberal, however, I believe that expulsion of the most egregiously leftwing states is anything but a slight "joke'; it is, in fact, clearly the serious and necessary path for rescue and revival of the United States of America. I am also sure that God will be understanding when the U.S.A., a reborn nation with revised borders, reaffirms the entire First Amendment and does not change its name at this time, even if well intended, to Jesusland. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From mv at cdc.gov Sat Nov 13 08:54:05 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 08:54:05 -0800 Subject: Cell Phone Jammer? Message-ID: <41963C2D.5FB4F685@cdc.gov> At 04:19 PM 11/11/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: >Anyone know from first-hand experience about cellphone jammers? > >I need... > >1) A nice little portable, and >2) A higher-powered one that can black out cell phone calls within, say, 50 >to 100 feet of a moving vehicle. Cell Jammers do a DoS on the frequency used by the base station to contact the handset, preventing a ring-in. Or a ring-out; the handset reports no service. After a ring-in the base tells the handset to jump to another freq, so you can't drop an ongoing conversation with a typical jammer. The < $200 jammers will stop folks in the next car, or in your office, but not too much farther; depends on the strength of the local base station. To jam the entire cell freq *bands* would take more power and more complex circuits. A jacob's ladder and/or tesla coil might work but would be indiscrete at least. From jamesd at echeque.com Sat Nov 13 09:10:15 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 09:10:15 -0800 Subject: Iraq II, Come to think of it (was...China's wealthy) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4195CF77.14541.281B4D@localhost> -- James A. Donald: > > Pol Pot's Cambodia was, like Ch'in dynasty china, > > decentralized in that they had twenty thousand separate > > killing fields, but was, like Ch'in dynasty china, highly > > centralized in that the man digging a ditch dug it along a > > line drawn by a man far away who had never seen the ground > > that was being dug. Tyler Durden > Well, this was difficult given that there were probably a > good number of Qin Shr Huang's 'subjects' that didn't even > know they were subjects until well after Qin Shr Huang died. That seems improbable: Qin had a cult of personality, in which every single person subject to his control had to participate. A subject of Qin, like a subject of Mao, was more aware of Qin, than he was of his mother and father. The proposition that the chinese emperors ruled with a light hand is historical revisionism. Some of them ruled with a moderately heavy hand, some of them with an extremely heavy hand, and Qin was as heavy as it gets. > However, the nature, reasons, and byproducts of any > particular instance of despotism very hugely...trying to pack > them all into one simplistic grid is a formula for. I did not pack them in to one simplistic grid - I said that legalism was much the same thing as communism/nazism, whereas Confucianism is a mixture of that, and also of rule by social conservatives. The rule of Qin was very similar to commie nazi rule. The rule of Qianlong was substantially different. Both were despots, but Qianlong was no totalitarian. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG k6s+2bFmGHKlU9v6wCbmGCo+6m4eAEfjtEfJ3b3W 4EcgDCvx/77or2uD2Vhx/20HURcJ8XVeRylOk8puI From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Sat Nov 13 08:36:27 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 11:36:27 -0500 Subject: Iraq II, Come to think of it (was...China's wealthy) Message-ID: >My delusion is evidently widely shared: I did a google search >for legalism. http://tinyurl.com/56n2m The first link, and >many of the subsequent links, equated legalism with >totalitarianism, or concluded that legalism resulted in >totalitarianism. Wow! A GOOGLE search did you say? Well I'm convinced. >When a provincial commander marched fresh conscripts from place >A to place B, he would do it in the time alloted, and be there >on the date specified, or the Ch'in emperor would cut his head >off. Well kind of. But even Qin Shr Huang Di knew that you couldn't force-march soldiers from Xian to Suzhou in 4 days. And the remotest parts of China at that time (the borders are far larger now, of course) weren't any closer than a month or two, no matter what the orders. (Qin Shr Huang probably was no idiot...if it was physically impossible then he could not gain power.) >It is the cut-his-head off bit, and the minute and overly >detailed instructions concocted by a far away bureaucracy, that >made it a modern totalitarianism. You seem to be thinking that I am arguing that Qin Shr Huang was not a despot. However, comparisons to modern totalitarian states are filled with >Pol Pot's Cambodia was, like Ch'in dynasty china, decentralized >in that they had twenty thousand separate killing fields, but >was, like Ch'in dynasty china, highly centralized in that the >man digging a ditch dug it along a line drawn by a man far away >who had never seen the ground that was being dug. Well, this was difficult given that there were probably a good number of Qin Shr Huang's 'subjects' that didn't even know they were subjects until well after Qin Shr Huang died. Camodia is just a TEENSY bit smaller than China. Now the reason this excersize is not completely futile is that it's pretty clear that the notion of a "Despot" is very different from place to place. If push comes to shove, I of course will probabluy agree that most of the leaders you claim were despots probably were (though I'd bet my list is MUCH larger than yours). However, the nature, reasons, and byproducts of any particular instance of despotism very hugely...trying to pack them all into one simplistic grid is a formula for...Iraq II, come to think of it. Without understanding the details on their own terms, you're liable to get the locals a little upset with you if you try to force-fix their problems. -TD From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Sat Nov 13 08:43:58 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 11:43:58 -0500 Subject: Mr. Blue Goes Deaf When He Sees Red Message-ID: That's the thing that sucks. The US's Liberals are almost as fascisistic as the clouds of middle-counrty hillbillies. I figured that out as a Brooklyn HS teacher when I realized the true meaning of an oft-repeated phrase of the time: "STAY IN SCHOOL". -TD >From: "R.A. Hettinga" >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Mr. Blue Goes Deaf When He Sees Red >Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 22:16:19 -0500 > >Mostly because I sent his "Declaration of Expulsion" here... > >It's entirely possible that, absent a physical threat to keep the country >together, we have all the necessary ingredients to go the way of the Soviet >Union someday, and devolve. > >Cheers, >RAH >------ > > > >HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE: The National Conservative Weekly Since 1944 > >Mr. Blue Goes Deaf When He Sees Red > >by Mike Thompson >Posted Nov 12, 2004 > > Twenty-four hours after the dramatic U.S. presidential-election results >were validated, Human Events Online published my essay (which I had been >hatching for two weeks), "Declaration of Expulsion," a slightly satiric >proposal to kick out of the Union the 12 most liberal states, either to >join the People's Socialist Dominion of Canada or, on their own, go >straight to Hell. > > Within hours (and I do not claim that my piece was a causal effect), >liberal voices formed into an enthusiastic chorus for roughly the same >idea: Democrat gurus Lawrence O'Donnell and Robert Beckel, as angry talking >heads on two separate TV news shows, taunted the newly solid-Republican >South (all states of which actually are overfed "welfare clients" of the >affluent, heavily taxed North, huffed O'Donnell) to secede, for the second >time since 1860; The reliably opportunistic Internet erupted with "I >Seceded" T-shirts for sale, plus the mocking map of a 31-Red-state nation >called "Jesusland," and An e-mail rapidly circulating among liberals touted >creation of the country of "American Coastopia," whose upscale Atlantic- >and Pacific-rim inhabitants joyfully would (what else?) fly over Fly-Over >Country to get away from "rednecks in Oklahoma and homophobic >knuckle-draggers in Wyoming." > > Then came confirmation of the growing fascination for dividing what once >was "one nation indivisible," when Manhattan-based liberal talk-show host >Alan Colmes invited me to be a guest for 15 minutes on his late-night radio >program. > > My on-air "15 minutes of fame" would mushroom into 45 minutes of >defamation: "Why are you so intolerant of liberals?" asked Herr Colmes, who >apparently had forgotten that he was supposed to ask me when I had stopped >beating my wife. I explained to him factually that more liberals than >conservatives publicly are advocating dissolution of the Union, and that >the issue, in either event, is not intolerance but rather >insolubility--that is, there is no middle ground, no compromise possible on >most CultureWar issues. > > "That's exactly what intolerance is!" asserted the intolerant >talkmeister. > > "Listen carefully, Alan," I urged. "If you want Congress to pass a >10-dollar minimum wage and I want an eight-dollar cap, it's possible for us >to compromise at nine dollars. But how do we compromise on abortion? Shall >we kill only half as many babies? How do we compromise on gay marriage? >Shall we allow a lesbian to marry a lesbian but forbid a man to marry a >man? There are too many of these insoluble differences between the Red >states and the Blue states." > > "I can't believe how intolerant you are!" screamed Alan. > > Soon a self-identified lesbian called in breathlessly to confess "intense >fear of intolerant Red states." (Why, I thought, was she phoning a radio >show in the middle of the night instead of her local 911 operator?) The >perceptive host again verbally pounced on me, his guest, who safely lives >in the brimstone warmth of Red Florida: "Do you think, Mr. Thompson, that >this woman is evil or immoral?" > > "Alan, I have no idea who the woman is," I answered. "I have just met her >anonymously over the phone. All I know is that she has made a bad choice of >lifestyle, because lesbians have a documented higher rate of alcoholism, a >higher rate of mental problems and a higher rate of suicide than >heterosexual women." > > Alan, who apparently is aurally challenged, now was in the full-boost >stage of liberal ballistics: "What do you mean, this woman RAPES other >women? You are filled with hate! How DARE you say such a thing!" > > "Rape?" I asked, flabbergasted. "I said RATE--as in 'suicide rate.' >RATE--as in 'alcoholism rate'! Please listen to me, Alan. Is your phone >bad?" > > With no apology to his mystified guest, Alan disconnected the lesbian's >call and radically changed the subject: "Do you think John Kerry is a >traitor?" > > "Yes, Alan. One who commits treason," I observed coolly, "by definition >is >a traitor. Kerry went to Paris and consulted with our Communist Vietnam >enemies, not with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Subsequently, >Kerry publicly endorsed the outrageous Communist 'peace plan,' not his own >country's plan. > > "In uniform, Kerry during the war and under oath before the U.S. Senate >also accused his fellow American soldiers of indiscriminately raping and >killing Vietnamese civilians and destroying their villages just for the fun >of it--false charges that were welcomed and used by the Communist nation's >cruel jailers for years to torture American prisoners. Therefore, Mr. Kerry >is a double traitor." > > Unguided-missile Colmes finally reached the smoking-burnout stage, >spewing >invectives and ridicule at me as fast as his facile, bifurcated tongue >could wag. > > "How can you just sit there and libel a statesman like John Kerry?" he >sputtered. > > "How dare you sit in judgment of a great American patriot!" > > My answer: "Apparently you have forgotten, Alan, but you asked me to 'sit >in judgment' of John Kerry--you asked me if I thought he was a traitor. I >didn't bring up the subject." Pausing, I asked, "By the way, can you tell >your audience how the Constitution defines a traitor? Go ahead. Surely you >must know." > > Retorted Prof. Colmes testily: "I'm not going to play your little quiz >game!" > > "It's not a game, Alan," I said. "Are you ignorant and don't know the >answer, or are you afraid to speak the truth? The Constitution defines a >traitor as someone who in time of war adheres to our enemy and gives the >enemy 'aid and comfort'--those are the exact words. Listen, Alan, listen." > > His response was a curt good-bye before going to the final break of the >hour to promote rupture-easers and get-rich-quick books from unknown >con-artists. > > When I submitted "Declaration of Expulsion," I felt a bit like Jonathan >Swift must have when he wrote "A Modest Proposal," a tongue-in-dark-cheek >suggestion that the "excess" babies born to Irish Catholics should be eaten >by Englishmen as a cheap source of meat. After my 45-minute broadcast >encounter with a typical American liberal, however, I believe that >expulsion of the most egregiously leftwing states is anything but a slight >"joke'; it is, in fact, clearly the serious and necessary path for rescue >and revival of the United States of America. > > I am also sure that God will be understanding when the U.S.A., a reborn >nation with revised borders, reaffirms the entire First Amendment and does >not change its name at this time, even if well intended, to Jesusland. > > >-- >----------------- >R. A. Hettinga >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation >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' From jya at pipeline.com Sat Nov 13 11:59:39 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 11:59:39 -0800 Subject: Mr. Blue Goes Deaf When He Sees Red In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It is possible that the intelligence community, front-covered the CIA, dream of a Putin-like takeover, not to continue "serving the President," and taking orders as demanded toady by David Brooks in the New York Times. US citizens allowed the intel monster to grow in secrecy and it will likely devour the American experiment in democratic openness, utilizing the same methods forever employed by secret orgs: national security FUD. To be sure, most of the monster hides behind the DoD facade of "our troops," not at Langley, and it is this warmongering majority that has the biggest stake in inventing enemies of the state, and promising economic benefits to local, state, and national interests. Secrecy is the WMD that is killing the US, not the puny terrorists, as demonstated by the UK, Russia, China, Cuba, all around the apple. What Bush and Blair cooked up in the last day or so could well determine whether lists like this and much of the Internet remain open or get shut. The boys and girls who daily brief the Ps are not going to go back to the downslide of pre-911. No doubt some might say that is why 911 was cooked up, precursing Beslan and more to come. 1200 troops dead in Iraq is not much of a blip on big sines of expendables. From rsw at jfet.org Sat Nov 13 12:12:20 2004 From: rsw at jfet.org (Riad S. Wahby) Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 14:12:20 -0600 Subject: Cell Phone Jammer? In-Reply-To: <41963C2D.5FB4F685@cdc.gov> References: <41963C2D.5FB4F685@cdc.gov> Message-ID: <20041113201220.GB3886@positron.jfet.org> "Major Variola (ret)" wrote: > To jam the entire cell freq *bands* would take more power and > more complex circuits. A jacob's ladder and/or tesla coil might > work but would be indiscrete at least. A plasma speaker http://images.jfet.org/20031027/imgp1255.jpg would also work, assuming that you've got the tube to drive those frequencies and an appropriately-constructed coil. Mine runs at ~25 MHz and broadcasts like a bitch (prolly 100+ Watts). Discrete? What does that mean? -- Riad S. Wahby rsw at jfet.org From mv at cdc.gov Sat Nov 13 17:37:54 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 17:37:54 -0800 Subject: Cell Phone Jammer? Message-ID: <4196B6F2.71E72275@cdc.gov> At 02:12 PM 11/13/04 -0600, Riad S. Wahby wrote: >"Major Variola (ret)" wrote: >> To jam the entire cell freq *bands* would take more power and >> more complex circuits. A jacob's ladder and/or tesla coil might >> work but would be indiscrete at least. > >A plasma speaker > http://images.jfet.org/20031027/imgp1255.jpg >would also work, assuming that you've got the tube to drive those >frequencies and an appropriately-constructed coil. Mine runs at ~25 MHz >and broadcasts like a bitch (prolly 100+ Watts). > >Discrete? What does that mean? You know, bug-soldered components :-) Is that a jacobs ladder in your pocket or are you just glad to see me? You disturb my aether, I decode your signal, fuck the 900 MHz (or whatever, analog cell) prohibition, eh? Have we state-licenced SPICE, or compilers yet? From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Sat Nov 13 20:19:18 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 23:19:18 -0500 Subject: Iraq II, Come to think of it (was...China's wealthy) Message-ID: >That seems improbable: Qin had a cult of personality, in >which every single person subject to his control had to >participate. A subject of Qin, like a subject of Mao, was >more aware of Qin, than he was of his mother and father. You are apparently simply unaware of the real size and terrain of China. There were villages in remote parts of China that were unaware of Mao's death into the early 1980s. Travel around in China for a while and you'll get the picture. Just to give you an idea, short of renting out a helicopter, there are plenty of parts of China that are more than a week away from even me, living here in NYC. >The proposition that the chinese emperors ruled with a light >hand is historical revisionism. Some of them ruled with a >moderately heavy hand, some of them with an extremely heavy >hand, and Qin was as heavy as it gets No, as usual you seem to think that because I disagree with the simplicity of your "grid" that I must believe the opposite. Let's put it this way: The Qin was absolutely despotic in areas that could be guessed at ("Burn Books Kill Scholars"), as well as quite despotic in areas that would seem pointless now (like bell volumes, because bells were also measurements for grain). They also completely didn't care about other things that you would think a despot would really care about. A thing to think about was that Qin Shr Huang seemed to truly believe that everything he did was necessary for the unification of China (which he accomplished). YOU (not me) might argue that by unifying a large portion of central China he actually prevented a lot more deaths due to "Barbarian" incursion by "Unfree and uncivilized" Muslims...OOPS--Did I say that? I mean "Unfree and backward people that should be killed". -TD >I did not pack them in to one simplistic grid - I said that >legalism was much the same thing as communism/nazism, whereas >Confucianism is a mixture of that, and also of rule by social >conservatives. The rule of Qin was very similar to commie nazi >rule. The rule of Qianlong was substantially different. Both >were despots, but Qianlong was no totalitarian. > > --digsig > James A. Donald > 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG > k6s+2bFmGHKlU9v6wCbmGCo+6m4eAEfjtEfJ3b3W > 4EcgDCvx/77or2uD2Vhx/20HURcJ8XVeRylOk8puI From saftergood at fas.org Sun Nov 14 02:46:53 2004 From: saftergood at fas.org (Aftergood, Steven) Date: November 14, 2004 2:46:53 PM EST Subject: Secrecy News -- 11/14/04 Message-ID: SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2004, Issue No. 100 November 14, 2004 ** THE ARRIVAL OF SECRET LAW ** TSA THREATENS TO ARREST LEAKERS ** SUPPORT SECRECY NEWS THE ARRIVAL OF SECRET LAW Last month, Helen Chenoweth-Hage attempted to board a United Airlines flight from Boise to Reno when she was pulled aside by airline personnel for additional screening, including a pat-down search for weapons or unauthorized materials. Chenoweth-Hage, an ultra-conservative former Congresswoman (R-ID), requested a copy of the regulation that authorizes such pat-downs. "She said she wanted to see the regulation that required the additional procedure for secondary screening and she was told that she couldn't see it," local TSA security director Julian Gonzales told the Idaho Statesman (10/10/04). "She refused to go through additional screening [without seeing the regulation], and she was not allowed to fly," he said. "It's pretty simple." Chenoweth-Hage wasn't seeking disclosure of the internal criteria used for screening passengers, only the legal authorization for passenger pat-downs. Why couldn't they at least let her see that? asked Statesman commentator Dan Popkey. "Because we don't have to," Mr. Gonzales replied crisply. "That is called 'sensitive security information.' She's not allowed to see it, nor is anyone else," he said. Thus, in a qualitatively new development in U.S. governance, Americans can now be obligated to comply with legally-binding regulations that are unknown to them, and that indeed they are forbidden to know. This is not some dismal Eastern European allegory. It is part of a continuing transformation of American government that is leaving it less open, less accountable and less susceptible to rational deliberation as a vehicle for change. Harold C. Relyea once wrote an article entitled "The Coming of Secret Law" (Government Information Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 2, 1988) that electrified readers (or at least one reader) with its warning about increased executive branch reliance on secret presidential directives and related instruments. Back in the 1980s when that article was written, secret law was still on the way. Now it is here. A new report from the Congressional Research Service describes with welcome clarity how, by altering a few words in the Homeland Security Act, Congress "significantly broadened" the government's authority to generate "sensitive security information," including an entire system of "security directives" that are beyond public scrutiny, like the one former Rep. Chenoweth-Hage sought to examine. The CRS report provides one analyst's perspective on how the secret regulations comport or fail to comport with constitutional rights, such as the right to travel and the right to due process. CRS does not make its reports directly available to the public, but a copy was obtained by Secrecy News. See "Interstate Travel: Constitutional Challenges to the Identification Requirement and Other Transportation Security Regulations," Congressional Research Service, November 4, 2004: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/RL32664.pdf Much of the CRS discussion revolves around the case of software designer and philanthropist John Gilmore, who was prevented from boarding an airline flight when he refused to present a photo ID. (A related case involving no-fly lists has been brought by the ACLU.) "I will not show government-issued identity papers to travel in my own country," Mr. Gilmore said. Mr. Gilmore's insistence on his right to preserve anonymity while traveling on commercial aircraft is naturally debatable -- but the government will not debate it. Instead, citing the statute on "sensitive security information," the Bush Administration says the case cannot be argued in open court. Further information on Gilmore v. Ashcroft, which is pending on appeal, may be found here: http://papersplease.org/gilmore/ TSA THREATENS TO ARREST LEAKERS Efforts by the Transportation Security Administration to investigate air marshals for talking to the press or the public "were appropriate under the circumstances," the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General said last week, and did not constitute a "witch hunt." However, "air marshals from two locations said that they were threatened with arrest and prosecution if they were found to have released sensitive security information (SSI), even though release of SSI is not a prosecutable offense," the Inspector General said. In a related overstatement, Federal Air Marshal Service policy says that "employees who release classified information or records in any form without authority from the Classified Documents Custodian are in violation of United States Code and are subject to arrest and prosecution," the DHS Inspector General (IG) noted. But "We question the legal accuracy of this policy statement, which seems to criminalize all releases of classified information," the IG wrote. The unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a criminal offense only in certain narrowly defined circumstances. See "Review of Alleged Actions by TSA to Discipline Federal Air Marshals for Talking to the Press, Congress, or the Public," DHS Inspector General Audit Report, November 2004: http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dhs-ig-ssi.pdf SUPPORT SECRECY NEWS Secrecy News has a big hole in its budget for the coming year. Can you help? If you have learned something useful, valuable or interesting from Secrecy News over the past year, then please consider supporting this publication and the work of the FAS Project on Government Secrecy. Donations may be made online here (click "donate now" and make sure to designate your contribution for "Secrecy News"): http://www.guidestar.org/helping/donate.adp?ein=23-7185827 Or mail a check payable to the Federation of American Scientists to: Secrecy News Federation of American Scientists 1717 K Street NW, Suite 209 Washington, DC 20036 _______________________________________________ Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists. To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, send email to secrecy_news-request at lists.fas.org with "subscribe" in the body of the message. To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a blank email message to secrecy_news-remove at lists.fas.org OR email your request to saftergood at fas.org Secrecy News is archived at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html Secrecy News has an RSS feed at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.rss _______________________ Steven Aftergood Project on Government Secrecy Federation of American Scientists web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html email: saftergood at fas.org voice: (202) 454-4691 --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jamesd at echeque.com Sun Nov 14 08:39:25 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 08:39:25 -0800 Subject: Iraq II, Come to think of it (was...China's wealthy) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <419719BD.21551.5323A06@localhost> -- James A. Donald: > > Qin had a cult of personality, in which every single person > > subject to his control had to participate. A subject of > > Qin, like a subject of Mao, was more aware of Qin, than he > > was of his mother and father. Tyler Durden: > You are apparently simply unaware of the real size and > terrain of China. There were villages in remote parts of > China that were unaware of Mao's death into the early 1980s. Bullshit. Everyone knew that which the regime decided they must know. And if true, which I very much doubt, you are not only arguing that Qin's legalism was a different thing than communism/nazism, you are also arguing that Mao's communism was a different thing than Stalin's communism. It was a lot harder to get to Afghanistan from Moscow than to get to any place in China from Peking, yet every Afghan child knew in painfully excessive detail what Moscow commanded them to know, and the regime was partially successful in preventing them from knowing what it wished them to not know. When, during the great leap forward, Peking commanded unreasonable grain requisitions from the provinces, *all* provinces contributed, and *all* provinces suffered starvation. It is often said that Mao's famine was an unfortunate accident, while Stalin's famines were intentional, but any differences are merely a matter of greater self deception. Both did the same things for the same reasons, but Stalin justified his actions by anti peasant rhetoric - "liquidation of the kulaks", whereas Mao justified his action by pro peasant rhetoric, but this is a mere difference in the emphasis in the rationalizations and propaganda, not any difference in means and ends. Both used ruthless terror to establish extraordinary control over a far flung empire that had formerly been ruled by relatively light hand, and then used that extraordinary control to extort extraordinary resources from the peasantry. The difference between Stalin's frequent references to the poor peasants (who were supposedly carrying out the liquidation of the kulaks in revolutionary zeal) and Mao's similar references is merely that Mao was more thorough in creating the simulation of a mass movement. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG xGYJrVMJ5Hx9Dgyly/Lt7Vk6TKJAugVqAcp3+7mq 4rvMXJ51mdk2UqHkU40M50T9s5aAMzX99JW0hQGT/ From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Sun Nov 14 09:33:26 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 12:33:26 -0500 Subject: Iraq II, Come to think of it (was...China's wealthy) Message-ID: James Donald wrote... >Bullshit. Everyone knew that which the regime decided they >must know. And if true, which I very much doubt, you are not >only arguing that Qin's legalism was a different thing than >communism/nazism, This is where the "Simplistic Grid" comes in. The momentum of Chinese culture will oalways outlive any short-term despotism, and the Chinese on many levels know this. When it comes to China, even some of the Han-dominated areas are incredibly difficult to get to, and when you start talking about Southern parts of Yunnan, most parts of Tibet, and places like Qinhai and Xinjiang, the idea of a lightening-fast and efficient despotism starts to sound dubious. Indeed, these areas are only barely under Beijing control today. It's also a main reason why Burma and the Golden triangle find it very easy to ship heroin overland through China to Hong Kong rather than go at it via a more direct route. >When, during the great leap forward, Peking commanded >unreasonable grain requisitions from the provinces, *all* >provinces contributed, and *all* provinces suffered starvation. Anhui and central China suffered far more than other parts of China. I'd guess that 70% of the deaths due to starvation during 58 to about 64 occurred in that part of Central China. The obvious reasons were: 1) Proximity and easy communicatuion with Beijing, and 2) Large tracts of previously arable land (ie, you don't bother exerting despotism over an area that can't do much anyway). >you are also arguing that Mao's communism was >a different thing than Stalin's communism. No, I am arguing that Chinese communism was a different thing from Soviet commusim, for the precise reason that the weight of Chinese history would be fairly quick to erase Chinese commusim. Any China hand could have predicted exactly that, and indeed that's precisely what happened. Our decision to back the far-more corrupt Chiang regime all the way to 1973 or whenever, was a major blunder, if for no other reason then to accelerate the isolation of the Soviets. Mao would have been very hip to the manuever, and I bet would have welcomed it (The Soviets were never very useful to the Chinese communists). In other words, even a smart rabid anti-communist should have recognized that backing Mao's "Bandits" was at some point obvious, but most were far too blinded by their ideology to see that. The same thing's happening with Iraq and Iran. Iran's making overtures that we consistently ignore because were too darned dumb and power-oriented to see the opportunity. -TD > >Both used ruthless terror to establish extraordinary control >over a far flung empire that had formerly been ruled by >relatively light hand, and then used that extraordinary control >to extort extraordinary resources from the peasantry. The >difference between Stalin's frequent references to the poor >peasants (who were supposedly carrying out the liquidation of >the kulaks in revolutionary zeal) and Mao's similar references >is merely that Mao was more thorough in creating the simulation >of a mass movement. > > --digsig > James A. Donald > 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG > xGYJrVMJ5Hx9Dgyly/Lt7Vk6TKJAugVqAcp3+7mq > 4rvMXJ51mdk2UqHkU40M50T9s5aAMzX99JW0hQGT/ From jon at callas.org Sun Nov 14 13:44:16 2004 From: jon at callas.org (Jon Callas) Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 13:44:16 -0800 Subject: THE ARRIVAL OF SECRET LAW FAS Secrecy News -- 11/14/04 Message-ID: From jamesd at echeque.com Sun Nov 14 13:45:43 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 13:45:43 -0800 Subject: Iraq II, Come to think of it (was...China's wealthy) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <41976187.29239.648FBA9@localhost> -- On 14 Nov 2004 at 12:33, Tyler Durden wrote: > When it comes to China, even some of the Han-dominated areas > are incredibly difficult to get to, and when you start > talking about Southern parts of Yunnan, most parts of Tibet, > and places like Qinhai and Xinjiang, the idea of a > lightening-fast and efficient despotism starts to sound > dubious. I have never suggested that any despotism was lightning fast or efficient, and totalitarianism, such as that of Mao and Qin, is even slower and less efficient. It is not travel distance that makes for slow reactions, but the fact that everything has to be cleared with the top, the fact that low level people are forbidden to think. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 56D0bYHQzFhVoqs5hSQzS0qvgik5OwJHVAMVGSfz 4FvsMZXY2Yed7To20MoGIPJ3rszxf79ZaE6XvYlpG From rah at shipwright.com Sun Nov 14 15:50:35 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 18:50:35 -0500 Subject: THE ARRIVAL OF SECRET LAW FAS Secrecy News -- 11/14/04 Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text From rah at shipwright.com Sun Nov 14 19:39:39 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 22:39:39 -0500 Subject: Tiny Antennas to Keep Tabs on U.S. Drugs Message-ID: The New York Times November 15, 2004 Tiny Antennas to Keep Tabs on U.S. Drugs By GARDINER HARRIS he Food and Drug Administration and several major drug makers are expected to announce an agreement today to put tiny radio antennas on the labels of millions of medicine bottles to combat counterfeiting and fraud. Among the medicines that will soon be tagged are Viagra, one of the most counterfeited drugs in the world, and OxyContin, a pain-control narcotic that has become one of the most abused medicines in the United States. The tagged bottles - for now, only the large ones from which druggists get the pills to fill prescriptions - will start going to distributors this week, officials said. Experts do not expect the technology to stop there. The adoption by the drug industry, they said in interviews, could be the leading edge of a change that will rid grocery stores of checkout lines, find lost luggage in airports, streamline warehousing and add a weapon in the battle against cargo theft. "It's basically a bar code that barks," said one expert, Robin Koh, director of applications research at the Auto-ID Labs of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "This technology is opening a whole series of opportunities to make supply chains more efficient and more secure." Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense have already mandated that their top 100 suppliers put the antennas on delivery pallets beginning in January. Radio tags on vehicles and passports could become a central tool in government efforts to create a database to track visitors to the United States. And companies are rushing to supply scanners, computer chips and other elements of the technology. The labels are called radio-frequency identification. As in automated highway toll collection systems, they consist of computer chips embedded into stickers that emit numbers when prompted by a nearby radio signal. In a supermarket, they might enable a scanner to read every item in a shopping cart at once and spit out a bill in seconds, though the technology to do that is still some distance off. For drug makers, radio labels hold the promise of cleaning up the wholesale distribution system, where most counterfeit drugs enter the supply chain - often through unscrupulous employees at the small wholesale companies that have proliferated in some states. Initially, the expense of the system will be considerable. Each label costs 20 to 50 cents. The readers and scanners cost thousands of dollars. But because the medicines tend to be very expensive and the need to ensure their authenticity is great, officials said, the expense is justified. Costs are still far too high for individual consumer goods, like the amber bottles that pharmacies use to dispense pills to individuals. But prices are expected to plunge once radio labels become popular, so drug makers represent an important set of early adopters. Privacy-rights advocates have expressed reservations about radio labels, worrying that employers and others will be able to learn what medications people are carrying in their pockets. Civil-liberties groups have voiced similar concerns about ubiquitous use of the technology in the marketplace. But under the current agreement, the technology would not be used at the retail level. The food and drug agency's involvement is crucial because drug manufacturers cannot change a label without the agency's approval. In its announcement, the agency is expected to say that it is setting up a working group to resolve any problems that arise from the use of radio antennas on drug labels. Counterfeit drugs are still comparatively rare in the United States, but federal officials say the problem is growing. Throughout the 1990's, the F.D.A. pursued about five cases of counterfeit drugs every year. In each of the last several years, the number of cases has averaged about 20, but law-enforcement officials say that figure does not reflect the extent of the problem. Last year, more than 200,000 bottles of counterfeit Lipitor made their way onto the market. In 2001, a Sunnyvale, Calif., pharmacist discovered that bottles of Neupogen, an expensive growth hormone prescribed for AIDS and cancer patients, were filled only with saltwater. "We've seen organized crime start to get involved," said William Hubbard, an associate food and drug commissioner. With some drugs costing thousands of dollars per vial, the profit potential is huge, he said. The weak point, Mr. Hubbard said, is the wholesaler system, which ships more than half of the 14,000 approved prescription drugs in the United States. While three large companies - McKesson, Cardinal and AmerisourceBergen - account for more than 90 percent of drugs that are sent through wholesalers, there are thousands of smaller companies throughout the country, many little more than a room with a refrigerator. State pharmacy boards are responsible for regulating drug wholesalers, but most boards do almost nothing to police them. In many states, only a small fee and a registration form are needed to set up shop. A 2003 report by a Florida grand jury found that the state had 1,399 approved wholesalers - one for every three pharmacies in Florida. Radio labels fight counterfeiting by providing a unique identifier that is almost impossible to copy. When pharmacists receive delivery, they should be able to pass a wand over the bottles and, through an online database, check the history of each. Any bottles that have been reported missing or previously sold, have an unusual delivery history or are not recognized by the system will be flagged as suspicious. Makers of prescription narcotics say radio labels could help cut down on the booming trade in stolen pills. "We get calls once a week from state troopers saying they got a guy with one of our bottles," said Aaron Graham, chief security officer for Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. With radio labels, Purdue will be able to trace those bottles to individual pharmacies. "If that pharmacy was robbed, we'll know for certain that that guy is in possession of stolen property," Mr. Graham said. Radio labels could conceivably help ensure that imported drugs are safe, Mr. Hubbard said. But drug manufacturers are unlikely to put radio labels on drugs sold in other parts of the world for many years, he said. The F.D.A. has been a fierce opponent of legalizing drug imports. "This is about securing the domestic supply," said Tom McGinnis, the F.D.A.'s chief pharmacist. So far, the agency is relying on a nonprofit industry group, EPCglobal, based in Lawrenceville, N.J., to set standards for radio labels. The labels will remain voluntary until 2007. After that, the agency may require the labels and specify which types must be used, Mr. Hubbard said. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From isn at c4i.org Mon Nov 15 02:47:54 2004 From: isn at c4i.org (InfoSec News) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 04:47:54 -0600 (CST) Subject: [ISN] How a guy's gizmo spread fear at Fed Message-ID: Forwarded from: William Knowles http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/251774p-215484c.html BY THOMAS ZAMBITO DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER November 11, 2004 It nearly sparked a financial catastrophe. An electrician's homemade gadget wreaked havoc on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, causing computer convulsions at a facility that houses the world's biggest cash vault, the Daily News has learned. The foulup short-circuited the career of journeyman electrician John Cravetts, who was fired though he insists he meant no harm. But it could have been much worse, according to papers filed in Manhattan Federal Court. "The results could have been catastrophic," said Barry Schindler, an attorney for the New York Fed. Fed officials say they might have had to shut down computers that process some $2.5 trillion in funds and securities payments and $4 billion in checks every day. Fortunately, backup systems kicked in after the Nov. 17, 2002, incident. The heavily guarded facility in East Rutherford, N.J., is also home to a vault that handles more than $1 billion in currency, coins and food coupons. Cravetts, 62, was canned two weeks after the incident. A surveillance tape caught him using the crude device - two red wires strung between an ordinary household switch and plug. He later filed an age discrimination suit and also charged his firing was retaliation for reporting an electrocution hazard at the facility where he'd worked for almost 10 years. Manhattan Federal judge Harold Baer tossed out Cravetts' claim this week. "I had an unblemished record," Cravetts told The News yesterday. "What I did was in good faith. I did not do anything malicious," added the licensed electrician, who has since found a new job. "What do they think I'm going to do, sabotage it?" Although Fed attorneys presented a near-doomsday scenario in court filings, Fed spokesman Peter Bakstansky downplayed the incident yesterday. "There was no point at which the operations of the Fed were in danger," Bakstansky said. "We stopped him. ... We have a lot of redundancy." Cravetts had been asked to locate circuit breakers on the Fed computers that had not been properly labeled. He used his gizmo to conduct the search, plugging it in and tripping breakers, knocking out power as he went along. Cravetts told The News his superiors knew he used the device. He had made four of them at work. Fed attorneys say he should have used a device that sends a harmless tone back to the breaker and doesn't cause disruptions. Cravetts said that for more than a year, he had asked his bosses to order the manufactured device needed for the job, but they never did. *==============================================================* "Communications without intelligence is noise; Intelligence without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ---------------------------------------------------------------- C4I.org - Computer Security, & Intelligence - http://www.c4i.org *==============================================================* _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From isn at c4i.org Mon Nov 15 02:48:20 2004 From: isn at c4i.org (InfoSec News) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 04:48:20 -0600 (CST) Subject: [ISN] Japanese Government Bans Security Researcher's Speech Message-ID: http://www.ejovi.net/archives/2004/11/japanese_govern.html November 12, 2004 [JUKI net is Japan's national ID system. Ejovi performed a security audit of the system for Nagano Prefecture one year ago] Its been a long day. I am greatly disappointed that Soumushou, the Japanese government that maintains JUKI net, prevented me from speaking today at the PacSec security conference. Soumushou prevented my talk by threatening the Japanese event who currently are seeking contracts from the government The Japanese government gave me two options. 1) Do not talk 2) Drastically change your slides to say what they want me to. When I offered to not use slides at all and give my own opinion they told me that I would not be permitted to speak AT ALL. It is obvious to me that they did not have an issue with my slides or presentation. They were afraid that I would draw attention to problems in JUKI net. Soumushou thinks that they can hide from the issues. They think that if they keep people from speaking about the issues, it will go away. I thought I would be immune from such Japanese government pressures however I underestimated Soumushou's ability to manipulate those around me. Soumushou's reason for forbidding me to speak was this "Since we are endorsing the convention we have to right to tell you not to speak" if this is the case, the Japanese government needs only sponsor or endorse ANY event in which they don't agree with and force the organizers to change the content. If this is the case Japan will never make any progress towards a safer environment. What is most upsetting to me is the fact that I HAD NO PLANS TO CRITIZE the Japanese government. My talk was going to be extremely fair and balanced addressing the issues raised by both sides. In fact I invited Soumushou to meet with me directly so that I can address any issues they may have. I told them this on the telephone and by email. Instead they choose to pressure the Japanese representatives of the conference. They never attempted to talk with me directly. Why is this? If they had issues with something I may say why not ask me about it? Why pressure a company they relies on government contracts? Is this fair? The purpose of my talk was to present both sides of JUKI net security systems. I have no vested interest in seeing it fail or in seeing it succeed. I only wanted to recommend how best to make it safer, how best to improve the system. But Soumushou believed that my recommendations on how to improve its security alone would mean that JUKI net has problems and they refused to admit this. I'm sorry to tell them but it does have security problems. The good news is that the technical issues can be easily resolved. However the greatest problem with JUKI net is not technical but Soumushou's inability to even acknowledge that they exist! How can a system become secure if the Japanese government are not willing to listen to someone who points out issues. Today was a sad day for Japan and a frustrating day for me. _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 15 05:58:17 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 08:58:17 -0500 Subject: Want to surf net? Show I-card Message-ID: : HindustanTimes.com Prove identity to surf net in Bangalore Press Trust of India Bangalore, November 15 Advertisement Internet surfers in over 50,000 cyber cafis across Karnataka now need to show an identity proof before browsing the web. With an aim to prevent misuse of the Internet by criminals, the state government has made it mandatory for all such cafes to have a record of net users, failing which the police can impound their licenses. "We are introducing this law to check anti-social elements and anti-national activities. Internet is a great medium for communication, but people can also carry out a lot of such (illegal) activities through it," state IT secretary K.N. Shankaralinge Gowda told here. According to the new norms, a surfer needs to display his/her identity card at the cyber cafi or be photographed by a web camera by the attendant before logging on. Printed From -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 15 06:17:47 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 09:17:47 -0500 Subject: [ISN] Japanese Government Bans Security Researcher's Speech Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 15 06:19:57 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 09:19:57 -0500 Subject: [ISN] How a guy's gizmo spread fear at Fed Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 15 06:22:39 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 09:22:39 -0500 Subject: [Osint] DHS Now Has Non-Disclosure Agreement For *Un*classified Info Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text To: "Bruce Tefft" Thread-Index: AcTLBDc4vJyL80TwSZuIiwn1AOddIQACB0Zg From: "Bruce Tefft" Mailing-List: list osint at yahoogroups.com; contact osint-owner at yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list osint at yahoogroups.com Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 07:13:19 -0500 Subject: [osint] A NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT FOR UNCLASSIFIED INFO] Reply-To: osint at yahoogroups.com A NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT FOR UNCLASSIFIED INFO In a momentous expansion of the apparatus of government secrecy, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is requiring employees and others to sign legally binding non-disclosure agreements as a condition of access to certain categories of unclassified information. Up to now, non-disclosure agreements have only been used by government agencies to regulate access to classified information. In fact, they are one of the defining features of the national security classification system, along with security clearances and the "need to know" principle. As far as Secrecy News could determine, such classification-like controls have never before been systematically imposed on access to unclassified information. But now at DHS a non-disclosure agreement must be executed in order to gain access to any one of a panoply of new and existing categories of unclassified information, including: "For Official Use Only (FOUO); Official Use Only (OUO); Sensitive Homeland Security Information (SHSI); Limited Official Use (LOU); Law Enforcement Sensitive (LES); Safeguarding Information (SGI); Unclassified Controlled Nuclear Information (UCNI); and any other identifier used by other government agencies to categorize information as sensitive but unclassified." The proliferation of controls on unclassified information signifies a massive increase in government secrecy, particularly since the number of officials who are authorized to designate information in one of these categories dwarfs the number of officials who can create classified information. And while the classification system operates according to certain well-defined rules and limitations, including procedures for review and challenge of classification decisions, the same is not true of the "sensitive but unclassified" domain. Furthermore, there is nothing like the Information Security Oversight Office to monitor and oversee the restriction of unclassified information. (Some types of sensitive but unclassified information are not specifically protected by statute and can still be successfully requested under the Freedom of Information Act. But with Justice Department encouragement, agencies take an expansive view of the scope of the Act's exemptions and access is increasingly uncertain.) The DHS non-disclosure agreement is apparently the first such document crafted in the Bush Administration. It represents a new high water mark in the rising tide of official secrecy. A copy of DHS Form 11000-6, Non-Disclosure Agreement for Sensitive But Unclassified Information, dated August 2004, was obtained by Secrecy News and is posted here: http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dhs-nda.pdf ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-osint at yahoogroups.com. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor bisoldi at intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint at yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 15 07:34:36 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 10:34:36 -0500 Subject: Certicom Announces Security Builder NSE (National Security Edition) Message-ID: Certicom Announces Security Builder NSE (National Security Edition) Cryptographic toolkit enables government contractors to add security that meets NSA guidelines to protect mission-critical information MISSISSAUGA, ON, Nov. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Government defence contractors got a helping hand today when Certicom Corp. (TSX: CIC), the authority for strong, efficient cryptography, announced Security Builder(R) NSE(TM). This developer toolkit enables organizations to build applications and devices that meet the field-of-use guidelines set out by the National Security Agency (NSA) to protect mission-critical national security information. According to the NSA, there are over one million high-grade devices in the U.S. Government today that will need to be replaced to include security based on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). At an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meeting on November 11, the NSA presented their requirements for strong security over the next 50 years and further information about their licensing agreement with Certicom for its ECC-based intellectual property. The NSA presentation can be found at http://www.machshav.com/~smb/saag-11-2004/ . In October 2003, the NSA selected elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) as the public-key cryptosystem to meet these new, stronger security requirements under its crypto modernization program. The agency purchased licensing rights for 26 ECC-based patents from Certicom for a particular field-of-use, defined as implementations of ECC that are over GF (p), where p is a prime greater than 2 to the power of 255. "This toolkit is a logical next phase for Certicom as it helps contractors meet the NSA guidelines for protecting the most critical government information. The agency has set out the guidelines and made the crypto licenses available to contractors. We're now providing a tool to help developers integrate optimized security features that meet those guidelines," said Ian McKinnon, president and CEO of Certicom. With this toolkit, organizations can be assured of proven implementations backed by Certicom, a team of cryptographic experts that has focused on optimizing public-key cryptosystems for almost two decades. The Security Builder NSE toolkit covers the technology that was part of the 26 patents licensed by the NSA plus optimized implementations that enable developers to meet the NSA field-of-use guidelines and FIPS 140-2 validation requirements. The toolkit, which is available in C code, includes: - Elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) (FIPS-validated) for digital signatures; - Elliptic curve Menezes-Qu-Vanstone (ECMQV) for key agreement and transport; - SHA-1 and SHA-2 (FIPS-validated) for hashing; - Advanced encryption standard (AES) (FIPS-validated) for strong encryption; - Random number generation (RNG) (also FIPS-validated); - Point compression for size and performance efficiencies; and - Support for Windows and Linux platforms. Security Builder NSE is part of the Certicom Security Architecture, which unifies all of Certicom's existing toolkits across a single API and enables developers to quickly migrate their applications to whichever cryptographic module is required. Pricing and Availability Security Builder NSE will be available in the first quarter of 2005 and priced at a one-time license fee with no royalties starting at US$50,000 per project in the field-of-use plus support and maintenance. A free license for the patents in the NSA field-of-use is available from the NSA or Certicom. About Certicom Certicom Corp. (TSX:CIC) is the authority for strong, efficient cryptography required by software vendors and device manufacturers to embed security in their products. Adopted by the US Government's National Security Agency (NSA), Certicom technologies for Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) provide the most security per bit of any known public key scheme, making it ideal for constrained environments. Certicom products and services are currently licensed to more than 300 customers including Motorola, Oracle, Research In Motion, Terayon, Texas Instruments and Unisys. Founded in 1985, Certicom is headquartered in Mississauga, ON, Canada, with offices in Ottawa, ON; Reston, VA; San Mateo, CA; and London, England. Visit http://www.certicom.com . Certicom, Certicom Security Architecture, Certicom CodeSign, Security Builder, Security Builder Middleware, Security Builder API, Security Builder Crypto, Security Builder SSL, Security Builder PKI, and Security Builder GSE are trademarks or registered trademarks of Certicom Corp. Intel is registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All other companies and products listed herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Except for historical information contained herein, this news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Factors that might cause a difference include, but are not limited to, those relating to the acceptance of mobile and wireless devices and the continued growth of e-commerce and m-commerce, the increase of the demand for mutual authentication in m-commerce transactions, the acceptance of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) technology as an industry standard, the market acceptance of our principal products and sales of our customer's products, the impact of competitive products and technologies, the possibility of our products infringing patents and other intellectual property of fourth parties, and costs of product development. Certicom will not update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. More detailed information about potential factors that could affect Certicom's financial results is included in the documents Certicom files from time to time with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities. SOURCE Certicom Corp. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 15 19:29:01 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 22:29:01 -0500 Subject: Gettin' Our Scots-Irish Up Message-ID: Fight. Sing. Drink. Pray. Cheers, RAH ------- The National Review November 15, 2004, 8:24 a.m. Gettin' Our Scots-Irish Up Country music reflects America's spirit. I am fortunate to have been given the opportunity to review Jim Webb's magnificent new book, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, for NRODT [National Review on dead trees --RAH]. It is a wonderful social history of an individualistic, stubborn, rebellious people responsible for creating America's strongest cultural force. A particularly powerful component of this culture is country music. Webb calls country music "a uniquely American phenomenon," a "hypnotic and emotionally powerful musical style" that evolved from its Celtic origins in the mists of Scotland and Ireland. Country music is at the heart of the Scots-Irish culture....In the hollows through those earlier years the dulcimer found its plaintive notes, the traditionally exquisite violin turned into such a hot fiddle that some warned it came from the devil (think Charlie Daniels: "The Devil came Down to Georgia"), and the banjar, a native African instrument made with a gourd, evolved into the hillbilly banjo. Indeed, anyone who wants to understand the Scots-Irish in America would do well to begin by listening to this genre. It is no accident that Webb describes the importance of country music for the Scots-Irish in his chapter entitled "Fight. Sing. Drink. Pray." Country music is about real life, about "hard living, cheating hearts, and good-looking women." It's also about sin and redemption. Country music teaches that actions have consequences, and no one has ever conveyed this reality more clearly than the hard-living, hard-drinking George Jones. The titles of his songs tell it all: "From Hillbilly Heaven to Honky-Tonk Hell," "Hell Stays Open All Night Long," "The Man that You Once Knew," "He Stopped Loving Her Today," and "I've Had Choices." I've had choices, since the day that I was born. There were voices, that told me right from wrong. If I had listened, no I wouldn't be here today, Living and dying, with the choices I've made. Country music teaches these lessons in a way that puts to shame most of what passes for poetry these days. Consider what I believe to be the greatest country song of all time: "Amarillo By Morning," by the incomparable George Strait. Amarillo by morning, Up from San Antone Everything that I've got, Is just what I've got on... They took my saddle in Houston, Broke my leg in Santa Fe Lost my wife and a girlfriend, Somewhere along the way.... Amarillo by morning, Up from San Antone Everything that I've got, Is just what I've got on I ain't got a dime, But what I've got is mine I ain't rich, But Lord I'm free Amarillo by morning, Amarillo's where I'll be. Or "Whiskey Lullaby," by Brad Paisley and Alison Krause: She put him out like the burnin' end of a midnight cigarette She broke his heart, he spent his whole life tryin' to forget We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind Until the night. He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger And finally drank away her memory Life is short but this time it was bigger Than the strength he had to get up off his knees. Country music can be overtly religious, which, of course, scares the dickens out of secular elites in this country. Consider Jimmy Wayne's "I Love You This Much": He can't remember the times that he thought Does my daddy love me? Probably not But that didn't stop him from wishing that he did Didn't keep from wanting or worshipping him He guesses he saw him about once a year He could still feel the way he felt Standing in tears Stretching his arms out as far as they'd go Whispering daddy, I want you to know. Chorus I love you this much and I'm waiting on you To make up your mind, do you love me too? However long it takes I'm never giving up No matter what, I love you this much. He grew to hate him for what he had done 'Cause what kind of a father, could do that to his son He said 'damn you daddy', the day that he died The man didn't blink, but the little boy cried. Chorus Half way through the service While the choir sang a hymn He looked up above the preacher And he sat and stared at him He said "Forgive me father" When he realized That he hadn't been unloved or alone all his life His arms were stretched out as far as they'd go Nailed to the cross, for the whole world to know. Chorus But even a man of faith can lose it - at least for a while - if the burden is great enough. The next time you get a chance, listen to Alan Jackson sing "you left my heart as empty as a Monday-morning church" about a man who has just buried his wife. As Webb observes, when the Scots-Irish aren't praying, they are often fighting, singing, or sinning in other ways. Despite the admonition of countless fire-and-brimstone preachers from time immemorial, the Scots-Irish have lived the, ahem, secular life to the fullest. As an old Marine, the drinkin'-and-fightin' strain of country music has always appealed to me (not that I have ever engaged in such rowdy behavior, of course). To my way of thinking, there's nothing like the in-your-face music of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams Jr., Aaron Tippin, and Toby Keith. And we shouldn't forget the rowdy girls. I love the ladies - Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, June Carter Cash, Reba, Faith Hill, and the rest - but I have always had a soft spot for the wild ones: Tanya Tucker and my latest favorite, Gretchen Philips, the redneck woman who's here for the party. I may not be a ten but the boys say I clean up good And if I gave 'em half a chance for some rowdy romance you know they would. The Scots-Irish have a 2000-year-old military tradition, so it's not surprising that country music is also overtly patriotic. Who can forget Alan Jackson's 9/11 musical memorial, "Where Were You?" or Toby Keith's moderate response to the terrorists, "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" ("we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way")? Country music looks to tradition for continuity. There's nothing like a "ghost of Hank Williams" song. So Alan Jackson sings about "Midnight in Montgomery": Midnight in Montgomery, silver eagle, lonely road I was on my way to Mobile for a big New Years Eve show I stopped for just a minute to see a friend outside of town Put my collar up, found his name, and felt the wind die down Then a drunk man in a cowboy hat took me by surprise Wearing shiny boots, a Nudi suit and haunting haunted eyes. He said, "Friend it's good to see you, it's nice to know you care" Then the wind picked up and he was gone Was he ever really there? 'Cause it's midnight in Montgomery Just hear that whippoorwill See the stars light up the purple sky Feel that lonesome chill When the wind it's right, you'll hear his songs Smell whiskey in the air Midnight in Montgomery He's always singing there. Of course, the elites in this nation hate country music just as they hate what Webb describes as the Scots-Irish culture. So after the elections, novelist Jane Smiley wrote in Slate that The election results reflect the decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry. . . . Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. . . . Listen to what the red state citizens say about themselves, the songs they write, and the sermons they flock to. They know who they are - they are full of original sin and they have a taste for violence. . . . Well, to Ms. Smiley and her fellow "elites," from us country-music fans: As Aaron Tippin sings in a different context, "Jane - kiss this!" - Mackubin Thomas Owens is an associate dean of academics and professor of national-security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 15 19:56:20 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 22:56:20 -0500 Subject: Certicom First to Earn FIPS 186-2 Validation for Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm Message-ID: Certicom First to Earn FIPS 186-2 Validation for Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm Validation of ECC-based algorithm another step in ECC standardization and widespread adoption MISSISSAUGA, ON, Nov. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Certicom Corp. (TSX: CIC), the authority for strong, efficient cryptography, today announced that its implementation for the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (EassociateCDSA) has earned the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 186-2 validation certification No. 1 - making it the first company to receive the designation for an elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) -based algorithm. This validation is particularly valuable for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and software vendors who sell to government organizations. By using Certicom's ECDSA implementation in their products, they meet FIPS requirements without undergoing the time-consuming and costly testing process. ECDSA is used to build in digital signature functionality and is a faster alternative to legacy algorithms. For the cryptography community, and in particular proponents of ECC, the testing of ECC as part of the FIPS validation process is a significant step in the adoption of this public key cryptosystem. Considered a benchmark for security in government, a FIPS validation assures users that a given technology has passed rigorous testing by an accredited third party lab as set out by the National Institute of Standards for Technology (NIST) and can be used to secure sensitive information. Typically, it drives wide-scale adoption in government and in commercial sectors, particularly in the financial and healthcare sectors that recognize the significance of FIPS validation. This milestone in ECC's evolution follows last year's announcement from the National Security Agency (NSA) that ECC is a 'crucial technology'. Both events are part of the U.S. Government's crypto modernization program. "A major hurdle to widespread adoption of any security technology is standardization. We witnessed that 25 years ago with the Data Encryption Standard (DES) and now are seeing it play out with Advanced Encryption Standards (AES), the successor to DES," said Scott Vanstone, founder and executive vice-president, strategic technology at Certicom. "As a complementary cryptosystem to AES, we can expect the same for ECC. By testing ECC-based algorithms in the FIPS certification process, NIST added a level of assurance that says they've done the due diligence on it and now organizations can be very comfortable adopting it." ECC is a computationally efficient form of cryptography that offers equivalent security to other competing technologies but with much smaller key sizes. This results in faster computations, lower power consumption, as well as memory and bandwidth savings, thereby making it ideal for today's resource-constrained environments. Certicom is considered a pioneer in ECC research and implementations, backed by 20 years of experience. The company developed the industry's first toolkit to include ECC, which has since been adopted by over 300 organizations. Tomorrow it will host the Certicom ECC Conference 2004, the first-ever conference that brings together Elliptic Curve Cryptography researchers, industry experts and users. During the two-day conference, participants from North America, Europe and Asia will discuss the evolution of ECC and share best implementation practices and insights for future applications. About Certicom Certicom Corp. (TSX:CIC) is the authority for strong, efficient cryptography required by software vendors and device manufacturers to embed security in their products. Adopted by the US Government's National Security Agency (NSA), Certicom technologies for Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) provide the most security per bit of any known public key scheme, making it ideal for constrained environments. Certicom products and services are currently licensed to more than 300 customers including Motorola, Oracle, Research In Motion, Terayon, Texas Instruments and Unisys. Founded in 1985, Certicom is headquartered in Mississauga, ON, Canada, with offices in Ottawa, ON; Reston, VA; San Mateo, CA; and London, England. Visit http://www.certicom.com . Certicom, Certicom Security Architecture, Certicom CodeSign, Security Builder, Security Builder Middleware, Security Builder API, Security Builder Crypto, Security Builder SSL, Security Builder PKI, and Security Builder GSE are trademarks or registered trademarks of Certicom Corp. Intel is registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All other companies and products listed herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Except for historical information contained herein, this news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Factors that might cause a difference include, but are not limited to, those relating to the acceptance of mobile and wireless devices and the continued growth of e-commerce and m-commerce, the increase of the demand for mutual authentication in m-commerce transactions, the acceptance of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) technology as an industry standard, the market acceptance of our principal products and sales of our customer's products, the impact of competitive products and technologies, the possibility of our products infringing patents and other intellectual property of fourth parties, and costs of product development. Certicom will not update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. More detailed information about potential factors that could affect Certicom's financial results is included in the documents Certicom files from time to time with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities. SOURCE Certicom Corp. More news from PR Newswire... Issuers of news releases and not PR Newswire are solely responsible for the accuracy of the content. Terms and conditions, including restrictions on redistribution, apply. Copyright ) 1996-2004 PR Newswire Association LLC. All Rights Reserved. A United Business Media company. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 15 20:14:47 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 23:14:47 -0500 Subject: Banned Chechen Web Site Now Operating On Swedish Server Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 15, 2004 4:57 a.m. EST Banned Chechen Web Site Now Operating On Swedish Server DOW JONES NEWSWIRES November 15, 2004 4:57 a.m. STOCKHOLM (AP)--A pro-independence Chechen Web site that was shut down by the Lithuanian government and then removed from a Finnish server because of a posting that claimed responsibility for the school massacre in southern Russia began operating on a Swedish-owned server. Jean Hamberg, managing director for Port80 AB, a Stockholm-based Internet service provider, said the Web site, www.kavkazcenter.com, was up and running on its servers since late last week. "Nobody has complained about it," he told The Associated Press on Monday. "No officials, I should say." The site is regarded as a clearing house for pro-Chechen information and a mouthpiece for Chechen rebel leaders battling Russian troops in the breakaway province. Lithuania's State Security Department shut the site down in September when it was hosted by Elneta, an Internet service provider in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. In early October, the site surfaced on a server owned by Finland's Sonera, but was shut down by the Finnish government. Russia's government has called the site an "information tool of international terrorists." On Sept. 17, the site posted a letter - purportedly by Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev - in which he claimed responsibility for the three-day siege of a Russian school in Beslan. More than 330 people died in the standoff, nearly half of them children. It was impossible to confirm whether the letter on the Web site was genuine, but Basayev's previous claims of responsibility have appeared there. Hamberg said the Web site would stay online, since it appeared to have not violated any law. "Our policy is if they're doing anything illegal, then they're out," he said. "If they're not doing anything illegal we don't wish to interfere." The Swedish government had no comment on the site. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From isn at c4i.org Tue Nov 16 05:34:56 2004 From: isn at c4i.org (InfoSec News) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 07:34:56 -0600 (CST) Subject: [ISN] BlackBerry prickles Department of Defence spooks Message-ID: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/11/15/1100384480556.html By Rob O'Neill November 16, 2004 Next Department of Defence communications spooks are restricting the use of wireless BlackBerry devices in government over concerns about the security of confidential and restricted information. The Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), the nation's high-tech electronic eavesdropper, says the popular devices must not be used to transmit confidential or secret information or connect to systems that process it. Agencies may use BlackBerry devices with systems that handle "unclassified, x-in-confidence (excluding cabinet-in-confidence) and restricted information". Telstra, one of several providers of BlackBerry services, insists the systems are secure. "They are used by a lot of customers that require high levels of security in the financial services industry, and even the CIA and the Pentagon," a Telstra spokesman says. Paul Osmond, Asia-Pacific regional director of BlackBerry developer Research In Motion, is "thrilled" the Government has decided the Department of Defence can use the device, because 18 months ago they were prohibited. "Their restrictions are fairly common when you look at a first go-around," Osmond says. "They are similar to those the US defence forces put out when they first used it." The DSD will review the guidelines in February when it is expected RIM and ISPs will seek to have their say. The hand-held BlackBerry device, which allows access to corporate email, including attachments, from almost any location, has become the new must-have corporate accessory in the US and is receiving strong support here. But the swarm of new mobile computing devices poses security challenges to government and private organisations. They are keen to have the functionality but worry about privacy and access. Other consumer devices have also generated alarm. A British security firm's survey revealed Apple's iPod, which has large portable storage capacity and can be plugged into most PCs, is considered a threat. Sometimes such concerns can seem overblown, as in 1999 when the Furby, a computerised toy, was banned from US National Security Agency premises because it could be used as a recorder. _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/ - --- end forwarded text - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZpgrsPxH8jf3ohaEQIbrACgoFRvXVUJA1KwCT3bo1W/Kh43CKsAoKgs MVhEl7/6XTLGsGe1fcywBsMm =O3HP -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From bill.stewart at pobox.com Tue Nov 16 10:17:54 2004 From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 10:17:54 -0800 Subject: Gettin' Our Scots-Irish Up In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200411162006.iAGK6fUA012351@positron.jfet.org> At 07:29 PM 11/15/2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: >The National Review > November 15, 2004, 8:24 a.m. >Gettin' Our Scots-Irish Up >Country music reflects America's spirit. The music that I associate with National Review is distinctly not country-western - it's Bach's Second Brandenburg Concerto, used as the theme music for Bill Buckley's program Firing Line. They may be putting on country-boy airs, but they're still elitists... Bill Stewart bill.stewart at pobox.com From jrandom at i2p.net Tue Nov 16 12:54:18 2004 From: jrandom at i2p.net (jrandom) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 12:54:18 -0800 Subject: [i2p] weekly status notes [nov 16] Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi y'all, its tuesday again * Index 1) Congestion 2) Streaming 3) BT 4) ??? * 1) Congestion I know, I'm breaking the habit of naming point 1 "Net status", but this week "congestion" seems appropriate. The network itself has been doing pretty well, but as the bittorrent usage increased, things started getting more and more clogged up, leading to an essential congestion collapse [1]. This was expected, and only reinforces our plan - get the new streaming lib out there, and revamp our tunnel management so we have sufficient data about peers to use when our fast peers fail. There were some other factors in play in the recent network problems, but the bulk can be traced to the congestion increase and resulting tunnel failures (which in turn caused all sorts of wild peer selection). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_collapse * 2) Streaming There has been a lot of progress with the streaming lib, and I've got a squid proxy rigged up to it through the live net that I've been using it frequently for my normal web browsing. With mule's help, we've been hammering the streams pretty hard too by piping frost and FUQID through the network (my god, I never realized how abusive frost was before doing this!) A few significant longstanding bugs have been tracked down this way, and some tweaks to help control massive numbers of connections have been added. Bulk streams are working great too, with both slow start and congestion avoidance, and the quick send/reply connections (ala HTTP get+response) are doing exactly what they should. I expect we'll draft some volunteers to try deploying it further over the next few days, and hopefully get us to the 0.4.2 level soon. I don't want to say it'll be so good that it does your dishes, and I'm sure there'll be bugs that slip through, but it does look promising. * 3) BT Barring the recent network troubles, the i2p-bt port has been making leaps and bounds. I know a few people have pulled down over a GB of data through it, and performance has been as expected (due to the old streaming lib, ~4KBps per peer in the swarm). I try to listen in on the work being discussed in the #i2p-bt channel - perhaps duck could give us a summary in the meeting? * 4) ??? Thazzit from me for now. See y'all in the meeting in a few minutes. =jr -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.1 iQA/AwUBQZpoZBpxS9rYd+OGEQJ7hQCgm635Z/qWpcfDiKQE2JO2Q3eAR/UAn2yQ ZEawa8wEMLl1tz/uk4BTENkb =ZS5w -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ i2p mailing list i2p at i2p.net http://i2p.dnsalias.net/mailman/listinfo/i2p ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From jamesd at echeque.com Tue Nov 16 13:48:25 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 13:48:25 -0800 Subject: Gettin' Our Scots-Irish Up In-Reply-To: <200411162006.iAGK6fUA012351@positron.jfet.org> References: Message-ID: <419A0529.19273.11B2BB@localhost> -- On 16 Nov 2004 at 10:17, Bill Stewart wrote: > The music that I associate with National Review is distinctly > not country-western - it's Bach's Second Brandenburg > Concerto, used as the theme music for Bill Buckley's program > Firing Line. > > They may be putting on country-boy airs, but they're still > elitists... Perhaps, but it is characteristic of american conservatives to claim to be rednecks or hillbillies - and characteristic of american leftists to condemn their opponents as trailer park trash, rednecks, hillbillies, and sister fuckers. