Re: VPAV, immediately spun away

2003-12-01 Thread Bill



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2004-12-18 Thread Bill




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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2004-12-18 Thread Bill




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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2005-01-22 Thread Bill






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Re: An attack on paypal

2003-06-11 Thread Bill Frantz
At 11:01 AM -0700 6/11/03, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
>At 03:39 PM 6/10/03 -0700, Bill Frantz wrote:
>>IMHO, the problem is that the C language is just too error prone to be
>used
>>for most software.  In "Thirty Years Later:  Lessons from the Multics
>>Security Evaluation",  Paul A. Karger and Roger R. Schell
>> credit the use of PL/I
>for
>>the lack of buffer overruns in Multics.  However, in the
>Unix/Linux/PC/Mac
>>world, a successor language has not yet appeared.
>
>What about Java?  Apart from implementation bugs, its secure by design.

Java is certainly an improvement for buffer overruns.  (The last estimate I
heard was that 1/3 of the penetrations were due to buffer overruns.)  Java
is still semi-intrepreted, so it is probably too slow for some
applications.  However Java is being used for server-side scripting with
web servers, where the safety of the language is a definite advantage.

Of course, when you cover one hole, people move on to others.  Server-side
Java is succeptable to SQL injection attacks for example.

Cheers - Bill


-----
Bill Frantz   | Due process for all| Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506 | used to be the | 16345 Englewood Ave.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | American way.  | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA



Re: MS Format Flames Re: An attack on paypal --> secure UI for browsers

2003-06-14 Thread Bill Stewart
> Oh get over it.  There are other formats.
You ever heard of XML?  HTML? RTF?
There are output formats and input formats.

It's easy to output data in formats other people can read -
if you want something prettier than ASCII,
HTML is usually fine, though there's not much support
for embedded pictures as opposed to separate files.
XML is a meta-format - you can't really guarantee that
anybody else's XML tool can read your XML tool's documents,
because they may not have all the same objects.
If you want to give them something quasi-immutable,
there's always PDF.  That lets you be rude _and_ proprietary :-)
Postscript is more flexible, but too many people don't have
tools to read it with.
Input formats are harder, because Microsoft keeps adding
backwards-incompatibility every time they upgrade Office,
just to force everybody else to upgrade.
OpenOffice can often help, but not always.
Microsoft does make free readers for Word and Powerpoint.
They're only intended for running on Windows,
but perhaps they work on WINE?


Re: An attack on paypal

2003-06-10 Thread Bill Frantz
At 5:12 PM -0700 6/8/03, Anne & Lynn Wheeler wrote:
>somebody (else) commented (in the thread) that anybody that currently
>(still) writes code resulting in buffer overflow exploit maybe should be
>thrown in jail.

A nice essay, partially on the need to include technological protections
against human error, included the above paragraph.

IMHO, the problem is that the C language is just too error prone to be used
for most software.  In "Thirty Years Later:  Lessons from the Multics
Security Evaluation",  Paul A. Karger and Roger R. Schell
 credit the use of PL/I for
the lack of buffer overruns in Multics.  However, in the Unix/Linux/PC/Mac
world, a successor language has not yet appeared.

YMMV - Bill


-----
Bill Frantz   | Due process for all| Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506 | used to be the | 16345 Englewood Ave.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | American way.  | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA



Re: weird logic

2003-06-18 Thread Bill Stewart
At 06:15 PM 06/17/2003 -0500, Harmon Seaver wrote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2998870.stm
"With Iraq's judicial system in disarray after the end of the war, Paul Bremer
said a special criminal court would be set up.
He said the court would try people, "in particular senior Baathists... may 
have
committed crimes against the coalition, who are trying to destabilise the
situation"."

