There's much more to the case than has been published, some 28MB of it. Ready to go depending on how the secret hearing turns out. Citibank is being lured into a trap of its own making, along with Cambridge daredevils.
Reminds of MPAA, RIAA and TIA, and the mongerers have more dirty tricks up their sleeves than will be made public in court or anywhere -- though some bits may be leaked on the Internet. Security experts are in for a rough ride to stay free of those who customarily hire them for high bribes or send them to the pokey or poorhouse for disclosing financial shenanigans. Cambridge's $50 million dance with the Microsoft devil is most interesting. As with other Net mavens getting in bed with the enemy, then having to apologize for spreading the clap, or more sympathetically asking for help in escaping disastrous fuckfest of unprotected bad judgment. Those infected apologists are thriving right now on the fruits of small-beans investment in their careers, and the early beneficiaries, like PRZ, have been clamped with NDAs and can only hope their quiet money accounts are not looted by their vulture investors, or worse exposed by feral litigants who've been themselves fucked by predators using the security experts glossy tools. Watch Counterpane and others lesser known go down that road, well traveled by scientists of assurance who believed that their work would be used only for good. Or pretended to believe that until brought in from the cold. The NYT reports today that homeland security will triple in funding in the next few years, outpacing DoD. Not many security experts will resist the dangles to come, in particular after they are entrapped by honey pots into betraying those who trusted them. At 02:50 PM 2/22/2003 -0800, you wrote: >Declan McCullagh wrote: > >> This is an interesting case, but it's not as if Citigroup is trying >> to stifle academic research for the sake of stifling academic research -- >> the Cambridge folks were retained as (presumably paid) defense experts >> in the case. This is not to defend the prospect of a gag order, of course -- >> all that I'm saying is that they ran no risk of gagging until after they >> volunteered to be experts, as I understand it. > >What I find odd about this case, is that previously published work done >independently of the court case can be gagged from further dissemination >if one recites it in court as an expert witness. > >Is this some fluke of UK law? I can't imagine such a thing happening here >in the US. Once the cat is out of the bag, it's out. > >> The other interesting thing to note is why Citigroup permitted one >> card to make $80K of withdrawals from one account (which was allegedly >> closed at the time anyway) in a weekend. The answer seems to be almost >> certainly a malicious insider in their South African franchise. > >This is pretty common. There are times when bank computers are unable to >access customer accounts, and rather than incur customer badwill, banks >will let ATM transactions go through. The risk is small, since most >people will be honest, and they really don't know when these small windows >of unlimited withdrawal occur. > >I remember some guy in Oregon a few years back, who ran around and emptied >ATMs of $350k during such an event. Of course he was dumb and got caught, >and the bank got their money back. > >So large withdrawals in and of themselves, on overlimit or cancelled >cards, are not a priori proof of insider shenanigans, although in this >case, that's probably what happened. > >-- >Eric Michael Cordian 0+ >O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division >"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