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG KvBpkRgMY1EaRdittHLTuKxpXHzlpZNo6UE55J9v 4c1dfn1oWWGKl5Zmmwoij539ww8jvi8JqwMuasWVW From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 16 12:13:27 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 15:13:27 -0500 Subject: [ISN] BlackBerry prickles Department of Defence spooks Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - --- begin forwarded text From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 16 12:28:10 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 15:28:10 -0500 Subject: 'Virtual Debit Card' Aims To Combat Online Fraud Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Wall Street Journal November 16, 2004 MONEY 'Virtual Debit Card' Aims To Combat Online Fraud By JENNIFER SARANOW Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL November 16, 2004; Page D2 Consumers typically have been wary of using bank cards online. One bank's solution is to get rid of the cards. In an effort to ease customers' concerns about fraud and identity theft when shopping online, PNC Bank has launched a new checking account with a "virtual debit card." In addition to a regular debit card that can be used at automated teller machines and in stores, the "Digital Checking" account comes with an "eSpend" card. The card is basically a piece of paper with an account number, expiration date and verification code for making purchases online, over the phone and by mail order. Customers can set a daily limit for their eSpend card (say $1,000) and once that amount is spent, additional purchases won't be approved. PNC Bank, a unit of PNC Financial Services Group Inc., Pittsburgh, hopes the eSpend card will attract people who want to make purchases online with their debit card but are uncomfortable doing so for fear of making their bank account vulnerable to fraud. If an unauthorized person obtains a customer's eSpend number, only the specified daily limit could be taken out of a customer's bank account. If this occurs, PNC says customers aren't liable for the charges. Purchases made with the eSpend card show up separately on bank statements. The account, which is aimed at online-banking customers, also comes with identity-theft reimbursement insurance, a debit card rewards program and no fee for using non-PNC ATMs. The account has a monthly $11 service fee unless customers opt for direct deposit of paychecks or government checks such as Social Security, and pay at least three bills online. The eSpend card comes as debit cards are quickly overtaking cash and checks as preferred methods of payment. According to a report from the American Bankers Association and Boston-based Dove Consulting, 31% of in-store purchases were made with a debit card last year, up from 21% in 1999. Consumers typically have been wary of using debit cards online because, unlike credit cards, they are directly tied to bank accounts. But online use of debit cards is starting to grow. In the first quarter of this year, Visa debit cards were used for 46% of online purchases, up from 43% a year earlier, according to Visa International. Analysts are skeptical about how excited consumers will be about PNC's new card. "I think it's an interesting idea but if you look at consumer usage, consumers are using their debit cards online today in increasing numbers, so it's unclear how much of a demand there would be for a card with that unique application," says Tony Hayes, a Dove analyst. Other banks have long offered similar credit-card products as a way to encourage purchases on the Internet and reduce the amount of fraud they are liable for. In June of 2002, for example, Citigroup Inc.'s Citibank launched free, downloadable software that allows credit-card customers to obtain a new disposable account number each time they make a purchase online. A downside: Such "virtual account numbers" can't be used when a credit card must be shown at pickup. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZpi4MPxH8jf3ohaEQKJ3QCfZ+wnHeKvUtcB5OPrDJpowuwZVlcAniqe Y95BEeRcqR2WVUz/2nG4zZvh =wU3/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 16 12:30:06 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 15:30:06 -0500 Subject: The Beginning of the Crypto Era Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 EWeek The Beginning of the Crypto Era November 15, 2004 By Larry Seltzer In a move that was totally expected, if a little early, Yahoo has announced that it will put its money where its mouth is and start checking Yahoo Mail with its DomainKeys system. The company had told me that it would do so by the end of the year, but I suppose it had had this last week, during the FTC e-mail authentication summit, as an internal deadline. Earthlink also announced that it will test DomainKeys on its system. DomainKeys is important. It is the main implementation of the second of the two most credible approaches to SMTP authentication, specifically the use of cryptographic signatures to authenticate messages against the domains from which they were sent. The other approach-to check against the IP addresses of the servers in those domains-also moved forward recently with the second version of the Sender ID spec. Don't assume that the DomainKeys implementation is the final form. There is an IETF group called ietf-mailsig working in preliminary stages to standardize the crypto approach to SMTP authentication and they might want to make some changes to the approach used by Yahoo. And I expect Yahoo to be open to such suggestions. In fact, Yahoo's openness to reasonable suggestions and unobjectionable licenses is a big reason to be optimistic about widespread adoption of it. Indeed, while Yahoo has intellectual property claims on its developments in DomainKeys, the company isn't being a jerk about it, like some other coMpanieS in this business that shall remain naMeleSs. There are some interesting questions about DomainKeys and Yahoo's handling of it. The first has to do with performance. My own first impression of cryptography as a solution was that the added performance burden on MTAs (message transfer agents, better known as mail servers) would be great and that many companies would have to upgrade their hardware to run a DomainKeys-enabled server with decent performance. In a recent eSeminar in which I participated, Richi Jennings of Ferris Research echoed this view. But while it's still too early to tell, there's reason to believe the performance issue is not as serious as first impressions would indicate. I've spoken to Sendmail, the leading MTA company in the world, about it. Nobody, except Yahoo, has more hands-on experience actually testing and coding DomainKeys than Sendmail. Sendmail thinks the added performance burden, entirely CPU-based, is on the order of 15 percent to 20 percent. This isn't nothing, but MTAs aren't typically CPU-constrained-they are network- and perhaps disk-constrained-so there could easily be spare CPU capacity in the typical MTA (unless it's running Exchange Server or Notes, in which case it's CPU-starved). Next Page: Why no SPF implementation? The other question I have about Yahoo is why it has refused to implement SPF. Sender Policy Framework is the uncontroversial part of Sender ID, the part that checks the message envelope. Many people still argue that SPF is all we really need. But no serious people believe this, least of all SPF's author Meng Weng Wong, who is a principal author and sponsor of the Sender ID spec and also a fan of DomainKeys. All SPF really stops is bounce messages, also known as "Joe Jobs." It's an important part of the solution, but it's far from an adequate one. But it is an easy one, and there's no good technical reason why Yahoo should resist it. All the other major mail providers, to my knowledge, are implementing SPF as part of their experimentation. The answer for Yahoo is probably something as stupid as not wanting people to get the misimpression that they are hedging on DomainKeys. I asked the company about this several weeks ago, and it weaseled out of a direct answer. Most dissatisfying. The Yahoo announcement focuses on phishing, probably because it's topical. Spam has become a major annoyance, but phishing is scary. And SPF does nothing to address phishing. This is why Microsoft developed Caller ID, the header portion of Sender ID. I should also take a moment to wag my finger at those who continue to express concern at how spammers are adopting SPF and other authentication standards in order to get around them. I don't know if they're walking into a trap or if they're just experimenting, but it won't do them any good. The more spammers authenticate, the easier they will make themselves to block. For insights on security coverage around the Web, check out eWEEK.com Security Center Editor Larry Seltzer's Weblog. Remember, authentication systems are not complete anti-spam systems. They just identify who is sending the mail, not why they are sending it. This whole approach requires the coordinated use of reputation systems that will use the authenticated address to tell you whether a sender is trustworthy. In such a scenario, an authenticated spammer becomes easy to block. The collapse of MARID brought forth a call for experimentation with the various proposals in the hope that the experience would inform the standards process and help to produce a consensus. We're lucky. The experimentation so far has formed along the lines one would expect, meaning the proposals backed by the major players. The advancement of DomainKeys puts in an approach that the open-source community won't object to and that is forward-looking. It doesn't have to be the only success in this area, but it's good that we have it. Security Center Editor Larry Seltzer has worked in and written about the computer industry since 1983. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZpjVMPxH8jf3ohaEQJJKwCgi1SpEnUCBsoXyXRVKX0O1pyltdkAoKat BGbyLClwxL8k4hHIlcdZ7xB4 =jRYJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 16 16:22:50 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 19:22:50 -0500 Subject: Crypto-Tax: Re: India to tax / levy license fees on ISPs that offer VPNs Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - --- begin forwarded text From mv at cdc.gov Tue Nov 16 20:29:41 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 20:29:41 -0800 Subject: condosleeza rice Message-ID: <419AD3B5.5B395336@cdc.gov> Dangle da carrot and dem negroes go fer da bait. Dang they'll lie for you like nothin' and dey're disposable as well! Gawd I love da south! Its a shame, Powell won't run. Instead, Fascism needs you, or your children. And hey, if Arnie gets his amendment (snort), the Carcano needs dusting off, say what you will about Oswald's politics, or the quality of spanish bolt-actions, or Maria's grim-reaper physiognomy, where is Oswald's ghost when you need it? From mv at cdc.gov Tue Nov 16 20:46:21 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 20:46:21 -0800 Subject: 1st amendment Message-ID: <419AD79D.198E82A7@cdc.gov> At 10:56 PM 11/16/04 -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > >DALLAS SERVER COMPANY CARRIES ZARQAWI DEATH VIDEOS, TERRORIST WEBSITES Any State employee who attempts to oppress free speech, including video, deserves killing. Read the Bill of Rights. Any limitation on financial speech is dubious at best; however, one imagines that bandwidth is readily donated, for free, as in liberty, and beer, and code, and other forms of expression. Any private ISP is free to do as they please; however, when the State is involved, its minions must respect the BoR or expect a well-deserved visit from Mr. Soze, et al. Render unto Caesar, etc. From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 16 18:12:33 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 21:12:33 -0500 Subject: [osint] Al-Qaeda propaganda website shut down Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - --- begin forwarded text To: "Bruce Tefft" Thread-Index: AcTMRPaUQi8W4viLTUaHaDASsEmcWgAAM3oQ From: "Bruce Tefft" Mailing-List: list osint at yahoogroups.com; contact osint-owner at yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list osint at yahoogroups.com Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 20:38:21 -0500 Subject: [osint] Al-Qaeda propaganda website shut down Reply-To: osint at yahoogroups.com Al Qaeda propaganda website shut down Wednesday November 17, 05:54 AM Al-Qaeda propaganda website shut down A web site that reportedly contained speeches by Suleiman Abu Ghaith, an alleged spokesman for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was shut down by a Swedish internet provider after the site was traced to its server. Spray Network, a subsidiary of Lycos Europe, shut the site down after being informed of the site, said Fredrik Skaerheden, a Spray Network spokesman. "We have a very clear policy that any material that in any way may urge or encourage criminal acts or violence is immediately removed," Skaerheden told The Associated Press. The web site, www.members.lycos.co.uk/abugaith1, reportedly contained several audio files of Abu Ghaith giving speeches and sermons in Arabic, and contained several violent and bloody images. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, which first traced the site to the Swedish server, at least one of the sermons called for Muslims to give their lives to fight the United States. A report on MEMRI's Web site quoted the sermon as hailing bin Laden and describing the Jihad fighters as people who "seek death as others seek life and seek Allah's promise in the Koran and sacrifice their property, their blood, and their lives as a sign of the sincerity of their faith." Anyone can create a web site for free on Lycos' servers, Skaerheden said, adding that many of the Lycos Europe member sites are hosted by Spray's servers in the Swedish capital, Stockholm. http://au.news.yahoo.com/041116/2/rr8i.html - ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM - --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> - -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-osint at yahoogroups.com. - -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor bisoldi at intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint at yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ - --- end forwarded text - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZqzocPxH8jf3ohaEQLqBQCfXmSSbDyKMsn5ECNGIukcdIo+ntwAn2Pa uA+n1tf2Qb0KT0IbFvSZpr6c =Eg7m -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 16 13:55:08 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 22:55:08 +0100 Subject: [i2p] weekly status notes [nov 16] (fwd from jrandom@i2p.net) Message-ID: <20041116215507.GH1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from jrandom ----- From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 16 19:56:06 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 22:56:06 -0500 Subject: CBS 11: Dallas Server Company Carries Zarqawi Death Videos, Terrorist Websites Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 CBS 11 | cbs11tv.com DALLAS SERVER COMPANY CARRIES ZARQAWI DEATH VIDEOS, TERRORIST WEBSITES * THE PLANET.COM SAYS IT IS UNWITTING VICTIM, CAN'T POLICE ITSELF Nov 14, 2004 11:00 pm US/Central By Todd Bensman and Robert Riggs The Investigators CBS-11 News CARBONDALE, ILL. -- The grainy Internet movie file flashes a title: "Al Qaeda Movement in the Land of the Two Rivers. An Operation Against the British Troops Near Baghdad." The streaming online video clip shows a car as it motors slowly up a single-lane road, away from the cameraman who shakily zooms in as it gathers speed toward a British checkpoint. A caption appears, reading "Here goes the brave lion to tear up his prey and to win paradise." The cameraman is speaking in Arabic, his voice rising with "God is Great, God is Great" as the car at center screen arrives at the British checkpoint and a soldier standing in the road. Suddenly, a massive fireball of orange and black lashes upward and outward, instantly slaughtering him and wounding two other British soldiers of the Black Watch Regiment, along with the suicide bomber, according to later press reports. The Jihadists responsible are then filmed at the scene kicking a dismembered arm left behind by a recovery tank squad. This is a movie clip put up just last week by notorious terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organization within a few days of the actual Nov. 7 attack. Sometime over the weekend, as CBS-11 aired promotions for this story, it disappeared with others of its ilk on an Internet server owned by an up-and-coming Dallas web site hosting company called The Planet. In downtown Dallas ((www.theplanet.com). Glorifying the slaughter of American soldiers and their allies in Iraq. Helping to enhance the global street credentials of Zarqawi among any like-minded person with access to a computer. Aaron Weisburd, a self-appointed cyber warrior who since 2002 has run a crusade called Internet Haganah (www.Internet-Haganah.us) to shut down these so-called "e-jihadists," is the one who tracked the movies to Dallas. And in recent weeks, Weisburd has discovered that Zarqawi's home movies on The Planet servers have plenty of other bad company in Big D. The Planet's Dallas servers have in recent months hosted web sites run by Islamic extremist organizations the U.S. government has long since banned as Designated Terrorist Organizations - three different Palestinian Islamic Jihad promotional sites and Hamas' monthly news magazine. Two Hamas websites and two Al Quaeda websites remain on The Planet's servers, according to Internet Haganah. For the past two and a half years, Weisburd and his Internet Haganah (www.haganah.us) volunteer translators and analysts across the globe have been using a tracking program he devised to expose the presence of extremist outlawed Jihadists and hound them off the Web by asking the server companies to drop their business. A former computer programmer, Weisburd started chasing after e-jihadists on a lark and soon realized that literally thousands of extremist Islamic web sites were out there in cyberspace, beckoning to millions of Muslims around the world to join their bloody causes. "Every moment that these sites are up they encourage jihadists to commit acts of terrorism," Weisburd told CBS-11 News in his first interview with an American media organization. "They provide instructions to people in how to do things like build bombs. They build identity and a sense of community. They incite violence. They encourage people to go out and kill people. "I'm of the opinion that one ought not to just sit there and tolerate terrorists advertising their organization," he said. "They're not just some other organization. They're not a humanitarian organization. They're not a corporation. They're terrorists. They're in the business of killing people. They shouldn't be allowed to enjoy that kind of legitimacy." - From his home office in the southern Illinois college town of Carbondale, Weisburd has found sites in Dallas literally singing the praises of suicide bombing, sporting photo memorials of martyrs and promoting their bloody, violent causes. Working internationally, he claims his efforts have knocked down more than 550 extremist web sites. Sometimes, he said, service provider companies resist but most do not want to be associated with terrorists. "My guess is that in the grand scheme of things one bad customer isn't worth nearly as much as all the good customers you want to keep who don't want to be associated with this stuff either," Weisburd said. "I mean, do you really want to be known as associated with terrorists?" Most of the time, the giant service providers do not know what kinds of web sites they are hosting until someone complains. Such companies typically sell wholesalers their web space and those wholesalers in turn contract much of the business with the public, with just about anyone who offers a name and a credit card. Under federal law, it is illegal for any American company to knowingly do business with a designated terrorist organization without reporting it, although federal prosecutions are considered difficult to bring to fruition across multiple international jurisdictions. Federal prosecutions also are difficult because straw purchasers several steps removed from a terrorist group who might secretly buy the web sites can be difficult to directly link to terrorist organizations. The First Amendment otherwise protects even most hate speech from prosecution, limiting what the government can do but certainly not what civilians like Weisburd can do. Which is to track down the e-jihadists wherever they may turn up, report their new presence and have them thrown off the Web until they pop up again somewhere else. Weisburd said his computer programs constantly prowl the World Wide Web for more than 200 web sites in his growing database, keeping them ever on the run. Weisburd and the estimated 30,000 Internet Haganah followers who see his regular reports on the whereabouts of Islamic extremist websites said he couldn't yet claim credit for shaming the five web sites he knows of off the Dallas servers. In September, three Palestinian Islamic Jihad web sites he had shut down in Switzerland showed up on The Planet's servers in Dallas. Weisburd said he reported their resurfacing to his Internet Haganah readers and moved on to other business. The three websites have since disappeared but Weisburd isn't sure of what happened. The Planet executives declined requests for on-camera interviews but said in telephone conversations that the company simply does not have the ability to police for Islamic extremist material among the 1.5 million web sites and 20,000 customers. The web sites appear to violate content that is banned by The Planet's own acceptable use policy. More than a week after CBS-11 informed Chief Operating Officer Lance Crosby of a Hamas magazine web site, www.fm-m.com that were operating off of his servers, it remained online. Hamas, which was designated a terrorist organization in 1995, has taken credit for years of suicide bombings that have claimed the lives of hundreds of Israeli civilians and at least ten Americans. An email request for interviews at the website went unanswered last week. But former federal prosecutor Matt Yarbrough, now a private attorney specializing in cyber law, said server companies like The Planet can easily and cheaply patrol their servers. "There would have to be a social sort of outcry or decision here on the part of the service provider to want to do this, but it is technically possible," Yarbrough said. "All they would have to do is basically run a string search across its own server farm to look at the content of each one of these web sites, whether it's a key word, or terrorism, or bomb, or Holy Jihad." Yarbrough said service providers who choose not to police for extremist Islamic material risks civil liability should anyone ever be injured or killed as a result of Internet encouragement. "Victims of terrorist attacks are not going to be suing terrorists; they're going to be suing deep pockets right here in the United States that played some role, even if it's very tenuous to what happened in the act of terrorism," Yarbrough said. Mark Briskman, head of the Dallas area chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, said his organization was "saddened to know that a company in Dallas is hosting hate materials and hope they take actions against any sites that violate their rules." "This is not an issue of freedom of speech," Briskman said. "Rather, a company can choose with whom they wish to do business and hold the right to terminate that business relationship. " Meanwhile, macabre new video clips continued showing up on The Planet servers last week, posted there by Zarqawi's organization, Weisburd said. They included a video clip entitled "Smoke 'em Out" showing American soldiers putting out fires from a car bomb attack somewhere in Iraq. The video then shows footage of a dead U.S. soldier, accompanied by the caption "The picture of a U.S. soldier who was killed in the explosion." A smiling Iraqi man is shown proudly holding a torn American combat boot. Weisburd said he discovered the video clips on the Dallas server while patrolling a highly restricted Al Qaeda discussion forum where Zarqawi's personal spokesman often posts messages about the group's latest terror attacks. After the suicide bombing that killed the British soldier, Weisburd said, the terrorist spokesman posted a message in the forum claiming credit and promising to post proof soon. The next day, Zarqawi's spokesman announced the proof and provided a link to the video of the exploding car bomb, on The Planet.com. Asked how he would like The Plant to respond, Weisburd said, "I would hope that they would contact their customer whose site is being used to host that film and that their customer would respond by suspending that account. "The Planet is not profiting from this hardly at all. Being a step or two removed from the paying customer, there's really very little interest for them," he said. "But they have a lot to lose in terms of simply business reputation. " As in any war, even in cyberspace, those who shoot are liable to be shot at. And figuratively, Weisburd, who is Jewish, has taken plenty of shots from the e-Jihadists who have come to hate him and the trouble he causes. "Web sites are central to their identity. It's a window on their soul," Weisburd explained. "They associate with these sites in a very personal way. And so, when you cause one of these sites to be shut down you cause them personal pain. They'll find their sites down and go to my site and find out it was me." Haganah is a hebrew word meaning "defense" and became potent when it was chosen as the name of Jewish defense militias that fended off relentless Arab attacks on settlements before Israel's 1948 establishment. The Haganah was precurser to today's Israeli Defense Force. Internet Haganah's persistence has drawn repeated counterattacks from Islamist website forums and chat rooms. Posters urge Muslim hackers to attack Weisburd, and they have succeeded on a number of occasions of shutting him down, albeit temporarily. "They just generally call me 'That Jew,' Al Yahood," he said. "In Arabic, calling somebody a Jew is as bad as it gets." Physical threats of violence are not uncommon, either. Most recently, Weisburd received a letter from someone in Cherry Hill, N.J. threatening that they would cut his head off if he did not stop the cyber warfare. But Weisburd, who keeps loaded firearms at hand at all times, says he is ready for them and will keep the pressure on. "I'm in-your-face," he said. "It's important to confront them as it would be any thug. The way you deal with people like them is you stand up and fight them. You don't run away and hide. "You don't let them control the battlefield, and you don't let them take advantage of your own networks in order to destroy your own society." For more information about what you can do about Internet terrorism, contact www.Internet-Haganah.us. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZrPDsPxH8jf3ohaEQJ2LQCgySzPPx8aFoQeLvgVTxaVBrFeKWsAoIYb fUIpuf/XiBBXwGs+mvXxAKXM =zk6G -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Tue Nov 16 22:28:27 2004 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 01:28:27 -0500 Subject: [p2p-hackers] Seth Johnson: Request for the P2P Workshop at the FTC Message-ID: Below is my request to participate in the FTC's Workshop on "P2P Filesharing," details of which may be found at: > http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/filesharing/index.htm > http://www.ftc.gov/os/2004/10/041015p2pfrn.pdf Seth --- Request to Participate Federal Trade Commission Peer to Peer Filesharing Workshop Including Comments and Recommendations Seth Johnson I have been a developer of database software since the 1980's, and presently offer professional consultancy services in information quality improvement. My clients have included the Illinois Department of Agriculture, Sony Music, Bertelsmann, and Affinity Health Plan. I am also an advocate and organizer in areas of information freedom. Working with New Yorkers for Fair Use and other groups, I have worked to promote the interests of innovation in information technology for many years, including such areas as patent policy at the World Wide Web Consortium, content control in the broadband Internet, the broadcast flag, software patents, and other issues. At the Internet Commons Congress in March 2004 (http://www.nyfairuse.org/icc), I worked with Daniel Berninger, New Yorkers for Fair Use and others to bring together advocates for many different areas so that they could better coordinate their activities and concerns. A matter of some concern regarding the FTC's workshop on "P2P filesharing technology" arises from its usage of the term "P2P" or "peer to peer." Observing that Napster's centralized data servers were a legal target, some Internet users declared that the use of a central server was unnecessary, because the decentralized architecture of the Internet was inherently not subject to the legal theory behind the charges levied against Napster. As a result, downloadable applications like KaZaA, Grokster and Gnutella took on the label "P2P" to distinguish them from Napster, when in fact the ability for any computer to directly communicate with any other is built into the Internet infrastructure. In addition, the facts that these applications allowed users to open up access to their directories, and that they presented lists of files which users could select to initiate transfers, have often obscured the fact that the applications themselves do not transfer the files, and that the ability to give other users access to local directories is a feature built into ordinary operating systems. This is why "P2P filesharing" is not an appropriate name to describe these applications. These applications simply provide the same function that Napster provided with a centralized server: the ability to find files on the Internet. They are decentralized search engines. They do not perform the file transfers and they do not themselves make peer to peer possible. They allow users to implement a search engine that is distributed across many machines, and the Internet itself does the rest. The description of "P2P filesharing applications" presented in this workshop's call for participation offers nothing to distinguish KaZaA, Grokster or Gnutella from the basic functions of the Internet and ordinary, generally used operating systems. It also makes no mention of the core functionality that these applications actually do provide: search and discovery of the locations of files. Sharing files among a group of users is a basic network capability that operating systems and networks already provide. Among the goals presented by the FTC for this workshop are learning about P2P, including how it works, and discussing self-regulatory, regulatory, and technological responses to a set of risks which the workshop associates with these consumer-friendly decentralized search engines. I suggest that the testimony of those who designed the Internet and those who exercise its basic functions as a matter of their daily productive lives, will provide a stronger framework for understanding the real nature of these risks. One name that should be recommended is David Reed, one of the original architects of the underlying infrastructure of the Internet. He is well-prepared to comment on the relationship between the architecture of the Internet and the capacities for innovation for which it provides. Another name that might be considered is Bram Cohen, the author of BitTorrent. A cursory survey of Sourceforge.net will show a great variety of projects whose authors can testify to their dependence on the peer to peer architecture of the Internet, and to the fact that accessing and distributing of files among peers is an unalterable component of their work. The participation of voices representing development projects such as these is a critical consideration for this workshop. Discussion of consumers' private interests should not be confused with copyright issues. Even greater risks ensue when discussions of filters, privacy, security, adware, viruses, exposure to undesirable material and impairments of computer function are mixed with copyright issues. The result of addressing copyright concerns in the manner of protecting private consumer interests can only be that both copyright and innovation will suffer. Technological developments that affect the capacity of individuals to publish, use, and develop new uses for information will often signal new issues for copyright policy, issues which touch on areas that are necessarily out of the scope of the FTC's mandate for rulemaking or promulgating norms. In particular, among the risks mentioned in the workshop's call for participation is that of exposure of end users to liability to charges of copyright infringement. Addressing this risk within the conceptual framework that the call for participation appears to exhibit, and in terms of the kinds of responses that it cites for consideration, can reasonably be expected to lead to a very limited understanding and an encouragement of prescriptive responses that are not well-advised. More fundamentally, addressing copyright issues within this conceptual framework will result in owners of computers and makers of applications losing their capacity to develop and make use of their computers and the communications infrastructure. It may be that the structure that the workshop will eventually take is to some extent exhibited in the questions presented in the call for participation and the way it contemplates certain risks with regard to consumers' use and understanding of the features of decentralized search applications. Inasmuch as this is true, it would be advisable to adjust the structure of the workshop to more precisely reflect the nature of the subject matter. The scope of the questions should also be expanded and adapted to admit a proper examination of the relationship of the risks to the nature of the technology and the interests of flexibility and innovation; and I would urge the FTC to adapt the conceptual framework and format of the workshop to reflect this purpose more greatly. Opportunity should be provided to describe the architecture of the Internet and how it fosters innovation, and to more precisely define the nature of the applications that are the focus of the workshop. The set of questions on uses of "P2P filesharing" technology should be expanded to admit testimony of those who develop Internet applications. The questions listed in the set addressing the impact of "P2P filesharing" on copyright holders would in fact warrant an extensive process of public inquiry in themselves. Many of these questions address areas that do not pertain specifically or solely to the consideration of the impact of peer to peer technology on copyright holders. The FTC would be well advised to report on the areas alluded to by these questions separately and extensively. The sets of questions addressing identification and disclosure of risks to consumers should be adapted so that the nature and source of the risks are not misconstrued, and so that a more encompassing understanding of the sources of the risks and of prospective solutions can be developed. The questions as a whole exhibit a narrow focus on a set of applications whose characteristics are not properly recognized and understood. The set of questions addressing technological solutions should be decoupled from a narrow focus on specific applications that provide decentralized search capabilities, and should be expanded to admit a broader analysis. The solutions currently identified in the call for participation do not appear to provide for a well-designed response to the full scope of risks and implications elicited by this workshop's areas of consideration. One major source of these risks that some will mention is the undue influence on the market and on copyright policymaking of interests such as market dominant software manufacturers, publishers and the recording and motion picture industries. Monopoly interests in the operating system arena in particular interfere severely with consumers' access to, understanding of and choices with respect to software that can provide far more robust protections than they generally make use of presently. I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to participate in this workshop as a panelist. I also offer to help in advising as to the structure of the workshop and appropriate participants. Above I have mentioned David Reed and Bram Cohen. Voices I can mention in particular as offering constructive and appropriate insight for this proceeding include the following. I mention them in many cases without specific knowledge of their interest in participating, or of their having actually requested to participate: Jay Sulzberger, New Yorkers for Fair Use, jays at panix.com Brett Wynkoop, Wynn Data Limited, wynkoop at wynn.com Michael Smith, LXNY, mesmith at panix.com Miles Nordin, Developer/Systems Administrator, carton at Ivy.NET Dan Berninger, Technology Analyst, dan at danielberninger.com Adam Kosmin, WindowsRefund.net, akosmin at windowsrefund.net Andrew Odlyzko can provide rigorous empirical analysis and data that are highly pertinent to the subject areas addressed by this workshop: Andrew Odlyzko, University of Minnesota, odlyzko at dtc.umn.edu The following are just a few people who can represent specific development projects: Kevin Marks, MediAgora, kmarks at mac.com Lucas Gonze, Webjay, lgonze at panix.com Bram Cohen, BitTorrent, bram at bitconjurer.org The following are good leading voices who would make significant contributions to this workshop: David Reed, SATN.org, dpreed at reed.com Bob Frankston, SATN.org, rmfxixB1 at bobf.frankston.com David Isenberg, "The Stupid Network," isen at isen.com Richard Stallman, The GNU project, rms at gnu.org David Sugar, Free Software Foundation, dyfet at gnu.org Fred von Lohmann, Electronic Frontier Foundation, fred at eff.org Gigi Sohn, Public Knowledge, gbsohn at publicknowledge.org Robin Gross, IP Justice, robin at ipjustice.org Chris Hoofnagle, Electronic Privacy Information Clearinghouse, hoofnagle at epic.org Nelson Pavlosky, Free Culture, npavlos1 at swarthmore.edu Thank you, Seth Johnson Committee for Independent Technology (SNIP Contact Information) _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers at zgp.org http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers _______________________________________________ Here is a web page listing P2P Conferences: http://www.neurogrid.net/twiki/bin/view/Main/PeerToPeerConferences ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From gr at eclipsed.net Tue Nov 16 23:26:01 2004 From: gr at eclipsed.net (gabriel rosenkoetter) Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 02:26:01 -0500 Subject: 1st amendment In-Reply-To: <419AD79D.198E82A7@cdc.gov> References: <419AD79D.198E82A7@cdc.gov> Message-ID: <20041117072601.GY7532@uriel.eclipsed.net> On Tue, Nov 16, 2004 at 08:46:21PM -0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > At 10:56 PM 11/16/04 -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > > > > >DALLAS SERVER COMPANY CARRIES ZARQAWI DEATH VIDEOS, TERRORIST WEBSITES > > Any State employee who attempts to oppress free speech, including > video, deserves killing. Read the Bill of Rights. "The next day, Zarqawi's spokesman announced the proof and provided a link to the video of the exploding car bomb, on The Planet.com. Asked how he would like The Plant to respond, ..." ^^^ And any news editor who so grossly fails to copy edit also deserves killing. Telling little slip, tho'. -- gabriel rosenkoetter gr at eclipsed.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature] From suresh at outblaze.com Tue Nov 16 16:17:53 2004 From: suresh at outblaze.com (Suresh Ramasubramanian) Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 05:47:53 +0530 Subject: India to tax / levy license fees on ISPs that offer VPNs Message-ID: Deepak Jain [16/11/04 18:15 -0500]: > > I guess it depends on how you define a VPN over just a private network. > Is an SSH tunnel a VPN? What about an encrypting SOCKS proxy? > This "tax" is aimed at a few Indian ISPs that are making lots of money selling managed IP-VPN services.. the incumbent telco seems to think all the money going there would be better spent by companies if they bought copper / fiber from it, and so the DoT (http://www.dot.gov.in) - lots of telco types there who wouldn't know a vpn from a hole in the ground - decided to "level the playing field" Just for laughs, here's the DoT press release on this: srs http://www.dot.gov.in/pressnote10nov04ISP.doc 142/04 www.pib.nic.in PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ****** ISP LICENSING CONDITIONS AMENDED TO PERMIT VPN SERVICES New Delhi, Kartika 19, 1926 November 10, 2004 The Department of Telecommunications today decided to extend the scope of the Licence conditions of Internet Service Providers (ISP) ,thereby allowing them to provide managed Virtual Private Network services to corporates and individuals. In accordance with the decision, the ISP licences (both -Licence without Internet Telephony and with Internet Telephony) will have an enabling provision for VPN services by ISPs under specified terms & conditions. The annual licence fee will be at 8% of the Gross Revenue generated under the licence. There will be one time non-refundable entry fee of Rs. 10, 2 and 1 crore for Category A, B , and C ISPs respectively ISP-with VPN licencee will be permitted to lay optical fibre cable or use radio links for provision of the services under their licence in its Service Area. Further, ISPs shall be free to enter into mutually agreed commercial agreement with infrastructure service providers for sharing of infrastructure. The ISPs shall not engage in reselling bandwidth directly or indirectly. The above decision will help as many 388 ISP Licensees, more particularly 61 all India (Category A) ISP Licensees, to offer VPN services to their customers, thus adding to their revenue stream from Internet Access Services. VPN is a service where a customer perceives to have been provided with a private network which actually is configured over a shared public network. Benefits of VPN include secure communication over public network and guaranteed quality of service. A High Level DoT Committee had examined the matter and had observed that while on one hand such VPN services were not under the scope of the present ISP licences, on the other hand it would be desirable to permit ISPs to provide such services in the present day liberalized telecom environment in the country. The services which are technologically possible should be allowed while at the same time ensuring level playing field to all the service providers. Such VPN services which provide a platform for utilization of bandwidth in a very cost effective and efficient manner are emerging services internationally. This facility is necessary for the corporate world in meeting their growing communication needs of inter-office connectivity to send/transfer data securely and such services are widely available in telecom sector globally. RM/AMA 101104 ISP Licencing Conditions - --- end forwarded text - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZqZ5MPxH8jf3ohaEQKgbQCeIwR9Sbb1xf0KngQzvjuG0BJ/aakAoJ// mB3sxphFvIrWgiMVKTw5LIwY =PRwA -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 17 07:07:19 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 10:07:19 -0500 Subject: How scammers run rings round eBay Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register B; Internet and Law B; Wild Wild Web B; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/16/petty_fraudsters_ebay/ How scammers run rings round eBay By Ken Young (robin.lettice at theregister.co.uk) Published Tuesday 16th November 2004 16:15 GMT Everyone knows that buying and selling on eBay is precarious. Even eBay admits this and gives basic advice on its site that it believes helps eliminate most fraud. But there appears to be a basic weakness in eBay's system that fraudsters and petty thieves are exploiting. It occurs when buyers pay sellers direct into the sellers' bank account by cheque or cash. The following is a real example that occurred in September this year (names withheld for legal reasons). Let's call the buyer Tom and the seller Harry. Tom won the bid for a mobile phone and agreed to pay Harry (who lives 80 miles away from Tom) B#185 plus B#6 insurance using cash at a branch of Harry's bank. A few days later a box arrived. It contained a battery charger and an earplug, but no phone. Tom informed Harry who said that he believed someone at the post office must have stolen the phone and that he would look into it. Days passed and Tom then asked Harry to claim on the insurance. Harry said he had lost the insurance slip and would instead refund 50 per cent of the B#185. A week passed and Tom called Harry to say no payment had been received and that he was losing his patience and would report the matter to eBay. Harry made more excuses and stopped answering his mobile phone. Over the next few weeks they spoke occasionally but Harry refused to send any money and blamed Tom for his removal from eBay (subsequent to Tom informing eBay of his loss). Tom contacted Harry's bank but the bank refused to provide Harry's address. Tom only knows Harry's mobile phone number and Hotmail email address. In summary, Tom spent B#196 on a phone that never arrived and he is not alone. As a result of basic research for this story we have been contacted by five people who have experienced similar scams (their stories, in emails, are copied below). The fact is it appears far too easy for this scam to be perpetrated. Pattern of fraud The pattern is all too predictable. Buyers and sellers agree not to go through the more secure PayPal system because it costs more to do so. So buyers take the risk of sending the money to the seller who either doesn't send the goods or sends shoddy or fake goods. The sellers protect themselves against prosecution by claiming loss, or disputing the buyer's version of events. The amounts involved - though not insignificant to the buyer - are too small for eBay to want to take the matter further. There is one other common factor in all these stories. Though the buyers report the matter to eBay they are invariably frustrated at standard email responses and being steered towards a mediation system which costs the buyer B#15 and even then may or may not lead to resolution. Alternatively, sellers can claim compensation through eBay and may get a maximum of B#105 - if they claim between 30 and 90 days after the event and meet the criteria for payment. In our example above Tom made a claim last month and is still waiting. A common refrain is: "Should I report this to the police? eBay are not replying to my emails about this and I don't know if the police are aware or not. What should I do?" eBay declined an interview in relation to this story but instead issued a statement: "eBay takes the issue of fraud very seriously and investigates every case of fraud reported to it. eBay currently has over 1,000 people worldwide with backgrounds in law enforcement, customer support, advanced computer engineering and analysis dedicated to making eBay one of the safest places to trade online and, in the UK, employs an ex-Scotland Yard officer as liaison point for law enforcement agencies. "The majority of transactions on the eBay site are completely secure and without incident. Approximately 0.01 per cent of transactions end in a confirmed case of fraud." This means that for every million transactions, 100 are 'confirmed' fraudulent, though the criteria for this confirmation are not available. Any security consultant will say that is an acceptable level of risk and way below fraud levels on credit cards. Not surprisingly, eBay therefore does not advise people specifically not to pay by cheque or cash payment into a seller's bank account. Top tips On the eBay website its 'top tips' state that sellers should ideally use secure payment systems like PayPal (which offers greater levels of protection, though still limited if the seller has little or no track record) and should NOT use money transfer services "like Western Union". But aside from telling buyers to be wary it does not tell buyers NOT to send cheques or pay directly into sellers' bank accounts (either by money transfer or using cash at a bank branch). Clearly it believes that most such transactions are safe and therefore if the buyer assesses the risk as low, then why not? Many eBay users may agree - it's 'caveat emptor' applied to the world of online car boot sales. But when Steve Gold, a security consultant, celebrity ex-hacker (he co-hacked the Duke of Edinburgh's Prestel mailbox), and former accountant also gets hit by such a scam you begin to wonder how the mass of eBay's users are avoiding getting stung and whether the 0.01 per cent figure is an accurate reflection of the amount fraud occurring. Gold, an experienced eBay user, reports that he bought a hard drive for B#63 from a man who never sent the item. After weeks of the usual hassle he used 192.com to track the man down to confront him. The seller - somewhat shocked to see his 'victim' - pleaded poverty and illness and apologized profusely. Gold admitted defeat safe in the knowledge that at least he had confronted his fraudster and learnt a useful - if painful - lesson. Pants down He now says he uses a mixture of web tools to check out sellers. He pays 192.com B#25 per 100 enquiries to get addresses from phone numbers; he uses maporama.com to check out locations of sellers; and he admits he is more cautious than ever. "eBay is caught with its pants down," he says. "They are neglecting their customers; they should make a shed load of information available to help people to avoid this." Like others Gold says he hit a brick wall when he tried to get other bodies involved: "I went to trading standards - they weren't interested. I even compiled a dossier on the seller and sent it to his local police force. Subsequently they told me they were aware of eBay fraud but don't deal with it." Gold believes the level of fraud on eBay is higher than the 0.01 per cent figure given: "But how can we tell? eBay won't reveal the real figures so we have no way of knowing." He has a point. Credit card fraud has been reduced over the years by greater public awareness over the levels and types of fraud occurring. eBay is relying on sellers to be 'careful' but the question for the regulatory authorities remains: Is eBay doing enough to protect its users? Those who lose out as a result of this type of scam certainly think not. Clearly eBay cannot be held responsible for dishonesty among sellers but perhaps it could do a lot more to warn people how easy it is for petty criminals to exploit our desire for a bargain. Maybe it is time for an independent body to track complaints against the system so that buyers can get a better picture of the types and frequency of frauds occurring. B. Below are a selection of emails from others defrauded via eBay. Names have been omitted for legal reasons: I was cheated out of B#200 when I tried to buy an ipod. I corresponded with the seller, who seemed friendly until I sent my money and he clammed up. I got emails from another apparent victim, who also was a bit shy of giving out his contact details. I suspect the second person was the first in disguise. Top cap it all, the seller gave a bank account for me to deposit the money, which I did, but it turned out that his identity was totally fake - in fact it was someone else's ID. So he had used a real ID (not his own), to open not one but three accounts at Nationwide to use for fake eBay transactions. I contacted the police but the trail went cold. I did manage to get Nationwide to close the accounts down They said he had been taking money out as soon as it hit the account. I tried to contact eBay with the details, saying the guy wasn't returning my emails, they responded with an email saying "why don't you try our arbitration service." I emailed them asking how I could do that if the guy won't respond to me. They replied saying they were sorry about that but maybe I should try their arbitration service. I then asked how I could claim on their insurance policy to reimburse defrauded customers, and they simply replied advising me to try their arbitration service. I bought a couple of Tiffany items - from different sellers - for my niece last Christmas. One item was fine - the other was a fake. The girl who sold it handled it perfectly. She was very chatty (by email) and was 'touched' when I told her the thing was intended as a gift for my niece etc..... Anyway, when my niece received the item, it was obviously a fake. We did consult Tiffany, who confirmed that they hadn't ever manufactured a piece in that style. I got back on to her and her response was something not so far short of f off - but without the swear words. I was furious. I contemplated forms of retribution. I did, however, go thru the Safe Harbour system but with no success. I later made a claim from eBay but it was such a long-winded process that i kind of forgot to finish it off. So I just lost the money. From my experience I'd suggest eBay needs to sort out its claims policy. It's such a hassle that it really is off-putting. I still use eBay but without the same enthusiasm. I have a reseller friend who was a victim of an eBay scam, and to add insult to injury not only did they steal his card details on a non-existent transaction, they sent him a brick through the post to rub salt into that wound. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZttm8PxH8jf3ohaEQJupACffXM/FxKtkOvURxpHZ/rdHqcdT1UAoIb5 Xrp51MUU1m32O0RrnG/yCr65 =p97f -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 17 01:28:13 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 10:28:13 +0100 Subject: [p2p-hackers] Seth Johnson: Request for the P2P Workshop at the FTC (fwd from seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org) Message-ID: <20041117092813.GU1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Seth Johnson ----- From brian-slashdotnews at hyperreal.org Wed Nov 17 06:26:03 2004 From: brian-slashdotnews at hyperreal.org (brian-slashdotnews at hyperreal.org) Date: 17 Nov 2004 14:26:03 -0000 Subject: Students Tracked By RFID Message-ID: Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/17/0436214 Posted by: timothy, on 2004-11-17 12:23:00 from the government-schooling dept. [1]TheMeuge writes "The New York Times is reporting a new development in the unrelenting progress of the [2]RFID juggernaut. The school district of [3]Spring, Texas has adopted [4]RFID as a way to track students' arrival and departure. Upon being scanned, the data are transmitted to both the school administrators, as well as city police. I guess cutting class is no longer an option." [5]Click Here References 1. http://www.themeuge.com/ 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID 3. http://www.google.com/url?oi=map&sa=X&q=http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp? country=US&address=&city=Spring&state=TX 4. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/17/technology/17tag.html 5. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=5659&alloc_id=12309&site_id=1&request_id=612248&op =click&page=%2farticle%2epl ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 17 06:35:56 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 15:35:56 +0100 Subject: Students Tracked By RFID (fwd from brian-slashdotnews@hyperreal.org) Message-ID: <20041117143556.GT1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from brian-slashdotnews at hyperreal.org ----- From cypher at tediouspath.com Wed Nov 17 16:43:43 2004 From: cypher at tediouspath.com (cypher at tediouspath.com) Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 19:43:43 -0500 Subject: Russia 'tests new missile systems' Message-ID: Russia 'tests new missile systems' Wednesday, November 17, 2004 Posted: 6:59 PM EST (2359 GMT) MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Wednesday that his country's armed forces will soon have access to advanced nuclear missile systems unavailable in any other country. "We are conducting research and are testing the most up-to-date nuclear missile systems, which, I'm sure, will be supplied to the armed forces in the near future," Putin told a conference of high-ranking military officials, according to a translation from Russia's Interfax News Agency. "What is even more important, these systems will have no analogues in the other nuclear powers during the next few years." The Bush administration said the developments in Russia's nuclear program are consistent with the Moscow Treaty, signed between President Bush and Putin in May 2002. "We are confident that Russia's plans are not threatening and are consistent with its obligations, and I think are indicative of a new strategic relationship between the United States and Russia that is focused on reducing threats and increasing confidence," deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters. The treaty, which required both sides to reduce their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012, was designed to establish a new strategic relationship between the two nations based on partnership and cooperation. But State Department officials told CNN on condition of anonymity that although they don't think Putin's comments are anything to worry about, they will be seeking further clarification from the Russians about the specific modernizations in Moscow's program. "As far as we can tell there is nothing to be concerned about, but Putin did not give a lot of detail," one official said. "We are trying to figure out what he meant. Did he mean what we think he means or is this something that is not covered by the treaty?" Another official said that Putin's comments could be viewed an attempt to impress his military leaders with assurances that Russia's weapons programs are competitive. "This may well have been his way of talking to his defense folks," this official said. "But we are trying to find out more." President Bush will meet with Putin in Chile later this week at a summit of Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation, where he is expected to discuss the matter, this official said. http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/11/17/russia.putin/index.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This message was sent from The Tedious Path Are you ready to travel The Tedious Path? http://www.tediouspath.com http://forum.tediouspath.com From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 17 20:30:16 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 23:30:16 -0500 Subject: [osint] Group to launch terrorist database Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - --- begin forwarded text To: "Bruce Tefft" Thread-Index: AcTNAwGu+++zgK7aQ5yfqJWprtY+xAAFRDpg From: "Bruce Tefft" Mailing-List: list osint at yahoogroups.com; contact osint-owner at yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list osint at yahoogroups.com Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 21:42:54 -0500 Subject: [osint] Group to launch terrorist database Reply-To: osint at yahoogroups.com Wednesday, November 17, 2004 Group to launch terrorist database BY Diane Frank Published on Nov. 17, 2004 National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism "DHS plans info hub" [FCW.com, April 7, 2004] "DHS debuts info portal" [FCW.com, April 19, 2004] A new system with detailed historical information on terrorism could become the first stop for first responders and other government officials developing strategies to prevent incidents nationwide, experts said Wednesday. The Terrorism Knowledge Base is the latest Web-based resource from the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, a nonprofit organization in Oklahoma City. The institute developed three solutions, which also include the Lessons Learned Information System and the Responder Knowledge Base, with funding from the Justice and Homeland Security departments. This system provides open-source, unclassified information on international and domestic terrorism, pulling information from a database of terrorist incident information maintained since 1968 by Rand, nonprofit research organization. It also incorporates links to original court documents pertaining to suspected terrorists. The institute's analysis tools collect this information and allow officials to compare and sort the information. A wizard tool takes users through a step-by-step process to find the information they want. The Rand database had not been available to the public or much of government until now, and it provides information about groups, individuals, incidents, tactics and other issues that can provide critical context when developing a prevention and response strategy, said James Ellis, research and program coordinator for the project at the institute. "A lot of people, when they're doing that kind of planning, they're always trying to think hypothetically, theoretically, what might terrorists do," Ellis said. "That's fine, but why don't we look at what they actually have done over the last several decades, and use that to be able to have real-world data to support them." Using open-source terrorist information from public and private sources is one of the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission, said Lloyd Salvetti, a former officer with the CIA and a consultant to the commission. It is an important complimentary resource for the intelligence community and first responders, he said. For first responders at the federal, state and local levels of government, the systems fill a void by providing information in a resource that even those who are not technology-savvy can use, said Suzanne Mencer, director of DHS' Office for Domestic Preparedness. "Whenever you can look at historically what has occurred in a particular area, that gives you some indication of the potential for what may occur in the future," she said. "This is an indicator, ... one tool in the toolbox for the investigator, for the academic, or anyone that is in the decision-making process." http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/1115/web-terrordata-11-17-04.asp - ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM - --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> - -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-osint at yahoogroups.com. - -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor bisoldi at intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint at yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ - --- end forwarded text - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZwlkcPxH8jf3ohaEQKroQCg82xMvgzE8iKa4nFBQhLz38DRfu4AoLZ5 4NuZU7TrbohtCbgKEXX3Td0E =QZG7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 18 06:39:05 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 09:39:05 -0500 Subject: Just Another Chip in the (Privacy) Wall Message-ID: Technology Review Just Another Chip in the (Privacy) Wall An electronic database implanted under the skin can assure speedy and proper medical care-but is it worth it? By David Kushner November 18, 2004 You can almost see the ads now: Imagine a bright future with a chip in your arm! Went to the supermarket, but left the wallet at home? No problem! Flex your bicep and the smiling cashier passes a scanner over your arm. Voila-identification chip recognized! Problem solved. Your credit is good with us! Passed out during a sunrise jaunt on the top of Haleakala Mountain in Maui? Fret not! The hospital down below is on the case. Arm please. Scanner! The readout on the computer is fine. Just a little altitude sickness. Key to the safety deposit box weighing you down? Chuck it! Next time you're in the bank, give the teller a friendly wave-and watch the doors open to greet you! After decades as the stuff of sci-fi novels and anime movies, the age of chipped humans is finally a reality. Last month, following two years of review, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of an implantable chip for medical applications. Each Verichip is the size of a grain of rice and contains a unique, 16-digit radio frequency ID. Linked to a database, that ID tag can call up a variety of information-from medical records to financial information. Not surprisingly, the technology is causing its share of controversy. Civil liberties groups are calling this the end of privacy. Religious groups are calling it the number of the beast. Down on the shores of Delray Beach, FL, Applied Digital-the company behind the Verichip-calls it a goldmine. Like a lot of new technologies, the Verichip happened rather by accident. Fifteen years ago, a company called Digital Angel developed implantable identification chips for the purpose of tracking companion pets and cattle. But the idea was nothing to moo at. Last year, 800,000 animal chips were sold in the United States for $55 to $70 apiece-30 percent more than in 2002. If the chips could identify animals, why not a human being? This thought occurred to Richard Seelig, a surgeon in New Jersey, shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Seelig watched with horror as New York City firemen scrawled their social security numbers in black ink on the forearms-just in case they were to be burned beyond recognition in the inferno. Familiar with Digital Angel's work, Seelig voluntarily implanted himself with a radio frequency identification chip. And the race to bring it to the rest of the world was on. According to Angela Fulcher, spokesperson for Applied Digital, the human chip works in essentially the same manner as the animal chips. The chip is contained inside a cylindrical transponder, a glass tube 11 millimeters in length and 2.1 millimeters in diameter. Along with the chip is an antenna coil, which picks up and transmits the identification number to a scanner. The Pocket Reader, an existing handheld scanner created by Applied Digital, reads the radio frequency ID number when it's passed over the skin within a space of three or four inches. Unlike the animal version, the human chip is coated with Biobond-a porous polypropylene sheathe that connects to surrounding tissues. The chip is implanted, via a proprietary Verichip inserter, in a fleshy area such as the bicep. "Based on our experience at with microchips and animals," Fulcher says, "we see the lifespan at being 10 years." Although newly approved by the FDA, Verichips are already in use outside the United States. In total, an estimated 1,000 people have been implanted thus far. In Mexico, Rafael Macedo de la Concha, the country's attorney general, was implanted with a chip to provide secure access to government documents. In Barcelona, a beach club is injecting partiers with ID chips in lieu of hand stamps. Despite the announcement of the FDA approval, however, such frivolous implants may soon be second guessed. Organizations have criticized Applied Digital for not adequately disclosing the FDA's finding of Verichip's risks. A group called the Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering, or Caspian, obtained a letter from the FDA to Applied Digital dated October 12, and posted it on the Web. The letter cites several "potential risks to health associated with the device," including adverse tissue reaction, migration of the implanted transponder, electromagnetic interference, electrical hazards, and incompatibility with magnetic resonance imaging. In addition to medical concerns, privacy advocates lament the potential abuses of implantable IDs. The outcry stems from the proliferation of radio frequency identification in products and badges. The San Francisco Public Library is trying to put ID chips in all of its books. In Virginia, the Department of Motor Vehicles is considering putting chips on every driver's license. The Ross Correctional Facility in Chillicothe, Ohio is running a pilot program that will track prisoners using chipped badges. Ostensibly, the idea is to provide a kind of DNA for merchandise (and inmates), a unique identifier that can track where and how products are distributed. But questions raised by implantable chips only complicate the matters-particularly in light of the increased use of surveillance in the workplace. "I see implantable chips as the wave of the future," says Frederick S. Lane III, author of The Naked Employee: How Technology Is Compromising Workplace Privacy. Lane says "The problem is that it gives employers access to so much information that they get to call the shots as far as what's innocuous." And the battles could intensify if, as some fear, the devices can be used in conjunction global position satellites. Fulcher says Applied Digital has in fact developed a prototype of an implantable "personal location device," and has already obtained the intellectual property. Bringing such technology to market, Fulcher says, "is a multimillion dollar conversation. At the moment, we're focusing on our current technology. If the right partner came along, however, that might be of interest." David Kushner is a contributing writer for Technology Review who covers digital entertainment technology. He is the author of Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 18 12:18:02 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 15:18:02 -0500 Subject: [CYBERIA] A VERY significant DMCA case Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - --- begin forwarded text DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; b=oTDVOd2nHalBsKpKJum+5IY+lu1RJaHM79+4MmwY72xPRCq9nhudLZRniLNmeZojjGL9Cl3sFptEpXD2Go79CazzJCeB/dg4OT0EcNTRhLoB3c/qMqE5b0YopkFen3gJ4Zw0SKmrbN1bSGKlXBqAkrsurOheKaqq7Dd2lM/Yq68= ; Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 07:53:23 -0800 Reply-To: Law & Policy of Computer Communications Sender: Law & Policy of Computer Communications Comments: DomainKeys? See http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys From: Paul Gowder Subject: [CYBERIA] A VERY significant DMCA case To: CYBERIA-L at LISTSERV.AOL.COM This just came to my attention. I don't know if it's been mentioned here before, since I only read this list intermittently. Still... Lexmark International Inc. v. Static Control Components Inc., 6th Cir., No. 03-5400 10/26/04 http://pacer.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/04a0364p-06.pdf This case appears to be a ringing blow against the DMCA, and against copyright fascism in general. The Sixth Circuit, vacating a grant of preliminary injunction, held that a program was likely uncopyrightable, because unoriginal, because its functional requirements merged with its expression. It further concluded that the DMCA can't be used to protect such an un-copyrightable work. Because this was before the court on review of a preliminary injunction, it's not terribly definitive on the facts -- but as a statement of law -- it seems very promising. Thoughts? __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free! http://my.yahoo.com ********************************************************************** For Listserv Instructions, see http://www.lawlists.net/cyberia Off-Topic threads: http://www.lawlists.net/mailman/listinfo/cyberia-ot Need more help? Send mail to: Cyberia-L-Request at listserv.aol.com ********************************************************************** - --- end forwarded text - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZ0H9sPxH8jf3ohaEQKIEgCglPuzNup4Ni+fVo2ePX/gzTO0jkcAnAvu kKZN3l2htctoER3TCElpfZXL =Ijza -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From nelson at crynwr.com Thu Nov 18 18:15:17 2004 From: nelson at crynwr.com (Russell Nelson) Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 21:15:17 -0500 Subject: E-Mail Authentication Will Not End Spam, Panelists Say In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <16797.22325.475253.290257@desk.crynwr.com> R.A. Hettinga writes: > Any e-mail authentication system, for example, would check that the block > of Internet addresses assigned to an e-mail provider includes the specific > numeric address of a sender of a piece of e-mail. Huh? Somebody is confused here. DomainKeys is 1) an e-mail authentication system, and 2) it doesn't check IP addresses. Instead, it uses cryptographic signing using public/private keys which have the potential of being assigned down to the individual level. > Still, panelists insisted authentication is a vital first step. After that, > they said, could come a system that evaluates the "reputation" of senders, > perhaps using a process that marks good e-mail with an electronic seal of > approval. Yes, this is true. John Gilmore is a pain in the ass for standing on his rights (some government types might say *fucking* pain in the ass), but he is correct. ALL of the effort spent to secure open relays was basically wasted effort, because spammers just moved on to insecure client machines. The proper route to control spam is to involve users in prioritizing their email, so that their friend's email comes first, followed by anybody they've sent mail to, followed by people they've gotten email from before, followed by mailing list mail, followed by email from strangers (which is where all the spam is). All of that relies on email authentication to work. Why the heck can't we just shortcut all this pain, and just listen to John in the first place? I vote to elect John to the post of Benevolent Dictator For Life. -- --My blog is at angry-economist.russnelson.com | Violence never solves Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | problems, it just changes 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 212-202-2318 voice | them into more subtle Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | FWD# 404529 via VOIP | problems. From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 18 18:24:44 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 21:24:44 -0500 Subject: E-Mail Authentication Will Not End Spam, Panelists Say In-Reply-To: <16797.22325.475253.290257@desk.crynwr.com> References: <16797.22325.475253.290257@desk.crynwr.com> Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 9:15 PM -0500 11/18/04, Russell Nelson wrote: >The proper route to control spam is to >involve users in prioritizing their email, so that their friend's >email comes first, followed by anybody they've sent mail to, followed >by people they've gotten email from before, followed by mailing list >mail, followed by email from strangers (which is where all the spam >is). A whitelist for my friends, all others pay... oh, forget it. Cheers, RAH - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZ1ZdsPxH8jf3ohaEQI8pwCdEVgdIUVYiPzmdWqm9riXjm1OD5AAn2C1 +6/yamOaGMicjTxWwfk0LhgJ =c5c6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From steve49152 at yahoo.ca Thu Nov 18 20:45:33 2004 From: steve49152 at yahoo.ca (Steve Thompson) Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 23:45:33 -0500 (EST) Subject: [osint] Group to launch terrorist database In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20041119044533.13782.qmail@web51808.mail.yahoo.com> > "R.A. Hettinga" wrote: > [from osint] > Wednesday, November 17, 2004 > Group to launch terrorist database > BY Diane Frank > Published on Nov. 17, 2004 [snip] > The Terrorism Knowledge Base is the latest Web-based > resource from the National Memorial Institute for the > Prevention of Terrorism, a nonprofit organization in > Oklahoma City. The institute developed three solutions, > which also include the Lessons Learned Information > System and the Responder Knowledge Base, with > funding from the Justice and Homeland Security > departments. > This system provides open-source, unclassified information > on international and domestic terrorism, pulling information from > a database of terrorist incident information maintained since > 1968 by Rand, nonprofit research organization. It also > incorporates links to original court documents pertaining to > suspected terrorists. They should set up a snitch line, so to speak, so that the general public can report, possibly even by email, incidents of small-scale terrorism and potential terrorism that they might witness as they go about their daily lives. It couldn't hurt. In fact, such a move would easily eliminate any question of institutional bias in reference to the selection criterion used to evaluate whether any given incident qualifies as terrorism or not. I'm not usually one to come out in favour of government database systems, but for something like the terrorism database (which has the potential to greatly enhance the security of democracy and law), what's there not to like about it? Regards, Steve --------------------------------- Post your free ad now! Yahoo! Canada Personals From isn at c4i.org Fri Nov 19 03:03:00 2004 From: isn at c4i.org (InfoSec News) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 05:03:00 -0600 (CST) Subject: [ISN] Under Phishing Attack, British Bank Shuts Down Some Services Message-ID: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=CIGVP13WT43RMQSNDBGCKHSCJUMEKJVN?articleID=53700579 By Gregg Keizer TechWeb News Nov. 18, 2004 One of the four biggest banks in the United Kingdom has taken the unusual step of suspending some features of its online service following a phishing attack. On Wednesday, NatWest, which is part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group and one of Britain's big four banks, shut off features to its million-plus online customers. When users logged on to the NatWest site, they saw a message that read, "We have temporarily suspended the ability to create or amend Third Party Payment mandates and create Standing Order mandates." Third-party-payment mandates, said Caroline Harris, a NatWest spokesperson, are ad-hoc electronic-payment requests outside the normal bill payments already established. They're typically used to pay individuals electronically. Standing-order mandates are the U.K. equivalent of a scheduled bill payment. "We've not shut down the entire site, as some press reports would have you believe," said Harris, "but we've only restricted one small part." The phishing e-mail received by NatWest customers claimed to be part of a software update to the online banking service. "This is only temporary," said Harris, "and is a preventative measure to protect our customers. Because we've [blocked third-party-payment and standing orders] the phishers haven't been able to take money out of customer accounts." She reiterated that no NatWest customer had lost money to the scam. NatWest urged customers who may have given up personal information to contact the bank, and said that alternate ways to make payments, such as by telephone, remained an option. Although Harris said such action was "nothing new" and that the bank had done similar things before when faced with determined phishers, a U.S.