   So you invade a country, and the patriots who resist you are no longer
soldiers, even guerillas, but "criminals" to be tried in the US's weird new
courts, probably secretly with no representation.
Yup.  And USA Today was referring to the US military reserve soldiers
who were sent there as "Citizen Soldiers", but of course
*Iraqis* who fought the invaders weren't "citizen soldiers",
they were "terrorists" or "illegal combatants" or "evil" or
"failing to act sufficiently French by surrendering".
And since the US Constitution doesn't apply to
US forces operating outside the US, there's no prohibition
against "ex post facto" laws about "crimes against the coalition",
and of course the Bush Administration bullied Brussels into exempting
their armed forces from war crimes laws.


Re: Destroying computers

2003-06-20 Thread Bill Stewart
> > > Methinks Mr Hatch is not a very bright man.

> > A Southern senator.  Need I say more?

Utah is Southern?  I do not want directions from you. :-)
I think people have been mixing up Orrin Hatch with Jesse Helms.
Both are right-wingers who didn't really like the 20th century,
much less the 21st, both have right-wing religious constituencies
(though radically different religions),
but they're really quite different.


Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC

2003-06-28 Thread Bill Stewart
Somebody did an interesting attack on a cable network's customers.
They cracked the cable company's DHCP server, got it to provide a
"Connection-specific DNS suffic" pointing to a machine they owned,
and also told it to use their DNS server.
This meant that when your machine wanted to look up yahoo.com,
it would look up yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com instead.
This looks like it has the ability to work around DNSSEC.
Somebody trying to verify that they'd correctly reached yahoo.com
would instead verify that they'd correctly reached
yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com, which can provide all the signatures
it needs to make this convincing.
So if you're depending on DNSSEC to secure your IPSEC connection,
do make sure your DNS server doesn't have a suffix of echelon.nsa.gov...
--
RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest  Saturday 17 June 2003  Volume 22 : Issue 78
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.78.html
--
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 15:33:15 -0400
From: Tom Van Vleck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: ISP's DHCP servers infiltrated
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/19/2325235&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=172&tid=95

"... It turns out, Charter Communications' DHCP servers were
infiltrated and were providing p5115.tdko.com as the
'Connection-specific DNS suffix', causing all non-hardened Windows
(whatever that means in a Windows context) machines to get lookups
from a hijacked subdomain DNS server which simply responded to every
query with a set of 3 addresses (66.220.17.45, 66.220.17.46,
66.220.17.47).
On these IPs were some phantom services. There were proxying Web
servers (presumably collecting cookies and username/password combos),
as well as an ssh server where the perpetrators were most likely
hoping people would simply say 'yes' to the key differences and enter
in their username/password..."
Hmm, my cable ISP was down this morning.  Maybe coincidence.



Re: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC

2003-06-29 Thread Bill Stewart
At 11:15 PM 06/28/2003 -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Bill Stewart writes:
>This looks like it has the ability to work around DNSSEC.
>Somebody trying to verify that they'd correctly reached yahoo.com
>would instead verify that they'd correctly reached
>yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com, which can provide all the signatures
>it needs to make this convincing.
>
>So if you're depending on DNSSEC to secure your IPSEC connection,
>do make sure your DNS server doesn't have a suffix of echelon.nsa.gov...
No, that's just not true of DNSsec.  DNSsec doesn't depend on the
integrity of the connection to your DNS server;
rather, the RRsets are digitally signed.
In other words, it works a lot like certificates,
with a trust chain going back to a magic root key.
I thought about that, and I think this is an exception,
because this attack tricks your machine into using the
trust chain yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com., which it controls,
instead of the trust chain yahoo.com., which DNSSEC protects adequately.
So you're getting a trustable answer to the wrong query.
I'm less sure of the implementation issues of the
"Connection-specific DNS suffix", and I've seen conflicting documentation.
If the resolver looks up "domain.suffix" before "domain",
then the attacker's DNS doesn't need to control the DNS access,
and only needs to provide the attacker's certificates,
but if the resolver looks up "domain" before "domain.suffix",
then the attacker also needs to make sure that the lookup of "domain" fails,
which is most easily done by telling the DHCP client to use
the attacker's DNS server along with telling it the suffix.
(That doesn't add any extra work to the attack, but does make it
a bit easier to trace the attacker after the fact;
if you're not replacing the attacker's DNS server entry,
then all you need is a legitimate-looking server for
"*.attackersdomain.com".  In either case, somebody who can
pull off this kind of an attack probably uses a compromised machine
to run the DNS server on anyway.)
I'm not saying that
there can't be problems with that model, but compromised DNS servers
(and poisoned DNS caches) are among the major threat models it was
designed to deal with.  If nothing else, the existence of caching DNS
servers, which are not authoritative for the information they hand out,
makes a transmission-based solution pretty useless.
DNSSEC seems to do a pretty thorough job of making sure that
if you look up the correct domain name, you'll get the correct answer,
in spite of attackers trying to prevent it.
But this attack tricks you into looking up the wrong domain name,
and DNSSEC makes sure that you get the correct answer for the wrong name,
which isn't the result you want.