-based banking analyst said it was news to her. "I've never heard of that tactic before," said Avivah Litan, a research director and vice president with Gartner who specializes in bank fraud and phishing issues. "Not that it's a bad action, but it sounds to me that NatWest didn't have a way to contain the damage. "It's an extreme measure. It probably means that they don't have other risk-control mechanisms in place, or the attack was getting out of hand," she added. And while NatWest reacted quickly, there's a real chance a temporary measure like this won't stop phishers from exploiting stolen information. Increasingly, she said, it seems phishers are a lot more patient than anyone thought. "When you look at the big picture, there's more and more evidence that phishers are sitting on the information [they steal], and that the real damage may not show up for a year or two." Phishers, Litan went on, "are very clever, and have a lot of time and patience." Rather than use their ill-gotten information immediately -- which is what NatWest assumes by temporarily limiting on-the-fly payments -- there's growing concern that cyber-criminals wait a long time before pouncing. One tactic phishers are using, said Litan, is to apply for new credit cards using stolen identity information, use and pay those cards, and over a period of months, even as long as two years, build up the cards' credit limits. "Then they'll do 'bust-outs,'" said Litan. "That's when they run through the credit limit, say $50,000, before the first bill comes due, with no intention of paying." The worst news, about NatWest's move, concluded Litan, is that it may only be the beginning of a new wave of banking business disruptions. "Once I thought that maybe phishing was a fad, and after a while it would be replaced by some other scam, like keyloggers. But it's not a fad. It's going to get worse, and it's not going to slow down." _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/ - --- end forwarded text - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZ4H88PxH8jf3ohaEQJ4GwCfQ0s+fQlkneSb6Tqq3l1sfMVCIrIAn04X ophDQhDGRIN6km3/v3liETOO =q56s -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 19 04:20:40 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 07:20:40 -0500 Subject: Pioneer of Sham Tax Havens Sits Down for Pre-Jail Chat Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The New York Times November 18, 2004 Pioneer of Sham Tax Havens Sits Down for Pre-Jail Chat By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON EATTLE, Nov. 17 - Jerome Schneider, the nation's best-known seller of fraudulent offshore banks, said in an interview today that he had helped hundreds of rich Americans evade taxes, including actors, celebrities and business owners. Mr. Schneider, who pleaded guilty in February to conspiring to help his clients evade the tax laws, said that he expected "every single one" of his clients to be prosecuted or sued for the taxes they evaded. He said clients sought to evade taxes on incomes ranging from $100,000 to $40 million, though most were from a third to half a million dollars. Mr. Schneider, 53, spoke in a cramped hotel room here under the watchful eye of three Internal Revenue Service criminal investigators, who said nothing but smiled broadly at times as he answered questions and named clients and associates. The I.R.S. set up the interview with Mr. Schneider but did not interfere with it. The agency, by law, cannot comment on individual taxpayers. Under the terms of his agreement with the government to plead guilty, Mr. Schneider may not make any public comments about his former clients "without prior consent of the government." He is to be sentenced on Monday in Federal District Court in Los Angeles. In return for his cooperation, he is expected to serve no more than 24 months in prison. He has already paid $100,000 in restitution. Mr. Schneider said he always reported his full income to the I.R.S. and never personally used an offshore bank to hide income. Since 1976, Mr. Schneider has set up sham banks for clients in the Cayman Islands, Grenada, Montserratt, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands and, recently, in Nauru, a Pacific island. Clients paid as much as $60,000 to "acquire" an offshore bank, which consisted of nothing more than pieces of paper to create the appearance of legitimate business activity, he said, confirming the accusations in the government indictment. He said that while most clients wanted to hide money from the I.R.S., some also wanted to conceal money from estranged spouses or creditors. "Every one of my clients knew full well what they were getting into, including the potential to be prosecuted," he said, detailing how they signed contracts, were advised by lawyers and were told that if tax authorities ever caught onto them they could go to prison. "They understood that," he contended. He said that all his clients had two things in common - they were rich and they wanted to escape taxes. Most of the nation's major accounting firms worked with one or another of his clients, he said, and he named two law firms that he said were central to his business. He said one prominent actress sent money to the United International Bank in Nauru, which he said he created. He said the actress paid $50,000 for a legal opinion asserting that the arrangement was legal. Mr. Schneider also said that in 1988 he arranged for a prominent motivation coach to place $250,000 in an offshore bank without reporting the money to the I.R.S. In addition, Mr. Schneider said that a billionaire media businessman, one of several clients who he said were on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans, sent $40 million to a sham bank in Nauru to pay for a nut-processing company in 1994. The owner of the company has died, but his estate is challenging in Tax Court an I.R.S. demand that taxes be paid on profits from the sale. For 28 years, Mr. Schneider promoted offshore tax schemes. He sold, he said, more than a million copies of his book, "The Complete Guide to Offshore Money Havens," which he advertised in The Wall Street Journal and SkyMall, a magazine found in the seat-back pocket on many airlines. The 2000 edition book carried an endorsement by Representative Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana Republican, who also spoke at one of Mr. Schneider's tax evasion conferences. Mr. Tauzin's spokesman, Ken Johnson, said the endorsement was "a stupid mistake." Mr. Schneider, 53, who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, was the picture of a successful businessman, dressed in a knit shirt, gray wool slacks and black loafers, his graying hair clipped short, his face framed by horn-rimmed glasses. He began the interview by describing his conduct in terms of helping people, but when pressed he said, "Yes, I am a criminal." Mr. Schneider said his undoing began the day more than a decade ago when he asked Jack Blum, a former United States Senate investigator, to speak at one of his offshore seminars. Mr. Blum, who specializes in exposing international financial crimes, wrote a letter to the Justice Department that prompted the investigation that led to Mr. Schneider's guilty plea. Mr. Blum said, "That Schneider could operate openly for years, buying ads in the Wall Street Journal and the American Airlines flight magazine, shows the utter failure of tax law enforcement." He said law enforcement had known about Mr. Schneider for years, but failed to act. The Senate Permanent Investigations subcommittee called Mr. Schneider as a witness in 1983 hearings on offshore tax evasion, and two years later the Comptroller of the Currency warned American banks about dealing with some of the offshore banks Mr. Schneider created. The I.R.S., in court papers, said it began investigating Mr. Schneider in 1997, 14 years after his Senate testimony, because of the letter from Mr. Blum. It took five more years to obtain an indictment. Today, Mr. Schneider said, he is broke. "I lost everything,'' he said. "My wife divorced me and with the legal fees, everything is gone." Asked about the millions of dollars he earned setting up offshore banks, he replied, "It is gone, all gone." Since he has held himself up as the world's leading expert on hiding money offshore, how could one know for sure if Mr. Schneider really is broke? The I.R.S. agents listening to the question put their hands to their mouths to repress grins. "If you can find it," Mr. Schneider said, "I would say take it." - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZ3lLcPxH8jf3ohaEQI47QCg7oEB+XrObKioXntUJDtLy2IgJfsAoJoq mOcArd6Jsqcn21vAKSQhyUbW =mj7W -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 19 04:51:04 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 07:51:04 -0500 Subject: Tax inspector's quest in 'The Cryptographer' Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Star Online: Lifestyle Friday November 19, 2004 Tax inspector's quest in 'The Cryptographer' Review by JOANN KOH The Cryptographer Author: Tobias Hill Publisher: Faber and Faber If cryptography is the science of concealing something, such as "the blueprint of a gun in a conversation about snow", then Tobias Hill himself must be an expert cryptographer. If he had meant to be so, that is. This book is full of brilliant insights - but I had to dig for each nugget, because he is not always clear. Or direct. But perhaps it is because Hill is good at getting under his characters' skin (he won the 1998 PEN/MacMillan Award for Fiction for his debut novel, Skin). Then again, perhaps he is too good. In the book, the protagonist Anna Moore, tax inspector A2 grade of Her Majesty's Inland Revenue Service, is paid to doubt what her "client" says (client being a euphemism for those we must investigate), and Anna Moore doubts plenty. In trying to show us how the mind trips up when doubting, Hill may have caused us to stumble, too. It is quite an exercise of tenacity, by page 20, to reread what Anna says or doesn't say - to make sure what Anna says, or doesn't say, is what Anna means exactly. But then again, this is stream-of-consciousness writing, and novels with ambiguity of this level do not sit well with me. That said, however, if you enjoy ideas and feel up to a challenge, this novel could be for you. It is the year 2021, when Soft Gold, an unbreakable form of electric money has replaced paper money. Anna is assigned to investigate John Law, cybergenius, cryptographer and inventor of Soft Gold, for an undeclared sum of four million dollars in an account in his son's name - a surprising sum to be secret about for a quadrillionaire. For Anna - who believes that after a certain point, we begin chasing money not for money's own sake, but for the love of someone we have, someone we want or hope to be - this is the beginning of an obsession. Anna wants to know whom John Law thinks of, when he thinks of money. In this invented world, the future belongs to John Law. But the world of the future fears him as much as they respect him. For a man who knows how to embed "encrypted information in the genetic code of plants and flowers", (the patent of which, at age 17, he sold to the US government for seven and a half million dollars) may also embed a deadly virus in our bodies should he wish to quietly exterminate us. A man with so much wealth can vacuum his gut ever so frequently and outlive us - a demigod amongst mortals. And so on and so forth. Law creates the downloadable Soft Gold freeware, which he guarantees is totally secure because no computer has yet been invented that can break the code. But he also knows it is human nature to want to break an unbreakable code, for by breaking it, not only does one discover its defects, one also exceeds its inventor. So, it is just a matter of time when Soft Gold gets broken into and John Law becomes a hunted man. This time, Anna is assigned to hunt him down. Concealed within are two love stories, involving old loves Anna and Lawrence and new loves Anna and John. Lawrence waits patiently to re-ignite a stalled relationship, but Anna feels she no longer loves him; she has betrayed his trust, once; she feels she trusts him though. But she doesn't know if she can trust John Law, although she wants to; the second pursuit, on a personal level, is for her to find out if she can. Because without trust, she knows, love will not be possible. Read The Cryptographer for the thinker in you, and not the "feeler". And welcome to the invented world of Tobias Hill. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZ3sRsPxH8jf3ohaEQKAbQCdGIemIF+TWyd0UMIBMIcXHqbjNbsAn0lr MhB9HFVzSPb1hODcURwLubGk =ypcr -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 19 06:25:07 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 09:25:07 -0500 Subject: [ISN] Under Phishing Attack, British Bank Shuts Down Some Services Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - --- begin forwarded text From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 19 06:41:32 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 09:41:32 -0500 Subject: Terror Net Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Technology Review Terror Net By Lakshmi Sandhana Innovation News December 2004 Ever since the September 11 terrorist attacks, federal agencies have been wishing for a system capable of issuing a nationwide alert at the first sign of a chemical, biological, or radiological attack. Now such a system is undergoing trials in Tennessee. Developed by the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the new system consists of sensor packages attached to structures such as cell-phone towers. The packages will include detectors for airborne chemicals and radioisotopes, and for weather changes. The intent of the system-which is being tested in Knoxville, Nashville, and other locations-is to detect plumes of contaminants, predict their spread, and quickly alert command centers. In a 2002 test, prototype sensors successfully detected discharges of simulated sarin gas in three cities 140 to 270 kilometers apart and dispatched pertinent data in less than two minutes. The current trial will test the system on an even larger scale. The Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and other organizations are sharing the cost of developing the system; at least $12 million has been assigned to it for the coming year. "At this point, we are not deployed nationwide, but we've demonstrated the scalability of the technology," says Jim Kulesz, special-projects manager at Oak Ridge. Observers say the technology, while promising, is not a panacea. If fully deployed, says Paul Sereiko, president of Needham, MA-based wireless-sensor maker Sensicast Systems, it "will provide an excellent early-warning system for wide-area contaminant monitoring." But, he adds, additional local monitoring will still be needed. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZ4H8MPxH8jf3ohaEQL1AACgw+u/d4omwYlLZm5sPVUqhAyG8tgAoOma TC/hiEwOHODVP/IxN7TfzKn1 =2c0B -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From chris.kuethe at gmail.com Fri Nov 19 08:50:34 2004 From: chris.kuethe at gmail.com (Chris Kuethe) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 09:50:34 -0700 Subject: [osint] Group to launch terrorist database In-Reply-To: <20041119044533.13782.qmail@web51808.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20041119044533.13782.qmail@web51808.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <91981b3e04111908506cff86f2@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 23:45:33 -0500 (EST), Steve Thompson wrote: > > They should set up a snitch line, so to speak, so that the general public > can report, possibly even by email, incidents of small-scale terrorism and > potential terrorism that they might witness as they go about their daily > lives. It couldn't hurt. In fact, such a move would easily eliminate any > question of institutional bias in reference to the selection criterion used > to evaluate whether any given incident qualifies as terrorism or not. Quoting from http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard3.html ========== I make a mental note of his license plate. In fact, I did that 60 times a minute for 15 and a half minutes. Oh dear.. oh dear.... Looks like another call to the DMV Database to register a vehicle as stolen by out of town arms dealers... ========== So when some jackhole cuts you off in traffic, now you don't report him as a possible drunk driver, now you can turn him into DHS as a highway terrorist. Unless he's preemtively called you in. Everyone remember the rules of the prisoner's game? Anyway, you already have snitch lines. http://www.fbi.gov/page2/oct04/seekinfo103004.htm says you can use the online tip form, or contact your local FBI office or US embassy. Or your police department. > I'm not usually one to come out in favour of government database > systems, but for something like the terrorism database (which has > the potential to greatly enhance the security of democracy and law), > what's there not to like about it? Howzabout the difficulty of sorting the useful tips out of the chaff when you just know that some new spam network will be set up to flood the system with bogus yet somewhat plausible tips. Howzabout the difficulty that you - the meat blob - will have trying to get your name out of the database after you unfortunately happened to be within a 10 mile radius of "the real terrorists". Howzabout the fact that in this day and age of the internet and telephone, no one seems to have successfully managed to hack up some little Law-Enforcement-Only forum where "They" go to talk about how to catch terrorists. That's a people problem, really. Howzabout the fact that all LE organizations seem to have a real hard time working together, squealing about jurisdiction, etc. If they were actually serious about getting the job done, they'd either put the "juris-my-dick-tion bullshit" or there would be some presidental directive simply ordering everyone to play nice together. I don't think either of those are happening, based on the number of security czars who seem to be retiring suddenly. -- GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have 'fix' too? From pcapelli at gmail.com Fri Nov 19 07:16:01 2004 From: pcapelli at gmail.com (Pete Capelli) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 10:16:01 -0500 Subject: Terror Net In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This'll be sweet. Think of the DoS, false positive fun you could have with these ... On Fri, 19 Nov 2004 09:41:32 -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > > Technology Review > > Terror Net > > By Lakshmi Sandhana > Innovation News > December 2004 > > Ever since the September 11 terrorist attacks, federal agencies have been > wishing for a system capable of issuing a nationwide alert at the first > sign of a chemical, biological, or radiological attack. Now such a system > is undergoing trials in Tennessee. > -- Pete Capelli pcapelli at ieee.org http://www.capelli.org PGP Key ID:0x829263B6 "Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin, 1759 From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com Fri Nov 19 07:40:40 2004 From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 10:40:40 -0500 (GMT-05:00) Subject: Gov't Orders Air Passenger Data for Test Message-ID: <3845414.1100878840624.JavaMail.root@dewey.psp.pas.earthlink.net> News story quoted by RAH: >WASHINGTON - The government on Friday ordered airlines to turn over >personal information about passengers who flew within the United States in >June in order to test a new system for identifying potential terrorists. The interesting thing here is that they can't really test how effective the system is until they have another terrorist event on an airline. Otherwise, they can assess the false positive rate of their list (people who were on the no-fly-list, shouldn't have flown according to the rules, but did without trying to hijack the plane), and the false positive and false negative rate of their search for names in the list (e.g., when it becomes obvious that Benjamin Ladon from Peoria, IL would have matched, but wasn't the guy they were hoping to nab, or when it becomes obvious that a suspected terrorist was in the data, did fly, but wasn't caught by the software). > The system, dubbed "Secure Flight," will compare passenger data with names >on two government watch lists, a "no fly" list comprised of people who are >known or suspected to be terrorists, and a list of people who require more >scrutiny before boarding planes. Presumably a lot of the goal here is to stop hassling everyone with a last name that starts with al or bin, stop hassling Teddy Kennedy getting on a plane, etc., while still catching most of the people on their watchlists who fly under their real name. ... > Currently, the federal government shares parts of the list with airlines, >which are responsible for making sure suspected terrorists don't get on >planes. People within the commercial aviation industry say the lists have >the names of more than 100,000 people on them. This is a goofy number. If there were 100,000 likely terrorists walking the streets, we'd have buildings and planes and bus stops and restaurants blowing up every day of the week. I'll bet you're risking your career if you ever take someone off the watchlist who isn't a congressman or a member of the Saudi royal family, but that it costs you nothing to add someone to the list. In fact, I'll bet there are people whose performance evaluations note how many people they added to the watchlist. This is what often seems to make watchlists useless--eventually, your list of threats has expanded to include Elvis Presley and John Lennon, and at that point, you're spending almost all your time keeping an eye on (or harassing) random harmless bozos. >R. A. Hettinga --John From nelson at crynwr.com Fri Nov 19 08:19:33 2004 From: nelson at crynwr.com (Russell Nelson) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 11:19:33 -0500 Subject: E-Mail Authentication Will Not End Spam, Panelists Say In-Reply-To: References: <16797.22325.475253.290257@desk.crynwr.com> Message-ID: <16798.7445.715928.127619@desk.crynwr.com> R.A. Hettinga writes: > >mail, followed by email from strangers (which is where all the spam > >is). > > A whitelist for my friends, all others pay... > > oh, forget it. Anybody can pay to send email right now. You just go to paypal, type in the person's email, enter the amount of money you think is necessary to persuade them to read the email, and put the text of your message in the comment box. My email is paypal.com at russnelson.com; feel free to send me as much email as you want, ca-ching! But anyway, that's not what I propose. I suggest that email from strangers needs to come with an introducer of some sort to convince you to read it. There's a dozen different kind of introducers which could be used, some of them using cryptography, only one or two of which involve payment. The days when all email was treated equally by an email client are long past, or at least, should be if you're running a decent email client. Maybe the level of spam complaints is caused by the low quality of email clients? -- --My blog is at angry-economist.russnelson.com | Violence never solves Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | problems, it just changes 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 212-202-2318 voice | them into more subtle Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | FWD# 404529 via VOIP | problems. From nobody at dizum.com Fri Nov 19 02:40:02 2004 From: nobody at dizum.com (Nomen Nescio) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 11:40:02 +0100 (CET) Subject: Why Americans Hate Dissenters Message-ID: John Young: > On CJ (Carl Johnson) and Jim Bell: Hi John Thanks for the info! Several times in the past I've seen concrete relevant questions asked on the list without anyone taking their time to answer them. The stories of these cypherpunks are indeed interesting and relevant for the list. I guess the story of Jim and CJ is the reason why one of the cypherpunks nodes used to have this text on the page: "It is known this list is under surveillence by US and foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies, consider using anonymous remailers and cryptography" Regards From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 19 09:17:59 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 12:17:59 -0500 Subject: A Less-Visible Role For the Fed Chief: Freeing Up Markets Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 This is a really good article, with a lot of useful financial history. Also note the following: >"It is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for >honest dealings and a quality product," he wrote in Ms. Rand's >"Objectivist" newsletter in 1963. Regulation, he said, undermines this >"superlatively moral system" by replacing competition for reputation with >force. "At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which >characterizes all regulation lies a gun." Cheers, RAH - ------- The Wall Street Journal November 19, 2004 PAGE ONE The Deregulator A Less-Visible Role For the Fed Chief: Freeing Up Markets Greenspan Blessed Mergers And Blocked Regulation; Using the 1800s as a Model Is Modern Finance Too Risky? By GREG IP Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL November 19, 2004; Page A1 WASHINGTON -- As Alan Greenspan approaches his last year as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, he continues to draw praise for his most visible job: steering the economy by raising and lowering interest rates. But behind the scenes, the 78-year-old economist has had a big impact on American life in an entirely different role: pushing the government to stay out of financial markets. Consider what happened in 2002, when Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein proposed new rules to govern how traders buy and sell contracts to deliver energy through financial instruments known as derivatives. Her move came after Enron Corp. and others helped send electricity prices soaring in California by manipulating that market. When she telephoned Mr. Greenspan for support, he declined, telling her the proposal threatened the multitrillion dollar derivatives industry, which he considers an important stabilizing force that diffuses financial risk. Mr. Greenspan persuaded other Bush-appointed regulators to join him in a critical letter that Sen. Feinstein's opponents wielded as a weapon on the Senate floor. The bill was narrowly defeated on a procedural motion. Sen. Feinstein reintroduced the proposal a number of times and at least twice Mr. Greenspan rallied fellow regulators to oppose it. "I believe it would have passed without his opposition," Sen. Feinstein says. In addition to thwarting the post-Enron impulse to regulate derivatives, Mr. Greenspan has helped remove Depression-era barriers between the banking and securities industries and has blessed mergers creating banking behemoths. He has implored regulators to keep their hands off hedge funds and other markets that are replacing banks as financiers of American business. Although the Fed is a major bank regulator, it has become a less intrusive one under Mr. Greenspan. Behind this advocacy is a passionate belief that freely functioning financial markets are better than government regulators -- and even central bankers -- at protecting the economy from booms and busts. Mr. Greenspan once read that a B-2 "stealth" bomber would crash without a computer that continuously adjusted its wing flaps. In conversations, he compares markets to the B-2's computer: They continuously redistribute risk so the economy can absorb shocks. The result is a paradoxical position for one of the world's most influential civil servants: He would prefer that the state play virtually no role in the economy. His ideal is the pre-Civil War period when the federal government was so invisible it didn't even issue a national currency. In reality, Mr. Greenspan sometimes tailors that radical position to suit the demands of his job -- such as dealing with the near-collapse of hedge fund Long Term Capital Management -- as well as the political requirements of surviving in Washington. But, on balance, his views have been powerfully influential in deregulating markets at a crucial time in their history when they are increasing in size, complexity, and the number of ways in which they interact with everyday people. With Mr. Greenspan's term set to end in January 2006, an important question is whether his successor will carry on this less visible role. Critics say his hands-off regulatory philosophy has made the Fed a less effective watchdog, citing complicity by Fed-regulated banks in recent corporate scandals. His intellectual opponents also argue that some regulation is necessary to moderate the risks inherent in modern finance. Mr. Greenspan first articulated many of his views in the 1960s when he was part of the intellectual circle surrounding libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand. If businesses were solely responsible for their own reputation, he said at the time, they would do whatever necessary to maintain it or ultimately fail. "It is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product," he wrote in Ms. Rand's "Objectivist" newsletter in 1963. Regulation, he said, undermines this "superlatively moral system" by replacing competition for reputation with force. "At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun." His language has moderated but he still admires the laissez-faire capitalism of the mid-19th century. At that time, competition, not regulation, kept financial markets honest. Banks, for example, issued their own currency whose value fluctuated with the issuer's reputation. Mr. Greenspan believes the 19th-century economy was inherently stable because of the gold standard, a system in which currencies were exchanged for fixed amounts of gold both within the U.S. and across international borders. Countries that borrowed too much would hear from anxious foreign lenders demanding to be repaid in gold. To prevent that, banks would raise interest rates, encouraging lenders to stay put. Borrowing, which was now more expensive, would abate. In Mr. Greenspan's view, this self-correcting economy was undermined by cumulative government intrusions. The first was the creation of a national currency and national banking system in 1863 whose flaws, he believes, contributed to periodic financial panics in following decades. In 1913, the very organization in which he made his name, the Federal Reserve, was created. As the lender of last resort, the Fed could prop up failing banks, reducing the incentive for bankers and businessmen to act prudently. Market discipline weakened further when the government created federal deposit insurance in 1933, making depositors less concerned about the reputation of the bank to which they entrusted their money. That was compounded when the U.S. went off the gold standard in 1933. "A kind of vicious circle of government replacement of market oversight [was] clearly set in motion," he said in a May 2001 speech. Mr. Greenspan has a complicated way of reconciling his job with his economic theories. In an ideal world, he believes, there would be a gold standard and no central bank. But the end of the gold standard and creation of the Fed weakened market discipline. That created a need for government intervention the Fed chairman must do his best to fulfill. Few things are more important to Mr. Greenspan than keeping the government's hands off financial markets. Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, among others, used to argue to Mr. Greenspan that governments should sometimes use regulation to moderate risks that stem from the complexity of modern markets. Mr. Greenspan was willing to tolerate occasional hiccups to encourage innovations that allow markets to operate more efficiently. MARKET FORCES Key moments in the history of intervention in U.S. financial markets. 1791: Alexander Hamilton starts the first Bank of the United States. Dissolved in 1811. 1816: Second Bank of the United States chartered. Charter lapses in 1836 1863: National Bank Act, national currency issued 1907: Financial panic ends with intervention organized by J. Pierpont Morgan 1913: Federal Reserve formed 1933: Federal deposit insurance introduced 1933: Glass-Steagall Act bars combinations of banks, securities companies 1972: Financial derivatives first traded in Chicago futures markets 1978: States begin to allow interstate banking 1980: Monetary Control Act deregulates interest rates 1981: Over-the-counter derivatives are born with first currency "swap" 1987: Fed gives banks permission to sell bonds 1987: Fed slashes interest rates after stock- market crash 1995: Treasury, Fed bail out Mexico 1996: Fed significantly increases banks' ability to deal in securities 1998: Fed arranges rescue of Long Term Capital Management 1999: Glass-Steagall fully repealed 2000: Deregulated status of most derivatives entrenched in law 2001: Enron collapses 2004: SEC votes to register hedge funds Source: WSJ research To those in the Rubin Treasury, this clash became known as the "wooden tennis rackets" debate. Mr. Rubin's notion, that governments should constrain markets, "was like saying tennis was a better game with wooden rackets," says Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University and previously Mr. Rubin's deputy and successor at the Treasury. Mr. Greenspan would prefer rackets made with advanced alloys that delivered better shots even if they were occasionally wild. Mr. Greenspan has long disparaged government-imposed limits on mergers. He came to the Fed an avowed opponent of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act that established barriers between the banking and securities industries. The act was inspired by the belief that bank stock speculation helped cause the 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression; subsequent study casts doubt on this. The act split J.P. Morgan & Co. into two firms whose successors today are J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley. Mr. Greenspan, as a director of J.P. Morgan in 1984, played a part in publishing that bank's anti-Glass-Steagall treatise, according to a book by historian Ron Chernow. The Fed took its first step toward undoing Glass-Steagall in 1987, a few months before Mr. Greenspan's arrival. It further loosened restrictions in 1996. Two years later it precipitated the act's demise by approving the merger of Citicorp, parent of the U.S.'s second-largest bank, and Travelers Group, a major insurance underwriter and securities dealer. The Fed's approval was conditional on Citigroup Inc. -- the merged company - -- later divesting businesses not permitted. But Citigroup correctly bet the law would change. The merger prodded Congress to repeal the remaining barriers a year later. "Greenspan pushed the envelope," says Kenneth Guenther, retired president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, a small-bank trade group that at the time unsuccessfully sued the Fed for pre-empting Congress. Though Mr. Greenspan usually defers to his staff about regulatory matters, their recommendations have tended to track his laissez-faire approach. In his tenure, the Fed has approved the merger of every bank-holding company that has come before it except two. By contrast, his predecessor, Paul Volcker, scotched 10 mergers in an eight-year term. The U.S. now has three banking conglomerates with assets exceeding $1 trillion -- Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America Corp. Critics say these mergers concentrate financial risk too heavily in a few institutions. Mr. Greenspan argues that deregulation also produced a more stable financial system. His favorite example comes from the telecommunications sector. Telecom companies borrowed almost $1 trillion between 1998 and 2001, but while many failed, no major financial institution collapsed as a result. Stock and bondholders lost money but banks that arranged the financing used innovative methods to spread their risk. Some sold pieces of loans to other institutions, underwrote bond offerings or bought hedges in the new market for "credit derivatives," insurance policies against companies defaulting. "Even the largest corporate defaults in history -- WorldCom and Enron -- and the largest sovereign default in history -- Argentina -- have not significantly impaired the capital of any major U.S. financial intermediary," Mr. Greenspan said in a speech last month. Banks in the 1980s and early 1990s, by contrast, were crippled by bad loans to developing countries and real-estate developers. The resulting credit crunch hobbled the economy. When markets give way to crisis, Mr. Greenspan has reluctantly given way to government intervention. In December 1997, the Treasury wanted banks to roll over loans to South Korea to avert a global financial panic. Mr. Greenspan went along but told Treasury officials he wouldn't call the commercial banks himself, according to people involved in the effort. He argued it was inappropriate for a regulator to influence banks' lending practices. Instead, Mr. Rubin and then-New York Fed President William McDonough made the calls. Mr. McDonough says in an interview that as a former commercial banker, he could convey to the banks that restructuring the loans was in their own best interest. A bigger test came several months later, when the near-failure of hedge fund Long Term Capital Management threatened to halt trading in U.S. debt markets. Again, Mr. McDonough took the lead and brokered a buyout of the fund by its private creditors, including several Fed-regulated banks. While Mr. McDonough says he kept Mr. Greenspan informed, he didn't ask the Fed chief for approval. Testifying to Congress, Mr. Greenspan called the rescue one of "those rare occasions when otherwise highly effective markets seize up and ad hoc responses were required." The LTCM debacle was an embarrassment to the Fed -- which regulated some of the hedge fund's largest creditors -- but Mr. Greenspan didn't think it suggested the Fed needed to significantly beef up its oversight operations. "If we had to meet the standards that people think exist, we would have five times as many examiners," he said at a Fed meeting that September, transcripts show. "We would examine them to death, and they would not have any breathing room." The Fed didn't take public disciplinary action against LTCM's lenders. Congress was more worried about the economic risks inherent in hedge funds than the adequacy of the Fed's regulatory operations. In 1998, it asked the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, which included Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Rubin, to suggest how -- if at all -- to regulate hedge funds and "leverage," large financial bets made with borrowed money. Mr. Rubin was open to increased regulatory oversight, say people involved in the process. Mr. Greenspan was not. He asked why government officials earning $80,000 or $100,000 would be any more likely to spot overly risky hedge-fund activities than the Wall Street experts, earning millions of dollars, who ran them, recalls Gary Gensler, the Treasury official who coordinated the group. Mr. Greenspan refused to endorse the most intrusive of the group's recommendations: expanding oversight over brokerage firms' unregulated affiliates. Mr. Greenspan has also been skeptical of the value of the Fed's many consumer-protection rules. The only vote he has lost on the seven-member Federal Reserve Board was a 4-3 decision in 1995 that required banks to change the way they calculate savings-deposit rates. Some on the board felt the way the rate was calculated was misleading to the public. Weeks later, after banks protested the cost of the change, the board voted unanimously to suspend its action and the proposal didn't take effect. In some ways, Mr. Greenspan has become less hostile to these kinds of rules. For example, he now sees some benefit to Fed-enforced laws that compel banks to do business in poor communities. Although banks have been implicated in recent financial scandals, the Fed has often been slow to take decisive action. Critics note that it was private litigants and Senate investigators who first brought to light evidence that Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase helped Enron hide its true financial state from shareholders. Both were eventually charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission and reached settlements with the SEC, Manhattan District Attorney and the Fed. Neither admitted or denied wrongdoing. The Fed "has changed its approach from being a cop on the beat to being a consultant at the elbow of major financial institutions," charges Tom Schlesinger, director of the Financial Markets Center, an often-critical Fed watchdog. The Fed's defenders say its main job is to ensure the soundness of the financial system, not to sniff out fraud. On that score, they note that the banking system has remained strong amid recent economic upheavals. The Fed has also revamped its supervisory procedures and has levied three of its four largest-ever penalties in the last year. Last year, SEC Chairman William Donaldson put hedge-fund regulation at the top of the regulatory agenda by proposing hedge funds register with his agency. The SEC wanted routine access to information and the right to examine hedge funds' operations to search for fraudulent behavior. Mr. Greenspan, who worked with Mr. Donaldson on Wall Street in the 1960s, became one of his leading opponents. He told senators last July that hedge funds provide essential market liquidity, meaning they are often willing to buy when everyone else is selling. Registration would scare them away, "to the significant detriment of our economy," while doing little to stop fraud, he said. Mr. Greenspan's opposition was manna to Mr. Donaldson's opponents. "With due deference to Chairman Greenspan and the tough job that he has, I cannot think of a time when he has been so clear," Paul Atkins, one of Mr. Donaldson's four fellow SEC commissioners, declared during the agency's debate last month. In an interview, Mr. Donaldson suggests he and Mr. Greenspan simply have different priorities. "I think it's a legitimate argument that they do provide liquidity," he says. But "how much fraud are you willing to tolerate for liquidity? And if you asked me that, I'd say, zero." On this rare occasion, Mr. Greenspan's side lost. The SEC voted 3-2 for Mr. Donaldson's proposal. But business groups hope to overturn the SEC's move and are mulling an appeal to Mr. Greenspan for written support. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZ4rhsPxH8jf3ohaEQIbfQCg7uv/AxxC8AtPNedy8fESfCrnVV0AoIuP XmjUFlNFC1PxGDrD44mhuuuw =3b77 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From jya at pipeline.com Fri Nov 19 12:37:45 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 12:37:45 -0800 Subject: Drivers License Security Hole Message-ID: The American Assocation of Motor Vehicle Administrators has prepared a series of studies on security of drivers license data, and not least sharing it with law enforcement. Access to some of the docs are supposed to be limited to members but R. notes that the security is illusory, so the docs can be accessed until the hole is closed (see the last appendix for LE access to data): ----- http://www.aamva.org/IDSecurity/index.asp AAMVA determined the need for a comprehensive framework of minimum requirements with enhanced recommendations to improve the quality, reliability, uniformity and security of the driver licensing process in North America. As a result, AAMVA compiled and produced its DL/ID Security Framework: A Package of Decisions Based on Best Practices, Standards, Specifications and Recommendations to Enhance Drivers License Administration and Identification Security. This document is currently available to the AAMVA membership only. Members will be required to present their AAMVA user ID and password to access the framework. ----- From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 19 11:53:25 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 14:53:25 -0500 Subject: E-Mail Authentication Will Not End Spam, Panelists Say In-Reply-To: <16798.7445.715928.127619@desk.crynwr.com> References: <16797.22325.475253.290257@desk.crynwr.com> <16798.7445.715928.127619@desk.crynwr.com> Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 11:19 AM -0500 11/19/04, Russell Nelson wrote: >Anybody can pay to send email right now. :-). Of course, I'm talking about something like postage, at the $MTP level. Again, forget it. Cheers, RAH - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZ5zz8PxH8jf3ohaEQK4MQCfd7YBxFvOj47uNi+9t5pWTA7jY5gAn1fa krefkKpnmULmZCGENB2F6dnZ =JbZZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk Fri Nov 19 09:01:37 2004 From: bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk (ken) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 17:01:37 +0000 Subject: China's wealthy bypass the banks In-Reply-To: <41948C3D.12635.53067DEF@localhost> References: <4194D96B.7070006@students.bbk.ac.uk> <41948C3D.12635.53067DEF@localhost> Message-ID: <419E26F1.5050904@students.bbk.ac.uk> James A. Donald wrote: > -- > ken wrote: > >>>And when was this stagnation? > > > R.A. Hettinga wrote: > >>Two words: Ming Navy > > > For those who need more words, the Qing Dynasty forbade > ownership or building of ocean going vessels, on pain of death > - the early equivalent of the iron curtain. Which was a couple of millenia *after* the distinctive Confucian philosophy became the official code of most Chinese governments. So that can't be the reason for Chinese stagnation. QED. (Which as TD pointed out better than I could have was short-lived and nowhere near as general as we used to paint it) And it was the later Ming period - not Qing From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 19 16:01:55 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 19:01:55 -0500 Subject: Home Office stalls on weapons scanner health risks Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register B; Internet and Law B; Digital Rights/Digital Wrongs B; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/18/blunkett_xray_blank/ Home Office stalls on weapons scanner health risks By John Lettice (john.lettice at theregister.co.uk) Published Thursday 18th November 2004 18:00 GMT Are your children being irradiated? Are you being irradiated? The UK Home Office seems unconcerned by the question, despite being responsible for at least one of the government organisations wielding the devices that might be doing the irradiating. Weapons scanners that use x-rays are now being tested by the Metropolitan Police and at Heathrow airport, and while the effect of a single scan will probably be negligible, the actual health risk will depend on the nature of the particular deployments, and on the individuals being scanned. So they should therefore not be deployed casually, without careful prior consideration, on the basis that they're 'harmless'. Earlier this week Norman Baker MP asked the Home Office the following parliamentary question: "To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what air kerma rate has been used to assess radiation doses associated with the use of the Rapiscan Secure 1000 apparatus." David Blunkett's (yes, him again, sorry about that) response was: "The information sought is not in the public domain." Which is not much of a response from a department deploying at least two Rapiscan 1000s, and with a unit offering them to police forces throughout the country. (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/crimpol/police/scidev/news/items/xray2907.html) Nor is the answer true. (Air kerma, by the way, refers to the amount of radiation produced by a device.) Rapiscan 1000s are indeed mostly harmless, probably, depending. Technology of this sort has been used for baggage scanning for some time now, but more recently people-sized versions have been undergoing testing in the US and elsewhere in the world, and x-ray scanning is also being used in other, mobile and less controlled environments (e.g. scanning containers and trucks for stowaways). You can find some more about that here. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/08/heathrow_scanner_pilot/) One of the public domain sources of information about the effects of x-ray scanners, including the Rapiscan 1000, that David Blunkett says don't exist can be found here. (http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/03/briefing/3987b1_pres-report.pdf) A presidential report by the US National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements carried out for the Food and Drug Administration - very obscure, not. The document's very existence provides us with a small case study of how things work in government on either side of the pond. Both the US and the UK are proposing and using x-ray scanners on people, but in the US this involves a diligent process of measurement for potential hazards, while in the UK they just get haphazardly deployed. Both governments still repress us, but the US one is somehow more professional about how it starts off, while the UK one regularly gives the appearance of not being able to find its arse with both hands. Back, however, to the document, the measurements and the risks. The dose of radiation delivered by a scan, which the NCRP team measured in the range 0.04 B5Sv - 0.05 B5Sv, is not terrifying by the radiation standards the US uses. Negligible Individual Dose (NID) over a year is defined as 10 B5Sv, which is the effective dose deemed acceptable for a single source, while ANSI approved a standard in 2002 defining an acceptable dose per scan as being 0.1 B5Sv or less. This would mean that a security scanner would have to deliver 2,500 scans of an individual annually at 0.1 B5Sv per scan in order to reach the US administrative control level of 0.25 mSv. For an airport security scanner, even operating at a rather higher level, you'd probably have to be living in it to achieve that kind of level. But it's not necessarily going to be the only source of radiation you're exposed to, nor will all of these sources necessarily operate at such low levels. Cumulative dosage will be higher from scanners you have to pass several times every day (say, a weapons scanner at a school), and you'll be exposed at the hospital, at the dentist, and maybe there will be high exposures you don't know about. The NCRP speaks of proposals for concealed scanners, and mobile scannners that could check vehicles (which we covered in our earlier piece), while just today UK Secretary of State for Education Charles Clarke was proposing to give schools powers to search pupils for weapons, and to "have arrangements with their local police forces to undertake snap searches if they thought knives were on school premises". What kind of equipment did you have in mind they bring with them when they do that, Charles? - From our reading of the FDA report, it seems unlikely that the level of exposure via the Rapiscan at Heathrow would present a health risk to most people, nor is the Met's happy deployment of x-ray machines for area stop and searches an obvious hazard to anything other than liberty and race relations. However in both cases what goes for most people may not go for particular individuals, so it's extremely important that the operators make the position vis a vis radiation absolutely clear, and that subjects have an absolute right to decline the kind offer of an x-ray scan. The consequences of more widespread deployments are far more difficult to quantify. If fixed scanners became sufficiently common for it to be possible to be exposed several times a day, then the risks would climb, and it would be less possible (it's not exactly easy at the moment) for people too know what their cumulative dose was. Concealed scanners would make that impossible, and high dose vehicle and/or concealed scanners would throw the sums out entirely. Reported doses from a cargo scan test in 2001, for example, ranged from 0.1 B5Sv to 100 B5Sv, depending on positioning in the compartment. The US annual dose limit set by the NCRP is 1 mSv, excluding exposures from natural background and medical care, while the suggested exposure from a single site is 25 per cent of annual dose, or no single source under one control delivering more than 0.25 mSv annually. It recommends the latter being the one set for security screening such as airport scanners, and that it cover multiple checkpoints at a given (say) airport. We commend the report as essential reading for Home Secretaries who might need to bone up on the potential risks associated with equipment their departments are deploying. They could of course just carry on giving MPs dumb and obstructive answers, but it's not clever, and in some cases it's the sort of thing people might think of as negligent. Ask a focus group, David. B. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZ6K6cPxH8jf3ohaEQIDBwCgqyVMif7+rhxP4RaqseORKnCxNZgAniAJ WvJrvj9VdVetp2xD1IOMRmRJ =L1az -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 19 17:35:38 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 20:35:38 -0500 Subject: Stephen Moore: A Tax-Ban No Brainer Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The National Review November 19, 2004, 11:21 a.m. A Tax-Ban No Brainer Congress should keep the Internet-tax ban in place. Today the House of Representatives will vote to extend the ban on Internet taxation through November of 2007. Keeping cyberspace tax free has long been a goal of anti-big-government and pro-technology forces in Washington. This bill, led by Chris Cox in the House and John McCain and George Allen in the Senate has significant opposition from tax-eater lobbying groups on Capitol Hill, especially state and local governments who hope that the World Wide Web will be their next great cash cow. The Senate enacted the bill earlier this week; the House should follow suit, and keep the Internet-tax ban in place. President Bush strongly supports this legislation. So, if the House does its job, next week this pro-taxpayer legislation will be the law of the land. The new law will mean no taxes on Internet access, unless you use dial up and pay the telephone tax (which should be eliminated as well). It also means no tax on Internet sales. In other words, the Internet will be a genuine tax-, regulation-, and tariff-free zone. A tax on the Internet would do real damage to the U.S. economy. Economic growth in recent years has been propelled by the technology sector, which has made a big-time rally after the implosion of 2000-01, when the NASDAQ fell from 5,000 to 1,500. The argument against the ban on the Internet tax is that states and localities need the money and that Internet purchases are eroding the tax base of city hall and state governments. This is preposterous. The states and localities are now awash in cash. For example, my home state of Virginia has a $1 billion state-tax surplus. The same rosy fiscal picture is true in local governments across the nation. A new Cato Institute study finds that states and localities have already doubled their tax collections over the past twelve years, even without tapping into the new frontier of the digital economy. Governors and mayors should now be aggressively cutting taxes, not finding sneaky new ways to add to their coffers. The policy that Congress is about to adopt is simply a continuation of the federal law that has been in place for the past six years. Since 1998 Congress has wisely declared the Internet a tax-free zone by establishing a moratorium on Internet-access charges. An "access charge" is essentially a toll on using the Internet. The idea was to prevent the government from causing infant crib death of this new consumer technology. After all, as Justice John Marshall once observed, "the power to tax is the power to destroy." By all accounts, the Internet-tax moratorium has been a resounding success. In 1985, about one in six American families and businesses had access to the web; now, three in four do. Moreover, e-commerce is the new frontier of business enterprise. International Data Corporation recently estimated that the Internet economy in 2003 reached $2.8 trillion. In the U.S. alone, e-commerce accounted for $500 billion in business activity and employed 2.3 million Americans. The Internet sector of the economy is growing at 12 percent per year compounded. E-commerce, in short, is to the early 21st century what the steam engine was to early-20th-century economic development. Meanwhile, the telecommunications sector of the economy now stands ready to invest billions to upgrade the nation's communications networks and make high-speed (or broadband) Internet access available to all American homes and small businesses, as it is for large corporations today. All of this is to say, if ever a public policy has worked precisely as hoped, it is the Internet-tax moratorium. Moreover, if the Republicans in Congress really wants to keep tax relief a centerpiece of their domestic agenda, keeping the IRS and state tax collectors away from the Internet is critical. By some estimates, a tax on Internet access could cost families up to $150 a year. If purchases on the Internet were also taxed, these costs could double or triple. There is only one problem with the bill that Congress will vote on today. It does not make the Internet a tax-free zone permanently. Also, it seems that if we want a regime of "tax fairness" and a level playing field, all forms of Internet access, whether dial-up or wireless, should be immunized from state, local, and federal taxation. While Sen. McCain's compromise does not meet all of these criteria, it brings us a lot closer to the ultimate goal. Congress today has a chance to ring the bell for liberty. The opportunity now exists to create, through the growth of the Internet economy, a massive global free-trade zone. Opponents of the Internet-tax ban argue that this bill will only put added pressure on all levels of government to lower taxes on "bricks and mortar" businesses. That's absolutely true - but I suspect most Americans would regard this as an added benefit of the Internet-tax ban. - Stephen Moore is president of the Club for Growth. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZ6i/8PxH8jf3ohaEQJyOwCeKeNAAz7QCyiEng3wz8tLjuKQmZcAoLfG punAsHbRo/bldh6SnM2Qe0Hw =j/kW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 20 05:49:58 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 08:49:58 -0500 Subject: [osint] NSA director could be in line for CIA deputy director post Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - --- begin forwarded text To: osint at yahoogroups.com User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 From: "gwen831" Mailing-List: list osint at yahoogroups.com; contact osint-owner at yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list osint at yahoogroups.com Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2004 19:45:18 -0000 Subject: [osint] NSA director could be in line for CIA deputy director post Reply-To: osint at yahoogroups.com http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1104/111704g1.htm GovExec.com DAILY BRIEFING November 17, 2004 NSA director could be in line for CIA deputy director post By George Cahlink gcahlink at govexec.com The Central Intelligence Agency has been rocked in recent weeks by changes brought by new director Porter Goss, and the shake-up could continue with the appointment of a tough deputy director. Reuters reported on Tuesday that Goss was considering naming National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen Michael Hayden to the agency's No. 2 slot. John McLaughlin, who served as acting CIA director this summer, recently announced his retirement from the deputy director post. Hayden has been one of NSA's most visible, powerful and, in some quarters, controversial directors, as he has fought to reorganize the signals intelligence agency. If he were tapped for the CIA slot, he'd likely bring the same aggressive management style to the beleaguered agency. Goss served as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence before being nominated for the CIA job in August. In that position, he conducted oversight of the NSA and worked closely with Hayden to increase the agency's budget. Hayden, who is NSA's longest-serving director, has been relentless in pushing change at the intelligence agency since taking over in March 1999. He's asked longtime agency workers to retire to make way for new hires, outsourced information technology work, expanded the pool of contractors, raised the agency's profile, and consolidated leadership ranks. Few would argue that changes were not needed at an agency with a veteran workforce trained and computer systems designed for the Cold War. James Bamford, author of two best-selling books on the NSA, credits Hayden with continuing to let veteran workers go even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "The people they had were people they did not need," said Bamford, who noted that the agency had a surplus of Soviet analysts and linguists but too few Middle East experts. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Boyd, now head of Business Executives for National Security, who served with Hayden, said, "He sold needed reforms to those with oversight and resources. He's presided over a transition there from an institution geared toward the Cold War into one for a new world with different technology." Some NSA veterans however, have protested Hayden's moves. "Coming to a place and telling a large group of well-qualified professionals they need be cleaned out is not the way to change an agency," said Michael Lavin, who worked at the agency from 1947 to 1993, first as an analyst and later as a policymaker and spokesman. NSA veterans with obsolete skills should be retrained to prevent the loss of corporate memory, Lavin argued. Hayden earned praise for his efforts to expand the NSA's contracting base and upgrade the agency's aging computer systems. In 2001, the agency inked a $2 billion outsourcing deal with an industry team, led by Computer Sciences Corp., to upgrade and run the agency's computer operations over the next 10 years. Congress, however, has not been happy with how the agency tracked its spending. In 2004, the NSA lost its independent spending authority, and its budget is now managed by Defense undersecretaries. Steven Aftergood, an intelligence expert with the Federation of American Scientists, noted that Hayden is one of the few intelligence managers to escape blame for Sept. 11. "Everyone has been down on the CIA," he said, "but NSA came through almost completely unscathed." - ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM - --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> - -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-osint at yahoogroups.com. - -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor bisoldi at intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint at yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ - --- end forwarded text - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQZ9PcMPxH8jf3ohaEQK8BACgm/szNVus6K4hMs2QjovuLi8gAVIAoLPk ej+MqbixbWbBSP0oa9WxXFQc =hesR -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From cat at iis.com.br Sat Nov 20 05:13:51 2004 From: cat at iis.com.br (Carlos Alberto Teixeira) Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 11:13:51 -0200 Subject: bulk to order References: <20041120100740.40CCC416118@ws5-2.us4.outblaze.com> Message-ID: <044701c4cf03$31f3a880$b5cffea9@catgeni> Dear Mr. Uche. Internal Medicine (Harrison) - not available Anatomy and Physiology (Keith & Moore) - not available Principles of Biology (Lehringer) - not available Please check http://www.amazon.com And, just for your information, you sent your message to totally wrong recipients. Wish you best of luck. - c.a.t. www.iis.com.br/~cat ----- Original Message ----- From: "pascal uche" To: Cc: Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2004 8:07 AM Subject: bulk to order > dear sir/madam > my name is pascal uche, > i just want to know the prices of this medical book,s bellow and there > shipment cost to nigeria with DHL courier service,the book,s are at bellow > brunna and sudath test book of medical surgical nursing > intenal medicin by harison > keith more anatomy and physiology > lehninger principles of biology > and i will like u to also indecate for me more intreting medical book,s u > have on ur store, > thank u and i will be waitin for ur reply ASAP > > PASCAL UCHE > -- > _______________________________________________ > Get your free email from http://fastermail.com > > Powered by Outblaze From steve49152 at yahoo.ca Sat Nov 20 17:45:27 2004 From: steve49152 at yahoo.ca (Steve Thompson) Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 20:45:27 -0500 (EST) Subject: [osint] Group to launch terrorist database In-Reply-To: <91981b3e04111908506cff86f2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20041121014527.71275.qmail@web51807.mail.yahoo.com> Chris Kuethe wrote: [snip] Quoting from http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard3.html I didn't really need to be reminded of that... Now I have diet coke all over my keyboard. Shame on you. > ========== > I make a mental note of his license plate. In fact > , I did that 60 times a minute for 15 and a half > minutes. Oh dear.. oh dear.... > Looks like another call to the DMV Database > to register a vehicle as stolen by out of > town arms dealers... > ========== > So when some jackhole cuts you off in traffic, ... accelerate, close and then force him off the road. Oh, wait. We have cell-phones now and so should rather telephone the local constabulary and let _them_ apprehend the miscreant. > now you don't report him as a possible drunk > driver, now you can turn him into DHS as a > highway terrorist. On the other hand, we could save lots of money if we used bullets that have been drilled out and filled with mercury. True, we might have to deal with PETArds getting in a uproar over the heavy-metal poisoned wrecks littering the sides of the roads, but we can write that down as an opportunity cost. Fight fire with fire, I say. > Unless he's preemptively > called you in. Everyone remember the rules > of the prisoner's game? I think so, but I should probably go back and refresh my memory. Just to be sure. > Anyway, you already have snitch lines. > http://www.fbi.gov/page2/oct04/seekinfo103004.htm > says you can use the online tip form, or contact > your local FBI office or US embassy. Or your > police department. But if I submit a terrorist report to one of those places will it eventually end up registered in their terrorism database? Probably not. Obviously, they need a 1-800 number or something that goes straight to the DHS. >>[not in favour of large gov't databases] > Howzabout the difficulty of sorting the useful > tips out of the chaff when you just know that > some new spam network will be set up to flood > the system with bogus yet somewhat plausible tips. If they don't have a good enough dictionary for their filters now, they never will. > Howzabout the difficulty that you - the meat > blob - will have trying to get your name out "you - the meat blob." How flattering. > of the database after you unfortunately > happened to be within a 10 mile radius of > "the real terrorists". That can't be good. Is the measure of proximity to "real terrorists" on a scale that uses a linear scalar, or a logarithmic one? > Howzabout the fact that in this day and age > of the internet and telephone, no one seems > to have successfully managed to hack up some > little Law-Enforcement-Only forum where "They" > go to talk about how to catch terrorists. I imagine that it would be too hard to screen for criminals and terrorists completely, rendering the idea of a private forum moot. > That's a people problem, really. No shit. > Howzabout the fact that all LE organizations > seem to have a real hard time working > together, squealing about jurisdiction, etc. Sounds like bad management if that's still the problem. Maybe the cops should hire a few management consultants and tune their workflow system. We should tell them, though, that if they do that they must remember to brief the consultants thoroughly on the other consultants from the private sector -- the ones that are _already_ involved with various things related to law enforcement. Good consultants hate surprises. > If they were actually serious about getting > the job done, they'd either put the > "juris-my-dick-tion bullshit" or there would > be some presidential directive simply ordering > everyone to play nice together. I don't think How about a presidential order that says that they all have to run and use Peoplesoft (or something similar) to facilitate better interoperability? That might work too. > either of those are happening, based on the > number of security czars who seem to be > retiring suddenly. I suppose that last bit depends somewhat on the number who are going into the private sector, as opposed to those who are going into a `true' retirement from work. Regards, Steve > -- > GDB has a 'break' feature; why doesn't it have > 'fix' too? It's likely they just haven't gotten around to doing it yet. Maybe it'll get done for the next major release. ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 20 19:06:57 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 22:06:57 -0500 Subject: A Tale of Two Maps Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Tech Central Station A Tale of Two Maps By Patrick Cox Published 11/17/2004 The now familiar map of the United States, separated into red and blue states, makes the point, graphically, that the coastal population centers tend to vote Democratic while fly-over country leans Republican. Unfortunately, the map's binary either/or electoral college nature overestimates the philosophical division within the country while failing to show the extraordinary degree to which Americans' voting behavior reflects the degree to which their own neighborhoods are more or less crowded. A far better illustration, devised by Princeton University mathematician Robert Vanderbei, uses shades of purple to indicate the spectrum of election preferences within counties. Here is a map, executed by Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman of the University of Michigan using his procedure: Here is a map showing U.S. population density in 1990: Comparisons of these two maps make startlingly obvious the extent to which population density predicts voter behavior. Though not a perfect match, the relationship is undeniable -- and ultimately enigmatic. What, we are led to ask, could explain this relationship? How does the number of live humans per square mile either influence or reflect political philosophy? The standard, rather unexamined, assumption is that rural America has more traditional cultural values that are associated with the Republican Party. These include religious, family and pro-military values. Urban population centers and surrounding environs, on the other hand, are associated with more progressive values associated with Democratic Party. These values are assumed to be more secular, progressive and anti-military. While this may be an accurate description, no one, to my knowledge, has provided a convincing explanation for the differences between lower and higher density regions. Why would, after all, city life cause one to embrace liberal political views? Why would life in the country yield a conservative perspective? What, specifically, are the causative factors? There has been a surfeit of speculation about psychological factors, but relatively few specifics and even less evidence. Urban areas do have higher crime rates and, while this attribute is widely recognized, there is little real analysis of such as a causative factor in political attitudes. One of the few efforts even to quantify the correlation of population density and crime rates comes from John R. Lott and David Mustard who studied the impact on crime rates of Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun laws -- which is higher in rural areas. One of the very few studies to actually examine the effects of population density on behavior and attitudes is "Measuring Helping Behavior Across Cultures" by Robert V. Levine of California State University, Fresno. Levine found, through a series of interesting tests, such as feigning a blind person trying to find and retrieve a lost letter, that "Far and away the best predictor of helping was population density. Density was more closely tied to the helpfulness of a city than even characteristics like crime rates, the pace of life, economic conditions or environmental stressors like noise and air pollution. Overall, people in more crowded cities were much less likely to take the time to help. New York City was Exhibit A. Crowding brings out our worst nature. Urban critics have demonstrated that squeezing too many people into too small a space leads to alienation, anonymity, de-individuation and social isolation. Ultimately, people feel less responsible for their behaviors toward others -- especially strangers. Previous studies have shown that city dwellers are more likely to do each other harm. Our U.S. results indicate that they are also less likely to do them good, and that this apathy increases with the degree of city-ness." This, of course, is only one study and may not take into account other less observable forms of "helping" so it may not be safe to read much into the author's conclusions. Another fascinating and easily verifiable correlation may be tied only indirectly to the characteristics of population density. The red states, that voted for Bush in both of the last elections, it seems, are net receivers of federal tax revenues. In 2002, Dean Lacy of Ohio State University and the Hoover Institution. published "A Curious Paradox of the Red States and Blue States: Federal Spending and Electoral Votes in the 2000 Election." He found that, "Thirty of the U.S. states reap more in federal spending than their citizens contribute to the federal government in taxes. The other 20 states provide more in taxes than they receive in spending. In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, George W. Bush won most of the states that are net beneficiaries of federal spending programs, while Al Gore won most of the states that are net contributors to federal spending. A state's ratio of federal spending to tax dollars, particularly non-defense spending, is a statistically and substantively significant predictor of Bush's margin of victory across the states. A state's per capita federal tax burden is also associated with the election result: states with higher tax burdens gave higher vote margins to Gore. Compared to Clinton's state-by-state vote shares in 1996, Gore did worse in states that gained in federal spending per tax dollar from 1998 to 2000." Even more specifically, Lacy wrote that, "Put another way, Bush's margin goes up by 2 percentage points for every additional dime of federal spending in a state per dollar of taxes paid by that state." The same results held, in principle, in the Bush/Kerry election, and much has been made of this odd fact by those who want to characterize red states as welfare recipients. It is an odd charge, however, that the states that tend to oppose transfer payments politically benefit most from them financially. One possible explanation of this seeming contradiction is that it is caused by progressive taxation and higher urban area incomes. Though the cost of living is higher in the cities than it is in rural areas, taxpayers with nominally higher incomes naturally pay more taxes. Most federal programs, however, are paid out based more on the basis of population statistics, regardless of income levels, leading to an outflow of revenues from high-income states to low income states. The case can also made that the cost of delivering services to states with low population densities is greater than it is in urban population concentrations. It is, for example, easier to deliver mail to rows of consecutive mailboxes on city streets than it is to drive to a series of far-flung farmhouses. It is also true that labor and other costs are also lower in rural areas, so it is probably not safe to assume federal programs are actually higher in rural areas. Additionally, many significant programs, such as agricultural subsidies, are unaffected by the demographic scattering. I think it is more likely that the net-recipient status of the red states reflects the fact that, in order to secure the support of states whose populations tend to resist transfer payments, supporters of redistributive programs are often forced to buy off red state approval for government spending programs. Still, these characteristics fail to explain the differences in the underlying differences in political attitudes between concentrated and dispersed populations. All modern differences between rural and urban American life may, in fact, be irrelevant. They could, rather, be holdovers from more traumatic times. As I've lived and worked in both heartland farm country, in Idaho and Florida, as well as and some of America's largest cities, including New York and Boston, I am skeptical that current differences would yield the radical differences in political philosophies that we now observe. The caricatures put forth by both sides, of insular hicks in trailer houses and cowering victims in crime-ridden row houses, do not reflect the experiences of most people. Less than a hundred years ago, though, the contrasting challenges of city and farm life were far more tangible. One data point is that, before the development of penicillin at the beginning of the first World War, a compound fracture, which was a not uncommon consequence of being thrown from a wagon, resulted in death about half the time. On the other side of the demographic divide, big city politics were often remarkably brutish and intrusive. Victor Davis Hanson, if I understand him correctly, posits that the legacy of America's farmer/warrior past has had an enduring impact on America's traditional political views, now emanating primarily from the heartland. One might expect, if this is true, that those who live in closest proximity to agricultural activities and communities would maintain more of these traditional attitudes. George Bush's use of the symbols of agriculture, cowboy boots, big belt buckles and pickups, obviously appealed to these people. If Hanson is correct, however, demography may very well be destiny, as technology has decreased radically the portion of our population that is involved, even peripherally, in agriculture. Moreover, the cultural connection between the modern descendants of agricultural families may soon fade because, as Thomas Sowell suggests, culture lasts only two or three generations, and there are fewer and fewer Americans with agricultural roots as time passes. Ninety-nine out of a hundred Americans were engaged in agriculture at the time of the American Revolution. In 1953, about 15 percent of the U.S. population, or twenty-three million people, actually lived or worked on farms, and 54 million lived in areas deemed rural. Now, due to the impact of technology on agriculture, only 3 million people, or 1 percent of the U.S. population, live on farms. According to an admittedly revised definition, the rural population has risen to 59 million but has lagged far behind urban growth and is now only 21 percent of the U.S. total. This pattern continues today as growth in rural areas is running at less than a quarter of the urban rate. On the other hand, agriculture is clearly not the sole political variable. In recent elections, residents of suburbs voted more for Republicans than did residents of more crowded cities -- and they did so in inverse proportion to their population density. The statistician's perennial caveat is that "correlation is not causation." but there is little doubt that there is connection, largely unexplained, between ideology and demography. Depressingly deterministic as it is, this correlation, if it continues, may mean that future elections will be decided by immigration patterns, reproductive rates and technologies that allow more businesses and workers to locate in suburban and rural locations. I would be happy to be proven wrong. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaAGc8PxH8jf3ohaEQIb6gCg95Yqg4TVod8pKoa812Cd6e3ppUUAoKai Qb55aSALy/TSylMGgEcQkZyb =HZoT -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 20 20:07:02 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 23:07:02 -0500 Subject: Rethinking Libertarian Minimalism Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 TCS: Tech Central Station - Ryan H. Sager Rethinking Libertarian Minimalism By Ryan Sager Published 11/19/2004 Libertarians need to get serious about foreign policy. That's the proposition I put forward earlier this week on my blog, Miscellaneous Objections, as part of a broader discussion of the future of libertarianism, and it has drawn a number of interesting -- and often heated -- responses. Questions of foreign policy have always been difficult for those of us who espouse a philosophy of limited government domestically, and they have only grown more difficult, though at the same time more critical, since September 11, 2001. Unfortunately, instead of reassessing their minimalist instincts when it comes to intervention abroad, many in the institutional centers of the libertarian movement -- principally at the Cato Institute and, to a lesser extent, at Reason magazine -- have remained mired in a pre-9/11 mindset. Here, I would like to address some of the key arguments people are making against both the need for a coherent (or at least vaguely cohesive) libertarian foreign policy and the premise that one doesn't exist already. "We're libertarians, we don't need to agree on anything." The most common response to any call for libertarians to rethink their stances on foreign policy is that there's no reason that libertarians should all have to agree on one approach. True enough, if libertarianism is a debating club. But that sort of thinking is a bit facile if libertarians hope to have any impact on politics and public policy. And we should want that. We are not powerless. This year, a Rasmussen survey estimated that libertarians make up roughly 10% of the electorate -- and that's just self-identified libertarians. People who share libertarian beliefs in small government and social tolerance likely make up another 10%-20% of the electorate. In a 50-50 political landscape -- or even a 51-48 landscape -- that's real power. When libertarians are so united on domestic issues (taxes, Social Security, spending, drug laws, gay marriage, etc.), is it not worth it to begin a serious debate about what libertarians believe about foreign policy and what ideas we can offer in the War on Terror? Foreign policy, with the focus right now on the war in Iraq, is the primary issue that dilutes the libertarian voting bloc. Since similar issue are likely to define the next few federal elections -- at the very least -- libertarians are going to have to reach a rough consensus of some kind. Otherwise, their votes will perpetually be split between the two parties, lessening their leverage with regard to each. Libertarianism can, of course, continue to exist in such a state. But it would enjoy less sway within its traditional home, the Republican Party, while at the same time never making a full move to the Democratic Party. That's why, for those of us who believe in a muscular foreign policy -- or at least a more-than-minimal one -- it is worth engaging our libertarian friends, to at least see how far apart we are. What will not work is the current attitude in some libertarian circles that the focus can be kept on domestic issues -- where we agree with each other and have more experience -- while the national debate passes by us. "What exactly do you mean by 'serious'?" The first response of libertarians accused of not being "serious" about foreign policy is to suspect they are really being called wimps for not supporting the war in Iraq. The question of Iraq is inextricable from this debate, but it is not central. People of good will and good judgment disagreed about the Iraq invasion before it happened, and we all have our various assessments of how it has turned out so far. The question now, however, is how are libertarians dealing with the Iraq issue as it stands today? There is a strong temptation for them to say, "Hey, it's not our problem." But that's obviously not very helpful. Nonetheless, that would be a fairly accurate description of the output of the Cato Institute foreign-policy staff since the war started. * On Dec. 13, 2003 -- after the March 2003 invasion -- Cato published a policy analysis titled, "Iraq: The Wrong War." ("We told you so!") * On Jan. 5, 2004, Cato published, "Can Iraq Be Democratic?" (Cato's answer: "No.") * This June, Cato published the book, "Exiting Iraq." The book calls for a withdrawal date from Iraq of -- wait for it -- Jan. 31, 2005. (That's a little over two months from now.) * Since the start of the war, Cato has also called for the United States to withdraw all troops from the Gulf region -- even suggesting that we reverse the long-standing policy of deploying a carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf. (Talk about a surrender. But at least terrorists have never taken Western withdrawal as a sign of weakness and an invitation to further attacks -- oh, wait.) Now, libertarians are free to get all touchy when people think of them as less-than-serious when it comes to defense issues, but there's a reason their opinions are written off almost completely in this area, and have been for some time, by anyone even in proximity to power. And anyone who thinks that libertarian opinions on these matters are not written off in the rest of the Republican Party -- well, they're either out of touch, or they're not paying attention. So, "serious," in this context, means forward-looking (not fixated on recrimination), based in a plausible reality (with at least some eye to political considerations) and with some appreciation of the nature of the terrorist threat (eschewing the appearance of retreat). By and large, libertarians, under this definition at least, have been anything but serious when it comes to foreign policy lately. "Libertarians don't have anything constructive to offer in the War on Terror." The strangest thing about this argument is that libertarians are the ones making it. Basically, some say, any war -- on terror, in Afghanistan, in Iraq -- costs money and curtails civil liberties. The job of libertarians, then, is simply to whine about spending and assist the ACLU in opposing the governmental bad guys at home. Now, don't get me wrong, libertarians do have an important roll to play in opposing the infringements on civil liberties that the Bush administration seems to think are allowed for in the Constitution somewhere (they're not, trust me, I've read it). But libertarians, limiting themselves to the sidelines like this, are really doing themselves -- and not to sound too grand, but the country -- a disservice. Libertarianism, in and of itself, does not in any way limit its adherents to a minimalist approach to foreign policy -- i.e. using the least amount of force possible to respond only to the most imminent of threats. While aggressively pursuing empire or invading any country that looks at America funny would certainly not be in accordance with libertarian or classical liberal thinking, there is otherwise quite a bit of flexibility to be had. Pro-war and anti-war libertarians don't have to get together on Iraq in retrospect. It's not going to happen, and there's not much to be gained by rearguing the last two years. But they should think about how they could congeal going forward. If anti-war libertarians are as serious about fighting the War on Terror as those who favored the war, they're going to have to come up with a lot better than the John Kerry-esque line that we need to turn our attention back to finding Osama bin Laden and fighting al Qaeda. Bin Laden is one man whose capture would be nice -- very, very nice -- but likely of little strategic import. And, well, we have been fighting al Qaeda aggressively; we could always kill more of them, but that's more of a truism than a policy proposal. So, where can libertarians agree and what can they offer? Where libertarians have a natural advantage, due to their quirky politics, is in being able to think creatively and take a step back from the partisan battles that define much of our public discourse. * Libertarians could dedicate some of their intellectual firepower to supporting intelligence reform, for instance, and the strengthening of our human assets in the Middle East and the Arab world generally. * Libertarians could delve into questions of nation-building -- all the better to help us disentangle ourselves from where we're entangled more quickly. What are the prerequisites of a free society? How can they be fostered? How can we turn over power to the people we've liberated? For instance, Cato has put out a few policy papers on how Iraq can set up a monetary system and deal with its debt; that's a start. * Libertarians could also turn their attentions to the question of how we can help the Arab world liberalize on its own. Charles Paul Freund at Reason has written extensively on the power of Western culture to bring openness and modernity to Arabs hungry for change. Libertarians were knee-deep during the Cold War in efforts to sneak Western, democratic and free-market ideas into Eastern Europe -- something for which the peoples of those countries are deeply grateful today. Why now, with the West facing the threat of Islamofascism and millions of Arabs and others suffering under it, are libertarians suddenly so afraid to look outward? Libertarians could be spearheading an effort like that during the Cold War to translate and transmit classics of liberal thought, bringing them to democratic-minded people trapped in repressive societies. They could be working to help these people get access to the Internet and to American radio and television broadcasts. They could be pushing for funding of pro-democracy movements. And they could be spearheading a push for an American free-trade initiative to bring economic opportunity to developing Arab nations. These are, admittedly, just the most rudimentary of thoughts about the way forward for libertarians. We need to see where we're divided and see where we can find common ground. What won't work, however, is a continued attachment to minimalism in terms of our foreign-policy thinking. Libertarians need more than that. Ryan Sager edits the blog Miscellaneous Objections. He can be reached at editor at rhsager.com. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaAWFsPxH8jf3ohaEQIOgwCfQD37PLr+CE/OS0cvj6ZdLXSDyAMAoNld QnWvITrmgwh1O4llT1ix+5l6 =o+ze -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 20 20:10:02 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 23:10:02 -0500 Subject: Long Live Free Fallujah! Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Tech Central Station Long Live Free Fallujah! By Stephen Schwartz Published 11/19/2004 With the liberation of Fallujah and the fall of the jihadist regime in the town, it is apparent that American media intend to keep their story on message: the message being that the U.S. military operation there has failed and that Fallujans, and Iraqis in general, still hate the intervention forces. At the same time, other reports tell a more significant and eloquent story: the jihadists had set up a Taliban-style dictatorship, in which women who did not cover their entire bodies, people listening to music, and members of spiritual Sufi orders -- that is, ordinary Fallujans -- were subject to torture and execution. The Fallujans have learned the same lesson the Shias learned before them, and the Afghans before them: U.S. boots on Muslim soil may be onerous, but American military action is preferable to the unspeakably vicious criminality of Islamist extremists financed, recruited, and otherwise encouraged by Wahhabism, the state religion in Saudi Arabia. When Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge almost 30 years ago, Western media reported it as the liberation of a city. Noam Chomsky hailed the forced evacuation of Cambodian towns as a noble social experiment. But many journalists were soon forced to record the truth about Khmer Rouge cruelty. It took longer for Western, and especially American media, to stop glamorizing the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Stalinist guerrillas in El Salvador, and to admit that the masses of people in those countries rejected their claims to represent them. An editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, where I worked, on the day after Violeta Chamorro (remember her?) won election in Managua in 1990, told me, "Nicaragua is no longer a news story for us." I asked, "is that because there will be no more violence?" He said, "No, it's because the U.S. is no longer a target." I am sure he meant "a target of our reporting." Since the Vietnam era, American journalists seem to operate by an ethic reversing the infamous slogan of antiwar demonstrators, who chant "media lies, people die." Much more accurate would be to say "people die, media lies." American media lied about Vietnam, telling us the Communists won the Tet offensive when they were defeated -- and when, by the way, the recapture of the traditional capital city of Hue disclosed that the Communists had rounded up and executed some 6,000 people. American media lied about Central America, as noted; American media still lie about Cuba, portraying the Castro regime, which has driven the average standard of living of the people drastically down, as the most progressive in Latin America. Much of American media lied about the wars in Yugoslavia, depicting Slobodan Milosevic, early on, as a reformer in the style of Gorbachev. They continued by "explaining" Serbian aggression against Slovenes, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians by the alleged wholesale collaboration of the victims' great-grandparents with the Nazis. Presumably, the 1,100 children killed in the siege of Sarajevo were all members of a Bosnian Waffen SS division about which much propagandistic ink has been spilled over the years. And they repeated ad nauseam the false charge that equal atrocities were committed on all sides, when the great majority of mass murders, rapes, deportations, and expulsions were carried out by the Serbs. Where the ink of lies is spilled, the blood of victims soon follows. Media liars are sharks; they gather at the smell of blood. And in this deadly cycle of untruths, Iraq has set new standards for media mendacity. President Bush and his team are reviled because the Iraq war was described by one adviser as a "cakewalk;" well, the conquest of Baghdad was a cakewalk, remember? Then the administration was defamed because the Iraqis did not strew roses in the path of our service personnel. Terrorism suddenly became "insurgency" and "resistance," with the veteran fabricators of The New York Times -- who lied about Stalin's famine in the 1930s and on numerous occasions thereafter -- adopting the propaganda vocabulary of al-Jazeera. Strangely, throughout the Iraqi struggle, Western media have joined Western politicians in a reluctance to name the "foreign fighters" in Fallujah as what they are -- mostly Wahhabis, and mainly Saudis. Those who monitor Arab media know this to be true because when jihadists die in Fallujah, their photographs and biographies appeared in newspapers south of the Iraq-Saudi border. Western media "analysts" added to the fog of disinformation by alleging that the Shia rebels of Moqtada ul-Sadr would join the Wahhabis in Fallujah. But Islamic media around the world began to produce curious items: Moqtada ul-Sadr issued an order for the execution of any Wahhabis caught infiltrating the Shia holy cities; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in turn, supervised the beheading of an Iraqi Shia accused of spying for the Americans. Top Shia cleric Ayatollah Ali Sistani issued a fatwa saying that anybody who obstructed the U.S.-sponsored elections in Iraq is destined for eternal fire. And the 26 leading Wahhabi radicals in Saudi Arabia published an open letter to the Iraqis calling for stiffened resistance in Fallujah and forbidding any cooperation with the U.S. forces. Little of this was reported in or digested by American media, which stuck to their story: Americans bad, terrorists in Iraq good. Most Western journalists seem to have fled Fallujah as the fighting there heated up. But news is now trickling out of the liberated city, and it is fascinating to read. The London Times on Monday, November 15, described Fallujah as "terrorized" by the jihadists, who posted notices ordering death sentences on walls and poles throughout the streets. "Mutilated bodies dumped on Fallujah's bombed out streets today painted a harrowing picture of eight months of rebel rule," it began. The characteristically arbitrary, if not insane tone of Wahhabi/Taliban "governance" was clearly in evidence: An order dated November 1 "gives vendors three days to remove nine market stalls from outside the city's library or face execution. The pretext given is that the rebels wanted to convert the building into a headquarters for the 'Mujahidin Advisory Council' through which they ran the city." Orders to conform to Wahhabi "virtue" were backed up by graphic examples: "An Arab woman, in a violet nightdress, lay in a post-mortem embrace with a male corpse in the middle of the street. Both bodies had died from bullets to the headB Many of the residents who emerged from the ruins welcomed the U.S. marines, despite the massive destruction their firepower had inflicted on their city. A man in his sixties, half-naked and his underwear stained with blood from shrapnel wounds, cursed the insurgents as he greeted the advancing marines on Saturday night. "'I wish the Americans had come here the very first day and not waited eight months,' he said, trembling. Nearby, a mosque courtyard had been used as a weapons store by the militants. Another elderly man, who did not want his name used for fear the rebels would one day return and restore their draconian rule, said he was detained by the militants last Tuesday and held for four days before being freedB 'It was horrible,' he told an Agence France-Presse reporter. 'We suffered from the bombings. Innocent people died or were wounded by the bombings. But we were happy you did what you did because Fallujah had been suffocated by the Mujahidin. Anyone considered suspicious would be slaughtered. We would see unknown corpses around the city all the time.'" The account continues, "Even residents who regard themselves as observant Muslims lived in fear because they did not share the puritan brand of Sunni Islam that the insurgents enforced. One devotee of a Sufi sect, followers of a mystical form of worship deemed heretical by the hardliners, told how he and other members of his order had lived in terror inside their homes for fear of retribution. "'It was a very hard life. We couldn't move. We could not work,' said the man sporting the white robe and skullcap prescribed by his faith. 'If they had any issue with a person, they would kill him or throw him in jail.'" There are, perhaps, some Western Islamophobic ideologues who, from the safety of their suburban homes, would love to tell these Muslim victims of terrorism that their torment was their own fault for not changing or altering their traditional Islamic faith. Some people have no shame. But sooner or later Americans will understand what Iraqis are learning: that our troops went there to free Islam, not to destroy it; that in a choice between American supervision and Taliban atrocities, the ordinary Sunnis and the mystical Sufis and the majority Shias will opt for our help. Meanwhile, the body count is encouraging: in Fallujah, 38 Americans and five Iraqi regulars lost; 1,200 terrorists killed. Long live free Fallujah! - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaAWGcPxH8jf3ohaEQLEZwCg/hZmOyHaSGuXFi8V4NjrZ/z56jMAoNIr VTeUa8N59DnMG+AbQJHAAV7t =0kV3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From gnu at toad.com Sun Nov 21 16:20:30 2004 From: gnu at toad.com (John Gilmore) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 16:20:30 -0800 Subject: Gov't Orders Air Passenger Data for Test In-Reply-To: <3845414.1100878840624.JavaMail.root@dewey.psp.pas.earthlink.net> References: <3845414.1100878840624.JavaMail.root@dewey.psp.pas.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <200411220020.iAM0KUWT018543@new.toad.com> > ... they can't really test how effective the system is ... Effective at what? Preventing people from traveling? The whole exercise ignores the question of whether the Executive Branch has the power to make a list of citizens (or lawfully admitted non-citizens) and refuse those people their constitutional right to travel in the United States. Doesn't matter whether there's 1, 19, 20,000, or 100,000 people on the list. The problem is the same: No court has judged these people. They have not been convicted of any crime. They have not been arrested. There is no warrant out for them. They all have civil rights. When they walk into an airport, there is nothing in how they look that gives reason to suspect them. They have every right to travel throughout this country. They have every right to refuse a government demand that they identify themselves. So why are armed goons keeping them off airplanes, trains, buses, and ships? Because the US constitution is like the USSR constitution -- nicely written, but unenforced? Because the public is too afraid of the government, or the terrorists, or Emmanuel Goldstein, or the boogie-man, to assert the rights their ancestors died to protect? John (under regional arrest) Gilmore PS: Oral argument in Gilmore v. Ashcroft will be coming up in the Ninth Circuit this winter. http://papersplease.org/gilmore From rah at shipwright.com Sun Nov 21 14:57:03 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 17:57:03 -0500 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Green Side Sunday, November 21, 2004 Email from Dave - Nov 19, 04 Dear Dad - Just came out of the city and I honestly do not know where to start. I am afraid that whatever I send you will not do sufficient honor to the men who fought and took Fallujah. Shortly before the attack, Task Force Fallujah was built. It consisted of Regimental Combat Team 1 built around 1st Marine Regiment and Regimental Combat Team 7 built around 7th Marine Regiment. Each Regiment consisted of two Marine Rifle Battalions reinforced and one Army mechanized infantry battalion. Regimental Combat Team 1 (RCT-1) consisted of 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion (3rd LAR), 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines (3/5); 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines (3/1)and 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry (2/7). RCT-7 was slightly less weighted but still a formidable force. Cutting a swath around the city was an Army Brigade known as Blackjack. The Marine RCT's were to assault the city while Blackjack kept the enemy off of the backs of the assault force. The night prior to the actual invasion, we all moved out into the desert just north of the city. It was something to see. You could just feel the intensity in the Marines and Soldiers. It was all business. As the day cleared, the Task Force began striking targets and moving into final attack positions. As the invasion force commenced its movement into attack positions, 3rd LAR led off RCT-1's offensive with an attack up a peninsula formed by the Euphrates River on the west side of the city. Their mission was to secure the Fallujah Hospital and the two bridges leading out of the city. They executed their tasks like clockwork and smashed the enemy resistance holding the bridges. Simultaneous to all of this, Blackjack sealed the escape routes to the south of the city. As invasion day dawned, the net was around the city and the Marines and Soldiers knew that the enemy that failed to escape was now sealed. 3/5 began the actual attack on the city by taking an apartment complex on the northwest corner of the city. It was key terrain as the elevated positions allowed the command to look down into the attack lanes. The Marines took the apartments quickly and moved to the rooftops and began engaging enemy that were trying to move into their fighting positions. The scene on the rooftop was surreal. Machine gun teams were running boxes of ammo up 8 flights of stairs in full body armor and carrying up machine guns while snipers engaged enemy shooters. The whole time the enemy was firing mortars and rockets at the apartments. Honest to God, I don't think I saw a single Marine even distracted by the enemy fire. Their squad leaders, and platoon commanders had them prepared and they were executing their assigned tasks. As mentioned, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry joined the Regiment just prior to the fight. In fact, they started showing up for planning a couple of weeks in advance. There is always a professional rivalry between the Army and the Marine Corps but it was obvious from the outset that these guys were the real deal. They had fought in Najaf and were eager to fight with the Regiment in Fallujah. They are exceptionally well led and supremely confident. 2/7 became our wedge. In short, they worked with 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. We were limited in the amount of prep fires that we were allowed to fire on the city prior to the invasion. This was a point of some consternation to the forces actually taking the city. Our compensation was to turn to 2/7 and ask them to slash into the city and create as much turbulence as possible for 3/1 to follow. Because of the political reality, the Marine Corps was also under pressure to "get it done quickly." For this reason, 2/7 and 3/1 became the penetration force into the city. Immediately following 3/5's attack on the apartment buildings, 3/1 took the train station on the north end of the city. While the engineers blew a breach through the train trestle, the Cavalry soldiers poured through with their tanks and Bradley's and chewed an opening in the enemy defense. 3/1 followed them through until they reached a phase[line deep into the northern half of the city. The Marine infantry along with a few tanks then turned to the right and attacked the heart of the enemy defense. The fighting was tough as the enemy had the area dialed in with mortars. 3/5 then attacked into the northwest corner of the city. This fight continued as both Marine rifle battalions clawed their way into the city on different axis. There is an image burned into my brain that I hope I never forget. We came up behind 3/5 one day as the lead squads were working down the Byzantine streets of the Jolan area. An assault team of two Marines ran out from behind cover and put a rocket into a wall of an enemy strongpoint. Before the smoke cleared the squad behind them was up and moving through the hole and clearing the house. Just down the block another squad was doing the same thing. The house was cleared quickly and the Marines were running down the street to the next contact. Even in the midst of that mayhem, it was an awesome sight. The fighting has been incredibly close inside the city. The enemy is willing to die and is literally waiting until they see the whites of the eyes of the Marines before they open up. Just two days ago, as a firefight raged in close quarters, one of the interpreters yelled for the enemy in the house to surrender. The enemy yelled back that it was better to die and go to heaven than to surrender to infidels. This exchange is a graphic window into the world that the Marines and Soldiers have been fighting in these last 10 days. I could go on and on about how the city was taken but one of the most amazing aspects to the fighting was that we saw virtually no civilians during the battle. Only after the fighting had passed did a few come out of their homes. They were provided food and water and most were evacuated out of the city. At least 90-95% of the people were gone from the city when we attacked. I will end with a couple of stories of individual heroism that you may not have heard yet. I was told about both of these incidents shortly after they occurred. No doubt some of the facts will change slightly but I am confident that the meat is correct. The first is a Marine from 3/5. His name is Corporal Yeager (Chuck Yeager's grandson). As the Marines cleared and apartment building, they got to the top floor and the point man kicked in the door. As he did so, an enemy grenade and a burst of gunfire came out. The explosion and enemy fire took off the point man's leg. He was then immediately shot in the arm as he lay in the doorway. Corporal Yeager tossed a grenade in the room and ran into the doorway and into the enemy fire in order to pull his buddy back to cover. As he was dragging the wounded Marine to cover, his own grenade came back through the doorway. Without pausing, he reached down and threw the grenade back through the door while he heaved his buddy to safety. The grenade went off inside the room and Cpl Yeager threw another in. He immediately entered the room following the second explosion. He gunned down three enemy all within three feet of where he stood and then let fly a third grenade as he backed out of the room to complete the evacuation of the wounded Marine. You have to understand that a grenade goes off within 5 seconds of having the pin pulled. Marines usually let them "cook off" for a second or two before tossing them in. Therefore, this entire episode took place in less than 30 seconds. The second example comes from 3/1. Cpl Mitchell is a squad leader. He was wounded as his squad was clearing a house when some enemy threw pineapple grenades down on top of them. As he was getting triaged, the doctor told him that he had been shot through the arm. Cpl Mitchell told the doctor that he had actually been shot "a couple of days ago" and had given himself self aide on the wound. When the doctor got on him about not coming off the line, he firmly told the doctor that he was a squad leader and did not have time to get treated as his men were still fighting. There are a number of Marines who have been wounded multiple times but refuse to leave their fellow Marines. It is incredibly humbling to walk among such men. They fought as hard as any Marines in history and deserve to be remembered as such. The enemy they fought burrowed into houses and fired through mouse holes cut in walls, lured them into houses rigged with explosives and detonated the houses on pursuing Marines, and actually hid behind surrender flags only to engage the Marines with small arms fire once they perceived that the Marines had let their guard down. I know of several instances where near dead enemy rolled grenades out on Marines who were preparing to render them aid. It was a fight to the finish in every sense and the Marines delivered. I have called the enemy cowards many times in the past because they have never really held their ground and fought but these guys in the city did. We can call them many things but they were not cowards. My whole life I have read about the greatest generation and sat in wonder at their accomplishments. For the first time, as I watch these Marines and Soldiers, I am eager for the future as this is just the beginning for them. Perhaps the most amazing characteristic of all is that the morale of the men is sky high. They hurt for the wounded and the dead but they are eager to continue to attack. Further, not one of them would be comfortable with being called a hero even though they clearly are. By now the Marines and Soldiers have killed well over a thousand enemy. These were not peasants or rabble. They were reasonably well trained and entirely fanatical. Most of the enemy we have seen have chest rigs full of ammunition and are well armed are willing to fight to the death. The Marines and Soldiers are eager to close with them and the fighting at the end is inevitably close. I will write you more the next time I come in about what we have found inside the city. All I can say is that even with everything that I knew and expected from the last nine months, the brutality and fanaticism of the enemy surprised me. The beheadings were even more common place than we thought but so were torture and summary executions. Even though it is an exaggeration, it seems as though every block in the northern part of the city has a torture chamber or execution site. There are hundreds of tons of munitions and tens of thousands of weapons that our Regiment alone has recovered. The Marines and Soldiers of the Regiment have also found over 400 IEDs already wired and ready to detonate. No doubt these numbers will grow in the days ahead. In closing, I want to share with you a vignette about when the Marines secured the Old Bridge (the one where the Americans were mutilated and hung on March 31) this week. After the Marines had done all the work and secured the bridge, we walked across to meet up with 3rd LAR on the other side. On the Fallujah side of the bridge where the Americans were hung there is some Arabic writing on the bridge. An interpreter translated it for me as we walked through. It read: "Long Live the Mujahadeen. Fallujah is the Graveyard for Americans and the end of the Marine Corps." As I came back across the bridge there was a squad sitting in their Amtrac smoking and watching the show. The Marines had written their own message below the enemy's. It is not something that Mom would appreciate but it fit the moment to a T. Not far from the vehicle were two dead enemy laying where they died. The Marines were sick of watching the "Dog and Pony show" and wanted to get back to work. Dave - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaE4mMPxH8jf3ohaEQIE2wCdHyumNvYtGQgOiqdfUcdlV8COIhkAoO9b AU8Oim/gUU2PaHk52Ht2lEgS =hwDa -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Sun Nov 21 16:17:28 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 19:17:28 -0500 Subject: The Yikes Years Message-ID: The Washington Post washingtonpost.com The Yikes Years Life as the world's lone superpower is beginning to make the Cold War look easy By David Von Drehle Sunday, November 21, 2004; Page W16 The Russian poet and novelist Boris Pasternak observed that "history cannot be seen, just as one cannot see grass growing." Which was an interesting assertion from a man who saw, among other clearly historic events, the Russian Revolution, the rise of the Bolsheviks, the Stalinist terror and World War II. But let's work with Boris a little. No doubt he was correct in the sense that history sort of sneaks up on us. Day after day, stuff happens, and some of it is strange, some is unsettling, some is stirring, some is portentous. But we don't often know, in real time, whether these various happenings are adding up to anything meaningful enough to be called "history." Yet there comes a day when you look out the window and notice that the lawn is extremely shaggy. You may not have seen the grass growing, but suddenly it's so high you can no longer find the dog's chew toys or the baseball glove you asked your kid 400 times to put away. And then it rains for three straight days and you realize there is no way your lawn mower can get through the sopping wet, jungle-thick morass without making a terrible mess of the mower, the lawn, your shoes . . . Based on interviews with esteemed experts, the perusal of a stack of dense tomes, a plodding trip through thousands of pages of knotty articles in learned journals, plus the findings of assorted blue-ribbon federal commissions and weeks of squint-eyed reflection, I can report that this is precisely where America finds itself today. We are up to our shins in the sloppy grass of history. Maybe you have noticed. The past half-dozen years or so, strange things, unsettling things, stirring things, portentous things have been happening right and left. The decade of the 1990s danced in with such promise. No more Cold War. No more Evil Empire. The Persian Gulf War required a mere four days of land operations and seemed to spell the end of that gloomy, doubt-America malaise widely known as the "Vietnam syndrome." For a moment, it genuinely seemed that the most interesting question a president could face was, "Boxers or briefs?" Then: February 1998. A bloodthirsty zealot with a billionaire father declared war on America. Weird. From some cave or compound in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden dispatched a fatwa to a London newspaper announcing the sacred duty of Muslims to kill Americans anywhere they could find us. Only a handful of us even noticed. But this strange event turned out to be truly historic. After all, how many rich fanatics have declared war on an entire country? And how many, within six months, have managed to blow up two U.S. embassies? Our elected leaders began making their own sort of history. On December 19, 1998, the designated speaker of the House, Louisiana congressman Bob Livingston, marched onto the floor of Congress, announced he was quitting on account of a sex scandal, and called on President Clinton to do likewise. That certainly felt new. The rich guy in Afghanistan was trying to have a war with us, but our government had painfully snagged on what we were calling "zipper problems." Yet this wasn't even the biggest story of the day, because Livingston's speech was a footnote to the fact that the House impeached a president for only the second time in U.S. history. Then bin Laden's troops bombed, and nearly sank, a U.S. Navy destroyer. Then came a deadlocked presidential election, the first in more than a century. All this played out against a backdrop of dazzling new technologies and dizzying new wealth. Men and women barely out of college were making and losing fortunes that might have turned John D. Rockefeller's head -- and how? Strange, unsettling stuff: data harvesting, digital pet-food sales, cooking the books. And then, bin Laden brought his war to the American mainland. Hitler couldn't get here. Brezhnev couldn't get here. But the radical Islamists managed to hit us harder than we had been hit at home since the Civil War. Followed by Afghanistan and Iraq. Some people have begun using the phrase "World War IV." (No, you didn't miss one: WWIII is what used to be called the Cold War.) Rogue states are developing nukes. There's a plague decimating Africa. The polar ice caps are melting. It's no wonder our civic mood is grouchy. We are bombarded by banner headlines, caught in CAPS LOCK mode, deluged with dire declarations. Tom Wolfe dubbed the 1970s the Me Decade. We're living in the Yikes Years. BACK IN THE SUNLIT ERA WHEN THE BERLIN WALL CAME DOWN, before all hell broke loose, a theorist named Francis Fukuyama published an influential essay announcing "The End of History." It was a highly philosophical piece having to do with the ideological triumph of democracy and free markets, but the catchy title took on a life of its own, coming to stand for the ascendancy of the United States and its ideals. We're going to pay a visit to Fukuyama later in this article, and we'll hear what he now has to say about history. For the moment, though, just try to recall those days, when our leaders blithely wondered what to buy with our "peace dividend" and how best to manage the "Pax Americana." Some people actually felt a twinge of regret at Fukuyama's coinage. No more history? What a drag! It was such an American response -- after all, history had been good to us, nationally speaking. History gathered up various scattered bands of religious outcasts, economic refugees and insatiable colonists; history molded these elements into a nation; history boosted that nation into the global driver's seat. Several years after Fukuyama wrote his essay, a French leader, Hubert Vedrine, decided that the word "superpower" wasn't enough for us anymore. America wasn't just "super," America was "hyper," as in hyperpuissance, hyperpower. It sounded like something out of a DC Comics futurama. The world had never seen our equal -- a single nation dominating the globe militarily, economically, culturally. In those naive days, it seemed both a great relief and a slight shame to think that Americans might be done with an era of true significance and entering a time of uneventful sameness, that we might be embarking on a tranquil but meaningless period that would eventually be boiled down to a mere sentence or two in the history texts of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Were we destined to share the fate of the citizens of the Gilded Age, who apparently liked to argue over "free silver" while riding bicycles with absurdly large front wheels? Now we see there was no need to worry. One last belaboring of Pasternak: It's clear now that the end of the Cold War wasn't the end of grass; it was more like resodding the lawn. For a while there, nothing seemed to be growing. But new roots were going down, and once they took hold, the grass came back stronger and thicker than before. So, what does this all point to? What does it mean? Years from now, when a virtual teacher downloads the history of our time into a microchip in our great-grandchild's brain, what will the data say? "History?" President Bush answered with a shrug when Bob Woodward asked him how the future will view the Iraq war. "We don't know. We'll all be dead." I've become curious, though, about where the strange and unnerving events of recent years might be heading, and whether we can steer our course or must simply ride irresistible currents. I wanted a hint as to how this movie might end. So while most Washington journalists were tracking each up and down of the presidential campaign, I tried to look past this single election, and even Bush's second term, toward the larger pattern of things. I began reading books with titles like The Future of Freedom and The Clash of Civilizations, magazines with names like Foreign Affairs and the National Interest and Technology Review. I began e-mailing provocative young scholars and sage older ones. I started paying visits to the offices of learned women and men who are paid to ponder where America is and where it is headed. I discovered that they tend to be concentrated along a stretch of Massachusetts Avenue NW, which I came to refer to as "Big Think Boulevard." This is an intimidating world for a layperson to enter. The hushed hallways and book-lined offices of Big Think Boulevard are home to a priesthood that knows precisely the difference between "hegemony" and "empire," not to mention the difference between entente and detente. I found that some of these thinkers fear we are living through the end of the Western alliance, while others believe America's power is already seeping away to China. I met thinkers who fret most about nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists and others who prefer to worry about the speed at which our debtor nation is skidding toward fiscal crisis. You know things are scary when you find a wistful note of nostalgia for the relative stability of the Cold War creeping into the voices of level-headed people. True, the brains of Big Think Boulevard have always shown a tendency to be worrywarts, except for when they are overly optimistic. Through the years, a visitor could have heard deep and earnest discussions along that street of the domino theory (by which the communists would conquer the world), the triumph of the German economy (which also did not happen) and the rise of superpower Japan (ditto). But just because predicting the future is difficult doesn't mean thinking about the future is pointless. I found widespread agreement on at least two propositions: First, that some very different sort of world is roaring up at us. Second, that the history of our times will be the story of how we prepared for this different world -- which, so far, is mostly a story of how we have failed to prepare. Yikes. A FORMER GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL, THINK-TANK STAR AND NEWSPAPER COLUMNIST, Jessica Tuchman Mathews is now the president of a venerable outfit called the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The endowment occupies a handsome eight-story building in a prime spot on Big Think Boulevard -- a quietly elegant structure of glass and stone and wood, silent testimony to the power of Andrew Carnegie's millions multiplied by nearly a century of wise investment and compound interest. Human frailty being what it is, Carnegie's original goal of eliminating war has been scaled back over the years, and now the endowment is plenty busy just trying to keep wars from going nuclear. I was hoping that Mathews might be able to summarize why being a hyperpower has turned out to be so unpleasant. Why, just a few years after the dawn of a new American epoch, it sort of feels like a fast-fading twilight. "The past couple of years have shown us that the way we felt at the end of the Cold War -- the dominance we felt in terms of military power, economic power, so-called 'soft' cultural power -- was too facile," she began. America's power is "not at all as clear as it seemed just four years ago. Although we're spending approximately one-half of all the world's total military expenditures, and our power on that plane is supreme, it is not that usable against the enemies we now face." She said this on a late-summer morning when Osama was still in his cave (or wherever he might be) and the low-tech insurgency in Iraq was metastasizing. So it was hard to argue with her assertion that certain foes are not cowed by the most awesome conventional military the world has ever seen. The United States has a fleet of nuclear submarines, every one of which packs enough megatons to decimate a nation. We have 12 aircraft carriers, every one of which totes more power than the entire air force of virtually any other country. We have stockpiles of laser-guided bombs and missiles that we can land on the proverbial dime. Yet we are flummoxed by beheadings -- a technology from the days of Salome and John the Baptist. As it happens, this is a common problem for global powers: Conventional strength doesn't always succeed. The Romans had a similar experience with the Huns. Or a more recent example: In 1898, the British army won an overwhelming victory at Omdurman to regain control of Sudan and establish itself as the supreme fighting force on Earth. Within a year, the same army under the same general went off to fight the Boers in South Africa. At first, all went well: The British quickly seized the Boer capitals. Mission accomplished. But the opposing forces simply melted into the population, then launched a devastating guerrilla war that exposed the vulnerabilities of the superpower army. Which sounds familiar. Mathews continued: "On the economic side, we are very, very vulnerable." Strange: Wasn't it just a few years ago that the American economy was crushing its competitors like Godzilla mashing Toyotas? She cited two reasons to feel nervous. First, while the U.S. economy is easily the largest in the world, we're not even paying the bills of our own government -- not by a long shot. The federal deficit is more than $400 billion this year. And worse is sure to come when the baby boomers start retiring later this decade and Social Security and Medicare become massive drains. For the first time in our history, approximately half of our deficit spending is being financed by foreign nations. It can't bode well for a major power when its potential competitors hold the mortgage on its future. The second economic weak spot Mathews sees is the explosive growth of the global labor market. With populous countries like China and India and Singapore and Malaysia rushing into the manufacturing age, "we're looking at a global labor surplus for an extended period, which is something new," Mathews said. Let that sink in for a moment. An oversupply of a commodity means a declining price. A surplus of labor should mean lower wages, which means less saving and less spending, which means a sluggish economy, if not worse. Even the upside of cheap foreign labor -- the low prices we pay for clothes and gizmos -- often comes with a downside: a staggering trade deficit. At best, the coming years will be a nerve-racking race to convert those global workers into buyers of American exports, not just competitors for American jobs. Brightening briefly, Mathews added: "We're still best in the world at adapting to rapidly changing circumstances. No other nation takes disruption in stride the way we do." So the good news is, we're good at handling bad news. Finally, as satisfying as it may be to many Americans, even U.N.-bashing may be beyond our power in the future. "I think it's clear there are not many really important issues we can tackle alone," Mathews said. Take the example currently occupying her attention -- the proliferation of nuclear technology in places such as North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, places that are hostile, unstable or both. "A huge amount of work needs to be done on proliferation by a lot of countries working together," she said. "We can't accomplish what needs to be done by ourselves. And yet, what's the level of our political influence on other countries right now? When we were going into Iraq and the U.N. was resisting, I must have had 300 people say to me: 'Jessica, don't be silly. When push comes to shove, we'll get the votes.' But then it happened, and we couldn't get Mexico, for heaven's sake. Talk about a country that depends on us. Chile, which had a free-trade agreement on the line with us -- we couldn't get their vote. "This is a long-winded way of saying that we are not nearly as dominant as we all thought we were just a few years ago." I was surprised by how much agreement I found on this general idea among big thinkers, ranging from neoconservatives to multilateral peaceniks, from Republicans to Democrats to unaffiliated foreign intellectuals. They disagreed over nuances, but nearly all of them concurred that the rosy assumptions of the recent past must be completely reexamined. If the touchstone title of the 1990s was "The End of History," the title that speaks to the dawn of this decade might be Robert D. Kaplan's "The Coming Anarchy." So where are we headed? Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard offered an early take on that question in his influential 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations: "In sum, overall the West will remain the most powerful civilization well into the early decades of the twenty-first century. . . . [But] the West's control of [key] resources peaked in the 1920s and has been declining irregularly but significantly. In the 2020s, a hundred years after that peak, the West will probably control about 24 percent of the world's territory (down from a peak of 49 percent), 10 percent of the total world population (down from 48 percent) . . . about 30 percent of the world's economic product (down from a peak of probably 70 percent), perhaps 25 percent of manufacturing output (down from a peak of 84 percent), and less than 10 percent of global military manpower (down from 45 percent). "In 1919 Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George, and Georges Clemenceau together virtually controlled the world. Sitting in Paris, they determined what countries would exist and which would not, what new countries would be created, what their boundaries would be and who would rule them, and how the Middle East and other parts of the world would be divided up among the victorious powers. . . . A hundred years later . . . the age of Western dominance will be over." AND WHAT, YOU MIGHT ASK, WOULD BE SO BAD ABOUT THAT? Back when happy students were building a papier-mache replica of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen Square, and Russian kids were waving American flags in Moscow, and the president of the United States and the chancellor of Germany were fast friends, American dominance felt like a rewarding and gratifying pursuit. Now, we read bestsellers like Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire, both by Asia expert Chalmers Johnson -- books in which the purported costs of our dominance are counted in a litany of miserable tolls. We're hated, Johnson informs us. We're resented. We're increasingly opposed by other nations. And a fair number of the world's people would like to kill as many of us as they possibly can. "In the long run," Johnson writes, "the people of the United States are neither militaristic enough nor rich enough to engage in the perpetual police actions, wars, and bailouts their government's hegemonic policies will require." I once had the good fortune to visit Rome and found myself sitting on a perfect late-summer evening at a cafe on the vast Piazza Navona. Thousands of Romans, ineffably beautiful and thoroughly relaxed, were gliding happily back and forth across the plaza, hailing their many friends. The whole city, it seemed, had just returned from a month's vacation in the hills or by the sea. Shouted greetings and untroubled laughter were accompanied by the soothing music of water splashing in a huge fountain wrought by the master carver Bernini. My tummy was pleasantly full of prosciutto and figs and warm bread dipped in olive oil, and I found myself thinking that the best places to live in the whole world might be the capitals of former empires -- Athens, Amsterdam, London, Madrid, Vienna and right there in Rome -- where people enjoy all the cultural riches of having once dominated the world but are blissfully free of the burdens of leadership. There's just one problem with that, said Niall Ferguson. "There isn't always a contender to take over" the job of leading the world; or sometimes there is a contender, but one who happens to be a genocidal maniac. "If the U.S. draws back from the imperial hubris of 2003 -- which I guess it already is doing; after all, it's hard to imagine America taking any new significant military actions for a while -- then the short-term and medium-term scenario is that large parts of the world will be left in a state of misrule under dictators, or in a state of no rule at all. That is rather a troubling prospect." Ferguson is one of the hottest young stars in the foreign policy world, a thinker so big right now that he has hardly any fixed address. Just a few years ago, he was an unknown Oxford scholar working on a history of global fiscal policy (insert enormous yawn here). But it turned out that money really does make the world go around, or at least that it helps enormously to understand money if you want to understand history. Plus, Ferguson writes with flash and verve. His first book was a hit in brainy circles, and he followed it up with book after provocative book. Now, at 40, he's a globe-trotting, multinational theorist of empire. It can take days of e-mail exchanges and transatlantic telephone tag just to track him down; when we finally did talk, he was taking a brief break from a conference in Lisbon. At least I think he was still in Lisbon. While I was trying to find him, I read Ferguson's recent cover article in Foreign Policy magazine, a harrowing vision of a world without a dominant country -- a condition he called "apolarity" or "a global vacuum of power." We've seen such periods before, he observed: the so-called Dark Ages, for example, after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and, more recently, the demoralized 1920s, which gave rise to Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini in Europe and a resurgent Ku Klux Klan in the United States. We now see that the '20s also sowed the seeds of today's violent Islamicism, thanks to the dispirited intellectuals of the former Ottoman Empire, who began dreaming of a new order founded on strict Islamic law. So: "Be careful what you wish for," Ferguson warned those who might like to see America pull back from world leadership. "Apolarity could turn out to mean an anarchic new Dark Age: an era of waning empires and religious fanaticism; of endemic plunder and pillage in the world's forgotten regions; of economic stagnation and civilization's retreat into a few fortified enclaves." It's one thing to say, as most big thinkers do, that no nation has ever remained on top forever, and thus the United States, too, will someday see its period of dominance come to an end. The tricky part, as Ferguson's worries about a new dark age remind us, is figuring out a relatively peaceful path from hyperpower to former power. There are plenty of theories about potential rivals to American power 20 or 50 or 100 years from now. At current levels of growth, China will blow past the United States as the world's biggest economy sometime in the next half-century, according to economists at Goldman Sachs. China's influence over East Asia is growing even faster than that. China's military is no match for ours today, but it has nuclear-tipped missiles and a big army, and the wealthier China becomes the more it can spend on guns, bombs, airplanes and warships, if it so chooses. Many theorists can paint a vivid picture of a not-so-distant world in which Asia is the center of the action, with China dominating the continent. One piece of that picture appeared in a recent article in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's magazine Technology Review, which declared that the "world's hottest computer lab" is the one Microsoft has established in Beijing. If Bill Gates is betting on China, perhaps we all should. But even if things go smoothly for the Chinese, their nation is years away from rivaling the United States. And things are not likely to go smoothly. The coming years for China are precisely the phase in which other developing countries have experienced financial panics, civic unrest, economic meltdown and stagnation of trade. Maybe Europe? Charles A. Kupchan of Georgetown University said the United States and Europe were bound to clash after their common enemy -- communism -- was conquered. Arguments over Iraq and the global warming treaty simply sped up a process already underway. The development of the European Union is moving much faster than anyone expected, Kupchan said, and the United States might soon find itself competing with a confederation of European countries. There may be a tipping point when the combined EU economy becomes larger than the U.S. economy, when the euro rivals the dollar as the global currency, and when America no longer sets the rules for global banking and finance. Not everyone buys the idea of a bulked-up Europe, however, because Europe has problems of its own. European military power is mostly hollow, and some of Europe's leading economies are wheezing. The demographic picture is bleak: Native populations, especially in Western Europe, are aging and shrinking, which means fewer workers and more pensioners -- not exactly the muscular image of a rising superpower. If it's true that no other power is ready -- or even close to being ready -- to step into the yoke of history, America's choice is to either hang in there or give up. Much of the world is not going to like either choice. "Our real enemy may simply be . . . chaos in the world," said Walter Russell Mead, the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mead is another of the hot hands in the foreign policy business, harder to reach than a mid-list movie star. When I spoke to him by telephone, Iraq was boiling over and the United Nations was dithering about the genocide in Sudan. Yet Mead pronounced himself "optimistic" about the way history is unfolding -- as long as events aren't allowed to drift into madness. "Where I worry," he said, "is that the social and economic changes underway are going to create chaos." Some countries, like the change-loving United States, will be able to hack it in a world of change. Others will not. The widening gap between the two is a zone of enormous danger, Mead believes. "In many ways, I see Islamic terrorism as reflecting the changes of modernity in societies that may not be ready for them, or are divided by them," he said. "As the pace of change accelerates, and more and more people are affected, I worry we will see increasing resentment aimed at the country often seen as the source of these changes -- the United States." Which brings us back to: Yikes. I HALF-EXPECTED TO FIND FRANCIS FUKUYAMA SMOKING A PIPE AND PEERING AT A GLOBE WITH HIS BROW FURROWED. Or standing over a huge table covered with maps and encoded dispatches, his hands clasped behind him. Fukuyama is among the most widely acclaimed foreign policy theorists in the world. Even people who disagree with him routinely describe him as "brilliant." But no, Fukuyama works in an ordinary professor's lodgings at 1619 Big Think Blvd. His is one of several small offices grouped around a bullpen at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. (Eggheads simply call it SAIS -- pronounced "sice.") His standard-issue desk is heaped with the usual mounds of paper, and his nondescript bookshelves overflow with volumes that pool on the tables and spill to the floor. There is an appealing humility about the place; you have to scour the jumble with your eyes to spot The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama's book-length extension of his influential essay. Contrary to the assumptions of people who only read the title, Fukuyama never claimed that historic events were going to stop happening after the fall of the Berlin Wall. His thesis was limited to a philosophical claim. He reminded readers that for almost 200 years, dating back to the German philosopher G.F. Hegel, many big thinkers -- notably Karl Marx -- viewed "history" as a sometimes violent struggle to determine the best way to structure society. History was believed to be headed toward a solution. Fukuyama argued that the end of the Cold War was "the end of history" because it left no plausible alternative to free markets and liberal democracy. End of argument, end of history. Within that narrow definition, he may still be correct. The global clash of ideologies may well be over. Bin Laden isn't trying to create the future so much as he is trying to escape from it to the past, and a very distant, parochial past at that: medieval Arabia, and step on it. Still, Fukuyama acknowledged that this rarified use of the word "history" is less enlightening than it once seemed, because any notion of history that doesn't include the destruction of the World Trade Center is of dubious value. The world has moved on, and so has Fukuyama's thinking. His recent cogitation has produced a seemingly simple but subtle realization that might explain a lot about why America's role in the world has become so difficult. America's enormous power, he noted, actually violates an axiom of the political philosophy we have been promoting for the past two centuries. How so? As every civics class graduate knows, liberal democracy and free markets depend on "checks and balances" to rein in excess, to correct mistakes and to unleash creativity by bringing more ideas to the table. But now the unmatched military, economic and cultural power of the United States flouts the principle of checks and balances on a global scale. We don't expect monopolies to work well in economic markets. We don't expect dictatorships to survive free elections. Perhaps, he suggested, we should not be surprised to find that hyperpower has not ushered in a pastoral future. "We believe that power without checks and balances is not safe -- even in the hands of well-meaning people. But today, we are an unchecked power," Fukuyama said. "After September 11, the world saw America's unchecked power in the military sphere. We reached out and overturned two regimes halfway around the world, essentially without help, and said to other countries, 'If you don't like it, you can just stuff it.' " This rankles the rest of the world, which is naturally suspicious of unchecked power and, in fact, has a lot of practice in resisting it. Europe, for example, relied for generations on a "balance of power" strategy to stabilize the world. Whenever one government or axis became too strong, a fluid system of treaties would generate a competing alliance to level the field. This system wasn't pretty -- oceans of blood were shed in the age of Napoleon, in World War I and in World War II. Yet rulers preferred it to living with a single unchallenged power. Then came a streamlined version of the same idea: the Cold War, in which two nuclear superpowers checked and balanced each other through the threat of mutual destruction. American power "generates a big backlash," Fukuyama continued. While no nation is in a position to offset American military power, the world has other ways to thwart our intentions. Fukuyama envisions a difficult period in which the United States is stymied by "the rest of the world [deciding] not to cooperate with us on a lot of little things that, over time, really matter." Iraq may be one of those "little" things. Al Qaeda could turn into another. The doozy, though, is nukes. Nukes are the great X-factor, the cloud of uncertainty, floating over Big Think Boulevard. The future of Europe, the challenge of China -- such topics are good for the next conference in Lisbon or Aspen or New York. But bin Laden with a nuke: That's not a conference, it's a nightmare. Everyone knows this, on some level. During the presidential campaign, both George W. Bush and John F. Kerry agreed that it was the No. 1 national security threat to the United States. But not everyone has really digested the problem, which is significantly more complicated than the nuclear threat during the Cold War. Having lived their entire lives in the shadow of The Bomb, many Americans prefer not to ponder the ways in which today's nuclear picture is more dangerous than ever. During the Cold War, the world's security was built on a handful of interlocking truths that were dreadful to contemplate, but blessedly stable. First truth: It took a lot of money to develop a nuclear weapon. Second truth: It wasn't easy to deliver those weapons. You needed a long-range aircraft or intercontinental missile to put a nuke on a target without being vaporized yourself. Together, these facts created the third truth: We felt pretty sure that if we were going to be hit with a nuclear attack, we would know where it came from and whom to bomb back. The fact that nuclear bombs came with return addresses allowed us to deter nuclear attacks by threatening apocalyptic, glowing-molten-rubble retaliation. Every brick of that deterrent edifice is now crumbling. Technology makes all things cheaper, including nukes. North Korea, a country where peasants forage for grass like goats, has nukes. Pakistan, where impoverished youths seeking an education must turn to schools preaching radical Islamism, has nukes. Some experts might call them "crude" nuclear bombs, but remember: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were hit by "crude" nuclear bombs. Nor do you need a sophisticated jet or missile to deliver a bomb anymore. It turns out that suicidal zealots driving panel trucks are very cheap, very precise guidance systems. Who knew the world contained so many of them? Cheap bombs plus cheap guidance systems mean that a nuke could go off in Washington tomorrow, and we might never learn for sure where it came from. Nor, as we've seen in our hunt for bin Laden, would we necessarily know where to find the culprits. Nor, with an enemy that fetishizes death, could we be sure the culprits would fear retaliation. For all these reasons, what worked in the Cold War won't work anymore. The bomb will determine whether America's current fight against radical Islam represents a bump in the road of history or, as the venerable neoconservative Norman Podhoretz argued recently in Commentary magazine, "World War IV." Minus the bomb, in Fukuyama's words, "Islamism is much weaker than fascism or communism were. Its appeal is limited to Arab and Muslim countries. It has come to power in just three places -- Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia -- and all three are a mess. It's a protest movement of angry, marginalized people who haven't been able to integrate into the modern world." But . . . "If they take over Pakistan, say, then they have 60 nukes. And all of a sudden you have to take them pretty seriously." In other words, one of the biggest historical questions the United States now faces is impossible to answer. Ten years from now, will al Qaeda be a fading threat, or will downtown Washington be a pile of radioactive debris? Before leaving his office, I asked the professor to think back to the End of History days. He smiled ruefully. "It's definitely less pleasant today," he said. "We've got some real problems now." "YOU WANT TO HAVE SOME SOBERING THOUGHTS?" Walter Russell Mead had asked during our conversation about world chaos. Before I could answer no, he posed a mental experiment: "Ask yourself, what's the worst that terrorists could do to us in 1901?" History gives an approximate answer: In 1910, radical labor leaders bombed the headquarters of the Los Angeles Times, whose publisher was a staunch anti-unionist. The building collapsed, killing about two dozen people. "Now, what's the worst they could do in 2001?" That's easy. They did it on 9/11. "Okay, what's the worst they could do on September 11, 2101?" Ugh. Advances in science and technology -- material progress in general -- are not just a force for good. The bad guys also benefit. "It's not just nuclear you have to worry about," Mead said. "It's biological, too." The same genetic discoveries that promise new cures will, no doubt, reveal new ways to kill as well. "See, technology strengthens the forces of order and law, but it also strengthens the forces of anarchy and terror. Technology is not the automatic problem solver. The notion of liberal democracy and capitalism leading to the peaceful, quiet end of history underestimates the dynamism that capitalism and liberalism actually contain. In that sense, it's Pogo who has the last word: We have met the enemy and he's us . . . It's not clear that our ability to cope with change is growing as fast as the pace of change itself." We might be getting to the nub of the matter here. What were the 1990s all about in America if not a nation intoxicated by the perfume of change and drunk on the promise of technology? We chose a free-associating futurist, Newt Gingrich, to run Congress and a president who painted word pictures of a sunny bridge to the 21st century. Business leaders chanted the mantra "change or die," while the newsstands were full of magazines offering to teach us how to make change our friend. There was a giddiness to it all. In the future, people would live forever, and the Dow would never go down. Only fuddy-duddies and Luddites and cranks saw any drawbacks to the future. But other people, including some cranks in caves, were taking a very different view of change and of the future. They were asking which changes they could prevent, which ones they could reverse, and which changes they could turn into weapons against the future, judo-style. They failed to rivet our attention because we didn't think they merited attention; they weren't with the program. But guess what? Because of those people, the "bleeding edge" of change that hip people enjoyed talking about 10 years ago has turned out to involve a lot of actual bleeding. The unsettling signs and portents of the late 1990s now strike us as the burps and tremors of a volcano that was about to blow. The decadent trivia of politics in those years -- the sex scandals, the debates over hairdos, the millionaires and billionaires seeking to buy themselves high offices, the extreme niche-marketing of issues that once led President Clinton to offer a White House initiative on child safety seats -- all these combine into a sort of barometer of our national blindness, and, as such, were truly historic -- because they represent a generalized failure of the futuristic hyperpower to see even the slightest distance into the actual future. Time and money wasted on such trivia could have been used instead to plan for the menaces sure to crop up in the wreckage of the Cold War. Those years could have been used to begin creating the new international institutions, treaties and alliances that would allow the United States to lead and stabilize the world without violating the tested principle of checks and balances. They might have been used to craft a new strategy for avoiding nuclear war that would have as much weight and urgency behind it as the old strategy had. To be fair, American leaders have tried, in various ways, to engage the future. President Clinton pulled Bosnia back from the brink of chaos. The first President Bush built a coalition to enforce the U.N. mandate to liberate Kuwait. More recently, George W. Bush offered a doctrine of preemptive action to replace the now-inadequate Cold War deterrence theory. But none of these efforts have so far proved compelling enough to mark a clear path forward. Along Big Think Boulevard, people have their doubts whether America's leaders, from either party, will be able to brace the public for what promises to be a long and often unpleasant engagement with our clouded future. There is, after all, a strong and deep vein of isolationism bred in the American character. If one day in the not-so-far-off tomorrow we find that we must choose, for example, between paying the costs of global leadership and paying the pensions of our burgeoning retiree class, isn't it likely that we will pull back -- whether or not there is an acceptable nation ready to step into the void? Again and again, I heard big thinkers draw a contrast between this era and another hugely historic period: the immediate aftermath of World War II. They noted the alacrity with which the Allies, seasoned by economic depression and catastrophic war, pivoted to comprehend and face the future. The war ended in 1945. The following year, Winston Churchill delivered his "Iron Curtain" speech warning of Soviet expansionism. The next year, 1947, George Kennan laid out the strategy of "containment" that was quickly embraced by a bipartisan consensus of Western leaders, and the massively expensive Marshall Plan was launched. By 1948, President Harry Truman had established the doctrine that would guide Western foreign policy through Democratic and Republican administrations for the next 40-plus years. And in 1949 NATO was created to implement that policy. Four years to reinvent the world. I got a lot of shrugs and groans when I asked if anyone perceives a similar vision and unity of purpose today. Mead chose to answer by quoting Churchill. "He said, You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing -- after exhausting all the other possibilities." THERE CAME A POINT IN THIS INVESTIGATION WHEN I NEEDED TO HEAR THE BRIGHT SIDE, if there was one, in meatier form than the empty campaign-season exhortations that were leading the morning newspapers. So I sought out Joshua Muravchik, whose specialty is studying the spread of democracy and freedom around the world. His little office is located at the American Enterprise Institute, one of Washington's oldest and most influential think tanks, where Muravchik is a resident scholar. AEI occupies several floors of a nondescript Washington high-rise just off Big Think Boulevard -- a gray building on a gray street under gray skies the morning I visited. Muravchik is a neoconservative of the purest type, meaning that he started out some 40 years ago as a hawkish Democrat and today is a hawkish Republican. He is different from the classic conservatives of the GOP -- the "old-o-cons," as some call themselves. Neocons are more likely to eagerly seek out opportunities to change the world; old-o-cons are more likely to advise caution, on the theory that the world's biggest problem, namely human nature, is stubbornly resistant to change. Neocons in the Bush administration got much of the credit -- or blame, take your pick -- for the decision to invade Iraq. So when you meet a thinker of this sort, you might expect a fire-breather. Muravchik, however, turned out to be a genial fellow of winning humility. "You're asking big questions," he said right off the bat. "I'll probably get myself into trouble here." Then in he dove. Sure, he said, we're looking at a tricky and scary patch of history ahead. And yes, eventually, history will erode America's dominance. "Obviously, our time on top won't last forever. Everything comes to an end. But whether it lasts another 50 years or 500 years, I can't say. My guess is, this has a long way yet to go." He believes this because he sees a strong historical tide flowing in our direction. "For how many millennia was the world run by kings and warlords?" Muravchik asked. "And then the first elected democracy springs to life in 1776. It was a very imperfect democracy, a slave democracy, but still it contained this idea that people would elect a government temporarily and then a few years later elect a new one. "How many people participated? A small group: The entire political polity of the early United States was what -- a million people? From then to now is a blink of an eye in historical terms. But today, of the 192 countries in the world . . . 120 have elected governments." Granted, many of those are far from true democracies, but 89 qualify as "free" nations, Muravchik said, in which citizens elect their leaders and enjoy human rights guaranteed by the rule of law. "Not all of that was accomplished by the United States," he concluded, "but it began with the American model." This "remarkable triumph of American ideas" leaves him in the "long-run view . . . optimistic." The neocon had the same worry as the rest of the Big Think gang: that Americans, bloodied by Iraq, scorned by former allies, ill-served by squabbling leaders, will elect to pull back from a menacing world. "People could say: 'This is crazy! Bush bit off more than we could chew. We have a good life here . . . let's just batten down the hatches,' " Muravchik said. My mind drifted back to that evening in Rome, and my vision of the happy lives of the formerly dominant. "The withdrawal of American power would stir fears all over the world," Muravchik went on, puncturing my reverie. "It would create temptations, because the people who rule nations are very ambitious men. Some would act on those ambitions. The result would be lots of bloodshed, and at some point, we would be dragged back in." At that point, history suggests, things would look even worse than they do now. I came away from Big Think Boulevard having reached a few conclusions, for what they are worth. The end of history was a dream, lovely and fleeting. While we slumbered, the grass grew very tall. Now we have to cut it, and if there is an easy way to accomplish the job, no one knows what it is. And last: The very hope that such work would ever become easy -- the eternal but vain wish that history will level off into a broad and tranquil, sunlit meadow -- is a big part of the reason we're in such trouble. The most enticing dreams can be the most dangerous. David Von Drehle is a Magazine staff writer. He will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at 1 p.m. at washingtonpost.com/liveonline. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jya at pipeline.com Sun Nov 21 20:26:55 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 20:26:55 -0800 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Jesus, Bob, this and the Schwartz hosannah for Free Fallujah are about as bad a puke as anything you've posted. These vomitoria are upchucked by the hundreds by professional writers usually under contract, or angling for one, or in the case of the eye-witness in the propaganda unit of the Corps. Go over to DoD's and the mil departments' and warmongering foreign policy web sites and you'll see a lot of this juvenalia posted urging dads and sons to get hot about serving the nation. Formulaic dreck to generate fodder for the grinding machine. DoD puts on these shows several times a week, and all spokespersons speak the same lingo -- Stepford wiving. On Friday DoD rolled out two vile initiatives claiming to support the troops. Remember that when a military action like Fallujah is completely unnecessary except to display power by hamburgering youngsters and civilians, the glorious war stories come fast and furious to counter the uptick of funerals and VA hospital lifetime inductees. BTW, Bob, what's your draft status? Ready to die or lose your limbs for a mil spin doctors' salary boost? The NY Times today describes a Marine sniper getting his head exploded by an insurgent sniper, a day or so after the Marine predicted it would happen, whistling dixie, narcotized by the Green Cunt. From njohnsn at njohnsn.com Sun Nov 21 19:09:04 2004 From: njohnsn at njohnsn.com (Neil Johnson) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 21:09:04 -0600 Subject: Senators try to pull a fast one, almost get away with it. Message-ID: <200411212124.18823.njohnsn@njohnsn.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 From: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_11_14.php#004074 : This weekend Congress was working on a massive $388 billion omnibus spending bill that will cover all manner of federal spending. But at the request of Rep. Ernest Istook of Oklahoma, chairman of the House Appropriations Transportation Subcommittee, a special provision was inserted into the bill which allows the Chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees or their "agents" to review any American's tax return with no restrictions whatsoever. Specifically, none of the privacy law restrictions -- or the criminal and civil penalties tied to them -- would apply when the Chair or anybody he or she designates as his or her "agent" looked at your tax return. The exact language of the provision is as follows ... "Hereinafter, notwithstanding any other provision of law governing the disclosure of income tax returns or return information, upon written request of the Chairman of the House or Senate Committee on Appropriations, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service shall allow agents designated by such Chairman access to Internal Revenue Service facilities and any tax returns or return information contained therein." The provision was slipped into the bill at the last moment. And, at least on the Democratic side, no one was told about it until some Dems caught it at the last moment. Senate Republicans quickly backtracked, calling the provision a mistake or snafu and insisting they knew nothing about it. You can see some of the back-and-forth that took place on the Senate floor in this AP piece at CNN. Sen. Stevens of Alaska, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, originally blamed the provision on a 'staffer'. But later, according to the AP, Sen. Frist and "congressional aides" said it was inserted at the behest of Rep. Istook. - -- Neil Johnson http://www.njohnsn.com GPG key ID: F16D6484A GPG key Finger Print: DD84 677A D3C4 9A84 37B8 7AD7 8A8A A5AB F16D 648A -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFBoVviioqlq/FtZIoRAtVKAKCHNSqLq6iyD1bXqL/SwLOvyCVFmACfXasq wD5BZ+ue5MNgULWBoKLCnBQ= =Cs2Y -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Sun Nov 21 18:23:11 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 21:23:11 -0500 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 8:26 PM -0800 11/21/04, John Young wrote: >Jesus, Bob, this and the Schwartz hosannah for Free Fallujah >are about as bad a puke as anything you've posted. and... >BTW, Bob, what's your draft status? Born in 1959. One of two years in most of the last century that were draft-exempt. :-) By the way, John, did you know that Bush Is Going To Revive The Draft??? Or was it that Bush Lied and People Died??? Or maybe, it was that John Kerry Was In Viet Nam??? One man's "puke" is another man's "original thought", apparently. Cheers, RAH - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaFN2MPxH8jf3ohaEQKAkACfX125eCH0tKyejTciP+hCk0tCNq8AnjEh i7Mmc/ovoC/038TBcXvzozCs =DL6t -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From hadmut at danisch.de Sun Nov 21 12:36:01 2004 From: hadmut at danisch.de (Hadmut Danisch) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 21:36:01 +0100 Subject: E-Mail Authentication Will Not End Spam, Panelists Say In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20041121203600.GA3519@danisch.de> On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 04:20:59PM -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > > Still, panelists insisted authentication is a vital first step. After that, > they said, could come a system that evaluates the "reputation" of senders, > perhaps using a process that marks good e-mail with an electronic seal of > approval. which is, btw, not really correct. I was one of those panelists, and I explicitely stated that authentication is only the first step, but an important step, which requires a second step (literally in my slides). So the first statement seems to be a quote of my talk. But my statement about the second step was that "reputation" does not work on an international scale, this works in the U.S. only. It might even be unlawful in Europe. My proposal was to do the second step individually for each country. regards Hadmut From bill.stewart at pobox.com Sun Nov 21 23:34:53 2004 From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart) Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 23:34:53 -0800 Subject: Latest Tasteful Video Game Message-ID: <6.0.3.0.0.20041121232934.03bf6e70@pop.idiom.com> Slsahdot reports that MSNBC reports http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6549265/ that there's a new video game "JFK Reloaded" http://www.jfkreloaded.com/start/ that lets you explore the Kennedy assassination from Lee Harvey Oswald's perspective. Neither the article nor the website indicates whether you can also take shots from the Grassy Knoll or other locations, or whether you get +3 Magic Bullets as opposed to regular bullets. The authors claim that they're trying to let people see that the Lone Gunman theory is plausible by letting them try it out. Ted Kennedy's staff put out a highly negative statement, but didn't call for censorship. ---- Bill Stewart bill.stewart at pobox.com From chuckw at quantumlinux.com Mon Nov 22 01:11:45 2004 From: chuckw at quantumlinux.com (Chuck Wolber) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 01:11:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, 21 Nov 2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > At 8:26 PM -0800 11/21/04, John Young wrote: %< SNIP %< > By the way, John, did you know that Bush Is Going To Revive The Draft??? Troll -1 > Or was it that Bush Lied and People Died??? True +1 > Or maybe, it was that John Kerry Was In Viet Nam??? Irrelevant... > One man's "puke" is another man's "original thought", apparently. Looks like you came out even there b^HBob ;) -Chuck -- http://www.quantumlinux.com Quantum Linux Laboratories, LLC. ACCELERATING Business with Open Technology "The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." - FDR From rforno at infowarrior.org Mon Nov 22 07:22:27 2004 From: rforno at infowarrior.org (Richard Forno) Date: November 22, 2004 7:22:27 PM EST Subject: FW: Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Message-ID: Documents Not a new thing, but an FYI anyway. :) -rick Infowarrior.org Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1093&e=4&u=/pcworld/ 20041122 /tc_pcworld/118664 Mon Nov 22, 4:00 AM ET Jason Tuohey, Medill News Service WASHINGTON--Next time you make a printout from your color laser printer, shine an LED flashlight beam on it and examine it closely with a magnifying glass. You might be able to see the small, scattered yellow dots printer there that could be used to trace the document back to you. According to experts, several printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those machines produce. Governments, including the United States, already use the hidden markings to track counterfeiters. Peter Crean, a senior research fellow at Xerox, says his company's laser printers, copiers and multifunction workstations, such as its WorkCentre Pro series, put the "serial number of each machine coded in little yellow dots" in every printout. The millimeter-sized dots appear about every inch on a page, nestled within the printed words and margins. "It's a trail back to you, like a license plate," Crean says. The dots' minuscule size, covering less than one-thousandth of the page, along with their color combination of yellow on white, makes them invisible to the naked eye, Crean says. One way to determine if your color laser is applying this tracking process is to shine a blue LED light--say, from a keychain laser flashlight--on your page and use a magnifier. Crime Fighting vs. Privacy Laser-printing technology makes it incredibly easy to counterfeit money and documents, and Crean says the dots, in use in some printers for decades, allow law enforcement to identify and track down counterfeiters. However, they could also be employed to track a document back to any person or business that printed it. Although the technology has existed for a long time, printer companies have not been required to notify customers of the feature. Lorelei Pagano, a counterfeiting specialist with the U.S. Secret Service, stresses that the government uses the embedded serial numbers only when alerted to a forgery. "The only time any information is gained from these documents is purely in [the case of] a criminal act," she says. John Morris, a lawyer for The Center for Democracy and Technology, says, "That type of assurance doesn't really assure me at all, unless there's some type of statute." He adds, "At a bare minimum, there needs to be a notice to consumers." If the practice disturbs you, don't bother trying to disable the encoding mechanism--you'll probably just break your printer. Crean describes the device as a chip located "way in the machine, right near the laser" that embeds the dots when the document "is about 20 billionths of a second" from printing. "Standard mischief won't get you around it," Crean adds. Neither Crean nor Pagano has an estimate of how many laser printers, copiers, and multifunction devices track documents, but they say that the practice is commonplace among major printer companies. "The industry absolutely has been extraordinarily helpful [to law enforcement]," Pagano says. According to Pagano, counterfeiting cases are brought to the Secret Service, which checks the documents, determines the brand and serial number of the printer, and contacts the company. Some, like Xerox, have a customer database, and they share the information with the government. Crean says Xerox and the government have a good relationship. "The U.S. government had been on board all along--they would actually come out to our labs," Crean says. History Unlike ink jet printers, laser printers, fax machines, and copiers fire a laser through a mirror and series of lenses to embed the document or image on a page. Such devices range from a little over $100 to more than $1000, and are designed for both home and office. Crean says Xerox pioneered this technology about 20 years ago, to assuage fears that their color copiers could easily be used to counterfeit bills. "We developed the first (encoding mechanism) in house because several countries had expressed concern about allowing us to sell the printers in their country," Crean says. Since then, he says, many other companies have adopted the practice. The United States is not the only country teaming with private industry to fight counterfeiters. A recent article points to the Dutch government as using similar anticounterfeiting methods, and cites Canon as a company with encoding technology. Canon USA declined to comment. ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen at leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 22 04:51:07 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 07:51:07 -0500 Subject: [osint] Man returned to France after U.S. refuses entry Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - --- begin forwarded text To: "Bruce Tefft" Thread-Index: AcTQKrhgI3WPsIUuRROdx12oO2BMqgADm0dw From: "Bruce Tefft" Mailing-List: list osint at yahoogroups.com; contact osint-owner at yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list osint at yahoogroups.com Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 21:16:14 -0500 Subject: [osint] Man returned to France after U.S. refuses entry Reply-To: osint at yahoogroups.com Man returned to France after U.S. refuses entry Officials: Traveler appeared on no-fly list (CNN) -- A traveler departed on a flight to France Sunday after authorities refused him entry to the United States, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said. Authorities identified the traveler as being on a so-called no-fly list on Saturday, and diverted his Paris-to-Washington flight to Bangor, Maine, where it was met by federal officials, the Transportation Security Administration said. The man was taken off the plane, and another man traveling with him chose to depart the aircraft. The Air France flight then proceeded to Washington Dulles International Airport without the two men, who spent the night in Bangor's Penobscot County Jail. Sgt. Steven Slowik, shift supervisor at the jail, identified the men as Ahmed Lhacti, 47, and Mohammad Oukassou, 76, both Moroccan. Slowik said federal authorities had not told jail officials which man was on the no-fly list, or why. U.S. authorities use no-fly lists to screen suspected terrorists from flying on airlines. Due to mistaken identity, some travelers have been wrongly denied permission to fly or to enter the United States. While the men were being processed in Bangor, agents determined that the man on the no-fly list was traveling with an expired passport, and he was denied entry, said Barry Morrissey with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The man's apparent traveling companion chose to return to Paris with him Sunday. A TSA spokeswoman said Saturday that Air France should not have allowed the passenger to board the flight to the United States while in Paris. Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/11/21/flight.diverted/index.html - ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM - --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> - -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-osint at yahoogroups.com. - -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor bisoldi at intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint at yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ - --- end forwarded text - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaHqJ8PxH8jf3ohaEQKwqwCg9Ko1FdjrtK6qAd96JKXkKEXhOpAAoOrL 4qxNoh1en9/bkbDNDuYb3Caz =Sydn -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From ben at algroup.co.uk Mon Nov 22 02:35:28 2004 From: ben at algroup.co.uk (Ben Laurie) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:35:28 +0000 Subject: Your source code, for sale In-Reply-To: <20041108185124.9125057E2A@finney.org> References: <20041108185124.9125057E2A@finney.org> Message-ID: <41A1C0F0.5060800@algroup.co.uk> Hal Finney wrote: > Ben Laurie writes: > >>How do you make the payment already "gone" without using a third party? > > > Of course there has to be a third party in the form of the currency > issuer. If it is someone like e-gold, they could do as I suggested and > add a feature where the buyer could transfer funds irrevocably into > an escrow account which would be jointly controlled by the buyer and > the seller. This way the payment is already "gone" from the POV of the > buyer and if the seller completes the transaction, the buyer has less > incentive to cheat him. > > In the case of an ecash mint, a simple method would be for the seller to > give the buyer a proto-coin, that is, the value to be signed at the mint, > but in blinded form. The buyer could take this to the mint and pay to > get it signed. The resulting value is no good to the buyer because he > doesn't know the blinding factors, so from his POV the money (he paid > to get it signed) is already "gone". He can prove to the seller that > he did it by using the Guillou-Quisquater protocol to prove in ZK that > he knows the mint's signature on the value the seller gave him. > > The seller thereby knows that the buyer's costs are sunk, and so the > seller is motivated to complete the transaction. The buyer has nothing > to lose and might as well pay the seller by giving him the signed value > from the mint, which the seller can unblind and (provably, verifiably) > be able to deposit. Cute. You could adapt Lucre to do this. Cheers, Ben. -- http://www.apache-ssl.org/ben.html http://www.thebunker.net/ "There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit." - Robert Woodruff From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com Mon Nov 22 07:38:28 2004 From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 10:38:28 -0500 (GMT-05:00) Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report Message-ID: <6730221.1101137908535.JavaMail.root@daisy.psp.pas.earthlink.net> >From: "R.A. Hettinga" >Sent: Nov 21, 2004 9:23 PM >To: John Young , cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report ... >By the way, John, did you know that Bush Is Going To Revive The Draft??? I know this is currently known to be false by all informed opinion, but I don't think it's crazy to worry about it. If we want to fight high-tech wars like the invasion of Iraq, lots of conscript troops aren't that useful. If we want to occupy places like Iraq, we need people to do the occupying, and it's clear that there's some strain on our forces now. Conscript troops might very well be useful for that kind of work. Suppose we invade and occupy Iran next. Where will the soldiers needed to hold down occupied territory come from? Suppose we follow up with Syria, which is surely about as repressive and nasty a place as Saddam's Iraq. Three things are very clear about the current situation: a. A lot of people are finding out that their military obligations are going to be longer and much less pleasant than they expected. This is going to have a big impact on recruiting in the future. b. If we just want to hold down what we've got, we have enough troops to do it, but if we want to really go on a democratizing bender in the Middle East, we'll need more troops. c. It's not at all clear we won't be taking some action against Iran in the next year. Hopefully, that won't involve invading them, but it could. >Cheers, >RAH --John From jya at pipeline.com Mon Nov 22 11:21:49 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:21:49 -0800 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <6730221.1101137908535.JavaMail.root@daisy.psp.pas.earthlin k.net> Message-ID: The Selective Service website unctuously declares there is no draft foreseen at the moment and lists defeat of recent congressional efforts to institute the draft. However, it emphasizes that the agency is required by law to remain at the ready to immediately institute a draft upon notice. As part of this responsibility It polls educational instutitions every 18 months requesting updated information on draft-age youngsters who are receiving federal funding, the most recent of these polls here: http://cryptome.org/sss110404.txt A single harsh attack on US interests could precipitate a draft, and override public opposition in a flash. The military has nearly exhausted it National Guard and Reserve options, and will not give up the long-standing strategic policy of being able to fight two major wars at once. Thus most military resources are tied up not in the Middle East but in pre-positioned locations determined by the 2-wars policy. Whether the US military should forego its 2-war policy and use its forces in ways more appropriate to current threats will be determined by those interest groups who benefit from the horrifically expensive and magnificently wasteful 2-war boondoggle. Two generations of military personnel have been trained for the 2-war threat, and almost none have faced actual combat. This inexperience shows in unconventional warfare. again and again. Big war planners throw big war resources are small targets, take the applause for the phony war show, as in Fallujah, and discount lives lost because the do not show up on big war statistical-casualties diagrams. Big wars expect big losses, far more than volunteers can provide. Indeed, volunteer military personnel -- officers and enlisted -- are careful to throw conscripts into the breech as if they are expendable ammunition, the more thrown the higher the credit obtained in charts of capacity, not charts of smarts. Recall Kennedy embraced the counter-insurgent tool with support for Special Forces, but these forces remain a marginal part of the military, not least because they do not require much material and political resouces to do their duty. Big defense, and never forget, big intelligence to feed the need for big defense, are far superior ar generating contracts, jobs, careers and campaign contributions. The US is totally addicted to profligate, wasteful ineffective big war policy, primarily because there is little risk in parading might, bragging about it, threatening with it, compared to using it. Every application of US military might since WW2 has failed. STF up and pay your taxes, asshole, encourage your sons and daughters to sacrifice for the nation -- well, not really just tell the poor fuckers the military is a good safe job. Don't get drafted, that's for losers. Any road, killing the big war planners at home where they feel safe, is sure to come for their mighty military does not how to fight that war so busy is it parading forces against imaginary wargame-type evil empires of the day. From chris at eff.org Mon Nov 22 11:29:11 2004 From: chris at eff.org (Chris Palmer) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:29:11 -0800 Subject: E-Mail Authentication Will Not End Spam, Panelists Say In-Reply-To: <16797.22325.475253.290257@desk.crynwr.com> References: <16797.22325.475253.290257@desk.crynwr.com> Message-ID: <20041122192911.GI13392@eff.org> Russell Nelson writes: > Yes, this is true. John Gilmore is a pain in the ass for standing on > his rights (some government types might say *fucking* pain in the > ass), but he is correct. ALL of the effort spent to secure open > relays was basically wasted effort, because spammers just moved on to > insecure client machines. The proper route to control spam is to > involve users in prioritizing their email, so that their friend's > email comes first, followed by anybody they've sent mail to, followed > by people they've gotten email from before, followed by mailing list > mail, followed by email from strangers (which is where all the spam > is). All of that relies on email authentication to work. Spammers will start hijacking authenticated servers. The solution is to automatically classify messages according to user preference. Good software to do this is already in mainstream MUAs, and even better software to do it is open source (google for "weka machine learning" as an example). Someday (hopefully soon), MUAs will be able to automatically classify messages into more than two categories. There is already phenomenal software (reeltwo.com; commercial but based on Weka) to do this very quickly and accurately. -- Chris Palmer Staff Technologist, Electronic Frontier Foundation 415 436 9333 x124 (desk), 415 305 5842 (cell) 81C0 E11D CE73 4390 B6C7 3415 B286 CD8F 68E4 09CD [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature] From ribbit at speakeasy.net Mon Nov 22 12:18:06 2004 From: ribbit at speakeasy.net (Todd Ellner) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 12:18:06 -0800 (Pacific Standard Time) Subject: Gov't Orders Air Passenger Data for Test References: <200411220020.iAM0KUWT018543@new.toad.com> Message-ID: <41A2497E.000005.02136@TODD-LI5FA4H5M0> >The whole exercise ignores the question of whether the Executive Branch >has the power to make a list of citizens (or lawfully admitted non-citizens) >and refuse those people their constitutional right to travel in the United >States. >So why are armed goons keeping them off airplanes, trains, buses, and >ships? Because the US constitution is like the USSR constitution -- >nicely written, but unenforced? Because the public is too afraid of >the government, or the terrorists, or Emmanuel Goldstein, or the >boogie-man, to assert the rights their ancestors died to protect? Tsk. Don't you know that you're with us or you're with the terrorists? If you're not careful the Justice Department will decide that you are a "person of interest" and whisk you off to an undisclosed location until the war on terror is over with a stopover in Saudi or Egypt for torture. A lifetime ago Franklin Roosevelt said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Today the government is peddling fear itself. From bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk Mon Nov 22 06:00:22 2004 From: bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk (ken) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 14:00:22 +0000 Subject: A Tale of Two Maps In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <41A1F0F6.9040702@students.bbk.ac.uk> R.A. Hettinga posted: > > > Tech Central Station > > A Tale of Two Maps > > By Patrick Cox > > Here is a map showing U.S. population density in 1990: > > Comparisons of these two maps make startlingly obvious the extent to which > population density predicts voter behavior. Maybe the causality runs the other way. People who are more "left-wing" (whatever that exaclty might mean) are more likely to enjoy living in cities. Over here in Britain that certainly seems to have happened. There's a churn in city populations as young adults move in to study or get jobs, then move out to suburbs or small towns later. Some stay, and they tend to be the ones who are less politically conservative. Sometimes I think that political conservatives just don't *like* people as much. I mean that quite literally - my most right-wing friends are less greagarious than my left-wing friends. They keep themselves to themselves more. They stay in doors more and when they are out they are more likely to stick to their own cars. They don't like travelling in public transport, or going to noisy pubs. They seem to actively dislike social situations where they rub up against large numbers of strangers. And the Anarchists have the best parties. By which I mean Euro-style left-wing Sovcialist Anarchists of course, not grumpy American survivalist Libertarians. "Get off my land!" is a characteristic right-wing stereotype. "Whose round is it anyway?" is not. Like the old song says "As soon as this pub closes, the Revolution starts!" > The standard, rather unexamined, assumption is that rural America has more > traditional cultural values that are associated with the Republican Party. > These include religious, family and pro-military values. Urban population > centers and surrounding environs, on the other hand, are associated with > more progressive values associated with Democratic Party. These values are > assumed to be more secular, progressive and anti-military. In Britain, things may be different in your country, inner-city life is in many ways more old-fashioned than country life or suburban life. Us city dwellers are more likely to walk to work or school, less likley to drive. We're more likely to use public transport. When we buy things we go to small corner shops and the shop-keepers might even know us. They might not know our names, or even speak our language, but they probably recognise our faces. For some time now (in England, things may be different elsewhere) city-dwellers and inner-suburbanites have been more likely to go to church than people in the country or outer suburbs. London is the only part of Britain where churchgoing has gone up in the last ten years (though its everywhere lower than anywhere in the USA - consistently less than ten percent) Now teh last census tells us that one-parent families are rarer in London than in the country or in smaller towns. (See last week's Economist magazine http://www.economist.com/World/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3405966 - full text available only to subscribers) Also the proportion of people employed by government is smaller in London than the national average, and the proportion of self-employed or small businesses is greater. [...] > Another fascinating and easily verifiable correlation may be tied only > indirectly to the characteristics of population density. The red states, > that voted for Bush in both of the last elections, it seems, are net > receivers of federal tax revenues. Another thing US has in common with UK - large cities are net contributors to tax reevenues. From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 22 11:31:11 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 14:31:11 -0500 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 11:21 AM -0800 11/22/04, John Young wrote: >Every application of US military might since WW2 has failed. Korea. Yes. Korea. Hell, the entire Cold War, John. Including your beloved Viet Nam, which was a *battle*, not a war in same. When Castro, and North Korea, etc., finally fall, then the cold war will be over. Heck, when China's current gerontocracy dies off and has an *election*, the war will be over. They're already starting to have private property. So much for "communal" ownership. Once property is completely transferrable, the last nail will be in the coffin. Just because, like some ancient techtonic seafloor, your political compass ossified in the general direction of Moscow, ca 1965, doesn't mean that the magnetic pole's there anymore, John. Heck, that pole's actually flipped polarity, last time I looked. The current war against western civilization started in the 1920's, when Qutb started writing his Moslem triumphalist blather in reaction to the complete collapse of the Turkish Caliphate in the wake of World War I. It'll be finished when the residents of its modern equivalent has property rights and personal freedom. As for the the article that started this thread, I'm merely pointing out that we're entering a period of *Republican* triumphalism. That it has gotten completely up your nose is no surprise, of course. Cheers, RAH - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaI/cMPxH8jf3ohaEQIWSACdFGd11vOhNiHxP95Cg/Aulmqjk7sAoJhT gr46RwVQgpaBsW3ILgZ3jjOy =s5VA -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 22 11:35:06 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 14:35:06 -0500 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <6730221.1101137908535.JavaMail.root@daisy.psp.pas.earthlink.net> References: <6730221.1101137908535.JavaMail.root@daisy.psp.pas.earthlink.net> Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 10:38 AM -0500 11/22/04, John Kelsey wrote: >we need people to do the occupying, I'm pretty heretical about this. I think if we had decapitated Iraq, went after our military objectives, like securing what was a threat to us, including Iraq's senior military and political leadership and their weapons stockpiles, and left political order to emerge there on its own, like we did in Afghanistan, we could have done it with Rumsfeld's original 50,000 troop estimate. No. Seriously. :-). Cheers, RAH - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaI/dMPxH8jf3ohaEQJ5LgCg+nsmLf5Kb2RNVxkE9RswdxKydq0AoL1z TF3QBcMshgCaqfzRPyzXgyNj =rPJH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Mon Nov 22 12:17:36 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 15:17:36 -0500 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >Hell, the entire Cold War, John. Including your beloved Viet Nam, which was >a *battle*, not a war in same. When Castro, and North Korea, etc., finally >fall, then the cold war will be over. That war was won (or lost, depending on how you look at it) by the inherent failures of communism itself, not because the US Government was some kind of champion of freedom. As I've gone to pains to point out, I think a good (though not unassailable case) can be made showing that the US probably slowed down free market development in certain places. Hell--East Asian communism might rightfully be blamed on the outcome of World War I and the need to create some kind of anti-western hegemony. A libertarian might possibly look at the US Government and it's legions of "Conservatives" as being a sort of tag-along (at best) or leech, grabbing a ride on the back of certain industries and (of course) "championing them" against other technologies (eg, defense, oil, autos...). Of course, neocons will turn red at the notion that they promote a very strong form of government intervention into private industry... As for... >Heck, when China's current >gerontocracy dies off and has an *election*, the war will be over. They're >already starting to have private property. So much for "communal" >ownership. Once property is completely transferrable, the last nail will be >in the coffin. Don't count it. Capitalism, like communism, will likely take on it's own particularly Chinese flavor when hitting the high Refractive Index of that culture. China's population will near 1.5 Billion before it starts to shrink again, so don't look for real estate to be a perpetual contract for a century or two, if ever. Private Property in general (outside of real estate) has of course existed in China for decades now. -TD From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Mon Nov 22 12:40:48 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 15:40:48 -0500 Subject: "F*ck the South" Message-ID: A hilarious rant. You can hear this guy's anger ain't just for show, too--> www.fuckthesouth.com -TD Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are states we want to keep. And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really? Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard? No, No. Get the fuck out. We're not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don't get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately "Oooooh I've been a state for almost a hundred years" dickheads. Fuck off. Arrogant? You wanna talk about us Northeasterners being fucking arrogant? What's more American than arrogance? Hmmm? Maybe horsies? I don't think so. Arrogance is the fucking cornerstone of what it means to be American. And I wouldn't be so fucking arrogant if I wasn't paying for your fucking bridges, bitch. All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you, so shut up and enjoy your fucking Tennessee Valley Authority electricity and your fancy highways that we paid for. And the next time Florida gets hit by a hurricane you can come crying to us if you want to, but you're the ones who built on a fucking swamp. "Let the Spanish keep it, its a shithole," we said, but you had to have your fucking orange juice. The next dickwad who says, "Its your money, not the government's money" is gonna get their ass kicked. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and pay the least... can you guess? Go on, guess. Thats right, motherfucker, they're red states. And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? Its too easy, asshole, theyre blue states. Its not your money, assholes, its fucking our money. What was that Real American Value you were spouting a minute ago? Self reliance? Try this for self reliance: buy your own fucking stop signs, assholes. Lets talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? Its fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marriage universe. Yes, thats right, the state you love to tie around the neck of anyone to the left of Strom Thurmond has the lowest divorce rate in the fucking nation. Think thats just some aberration? How about this: 9 of the 10 lowest divorce rates are fucking blue states, asshole, and most are in the Northeast, where our values suck so bad. And where are the highest divorce rates? Care to fucking guess? 10 of the top 10 are fucking red-ass we're-so-fucking-moral states. And while Nevada is the worst, the Bible Belt is doing its fucking part. But two guys making out is going to fucking ruin marriage for you? Yeah? Seems like you're ruining it pretty well on your own, you little bastards. Oh, but that's ok because you go to church, right? I mean you do, right? Cause we fucking get to hear about it every goddamn year at election time. Yes, we're fascinated by how you get up every Sunday morning and sing, and then you're fucking towers of moral superiority. Yeah, that's a workable formula. Maybe us fucking Northerners don't talk about religion as much as you because we're not so busy sinning, hmmm? Ever think of that, you self-righteous assholes? No, you're too busy erecting giant stone tablets of the Ten Commandments in buildings paid for by the fucking Northeast Liberal Elite. And who has the highest murder rates in the nation? It ain't us up here in the North, assholes. Well this gravy train is fucking over. Take your liberal-bashing, federal-tax-leaching, confederate-flag-waving, holier-than-thou, hypocritical bullshit and shove it up your ass. And no, you can't have your fucking convention in New York next time. Fuck off. From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 22 12:52:29 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 15:52:29 -0500 Subject: Microchip passport critics say ID theft possible Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 USA Today Microchip passport critics say ID theft possible The Associated Press The United States hasn't issued any microchip-equipped passports yet, but as the Department of State tests different prototypes, the international standards for the passports are under fire from privacy advocates who worry the technology won't protect travelers from identity thieves. The American Civil Liberties union has raised alarms and even an executive at one of the companies developing a prototype for the State Department calls the international standards woefully inadequate. The international standards for "electronic" passports were set by the U.N.-affiliated International Civil Aviation Organization, which has worked on standards for machine-readable passports since 1968. On the latest passports, the agency has "taken a 'keep it simple' approach, which, unfortunately, really disregards a basic privacy approach and leaves out the basic security methods we would have expected to have been incorporated for the security of the documents," said Neville Pattinson, an executive at Axalto North America, which is working on a prototype U.S. electronic passport. As part of heightened security post-Sept. 11, all new U.S. passports issued by the end of 2005 are expected to have a chip containing the holders' name, birth date and issuing office, as well as a "biometric" identifier - a photo of the holders' face. The photo is the international standard for biometrics, but countries are free to add other biometrics, such as fingerprints, for greater accuracy. Privacy advocates have complained about the security standards for the passports, but Pattinson is the most prominent person involved in their creation to express concern that they could become prey for identity thieves if safeguards aren't standardized. A slide in a presentation he gives says, "Don't lose the public's confidence at the get go." Another asks, "Who is up for a black eye?" The international passport standards call for "a very sophisticated smart card device," that uses a chip and an antenna embedded in the passports' covers, Pattinson said. Unlike cheaper and dumber RFID tags, the passport chips would be microprocessors that could send one piece of information at a time in answer to queries from a machine reader. They could also be equipped with multiple layers of encryption for security. The international standards spell out ways the passports could incorporate more protection from identity thieves, but they make those methods optional. Under the standards, information on the chip could be picked up by someone who wires a briefcase with a reader, then swings it within inches of a passports, Pattinson said. Over a greater distance, an interloper could eavesdrop on border control devices reading the passports, he said. "There's no security built into it," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program, at the American Civil Liberties Union. "This will enable identity theft and put Americans at some risk when they travel internationally." One rudimentary way to protect electronic passports from identity thieves is to wrap them in tinfoil, which blocks radio waves. A single size Doritos bag would do the trick. Protecting border control agents' readers with a metal shield would protect against eavesdropping. The International Civil Aviation Organization and State Department say they're looking at more organized methods. The privacy issues "have come up and they are being looked at," said Denis Schagnon, a spokesman for ICAO. "This is a process that is being implemented over the next few years, it is not something that happens overnight." One way to fight identity theft is already in the standards, he said: The passports will have built-in encrypted authentication to let electronic readers know they are original documents, not forgeries. The international standard "is obviously a baseline," said Angela Aggeler, spokesperson for the bureau of consular affairs at the State Department. "This is something we continue to develop and work on. (Privacy) is the thing that is driving a lot of our considerations. Personal privacy issues are of paramount consideration." Other countries are also making the switch to microchipped, biometric passports, at U.S. request. Under the Patriot Act, visitors from 27 countries whose citizens don't need visas to visit the United States will need electronic passports, too. The United States originally asked that visitors from those countries have the electronic passports by this October. President Bush in August gave the countries an extra year to issue them; they will be required by next October. In testimony before a House committee, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that other countries were finding the switch "daunting," as was the United States. The Government Printing Office is manufacturing test passports using chip packages provided by four companies, it said when the contracts were awarded in October. The National Institute of Standards will then test the prototypes to see if they meet durability, security and electronic requirements. The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security are also testing the passports, Aggeler said. One or more companies will win a contract for the passports by the end of the year, according to the printing office's schedule, and the U.S. government would begin issuing them to officials and diplomats starting early next year. The companies under contract are Axalto, whose parent company is headquartered in France, SuperCom, Infineon Technologies and BearingPoint, which have been awarded contracts worth a total of $373,000. BearingPoint is the only company headquartered in the United States. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaJRlsPxH8jf3ohaEQJZcwCgm4/0wYTRd4NvCI4rx/Ii2/+nvMUAn3wB Iz4VwYjQJoZMuzFhm4LUPzGz =Y9yI -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 22 14:44:33 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 17:44:33 -0500 Subject: We're from the government, and we're here to grope you... Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 USNews.com Home Issues 11/29/04 Nation & World An Intrusive new search Thanksgiving travelers may be in for a bit of a shock as they plod through security lines at the nation's airports. Passengers chosen for secondary screening or whose clothing appears suspicious or bulky are now subject to frisking--in a pretty intrusive way. In late September, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began allowing security checkpoint screeners to manually pat down women's breasts and the genital and derriere regions of both sexes during searches. The point is to find hidden explosives while machines that might perform the job are still being tested. "I know it's not pleasant," says Rep. John Mica, chairman of the House aviation subcommittee, "but until we get the technology, what are the options?" The air marshals hasn't exactly taken off The new policy reflects an increasing sense of urgency about the lack of explosives-detection equipment. Today, only a small percentage of carry-on luggage and passengers is tested for bombs. In its final report, the 9/11 commission said the TSA must give "priority attention" to checking passengers for explosives. In August, two Russian airliners crashed, almost certainly because of explosives two Chechen women had concealed beneath their clothing--underscoring the danger. Complaints. The TSA policy says that passengers can request that the new screening be done in a private room and requires that the frisker be the same gender as the traveler. But graduate student Sommer Gentry, 27, says that male screeners at Boston's Logan International Airport tried to pat her down while a female screener at Baltimore-Washington International Airport roughly jabbed a metal-detector wand between her legs. "How can I feel safe," Gentry said, " when the TSA is ordering me to let strangers put their hands all over my most intimate places?" TSA spokesman Mark Hatfield says the new policy generates only about a dozen complaints a week, but there have been reports of passengers, mostly women, growing angry during searches. The TSA is currently testing machines that could eliminate the need for such frisking, like "trace portals" that blow puffs of air at passengers to dislodge and sniff for bits of explosive material. But it will be a while before the machines are ready for widespread use. In the meantime, the TSA will continue the pat-downs and train screeners to explain the process more carefully. "These are very valid security measures," says Hatfield. "They get at a very specific potential threat." But that's not enough for Gentry. "I am now," she says, "an ex-frequent flier." -Samantha Levine - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaJt7sPxH8jf3ohaEQLe1QCg1Fn29ta6DuoUkfFwFwa4W8d0RZsAoIb3 clsWWFX+kMxKx9Pc2I7jVWkG =O4K6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From dave at farber.net Mon Nov 22 18:35:49 2004 From: dave at farber.net (David Farber) Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 21:35:49 -0500 Subject: [IP] Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Message-ID: Documents X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.619) Reply-To: dave at farber.net Begin forwarded message: From isn at c4i.org Tue Nov 23 03:24:09 2004 From: isn at c4i.org (InfoSec News) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 05:24:09 -0600 (CST) Subject: [ISN] Hackers Pocket W16 Billion in Cyber Cash Message-ID: http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200411/kt2004112315444353460.htm By Chung Ah-young Staff Reporter 11-23-2004 The state prosecution on Tuesday indicted two computer hackers and one of their accomplices on charges of stealing cyber money worth 16.4 billion won ($15.3 million) by infiltrating one of the largest online game firms. The Seoul Central District Public ProsecutorsB!B/ Office said the suspects pocketed the largest amount of cyber money ever obtained in hacking crimes. Investigators said the suspects allegedly broke into the online game site to steal cyber cash, which can be exchanged for real money, and sold it to cyber brokers on Sept. 24-27. Prosecutors said that suspects plotted the crime beforehand through closely reviewing the companyB!B/s electronic payment system and conducted practice runs beforehand. They found that the Web site run by the major game company has a loophole that enabled them to manipulate file contents. Before committing the crime, the suspects did a mock hacking via the service and stole cyber cash worth 27 million won in March and June. Prosecutors said they connected to the companyB!B/s information network system 227 times during the Chusok holiday in September. They illegally charged mileage points worth 164.7 billion won through 152 identification numbers that they set up beforehand. The suspects then allegedly traded stolen cyber cash at 750 million won to a broker, identified as Kim, who also raked in a total of 168 million won by selling it to other brokers through e-mails or identification numbers. Prosecutors said the companyB!B/s damages have been minimized because it immediately shut down the use of the identification numbers right after the crime occurred. However, prosecutors did not exclude the possibility that more damages are expected because game mileage is vulnerable to illegal trading and is circulated through the black market between cyber traders. The amount of cyber money they stole, estimated at mileage points worth 164.7 billion won, is equivalent to the amount only after users have spent 16.4 billion won in buying items or using services the company provides. _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/ - --- end forwarded text - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaNZbMPxH8jf3ohaEQKEMgCg6TxKkxhn/8P1WfjGq3+wD8olfP0AnRcQ G0KREwbqVESINy5ooxPQsctk =6IT1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com Tue Nov 23 07:47:18 2004 From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 07:47:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report Message-ID: <28135658.1101224840677.JavaMail.root@bigbird.psp.pas.earthlink.net> >From: "R.A. Hettinga" >Sent: Nov 22, 2004 11:35 AM >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report ... >I'm pretty heretical about this. I think if we had decapitated Iraq, went >after our military objectives, like securing what was a threat to us, >including Iraq's senior military and political leadership and their weapons >stockpiles, and left political order to emerge there on its own, like we >did in Afghanistan, we could have done it with Rumsfeld's original 50,000 >troop estimate. It seems like there would have to have been someone to take over in a fairly clean way, or we'd have wound up setting off a civil war. Note that in the Kurdish parts of Iraq, there was someone to take over, and those parts are generally not a problem for us. (Once it's not our people getting shot at, we probably don't care that much if it's a pain for someone else to police.) But I think the parts of Iraq that Saddam was still ruling had few high-profile leaders with forces that could have taken over quickly--he wasn't especially fond of potential rivals. Maybe we could have cut a deal with some local strongmen and gotten something stable together with minimal US involvement if we'd done it early, I'm not sure. ... >Cheers, >RAH --John From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 23 05:34:10 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 08:34:10 -0500 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <41A31B6C.9010804@students.bbk.ac.uk> References: <41A31B6C.9010804@students.bbk.ac.uk> Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 11:13 AM +0000 11/23/04, "ken" reached out from his Birkbeck student digs to make September Forever once again on the cypherpunks list: >Muhammad Ahmad the so-called Mahdi Sayyed Qtub is who every model of a modern major islamofascist likes to point to as his ideological source, so Qtub's good enough for, heh, government work. Qtub is the person whose various manifestoes were used to found Egypt's Islamic Brotherhood, for instance, and Al Qaeda is, ideologically, just a branch of that. At 11:13 AM +0000 11/23/04, ken wrote: >Sometimes I wonder if the would would be a better place if most >Americans learned anything about history that happened east of New >Bedford or west of the San Andreas fault. Or that hadn't been >filtered through a right-wing journalese dumbing-down >small-c-conservative small-l-liberal consensus. Yes, yes, "War is God's way of teaching Americans about geography", to quote Ambrose Bierce. Meanwhile, "consensus" is the final rhetorical refuge for socialists who can't even get the mob to agree with him anymore... Apparently, understanding the recursive minutiae of the Levant, et al., the old-fashioned "received", regurgitated, OxBridge way didn't help y'all too much when it came to Fabianizing yourselves back to the stone-age, either, since we're on the subject of neo-feudalist totalitarianism. It took a whole *bunch* of American "right-wing journalese", plus the odd rescued City academic or two, filtered through a mere bourgeois shopkeeper's daughter to drag you lot, kicking and screaming, back to the 20th century. ;-) Cheers, RAH - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaNDksPxH8jf3ohaEQLPXgCfaXE9A2lWr5C8iAbeHoq5XKPKxUcAn0Q4 GKol4ptORgONffTxzIAeGzry =g7Jz -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 23 05:51:42 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 08:51:42 -0500 Subject: Froomkin joins EFF board Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Congrats to Michael Froomkin, AKA Vinnie "The Pro" Bono, an anonymous source of mine on cypherpunks back in the day, before he broke the ice himself, once he realized we weren't all going to be hitting him up for free legal advice. :-). Cheers, RAH - ------- The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register B; Business B; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/23/eff_griffin_froomkin/ Griffin, Froomkin join EFF board By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco (andrew.orlowski at theregister.co.uk) Published Tuesday 23rd November 2004 02:29 GMT The future of digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation looks faintly brighter today with the creation of an Advisory board, created to help the group form some effective long-term strategies. Amongst the 12 advisors named are the FSF's Eben Moglen, and Princeton professor Ed Felten. But we're pleased to see two names familiar to veteran Register readers, music entrepreneur Jim Griffin and lawyer Michael Froomkin [home page (http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/welcome.html) - blog (http://www.discourse.net/)] of the University of Miami's law school. Froomkin has devoted much of his time in recent years to examining how consensus is formed to provide a legitimate basis for online institutions, penning Habermas at discourse.net: Toward a Critical Theory of Cyberspace (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=363840) and although he has used the word "meme" on his blog (tut, Michael, we think you mean "theme" or "idea") he's proved himself a scrupulous and tenacious ICANN watchdog. Former Geffen CTO Jim Griffin, who co-runs the Pho mailing list, is probably the most passionate and articulate advocate of modernizing the compensation framework for the digital distribution of music. We interviewed (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/11/why_wireless_will_end_piracy/) Jim back in February, and your reporter drew heavily on Jim's persuasive arguments when giving this talk (http://www.theregister.com/2004/09/23/orlowski_interactive_keynote/) to the music industry earlier this Fall. All credit to the EFF for recognizing that fresh thinking is needed. The group's most notable successes have been on behalf of individuals who've falled foul of the rights' holders ugly use of litigation: such as "DVD Jon" Johansen and Dmitri Sklyarov. But the group has been outflanked at almost every turn by the better-funded copyright lobby. At times it's even managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: for example in the case of Senator Orrin Hatch. Hatch was so disgusted by the way the recording industry treated artists he threatened to introduce flat fee licenses (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/26/hatch_induce_act/), but was wooed by persistent flattery from the RIAA. He's now one of the staunchest pigopolist advocates. And earlier this year much of the organization's outstanding work on privacy was undone by Brad Templeton 'Google isn't so spooky' (http://www.templetons.com/brad/gmail.html) analysis of GMail, which kindly overlooked the implications of Google's defense of the service: that only machines read your email. As former DoJ cybercrime czar Mark Rausch pointed out here (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/15/gmail_spook_heaven/), that's an invitation for the the FBI to point its machines at your email too, and make the same defense. Ah, what problems, what confusion these techno utopians create for themselves! So not all of the EFF's ineffectiveness can be explained by a lack of resources, or its location: 2,300 miles further from Congress than its rival lobby groups. The organization was born out of the popular technical ethos of libertarianism, in which compromise is distrusted and direct political engagement is shunned for a faith in market forces. And being lawyers, they like to fight cases, naturally. "They like to lose - they feed on the indignation," thunders one reader, who characterizes the EFF as "a bumbling third-rate ACLU with high-tech airs. They're mucking about with some important cases, and every time they lose, we lose." Ouch. While there are welcome signs that the EFF is shedding some of its previously ideologically-hamstrung positions - such as advertising in Rolling Stone, and sending a blogger to the WIPO discussions - there's some way to go yet. The decision to advocate a "voluntary" collective license is going to go safely nowhere, to the contentment of the recording rights holders - as it's a compact that everyone in the world can sign up to except the people who matter. (The rights holders themselves) Still, the new appointments are a welcome sign that new tactics may be deployed. At every turn the tech lobby has been outsmarted and outfought, losing almost every important case it's engaged in, and we now practically have to beg Congress not to detonate our computers. It's going to be a long haul back. Sitting back and praying that either the market, or some as yet unknown emergent phenomena, will take care of things is no longer an option. B. Related stories Dirty rotten inducers - the law the IT world deserves? (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/26/hatch_induce_act/) RIAA praises 'magnificent' P2P (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/16/bainwol_induce_letter/) EFF asks US court to ditch vague patents (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/21/patents_brief_ambiguous/) EFF BOFH arrested (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03/13/eff_bofh_arrested/) UK Sklyarov protestors picket US embassy (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/08/30/uk_sklyarov_protestors_picket_us/) B) Copyright 2004 - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaNDlcPxH8jf3ohaEQJW1ACcC3S7nI7PfVYLrK6MfRLdmhv7vWMAoN8F B3mJI+MKfTSIEDrqcGuEUEQC =6rkQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 23 06:50:31 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 09:50:31 -0500 Subject: [ISN] Hackers Pocket W16 Billion in Cyber Cash Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - --- begin forwarded text From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 23 07:44:24 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 10:44:24 -0500 Subject: "Nonce Stamp": SRI International Receives Security Technology Patent for Paper-based Transactions Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 November 23, 2004 08:01 AM US Eastern Timezone SRI International Receives Security Technology Patent for Paper-based Transactions MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 23, 2004-- "Nonce Stamp" Offers Many Applications, Including Electronically Downloaded Airline Tickets, Travelers Checks, Passports, Postage, Legal Documents, and Event and Movie Tickets SRI International, a leading independent, nonprofit research institute known for its pioneering innovations, today announced that it has been issued a fundamental U.S. patent for its "nonce stamp" technology, which can secure and authenticate paper documents against fraudulent creation and use. U.S. Patent No. 6,820,201 covers SRI's information-based indicia technology for securing and authenticating paper documents. The SRI technology addresses the security issues inherent in today's popular "print-at-home" documents, such as postage and movie tickets, which can be readily counterfeited. The recently awarded patent and related pending SRI patents cover an innovative use of a nonce (an element used to protect electronic cryptography systems from being cracked) to protect paper-based documents. The nonce is a unique number preprinted on a forgery-resistant material. When the user wishes to print an article of value, such as a postage stamp, the value of the nonce is combined with other information (e.g., the value of the postage) and a digital certificate is created. The digital certificate, in electronic or printed form, together with the nonce stamp, provides cryptographically secure proof of the uniqueness and authenticity of the certificate. The inventors are laboratory director Patrick D. Lincoln, Ph.D., and staff scientist Natarajan Shankar, Ph.D., of SRI's Computer Science Laboratory. "Most paper currency and other documents that have monetary value include security features to prevent fraud. SRI saw the need to also secure today's popular "print-at-home" documents to eliminate forgery and counterfeiting," said Dr. Lincoln. "Nonce stamps are a way of creating unique physical representations of digital certificates that are easily authenticated and that cannot be forged." About SRI International Silicon Valley-based SRI International (www.sri.com) is one of the world's leading independent research and technology development organizations. Founded as Stanford Research Institute in 1946, SRI has been meeting the strategic needs of clients for almost 60 years. The nonprofit research institute performs contract research and development for government agencies, commercial businesses and nonprofit foundations. In addition to conducting contract R&D, SRI licenses its technologies, forms strategic partnerships and creates spin-off companies. Contacts SRI International Ellie Javadi, 650-859-4874 ellie.javadi at sri.com - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaNa38PxH8jf3ohaEQJ7fgCeNCYOxu71aVO/mcYxlc4xUJM8cY4AniMB OlniEOrpGN76Go+Qg+ZK65Lu =M9EY -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk Tue Nov 23 03:13:48 2004 From: bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk (ken) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 11:13:48 +0000 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <41A31B6C.9010804@students.bbk.ac.uk> > The current war against western civilization started in the 1920's, when > Qutb started writing his Moslem triumphalist blather in reaction to the > complete collapse of the Turkish Caliphate in the wake of World War I. Eh? OK, I wouldn't have expected you to have heard of Uthman dan Fodio and the Fulani Jihad, but you really ought to have some distant rumour of Muhammad Ahmad the so-called Mahdi, a generation or two earlier than the fall of the Turkish Empire. ()If only because it would be rather hard to make any sense of whats going on in North Africa without) > It'll be finished when the residents of its modern equivalent has property > rights and personal freedom. Sometimes I wonder if the would would be a better place if most Americans learned anything about history that happened east of New Bedford or west of the San Andreas fault. Or that hadn't been filtered through a right-wing journalese dumbing-down small-c-conservative small-l-liberal consensus. But some miracles are too much to hope for. From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 23 02:26:53 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 11:26:53 +0100 Subject: [IP] Government Uses Color Laser Printer Technology to Track Documents (fwd from dave@farber.net) Message-ID: <20041123102653.GM1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from David Farber ----- From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 23 09:07:31 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 12:07:31 -0500 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <41A36822.6000108@students.bbk.ac.uk> References: <41A31B6C.9010804@students.bbk.ac.uk> <41A36822.6000108@students.bbk.ac.uk> Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 4:41 PM +0000 11/23/04, ken wrote: >So that's why you guys are behaving exactly like we used to? Yup, since you can't anymore, having dropped the ball, a long, long, time ago. Monopolarity is a bitch. See Churchill, below... ;-) Cheers, RAH - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "...our claim to be left in the unmolested enjoyment of vast and splendid possessions, mainly acquired by violence, largely maintained by force, often seems less reasonable to others than to us." -- Winston Churchill, January 1914 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaNwrMPxH8jf3ohaEQKhbwCeJfWxYVxqOZceIldNF/uDxOtQ4tQAn0Vb kn2P1ZqGByUw54RQmr+NzxP6 =VwfI -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 23 09:56:29 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 12:56:29 -0500 Subject: Cybersleuth paints forgers into corner Message-ID: New Zealand Herald Online - Newspaper Wednesday November 24, 2004 Cybersleuth paints forgers into corner 24.11.2004 - By STEVE CONNOR Scientists have created a computer that can tell the mathematical difference between a genuine work of art and a forgery by analysing features invisible to the human eye, paving the way to a new method of art fraud detection. The computer can also distinguish between the contributions of apprentices who collaborated on a well-known masterpiece officially attributed to a single artist. Scientists said the technique meant academics could better understand the hidden contributions of lesser-known artists. The researchers used a mathematical approach, analysing the statistical likelihood that a particular brush or pen stroke was performed by the artist. A similar mathematical approach powered by computer has been used to analyse the words in famous texts to see whether they were the sole creation of a well-known author. Henry Farid, associate professor of computer science at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, said the technique could be applied to fine art thanks to the widespread use of high-resolution digital imagery that collects up to 2400 points of light in a single square inch of canvas. "We have been able to mathematically capture subtle characteristics of an artist that are not necessarily visible to the human eye," he said. "We expect this technique, in collaboration with existing physical authentication, to play an important role in the field of art authentication. "Similar methods have been used to analyse works of literature. "We can find things in art work that are unique to the artist, such as the subtle choice of words or phrasing and cadence that are characteristic of a certain writer." Scientists program the computer with an artist's personal style of painting or drawing, using digital images of masterpieces known to be the work of the same painter. The machine can then decide whether a new work it subsequently analyses is likely to be a forgery. Professor Farid and his colleagues analysed 13 drawings that had been attributed - at least at some time - to Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The computer successfully distinguished between eight paintings known to be by the artist and five famous imitations by contemporary artists, including some by artists who intended to commit a forgery. A second part of the research, reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analysed digital images of the Madonna with Child by Italian Renaissance artist Perugino, who became famous for his altar pieces. The faces of three figures on the left of the painting were found to be the work of one artist, and the three on the right were different enough to be the work of different artists, probably Perugino's apprentices, a common practice in Renaissance art. The researchers say analysing brush and pen strokes mathematically will be combined with other techniques, such as x-rays to see underneath a coat of paint, in verifying a painting's authenticity. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk Tue Nov 23 08:41:06 2004 From: bbrow07 at students.bbk.ac.uk (ken) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 16:41:06 +0000 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: References: <41A31B6C.9010804@students.bbk.ac.uk> Message-ID: <41A36822.6000108@students.bbk.ac.uk> R.A. Hettinga wrote: > Apparently, understanding the recursive minutiae of the Levant, et al., the > old-fashioned "received", regurgitated, OxBridge way didn't help y'all too > much when it came to Fabianizing yourselves back to the stone-age, either, > since we're on the subject of neo-feudalist totalitarianism. So that's why you guys are behaving exactly like we used to? From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 23 13:49:16 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 16:49:16 -0500 Subject: Bush Orders Review of Covert Operations Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 My Way News Bush Orders Review of Covert Operations Nov 23, 1:02 PM (ET) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush has ordered an internal review into whether the Defense Department should run covert paramilitary operations traditionally mounted by the CIA, administration officials said on Tuesday. The presidential directive, signed by Bush last week, asks the CIA and the Departments of State, Defense and Justice to report back to him in 90 days on "whether or not the paramilitary operations, currently under the control of the CIA, should be transferred to the Department of Defense," a senior administration official said. The recommendation was first made by the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as part of a package of reforms to overhaul and streamline the intelligence community. Top officials at the CIA and the Pentagon have been cool to the idea of giving the military's Special Operations forces such a large role in paramilitary operations. The CIA's paramilitary units are authorized to carry out the most sensitive covert operations, like the one launched in Afghanistan soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. COMPLEX ISSUE Personnel in U.S. military Special Operations forces, such as Delta Force and Navy SEALs, are elite and highly trained troops who perform special missions, in many cases covert and behind enemy lines. "Since this is a complex issue, we want to study it closely with the intelligence community to better understand it," said a Pentagon spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We don't have any preordained or preferred solutions in mind. We are undertaking the study with open minds. "We have been working formally and informally with the CIA already on this issue. We have a great deal of common ground and agreement with them," the spokesman added. Officials said the interagency review, first reported by The New York Times, would look at whether paramilitary authorities should be transferred in their entirety to the Defense Department. It could also advocate a more collaborative role between Special Operations forces and the paramilitary units of the intelligence agency. They already work together in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders. The leaders of the Sept. 11 commission have been critical of the CIA's covert paramilitary actions, which before Sept. 11 had used local agents with little success to attack al Qaeda. The commission said the joint CIA-military covert operations in Afghanistan after Sept. 11 were successful but still recommended shifting lead responsibility for all paramilitary operations to the better-equipped Pentagon. In the Iraq war, Special Operations troops again figured prominently, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been a big backer of the military's special forces. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaOwrMPxH8jf3ohaEQLKQACdEvkoSq6TQlouJwf2Uj0uBzWsrnEAoJgp AiKA+4rhAZZS9VcEXQEQHxki =wOds -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From jamesd at echeque.com Tue Nov 23 22:02:56 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 22:02:56 -0800 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <28135658.1101224840677.JavaMail.root@bigbird.psp.pas.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <41A3B390.5531.303121C@localhost> -- R.A. Hettinga > > I think if we had decapitated Iraq, went after our military > > objectives, like securing what was a threat to us, > > including Iraq's senior military and political leadership > > and their weapons stockpiles, and left political order to > > emerge there on its own, like we did in Afghanistan, we > > could have done it with Rumsfeld's original 50,000 troop > > estimate. On 23 Nov 2004 at 7:47, John Kelsey wrote: > It seems like there would have to have been someone to take > over in a fairly clean way, or we'd have wound up setting off > a civil war. And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG x5H8AGNAFwoPy8fyvCAHj64dIL55pbnwnQFgENLL 4PH/mFu1yrhhrF9zduNJT5lUkHHJFlT99/IhXMPeT From bill.stewart at pobox.com Wed Nov 24 02:42:14 2004 From: bill.stewart at pobox.com (Bill Stewart) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 02:42:14 -0800 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <41A3B390.5531.303121C@localhost> References: <28135658.1101224840677.JavaMail.root@bigbird.psp.pas.earthlink.net> <41A3B390.5531.303121C@localhost> Message-ID: <6.0.3.0.0.20041124023640.03bbcf98@pop.idiom.com> At 10:02 PM 11/23/2004, James A. Donald wrote: > > And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? Well, once you get past the invalid and dishonest parts of Bush's 57 reasons We Need to Invade Iraq Right Now (WMDs, Al-Qaeda, Tried to kill Bush's Daddy, etc.) you're pretty much left with "Saddam tried to kill Bush's Daddy" and "Replacing the EEEVil dictator Saddam with a Democracy to protect the Iraqi people". Pulling off the latter requires that you leave them with something better than a civil war, though it's not clear that what they're getting right now _is_ better than a civil war. From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 24 06:41:24 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 09:41:24 -0500 Subject: [osint] How al-Qaeda's London plot was foiled Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - --- begin forwarded text To: "Bruce Tefft" Thread-Index: AcTRvPl/4TehnAnvQQGTeYb2oxIivgAaHPCg From: "Bruce Tefft" Mailing-List: list osint at yahoogroups.com; contact osint-owner at yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list osint at yahoogroups.com Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 08:00:08 -0500 Subject: [osint] How al-Qaeda's London plot was foiled Reply-To: osint at yahoogroups.com http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1372124,00.html November 24, 2004 How al-Qaeda's London plot was foiled By Michael Evans and Sean O'Neill AL-QAEDA terrorists had to abandon a plan to fly hijacked airliners into Canary Wharf, the London skyscraper, and Heathrow airport after being "rumbled" by British and European intelligence services. The plot was made public this year but senior Whitehall sources gave further details yesterday of the intelligence work involved. Reports on ITV News and in a newspaper implied that the attacks had been thwarted recently. But, the sources said, the intelligence operation was in fact completed at least two years ago. Plots against Canary Wharf, in London Docklands, and Heathrow were confirmed in July when intelligence officers in Pakistan found incriminating files on computers that belonged to one of al-Qaeda's members. Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, 25, a suspected terrorist arrested after a raid in Lahore, Pakistan, was at the centre of al-Qaeda's computer communications hub. He encrypted and distributed messages between the network's leadership and agents around the world. Among the files on Khan's computers were a plan of the layout of Heathrow and information from reconnaissance of the Canary Wharf complex, including vehicle height restrictions for the underground car parks there. There were also suggestions for "picture postcard" targets, such as the Houses of Parliament and Windsor Castle, and discussions of potential assassination targets. But the plots referred mainly to planning that pre-dated the attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Whitehall sources said that a huge intelligence operation was also mounted after Sept-ember 11 when it was feared that al-Qaeda would try a similar hijacking over Britain. The sources said that there was credible intelligence that al-Qaeda planners were preparing to send a hijacking team to the UK. To foil the terrorists, checks were carried out at airports and flying schools in Britain and also in countries in Central and Eastern Europe, from where it was believed that al-Qaeda members might set off. Further checks on flying schools have been carried out in the past six months as part of continuing anti-terrorist operations. "They were rumbled," a source said. "We believe that al-Qaeda recognised that aviation security in the UK was too tight for a repeat of the September 11 attacks in this country and that it was too difficult to hijack an aircraft in our airspace. "Our firm belief is that the Heathrow and Canary Wharf plot is no longer extant. There is absolutely no evidence of any recent plotting against either of these targets. All the intelligence we had dates back at least two years." Some of the key people who were involved in planning the Heathrow and Canary Wharf plots were also by now either "deceased or arrested". The arrests had taken place outside Britain. Anti-terrorist agencies also said that there was no intelligence of any current suicide hijacking plot against targets in Britain. Scotland Yard sources were "bemused" by suggestions of a current plot. Downing Street and the Home Office, stinging from reports that ministers are trying to create a climate of fear before next year's election, distanced themselves from the story. A police source said: "If there was information that Canary Wharf was to be attacked, then I think that we would know. There is no credence to reports of any current threat." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] - ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM - --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> - -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-osint at yahoogroups.com. - -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor bisoldi at intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint at yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ - --- end forwarded text - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaSfrMPxH8jf3ohaEQJinACgwztafW90l8TRK3yJbt3eBA1VvQwAmQGl dG4kvo9Hart9c8hudMIuGMH4 =FJ44 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 24 07:07:00 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 10:07:00 -0500 Subject: Government watchdog to investigate election Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 CNET News http://www.news.com/ Government watchdog to investigate election By Robert Lemos http://news.com.com/Government+watchdog+to+investigate+election/2100-1028_3-5464969.html Story last modified Tue Nov 23 13:47:00 PST 2004 The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, will investigate anomalies in the November election at the request of five Democratic representatives. In two letters, sent Nov. 5 and Nov. 8, Reps. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and Robert Wexler, D-Fla., asked that the GAO investigate various complaints about election machine technology and procedural issues preventing some votes from being counted. Two other members of the House of Representatives, Robert Scott, D-Va., and Rush Holt, D-N.J., signed the Nov. 8 letter. "On its own authority, the GAO will examine the security and accuracy of voting technologies, distribution and allocation of voting machines, and counting of provisional ballots," the five members of the House said in statement Tuesday. "We are hopeful that GAO's nonpartisan and expert analysis will get to the bottom of the flaws uncovered in the 2004 election." The lawmakers provided to the GAO some 57,000 incident reports that had been received by the House Judiciary Committee. While most observers have concluded that election technology performed reasonably well in the last election, a variety of anomalies have cropped up. In Ohio, President Bush received a boost of some 4,000 votes in the preliminary tallies due to a transmission error. Data from Florida has raised eyebrows and led to at least one analysis that claimed the result of voting there is statistically implausible. The congressmen asked the GAO to move quickly while there was still evidence from the election to analyze. "There is substantial concern that much of the primary evidence needed to evaluate these allegations will not be preserved without immediate action," the representatives argued in the Nov. 8 letter. Eight other members of the House of Representatives gave their support to the GAO request as well, the congressmen said in their statement. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaSqrcPxH8jf3ohaEQIs7gCggMXVNNT/qU2IW6QGs5O1plHS7kMAoISG qEH7cKYcjS3taS4nvAKdQp/N =hdbe -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 24 07:37:08 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 10:37:08 -0500 Subject: U.S., Europe still tweaking anti-terror tech Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 MENAFN - Middle East North Africa . Financial Network U.S., Europe still tweaking anti-terror tech UPI - UPI - Tuesday, November 23, 2004 Date: Tuesday, November 23, 2004 7:28:15 PM EST By DONNA BORAK WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 (UPI) -- U.S. and European officials said they may encounter more problems implementing new anti-terrorism measures, including the "no-fly" list of passengers banned from U.S. airlines and biometric passports, but are working together on the issue. The viability of such anti-terror technology is important to the U.S. travel industry, which was dealt a severe blow after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In fact, the Travel Industry Association of America said Monday that as part of the fiscal year 2005 omnibus spending package Congress had included $10 million to promote the United States as an international travel destination. Last Saturday an international flight from Paris to California was diverted to Bangor, Maine because a Moroccan passenger was discovered to be on the U.S. "no-fly" list after the plane had taken off. Senior Department of Homeland Security officials warned on Monday that problems with the "no-fly" list would likely continue even when their new computerized screening system was put in place next year. "Obviously, you want the system to work perfectly. I don't know that when you have systems built upon human information and human responses that you are ever going to have a perfect system," said Asa Hutchinson, DHS undersecretary for border and transportation security. Hutchinson faulted the current advance passenger information system, human error and ineffective technology for the security failure. "We have to build a better system design that will greatly reduce and minimize these types of incidents from happening ... You also have to build a system that is capable of responding, (has) good checks and balances, and has layered defenses that is not reliant on one particular system," Hutchinson said at a joint press conference with John Faull, the European Union's director general for Justice and Home Affairs. Expected changes include a revamp of the current advance passenger information system. Currently, airlines are not capable of matching passengers with terrorist-watch lists until 15 minutes after takeoff. The obvious goal is to prevent suspect individuals from boarding at all. In addition to faster matching against terrorist-watch lists, the new system would integrate U.S. and European anti-terror efforts. Hutchinson suggested that the new biometric passport and multilateral efforts among nations would be the solution to alleviating further security failures. Biometric devices were among the 9/11 Commission recommendations. Passports of people entering the United States would be required to contain a special type of computer chip, known as RFID or radio-frequency identification. The chip would contain a digitized facial image of the bearer. Current rules would require them by October 2005. Such biometric passports and visas will help government officials authenticate documents and potentially identify terrorists, officials said. Hutchinson explained that the United States would be aggressively working with its European allies to meet the deadline, but the emphasis on testing would be first priority, before any passports were issued. "Obviously, that has to be completed before production is implemented," said Hutchinson. Last month, the DHS was granted a yearlong extension till the October 2005 deadline. It initially requested two years. "We are working very hard to meet the deadline," said Hutchinson. The European Union agreed in October to use biometric passports. EU Director Faull said that the decision to utilize biometric passports was not the result of pressure by the United States, but a common-sense decision in the face of a common threat. "These are problems that cannot be solved unilaterally," said Hutchinson. It is expected that the United States will demand visas from 27 countries if they do not have biometric passports by October 2005. According to Faull, production has already started on biometric passports and it is expected that the first will be ready in 18 months. Faull explained that there were a number of challenges facing the two parties, but that both were working together to resolve any issues. At the press conference, Hutchinson characterized talks with European Union officials as "frank and open." "In our discussions it is clear to me, that the European Union has accelerated their counter-terrorism efforts and we are grateful for that," he said, adding that the United States and the EU share "common concerns" about terrorism. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1308 iQA/AwUBQaSqqcPxH8jf3ohaEQLXJQCdE8Wj8/8bibK1fGThO0F4G387udcAoNO7 dSvgDVi8kQl+UEkuLlmg4g/s =WgYi -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 24 02:05:09 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 11:05:09 +0100 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <41A3B390.5531.303121C@localhost> References: <28135658.1101224840677.JavaMail.root@bigbird.psp.pas.earthlink.net> <41A3B390.5531.303121C@localhost> Message-ID: <20041124100508.GJ1457@leitl.org> On Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 10:02:56PM -0800, James A. Donald wrote: > And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? Because not only you're an evil fuck, but you're letting the others know you're an evil fuck. Now that is stupid. Look into historic records... -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Wed Nov 24 09:08:37 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 12:08:37 -0500 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <41A3B390.5531.303121C@localhost> Message-ID: James A Donald wrote... >And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? And the answer is: 9/11 sucked. Oh wait, I guess I have to explain that. After the Soviets were pushed out of Afghanistan the place became a veritable breeding ground for all sorts of virulent strains of Islam, warlords, and so on. Iraq would likely denigrate into the same, eventually launching similarly nice little activities. -TD From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com Wed Nov 24 10:05:08 2004 From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 13:05:08 -0500 (GMT-05:00) Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report Message-ID: <29976920.1101319508726.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> >From: Tyler Durden >Sent: Nov 24, 2004 12:08 PM >To: jamesd at echeque.com, cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report >James A Donald wrote... >>And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? >And the answer is: 9/11 sucked. >Oh wait, I guess I have to explain that. After the Soviets were pushed out >of Afghanistan the place became a veritable breeding ground for all sorts of >virulent strains of Islam, warlords, and so on. Iraq would likely denigrate >into the same, eventually launching similarly nice little activities. Well, I'm sure glad we avoided having Iraq become a breeding ground for all sorts of virulent strains of Islam, warlords, etc. Also that we avoided it becoming a place that trains people in how to carry out effective guerrilla warfare against US troops. We sure dodged a bullet there.... >-TD --John From kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com Wed Nov 24 10:08:11 2004 From: kelsey.j at ix.netcom.com (John Kelsey) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 13:08:11 -0500 (GMT-05:00) Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report Message-ID: <4996199.1101319691637.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> >From: "James A. Donald" >Sent: Nov 24, 2004 1:02 AM >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report ... >And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? At least three: a. The pottery barn theory of foreign affairs--we'd be blamed for making things worse. (I don't know how much this matters long term, but it would certainly have made life pretty hard on Tony Blair and the rest of the world leaders who actually supported us.) b. We would one day like their oil back on the market. c. We would like to make sure that the next regime to come to power there isn't someone we also feel obligated to get rid of, as even invasions done on the cheap cost a lot of money. > --digsig > James A. Donald --John From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 24 10:24:21 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 13:24:21 -0500 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <29976920.1101319508726.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> References: <29976920.1101319508726.