Re: Attacking networks using DHCP, DNS - probably kills DNSSEC

2003-06-29 Thread Bill Stewart
At 11:49 PM 06/29/2003 +0200, Simon Josefsson wrote:
No, I believe only one of the following situations can occur:

* Your laptop see and uses the name "yahoo.com", and the DNS server
  translate them into yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com.  If your laptop
  knows the DNSSEC root key, the attacker cannot spoof yahoo.com since
  it doesn't know the yahoo.com key.  This attack is essentially a
  man-in-the-middle attack between you and your recursive DNS server.
That doesn't happen.  (Well, it could, but as you point out,
it's not a successful attack methodology, because DNSSEC was designed
to correctly take care of this.)
* Your laptop see and uses the name "yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com".
  You may be able to verify this using your DNSSEC root key, if the
  attackersdomain.com people have set up DNSSEC for their spoofed
  entries, but unless you are using bad software or judgment, you will
  not confuse this for the real "yahoo.com".
The DNS suffix business is designed so that your laptop tries
to use "yahoo.com.attackersdomain.com", either before "yahoo.com"
or after unsuccessfully trying "yahoo.com", depending on implementation.
It may be bad judgement, but it's designed to support intranet sites
for domains that want their web browsers and email to let you
refer to "marketing" as opposed to "marketing.webservers.example.com",
and Netscape-derived browsers support it as well as IE.
Of course, everything fails if you ALSO get your DNSSEC root key from
the DHCP server, but in this case you shouldn't expect to be secure.
I wouldn't be surprised if some people suggest pushing the DNSSEC root
key via DHCP though, because alas, getting the right key into the
laptop in the first place is a difficult problem.
I agree with you and Steve that this would be a Really Bad Idea.
The only way to make it secure is to use an authenticated DHCP,
which means you have to put authentication keys in somehow,
plus you need a reasonable response for handling authentication failures,
which means you need a user interface as well.
It's also the wrong scope, since the DNSSEC is global information,
not connection-oriented information, so it's not really DHCP's job.


test please ignore

2003-07-02 Thread Bill Stewart
Is it really quiet in here, or does the fact that I've been
playing with procmail this evening have something to do with it?
	Thanks; Bill



Re: SF meet: future of feta, port, sherry, gorgonzola at stake

2003-07-03 Thread Bill Stewart
Great.  First they take the Champagne, now they want the port and sherry, 
and feta cheese.
Next it'll be the Chianti, and they'll find something wrong with fava beans 
as well.

Worse than that, they'll make Americans stop eating Hamburgers,
and the vast right wing conspiracy already banned French fries.
(I'm actually rather surprised by feta cheese being on the list -
my local Iranian grocery regularly has feta from France,
Greece, Bulgaria, and one or two other places.)