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> Message-ID: At 1:05 PM -0500 11/24/04, John Kelsey wrote: >effective guerrilla warfare against >US troops. Uh, huh...Just for fun, see the title of this thread. ;-) Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 24 10:29:12 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 13:29:12 -0500 Subject: The Fall of Reason Message-ID: The Fall of Reason Paul Forest Dar Al-Hayat 2004/11/23 Condoleezza Rice is the latest cabinet member to gush out of the oil patch. She is an obvious choice as Secretary of State for President Bush, who is disenchanted with General Powell's ability to mouth the words given to him by the White House spin barons, and yet, convey the impression that he is not really comfortable as a bearer of false tidings. With Dr. Rice, President Bush will be admirably served. Obviously an extremely articulate illusionist, at the time of the Iraq justification period, she was in the foxhole shooting back at all proponents of factuality and, actually, did get in some good shots, when judged more on intellectual acrobatics than accuracy. Of her many masterful quotes, one stands out: "Whoever's fault it is, it is certainly not mine, unless you think it's the President's, in which case it's mine." It is doubtful that the international world of diplomacy will understand her nomination and doubtlessly accept credentials, which they can so clearly identify as that of a studious perpetrator of deceit. She is unlikely to abandon her credo of: "Our truth above all," and while trying to outdo herself, she will preside over the destitution of what remains of U.S. integrity. Few people doubt, that her assertions that this administration's sole objective was to surgically remove Saddam Hussein, would have received ample support from the majority of Arab states. It seems self-evident, however, that despite the U.S. air strike success in Kosovo, the Bush Administration nurtured a hidden agenda that required massive intervention by ground forces, and the establishment of a loyal and friendly new controlling block in Iraq. This machination was conceived as a manner of controlling a sufficient amount of world oil reserves, for the U.S. to be a significant factor in the world price for oil. In modern history, as well as present times, there are numerous examples of dominant powers and individuals, venting their anger on the innocent when the true culprits are beyond their reach. The U.S. military and the current administration at some point, must have decided that using a surgical knife is not time effective when seeking to carve out for itself a sizable niche in the world's most desirable geography. It is truly amazing that when a despicable act is perpetrated by the U.S. military, whether in a prison or as recently, in a Mosque, a camera appeared to have been pointed at the malefactors. We may ask ourselves, is this the superior work of talented embedded cameramen, or could the camera have been pointed anywhere with matching results? These barbarian acts have considerably traumatized much of the world community of Arab and Muslim nations, which are now firmly convinced that the President's "war of vindictiveness" may have been intended to dislodge Saddam Hussein and his regime, but as much thought went into humanitarian concerns for the population, as in the governance of a post-war Iraq, very little. The shortsighted view is that terrorism will once again strike U.S. soil, and recent utterances by the Sultan of Terror confirm that this is in fact their intent. Should a disastrous terrorist act again occur on U.S. soil, the fear mongers in the White House will then feel vindicated by the tangible validation of their long-held views, and they will point fingers at their detractors. These, in turn, will likely respond that a more conciliatory attitude by the administration towards the Arab and Muslim people, replacing the current militaristic course of action, might well have prevented that which by then will have taken place. The longer-term implications, however, are that Arab investments in the U.S., which are now valued near 2 trillion dollars, will dry up, and may in fact be downsized in favor of investments in the growing, potentially friendly and peaceful European Community, whose currency appears destined to supplant the Dollar as the principle world currency. The U.S. treasury and financial markets have been surviving on a steady influx of outside capital, and will be caught in a war of financial attrition which they are not in a position to win. Israel's well-being is directly linked to American benevolence and the Israeli Government may discover the wisdom of having a greater array of able and willing supporters. A considerable concentration of American Jewish wealth and influence has been creatively positioned in the American National Media, and this condition does not exist in any other nation. This was unmistakably exhibited recently in a promo on itself by CNN, in which they present, as most trustworthy, six of their regular hosts, of which four are of Jewish legacy. Simple calculation reveals that since American Jews represent 2% of the total American population, the selected hosts amounted to 33 times the proportional representation within the American population. True friends of Israel, mainly Americans of Jewish heritage, must demonstrate to Israel's fanatic right that the citizens of the world other than North Americans, are not conditioned to readily endure the economic, human and traumatic sacrifices that the U.S. experience clearly indicates are to be expected, when fully committed to the exclusive support of Israel in the relentless pursuit of its political expansionism. The dire consequences previously described, have stealthily begun, and may be experienced by anyone approaching a Foreign Exchange counter. Graver concerns may occur sooner than we might normally expect, at the current rate of irresponsible deficit spending, gargantuan trade deficits and progressively increasing labor outsourcing, unless a total policy reversal is implemented. First, the U.S. must, somehow, find a way to express their support for Israel, without openly exhibiting hostility towards the Arab and Muslim community, their culture, and their leaders. To that end, Israel, whose only derived benefit in the Middle East conflict has been the ephemeral inflow of U.S. capital and military resources, must join the U.S. in this resolve. There has always been, and there continues to be, an unwritten rule among journalists in the U.S., that you do not make a connection between the U.S. total support of Israel in everything of concern to them, and the bottommost esteem of the U.S. and Americans by most of the world and particularly Arab/Muslim descendants. Yet, it is clearly obvious that this is a fact. We must ask ourselves: "What other reason could there be?" No one can now reverse the momentum of militant intervention by Muslim terrorists, without a complete agreement between warring parties in Israel and Palestine. The economic and military support freely given to Israel by the U.S. is the breath of life that is keeping the Middle East conflict alive and well. Any potential solution to this basic Middle East conflict must take the form of an agreement acceptable to the Palestinians of their own free will. For this to happen, perhaps new lines must be drawn in the sand, which would provide a restated Palestine with a significant Mediterranean shoreline, a united West Bank and Gaza and all Palestine lands south of the West Bank. In a dream-like state, one might visualize a peaceful Israel, clearly separated from the equally peaceful states of Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, not by a wall, but by a multilane highway, perhaps to be appropriately known as the "Jerusalem International Highway," under the watchful supervision of the UN. George W. Bush has yet to exhibit any capacity for reversing himself on matters before him, and unless he becomes a born-again rationalist, we can logically conclude that the developing crisis will inexorably degenerate into the colossal tribulation that it appears headed for. Colchester , Vermont PolForest at aol.com )2003 Media Communications Group -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jya at pipeline.com Wed Nov 24 14:21:25 2004 From: jya at pipeline.com (John Young) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 14:21:25 -0800 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: References: < <29976920.1101319508726.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> <29976920.1101319508726.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> Message-ID: Associated Press has pre-issued a Thanksgiving Day photo of a former US soldier who lost a leg, participating in a photo op at a military base. Secdef and CJCS issued pre-holiday thanks yesterday to the families of the military dead and to the wounded and maimed in hospitals and on photo op tours. Today Secdef was on Laura Ingraham gushing (slobber not blood) about the AmericaSupportsYou.mil website where red-blooded Americans can participate in thanksgiving the Iraq bloodletting, praising the headless and limbless and scared shitless and McVeigh-mad-dogs yearning-to-frag-backhome-warfighters. AP has nearly stopped showing valorous warriors in combat in Iraq, now its mostly photos of funerals and the dead in cheerful high school pictures and dress-uniformed headshots, oops, head shots are no, no's, except for the hardbitten would-be warriors here sitting fat and happy before the keyboard tapping for more killing, right James, civil war over there is hunky dory, but please not an RPG invading your computer bubble, an IED making your kids into rag dolls. Overseas wars are delightful movie-land fun from over here, Secdef croons -- gobble, gobble, Sergeant York called for the Secdef's curious-head pop-up. Seen the Norwegian site that calls for Bush's head shot? Two URLs, the last vivid: http://www.killhim.nu/ http://killhimwith.bazooka.at/once/ From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 24 12:00:44 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 15:00:44 -0500 Subject: Homeland Security's Request For Student Data Stirs Concern Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 24, 2004 POLITICS AND POLICY Homeland Security's Request For Student Data Stirs Concern By ALONSO SOTO and ROBERT BLOCK Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL November 24, 2004; Page A4 WASHINGTON -- A Homeland Security Department campaign to make schoolchildren better prepared for terrorist attacks is raising concerns about making them more vulnerable to identity theft as well. The department's preparedness form, which went out as part of the "Ready" campaign in September and October, asks that students in junior and senior high school carry around a form that includes their Social Security number, birth date and home address, as well those of their parents and siblings. The move first caused an outcry in Rhode Island when a consumer fraud investigator brought it to the attention of Patrick Lynch, the state attorney general. Mr. Lynch responded by firing off a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge requesting that he revise the form immediately. "While I do agree that it is important for families to have a plan in the event of an emergency, I believe this particular form is capable of more harm than good," he said in the letter dated Oct. 14. He said he was particularly concerned about the part of the form that exhorts: "Take this out of your agenda, fill it out with family and make copies to keep in your schoolbag and in visible locations at home." Mr. Lynch said that asking children to carry around such information was an invitation to identity thieves because teenagers frequently lose or misplace their backpacks. Mr. Lynch said in a phone interview yesterday that he has yet to receive any response from Homeland Security. Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse denied that the government was encouraging identity theft, saying that people worried about such problems could choose to leave the sensitive entries blank. "People can choose to include whatever information on the forms they like," he said. Several Homeland Security programs have drawn criticism and privacy complaints from civil activists over the past two years. The agency says that such measures need to be taken to protect Americans from terrorist plots. Homeland Security officials declined to say how many student planners with the forms were sent around the country, but say that they have removed the sentence encouraging students to keep copies of the forms in their backpacks from the latest version. However, space for the family Social Security numbers is still included. Mr. Roehrkasse said that forms which will be sent to younger children later this year won't include space for Social Security information. Barry Steinhardt, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union Liberty Project, said Homeland Security was "grossly irresponsible" for the form, saying that it should know that identify theft is an epidemic in the country and their actions would only make it easier for thieves. "I hope this was just a misjudgment by the department and not a concealed attempt to collect data," he said. According to the Federal Trade Commission, the problem of identity theft cost Americans nearly $43 billion last year. Identity theft is also of major concern to federal law-enforcement officials because it could help terrorists disguise their activities. In addition to complaining to Mr. Ridge, Mr. Lynch wrote to Rhode Island's state director of Homeland Security affairs and to the superintendents of each of the state's school systems asking them to disregard the Homeland form. "We don't want children, we don't want adults, we don't want anybody giving up their Social Security numbers," he said. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 24 12:02:40 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 15:02:40 -0500 Subject: Where Did Arafat Stash the Money? Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 24, 2004 WORLD NEWS Where Did Arafat Stash the Money? For Palestinian Authority, Credibility Could Depend On Tracking Down Funds By FARNAZ FASSIHI Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL November 24, 2004; Page A11 RAMALLAH, West Bank -- As the Palestinian Authority enters the post-Yasser Arafat era, the tracking down of funds controlled by the deceased leader -- rumored to be in the tens of millions of dollars -- will affect the authority's credibility at home and abroad and the potential for clashes among its factions. Some Palestinian officials already have called for questioning of Mr. Arafat's closest aides, and now interim successors, Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmad Qurei, and his wife, Suha Arafat. Officials have pledged to determine exactly the amount and location of the money. This week, a statement issued by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militant group in the West Bank, warned the new government of corruption among some top officials and vowed to take the law into its own hands if action isn't taken within a month. "Officially, the money is supposed to be with the Finance Ministry, but millions of dollars are invested around the world and no one knows where they are," said Hassan Khreisheh, first deputy speaker of the legislative council who has led several probes into government-corruption charges. "This is unacceptable to any Palestinian." Over the decades, as Mr. Arafat carried the flag of the Palestinian struggle, he accumulated money donated by countries, businesses and individuals to support his movement and help the Palestinian people. Until the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Gulf countries donated millions of dollars a year to the Palestinian cause, and Saudi Arabia alone sent an annual check of $50 million, or about $38 million, a year to Mr. Arafat. He used this money to support Palestinian refugees in Arab countries, as well as to fund some of the security groups within the Palestine Liberation Organization, the umbrella organization headed and controlled by Mr. Arafat. Aid from Gulf countries slowly diminished after Mr. Arafat backed Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, but Mr. Hussein stepped in to make up for lost income. The money was stashed in foreign bank accounts, with some invested in commercial entities around the world. The International Monetary Fund in a September 2003 report said that from 1995 to 2000, the Palestinian Authority's assets may have exceeded $898 million. That report concluded that much of its revenue from taxes was invested in a variety of commercial enterprises that nominally belonged to the authority, but that the "substantial revenue" they generated was being diverted, as was revenue from monopoly contracts for cement and petroleum. The report said the enterprises operated "with no transparency or accountability." Under the arrangement worked out through the 1994 Oslo Accord, Israel collected value-added and excise taxes on purchases by Palestinians, and was to remit the money to the Palestinian Authority. But money -- particularly from excise taxes on petroleum, tobacco and alcohol -- was diverted, some to an account in a Bank Leumi branch in Tel Aviv, the report said. Mr. Arafat and his financial adviser, Mohammad Rachid, controlled the account, according to the IMF. A major overhaul launched in 2002 by the new minister of finance, Salem Fayyad, succeeded in transferring control of the bulk of assets from Mr. Arafat to the government. Since January 2003, all funds have been separated into two categories: the Palestinian Authority's assets of $300 million to $700 million in 79 commercial ventures, the largest being a telecommunication company operating in Algeria and Tunisia, which is now considered public money; and the PLO's money, whose sum remains a mystery but is estimated in the tens of millions of dollars by independent auditors who investigated the funds. Under political pressure from donor countries, Mr. Arafat agreed the authority's money could be tracked down throughout the Arab world, registered and secured in the Palestinian Investment Fund, which requires at least three official signatures for any withdrawal and is audited by the Democracy Council, an American nonprofit group hired by Mr. Fayyad. But no watchdog was ever hired to monitor the PLO funds, and according to James Prince, who leads the American auditing team, "the PLO funds are totally opaque." According to some officials and investigators, Mr. Arafat used that money to buy loyalties, and this stash came from the authority's presidential budget of close to $40 million -- as well as various illegal cuts Mr. Arafat allegedly was receiving from petroleum smuggling and from fees paid by trucks crossing the Gaza Strip border. "They took away his political and physical power, and all he had was financial power," Mr. Prince said. "He went around with cash and threw money around." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 24 12:06:38 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 15:06:38 -0500 Subject: Blair's Legislative Program To Focus on Crime, Security Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 24, 2004 3:28 a.m. EST WORLD NEWS Blair's Legislative Program To Focus on Crime, Security Associated Press November 24, 2004 3:28 a.m.; Page A11 LONDON - British Prime Minister Tony Blair put the fight against crime and terrorism at the center of his campaign for a third term, pledging to fast-track plans for national identity cards and a new police agency similar to the FBI. With parliamentary elections expected in May, the government wants to appear tough on law and order, and security lies at the heart of the legislative program it unveiled yesterday. "This is a big change, but frankly with terrorism, illegal immigration and organized crime ... identity cards in my judgment are long overdue," Mr. Blair told the House of Commons. Political opponents accused his government of seeking to frighten voters - similar to a charge Democrats leveled against President Bush. Despite widespread public opposition to British participation in the Iraq war, Mr. Blair's Labour Party is comfortably ahead in opinion polls and expected to win a third consecutive term. Queen Elizabeth II outlined to Parliament plans for a Serious Organized Crime Agency to crack down on drug gangs, people-traffickers, major fraudsters and Internet pedophiles. The agency has been dubbed Britain's equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But the government's legislative priority is a law allowing a national database of names, addresses and biometric details of everyone in Britain. The information would be linked to ID cards. Ministers hope to phase them in for voluntary use by 2007, then make them compulsory by 2012. Such cards are mandatory in many Western European countries, but the idea alarms civil-rights activists. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 24 12:37:49 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 15:37:49 -0500 Subject: SSRN- Deworming the Internet by Douglas Barnes Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- SSRN Deworming the Internet DOUGLAS BARNES University of Texas at Austin - School of Law Texas Law Review, Vol. 83, No. 1 Abstract: Both law enforcement and markets for software standards have failed to solve the problem of software that is vulnerable to infection by network-transmitted worms. Consequently, regulatory attention should turn to the publishers of worm-vulnerable software. Although ordinary tort liability for software publishers may seem attractive, it would interact in unpredictable ways with the winner-take-all nature of competition among publishers of mass-market, internet-connected software. More tailored solutions are called for, including mandatory "bug bounties" for those who find potential vulnerabilities in software, minimum quality standards for software, and, once the underlying market failure is remedied, liability for end users who persist in using worm-vulnerable software. Keywords: Worms, viruses, software, market failure, network externality, negative externality, perverse incentives, tort liability, lemons equilibrium, regulation JEL Classifications: K29, K13, L86, 031 Accepted Paper Series Abstract has been viewed 392 times Contact Information for DOUGLAS BARNES (Contact Author) Email address for DOUGLAS BARNES University of Texas at Austin - School of Law 727 East Dean Keeton Street Austin , TX 78705 United States 512-689-1875 (Phone) Suggested Citation Barnes, Douglas A, "Deworming the Internet" . Texas Law Review, Vol. 83, No. 1 http://ssrn.com/abstract=622364 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 9.0 (Build 1336) Beta - not licensed for commercial use: www.pgp.com iQEVAwUBQaTwysUCGwxmWcHhAQEAnAf5AQO9G8LuuKg1CFYHOnRflT68YX9w6xhp nt0csgWW0dxso9n7T1kMtGzZRDr/G5kdz+IVqHg2qjjzQajf7Ni50/mjRN48tJko vr3TeSWU4cX2yKTPJE56tc27uY534IHc5eBWxtprLagMIGfokNQeGZPT8S4OLzxL H/a9lTIQknHMtOA1HoRXodX252xn5II3AwLOZrC4gnap1R9mfkXOtdB6ChlXD11n hpN7g1A1CTkWE/74NiSEROJdk2oeJS2K0aks2dqMK59tI5KLteePpJGN8DfP0yUv 0HaFKUPFiS1yAzNtTj/J4VLog84Lofel6+rwaKIHCEXvB6nHvFN5SA== =xwLk -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 24 13:19:18 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 16:19:18 -0500 Subject: Suicide pigs fly to support Blunkett's War on Terror Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register B; Internet and Law B; Digital Rights/Digital Wrongs B; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/23/terror_scare_spin/ Suicide pigs fly to support Blunkett's War on Terror By John Lettice (john.lettice at theregister.co.uk) Published Tuesday 23rd November 2004 11:44 GMT In an amazing coincidence, news of a thwarted 911-style terror attack on the UK emerged just hours before the Government was due to unveil a legislative programme chock-full of security-related goodies. The strangely fact-free story, available from the Mail, (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id= 328011&in_page_id=1770&ct=5) ITN (http://www.itv.com/news/index_957889.html) and The Scotsman, (http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1346532004) among others, is attributed to a "senior authoritative source", and Downing Street, the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police "declined to comment." As journalistic constructs designed to distance government from responsibility for the junk the spin doctors are handing out go, "senior authoritative source" is pretty esoteric. It's not 'Home Office sources', nor is 'sources close to the Home Office' - maybe it's not even 'informed sources', and our confidence in it is further undermined by the apparent need to say in the story that the source "who has no axe to grind, said that the threats were real and were not deliberately exaggerated for political purposes." When you have to put in your story, 'look, I know you're all going to think this is junk made up by the Government to coincide with the Queens speech, but it's not, OK?', you are in bad shape.? The Government's intention now will be to let this one lie (as it were), and just smugly decline to comment. David Blunkett, who heads up the newly-merged Ministries of Fear and Truth, has however had trouble controlling his mouth on previous occasions. Earlier this year the man who is not running a fear-inspired campaign to justify his terror measures cited (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3607141.stm) a thwarted chemical bomb plot as justifying them. The chemical in question was, even in the views of the terror rentaquotes, (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3603961.stm) a peculiar choice for a bomb that would do anything apart from, er, inspire terror, and it later transpired that nobody had actually been arrested (http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/0000000CA4C2.htm), and that none of the strange and ineffective bomb-making chemical osmium tetroxide may even have been acquired. There were actual arrests in another chemical bomb scare (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/11/17/tube.terror/) (although in that report John Prescott seems weirdly off-message). Unhappily, as this valuable sweeping up (http://www.salaam.co.uk/themeofthemonth/january03_index.php?l=52%82%22=0") of terror-scare aftermaths reports, none of them was ever convicted of terrorism-related activities. One of the three was sentenced to three months for possession of a fake French passport. What percentage of fake ID holders are terrorists, Mr Blunkett? But back to today's events. Among the 'sensible preemptive measures' to be announced today we have the ID scheme bill, and just last week David Blunkett was pre-spinning the matter in his speech to the IPPR. The transcript of this now available, (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs3/identitycards_041118speech.htm) and we note with some interest that David, who assures us he does not use terror scares to sell repression, says: "Now people say to me that they don't believe for a minute ID cards would actually help in terms of being able to track or prevent terrorist activity and they say 'It didn't stop the terrorist attack in Madrid in March, did it?' And the answer is: 'no it didn't' and I have never claimed that it would have done." A little research provides an example of trustworthy and truthful David not saying that very thing. In the Breakfast with Frost (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/breakfast_with_frost/3657219.stm) interview in April, which is rapidly acquiring 'seminal' status, he said: "Firstly because we've got biometrics, I mean, people say to me you couldn't stop the World Trade Center attack, you couldn't stop the Madrid bombing with ID cards. Well, you couldn't with, of course because the Americans although they have an insurance system, do not have an ID card as you know." "The Spanish do. But it isn't a foolproof biometric card with a database, with the ability to test not only the card vis-a-vis the database, but actually the person and the card they hold. That's what will be potentially possible." Which, we'll grant, is not saying the ID scheme would have stopped Madrid, but it does look a bit like saying Madrid happened because the Spanish had the 'wrong kind of ID card', while we, of course... More later, after the rich lady sings, no doubt... B. - -- - ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 1336 iQEVAwUBQaT7ZcUCGwxmWcHhAQEFOgf/YOsv1LvmnOeC6ArryPqf8qFXY+nl8qVB GuNjg398lnGWuJqWBq9EVf+TILXh1zeO4vOfFBC9agrdqBVsLsl0wFbgm9ylgDA+ +XnOV0oBXhMWWPrXDJn6h8YVHyT96Sd593wKJSTUcs7eQOAXaHMhYQCrg1Kg5hOH TtNIijBHACaWOv9rkt8CczmmAjypmT0zLP/VXB65Q3zwlaLFBZiNzjJUcyr/9vbB VPI1tOGyuqsPm5X1GfVXSmd3Nx96sr2fPcfSwD+huSrlh7MzxLPh9WbMfXGBs/96 k8EO8Hk8cQmBut/8g4ZHTe2nNCWBUp4LQoOnPFiecdSXvuvRf/aNyg== =LcB1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Wed Nov 24 13:48:29 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 16:48:29 -0500 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <29976920.1101319508726.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> Message-ID: John Kelsey wrote... >Well, I'm sure glad we avoided having Iraq become a breeding ground for all >sorts of virulent strains of Islam, warlords, etc. Also that we avoided it >becoming >a place that trains people in how to carry out effective guerrilla warfare >against >US troops. We sure dodged a bullet there.... > > >-TD > >--John > Oops! I stand corrected. -TD From mv at cdc.gov Wed Nov 24 17:31:53 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:31:53 -0800 Subject: Latest Tasteful Video Game: Chappaquiduck Message-ID: <41A53608.827B16BA@cdc.gov> At 11:34 PM 11/21/04 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: >Slsahdot reports that MSNBC reports http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6549265/ >that there's a new video game "JFK Reloaded" http://www.jfkreloaded.com/start/ I'm waiting for Grand Theft Auto IV, Drunk Over the Bridge With the Secretary variant. Wonder what Teddie will say about that one. Oswald saved the world from nuclear conflict, thank the gods he offed the sex & drug crazed toothy one as soon as he (et al :-) did. And a hell of a shot as well. Gotta respect that, with a bolt-action, no less. From mv at cdc.gov Wed Nov 24 17:40:36 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:40:36 -0800 Subject: Gilmore's regional arrest & interstate travel Message-ID: <41A53814.1B919058@cdc.gov> > John (under regional arrest) Gilmore The feds can't prohibit interstate travel, no? To visit 2 of the states, you must use a boat. Do boats require ID? I understand that trains now do. [Note that driving through a foreign country should not be required. To boat you pass out of US waters, into international, and back into US waters.] ----- Will DCite be greenish like trinitite, or is the swamp iron-poor? From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 24 09:18:43 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 18:18:43 +0100 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: References: <41A3B390.5531.303121C@localhost> Message-ID: <20041124171843.GT1457@leitl.org> On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 12:08:37PM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: > Oh wait, I guess I have to explain that. After the Soviets were pushed out > of Afghanistan the place became a veritable breeding ground for all sorts > of virulent strains of Islam, warlords, and so on. Iraq would likely > denigrate into the same, eventually launching similarly nice little > activities. What do you think the Iraq shenanigan has done to US's prestige? Nevermind terrorists, we're talking hard cold cash here. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From jamesd at echeque.com Wed Nov 24 19:42:45 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 19:42:45 -0800 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <29976920.1101319508726.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <41A4E435.18339.29F2580@localhost> -- James A Donald wrote... > > And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? Tyler Durden > And the answer is: 9/11 sucked. > > Oh wait, I guess I have to explain that. After the Soviets > were pushed out of Afghanistan the place became a veritable > breeding ground for all sorts of virulent strains of Islam, > warlords, and so on. Nothing wrong with warlords - right now they are doing a fine job of keeping the Taliban down. What made it a breeding ground for terrorism was not civil war, but diminuition of civil war. The problem was that the Taliban was damn near victorious. If the US government had maintained the relationship with our former anti communist allies, and kept on sending them arms, we never would have had 9/11 The trouble was that the government abandoned our allies. We should have sent them enough aid to sustain permanent major civil war against the Taliban. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG PKHY56Lv+tILn2Qq0fJACuoHr5UrnHsCHuFRofC7 4B3ZCczFe/KNkguYoDENJrgFm5KZ6pJTV/sIRh7wY From jamesd at echeque.com Wed Nov 24 20:02:51 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 20:02:51 -0800 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <4996199.1101319691637.JavaMail.root@grover.psp.pas.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <41A4E8EB.31540.2B18D96@localhost> -- James A. Donald > > And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? John Kelsey > At least three: > > a. The pottery barn theory of foreign affairs--we'd be > blamed for making things worse. And if we do nothing, we are also blamed for making things worse: Observe, for example 1. the French assist the Hutus to commit genocide against the Tutsis. Capitalism and America get blamed. 2. The Indonesians massacre infidels. Capitalism, Americans and America get blamed. 3. Saddam massacres his people. The CIA, Americans and America get blamed. 4. Syria invades Lebanon. America and Israel get blamed. 5. Africans massacre each other in the Congo. America gets blamed. (Oddly, for once, the CIA, capitalism, and Jews, are not involved.) > (I don't know how much this matters long term, but it would > certainly have made life pretty hard on Tony Blair and the > rest of the world leaders who actually supported us.) The dogs bark and the caravan moves on. > b. We would one day like their oil back on the market. They would like that also. Fortunately all the oil is Kurds, or Shiites - the first areas to be secured once the civil war burns down a bit. > c. We would like to make sure that the next regime to come > to power there isn't someone we also feel obligated to get > rid of, as even invasions done on the cheap cost a lot of > money. But it is easy and cheap to remove people. It is installing people that is hard, bloody, and expensive. If the dice turn out badly, just roll them again. Nobody teaches soldiers nation building in basic training. They do however, teach them nation smashing. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG cE8rYUZGiDSDZk4yFeEBDqa3go99WSWJnoTURH4R 4L1KruhmMXw4gVFrzipYHod+HL0bAKAEvFpvwCdUV From jamesd at echeque.com Wed Nov 24 20:07:49 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 20:07:49 -0800 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <6.0.3.0.0.20041124023640.03bbcf98@pop.idiom.com> References: <41A3B390.5531.303121C@localhost> Message-ID: <41A4EA15.13428.2B61918@localhost> -- James A. Donald: > > > And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? On 24 Nov 2004 at 2:42, Bill Stewart wrote: > Well, once you get past the invalid and dishonest parts of > Bush's 57 reasons We Need to Invade Iraq Right Now (WMDs, > Al-Qaeda, Tried to kill Bush's Daddy, etc.) you're pretty > much left with "Saddam tried to kill Bush's Daddy" and > "Replacing the EEEVil dictator Saddam with a Democracy to > protect the Iraqi people". Seems to me that permanent civil war in Iraq provides Americans with the same benefits as democracy in Iraq, though considerably more reliably. Chances are that after fair and free election, the majority will vote to screw the minority - literally screw them, as in rape being unofficially OK when members of the majority do it to members of the minority. Nothing like a long holy war with no clear winner to teach people the virtues of religious tolerance. That is, after all, how Europeans learnt that lesson. And the worst comes to the worst - well today the Taliban are busy kiling Afghans instead of Americans. Wouldn't it be nice if Al Quaeda was killing Iraqis instead of Americans - well actually they are killing Iraqis instead of americans, but wouldn't it be nice if they were killing *more* Iraqis? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG PwjZ4PipCdWr8EC4cLgzxV3SAw0bWUhhvejdGR8/ 4XrnLDT2Ed8fBlZ0wGPU0dQOOH2GeZ5kbh7h8N4QF From sfurlong at acmenet.net Wed Nov 24 17:39:00 2004 From: sfurlong at acmenet.net (Steve Furlong) Date: 24 Nov 2004 20:39:00 -0500 Subject: Oswald In-Reply-To: <41A53608.827B16BA@cdc.gov> References: <41A53608.827B16BA@cdc.gov> Message-ID: <1101346740.11415.6.camel@daft> On Wed, 2004-11-24 at 20:31, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > At 11:34 PM 11/21/04 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: > >Slsahdot reports that MSNBC reports http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6549265/ > >that there's a new video game "JFK Reloaded" > http://www.jfkreloaded.com/start/ > > I'm waiting for Grand Theft Auto IV, Drunk Over the Bridge With the > Secretary variant. Wonder what Teddie will say about that one. > > Oswald saved the world from nuclear conflict, thank the gods he > offed the sex & drug crazed toothy one as soon as he (et al :-) did. > > And a hell of a shot as well. Gotta respect that, with a bolt-action, > no less. A piece-of-shit boltie. I don't believe the official story, myself. Huh. Just realized, now that I'm spouting conspiracy theories I must finally be a real cpunks list member. From rah at shipwright.com Wed Nov 24 17:56:06 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 20:56:06 -0500 Subject: Oswald In-Reply-To: <1101346740.11415.6.camel@daft> References: <41A53608.827B16BA@cdc.gov> <1101346740.11415.6.camel@daft> Message-ID: At 8:39 PM -0500 11/24/04, Steve Furlong wrote: >A piece-of-shit boltie. That and a corset... Cheers, RAH ------- The Los Angeles Times COMMENTARY That 'Damned Girdle': the Hidden Factor That Might Have Killed Kennedy If not for an elaborate corset, he likely would have survived the Dallas shooting. By James Reston Jr. James Reston Jr.'s forthcoming book is on the Spain of Christopher Columbus and will be published by Doubleday next year. November 22, 2004 Two years ago, the historian Robert Dallek revealed new details about the extraordinary range of shots, stimulants and pills President Kennedy took to control his physical pain and present his youthful image to the world. Important and interesting as these details are, they should not distract us from the one medical remedy that probably killed the president: his corset. Members of Kennedy's inner circle had often witnessed the painful ritual that Kennedy endured in his private quarters before he ventured in public, when his valet would literally winch a steel-rodded canvas back brace around the president's torso, pulling heavy straps and tightening the thongs loop by loop as if it was a bizarre scene out of "Gone With the Wind." Once in it, the president was planted upright, trapped and almost bolted into a ramrod posture. Many would wonder how JFK could ever move in such a contraption. And yet move he did, and, besides his painkillers, his corset contributed to the youthful, high-shouldered military bearing that he presented glamorously to the world. But this simple device imparted a fate almost Mephistophelean in its horror to the sequence of events in Dallas 41 years ago. In researching my biography of Gov. John Connally of Texas 15 years ago, I was put on to the critical importance of Kennedy's corset in the ghastly six seconds in November 1963 by a former Texas senator, the late Ralph Yarborough, who was in the motorcade that day. Yarborough growled softly about that "damned girdle," and this led me to the remarks of two doctors, Charles James Carrico and Malcolm Oliver Perry, buried in Volume 3 of the 26-volume set of testimony that attended the Warren Commission report. In November 1963, Carrico was the youthful, 28-year-old resident in the emergency room of Parkland Hospital who first received the injured president in the trauma room; Perry came quickly to the emergency room to supervise the case - and then to pronounce the president dead half an hour later. Before the Warren Commission, Carrico told of removing Kennedy's back brace in the first seconds after his body arrived in the hospital. He described the device as made of coarse white fiber, with stays and buckles. Apart from the never-ending controversy over how many bullets Lee Harvey Oswald actually fired from the Texas School Book Depository, most experts agree with the Warren Commission that Oswald's first bullet passed cleanly through Kennedy's lower neck, missing any bone, then entered Connally's back, streaking through the governor's body and lodging in his thigh. This was the first so-called magic bullet. When Connally was hit, he pivoted in pain to his left, his lithe body in motion as it swiveled downward, ending up in the lap of his wife, Nellie. But because of the corset, Kennedy's body did not act as a normal body would when the bullet passed through his throat. Held by his back brace, Kennedy remained upright, according to the Warren Commission, for five more seconds. This provided Oswald the opportunity to reload and shoot again at an almost stationary target. The frames of the Zapruder film confirm this ramrod posture: Kennedy's head turns only slightly in those eternal seconds, and his upper body almost not at all, from frame 225 (when the first shot entered his neck) to the fatal frame of 313. Without the corset, the force of the first bullet, traveling at a speed of 2,000 feet a second, would surely have driven the president's body forward, making him writhe in pain like Connally, and probably down in the seat of his limousine, beyond the view of Oswald's cross hairs for a second or third shot. With no bones struck and the spinal cord intact, the president almost certainly would have survived the wound from the first bullet. Both Carrico and Perry testified to this likelihood (and apropos of the decades-long controversy, both testified that the small, round, clean wound in the front of Kennedy's neck was an exit wound rather than an entry wound). To Perry, under the questioning of then-assistant counsel - now senator from Pennsylvania - Arlen Specter, the injury was "tolerable"; the president would have recovered. Because the bullet had passed below the larynx, the wound would not even have impaired his speech later. In the new focus on cortisone shots, codeine painkillers, barbiturates, stimulants like Ritalin, and gamma globulin injections, the simple corset needs to be emphasized, tragically, in the context of those medical strategies President Kennedy used to create the illusion of the vigorous leader. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From brian-slashdotnews at hyperreal.org Wed Nov 24 15:01:24 2004 From: brian-slashdotnews at hyperreal.org (brian-slashdotnews at hyperreal.org) Date: 24 Nov 2004 23:01:24 -0000 Subject: CIA Researching Automated IRC Spying Message-ID: Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/24/2140209 Posted by: timothy, on 2004-11-24 21:58:00 from the will-u-be-my-friend-lol-j/k dept. Iphtashu Fitz writes "CNet News is reporting that the CIA has been [1]quietly investing in research programs to automatically monitor Internet chat rooms. In a two year agreement with the [2]National Science Foundation, CIA officials were involved with the selection of recipients for research grants to develop automated chat room monitors. Researchers at [3]Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute received $157,673 from the CIA and NSF for their proposal of 'a system to be deployed in the background of any chat room as a silent listener for eavesdropping ... The proposed system could aid the intelligence community to discover hidden communities and communication patterns in chat rooms without human intervention.' How soon until all IM conversations are monitored by [4]Big Brother? The [5]abstract of the proposal is available on the NFS website." [6]Click Here References 1. http://news.com.com/2100-7348_3-5466140.html 2. http://www.nsf.gov/ 3. http://www.rpi.edu/ 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(1984) 5. http://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0442154 6. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=5671&alloc_id=12342&site_id=1&request_id=2995024&o p=click&page=%2farticle%2epl ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From eugen at leitl.org Wed Nov 24 23:28:54 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 08:28:54 +0100 Subject: CIA Researching Automated IRC Spying (fwd from brian-slashdotnews@hyperreal.org) Message-ID: <20041125072854.GA1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from brian-slashdotnews at hyperreal.org ----- From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Thu Nov 25 07:10:24 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 10:10:24 -0500 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <41A4E435.18339.29F2580@localhost> Message-ID: James A Donald wrote... >What made it a breeding ground for terrorism was not civil war, >but diminuition of civil war. The problem was that the Taliban >was damn near victorious. If the US government had maintained >the relationship with our former anti communist allies, and >kept on sending them arms, we never would have had 9/11 Well, that's not particularly convincing. First of all, even during the Taliban's reign there were plenty of warlords that ran some regions of Afghanistan. More to the point is that a long term period of chaos and turbulence causes the locals to be willing to open the door to the like of the Taliban, as long as they offer some kind of peace. The period between Soviet withdrawal and the Taliban was uglier than practically anything imaginable...one batch of warlords would take over, killing the men loyal to the previous batch and raping the women, and then another batch would take over and do the same thing. When the Taliban came in to power, they seemed to offer some stability, albeit at a price. And I'd bet a lot of people in the shoes of the Afghanis would have been willing to pay that price. Such is the long-term consequence of an ill-thought out invasion by the US in Iraq OOPS I mean the Soviets in Afghanistan. They bet that all their power and their ultimate "inevitable" desitny as freers of the workers of the world should easily overcome the local will to control their own destiny (plus a few stingers of course). -TD From steve49152 at yahoo.ca Thu Nov 25 07:14:26 2004 From: steve49152 at yahoo.ca (Steve Thompson) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 10:14:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <41A4EA15.13428.2B61918@localhost> Message-ID: <20041125151426.81672.qmail@web51807.mail.yahoo.com> --- "James A. Donald" wrote: > -- > James A. Donald: > > > > And the problem with a civil war in Iraq is? > > On 24 Nov 2004 at 2:42, Bill Stewart wrote: > > Well, once you get past the invalid and dishonest parts of > > Bush's 57 reasons We Need to Invade Iraq Right Now (WMDs, > > Al-Qaeda, Tried to kill Bush's Daddy, etc.) you're pretty > > much left with "Saddam tried to kill Bush's Daddy" and > > "Replacing the EEEVil dictator Saddam with a Democracy to > > protect the Iraqi people". > > Seems to me that permanent civil war in Iraq provides Americans > with the same benefits as democracy in Iraq, though > considerably more reliably. You might be more accurate to say that a permanent [civil] war in Iraq benefits miltiary leaders and civilian contractors with a variety of benefits. Of course, I am quite stupid about a great many subjects and consequently I may not be able to fully appreciate the benefits that trickle down to the American public from being `part' of a theocratic-military pseudo-oligarchy. Perhaps such an arrangement makes the best of the human condition and I am merely too inferior to appreciate the fact. > Chances are that after fair and free election, the majority > will vote to screw the minority - literally screw them, as in > rape being unofficially OK when members of the majority do it > to members of the minority. Well this is to be expected if one studies the field of game theory. And given that reality, there is really no point in using psychology and legislation to mitigate against the dictatorship of the proletariat. Vulnerable minorities might as well lie back and enjoy the inevitable loving attentions of the majority, eh? > Nothing like a long holy war with no clear winner to teach > people the virtues of religious tolerance. That is, after all, > how Europeans learnt that lesson. You're dreaming. People simply do not learn from history. Never mind the fact that the historical record is largely incomplete and of course written by the victors; what does survive in the history of the species entirely fails to teach individuals and cultures the errors of primitive and barbaric ways. Of course this may change in the future. The Christian crusaders, to use but one trivial example, did not have television and the History Channel at the time when they were working themselves into a frenzy in preparation for war. > And the worst comes to the worst - well today the Taliban are > busy kiling Afghans instead of Americans. Wouldn't it be nice > if Al Quaeda was killing Iraqis instead of Americans - well > actually they are killing Iraqis instead of americans, but > wouldn't it be nice if they were killing *more* Iraqis? Many things would be nice if [group A] were busy killing [enemy B] instead of [group C]. Sadly, this is not a perfect world and the people who need the most killing do not, generally speaking, get it. Perhaps it is a bit of a shame that the kind of broken person who ends up becoming a suicide bomber, a Ted Kaczynski, a Timothy McVeigh, or even a Jim Sikorski, cannot be identified early on by some sort of DNA screening technology and then channeled into an appropriate military program in which they might be trained to use their special talents against truly worthy enemies of the state. Regards, Steve ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca From dgerow at afflictions.org Thu Nov 25 07:22:45 2004 From: dgerow at afflictions.org (Damian Gerow) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 10:22:45 -0500 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <20041125151426.81672.qmail@web51807.mail.yahoo.com> References: <41A4EA15.13428.2B61918@localhost> <20041125151426.81672.qmail@web51807.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20041125152245.GI12920@afflictions.org> Thus spake Steve Thompson (steve49152 at yahoo.ca) [25/11/04 10:17]: : You're dreaming. People simply do not learn from history. People /do/ learn from history. But most people never bother learning history, period, and many of those that do believe that their situation is different. And... : Never mind the fact that the historical record is largely incomplete and : of course written by the victors; what does survive in the history of the : species entirely fails to teach individuals and cultures the errors of : primitive and barbaric ways. From BMCLEE at aol.com Thu Nov 25 07:41:34 2004 From: BMCLEE at aol.com (BMCLEE at aol.com) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 10:41:34 EST Subject: [osint] 'Stunning' arms haul in Falluja Message-ID: [Excerpt: Weapons caches, many in the south of Falluja - the last area taken by the marines - were often marked by a brick suspended on a piece of string outside a house, they added....The amount of weapons was in no way just to protect a city," said Maj Jim West, a Marine intelligence officer...."There was enough to mount an insurgency across the country," he added....Earlier, Iraqi Minister of State Kassim Daoud told a news conference: "Soldiers from the Iraqi National Guard found a chemical laboratory that was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons....."They also found in the lab booklets and instructions on how to make bombs and poisons. They even talked about the production of anthrax."] Last Updated: Thursday, 25 November, 2004, 14:42 GMT http://212.58.240.132/1/hi/world/middle_east/4041235.stm 'Stunning' arms haul in Falluja US marines combing the Iraqi city of Falluja after a major offensive say they found weapons stocks sufficient to mount an insurgency across the country. The "stunning" finds included mortars, bomb-making equipment, grenades and rockets, officials said. The biggest haul was made at a mosque complex in the east of the city. Soldiers also found a house which contained a laboratory and instructions on how to make anthrax and blood agents, the US military told the BBC. US marines say it may be several weeks before civilians who fled the city can return. Following the US-led offensive, the city remains without power or water. The discoveries came as hundreds of British troops from the Black Watch took part in a fresh offensive against suspected Saddam Hussein loyalists living on the bank of the Euphrates river in central Iraq. In other developments: * US officials say they found five new bodies, including the corpses of some Iraqi soldiers, in the northern city of Mosul - the scene of a recent upsurge in attacks * Police in southern Iraq arrest five suspected foreign fighters - two Saudis, two Tunisians and one Libyan - they claim were planning to mount attacks in Basra. 'Foreign fighters' centre' Marine commanders said troops moving from house to house had discovered large numbers of weapons stores, including stocks of up to 700 mortar shells. Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and heavy cannon have also been found throughout the city, officers said. Weapons caches, many in the south of Falluja - the last area taken by the marines - were often marked by a brick suspended on a piece of string outside a house, they added. Iraqi Red Crescent convoy waits at entrance to Falluja, 24 Nov 2004 Aid organisations need to assess how many need help in Falluja "The amount of weapons was in no way just to protect a city," said Maj Jim West, a Marine intelligence officer. "There was enough to mount an insurgency across the country," he added. Earlier, Iraqi Minister of State Kassim Daoud told a news conference: "Soldiers from the Iraqi National Guard found a chemical laboratory that was used to prepare deadly explosives and poisons. "They also found in the lab booklets and instructions on how to make bombs and poisons. They even talked about the production of anthrax." 'Hotbed' The US has claimed Falluja was a centre for foreign fighters who had come to Iraq to fight the coalition. Earlier this week Iraq's interim defence minister said 60 Arab fighters were among those arrested in Falluja. The Americans claim to have killed at least 1,000 Iraqis in the Falluja assault launched two and a half weeks ago. More than 50 marines died and more than 400 were wounded. The number of Iraqi civilians killed and injured when they were caught up in the fighting is still not known. The Iraqi Red Crescent said on Thursday it had managed to deliver food aid, and that its volunteers would stay to help bury the dead and evacuate families still trapped in Falluja. enditem UNRESTRICTED [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-osint at yahoogroups.com. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor bisoldi at intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint at yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From BMCLEE at aol.com Thu Nov 25 07:49:27 2004 From: BMCLEE at aol.com (BMCLEE at aol.com) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 10:49:27 EST Subject: [osint] Mexican police hunt lynch mob Message-ID: [Excerpt: A third policeman who was finally rescued by colleagues - three and a half hours after the attack began - suffered serious injuries and is said to be in a critical condition....The attack in the southern suburb of San Juan Ixtayopan was the latest example of mob justice by Mexicans frustrated by state corruption and soaring crime, correspondents say. "I've never seen such insanity, so much unbridled hate. They beat them with pipes, they kicked them... It was so extreme that you couldn't recognise them when they were set alight," an unnamed Televisa cameraman who filmed the incident told the French news agency AFP....At one point, the victims, blood streaming down their faces, spoke into the cameras, confirming they were anti-terrorism agents. The gruesome footage was given wide coverage....Mexico City's public safety chief, Marcelo Ebrard, said back-up units were unable to get through for more than three and a half hours because of heavy traffic.] Last Updated: Thursday, 25 November, 2004, 10:23 GMT http://212.58.240.132/1/hi/world/americas/4040815.stm Mexican police hunt lynch mob Hundreds of police and federal agents raided a Mexico City suburb on Wednesday night after two officers were killed by an angry crowd. More than 30 people were reportedly held after police with pictures taken in the attack went from house to house. They are also investigating why the two men were not rescued - despite live TV coverage of Tuesday's events. The two plain-clothes officers were burned alive after locals apparently mistook them for child kidnappers. A third policeman who was finally rescued by colleagues - three and a half hours after the attack began - suffered serious injuries and is said to be in a critical condition. The attack in the southern suburb of San Juan Ixtayopan was the latest example of mob justice by Mexicans frustrated by state corruption and soaring crime, correspondents say. The men who were attacked were working on a covert drugs operation at the time, officials said. 'Unbridled hate' A long convoy of government vehicles sped into San Juan Ixtayopan just before night fell on Wednesday, an official spokeswoman told the Associated Press news agency. The agency said 600 federal agents and hundreds of city police were involved in the operation. They sealed off streets and carried out house-to-house searches. I've never seen such insanity, so much unbridled hate... It was so extreme that you couldn't recognise them when they were set alight TV cameraman Mexico's Procurator General, Rafael Macedo, told Mexican television that 33 people had been detained, among them people suspected of actually carrying out or instigating the attack, along with others who witnessed it, Efe news agency reported. The agents were taking photos of pupils at a primary school on Tuesday - where two children had recently gone missing - when the attack began. Some in the crowd thought they were kidnappers, while others were simply angry that the alleged kidnappings had not been properly investigated. The crowd cheered, chanted and shouted obscenities as they attacked. Reporters reached the scene before police reinforcements, and live cameras caught a mob beating Victor Moreles Barrera and Cristobal Martinez Martin before setting them alight. "I've never seen such insanity, so much unbridled hate. They beat them with pipes, they kicked them... It was so extreme that you couldn't recognise them when they were set alight," an unnamed Televisa cameraman who filmed the incident told the French news agency AFP. At one point, the victims, blood streaming down their faces, spoke into the cameras, confirming they were anti-terrorism agents. The gruesome footage was given wide coverage. Mexico City's public safety chief, Marcelo Ebrard, said back-up units were unable to get through for more than three and a half hours because of heavy traffic. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> $9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything. http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-osint at yahoogroups.com. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor bisoldi at intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint at yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jamesd at echeque.com Thu Nov 25 11:19:29 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 11:19:29 -0800 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: References: <41A4E435.18339.29F2580@localhost> Message-ID: <41A5BFC1.24127.83CC8C@localhost> -- James A Donald wrote... > > What made [Afghanistan] a breeding ground for terrorism was > > not civil war, but diminuition of civil war. The problem > > was that the Taliban was damn near victorious. If the US > > government had maintained the relationship with our former > > anti communist allies, and kept on sending them arms, we > > never would have had 9/11 Tyler Durden > Well, that's not particularly convincing. First of all, even > during the Taliban's reign there were plenty of warlords that > ran some regions of Afghanistan. I seem to recall you lot claiming that the Taliban had successfully restored order - (you see the Taliban being able to massacre civilians unoppose as order) There was some truth in that claim. They controlled 95%. Had their been less truth, the Taliban would have had less ability to make trouble. > More to the point is that a long term period of chaos and > turbulence causes the locals to be willing to open the door > to the like of the Taliban, as long as they offer some kind > of peace. So we should therefore make sure they cannot offer some kind of peace. In Iraq, the Pentagon cannot supply peace. Why then should we allow those who wish to destroy us provide peace? If we cannot have peace, no one should. > The period between Soviet withdrawal > and the Taliban was uglier than practically anything > imaginable...one batch of warlords would take over, killing > the men loyal to the previous batch and raping the women, Nonsense. The ugly thing about the period before Taliban rule was that the Taliban, or people of much the same ideology, would persistently destroy murder and rape in order to get people to submit to their rule. When opposition largely collapsed, their massacres did not cease, though their rapes became more discrete. Instead, they decided to expand their terror onto a wider stage. The war was not warlord vs warlord, it was radical Islamists vs the rest, the rest being warlords and conservative Islamists. The radical Islamists won, but victory did not appease their appetite for terror. > and then another batch would take over and do the same thing. All the big crimes were committed by the Taliban or their ally Hekmatyar. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG iMxmau6gQqD0z0pAMUXMXDaFhYeKeIIMk+RxXM7G 4oThdqbZEnQ5o4UXBwjhmlFI92anV7zx78zQop+f4 From jamesd at echeque.com Thu Nov 25 11:19:30 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 11:19:30 -0800 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <20041125151426.81672.qmail@web51807.mail.yahoo.com> References: <41A4EA15.13428.2B61918@localhost> Message-ID: <41A5BFC2.31349.83D3F0@localhost> -- James A. Donald: > > Seems to me that permanent civil war in Iraq provides > > Americans with the same benefits as democracy in Iraq, > > though considerably more reliably. Steve Thompson > You might be more accurate to say that a permanent [civil] > war in Iraq benefits miltiary leaders and civilian > contractors with a variety of benefits. Permanent holy war in Iraq would keep them busy and out of mischief WITHOUT permanent large involvement from American military. Plus, of course, they would be pumping oil like mad in order to fund it. Finding Al Quaeda is hard. Nation building is even harder. Military training covers nation smashing, not nation building. But arranging matters so that Al Quaeda is busily killing those muslims it deems insufficiently Muslim, and muslims are killing Al Quaeda right back, seems astonishingly easy. It is like throwing a match into a big petrol spill. Why are American soldiers getting shot putting out the fire? Why are Americans dying to stop arabs from killing arabs? We *want* arabs to kill arabs. When arabs kill arabs, we fear that the wrong side might win - but whichever side wins, it usually turns out to be the wrong side. If no one wins, no problem. > > Nothing like a long holy war with no clear winner to teach > > people the virtues of religious tolerance. That is, after > > all, how Europeans learnt that lesson. > You're dreaming. People simply do not learn from history. But we learnt from history. Europe, and Europeans, did learn from the European holy wars. > Many things would be nice if [group A] were busy killing > [enemy B] instead of [group C]. Sadly, this is not a perfect > world and the people who need the most killing do not, > generally speaking, get it. > > Perhaps it is a bit of a shame that the kind of broken person > who ends up becoming a suicide bomber, a Ted Kaczynski, a > Timothy McVeigh, or even a Jim Sikorski, First: Three cheers for Timothy McViegh. Secondly, the people who organize large scale terror can be identified, particularly by locals and coreligionists, which is why they have been dying in large numbers in Afghanistan. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG G5IWMfReu/by3/JCAyrz14Fcz3P/3Cx5EC8D4Nds 4uM10QNnx/FK6otz8rAXMHEfD++OcHoiD5mO/tqBW From sfurlong at acmenet.net Thu Nov 25 08:32:07 2004 From: sfurlong at acmenet.net (Steve Furlong) Date: 25 Nov 2004 11:32:07 -0500 Subject: Patriot Insurance In-Reply-To: <41A5E072.4050104@well.com> References: <41A5E072.4050104@well.com> Message-ID: <1101400326.11415.10.camel@daft> On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 08:38, Will Morton wrote: > How long have soldiers deployed in war-zones been able to get life > insurance? Would love to see their actuarial process... It's been a while since I was in the US Army, but I'm sure that the life insurance we had didn't cover parachute-related deaths and I vaguely recall it didn't cover combat deaths. Kinda serious omissions, from the soldier's point of view. From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 25 09:38:19 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 12:38:19 -0500 Subject: ID scheme, IT the key to Blunkett's new terror laws Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register ; Internet and Law ; Digital Rights/Digital Wrongs ; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/24/security_bill_roundup/ ID scheme, IT the key to Blunkett's new terror laws By John Lettice (john.lettice at theregister.co.uk) Published Wednesday 24th November 2004 12:00 GMT The pile of security legislation the Government unveiled yesterday is disturbingly large but, as Peter Hain has to all intents and purposes confessed, most of it is window-dressing this side of the election. A couple of Bills will get through before May, with ID cards and SOCA, the 'British FBI', among the most likely to do so. Another with heavy IT implications, the Management of Offenders Bill (tagging) also stands some chance, but ID Cards (the Government seems to have switched back to "Cards" rather than "Scheme") looks like being the showpiece the Government will try to sell itself on in the next election campaign. The 'British FBI', the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) will not cover terrorism, which makes it not much of an FBI, but will have a lot to do with surveillance, and is headed by former MI5 chief Sir Stephen Lander, who revealed himself as worryingly gung-ho in Sunday's Dimbleby programme. It was the excited smirk he gave as he said: "I'm an enthusiast for using wiretaps" that got us. So lots more lovely wiretaps in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, some media training for Sir Stephen, but quite possibly no sign of wiretaps being used in court before the Counter Terrorism Bill makes them more secrecy-friendly on the other side of the election. Lander, along with Blunkett and most of the security services, isn't so keen on having surveillance operations being exposed in court proceedings. On the two flagship bills Blunkett says: "Identity cards would help us tackle the organised criminals and terrorists who use fake identities to carry out their crimes. They would also aid the fight against illegal working and immigration abuse, enable easier and more convenient access to services and ensure free public services are only used by those entitled to them. The Identity Cards Bill will set out the stringent safeguards we want for the use of the cards, what information they contain and who can access it. "The Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill would establish a new agency to lead the fight against crime gangs whose trade in drugs and guns has an impact in every community in Britain. A new law-enforcement agency will be created that will pursue crime bosses using the very latest technology. The Bill would also overhaul the powers of police officers and extend the powers of Community Support Officers so they can deal effectively with anti-social behaviour on the streets." We'll leave the mission-creep obvious in that last sentence until we can do a broader reading of the legislation for 'shopping list' type additions. Both the surveillance aspect and the intent to use the "very latest technology" (which underlies most of the security plans) is of major importance for the IT industry. Two draft bills, the Draft Youth Justice Bill and the Draft Counter-Terrorism Bill, are there to put down marks for the next administration and to 'crowd out' the opposition on the security issue. The Youth Justice Bill will be ramping up the use of tagging and tracking to support a move away from prison and towards community sentences, while the Counter-Terrorism Bill will likely include Blunkett's 'ASBOS for terror suspects' (or as we're trying to call them, Anti-Internet Behaviour Orders, AIBOs, (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/21/blunkett_internet_ban/) and juryless anti-terror courts. This does not seem sufficient to populate a whole David Blunkett 'sensible preemptive security measure', and we feel sure there will be much more. A couple more measures do not have any obvious security implications, but are likely to be of interest to Register readers. The Inland Revenue and Customs Merger Bill is intended to do what it says on the tin, and will clearly have an impact on your personal financial situation. The Road Safety Bill will allow police to force drink-drive offenders to take another test, and raises the fine for driving while using a mobile phone to #60. This latter is a response to the lack of impact of the previous effort at a ban, which itself was brought in because enforcement of existing legislation on driving without due care and attention was patchy. You'll note that the problem here is enforcement rather than level of fine, but that they're pretending not to notice. The Clean Neighbourhoods And Environment Bill might have an impact on the more rowdy elements of the IT business, not that this should apply to Register readers. It gives local authorities the power to issue fines for a range of messy behaviour, including litter, noise and light pollution (light pollution? No doubt somebody will explain), so getting spot-fined for dropping cigarettes and being unruly outside pubs will become more common. Blunkett's 'zero tolerance' consultant from the US has also been suggesting points on your driving licence for anti-social behaviour, so there will be that to consider in the future as well. Oh, and Blunkett proposes to broaden police powers of arrest, while the Drugs Bill allows police to test for drugs on arrest rather than when charged. Those arrested will already have their DNA added to the national database, and ultimately the wider arrest powers will allow biometrics to be added in the same way (if they haven't got them already by then). It all joins up, conceptually. Joining it up IT-wise will be a lot harder, and that issue will keep us all busy for quite a few years yet. . -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 25 09:38:58 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 12:38:58 -0500 Subject: Get yer draconian Blunkett rhetoric here Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register ; Odds and Sods ; Bootnotes ; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/24/blunkett_policy_maker/ Get yer draconian Blunkett rhetoric here By Lester Haines (lester.haines at theregister.co.uk) Published Wednesday 24th November 2004 09:31 GMT Those readers who are following the magnificent meanderings of UK home secretary David Blunkett as he moves the UK inexorably towards voluntary/compulsory ID cards (http://www.cashncarrion.co.uk/?op=catalogue-products-null&prodCategoryID=28) in an attempt to stem the tide of swan-roasting illegal immigrant members of al-Qaeda who threaten the very fabric of our society will certainly enjoy Chris Applegate's David Blunkett Policy Maker (http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/other/blunkett.php). This nifty piece of programming is designed to deliver "draconian rhetoric, whenever you want it", and can instantly formulate a Blunkett-style policy guaranteed to make Britain a safer, more loving place. For example: Give refugees a 'Citizenship test', and then deny them the right to trial by jury. And charge them for it. Quite right too. Applegate warns users that: "The random generator can generate actual policies that Blunkett has launched. I take no responsibility for any distress caused by sudden realisation of the truth, nor any feelings of fear, doom etc. for one's own civil liberties." You have been warned. . -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 25 09:45:02 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 12:45:02 -0500 Subject: DIY fingerprint idea thwarts ID thieves Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/24/fingerprint_fights_id_theft/ DIY fingerprint idea thwarts ID thieves By John Leyden (john.leyden at theregister.co.uk) Published Wednesday 24th November 2004 07:59 GMT The Home Office is touting ID cards as a solution to ID theft in today's Queen's Speech (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4034543.stm) but a Yorkshire man has taken matters into his own hands. Jamie Jameson, a civil servant from Scarborough in North Yorkshire, insists that credit can only be extended in his name on production of a thumbprint. Jameson hit on the idea of writing to the UK's three main credit reference agencies - Equifax, Experian and Call Credit - and requesting that they put a 'Notice of Correction' on his file stating that a print must be offered with applications for loans or credit cards issued in his name. At the same time he submitted his fingerprint. This Notice of Correction of the first thing a prospective lender will see when it calls up his records. Normally this facility provides a way for individuals to explain why they have a county court judgement against their name or other qualifications to their credit history. Jameson is using it to do a cheap security check. Although uncommon in the UK, thumbprints are often used as an audit mechanism for people cashing cheques in US banks. A similar scheme was trialled (http://www.south-wales.police.uk/fe_news_w/news_details.asp?newsid=169) in Wales. Jameson takes a little ink pad similar to that used in US banks around with him all the time just in case he might need it. If an application for credit is accepted without a thumbprint - against Jameson's express instructions - then he will not be liable for losses. If a would-be fraudster gives a false print on an application then it makes it easier for them to be traced by the police. "Lenders don't have to match prints. Using prints just establishes an audit trail if anything goes wrong," Jameson explained. "It's not so much me proving who I am as preventing someone else being me." Jameson has been using the idea successfully for over a year. He concedes that the scheme isn't foolproof and that it's possible to fake (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/05/16/gummi_bears_defeat_fingerprint_sensors/) fingerprints ("nothing's perfect," as he puts it). As far as Jameson knows he's the only person who's using the technique in the UK. The scheme delays the issuing of credit, which could be a problem with people who apply for multiple accounts but this is a minor inconvenience for Jameson. "This is driven by the individual so there are no data protection issues. It's a real deterrent to ID theft," he told El Reg. . -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 25 09:47:22 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 12:47:22 -0500 Subject: [osint] 'Stunning' arms haul in Falluja Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text From rah at shipwright.com Thu Nov 25 09:48:21 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 12:48:21 -0500 Subject: [osint] Mexican police hunt lynch mob Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text From macavity at well.com Thu Nov 25 05:38:58 2004 From: macavity at well.com (Will Morton) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 13:38:58 +0000 Subject: Patriot Insurance Message-ID: <41A5E072.4050104@well.com> "US Patriot Financial (USPF) exists to help Americans, who risk their lives making this world a better place, obtain life insurance. This includes resident aliens. Whether you are a soldier deploying overseas, a DOD contractor helping to rebuild war torn countries, a missionary volunteering to help the most needy, or a business man or woman traveling the globe to support our economy we can help. Using our extensive network of life insurance carriers, we are able to provide protection to those whose service leads them into some of the world's most dangerous places. This includes US citizens living abroad." http://www.uspfinancial.com/ How long have soldiers deployed in war-zones been able to get life insurance? Would love to see their actuarial process... W From chuckw at quantumlinux.com Thu Nov 25 14:16:17 2004 From: chuckw at quantumlinux.com (Chuck Wolber) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 14:16:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: Patriot Insurance In-Reply-To: <1101400326.11415.10.camel@daft> References: <41A5E072.4050104@well.com> <1101400326.11415.10.camel@daft> Message-ID: On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Steve Furlong wrote: > It's been a while since I was in the US Army, but I'm sure that the life > insurance we had didn't cover parachute-related deaths and I vaguely > recall it didn't cover combat deaths. Kinda serious omissions, from the > soldier's point of view. If I'm not mistaken, that's because there are other provisions elsewhere in a soldier's "benefit" package to cover those omissions. I know not what those would be atm. -Chuck -- http://www.quantumlinux.com Quantum Linux Laboratories, LLC. ACCELERATING Business with Open Technology "The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." - FDR From sfurlong at acmenet.net Thu Nov 25 15:06:35 2004 From: sfurlong at acmenet.net (Steve Furlong) Date: 25 Nov 2004 18:06:35 -0500 Subject: US-centrism In-Reply-To: <20041125211601.GO1457@leitl.org> References: <41A5E072.4050104@well.com> <20041125211601.GO1457@leitl.org> Message-ID: <1101423995.11415.222.camel@daft> On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 16:16, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Can we please get out of the regional fixation? The cypherpunks list isn't > about the US, US pissant wars, and similiar boring backwater shit. Response 1: When the US sneezes, the world catches a cold. Response 2: The cpunks list isn't US-centric, but most of the regular posters are in the US. Even if you don't count Bob Hettinga because he mostly forwards news articles rather than write original content, and don't count Tyler Durden and me because we're idiots, I think you still have mostly Americans posting. From mv at cdc.gov Thu Nov 25 19:02:01 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 19:02:01 -0800 Subject: "And I hope that you die; And your death'll come soon" Message-ID: <41A69CA9.F3CDFD3E@cdc.gov> >Seen the Norwegian site that calls for Bush's head shot? >Two URLs, the last vivid: > > http://www.killhim.nu/ > > http://killhimwith.bazooka.at/once/ Quite refreshing (although a simple macromedia browser game would have been a nice touch) when a US teenager armed with a Dylan song warrants a visit from the men in black: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3323602,00.html ------- "People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history." -some idiot republican From jamesd at echeque.com Thu Nov 25 19:09:25 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 19:09:25 -0800 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: References: <41A4E435.18339.29F2580@localhost> Message-ID: <41A62DE5.25125.B1C2D7@localhost> -- On 25 Nov 2004 at 10:10, Tyler Durden wrote: > More to the point is that a long term period of chaos and > turbulence causes the locals to be willing to open the door > to the like of the Taliban, Those who used to mindlessly chant commie propaganda now mindlessly chant islamist propaganda. Just as it was supposedly capitalist oppression and injustice that makes the oppressed masses supposedly warmly embrace their communist liberators, in the same way we infidels supposedly endlessly fight among ourselves. Supposedly that part of the world not under Islamic overlords is Dar Al-Harb (Abode of War), thus leading us to gladly submit to the peace provided by becoming second class citizens under islamic overlords. Dar Al-Islam (Abode of Islam) The violence of which you speak was not warlords fighting warlords, but the Taliban and its predecessor attacking men women and children, for example the shelling of Kabul. The relief that people expected to obtain by submitting to Taliban rule was not relief from fighting each other, but relief from indiscriminate Taliban attacks. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Telq5NhpCgCZDEO1lcOKsyieFYCXtJtqz9XFpas 4FPfkxCbsSj5U8v+827Yg0Rx1b1I/8QU/qUAvToxa From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Thu Nov 25 18:42:39 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 21:42:39 -0500 Subject: Patriot Insurance In-Reply-To: <20041125211601.GO1457@leitl.org> Message-ID: Well, I guess I agree. However, there is some issues of Cypherpunkly importance here, particularly concerning nation-states fighting other nation-states. Though I can't consider myself a true-believing anarchist, my own personal reason for continuing to post on the subject was to illustrate that, as long as Group-of-Bandits X continues to utilize our tax dollars to fuck over geographically removed Group of Bandits Y (and their citizenry), then some form of local resistance a la Blacknet (and arguably more drastic measures) might be called for, irregardless of how much Group-of-Bandits X (and their hypnotized citzenry) believe they're marching on God's orders. -TD >From: Eugen Leitl >To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: Patriot Insurance >Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 22:16:02 +0100 > >Can we please get out of the regional fixation? The cypherpunks list isn't >about the US, US pissant wars, and similiar boring backwater shit. > >It's too bad this list is dying a death of a thousand paper cuts inflicted >by >moronic posts, as so many others had. I haven't used a >.procmailrc in a couple years, perhaps we can postpone this with a little >collective effort. > >On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 01:38:58PM +0000, Will Morton wrote: > > "US Patriot Financial (USPF) exists to help Americans, who risk > > their lives making this world a better place, obtain life insurance. > > This includes resident aliens. > > Whether you are a soldier deploying overseas, a DOD contractor > > helping to rebuild war torn countries, a missionary volunteering to > > help the most needy, or a business man or woman traveling the globe to > > support our economy we can help. > > Using our extensive network of life insurance carriers, we are able > > to provide protection to those whose service leads them into some of the > > world's most dangerous places. This includes US citizens living >abroad." > > > > http://www.uspfinancial.com/ > > > > How long have soldiers deployed in war-zones been able to get life > > insurance? Would love to see their actuarial process... > > > > W >-- >Eugen* Leitl leitl >______________________________________________________________ >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] From eugen at leitl.org Thu Nov 25 13:16:02 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2004 22:16:02 +0100 Subject: Patriot Insurance In-Reply-To: <41A5E072.4050104@well.com> References: <41A5E072.4050104@well.com> Message-ID: <20041125211601.GO1457@leitl.org> Can we please get out of the regional fixation? The cypherpunks list isn't about the US, US pissant wars, and similiar boring backwater shit. It's too bad this list is dying a death of a thousand paper cuts inflicted by moronic posts, as so many others had. I haven't used a .procmailrc in a couple years, perhaps we can postpone this with a little collective effort. On Thu, Nov 25, 2004 at 01:38:58PM +0000, Will Morton wrote: > "US Patriot Financial (USPF) exists to help Americans, who risk > their lives making this world a better place, obtain life insurance. > This includes resident aliens. > Whether you are a soldier deploying overseas, a DOD contractor > helping to rebuild war torn countries, a missionary volunteering to > help the most needy, or a business man or woman traveling the globe to > support our economy we can help. > Using our extensive network of life insurance carriers, we are able > to provide protection to those whose service leads them into some of the > world's most dangerous places. This includes US citizens living abroad." > > http://www.uspfinancial.com/ > > How long have soldiers deployed in war-zones been able to get life > insurance? Would love to see their actuarial process... > > W -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From jrandom at i2p.net Fri Nov 26 03:12:38 2004 From: jrandom at i2p.net (jrandom) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 03:12:38 -0800 Subject: [i2p] 0.4.2 is available Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi gang, Its been a long 2 months since the 0.4.1 release, but we've finally got the new 0.4.2 release out and ready for your consumption. As discussed in the meeting logs and weekly status notes, the main change is a new streaming library which will improve reliability, reduce latency, and get more appropriate throughput. The new release is NOT BACKWARDS COMPATIBLE, so you MUST UPGRADE. The update process is largely as before - though there is one important change, so please, read the instructions for updating on http://www.i2p.net/download The installer has also been changed a bit, streamlining some things, and on windows systems, we build shortcuts on in the start menu and on the desktop (if desired). There have also been numerous bugfixes and improvements along the way - please see the full list online for details: http://dev.i2p.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgii2p/history.txt?rev=HEAD Anyway, thats that - please update as soon as possible, because if you don't, you wont be able to do anything on I2P at all - it is NOT BACKWARDS COMPATIBLE (should I repeat that a third time? maybe with blink tags?) If anyone has any problems, please post up on the list [1], the forum [2], or get on #i2p [3]! =jr [1] http://dev.i2p.net/pipermail/i2p/ [2] http://forum.i2p.net/ [3] irc://irc.freenode.net/i2p || irc://irc.duck.i2p/i2p jrandom at iggy:~/dev/042_dist$ openssl sha1 * SHA1(i2p.tar.bz2)= 67576badb93cdf081cf7bf6aa738aa6b977a881e SHA1(i2p_0_4_2.tar.bz2)= edb67ea2edd19cd0f974670d3b7e7a965a92d2b6 SHA1(i2pupdate.zip)= b36014d775b406e8854257703db3ff3da50af516 SHA1(install.jar)= dcd7db8cb1ce02e943f0b70748c89a5402bb909f -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.1 iQA/AwUBQacPORpxS9rYd+OGEQLkGwCeM9NoB0+Y+ZlR47M6Bw6CLnpU3CEAoPL9 8LEroK97mv2Yvkh2sTHMODLc =W6Tg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ i2p mailing list i2p at i2p.net http://i2p.dnsalias.net/mailman/listinfo/i2p ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 26 06:12:00 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 09:12:00 -0500 Subject: Hacking tool 'draws FBI subpoenas' Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register ; Security ; Network Security ; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/25/nmap_draws_fbi_subpoenas/ Hacking tool 'draws FBI subpoenas' By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus (klp at securityfocus.com) Published Thursday 25th November 2004 10:42 GMT The author of the popular freeware hacking tool Nmap warned users this week that FBI agents are increasingly seeking access to information from the server logs of his download site, insecure.org. "I may be forced by law to comply with legal, properly served subpoenas," wrote "Fyodor," the 27-year-old Silicon Valley coder responsible for the post scanning tool, in a mailing list message. "At the same time, I'll try to fight anything too broad... Protecting your privacy is important to me, but Nmap users should be savvy enough to know that all of your network activity leave traces." Probably the most widely-used freeware hacking tool, Nmap is a sophisticated port scanner that sends packets to a machine, or a network of machines, in an attempt to discern what services are running and to make an educated guess about the operating system. An Nmap port scan is a common prelude to an intrusion attempt, and the tool is popular both with security professionals performing penetration tests, and genuine intruders with mischief in their hearts. Last year Nmap crept into popular culture when the movie the Matrix Reloaded depicted Carrie-Anne Moss's leather-clad superhacker Trinity performing an Nmap portscan (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/05/16/matrix_sequel_has_hacker_cred/) on a power grid computer prior to hacking in. But success comes with a price, and on Tuesday Fyodor felt the need to broach the "sobering topic" of FBI subpoenas with his users. He advised his most privacy conscious users to use proxy servers or other techniques when downloading the latest version of Nmap if they want to ensure their anonymity. In a telephone interview, Fyodor said the disclaimer wasn't prompted by any particular incident, and that he'd received "less than half-a-dozen" subpoenas this year. "It's not a huge number, but I hadn't received any before 2004, and so it's a striking new issue," he said. None of the subpoenas produced anything, Fyodor says, either because they sought old information that had already been deleted from his logs, or because the subpoenas were improperly served. In every case the request has been narrowly crafted, usually directed at finding out who visited the site (http://www.insecure.org/) in a very short window of time, such as a five minute period. "They have not made any broad requests like, 'Give me anyone who's visited insecure.org for a certain day,'" he says. Fyodor theorizes the FBI is investigating cases in which an intruder downloaded Nmap directly onto a compromised machine. "They assume that she might have obtained that URL by visiting the Nmap download page from her home computer," he wrote. He confesses mixed feelings over the issue. "The side of me that questions authority is skeptical of these subpoenas," he told SecurityFocus. "The other side says, this may be a very serious crime committed ... and if I were the victim of such a crime I would probably want people to cooperate" -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 26 06:21:52 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 09:21:52 -0500 Subject: HNS - Z1 SecureMail Gateway 2.1 Checks Certificates In Real-Time Message-ID: Net-Security.org Z1 SecureMail Gateway 2.1 Checks Certificates In Real-Time Posted on 26 November 2004 | Other Zertificon Solutions releases at HNS E-mail security solution enhanced with online protocol and monitoring in new release Zertificon Solutions just released version 2.1 of the Z1 SecureMail Gateway. The so called "virtual admin office" protects corporate e-mail traffic with centralized cryptography and electronic signature from being manipulated and spied out. The server-based solution contains a certificate management that now also supports the OCSP protocol. This enhancement enables verification of external certificates in real-time and is an increase of the security level. The Online Certificate Service Protocol (OCSP) is the emerging standard for the validation of certificates at trust centers. With the disposal of OCSP the common use of steadily growing Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs) and databases with expired certificates obsolete. This new way of certificate validation is faster, every time up-to-date and receives a security level which could not be achieved by manual verification by the PC user. Version 2.1 of the Z1 SecureMail Gateway now also contains a statistic module that e.g. shows how many e-mail messages went in and out, how many of them were encrypted and / or signed, which standard was used (PGP or S/MIME). Thus the statistic module monitors the increasing use of central encryption and electronic signature. Free and unlimited test version 2.1 is available on the companies website. About Zertificon Solutions: The Berlin/Germany based specialist develops software and solutions for secure electronic business processes and communication. Zertificon Solutions markets security software which aim on a superior convenience in administration through qualified reseller or consultants and within projects. The core product, Z1 SecureMail Gateway, protects the complete e-mail traffic of an organization via server-based encryption and electronic signature. The company offers security services for IT systems like system integration, software development and consulting within its competence areas "Secure eMail", PKI & SmartCards and Open-Source Security. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 26 07:15:56 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 10:15:56 -0500 Subject: Blunkett's Bad Idea Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 26, 2004 REVIEW & OUTLOOK Blunkett's Bad Idea November 26, 2004 Amidst Tuesday's pomp and pageantry that was the State Opening of the British parliament, the biggest smile during the Queen's speech probably belonged to Home Secretary David Blunkett. For, in spite of cabinet opposition, he managed to get his pet project -- a national identification card -- put atop the government's legislative agenda. Aside from extolling the worth of ID cards in the war on terror, Mr. Blunkett has been lauding their usefulness in fighting organized crime, combating welfare abuse, and curbing illegal immigration. In fact, save improving the performance of the nation's sports teams, it almost seems for Mr. Blunkett that there's no problem these magical cards can't solve. If an argument could be made that ID cards would be a valuable aid against terrorism, fine. But they're not. An ID card system, to cite but one case, didn't prevent the Madrid massacre. So Mr. Blunkett touts other benefits, like reducing benefit fraud. But at a projected cost of #3.1 ($5.8) billion, that'll have to be a lot of fraud. The government's real response to civil libertarians is: "If you've got nothing to hide, why oppose?" That's not the point. A state exists for the people and is accountable to the people. Not vice-versa. At least not in free and democratic countries. Britain is, or was, freer than its Continental neighbors precisely because the government wasn't as intrusive in peoples' lives. To so fundamentally alter the relationship between citizen and state, as Mr. Blunkett proposes, a compelling case needs to be made. He hasn't. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 26 03:24:22 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 12:24:22 +0100 Subject: [i2p] 0.4.2 is available (fwd from jrandom@i2p.net) Message-ID: <20041126112422.GC1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from jrandom ----- From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 26 11:45:42 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 14:45:42 -0500 Subject: Cents and sensibility Message-ID: IT AsiaOne - Specials Cents and sensibility Would you buy goods online that cost a few cents? Most people don't and won't, for they would either want it for free or fork out a reasonable amount for it By Raju Chellam , Business Times 27 Nov 2004 ON Jan 21, 1998, Boston-based computer giant, Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) began testing a new system for buying and selling low-cost information or goods over the Internet. The system, called MilliCent, was the brainchild of DEC CEO Kenneth Olsen and offered users the chance to buy information or goods or services over the Internet at prices ranging from one-tenth-of-a-cent to US$5 per transaction. That initiative was as revolutionary then as it is now. That's because the idea did not take off then - and has not quite taken off yet. The idea seems simple enough: instead of risking tens or hundreds of dollars buying stuff on the Net, would you mind parting with a single cent, or a few cents, or even a dollar, to buy something you like online? Most people don't - or won't - it seems. They would either want it free, or would be willing to pay a reasonable amount for it, but not just a few cents. Except perhaps for music. There are three success stories here: One, from Soundbuzz.com, a homegrown startup which offers 250,000 songs at $1.99 each for downloading on Creative Technology's MP3 players and other devices. Two, from Apple's iTunes, which charges 99 US cents to download a song from a repertoire of a million songs, to the iPod MP3 player. And three, from the booming ringtone industry, which charges from $1 to $3 per tune downloaded to your cellphone. All this however is a tiny drop in the ocean that is the Internet. Micropayments currently form less than one per cent of the commerce done electronically worldwide. While most consumers buy more goods or services that cost more than a few dollars online, very few buy goods or services that cost less than a dollar online. Gartner Inc says microcommerce will be a US$60 billion business, but only in 2015. Forrester Research says online retail sales - called B2C (business to consumer) - in the US are set to cross US$100 billion for the first time this year. Of that, less than US$50 million will comprise micropayments. That's a poor showing, even in the US. As for Singapore, IDC Corp says 2.8 million Singaporeans - 59.6 per cent of the population - have an Internet connection. Of that, only 1.4 million - 29 per cent of the populace - have shopped online for goods or services. Most of them would have bought stuff that costs over $10. Are more people reluctant to buy stuff that costs a fraction of a dollar online? Are there fewer goods available at those low prices? Or is it too cumbersome for either the buyer or the seller to process e-payments through credit cards for amounts less than a dollar? It is all of those factors and more. As for e-payments, there's a debit card service, called eNets, from Nets (Network for Electronic Transfers Singapore). In April, Nets launched eNets China Payment, that enables millions of mainland Chinese shoppers to use their Chinese bank debit cards to buy goods and services from Singapore's online merchants for the first time. At the launch, 110 online merchants in Singapore signed up to offer goods, including a dozen who offered to sell their wares online to China-based buyers. One lurking fear in buying goods online is fraud. Though consumer fraud is not yet as major an issue in Asia as it is in the US, it is still a major concern. 'Illegal access to checking accounts is the fastest-growing type of US financial consumer fraud, and thieves appear to be proliferating through online channels,' says Avivah Litan, Gartner's vice-president and research director. A Gartner poll in April concluded that 1.98 million online adults have experienced this sort of crime in the past 12 months. The cost is about US$2.4 billion in direct fraud losses, or an average of US$1,200 per victim. 'It will take time for the financial services industry to develop sophisticated backend tools, but banks must implement stronger access controls to online and phone banking systems,' Ms Litan says. If issues like fraud are holding back the growth of online payments in general, is there no hope for micropayments? Not quite. There's some evidence that online payments, whether big or small, are getting traction in the US now. The most well-known company in the category is PayPal. Some others, such as Beenz, Flooz and DigiCash, which boomed in the dotcom era, have since vanished. New ones are coming, with names like Bitpass, Peppercoin, Salon, Valista, Payloadz, Firstgate, Paystone and Yaga. They are all startups with dreams of becoming the next Google in mind. That will take time. Until that happens - or until the next rush of interest shifts to the 'microfirms' that offer micropayments - buyers will have to struggle to find goods and services that cost under a dollar online, even as sellers of goods that cost little struggle to find buyers online. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jdd at dixons.org Fri Nov 26 08:07:59 2004 From: jdd at dixons.org (Jim Dixon) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 16:07:59 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 25 Nov 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: > When the Taliban came in to power, they seemed to offer some stability, > albeit at a price. And I'd bet a lot of people in the shoes of the Afghanis > would have been willing to pay that price. An afghani is a unit of currency, worth much less than a penny. The people who live there are Afghans or Afghanistanis or just Afs. I know it's a trivial point, but for those of us who have actually spent some time there -- and to the Afghans, of course -- it grates. -- Jim Dixon jdd at dixons.org tel +44 117 982 0786 mobile +44 797 373 7881 http://jxcl.sourceforge.net Java unit test coverage http://xlattice.sourceforge.net p2p communications infrastructure From travis at redswoosh.net Fri Nov 26 18:14:16 2004 From: travis at redswoosh.net (Travis Kalanick) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 18:14:16 -0800 Subject: [p2p-hackers] Why UDP and not TCP? Message-ID: David, The main reason P2P is moving toward reliable-flow-controlled-UDP is that UDP allows for widely available straight forward techniques to route around NATs in NAT-to-NAT file delivery scenarios. I believe this was covered in the thread, but it may be such common knowledge by now that we only refer to it implicitly. Mangling TCP to implement similar traversal techniques is a substantially more difficult task. Though not impossible at all, it's a tricky bit of hacking you'll need to do to make it work. Travis -----Original Message----- From: p2p-hackers-bounces at zgp.org [mailto:p2p-hackers-bounces at zgp.org] On Behalf Of David Barrett Sent: Friday, November 26, 2004 5:45 PM To: P2P Hackers Subject: [p2p-hackers] Why UDP and not TCP? We've had a long-ranging discussion on how to overcome UDP's inherently unreliable nature, but I'm confused: what overwhelming benefits do you see to UDP that can't be found in TCP? Elsewhere, I've heard the general arguments: 1) UDP is faster (ie, lower latency) 2) UDP is more efficient (ie, lower bandwidth) 3) UDP is easier (ie, no TCP shutdown issues) 4) UDP is more scalable (ie, no inbound connection limits) However, it seems these arguments are only really true if in the application: (from http://www.atlasindia.com/multicast.htm) - Messages require no acknowledgement - Messages between hosts are sporadic or irregular - Reliability is implemented at the process level. Reliable file transfer (the impetus for our discussion, I think) doesn't seem to be a good match for the above criteria. Indeed, it would seem to me that in this situation: 1) Latency is less important than throughput 2) TCP/UDP are similarly efficient because the payload will likely dwarf any packet overhead 3) A custom reliability layer in software is harder than a standardized, worldwide, off-the-shelf reliability layer implemented in hardware 4) The user will run out of bandwidth faster than simultaneous TCP inbound connections. At least, that's what my view tells me. What am I missing? Is there another angle to the UDP/TCP protocol selection that I'm not seeing? I've seen mention of congestion -- does UDP somehow help resolve this? Alternatively, do you find yourself forced to use UDP against your will? I really don't want to start a religious war, but I would like to know what holes exist in my reasoning above. Thanks! -david _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers at zgp.org http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers _______________________________________________ Here is a web page listing P2P Conferences: http://www.neurogrid.net/twiki/bin/view/Main/PeerToPeerConferences _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers at zgp.org http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers _______________________________________________ Here is a web page listing P2P Conferences: http://www.neurogrid.net/twiki/bin/view/Main/PeerToPeerConferences ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From announce at cfp2004.org Fri Nov 26 16:40:48 2004 From: announce at cfp2004.org (announce at cfp2004.org) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 19:40:48 -0500 Subject: CFP-2005 Call for Proposals Message-ID: COMPUTERS, FREEDOM, AND PRIVACY CONFERENCE: Panopticon 2005 April 12-15, 2005, Westin Hotel, Seattle, WA www.cfp2005.org The 15th annual conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy takes place from Tuesday, April 12th, to Friday, April 15th, 2005, in Seattle, Washington. The Program Committee is now accepting proposals for conference sessions and speakers for CFP2005. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2004 CFP serves as an internationally recognized forum for the members of the technical, government, hacker, legal, business, education, media, cyber-rights, and non-profit communities to address cutting edge technical, business, legal and cultural issues. Programs, topics, and speakers from prior years' CFP conferences can be found at: www.cfp.org The CFP2005 Program Committee welcomes proposals on all aspects of technology, freedom and privacy. We are particularly interested in receiving proposals that ask the hard questions about privacy and freedom in emerging surveillance societies, and challenging those assumptions. For example, how much surveillance is too much? When does surveillance cease making us more secure and begin to change the fabric of society? The theme of the 15th CFP is "Panopticon 2005." Over time, and particularly recently, surveillance of ordinary citizens has increased to dramatic levels. Not only are governments watching more aspects of their citizens' lives, but those in the private sector are increasing surveillance of people as well. Often lost in the race to "increase intelligence" are discussions about different approaches to address problems like the threat of terrorism that are equally or more effective, but do not involve extensive and constant surveillance. In addition to topics directly related to the Panopticon 2005 theme, other areas of interest include: 1. domestic and international travel issues 2. communications surveillance 3. children and young adults growing up in a surveillance society 4. social networking 5. the flourishing of free speech (i.e. blogging) in spite of increased watchfulness 6. RFIDs and other emerging technologies 7. Intellectual property issues We are seeking proposals for tutorials, plenary sessions, workshops, and birds-of-a-feather sessions. We are also seeking suggestions for speakers and other relevant topics not listed above. Sessions should present a wide range of thinking on a topic by including speakers from different viewpoints. We particularly welcome proposals for non- traditional presentations - those that utilize drama, "mock trials," interactivity, the performing arts, and audience participation. Complete submission instructions appear on the CFP2005 web site: www.cfp2005.org All submissions must be received by December 31, 2004. The CFP2005 Program Committee will notify submitters of the status of their proposals by January 20, 2005. ======================================================================== Note: you have received this mailing because you were an attendee at a previous CFP conference or because you have requested information about CFP. If you wish to be removed from our mailing list, please send your request to: remove at cfp2005.org and be sure to note the exact email address at which you received this communication so we can purge it from the list. Please address all other queries to: feedback at cfp2005.org. Please do not respond to the address on this announcement; mail to this address is discarded without being read. ======================================================================== --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 26 16:45:25 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 19:45:25 -0500 Subject: MyKad too hi-tech to forge Message-ID: The Star Online > News Saturday November 27, 2004 MyKad too hi-tech to forge BY JANE RITIKOS KUALA LUMPUR: The National Registration Department has detected about 10 cases of forged MyKad issued to illegal immigrants in the country since it was introduced in 2001. However, the chips in the cards were not forged ones. Its director-general Datuk Wan Ibrahim Wan Ahmad said those caught with the fake cards were Indonesians and Bangladeshis, who claimed they had paid about RM200 for the card. The fake cards looked like genuine ones except that the forgers could not duplicate the smart chip imbedded in MyKad. "The physical appearance of the card looks real but the chip, a vital component of the card, is functionless and cannot be used for transactions. "This is because the features of the MyKad chip are so high-tech that they cannot be duplicated. Even if they could make a forged chip it has no data that is linked to our database," he said. Wan Ibrahim also said the chip in the fake MyKad was not readable. "We don't believe the chip can ever be forged. The information in our chip has data and biometric features," he said. The MyKad chip stores information of the cardholders including their identity cards, driving licences, passports and health data. Wan Ibrahim said there were also those caught with fake MyKad which had their laminated sheet tampered with to alter the physical details and picture. "When these cards are read, the identity of the bearer is that of someone else. These included those who were checked at the Immigration checkpoints at the airport. At a glance the cards looked real," he added. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 26 18:26:36 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 21:26:36 -0500 Subject: 'Suicide tree' toxin is 'perfect' murder weapon Message-ID: | New Scientist 'Suicide tree' toxin is 'perfect' murder weapon 15:56 26 November 04 A plant dubbed the suicide tree kills many more people in Indian communities than was previously thought. The warning comes from forensic toxicologists in India and France who have conducted a review of deaths caused by plant-derived poisons. Cerbera odollam, which grows across India and south-east Asia, is used by more people to commit suicide than any other plant, the toxicologists say. But they also warn that doctors, pathologists and coroners are failing to detect how often it is used to murder people. A team led by Yvan Gaillard of the Laboratory of Analytical Toxicology in La Voulte-sur-Rhtne, France, documented more than 500 cases of fatal Cerbera poisoning between 1989 and 1999 in the south-west Indian state of Kerala alone. Half of Kerala's plant poisoning deaths, and one in 10 of all fatal poisonings, are put down to Cerbera. But the true number of deaths due to Cerbera poisoning in Kerala could be twice that, the team estimates, as poisonings are difficult to identify by conventional means. Unnoticed homicides Using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry to examine autopsy tissues for traces of the plant, the team uncovered a number of homicides that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. This also suggests that some cases put down to suicide may actually have been murders, they say. Although the kernels of the tree have a bitter taste, this can be disguised if they are crushed and mixed with spicy food. They contain a potent heart toxin called cerberin, similar in structure to digoxin, found in the foxglove. Digoxin kills by blocking calcium ion channels in heart muscles, which disrupts the heartbeat. But while foxglove poisoning is well known to western toxicologists, Gaillard says pathologists would not be able to identify Cerbera poisoning unless there is evidence the victim had eaten the plant. "It is the perfect murder," he says. Three-quarters of Cerbera victims are women. The team says that this may mean the plant is being used to kill young wives who do not meet the exacting standards of some Indian families. It is also likely that many cases of homicide using the plant go unnoticed in countries where it does not grow naturally. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 26 18:28:59 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 21:28:59 -0500 Subject: U.K. government hit with another large computer failure Message-ID: U.K. government hit with another large computer failure The computer crash is being called the biggest in U.K. government history News Story by Laura Rohde NOVEMBER 26, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - IT system failures continued to plague the U.K. government this week, when as many as 80,000 civil servants working for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) had to deal with what is being described in the local press as the biggest computer crash in government history. The DWP was carrying out a "routine software upgrade" on Monday when the system crashed, leaving around 80% of the department's 100,000 desk machines disrupted or completely shut down, a DWP spokeswoman said today. The problems lasted through most of yesterday, but the "majority of our system is up and running now," she said. Microsoft Corp. and Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) run the DWP's network as part of a $3.8 billion information technology contract. Microsoft issued a short statement today saying that it worked closely with its partners to help rectify the situation and support the DWP, but declined any further comment. Representatives from EDS could not immediately be reached for comment. The head of the DWP, government secretary Alan Johnson, has promised an internal inquiry into the systems failure and the role Microsoft and EDS, of Plano, Texas, played in the crisis. The DWP, which is responsible for providing a variety of state benefits to about 24 million people, attempted to downplay the effect the computer problems will have on its customers, saying that the department's mainframe computers were not affected. "There will be delays with new and amended benefit claims, but we have been dealing with the problems though our contingency plans and the disruptions will be minimal," the DWP spokeswoman said. It is believed that the crash was caused when an incompatible system was downloaded on to the entire network, forcing employees to send faxes because they couldn't access their e-mail accounts and to fill out some payment checks by hand. The IT failure was only the latest in a string of serious computer system problems experienced by the department. The DWP's Child Support Agency (CSA) has been struggling with a $863 million system from EDS that has made payments to only one in eight single parents awaiting them. Last week, Johnson told a House of Commons Parliamentary Select Committee that he is considering shutting down the child-support case management and telephony system, and Doug Smith, the head of the CSA, resigned from his job. Today the general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, Mark Serwotka, called on the government to hold off on its plans to cut 30,000 jobs in the DWP on the basis of IT improvements, in light of the computer crisis. Earlier this year, the government announced plans to eliminate 104,000 civil servant jobs across the government based in part on increased efficiencies gained though new IT systems. Since 2001, the DWP has spent around $8.04 billion on various IT projects, including the CSA system. According to a report it submitted to a Parliament Select Committee, the department has spent $579 million on management and IT consultancy, $97.4 million on staff substitutions and contractors and $102.7 million on professional services. The U.K.'s public sector IT projects in 2003 and 2004 are expected to cost more than $23.4 billion, but U.K. government IT projects have often been accused of being over-ambitious and prone to disastrous delays and cost overruns. Beyond the DWP, further examples include the benefit-payment card program from the Post Office, the Department of Social Security and International Computers Ltd. (ICL), which fell apart after three years and $567 million; software problems that delayed the Swanwick air traffic control center and have since been blamed for a near collision between two airplanes; the disruption wrought on thousands of people with travel plans in 1999 by the Passport Office's new computer system, and the National Probation Service's case-record and management system which was abandoned in 2001 after it was revealed the project was expected to be two years late and 70% over budget. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 26 19:38:16 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 22:38:16 -0500 Subject: CFP-2005 Call for Proposals Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text From rah at shipwright.com Fri Nov 26 20:55:39 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 23:55:39 -0500 Subject: A Burglary Foiled by Calls That Didn't Reach 911 Message-ID: The New York Times November 27, 2004 A Burglary Foiled by Calls That Didn't Reach 911 By MARC SANTORA he plan seemed simple enough. The building had been cased and the burglars knew exactly what they wanted - advanced computer circuit panels that could be sold on the black market for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The night before Thanksgiving, about 8 p.m., they entered the Verizon building in White Plains undetected and set to work. But as the criminals removed the panels, they soon triggered problems across Westchester County. Most problematic, 911 systems across the region began to crash. By the time some 150 panels were removed, roughly 25,000 people had lost 911 service. At 9:51 p.m., the White Plains Police received a call alerting them to the fact that there might be a problem at the Verizon building. Still unaware that burglars were at work inside, a patrol car rolled up to the site, according to Inspector Daniel Jackson. "Literally, the two guys were walking out the door," Mr. Jackson said. They were carrying two large boxes when the officer shouted for them to stop. The men dropped the stolen boxes, fled on foot and were eventually run down by the officer and arrested, Mr. Jackson said. The two men were identified in a criminal complaint as Larry D. Davis, 43, of Brooklyn, and Gailican Phillips, 34 of Manhattan. They have been charged with conspiracy to commit interstate shipment of stolen property, a federal crime with a maximum sentence of five years in jail, according to the complaint. Mr. Jackson said that the burglary itself was not as disturbing as the widespread effect it had on the 911 system. The police are working with the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security on the case. Terrorism has been ruled out as a possible motive. Although the burglary occurred in the Verizon building, the stolen equipment belonged to some half-dozen other telecommunications companies that use the premises to house part of their operations. No Verizon customers were affected, a company official said. Dan Diaz Zapata, a spokesman for Verizon, said the building had many levels of security - from video cameras to security badges to on-site guards - and that the company was cooperating with local and federal authorities. Mr. Zapata said that Verizon had redundancy capabilities built into its system that would have prevented a theft of their own equipment from having such a wide impact. Mr. Jackson said that there had been a theft at the building once before, in 2003, and the police had reason to believe one of the two men involved Wednesday also took part in that operation. He would not elaborate on other details in that case. However, much less was stolen then. According to the complaint filed in Southern District of New York, the circuit boards ranged in value from $5,000 to $70,000 each and, all told, were worth in excess of $1 million. The plan was to deliver them to an unnamed co-conspirator who, in turn, planned to sell them to an unnamed company in California, according to the complaint. "There apparently is a strong, robust black market for this stuff," said a federal law enforcement official, who insisted on anonymity for fear of saying something that would compromise the investigation. There have been two other similar burglaries in New York City and New Jersey in recent years, according to Mr. Jackson. Those thefts were much smaller in scale. National Infrastructure Coordination Center of the Department of Homeland Security is also working with local police because of concern that the 911 system could be relatively easily compromised. After arresting the two men and photographing the stolen circuit panels, the police returned them to the companies that owned them. Once reinstalled, the 911 problems ended, and by 7 a.m. the system was back to normal, Mr. Jackson said. Police said the panels that were stolen were each about the size of a legal pad and are used by telecommunications companies to transmit data and connect calls. There is an industry standard for the panels and they can easily be transferred from one computer to another. Potential buyers of the panels on the black market range from small telecommunications companies to overseas clients, the police said. Copyrigh -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From mv at cdc.gov Sat Nov 27 06:36:24 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 06:36:24 -0800 Subject: Tin Foil Passports? Message-ID: <41A890E7.5BF983A2@cdc.gov> At 09:13 AM 11/27/04 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: >Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/27/0026222 >Posted by: michael, on 2004-11-27 05:05:00 > low-cost solution: '[I]incorporate a layer of metal foil into the > cover of the passport so it could be read only when opened.' Don't > they know that the whole tinfoil hat thing is supposed to be a joke?" What is most poignant about this post is the lack of education of /. authors. Don't they teach Maxwell any more? Is Faraday just the guy who said "Sir, I do not know what it is good for. But of one thing I am quite certain--someday you will tax it." Put your cell phone in a metal tin, and call it. Wrap your access point or receiver or other radio in Al foil. Do you think Brin in _Enemy of the State_ was just a potato-chip fetishist? From mv at cdc.gov Sat Nov 27 06:43:43 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 06:43:43 -0800 Subject: geographically removed? Message-ID: <41A8929F.FD608701@cdc.gov> At 09:42 PM 11/25/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: >Well, I guess I agree. However, there is some issues of Cypherpunkly >importance here, particularly concerning nation-states fighting other >nation-states. Though I can't consider myself a true-believing anarchist, my >own personal reason for continuing to post on the subject was to illustrate >that, as long as Group-of-Bandits X continues to utilize our tax dollars to >fuck over geographically removed Group of Bandits Y (and their citizenry), Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always be defeated by cranking up the police state a notch. This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems. This is why there are carnivore boxen aplenty. The knurls on the police-state knob are getting worn, it is cranked up so frequently now. Useful resistance comes from asymmetric physical feedback such as experienced in Lebanon, S. Arabia, off the coast of Yemen, in a few embassies somewhere in africa, in the trains of Madrid, Okla city, and some degenerate US east coast cities a few years back, the latter indicating that "geographically removed" is less important, and the only incident that Joe Voter is likely to remember. Until the next one, of course; Joe's buffer is not terribly capacious. ---- A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government. --George Washington From eugen at leitl.org Fri Nov 26 23:52:00 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 08:52:00 +0100 Subject: [p2p-hackers] Why UDP and not TCP? (fwd from travis@redswoosh.net) Message-ID: <20041127075200.GX1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from Travis Kalanick ----- From eugen at leitl.org Sat Nov 27 00:13:57 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 09:13:57 +0100 Subject: Tin Foil Passports? Message-ID: <20041127081357.GC1457@leitl.org> Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/27/0026222 Posted by: michael, on 2004-11-27 05:05:00 from the joke's-on-you dept. Daedala writes "The debate over [1]contactless chips with biometric information in passports continues. Vendors have been chosen for testing in the [2]U.S. and [3]Australia. [4]Privacy advocates are still arguing about the measure, as are [5]security reporters and [6]bloggers. The [7]specs themselves are interesting, to say the least. The EETimes says that [8]in interoperability tests, the potential chips could be read from 30 feet away. However, both they and the New York Times have published [9]articles reporting vendors' low-cost solution: '[I]incorporate a layer of metal foil into the cover of the passport so it could be read only when opened.' Don't they know that the whole tinfoil hat thing is supposed to be a joke?" IFRAME: [10]pos6 References 1. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/22/0040202&tid=158 2. http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=52200157 3. http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=51200486 4. http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-60594 5. http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/nov2004/nf2004115_1663_db016.htm 6. http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/000434.html 7. http://www.icao.int/mrtd/download/technical.cfm 8. http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=45400010 9. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/26/politics/26passport.html?hp&ex=1101531600&e n=6e6254bd574cba42&ei=5094&partner=homepage 10. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=5819&alloc_id=12652&site_id=1&request_id=4960775 ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From sfurlong at acmenet.net Sat Nov 27 07:12:49 2004 From: sfurlong at acmenet.net (Steve Furlong) Date: 27 Nov 2004 10:12:49 -0500 Subject: Tin Foil Passports? In-Reply-To: <41A890E7.5BF983A2@cdc.gov> References: <41A890E7.5BF983A2@cdc.gov> Message-ID: <1101568369.6033.10.camel@daft> On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 09:36, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > At 09:13 AM 11/27/04 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/27/0026222 > >Posted by: michael, on 2004-11-27 05:05:00 > > low-cost solution: '[I]incorporate a layer of metal foil into the > > cover of the passport so it could be read only when opened.' Don't > > they know that the whole tinfoil hat thing is supposed to be a > joke?" > > What is most poignant about this post is the lack of education > of /. authors. Don't they teach Maxwell any more? Is Faraday > just the guy who said > "Sir, I do not know what it is good for. > But of one thing I am quite certain--someday you will tax it." > > Put your cell phone in a metal tin, and call it. > Wrap your access point or receiver or other radio in Al foil. > Do you think Brin in _Enemy of the State_ was just a potato-chip > fetishist? But, but, but ... This is *government approved* metal foil. It's the good stuff. You can trust them -- they're from the government, and they're here to help. On your broader point, yah. I'll check out /. once in a while for pointers to news items and more rarely for the "ask slashdot" items, but most of the comments are garbage and probably half of the posts are garbage. The question is, has /. gotten worse since it was fresh, or have I grown less tolerant of ill-informed, shoot-off-at-the-mouth kiddies? (I have a 4-digit slashdot user id, to show how long ago I came across them.) From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 27 07:43:15 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 10:43:15 -0500 Subject: ACLU concerned that microchip passports won't be encrypted Message-ID: The Indianapolis Star ACLU concerned that microchip passports won't be encrypted Associated Press November 27, 2004 WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration opposes security measures for new microchip-equipped passports that privacy advocates contend are needed to prevent identity theft, government snooping or a terrorist attack, according to State Department documents released Friday. The passports would emit radio waves that could be read electronically from as far away as 30 feet, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the documents under a Freedom of Information Act request. The ability to remotely read personal data raises the possibility that passport holders would be vulnerable to identity theft, the ACLU said. It also would allow government agents to find out covertly who was attending a political meeting or make it easier for terrorists to target Americans traveling abroad, the ACLU said. Frank Moss of the State Department said the United States wants to ensure the safety and security of Americans traveling abroad. But encrypting the data might make it more difficult for other countries to read the passports, Moss said. All new U.S. passports issued by the end of 2005 are expected to have a chip containing the owner's name, birth date, issuing office and a "biometric" identifier -- a photo of the owner's face. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Sat Nov 27 08:38:20 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 11:38:20 -0500 Subject: geographically removed? In-Reply-To: <41A8929F.FD608701@cdc.gov> Message-ID: Variola wrote... >Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always be >defeated by cranking up the police state a notch. This is eg why >e-cash systems have anonymity problems. This is why there are >carnivore boxen aplenty. The knurls on the police-state knob >are getting worn, it is cranked up so frequently now. > >Useful resistance comes from asymmetric physical feedback such >as experienced in Lebanon, S. Arabia, off the coast of Yemen, >in a few embassies somewhere in africa, in the trains of Madrid, >Okla city, and some degenerate US east coast cities a few >years back, the latter indicating that "geographically removed" is less >important, >and the only incident that Joe Voter is likely to remember. Until the >next one, of course; Joe's buffer is not terribly capacious. Well, perhaps. Then again, consider though primordial blacknet systems currently labeled P2P. They don't currently present a big problem to Group-of-Bandits X, but it does cause some of their bigger enablers (ie, the record industry) to bitch a bit. As a result, they are turning up the pressure slowly, but only just fast enough for such systems to proliferate while evolving a nice protective coating (despite all the recent lawsuits). By the time these systems represent a destabilising influence (ie, you can pay someone for a file over anonymous swarmed P2P) it'll be too late. In short, Group-of-Bandits X is a group of bandits precisely because they couldn't survive otherwise...ie, they're not smart enough. They'll eventually go the way of the dodo, though they can prolong their exodus somewhat through drastic means. The OBL route, however, does seem to have its merits and is historically quite effective (Algeria, Iraq...). A little too messy for my tastes, however, and blowing up the building I work in won't be worth the number of virgins I'd have coming to me. -TD From rah at shipwright.com Sat Nov 27 14:43:07 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 17:43:07 -0500 Subject: Actor Is Fined $600,000 For Role in Movie Piracy Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 24, 2004 5:05 p.m. EST MEDIA & MARKETING Actor Is Fined $600,000 For Role in Movie Piracy A WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE NEWS ROUNDUP November 24, 2004 5:05 p.m. LOS ANGELES -- A federal court judge ordered actor Carmine Caridi to pay $600,000 to two movie studios to resolve allegations that he gave copies of their films to someone engaged in movie piracy. In an unrelated piracy case, the Motion Picture Association of America said a Malaysian man was fined for running a Web site that broadcast pirated movies. Mr. Caridi, who is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was ordered by Judge Stephen Wilson to pay $150,000 per title for each of four movies he shared improperly, two each belonging to Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. Entertainment and Sony Corp.'s Columbia Pictures. Earlier this year, Mr. Caridi told the Federal Bureau of Investigation that, as he received screeners -- copies of movies the Academy makes available to members as they consider which deserve Oscar awards -- he sent them to an acquaintance in Chicago. The acquaintance, Russell William Sprague, duplicated them on DVD. The movies -- hundreds, sent over the course of three years -- wound up on the Internet. In April he pleaded guilty to one charge of copyright infringement. Mr. Caridi, who formerly played a police officer on the TV show "NYPD Blue" and also appeared in the Godfather II and Godfather III movies, didn't return a phone call seeking comment. Separately, a Malaysian man was ordered to pay film studios $23.8 million for running a Web site that allowed paying members to watch pirated movies, according to the MPAA. A federal judge announced the decision against Tan Soo Leong at a hearing Monday, said John Malcolm, the association's director of world-wide anti-piracy operations. Mr. Leong ran the Web site film88.com and a company called MasterSurf Inc., which set up computer servers overseas to protect the business from liability, Mr. Malcolm said. The MPAA said Mr. Leong previously ran a similar Web site, movie88.com, which was shut down by officials in Taiwan. Dutch courts also shut down servers he later set up in Iran and the Netherlands, the association said. Mr. Malcolm said the judge also ordered Mr. Leong to destroy copies of copyrighted movies on his Web site. "This case shows that some people will go to extravagant lengths to profiteer from pirating movies," he said. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From steve49152 at yahoo.ca Sat Nov 27 16:01:04 2004 From: steve49152 at yahoo.ca (Steve Thompson) Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 19:01:04 -0500 (EST) Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <41A5BFC2.31349.83D3F0@localhost> Message-ID: <20041128000104.79961.qmail@web51808.mail.yahoo.com> --- "James A. Donald" wrote: > -- > James A. Donald: > > > Seems to me that permanent civil war in Iraq provides > > > Americans with the same benefits as democracy in Iraq, > > > though considerably more reliably. > > Steve Thompson > > You might be more accurate to say that a permanent [civil] > > war in Iraq benefits miltiary leaders and civilian > > contractors with a variety of benefits. [pardon the redundancy] > Permanent holy war in Iraq would keep them busy and out of > mischief WITHOUT permanent large involvement from American > military. True, but there's a question of the waste of resources and man-years that would come from such a circumstance. And then there's the ethical[1] side of the coin: do the (largely financial benefits) that might come from a civil war in Iraq really justify the consequent standard-of-living for the residents of Iraq? People like Tim May might say that the towel-headed barbarians deserve to be killed in a bloody civil conflict, but other people might argue that there are stable states that do not actually require heavy foreign civilian losses. As to who is correct, I cannot say. As a relatively new student of history I am still researching the topic. > Plus, of course, they would be pumping oil like mad in order to > fund it. Aren't we all about to run out of oil soon anyways? > Finding Al Quaeda is hard. Nation building is even harder. > Military training covers nation smashing, not nation building. Of course. It's much easier to smash things than it is to create; and smashing requires much less wisdom. On average; depending on how one goes about `smashing' a nation-state. I imagine that nation-building, or nation-`shaping', would be quite hard -- and what if such efforts were to go awry? The consequences might be terrible. > But arranging matters so that Al Quaeda is busily killing those > muslims it deems insufficiently Muslim, and muslims are killing > Al Quaeda right back, seems astonishingly easy. If you've been practising pitting groups of barbarians against each other, as is apparently the case for those involved with the military intelligence community, then yes, I suppose it might be considered `astonishingly easy'. I would also be inclined to suggest that those sorts of arrangements are quite expensive, regardless of their degree of ease. > It is like > throwing a match into a big petrol spill. Why are American > soldiers getting shot putting out the fire? Why are Americans > dying to stop arabs from killing arabs? We *want* arabs to kill > arabs. When arabs kill arabs, we fear that the wrong side > might win - but whichever side wins, it usually turns out to be > the wrong side. If no one wins, no problem. I suppose that Americans are getting shot and dying because they are being paid to engage in high-risk operations. The risk-taking probably makes them feel more like manly-men -- until they bleed out all over the desert sand, of course. Is there a psychologist in the house who might shed more light on this kind of risk-taking behavior? > > > Nothing like a long holy war with no clear winner to teach > > > people the virtues of religious tolerance. That is, after > > > all, how Europeans learnt that lesson. > > > You're dreaming. People simply do not learn from history. > > But we learnt from history. Europe, and Europeans, did learn > from the European holy wars. Well, my opinion is such that the major lesson that [a few] people end up learning from history is how to make conflict seem more legitimate to increasingly better educated populations. But there is evidently a long way to go before the enterprise of warfare is perfected. As to other lessons learned from history, it is evident that we as a species have learnt that war remains profitable under all conditions. This is now a matter of the most sacred orthodoxy to high-culture. Do not worry. I will not presume to challenge such a strongly-held belief. > > Many things would be nice if [group A] were busy killing > > [enemy B] instead of [group C]. Sadly, this is not a perfect > > world and the people who need the most killing do not, > > generally speaking, get it. > > > > Perhaps it is a bit of a shame that the kind of broken person > > who ends up becoming a suicide bomber, a Ted Kaczynski, a > > Timothy McVeigh, or even a Jim Sikorski, > > First: Three cheers for Timothy McViegh. How about, "Where is Ted Kaczynski now that we really need him?" > Secondly, the people who organize large scale terror can be > identified, particularly by locals and coreligionists, which is > why they have been dying in large numbers in Afghanistan. Um, what planet are you on? The people who, as you say, organize large scale terror tend to be protected by virtue of large bureaucratic firewalls, legislated secrecy, misdirection (smoke and mirrors), and even taboos. But perhaps you are not referring to Western terrorists, but are expecting your reader to assume that terrorists always wear turbans, and who generally will live and operate in the Middle-Eastern theatre. Perhaps you have forgotten about the people who planned and executed the operations that helped South-American tyrants form up and train their death- and terror-squads? Who was it, by the way, who coined the name "Death and Horror, Inc." My memory is a little hazy, but I don't believe it was Bin Laden. Regards, Steve [1] I'm so sorry to use that word, but I'm one of those unfortunate retrograde types who would like to see archaic words retain their currency rather than to see the language impoverished through unplanned lexical obsolescence and random mutation. ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca From rah at shipwright.com Sun Nov 28 06:28:50 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 09:28:50 -0500 Subject: U.S.'s neighbors rap expanded border ID program Message-ID: HoustonChronicle.com Nov. 28, 2004, 12:44AM U.S.'s neighbors rap expanded border ID program Fingerprinting and photographing at Canadian and Mexican crossings called divisive By DOUG STRUCK and KEVIN SULLIVAN Washington Post Andrea Schnekenburger pressed her two index fingers on a scanning pad at the U.S. border, becoming one of the first travelers to submit such data to a vast new bank of fingerprints and photographs that will be taken of millions of people who cross land borders to enter the United States. "At least they didn't use ink," said Schnekenburger, 42, a German resident of Canada en route to a U.S. business appointment on Nov. 18. "It was easier than I thought." Three U.S. border crossings - one from Canada, at Port Huron, and two from Mexico, at Laredo and Douglas, Ariz. - launched a program run by the Department of Homeland Security to collect fingerprints and photographs at U.S. borders. It will be expanded to the 50 busiest crossings by the end of next month, U.S. officials said. The requirements won't apply to U.S. or Canadian citizens or to travelers under age 14 or over 79. There are exceptions for Mexicans with special border-crossing cards known as laser visas, according to Homeland Security officials. Only 3 percent of an estimated 108 million people who enter the United States at legal land checkpoints annually will be affected, they said, while the program will increase security for the United States, catch criminals and speed processing at the border by computerizing some functions. But groups in Canada and Mexico complain that the new process will collect an Orwellian databank of personal information on law-abiding visitors, will unfairly target racial groups, might slow the border-crossing process and is unlikely to stop a terrorist from coming into the country. Mexican critics say the program is another step toward making the borders in America "a dividing line" and a sign of "distrust" of Mexicans. Canadian critics say files created on thousands of their residents will "criminalize" the border process. Those crossing the bridge with no Canadian passport, like Schnekenburger, are directed into a building where an agent takes digital photos of them and scans their index fingers. The system began operating at 130 airports and seaports in the United States in January, and fingerprints and photos already are required as part of the application for anyone needing a visa. But this expansion to land crossings particularly affects the busy daily commerce across the borders of the country's only contiguous neighbors. Canadian passport holders and Mexicans who work in the United States and have a laser visa card, which already carries the bearer's photo and fingerprint, are now exempt from the program. U.S. officials have sent mixed signals about whether the data collection eventually will include everyone. Critics in Canada say the exclusions mean the program unfairly targets an estimated 1 million Canadian residents who are classified as "landed immigrants" or permanent residents who have not obtained a Canadian passport. Critics also say the new process will exacerbate delays at the Mexican and Canadian borders, which already have considerable daily shuttling of trucks and workers. "This program could turn what has traditionally been a bottleneck into a complete blockage," said Rafael Fernandez de Castro, a leading international relations specialist in Mexico City. "This could be truly terrible. The border, instead of being a connecting bridge, is becoming a dividing line." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Sun Nov 28 09:52:43 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 12:52:43 -0500 Subject: Computerized outdoors idea serves users virtual baloney Message-ID: Computerized outdoors idea serves users virtual baloney (Published: November 28, 2004) A Texas businessman wants to rig a robotic, high-power rifle to a Webcam in a game park so people can punch buttons and "hunt'' from the comfort of their handiest Internet connection. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants everyone to stop eating fish because the slippery critters are, in their own way, as cute and cuddly as cats and dogs. Has the world gone nuts? The proponents of what has been labeled "remote-control hunting'' are, predictably, arguing that a sanitized, virtual slaughter would be a boon for the disabled. The leaders of the Fish Empathy Project are, with equal predictability, trying to convince everyone to spare the fish because they are sensitive, thinking creatures that travel in schools. One group of loonies thinks anyone should be able to kill anything the easiest way possible -- simply because we can. The other group thinks nobody should kill anything because we're all brother fauna. The flora are apparently exempt from the discussion because they're rooted in place. Were they able to move around and wag their leaves, PETA would likely argue we shouldn't eat them either. Whatever happened to the natural order of things? Instead, we have people who think it would be "sporting" to hunt and kill animals by remote-control with their computer. That sort of thinking is just plain sick. Where exactly is the "sport''? More importantly, where is the hunt? Webster's New World Dictionary defines "hunt'' this way: "1.) to go out to kill or catch (game) for food or sport; 2. to search eagerly or carefully for; try to find 3. a.) to pursue; chase; drive b) to hound; harry, persecute 4. a) to go through (a woods, fields, etc.) in pursuit of game'' and on and on in that vein. Nowhere is there any mention of sitting in a home or office, watching a computer-display screen and punching buttons. If that qualifies as hunting, no one really need ever hunt again because we've then reduced the killing of animals to the shooting of pictures. After all, a hunter who chose to engage in this sort of computer "sport" wouldn't really be shooting an animal. He'd be shooting a picture of an animal on his computer screen, thereby telling a piece of machinery in the middle of a field somewhere to do the actual execution. And if all you're really doing is shooting a picture, what differences does it make if the picture represents a real animal or a virtual one? For that matter, how would you even know for certain what you shot? Think how easy it would be to scam this sort of "hunting.'' Put up a Web site. Run a film of animals walking around in a field. Let the people who sign onto the Web site and pay their fee shoot the animals. Run some film of an animal dying. Then you ship the hunter 50 pounds of beef from the supermarket and tell her that's the animal she killed. Someone really creative might even be able to convince PETA to endorse an Internet hunting site that kills virtual animals. Look, PETA wants to save real animals from being killed. If shooting a virtual deer spares a real deer while satisfying someone's instinctive urge to hunt, isn't that a good thing? And if we can do this with hunting, why not fishing? Someone could rig a Webcam to a robotic fishing rod along the Russian River. You could sit at home and watch on your computer as the red salmon swarm up that stream, then maneuver a joy stick to make the rod cast a fly in front of them. Let it drift. Maybe even hear the computer going tappa-tappa-tappa to give you the feel of a lead weight bouncing along the river bottom. Feel the joystick jerk against your hand as a fish hits and then battle it across the table as the fight is on. Oh, the thrill, the excitement, the virtual adrenaline rush, until at last you bring that flapping salmon into view of the robotic net that scoops it up. A week later, salmon filets would arrive in the mail. Does it matter if any of this is real? Isn't the experience exactly the same if all you are seeing on your computer is virtual? Does a prerecorded film of salmon coming up the Russian really look any different than a live camera feed of salmon coming up the stream? Of course not. The only problem might come in producing a soy product that really tastes like salmon. But science can certainly solve that. Wouldn't that be perfect for just about everybody, except the poor, dead soybean plants? I hear they're quite sensitive, too. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From mv at cdc.gov Sun Nov 28 13:31:51 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 13:31:51 -0800 Subject: Computerized war serves citizens virtual baloney Message-ID: <41AA43C7.F900B8B6@cdc.gov> At 12:52 PM 11/28/04 -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > One group of loonies thinks anyone should be able to kill anything the >easiest way possible -- simply because we can. Neo-cons? > Instead, we have people who think it would be "sporting" to hunt and kill >animals by remote-control with their computer. That sort of thinking is >just plain sick. Except when its the US military doing it... > Where exactly is the "sport''? More importantly, where is the hunt? > > Webster's New World Dictionary defines "hunt'' this way: "1.) to go out to >kill or catch (game) for food or sport; 2. to search eagerly or carefully >for; try to find 3. a.) to pursue; chase; drive b) to hound; harry, >persecute 4. a) to go through (a woods, fields, etc.) in pursuit of game'' >and on and on in that vein. How do they define war? > Nowhere is there any mention of sitting in a home or office, watching a >computer-display screen and punching buttons. If that qualifies as hunting, >no one really need ever hunt again because we've then reduced the killing >of animals to the shooting of pictures. How does the author feel about rifled barrels? Chemical propellants in general? Is an atlatl moral? How about a 'net-connected atlatl? Just curious. From jamesd at echeque.com Sun Nov 28 18:44:14 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 18:44:14 -0800 Subject: geographically removed? In-Reply-To: <41A8929F.FD608701@cdc.gov> Message-ID: <41AA1C7E.1766.4C2991D@localhost> -- On 27 Nov 2004 at 6:43, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always > be defeated by cranking up the police state a notch. You assume the police state is competent, technically skilled, determined, disciplined, and united. Observed police states are incompetent, indecisive, and quarrelsome. > This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems. The problem is that any genuinely irrevocable payment system gets swarmed by conmen and fraudsters. We have a long way to go before police states are the problem. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG j/Q7ovPCBpocpAweY6EuWipd1SYuu09GuF0FDGs4 4F1phVigtAvUzPhC0QjPDP/3SKkY4KUtZc5hRUL9a From rah at shipwright.com Sun Nov 28 15:46:33 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 18:46:33 -0500 Subject: Computerized war serves citizens virtual baloney In-Reply-To: <41AA43C7.F900B8B6@cdc.gov> References: <41AA43C7.F900B8B6@cdc.gov> Message-ID: At 1:31 PM -0800 11/28/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >How about a 'net-connected atlatl? I figured you guys would get a kick out of both the technology, and other applications thereof, :-), and the whining commentary would just be gravy... As it were. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Sun Nov 28 15:54:12 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2004 18:54:12 -0500 Subject: [osint] CIA finds Arafat's $1.9bn fortune Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text To: "Bruce Tefft" Thread-Index: AcTSpMVj5XG6vXZWTjG/IuLd8itgOwBF6nSQ From: "Bruce Tefft" Mailing-List: list osint at yahoogroups.com; contact osint-owner at yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list osint at yahoogroups.com Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2004 08:51:40 -0500 Subject: [osint] CIA finds Arafat's $1.9bn fortune Reply-To: osint at yahoogroups.com CIA finds Arafat's $1.9bn fortune By PETER ANAV in Jerusalem 22nov04 THE late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat controlled a network of companies, investments and bank accounts with a value totalling at least $1.9 billion, according to the Austrian business magazine Format. Quoting a Central Intelligence Agency report, it said yesterday the CIA had conducted inquiries after receiving information that a holding company of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation had invested $11.6 million in a small pharmaceutical company in the Canadian town of Belleville, Ontario. Format said investigators had "stepped on an anthill" when they uncovered the stake held by the Palestinian Commercial Service Corporation in Bioniche Life Sciences. They uncovered a whole network of PLO funds such as Chalcedony, Onyx, Evergreen, SilverHaze and Avmax International, the latter based on the Caribbean island Aruba. The magazine said it had seen a file "detailing in concrete terms for the first time how much money was involved". The financial network was alleged to have been run by Arafat. Format said between 1998 and the Palestinian uprising of 2000, an Austrian bank and a group called Casino Austria financed a gambling casino frequented by Israelis at Jericho on the West Bank. It also alleged Arafat controlled $1.03 billion in bank accounts in Austria, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Switzerland. Arafat's nephew yesterday arrived in Paris from Cairo to pick up the deceased leader's medical records. Nasser al-Qidwa, who was accompanied by the Palestinian Authority's representative in France, Leila Shahid, did not make any statement. Arafat's death has caused speculation, controversy and continuing mystery. He was admitted to a Paris hospital on October 29 and died on November 11. However, his cause of death has not yet been revealed. Late on Friday, lawyers for Arafat's widow Suha said she had been given her husband's medical file and had left for her second home in Tunisia. Mrs Arafat, invoking French medical confidentiality laws, has kept a tight grip on information relating to her husband's treatment during his last days. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, discuss-osint at yahoogroups.com. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor bisoldi at intellnet.org http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint at yahoogroups.com Subscribe: osint-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: osint-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From sfurlong at acmenet.net Sun Nov 28 19:33:39 2004 From: sfurlong at acmenet.net (Steve Furlong) Date: 28 Nov 2004 22:33:39 -0500 Subject: geographically removed? In-Reply-To: <41AA1C7E.1766.4C2991D@localhost> References: <41AA1C7E.1766.4C2991D@localhost> Message-ID: <1101699219.28077.7.camel@daft> On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 21:44, James A. Donald wrote: > -- > On 27 Nov 2004 at 6:43, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > > Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always > > be defeated by cranking up the police state a notch. > > You assume the police state is competent, technically skilled, > determined, disciplined, and united. Observed police states > are incompetent, indecisive, and quarrelsome. > > > This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems. > > The problem is that any genuinely irrevocable payment system > gets swarmed by conmen and fraudsters. We have a long way to > go before police states are the problem. Heh. When the stasi come a-callin' tell them they'll have to wait because you've got bigger problems. Wonder how well that would work? I see that an irrevocable payment system, used by itself, is ripe for fraud, more so if it's anonymous. But why wouldn't a mature system make use of trusted intermediaries? The vendors register with the intermedi- ary *, who takes some pains to verify their identity, trustworthiness, and so on, and to keep the vendors' identities a secret, if appropriate. The sellers pay the intermediary, who takes a piece of the action to act basically as an insurer of the vendor's good faith. If there's a problem with the service or merchandise and the vendor won't make good, the intermediary is responsible for making the buyer whole. Is there some reason this wouldn't work? If not, why hasn't anyone tried it yet? Not enough cash flow to make it worth their while? * There's a proper word for "trusted intermediaries" in this context, but hanged if I can remember it. From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 29 04:54:05 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 07:54:05 -0500 Subject: Baltimore cleans house, plans de-listing Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT Baltimore cleans house, plans de-listing By electricnews.net (feedback at theregister.co.uk) Published Friday 26th November 2004 11:50 GMT Baltimore Technologies has embarked on a series of housekeeping exercises, but the former security firm has given no indication of its plans for the future. The company has organised a general meeting of shareholders for mid-December, to approve a plan to consolidate its share structure. The company currently has 40,000 shareholders, 24,000 of whom own less than 125 shares. At the current share price, 125 shares are worth around #22. To cut the cost of servicing these shareholders, old shares will be combined in a new share, at a ratio of 125 to one. Anybody who owns less than 125 shares will be paid the value of their shares and will cease to be a shareholder. American Depository Shares (ADS), which allow people to trade Baltimore's shares on the US markets, will be worth 1/625th of a share. The company will also cancel its stock market listing in London and remove itself from the US ADR system. A stock market listing might complicate potential plans to sell the company, it says. "The board does not believe that, in the company's current situation where it is essentially a cash shell, it is in the company's best interests to incur the costs involved in maintaining such a listing," Baltimore said in a statement. The announcements come after Baltimore's whole slate of directors - who were responsible for a painful asset sell-off process - were removed due the efforts of a outspoken shareholder, Acquisitor Holdings. The proxy battle between the two sides saw Acquisitor accuse Baltimore's caretakers of destroying shareholder value, while Baltimore's board complained that Acquisitor had no firm plans for the company's future. In other comments in Thursday's announcement, Baltimore said it is asking UK courts to force Earthport to lodge security to defray the legal costs arising from Earthport's #13m lawsuit against Baltimore, which was filed earlier this year. It is not backing down in face of Earthport's claims of fraudulent misrepresentation, negligent misstatement and breach of contract, saying that they are "inadequately particularised" and "without merit." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 29 05:15:29 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 08:15:29 -0500 Subject: Lycos screensaver to blitz spam servers Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/26/lycos_europe_spam_blitz/ Lycos screensaver to blitz spam servers By Jan Libbenga (libbenga at yahoo.com) Published Friday 26th November 2004 16:31 GMT Lycos Europe has started to distribute a special screensaver (http://makelovenotspam.com/intl) in a controversial bid to battle spam. The program - titled Make Love Not Spam, and available for Windows and the Mac OS - sends a request to view a spam source site. When a large number of screensavers send their requests at the same time the spam web page becomes overloaded and slow. The servers targeted by the screensaver have been manually selected from various sources, including Spamcop, and verified to be spam advertising sites, Lycos claims. Several tests are performed to make sure that no server stops working. Flooding a server with requests so that the server is unable to respond to the volume of requests made - a process known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack - is considered to be illegal. Lycos believes the program will eventually hurt spammers. 'Spamvirtised' sites typically don't sell advertising, so they have to pay for bandwidth. Therefore more requests means higher bills, Lycos argues. A spokesman for Lycos in Germany told The Register he believed that the tool could generate 3.4MB in traffic on a daily basis. When 10m screensavers are downloaded and used, the numbers quickly add up, to 33TB of 'useless' IP traffic. Seems Lycos may hurt not just spammers. . -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From ptrei at rsasecurity.com Mon Nov 29 07:08:19 2004 From: ptrei at rsasecurity.com (Trei, Peter) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 10:08:19 -0500 Subject: Oswald Message-ID: <017630AA6DF2DF4EBC1DD4454F8EE29704776B7C@rsana-ex-hq1.NA.RSA.NET> Steve Furlong wrote: > Major Variola (ret) wrote: > > Bill Stewart wrote: > > >Slsahdot reports that MSNBC reports > http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6549265/ > > >that there's a new video game "JFK Reloaded" > > http://www.jfkreloaded.com/start/ > > > > I'm waiting for Grand Theft Auto IV, Drunk Over the Bridge With the > > Secretary variant. Wonder what Teddie will say about that one. > > > > Oswald saved the world from nuclear conflict, thank the gods he > > offed the sex & drug crazed toothy one as soon as he (et al :-) did. > > > > And a hell of a shot as well. Gotta respect that, with a > bolt-action, > > no less. > > A piece-of-shit boltie. I don't believe the official story, myself. Hitting at a upper-body sized target at less than 90 yards, using a scoped rifle, is about as difficult shooting fish in a barrel. The slow steady movement of the car makes it slightly more interesting, but hardly challenging to a decent marksman. Check the Warren report: http://www.jfk-assassination.de/warren/wch/vol11/page309.php Peter From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Mon Nov 29 08:26:41 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 11:26:41 -0500 Subject: Oswald In-Reply-To: <017630AA6DF2DF4EBC1DD4454F8EE29704776B7C@rsana-ex-hq1.NA.RSA.NET> Message-ID: > > > Oswald saved the world from nuclear conflict, thank the gods he > > > offed the sex & drug crazed toothy one as soon as he (et al :-) did. I dunno...seems like the man had his priorities straight, at least....imagine bonin Marilyn Monroe high to the gills on painkillers and speed...come ON, gotta love the guy. Funny, though, how the American public idolizes and fetishizes that guy...George W would have slaughtered "commie" JFK in the last couple of elections. It seems we can't get enough of star-spangled myths. Anyone seen "Born on the 4th Of July"? The opening scene of a pastel American flag waving in the breeze is absolutely brilliant, given the rest of the film (I'm thinking this is John Young's favorite film!) -TD From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Mon Nov 29 08:36:45 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 11:36:45 -0500 Subject: geographically removed? In-Reply-To: <1101699219.28077.7.camel@daft> Message-ID: Steve Furlong wrote... >I see that an irrevocable payment system, used by itself, is ripe for >fraud, more so if it's anonymous. But why wouldn't a mature system make >use of trusted intermediaries? The vendors register with the intermedi- >ary *, who takes some pains to verify their identity, trustworthiness, >and so on, and to keep the vendors' identities a secret, if appropriate. >The sellers pay the intermediary, who takes a piece of the action to act >basically as an insurer of the vendor's good faith. If there's a problem >with the service or merchandise and the vendor won't make good, the >intermediary is responsible for making the buyer whole. There's nothing particularly unreasonable about this, from a risk persepctive. In fact, credit card companies already work like this more or less...they can afford to protect cardmembers from Fraud precisely because of the economies of scale. As for the card industry itself, it is already reputation based. People pay up not because they're afraid to get arrested or litigated against, but because they want to preserve their Reputation with the Rating agencies (real deadbeats don't care about their reputation, and most of the money they spend is never recovered.) -TD From eugen at leitl.org Mon Nov 29 02:51:16 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 11:51:16 +0100 Subject: 3D Biometric Facial Recognition Comes To UK Message-ID: <20041129105115.GG1457@leitl.org> Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/28/0155210 Posted by: timothy, on 2004-11-28 10:11:00 from the are-you-ready-for-your-closeup? dept. [1]Roland Piquepaille writes "In the UK, where the recent Queen's speech about national identity cards generated lots of -- mostly negative -- coverage, another potentially invasive technology is being tested with very few criticism. For example, several police departments are now testing a 3D biometric facial recognition software from [2]Aurora, a company based near Northampton. The use of facial recognition 'is rapidly becoming the third forensic science alongside fingerprints and DNA,' according to a police officer who talked to BBC News for '[3]How your face could open doors.'" (More below.) [4]Click Here "The company claims its software is so sophisticated it can make the distinction between identical twins. And if the civil liberties groups continue to be neutral, this technology could also be deployed in airports or by private companies. Even banks are thinking to put cameras in their ATM machines to identify you. The good thing is that you will not have to remember your PIN. On the other hand, as with every new technology, is it safe for your privacy and is it possible to hack the system? [5]Read more before making your decision." References 1. http://www.primidi.com/ 2. http://www.facerec.com/ 3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4035285.stm 4. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=5659&alloc_id=12309&site_id=1&request_id=6430161&o p=click&page=%2farticle%2epl 5. http://www.primidi.com/2004/11/26.html ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 29 11:03:59 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 14:03:59 -0500 Subject: IBM, Sony to detail 'Cell' PS3 CPU February 2005 Message-ID: The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT The Register ; Personal ; Consoles ; Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/29/ibm_sony_cell_debut/ IBM, Sony to detail 'Cell' PS3 CPU February 2005 By Tony Smith (tony.smith at theregister.co.uk) Published Monday 29th November 2004 11:17 GMT IBM, Sony and Toshiba - the three companies behind the 'Cell' microprocessor - will formally detail the chip's workings at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) on 6 February 2005, the trio said today. IBM and Sony also said they were now ready to announce the promised Cell-based workstation, which should enable software developers to begin coding for the PlayStation 3, itself set to be based on the new chip. The partners describe Cell as a 64-bit POWER-based "multi-core system" for computers and next-generation digital home appliances. Crucially, each core can run a single operating system, or run their own OS independently of the others. OS options include real-time support. With the confirmation that Cell is indeed derived from IBM's POWER architecture, and given they way the chip's designers discuss it more in terms of a general-purpose CPU than the more console-oriented Emotion Engine of the PS2, it's clearly going to raise the possibility that the part may be of interest to Apple. And since IBM is also working on the CPU for Xbox 2/Xbox Next, there's the chance of a certain degree of software compatibility there too, though clearly the use of different high-level APIs will limit games and application portability. The chip's makers note that Cell is not only a multi-core architecture - like the anticipated 'Antares' PowerPC 970MP - but multi-threaded too, though it's not yet clear whether support for multiple threads takes places within each core level, HyperThreading-style, or Sony and co. are simply talking about spreading threads across cores. IBM's POWER 5 architecture supports simultaneous multi-threading, so it seems likely Cell will too. IBM and Sony also talk about big memory and I/O bandwidth - no great surprise there, given it's a 64-bit processor and what IBM has demonstrated with existing POWER and PowerPC processors. More interesting is the integration of a security sub-system. The companies don't go into any detail, but it sounds not unlike VIA's PadLock technology with its hardware random number generator. Mention is made of "high-level media processing", which could be a reference to AltiVec, the PowerPC SIMD engine. There's also the suggestion that Cell will use a SpeedStep-style power conservation technology, allowing the chip to reduced its clock frequency. IBM's 90nm PowerPC 970 already has something along these lines. Contrary to past speculation that Cell would ship at 65nm, its makers today said it will debut as a 90nm part using IBM's SOI technology. As for the Cell-based workstation, it's clearly only at the prototype stage, IBM and Sony having come up with an "experimental model". Still, it packs 2 teraflops into a standard (presumably) rackmount box, apparently, with what sounds like multiple, multi-core chips operating as a kind of cluster-in-a-box configuration. . -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 29 13:29:28 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 16:29:28 -0500 Subject: Tin Foil Passports? In-Reply-To: <20041129200233.GA14689@arion.soze.net> References: <41A890E7.5BF983A2@cdc.gov> <20041129200233.GA14689@arion.soze.net> Message-ID: At 8:02 PM +0000 11/29/04, Justin wrote: >There has always been an uneducated class. Spoken like a true elitist. The sins of compulsary government education are not necessarily the sins of education in general... and, today... ;-) Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From jamesd at echeque.com Mon Nov 29 16:48:20 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 16:48:20 -0800 Subject: Patriot Insurance In-Reply-To: References: <20041125211601.GO1457@leitl.org> Message-ID: <41AB52D4.341.97ED7B6@localhost> -- On 25 Nov 2004 at 21:42, Tyler Durden wrote: > Well, I guess I agree. However, there is some issues of > Cypherpunkly importance here, particularly concerning > nation-states fighting other nation-states. Though I can't > consider myself a true-believing anarchist, my own personal > reason for continuing to post on the subject was to > illustrate that, as long as Group-of-Bandits X continues to > utilize our tax dollars to fuck over geographically removed > Group of Bandits Y (and their citizenry), then some form of > local resistance a la Blacknet (and arguably more drastic > measures) might be called for, irregardless of how much > Group-of-Bandits X (and their hypnotized citzenry) believe > they're marching on God's orders. I would like to clarify my own position, which is in some important ways different from your own: I am not in favor of myself, or any one else in America, being sacrificed for the greater good of Iraqi democracy, and since Iraqi democracy is likely to consist of 51% voting to bugger the other 49%, I can understand the position of those Iraqis who are fighting to resist the imposition of democracy. But if they fight by taking hostages and mutilating them on television, then by all means let us have them sodomized. I don't want Americans sent to fight by their stupid government, but if they are sent to fight, I am in favor of them winning and the guys they are fighting dying, and if it means destroying the village to save it, serves the goat fuckers right. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG QILwOoAZoZRoKhP5l5fyQXQ021Gs0UkjXIXPRZ3A 4zkLA6Uyu1rxD5xgNBbsjEbA+HajLJfiHBPRZEEK3 From jamesd at echeque.com Mon Nov 29 17:58:52 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 17:58:52 -0800 Subject: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report In-Reply-To: <20041128000104.79961.qmail@web51808.mail.yahoo.com> References: <41A5BFC2.31349.83D3F0@localhost> Message-ID: <41AB635C.4479.9BF692F@localhost> -- James A. Donald: > > Permanent holy war in Iraq would keep them busy and out of > > mischief WITHOUT permanent large involvement from American > > military. Steve Thompson > True, but there's a question of the waste of resources and > man-years that would come from such a circumstance. All the oil money has been wasted, most of the humans in the middle east have suffered poverty, ignorance, lack of freedom and the unproductive absence of useful labor. All my life, people have been proposing to solve this problem. Nearly every American president since 1950 announced some big and expensive initiative that would supposedly solve this problem, or make some substantial progress towards a solution. What is your solution? > And then there's the ethical[1] side of the coin: do the > (largely financial benefits) that might come from a civil war > in Iraq really justify the consequent standard-of-living for > the residents of Iraq? And your remedy for improving the standard of living in the arab world is? James A. Donald: > > Plus, of course, they would be pumping oil like mad in > > order to fund it. Steve Thompson > Aren't we all about to run out of oil soon anyways? Forty years or so, according to estimates by the more sane and conventional authorities. James A. Donald: > > the people who organize large scale terror can be > > identified, particularly by locals and coreligionists, > > which is why they have been dying in large numbers in > > Afghanistan. Steve Thompson > Um, what planet are you on? The planet where the Afghans held an election, in which nearly everybody voted, some of them several times, and the Taliban were unable to carry out any of the threats they made against the voters, which indicates that the Afghans have been pretty efficient in killing Taliban. > The people who, as you say, organize large scale terror tend > to be protected by virtue of large bureaucratic firewalls, > legislated secrecy, misdirection (smoke and mirrors), and > even taboos. The average Afghan warlord is untroubled by any of this crap. He sees someone who looks suspicious, says "Hey, you don't look like you are from around here. What are you doing?" If he does not like the answers, he brings out his skinning knife, and asks a few more questions. If the answers make him even more unhappy, he hands his skinning knife to the womenfolk, and tells them to take their time. > But perhaps you are not referring to Western terrorists, but > are expecting your reader to assume that terrorists always > wear turbans, and who generally will live and operate in the > Middle-Eastern theatre. Perhaps you have forgotten about the > people who planned and executed the operations that helped > South-American tyrants form up and train their death- and > terror-squads? The parties that sponsored death squads of Latin America, when victorious, held free and fair elections, which they won, and those they had been fighting lost. The death squads were an response to Soviet sponsored attempts to subjugate, enslave and terrorize Latin America, and when the Soviet Union passed, so did the death squads. It seems most unlikely that Al Quaeda, the Taliban, and the rest, if victorious would hold free and fair elections, or be capable of winning them. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ZM2pY5cDUC+zxrjD6RPpjIIAXWXup9Ea+odfnDAf 4eH4bUjZbBj3uFRzBBaJlvBPdeLJxSaUyk6w48C2Z From jamesd at echeque.com Mon Nov 29 18:39:18 2004 From: jamesd at echeque.com (James A. Donald) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 18:39:18 -0800 Subject: geographically removed? In-Reply-To: <1101699219.28077.7.camel@daft> References: <41AA1C7E.1766.4C2991D@localhost> Message-ID: <41AB6CD6.18784.9E47034@localhost> -- Major Variola: > > > Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can > > > always be defeated by cranking up the police state a > > > notch. > > > > > > This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems. James A. Donald: > > The problem is that any genuinely irrevocable payment > > system gets swarmed by conmen and fraudsters. We have a > > long way to go before police states are the problem. Steve Furlong > Heh. When the stasi come a-callin' tell them they'll have to > wait because you've got bigger problems. Wonder how well that > would work? The stasi are not a callin yet on ecash, and have not been particularly effective against people publishing bittorrents. > I see that an irrevocable payment system, used by itself, is > ripe for fraud, more so if it's anonymous. But why wouldn't a > mature system make use of trusted intermediaries? People issuing e-cash systems want to be irrevocable and anonymous, in part because the market niche for revocable payments is occupied by paypal and credit card companies, but they are running into trouble from fraudsters. They also have trouble from states, but as yet the trouble from states is merely the usual mindless bureaucratic regulatory harassment that disrupts all businesses, not any specific hostility to difficult-to-trace extranational payments. > The vendors register with the intermedi- ary *, who takes > some pains to verify their identity, trustworthiness, and so > on, and to keep the vendors' identities a secret, if > appropriate. The sellers pay the intermediary, who takes a > piece of the action to act basically as an insurer of the > vendor's good faith. If there's a problem with the service or > merchandise and the vendor won't make good, the intermediary > is responsible for making the buyer whole. Is there some > reason this wouldn't work? If not, why hasn't anyone tried it > yet? Not enough cash flow to make it worth their while? Lots of people have tried it, with varying degrees of success. Not much demand for it yet. A big problem is that whenever any such a website achieves some degree of acceptance, a storm of fake websites appear imitating its name, its look and feel, with urls that looks very similar. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Y34+Yhj/+imvS+mJMNI1gisrEu1m1KVnVZ1XWcQC 4IiGQ9ui1sYZ89OBlTxmM6HA8I+qJa2Q8CwcRJu3c From justin-cypherpunks at soze.net Mon Nov 29 12:02:33 2004 From: justin-cypherpunks at soze.net (Justin) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 20:02:33 +0000 Subject: Tin Foil Passports? In-Reply-To: <41A890E7.5BF983A2@cdc.gov> References: <41A890E7.5BF983A2@cdc.gov> Message-ID: <20041129200233.GA14689@arion.soze.net> On 2004-11-27T06:36:24-0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > At 09:13 AM 11/27/04 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: > >Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/27/0026222 > >Posted by: michael, on 2004-11-27 05:05:00 > > low-cost solution: '[I]incorporate a layer of metal foil into the > > cover of the passport so it could be read only when opened.' Don't > > they know that the whole tinfoil hat thing is supposed to be a > > joke?" > > What is most poignant about this post is the lack of education of /. > authors. Don't they teach Maxwell any more? Is Faraday just the guy > who said ... Standardized education. We can't have anyone teaching to the 50th percentile, even assuming the median teen-citizen can handle basic calculus and E&M. Teachers must teach one or two sigmas below that level, and anyone who gets hyperactive in such an inane educational environment is malfunctioning and requires medication. There has always been an uneducated class. These days, its members can be found in gangs, sitting at home watching TV and drinking beer, or hanging out on slashdot writing open-source software. -- "People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." --Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Diapsalmata From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 29 20:03:49 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 23:03:49 -0500 Subject: Notes Spotted by Soldier Lead G.I.'s to Rebel Cache Message-ID: The New York Times November 29, 2004 MOSUL Notes Spotted by Soldier Lead G.I.'s to Rebel Cache By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. OSUL, Iraq, Nov. 28 - At first the suspect was merely one of 115 Iraqis whom American troops corralled for questioning on Saturday night in a particularly nasty part of Mosul. But his belligerence stood out. And then he made his move. Sitting where the troops had ordered him to sit - in front of an open-air cigarette store - the suspect flicked out of his pocket several folded sheets of handwritten notes. It was clear he hoped the pages would land unnoticed amid the clutter of the store just a step away. They did not. A soldier scooped them up and handed them to an Iraqi interpreter working for the Americans. "Who has this? He is an insurgent!" shouted the interpreter, known only to the soldiers as Jeff the Fighting Kurd. Jeff and another interpreter quickly translated the pages for the American officers who gathered around. One passage mentioned a proposal for a large-scale attack against American troops, according to the interpreters. Another urged attacks on the families of Iraqis thought to be working for the Americans. Another described "how to get money and use the money for jihad," an interpreter said. And still another underscored the importance of "bringing information about who is working for the U.S. forces." An American commander told embedded journalists not to report other passages - more specific, descriptive and pointed - for fear of jeopardizing efforts to gather intelligence and prevent attacks on American forces. Suddenly, the night's operation was not over. Soldiers found keys on the suspect and took him the short distance to his two-story home in Old Mosul, a densely populated warren of rundown homes in central Mosul thought to be a haven for hard-core insurgents in this northern city of two million. They walked inside, through a 15-foot-square courtyard, past two women, an elderly man, a child and a young boy, to another room packed with papers. They moved upstairs, past a flower bed, and found two rooms that contained all sorts of electronic equipment, the troops said. "There was a large stash of bomb-making material, switches, wires, just a trove of stuff," said the American commander, Lt. Col. Erik Kurilla, whose battalion controls much of western Mosul. "Papers on how to launder money and others that talked about the ineffectiveness of some of their weapons systems against us and how they need to change." A 55-gallon drum of bomb-making material and 2.5 million Iraqi dinars - about $1,700 - was also found, he said. The papers retrieved from the man in front of the cigarette stand, he said, were "minutes from some type of meeting of terrorist cells where they discussed money laundering, recruitment, weapons effectiveness and future operations." This is how it goes in the war against the insurgents in Mosul. Apparently having learned that direct attacks on American troops and their heavily armored vehicles are a difficult if not suicidal approach, insurgents often keep to the confines of sympathetic neighborhoods. They come out to try to pick off American troops patrolling the city or to launch mortars at American bases. But most of their efforts lately have been to kidnap, brutalize and kill young Iraqis who have joined the nation's new security forces or who are thought to be helping the Americans. So for American troops here, success often means catching a break or two from a steady routine of raids and searches into places like Old Mosul, a one-square-mile district in the center of the city that is home to as many as 500,000 people. Sometimes troops go into insurgent areas for the principal purpose of drawing their fire - so the Americans can shoot back and capture or kill them. Such missions are very frustrating when the insurgents do not take the bait, as was the case during a rainy three-hour operation into Old Mosul last week. But on Saturday, the troops had help. Riding in a 19-ton armored Stryker vehicle was "the source," an informant who, despite never leaving the vehicle, was bedecked in a full-face scarf, a Kevlar helmet, and large black sunglasses. Using informants can be tricky business, Colonel Kurilla is quick to concede. They can be motivated by revenge, and some do not have a good track record. With the informant in tow, troops raided an Old Mosul mosque and surrounding homes in the morning, detaining eight people whom the informant - peering through an on-board video monitor linked to a large camera atop the Stryker - identified as insurgents. But there was not much evidence. The most excited one of the Iraqi commanders became was when he brought a pair of rubber boots out of a home and laid them at the feet of several American soldiers, exclaiming, "Ali Baba!" The troops, mystified, went inside the house and found a dozen pairs of boots, and nothing else. But for the troops, Saturday night offered a welcome payoff. The troops arrived at an intersection in Old Mosul at about 5:30 p.m. and began rounding up people near a mosque and a social club where men were playing cards on the second floor. Only toward the end of the mission did the handwritten notes appear - confirming, in the view of the soldiers, that they had found some bad guys. "This is a very good night," said Capt. Matthew McGrew. "They're somebody." He added that if they were not insurgent fighters, "they're one of the terrorist cells working against us." "We know they're bad," he said. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Mon Nov 29 20:08:35 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 23:08:35 -0500 Subject: Some Secret: Open House, Open Bar Message-ID: >Must have passed some kinda big supplemental. Cheers, RAH ------- The Washington Post washingtonpost.com Round-Trip or One-Way Tickets? By Al Kamen Wednesday, November 24, 2004; Page A19 Some Secret: Open House, Open Bar Remember a while back when it came out that intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency -- the supersecret spy crowd -- did not have the resources to keep up with the flood of intercepts to be able to translate terrorists' chatter on a timely basis? This naturally caused a big fuss, and Congress pledged big bucks to get the spooks up to speed. Seems to have worked out fine, judging from an invite we got to attend an open house Dec. 7 at the National Cryptologic Museum behind the Shell station at Fort Meade. Lots of fine finger food to be had, including a "brie encrote with brown sugar and pecans," some "Swiss cheese and chablis stuffed mushroom caps," a bit of roast turkey with cranberry mayo and "mini pumpkin cheesecakes." Our very fine invite with the NSA gold-embossed seal notes "Open bar." Must have passed some kinda big supplemental. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From s.schear at comcast.net Mon Nov 29 23:21:18 2004 From: s.schear at comcast.net (Steve Schear) Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 23:21:18 -0800 Subject: "F*ck the South" In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.0.1.1.0.20041129231441.04d00138@mail.comcast.net> At 12:40 PM 11/22/2004, Tyler Durden wrote: >A hilarious rant. You can hear this guy's anger ain't just for show, >too--> www.fuckthesouth.com > >-TD > >Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to >leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of >our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are >states we want to keep. > >And now what do we get? We're the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal >Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The >Authentic America. Really? > >Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers >you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think >they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your >assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn't bother to read >the first half of the fucking sentence? The Mother Jones article link to by this article spouts the same gun-control BS that the liberal press repeats ad nauseam day in and day out. "Regarding the second broad question of individual versus state-militia rights, the Court held in its 1939 United States v. Miller decision that individuals have in effect no right to keep and bear arms under the amendment, but only a collective right having "some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia." Lower courts have consistently applied the Miller decision in upholding various gun-control laws over the years. " Not quite. Recent History The story begins with the National Firearms Act of 1934, which was the first federal law regulating firearms. Prior to that time, it was generally believed that the Constitution did not grant the federal government this power. The Firearms Act levied a prohibitive $200 dollar tax on machine guns and sawed off shotguns. Government officials claimed that these were the weapons of choice for the criminal gangs that evolved during prohibition. This law was enacted during a period when a determined effort was being made to expand federal police power at the expense of the states. A crafty legislative tactic of that time was to construct new federal criminal laws as commerce measures, which could be justified as revenue producers in the event they were challenged by supporters of state's rights. Some have speculated that the 1934 Firearms Act was passed to provide job security for federal agents who were threatened with unemployment by the repeal of alcohol prohibition in 1933. Like most criminal cases, U.S. v. Miller involved some unsavory characters. Jack Miller, a bank robber and moonshiner with many enemies, felt the need to carry a sawed off shotgun without paying the tax. He and his associate, Frank Layton, had the misfortune to be caught transporting it from Oklahoma to Arkansas and were arrested in June of 1938 by federal agents on charges of violating the Firearms Act. They were brought before United States District Court Judge Heartsill Ragon in Fort Smith, Arkansas who encouraged them to plead not guilty and appointed an attorney to represent them. He then found in their favor, declaring that the relevant section of the Firearms Act was in violation of the Second Amendment and therefore unconstitutional. Federal law enforcement authorities were not pleased. Judge Ragon's decision threatened the expansion of federal power, so the case was quickly appealed to the Supreme Court. Jack could not afford legal representation and died of gunshot wounds before the hearing date. His co-defendant Frank Layton apparently decided he wasn't interested in defending his or our rights under the 2nd and took four years probation. That a Supreme Court case could be decided without the court hearing both sides of the argument seems bizarre. Yet this was the perfect opportunity for advocates of greater federal power to advance their agenda. With no opposition, they could not lose. Despite the lack of defendant representation the opinion, written by Justice James Clark McReynolds, was notable in that it did not completely cave in to the government demands. The resulting decision issued in May of 1939 stated that "in the absence of any evidence" the Supreme Court could not say that a sawed off shotgun had any relationship to the militia. The critical point here is the absence of evidence. Of course that was literally correct, since Miller's side never showed up in court. If there had been a N. R. A. Miller might very well have gone differently. After stating the court's opinion, McReynolds included passages from various historical sources to show that the militia consists of all able-bodied men who have a right, perhaps even a duty, to own firearms suitable for military service. There was little reason to include these references unless McReynolds wished to protect the Amendment from further encroachment. The case was returned to the lower court where Miller, if living, could have made further arguments on his own behalf. He could have easily and correctly argued that short-barreled shotguns had been popular military weapons in the trenches of the First World War. It was lucky for the federal government that he was dead. Still, the decision set off alarm bells in D.C. Federal prosecutors couldn't wait to weaken Miller. In Cases v. U.S. in 1942 they found their opportunity. The robed ones didn't see a straightforward way to eviscerate Miller. Instead they accepted many of the ruling's conclusions, but tried to draw a fence around it application "However, we do not feel that the Supreme Court in Miller was attempting to formulate a general rule applicable to all cases." "In view of this, if the rule of the Miller case is general and complete, the result would follow that, under present day conditions, the federal government would be empowered only to regulate the possession or use of weapons such as a flintlock musket ... But to hold that the Second Amendment limits the federal government to regulations concerning only weapons which can be classed as antiques or curiosities -- almost any other might bear some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia unit of the present day -- is in effect to hold that the limitation of the Second Amendment is absolute." "Another objection to the rule of the Miller case as a full and general statement is that according to it Congress would be prevented by the Second Amendment from regulating the possession or use by private persons not present or prospective members of any military unit, of distinctly military arms, such as machine guns, trench mortars, anti-tank or anti-aircraft guns, even though under the circumstances surrounding such possession or use it would be inconceivable that a private person could have any legitimate reason for having such a weapon." Right, what legitimate reason does Steve Schear have for keeping a fully armed tank in their back yard? While this certainly seems reasonable to most citizens, was this type of limitation intended when the Framers drafted the 2nd? Does Original Intent still matter? According to Mr Lessig's analysis of Supreme Court judicial conduct, "Translating Federalism: United States v Lopez," one of the challenges faced by those attempting to interpret the Constitution is that there has been a qualitative change in the depth of understanding of common citizens regarding the "fictions" and "conventions" that underlie it. He cites de Tocqueville, following his early 1800s U.S. tour, to support the assumption that "The government of the Union rests almost entirely on legal fictions. The Union is an ideal nation which exists, so to say, only in men's minds and whose extent and limits can only be discerned by the understanding. Everything in such a government depends on artificially contrived conventions, and it is only suited to a people long accustomed to manage its affairs, and one in which even the lowest ranks of society have an appreciation of political science." The system is not fundamentally different, in this sense, from baseball: For no one would say that baseball is just the rules of the game; more than the rules, it is the understandings of those rules, and the practices that they envision, that constitute the knowledge necessary to play the game. But what happens when this "diverse knowledge and discernment" disappear? When these "artificially contrived conventions" lapse, how does a constitutional regime respond? More particularly, how does written constitution survive when the "fictions" upon which it rested indeed become fiction? His answer is not very well. This is the distinctive feature of constitutionalism in America. It is not that conventions and understandings behind the constitutional text disappear; it is that they change. They change both in their substance, and in their location: They not only direct different readings of the constitutional text, but they are possessed, or understood, no longer by "the common people," instead by a constitutional elite lawyers, law professors, and members of government. The distinctive problem of American constitutionalism is how to read this constitutional text, when these understandings are fundamentally different from what they were. The result of this erosion of common understanding is that the Supreme Court swings, sometimes wildly, between two poles Mr. Lessig calls "orginalism" and "texturalism". Originalism attempts to maintain fidelity and articulate these previously understood conventions, and apply them today to assure that the constitutional structure original established is, so far as possible, preserved. The effort, we could say, is to translate that original structure into the context of today. Texturalism is less focused on fidelity. Its method is more direct. It simply reads a text according to relatively simple rules of interpretation, finding that understanding of the text that is most compelling in the current context. It doesn't worry whether that current reading is the original reading. It aims simply at finding a reading that coheres best with what is now understood to be the case. Though many of today's citizens and judiciary are most comfortable with a texturalistic interpretation, in my view only an originalistic reading is acceptable. Texturalism is a slippery slope which encourages a "make it up as you go along" ethic. It is in just this situation we find ourselves in today regarding the 2nd Amendment. Our Radical Beginnings From the Declaration of Independence the right of individuals to overthrow their governments when THEY feel that it has been enshrined. While some might insist that Constitutional Amendments or massive civil unrest is the only legitimate means of achieving fundamental change, I would remind you that only a relative minority of American Colonials took an active part in the Revolution. Even Lincoln, watching the storm clouds approach over secession, recognized this right for violent overthrow. "Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -- First Inaugural Address (available at http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html) "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,---a most sacred right---a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it." (Speech in the United States House of Representatives, Jan. 12, 1848) Back to the Future You or I certainly couldn't consider overthrowing our government by force with a pistol, rifle or shotgun. The robed ones understood this clearly in Cases. If the rule of the Miller case were to stand as a full and general statement "... Congress would be prevented by the Second Amendment from regulating the possession or use by private persons not present or prospective members of any military unit, of distinctly military arms, such as machine guns, trench mortars, anti-tank or anti-aircraft guns, even though under the circumstances surrounding such possession or use it would be inconceivable that a private person could have any legitimate reason for having such a weapon. It seems to us unlikely that the framers of the Amendment intended any such result." The Justices knew this assertion against individuals possessing the right and the means for violent overthrow to be historically false. I suspect they saw acceptance of a plain reading of the 2nd as tantamount to a suicide pact. Accordingly they adopted a textural interpretation. As the comedian Lenny Bruce was fond of saying, "In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls." So, where we sit now is that we have an implied right to overthrow our government by violence but the planning or possession of the effective means is a felony. From my perspective an acceptance of the original intent of the Framers and complete reversal of Miller/Cases is in order. But I'm not holding my breath. Both the liberal and conservative poles in our political spectrum routinely seek to obtain "plain readings" of those Amendments they support and textural interpretations of those they abhor. Only by a full and complete reading of all Amendments can we all truly hope to attain the rights and protections afforded under our great system of laws. If some of these laws have become outdated or culturally problematic, do not weaken our system by interpreting them away. Use the Amendment process. That's what its there for. (I have submitted a piece similar to this to the NYT and other press but I doubt their editorial bias will incline them to ever publish it.) Steve Schear P.S. If still doubt the basis of my arguments I point you to "The Embarrassing Second Amendment," by professor Sanford Levinson http://www.shadeslanding.com/firearms/embar.html From isn at c4i.org Mon Nov 29 22:50:36 2004 From: isn at c4i.org (InfoSec News) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 00:50:36 -0600 (CST) Subject: [ISN] Desktop Google Finds Holes Message-ID: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1730748,00.asp By Bruce Schneier November 29, 2004 Google's desktop search software is so good that it exposes vulnerabilities on your computer that you didn't know about. Last month, Google released a beta version of its desktop search software: Google Desktop Search. Install it on your Windows machine, and it creates a searchable index of your data files, including word processing files, spreadsheets, presentations, e-mail messages, cached Web pages and chat sessions. It's a great idea. Windows' searching capability has always been mediocre, and Google fixes the problem nicely. There are some security issues, though. The problem is that GDS indexes and finds documents that you may prefer not be found. For example, GDS searches your browser's cache. This allows it to find old Web pages you've visited, including online banking summaries, personal messages sent from Web e-mail programs and password-protected personal Web pages. GDS can also retrieve encrypted files. No, it doesn't break the encryption or save a copy of the key. However, it searches the Windows cache, which can bypass some encryption programs entirely. And if you install the program on a computer with multiple users, you can search documents and Web pages for all users. GDS isn't doing anything wrong; it's indexing and searching documents just as it's supposed to. The vulnerabilities are due to the design of Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, PGP and other programs. First, Web browsers should not store SSL-encrypted pages or pages with personal e-mail. If they do store them, they should at least ask the user first. Second, an encryption program that leaves copies of decrypted files in the cache is poorly designed. Those files are there whether or not GDS searches for them. Third, GDS' ability to search files and Web pages of multiple users on a computer received a lot of press when it was first discovered. This is a complete nonissue. You have to be an administrator on the machine to do this, which gives you access to everyone's files anyway. Some people blame Google for these problems and suggest, wrongly, that Google fix them. What if Google were to bow to public pressure and modify GDS to avoid showing confidential information? The underlying problems would remain: The private Web pages would still be in the browser's cache; the encryption program would still be leaving copies of the plain-text files in the operating system's cache; and the administrator could still eavesdrop on anyone's computer to which he or she has access. The only thing that would have changed is that these vulnerabilities once again would be hidden from the average computer user. In the end, this can only harm security. GDS is very good at searching. It's so good that it exposes vulnerabilities on your computer that you didn't know about. And now that you know about them, pressure your software vendors to fix them. Don't shoot the messenger. Bruce Schneier is CTO of Counterpane Internet Security Inc. _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From bulletin at staffadministrator.com Mon Nov 29 20:21:13 2004 From: bulletin at staffadministrator.com (Administrator) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 04 04:21:13 GMT Subject: ADV: Staff Announcement Message-ID: Attention All Nonprofit Organizations: Members and Staff You Must Respond By 5 P.M. Wednesday, December 1, 2004. Through a special arrangement, Avtech Direct is offering a limited allotment of BRAND NEW, top of-the-line, name-brand desktop computers at more than 50% off MSRP to all Nonprofit Members and Staff who respond to this message before 5 P.M., Wednesday, December 1, 2004. All desktop computers are brand-new packed in their original boxes, and come with a full manufacturer's warranty plus a 100% satisfaction guarantee. These professional grade Desktops are fully equipped with 2005 next generation technology, making these the best performing computers money can buy. Avtech Direct is offering these feature rich, top performing Desktops with the latest technology at an amazing price to all who call: 1-800-795-8466 by 5 P.M. Wednesday, December 1, 2004 The fast and powerful AT-3200 series Desktop features: * IBM Processor for amazing speed and performance * 128MB DDR RAM, -- Upgradeable to 1024 * 20 GB UDMA Hard Drive, -- Upgradeable to 80 GB * 52X CD-Rom Drive, -- Upgradeable to DVD/CDRW * Next Generation 2005 Technology * Premium video and sound -- For enhanced colors and graphics * Full Connectivity with Fax modem/Lan/IEE 1394/USB 2.0 * Soft Touch Keyboard and scroll mouse * Internet Ready * Network Ready * 1 Year parts and labor warranty * Priority customer service and tech support MSRP $499 ........................................ Your Cost $227 How to qualify: 1. You must be a Member, Staff or Associate of a Nonprofit. 2. All desktop computers will be available on a first come first serve basis. 3. You must call 1-800-795-8466 by 5 P.M. Wednesday, December 1, 2004. and we will hold the desktops you request on will call. 4. You are not obligated in any way. 5. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed. 6. Ask for Department C. Call Avtech Direct 1-800-795-8466 before 5 P.M. Wednesday, December 1, 2004 Visit our website at http://www.avtechcomputers.com If you wish to unsubscribe from this list, please go to http://www.avtechcomputers.com/announcements.asp Avtech Direct 22647 Ventura Blvd. Suite 374 Woodland Hills, CA 91364 From jrandom at i2p.net Tue Nov 30 13:07:50 2004 From: jrandom at i2p.net (jrandom) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 13:07:50 -0800 Subject: [i2p] weekly status notes [nov 30] Message-ID: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi y'all * Index 1) 0.4.2 and 0.4.2.1 2) mail.i2p 3) i2p-bt 4) eepsites 5) ??? * 1) 0.4.2 and 0.4.2.1 Since we finally pushed out 0.4.2, the network's reliability and throughput shot up for a while, until we ran into the brand new bugs we created. IRC connections for most people are lasting for hours on end, though for some who have run into some of the problems, its been a bumpy ride. There have been a slew of fixes [1] though, and later on tonight or early tomorrow we'll have a new 0.4.2.1 release ready for download. [1] http://dev.i2p.net/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/i2p/history.txt?rev=HEAD * 2) mail.i2p Earlier today I got slipped a note from postman saying he had some things he wanted to discuss - for more info, see the meeting logs (or if you're reading this before the meeting, swing on by). * 3) i2p-bt One of the downsides of the new release is that we're running into some trouble with the i2p-bt port. Some of the problems have been identified found and fixed in the streaming lib, but further work is necessary to get it where we need it to be. * 4) eepsites There has been some discussion over the months on the list, in the channel, and on the forum about some problems with how eepsites and the eepproxy work - recently some have mentioned problems with how and what headers are filtered, others have brought up the dangers of poorly configured browsers, and there's also DrWoo's page [2] summarizing many of the risks. One particularly note worthy event is the fact that some people are actively working on applets that will hijack the user's computer if they do not disable applets. (SO DISABLE JAVA AND JAVASCRIPT IN YOUR BROWSER) This, of course, leads to a discussion of how we can secure things. I've heard suggestions of building our own browser or bundling one with preconfigured secure settings, but lets be realistic - thats a lot more work than anyone here is going to bite into. However, there are three other camps: 1) Use a fascist HTML filter and tie it in with the proxy 2) Use a fascist HTML filter as part of a script that fetches pages for you 3) Use a secure macro language The first is pretty much like we have now, except we filter the content rendered through something like muffin or freenet's anonymity filter. The downside here is that it still exposes HTTP headers so we'd have to anonymize the HTTP side as well. The second is much like you can see on http://duck.i2p/ with the CGIproxy, or alternately as you can see in freenet's fproxy. This takes care of the HTTP side as well. The third has its benefits and drawbacks - it lets us use much more compelling interfaces (as we can safely use some known safe javascript, etc), but has the downside of backwards incompatability. Perhaps a merge of this with a filter, allowing you to embed the macros in filtered html? Anyway, this is an important development effort and addresses one of the most compelling uses of I2P - safe and anonymous interactive websites. Perhaps someone has some other ideas or info as to how we could get what is needed? [2] http://brittanyworld.i2p/browsing/ * 5) ??? Ok, I'm running late for the meeting, so I suppose I should sign this and send it on its way, 'eh? =jr [lets see if I get gpg to work right...] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFBrOBZGnFL2th344YRArtBAJ9YhRvP3MczO96gi4Xwnowie55HlACgzlO3 1uyX1xgZLboelTOSdermS+Q= =e5Xv -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ i2p mailing list i2p at i2p.net http://i2p.dnsalias.net/mailman/listinfo/i2p ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 30 14:15:03 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 17:15:03 -0500 Subject: 5 years, $6,200, plus whipping: Amnesty encourgaes departure of Malaysia's illegal immigrants Message-ID: >If not, they face jail sentences of up to five years or fines of more than >$US2,600, or both, plus whipping. Kewl... Cheers, RAH ------- Radio Australia - News - Amnesty encourgaes departure of Malaysia's illegal immigrants US warns of possible terror attacks in Indonesia during Ramadan > [17:10:10] Two quakes hit Indonesian city > [03:20:19] Bashir declares innocence as trial opens in Indonesian capital > [03:20:18] Last Updated 29/10/2004, 21:50:16 Malaysia has launched an amnesty for illegal immigrants. The Malaysian government hopes some 160,000 Indonesians, working illegally in the country, will head home during the 17 day amnesty program to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. If not, they face jail sentences of up to five years or fines of more than $US2,600, or both, plus whipping. Thousands of illegal immigrants have reportedly been whipped in Malaysian prisons since harsh new laws were introduced two years ago. Immigration officials say there's been little response so far, but they say they expect more people to leave in the coming days. Illegal immigrants can only depart if they have valid travel documents and a ferry ticket, and all those leaving are fingerprinted. Under the amnesty, 6,000 illegal immigrants held at detention centres in Malaysia will also be allowed to return to their countries, if they are not involved in court cases. There are about 1.2 million illegal immigrants in Malaysia, mainly from Indonesia and the Philippines. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 30 14:48:42 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 17:48:42 -0500 Subject: Growing Number Of Hackers Attack Web Sites for Cash Message-ID: The Wall Street Journal November 30, 2004 PAGE ONE Virus for Hire Growing Number Of Hackers Attack Web Sites for Cash Entrepreneur Asked a Team To Mastermind Strikes Against Rivals, U.S. Says WeaKnees on Its Knees By CASSELL BRYAN-LOW Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL November 30, 2004; Page A1 On Oct. 6, 2003, an electronic attack overwhelmed the Web site of WeaKnees.com, an online seller of digital video recorders. As the attacks escalated over several weeks, the e-mail system was knocked out, customers couldn't access the Web site, and the Los Angeles retailer says it suffered about $200,000 in lost sales and costs for fixing the system. U.S. law-enforcement officials who later investigated the electronic assault came to a disturbing conclusion: It wasn't masterminded by a typical hacker, motivated by the thrill of the crime. Instead, the attack on WeaKnees appeared to be the work of a new breed of cyber-mercenaries who are paid to unleash viruses. The man who allegedly made that payment is Jay R. Echouafni, a 37-year-old entrepreneur from Sudbury, Mass. Rebuffed by WeaKnees over a proposed business deal, Mr. Echouafni attacked the company's Web site, according to law-enforcement authorities. In August 2004, Mr. Echouafni was indicted by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles on charges of criminal conspiracy and launching destructive computer attacks against WeaKnees and two other firms. Mr. Echouafni has since fled, a prosecutor says. Five other defendants are named in a criminal complaint for their alleged role in the attacks, but haven't yet been indicted. Traditionally, computer hackers have invented viruses primarily for the sake of the bragging rights. But now hackers are mixing with fraudsters and organized-crime rings, law-enforcement officials say. Increasingly viruses are being used illegally for financial gain, and they are becoming part of the modern criminal's toolbox. "The things that used to be just nuisances have been picked up by financial criminals," says Alan Paller, director of research at the SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security Institute, known as SANS, an organization for computer-security professionals in Bethesda, Md. The Internet's growth has led to a surge in cyber-crime, including identity theft and online fraud. The Federal Bureau of Investigation ranks cyber-criminals as its third-biggest priority after terrorists and spies. The United Kingdom's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit has made more than 100 arrests related to major computer crimes since it was set up three years ago. The U.S. Department of Justice employs about 38 attorneys in its computer-crime section, up from three a decade ago. About half focus on viruses and other computer intrusions. The toll of viruses on business, in terms of lost revenue and repair costs, could hit $17.5 billion this year, up from an estimated $13 billion in 2003, according to Computer Economics Inc., a research firm in Aliso Viejo, Calif. It isn't known how much of that stems from financially motivated attacks, but law-enforcement officials say that their frequency is rising sharply. The growth in such attacks is driven by a new family of viruses that lets a person control large numbers of computers in order to, say, attack a corporate Web site. About a year ago, a Russian gang started using a network of virus-infected computers to shut down legitimate British gambling sites and blackmail the operators into paying hundreds of thousands of pounds, according to the U.K.'s high-tech crime unit. Computer viruses are notoriously hard to track. Mr. Echouafni's trail, for example, runs from Massachusetts and California to Germany and Britain. In a phone call made recently from an unknown location, Mr. Echouafni denied the federal charges. "I had nothing to do with the attacks," he said. He said that he had been the target of Web attacks himself, and that he had reported them to the FBI. Mr. Echouafni declined to comment further on the allegations. A prosecutor confirmed that the FBI had received Mr. Echouafni's report. Jay Echouafni, who also goes by the first name Saad, is of Moroccan origin, according to a U.S. prosecutor. A heavy-set man with green eyes, he came to the U.S. as a teenager and became an American citizen, the prosecutor says. Until recently, he lived in Sudbury, an affluent suburb of Boston, with his wife and their three children. They occasionally returned to Morocco where Mr. Echouafni maintained business interests, added the prosecutor. Mr. Echouafni's company, Orbit Communications Corp., sold gear such as set-top boxes that receive signals for satellite-TV systems, according to court filings. He also dabbled in software development, the prosecutor says. Former business acquaintances describe him as bright, hard-working and computer-savvy. He could also be tough. "We had lots of problems with him," says Lee Taylor, chief executive of Perfect 10 Satellite Distributing Inc., a company in North Little Rock, Ark., that sold millions of dollars of equipment to Mr. Echouafni over the past few years. Mr. Echouafni often would badger the distributor's employees to lower their prices, according to Mr. Taylor. The case against Mr. Echouafni and his co-defendants is in its early stages and not all the facts are known. Some alleged participants couldn't be reached. But the case provides an early glimpse into the burgeoning world of viruses-for-hire. Business Proposal In early 2003, Mr. Echouafni approached WeaKnees.com with a business proposal: In a move that would have broadened his company's product range, Mr. Echouafni wanted to distribute upgrade kits sold by WeaKnees, which extend the recording time of digital video recorders, says Michael Adberg, co-owner of WeaKnees. Mr. Adberg says he turned down the proposal in part because he worried it would give Mr. Echouafni significant control over WeaKnees's business. Apparently annoyed by the rejection, Mr. Echouafni contacted Paul G. Ashley, owner of a Powell, Ohio, company with whom he did business, according to the indictment. Mr. Ashley's company rented out large computers that run Web sites, the indictment says. Mr. Echouafni said that some competitors were bothering him and asked Mr. Ashley to attack their Web sites, according to the indictment and complaint. Three companies were targeted, including WeaKnees and Rapid Satellite, a Miami company that directly competed with Mr. Echouafni's business of selling home satellite-TV systems, according to the indictment. Mr. Ashley sent their Web addresses to Lee G. Walker, a business associate who lived in the U.K., according to the complaint. Mr. Walker's weapon of choice for the job was a piece of malicious computer code known as a bot virus, the complaint alleges. Richard Cline, a lawyer in Columbus, Ohio, for Mr. Ashley, said neither he nor his client had any comment. Mr. Walker couldn't be reached. With a bot virus, a single person can hijack the power of thousands of far-flung computers. Security experts believe that most spam is sent using bots. The approach makes it easy for cyber-criminals to cover their tracks since they act through other people's computers. The popularity of high-speed Internet connections that are always kept on has also promoted the spread of bots. In Internet chatrooms, access to bot-controlled computers can be purchased for anywhere from a few cents to $1 per machine. Of the 100,000 viruses and worms that exist in cyberspace, bots are among the fastest spreading. Two years ago only 200 bot-virus variations existed; today, there are about 4,000, according to F-Secure Corp., a Finnish antivirus software maker. Mr. Walker later confessed to law-enforcement officials that he used computers infected with a bot virus named "Agobot," according to the complaint. Its creator was Axel Gembe, an unemployed 22-year-old who named the virus after his own nickname "Ago." Mr. Gembe is a self-taught computer whiz from a modest background who lives near Germany's border with Switzerland. Mr. Gembe gained notoriety in the hacker world last fall for breaking into the systems of a U.S. videogame developer, Valve Corp., and stealing code for the sequel of a popular computer game called "Half-Life." Key parts of the game were leaked via the Internet, causing millions of dollars in damage, Valve says. German police arrested Mr. Gembe in May for his alleged role in the theft of the videogame code and for his involvement in the attacks that Mr. Echouafni allegedly instigated. Mr. Gembe hasn't been charged with any crime. Police say they are still investigating. In an e-mail response to questions, Mr. Gembe admits to taking the videogame code but denies leaking it. He also acknowledges writing Agobot, but says that he doesn't know how Mr. Walker obtained the virus. Mr. Walker used 5,000 to 10,000 hijacked computers to attack the WeaKnees and Rapid Satellite sites, according to the U.S. complaint. After initial assaults shut down the Web sites, Mr. Echouafni contacted Mr. Ashley by phone and praised him and others for doing "a good job," according to the indictment and a prosecutor. He also paid Mr. Ashley $1,000, the complaint says. Mr. Echouafni acquired Mr. Ashley's company and retained him as a systems administrator, for an annual salary of $120,000, according to the indictment and criminal complaint. Mr. Ashley transferred $900 to Mr. Walker in England, the prosecutor says. Around the same time, Mr. Ashley allegedly recruited another hacker, Joshua J. Schichtel from Chandler, Ariz., and asked him to launch his own attacks against the Web sites, according to the criminal complaint, which also names Mr. Schichtel as a defendant. Pressing the Attack "Destroy it...heheh," Mr. Ashley wrote Mr. Schichtel in an electronic message, according to the complaint. When Mr. Schichtel told him that one of the companies had changed network addresses six times, Mr. Ashley told him to keep attacking the site, the complaint says. Mr. Schichtel couldn't be reached for comment. The attacks against WeaKnees ran from early October until mid-November 2003, according to the complaint. During that time, the Web site was periodically shut down, making it difficult for customers to reach the company, says WeaKnees. In early October 2003, Rapid Satellite's site also was attacked. While Nick Molina, chief executive of Rapid Satellite's parent, WebClick Concepts Inc. of Miami, was struggling to get his systems running again, he says he received an unusual call. Mr. Echouafni offered to host Rapid Satellite's site for $5,000 a month. In an interview, Mr. Molina contends that Mr. Echouafni wanted "to see the pain I was going through" and "extort money from me." The three target companies, in total, suffered more than $2 million in lost revenue and costs, according to the complaint. The FBI, meanwhile, traced digital fingerprints left by the hackers to the company that Mr. Walker worked for, and then to Mr. Walker himself, according to the complaint. When U.S. and British law-enforcement agents interviewed Mr. Walker on Feb. 11, he admitted launching the attacks, according to the complaint. Three days later, FBI agents searched Mr. Ashley's home in Ohio, and he, too, confessed, according to the complaint. Mr. Ashley, Mr. Walker and Mr. Schichtel are among five defendants named in the criminal complaint. None of them has been indicted. The FBI eventually gathered enough evidence to go after Mr. Echouafni. When he learned about the Ohio search, Mr. Echouafni and his family flew to Morocco, the FBI says. He and his wife returned to Boston on an Air France flight on March 11, where he was arrested by waiting FBI officials, the agency says. Sometime after that, Mr. Echouafni jumped bail; prosecutors believe he has fled the country. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 30 14:53:14 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 17:53:14 -0500 Subject: [ISN] Desktop Google Finds Holes Message-ID: --- begin forwarded text From mv at cdc.gov Tue Nov 30 18:34:52 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:34:52 -0800 Subject: geographically removed? Message-ID: <41AD2DCC.E193FD4D@cdc.gov> At 06:44 PM 11/28/04 -0800, James A. Donald wrote: > -- >On 27 Nov 2004 at 6:43, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >> Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always >> be defeated by cranking up the police state a notch. > >You assume the police state is competent, technically skilled, >determined, disciplined, and united. Observed police states >are incompetent, indecisive, and quarrelsome. > >> This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems. > >The problem is that any genuinely irrevocable payment system >gets swarmed by conmen and fraudsters. We have a long way to >go before police states are the problem. Call me pessimistic, but you seem optimistic to me. At least we're moderately back on topic :-) From mv at cdc.gov Tue Nov 30 18:36:39 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:36:39 -0800 Subject: geographically removed? eHalal Message-ID: <41AD2E37.95FC281A@cdc.gov> At 10:33 PM 11/28/04 -0500, Steve Furlong wrote: >I see that an irrevocable payment system, used by itself, is ripe for >fraud, more so if it's anonymous. But why wouldn't a mature system make >use of trusted intermediaries? The vendors register with the intermedi- >ary *, who takes some pains to verify their identity, trustworthiness, >and so on, and to keep the vendors' identities a secret, if appropriate. Halal was deemed a terrorist weapon, and contrary to the treasury's policies, game over. From mv at cdc.gov Tue Nov 30 18:41:26 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:41:26 -0800 Subject: Oswald, Atta, Your Name Here Message-ID: <41AD2F56.6DFC202A@cdc.gov> At 10:08 AM 11/29/04 -0500, Trei, Peter wrote: >Steve Furlong wrote: >> Major Variola (ret) wrote: >> > Bill Stewart wrote: >> > >Slsahdot reports that MSNBC reports >> http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6549265/ >> > >that there's a new video game "JFK Reloaded" >> > http://www.jfkreloaded.com/start/ >> > >> > I'm waiting for Grand Theft Auto IV, Drunk Over the Bridge With the >> > Secretary variant. Wonder what Teddie will say about that one. >> > >> > Oswald saved the world from nuclear conflict, thank the gods he >> > offed the sex & drug crazed toothy one as soon as he (et al :-) did. >> > >> > And a hell of a shot as well. Gotta respect that, with a >> bolt-action, >> > no less. >> >> A piece-of-shit boltie. I don't believe the official story, myself. > >Hitting at a upper-body sized target at less than 90 yards, >using a scoped rifle, is about as difficult shooting fish in a >barrel. The slow steady movement of the car makes it >slightly more interesting, but hardly challenging to a >decent marksman. True nuff. I recently fired up M$ FS '98, and on my first attempt was able to Atta the WTC in a 747-300, whereas a more nimble plane was too responsive to my commands and stalled, spiralled, etc. And I could cycle my 7.52x54R bolt-action in under a second on my first try, but again, grace under pressure is cool. From mv at cdc.gov Tue Nov 30 18:44:37 2004 From: mv at cdc.gov (Major Variola (ret)) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:44:37 -0800 Subject: Tin Foil Passports, Al foil diplomas Message-ID: <41AD3015.5DB1C40E@cdc.gov> At 08:02 PM 11/29/04 +0000, Justin wrote: >On 2004-11-27T06:36:24-0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >> At 09:13 AM 11/27/04 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> >Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/27/0026222 >> >Posted by: michael, on 2004-11-27 05:05:00 >> > low-cost solution: '[I]incorporate a layer of metal foil into the >> > cover of the passport so it could be read only when opened.' Don't >> > they know that the whole tinfoil hat thing is supposed to be a >> > joke?" >> >> What is most poignant about this post is the lack of education of /. >> authors. Don't they teach Maxwell any more? Is Faraday just the guy >> who said ... > >Standardized education. We can't have anyone teaching to the 50th >percentile, even assuming the median teen-citizen can handle basic >calculus and E&M. Teachers must teach one or two sigmas below that >level, and anyone who gets hyperactive in such an inane educational >environment is malfunctioning and requires medication. Today I heard a guy at work describe the Turkish empire to another. Their plan was to eliminate foreign schools for ca. 300 years so the conquered would be lame. No Canticle For Liebowitz for the conquered. I refrained from expressing the parallels I perceived, camoflage is best some times. Got IED? From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 30 16:16:38 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:16:38 -0500 Subject: "Spooks", Root Beer, and My Keyboard... Message-ID: ...so, courtesy of BitTorrent and http://www.tvtorrents.net, I started to download and watch "Spooks" something that looked like a British knock-off of the really-better-off-dead "The Agency" from a few years back over here. Fine. First episode I see (Year 3 episode 6, episode titles forgotten), seemed okay, mostly, though she was *awfully* scrawny the old honey trap, um trick. Second one (episode 7), though, starts off with an almost plausible hacking-for-jihad storyline with only the odd bit of "Star-Trek science", admittedly I'm a sucker for hand-waving, but then, but then... ...but then they got to the crypto. Hence the subject line of this message. Sigh. I'll never learn. Root beer, keyboards, and "Spooks" don't mix. But we knew that already, right? :-) Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 30 18:14:23 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 21:14:23 -0500 Subject: Blunkett faces new visa questions Message-ID: Oh, the irony... Cheers, RAH ------- The BBC Tuesday, 30 November, 2004, 22:57 GMT Blunkett faces new visa questions David Blunkett is facing new questions about whether he "fast-tracked" a visa application for his ex-lover's nanny. The Daily Mail is publishing what it says are two Home Office letters to Leoncia Casalme, Kimberly Quinn's nanny The first tells her it could take up to a year to process her visa claim, but another letter 19 days later says she can now stay in the UK indefinitely. But Mr Blunkett's spokesman says he has done nothing wrong and the reported letters change nothing. Letters shift Ex-civil servant Sir Alan Budd has been appointed by the government to review the handling of the visa application and examine all the papers. Mr Blunkett has said he checked Ms Casalme's application for permanent residence was filled in correctly but did not intervene to get it approved. The letters published in the Daily Mail do not mention Mr Blunkett or indicate that he interfered in the process. " There will now be many unanswered questions hanging over the home secretary's head " David Davis BBC political editor Andrew Marr said the letters were only circumstantial evidence but on the face of it were "potentially very damaging". A letter to Miss Casalme on 23 April 2003 says her application cannot be decided immediately. It says: "The waiting period for these cases is about 12 months at the moment... "On current performance, we estimate that your application will be decided by January 2004." But a second letter dated the 12 May tells Miss Casalme: "You can now remain indefinitely in the United Kingdom." Apology Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis said: "If the Daily Mail story is correct, it is very difficult to understand how this can be the normal length of procedure for an application to remain. "Mr Blunkett will have to explain precisely how this rapid processing of the application came about. If he influenced this matter, his position is untenable." The reports emerged after Mr Blunkett said he was repaying #180 to Parliament for the first class train ticket he gave to then lover Mrs Quinn. He apologised for his "genuine mistake". The rail warrants are intended for MPs' spouses and Mr Blunkett's spokesman said he had now realised his error. Mark Leech, editor of the Prison's Handbook, complained about the rail ticket to Parliament's standards watchdog, Sir Philip Mawer. Despite Mr Blunkett's admission, Mr Leech said he still wants an inquiry, saying: "I have come across many cases where prison officers have been made to resign over falsified expense claims. This is no different." Sir Philip says he will look at the evidence behind the complaint before deciding whether to investigate. Mrs Quinn, who is seven months pregnant, was admitted to hospital on Monday night amid the stress caused by the controversy. Her husband, Stephen, said the problems were not serious but he did not know when she would be discharged. Downing Street denies Tory suggestions the scope of that inquiry is too narrow, saying the Home Office would look at less serious issues. Tony Blair's official spokesman also rejected suggestions that the prime minister had prejudged the review when he predicted it would exonerate Mr Blunkett. The spokesman said that by giving Mr Blunkett his public backing, Mr Blair had just been expressing trust and confidence in his home secretary. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 30 12:44:02 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 21:44:02 +0100 Subject: Clean System to Zombie Bot in Four Minutes Message-ID: <20041130204401.GE1457@leitl.org> Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/30/1932245 Posted by: michael, on 2004-11-30 20:05:00 from the takes-five-minutes-to-download-patches dept. [1]Amadaeus writes "According to the latest study by USA Today and [2]Avantgarde, it takes less than [3]4 minutes for an unpatched Windows XP SP1 system to become part of a botnet. Avantgarde has the statistics in [4]their abstract. Stats of note: Although Macs and PC's got hit with equal opportunity, the XP SP1 machine was hit with 5 LSASS and 4 DCOM exploits while the Mac remained clean. The Linux desktop also was impenetrable, but only was only targeted by 0.26% of all attacks." See also our story on the [5]survival time for unpatched systems. [6]Click Here References 1. mailto:raymondlai at gmail.com 2. http://www.avantgarde.com/ 3. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2004-11-29-honeypot_x.htm 4. http://avantgarde.com/ttlnabstract113004.pdf 5. http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/17/1347214&tid=172 6. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=5671&alloc_id=12342&site_id=1&request_id=4452725&o p=click&page=%2farticle%2epl ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ 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] From camera_lumina at hotmail.com Tue Nov 30 18:53:10 2004 From: camera_lumina at hotmail.com (Tyler Durden) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 21:53:10 -0500 Subject: geographically removed? eHalal In-Reply-To: <41AD2E37.95FC281A@cdc.gov> Message-ID: Variola: By Halal (are you getting this term confused with that for Islamic version of Kosher? I think the name is similar but not this) Do you mean that system of monetary transfers whereby local services are exchanged in place of direct cash transfer? (In other words, if I want to sell something abroad the money is actually wired to a 3rd party who appears to the authorities not to have anything to do with any purchasing...this person then obtains services or perhaps local cash in lieu of the money he transferred. The system seems to operate largely on trusted intermediaries, along with a series of barters...) Well, this system may technically be illegal, but it's done all the time in the wilds of Queens, both by middle easterners as well as South Americans, and I see little that could be done to stop it. Even the feds can't keep up with bugging all the Dominican brothels on Roosevelt Avenue. It is, in effect, an analog Blacknet, though transactions are of course probably limited to the low 5-figure range without some kind of big tipoff, but I'm sure the locals are fully aware of the threshold values. The only way are true police state could crack down would be to nuke Queens, which they might actually allow Al Qaeda to do if they chose to (seems like Al Qaeda could come in handy for a lot of things..."Oh, where did that baddie bin Laden go...guess we'll never find him...") -TD >From: "Major Variola (ret)" >To: "cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net" >Subject: Re: geographically removed? eHalal >Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:36:39 -0800 > >At 10:33 PM 11/28/04 -0500, Steve Furlong wrote: > >I see that an irrevocable payment system, used by itself, is ripe for > >fraud, more so if it's anonymous. But why wouldn't a mature system make > > >use of trusted intermediaries? The vendors register with the intermedi- > > >ary *, who takes some pains to verify their identity, trustworthiness, > >and so on, and to keep the vendors' identities a secret, if >appropriate. > >Halal was deemed a terrorist weapon, and contrary to the treasury's >policies, game over. From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 30 19:15:33 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 22:15:33 -0500 Subject: China 'blocks Google news site' Message-ID: Reminds me of Imperial Russia's railroad gauge, which was different from the rest of Europe's, maybe the whole world's, on purpose, to prevent attacks. Common trick, lots of countries did it, though it impedes lots of progress at the border besides military progress toward your capital. You have to offload *all* the freight, both ways, and put it onto new trains, for instance. Way worse than going from diesel to electric, like they did at New Haven, for instance, where you used to just change engines. More of a symptom than a cause, of course. Anyone want to take bets on China, though? I think the "Great Firewall" will choke, or more be likely ignored, long before China will block all truth at its border, instead of mere efficient transit prices for foreign trade. But then I was a "Polly" during the Y2K thing, too. Oh. Wait... (Yeah, I know, I was *dead* wrong about Jim Bell getting a guilty verdict. Surest way to be wrong is to make a prediction, and all that...) Cheers, RAH Oddly enough, the Aussies had exactly this railroad gauge problem about half way across their southern coast. I think they've fixed it since, though I'm not sure. -------- The BBC Tuesday, 30 November, 2004, 16:39 GMT China 'blocks Google news site' China has been accused of blocking access to Google News by the media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders. The Paris-based pressure group said the English-language news site had been unavailable for the past 10 days. It said the aim was to force people to use a Chinese edition of the site which, according to the watchdog, does not include critical reports. Google told the BBC News website it was aware of the problems and was investigating the causes. Chinese firewall China is believed to extend greater censorship over the net than any other country in the world. " China is censuring Google News to force internet users to use the Chinese version of the site which has been purged of the most critical news reports " Reporters Without Borders A net police force monitors websites and e-mails, and controls on gateways connecting the country to the global internet are designed to prevent access to critical information. Popular Chinese portals such as Sina.com and Sohu.com maintain a close eye on content and delete politically sensitive comments. And all 110,000 net cafes in the country have to use software to control access to websites considered harmful or subversive. Local versions "China is censuring Google News to force internet users to use the Chinese version of the site which has been purged of the most critical news reports," said the group in a statement. "By agreeing to launch a news service that excludes publications disliked by the government, Google has let itself be used by Beijing," it said. For its part, the search giant said it was looking into the issue. "It appears that many users in China are having difficulty accessing Google News sites in China and we are working to understand and resolve the issue," said a Google spokesperson. Google News gathers information from some 4,500 news sources. Headlines are selected for display entirely by a computer algorithm, with no human editorial intervention. It offers 15 editions of the service, including one tailored for China and one for Hong Kong. Google launched a version in simplified Chinese in September. The site does not filter news results to remove politically sensitive information. But Google does not link to news sources which are inaccessible from within China as this would result in broken links. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From eugen at leitl.org Tue Nov 30 13:56:04 2004 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 22:56:04 +0100 Subject: [i2p] weekly status notes [nov 30] (fwd from jrandom@i2p.net) Message-ID: <20041130215604.GH1457@leitl.org> ----- Forwarded message from jrandom ----- From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 30 19:57:49 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 22:57:49 -0500 Subject: It's "America" Not "Amerika" Message-ID: Tech Central Station It's "America" Not "Amerika" By Pejman Yousefzadeh Published 11/30/2004 Let's put a silly myth to bed, shall we? Contrary to what some believe, American politics is not devolving into a state of fascism. We read and hear warning cries alerting us to the supposed incipient fascist threat quite often nowadays. Many of these "alerts" inform us that our freedoms and liberties are at risk, that the American democratic-republic is gradually giving way to an authoritarian or totalitarian establishment, and that our leaders are reminiscent of Nazis. Thus we have Internet threads comparing George W. Bush with Hitler, or at the very least, with Mussolini or Leonid Brezhnev. By extension of the Hitler analogy, America may be like Germany in 1939 -- on the cusp of embracing fascism if it hasn't completely done so yet. You might shrug off this kind of rhetoric by saying that it is confined to crank quarters of the punditocracy, and to be sure, those who argue that America is sliding into fascism are ripe for ridicule. But the argument -- while wrong -- has the virtue of being simple and simplistic, meaning that it has the potential to be spread rather easily. (This is most interesting -- usually it is the fascists who have the simplistic arguments on their side. In this debate, however, it is the supposed anti-fascists who are trying to win converts to their argument with simplistic cries about fascism being in the ascendant in the United States.) Because the argument of "America as the Fascist State" can be so easily spread through simplistic arguments, it is high time to fight the demagoguery with a little perspective. A key component of the fascist state is the presence of authoritarian or totalitarian laws that clamp down on civil liberties. Those who decry the supposed onset of fascism in the United States like to claim that the Patriot Act is the instrument by which our rights and liberties is being curtailed. Putting aside the fact that many of the Patriot Act's critics haven't even carefully read the Act and its provisions, many of the arguments made against the Act are just plain wrong. Myth-busting articles and blog posts on the Internet setting the record straight regarding the Patriot Act -- like this one, for example -- are quite plentiful because there is a market for them thanks to blatant misreadings of the Patriot Act that are all too common in news and punditry circles. Many of the supposed totalitarian aspects of the Patriot Act were already in existence when the Act was passed, and as of July of this year, out of the nearly 1300 alleged abuses of the Patriot Act that were forwarded to the Inspector General of the Justice Department, the Inspector General found that none of those complaints had any merit whatsoever. (Surely, we will be told that the Inspector General is simply covering up the abuses of the crypto-fascist state, but there does come a point where such circular arguments are no longer worthy of any attention whatsoever.) The supposed loss of civil liberties and the onset of fascism were key components of the argument made to elect John Kerry as President. Kerry himself spoke to this issue when he promised in his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention that he would "appoint an attorney general who will uphold the Constitution of the United States." Of course, anyone who has been paying attention to political rhetoric over the past four years knows that John Ashcroft is closely connected with the supposed rise of American fascism, and politically, it was quite convenient for Kerry to pose as the remedy to the fascist Ashcroftian annihilation of American civil liberties. But when one compares the civil liberties voting records of Senator Kerry and former Senator Ashcroft, Ashcroft plainly comes out ahead as the more capable and ardent defender of civil liberties. And Ashcroft is not alone as the miscast Republican fascist. When the Clinton Justice Department was working on the development of "Carnivore" -- a cyber-surveillance tool -- it was former Republican congressman and House Majority Leader Dick Armey who campaigned against Carnivore as a threat against civil rights and civil liberties. Indeed, Armey pressed both Attorney General Janet Reno and Ashcroft on the issue of Carnivore -- strange behavior, to be sure, from the former leader of the House contingent of America's supposed fascist party. Strangely enough, those loudest in denouncing the incipient rise of American fascism ignored and ignore all of this. Of course, it isn't just Americans who are claiming the onset of fascism in the United States. In Europe, comparisons between the Bush Administration and fascist elements like the Nazis have also been plentiful. This is peculiar because the state of civil liberties in Europe is far more parlous than it is in America, and if the state of civil liberties in America actually descended to the European level, warnings regarding the incipient rise of fascism might actually have some merit. In his recent Thanksgiving holiday blog post, law professor Orin Kerr gave thanks for the fact that we live in a country that respects civil liberties a great deal more than they are respected in Europe. His remarks are well taken, but I wonder why we haven't heard alarm bells ringing regarding the rise of European fascism from the same quarters that like to claim American fascism is a threat to be taken seriously. None of this is to say that when it comes to fascism, "It Can't Happen Here." But those who make the claim that America is becoming a fascist state have an obligation to be responsible with the facts, lest others stop taking them seriously. Ironically enough, fascism has its best chance when those who line up to denounce it discredit themselves with one too many false alarms. The next time they sound the alarm, they may have reason to. But few people will be inclined to listen if those who make the claims have proven themselves to be untrustworthy demagogues in the past. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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' From rah at shipwright.com Tue Nov 30 20:20:44 2004 From: rah at shipwright.com (R.A. Hettinga) Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 23:20:44 -0500 Subject: Oswald, Atta, Your Name Here In-Reply-To: <41AD2F56.6DFC202A@cdc.gov> References: <41AD2F56.6DFC202A@cdc.gov> Message-ID: At 6:41 PM -0800 11/30/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >And I could cycle my 7.52x54R bolt-action in under a second on my >first try, but again, grace under pressure is cool. ...and here I bet you thought that Marine marksman rating, bordering on sharpshooter, whatever, would *never* come in handy... Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 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'