Re: Security for Mafiosos and Freedom Fighters

2003-07-16 Thread Bill Frantz
At 8:49 AM -0700 7/16/03, Tim May wrote:
>(By the way, the USB flashdrive (a 256 MB FlashHopper) I have on my
>keychain--my physical keychain!--is probably waterproof. The USB port
>has a little plastic cover which slides on snugly. Until I eventually
>misplace it, I am using it. I expect the thing is showerproof, though I
>don't intend to test it. Water resistance can be tested
>nondestructively with things like Fluorinert, of course. Also, surfers
>and kayakers often have O-ring sealed gizmos they wear under their wet
>suits, coming in different sizes. It would be trivial to find one to
>hold either a USB flashdrive or a Compact Flash card.)

Ever since I heard that manufacturers were cleaning assembled boards with
soap and water I have wondered just how much you need to protect electronic
circuits from water.  You obviously don't want to allow them to stay damp
so they corrode, but immersion for a time (up to weeks) followed by a fresh
water rinse and drying might not be so bad.  Do any hardware experts have
an opinion?

Cheers - Bill


-
Bill Frantz   | "A Jobless Recovery is | Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506 | like a Breadless Sand- | 16345 Englewood Ave.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | wich." -- Steve Schear | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA



Jude Milhon has passed away

2003-07-21 Thread Bill Stewart
Forwarded from another list

Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 16:35:28 -0700 (PDT)
From: Linda Hull
Subject: Jude Milhon has passed away
To those who knew her...I thought I would mention
that Jude has passed away.
To those who did not know her, she was the woman
who coined the phrase cypherpunk. Jude was also an
editor at Mondo 2000, among many other things.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/WiredWomen/wiredwomen000223.html
She had been fighting cancer and was losing her
battle; last night she embraced the inevitable
by taking her own life.
In all honesty, I never met her, though I had
often heard of her. It strikes me that she
finished her life the way she had always seemed
to live it - an empowered woman.
Condolences to her friends and family.

__



Re: kinko spying: criminal caught Scarfing keydata

2003-07-23 Thread Bill Stewart
The real question is whether the FBI's keyloggers caught Jiang's passwords,
or whether it was the NSA or Mossad caught the FBI's keyloggers
catching Jiang's keylogger catching other passwords.
At 01:13 PM 07/23/2003 -0700, Major Variola (ret.) wrote:
Kinko's spy case: Risks of renting PCs

 NEW YORK (AP) -- For more than a
 year, unbeknownst to people who used
 Internet terminals at Kinko's stores in
 New York, Juju Jiang was recording
 what they typed, paying particular
 attention to their passwords.
 Jiang had secretly installed, in at least 14
 Kinko's copy shops, software that logs
 individual keystrokes. He captured more
 than 450 user names and passwords, and
 used them to access and open bank
 accounts online.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/07/23/cybercafe.security.ap/index.html



Re: R.I.P. (was: Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online)

2003-07-25 Thread Bill Frantz
On Friday 25 July 2003 11:40, Steve Schear wrote:
> ... Now that many are un-
> or under-employed there still doesn't seem to be any activity by
> those active on this list in this critical infrastructure area.

In some sense, we have enough code.  Code exists that can be deployed.  It
may have to go thru the same evolutionary stages the P2P software is going
thru (Napster to Kazza to ???) as security problems become serious, but it
is deployed now.

What we don't have is:

* Patent licenses
* Easy to use code
* Users

Techies can work on the ease of use issue, but patent licenses take time
and/or money, and users take marketing and sales.

Cheers - Bill


-----
Bill Frantz   | "A Jobless Recovery is | Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506 | like a Breadless Sand- | 16345 Englewood Ave.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | wich." -- Steve Schear | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA



Re: What NAI is telling people

2001-07-16 Thread Bill Stewart

At 02:29 PM 07/16/2001 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Anyone have any idea if any ISPs are refusing to accept encrypted
>email from "black-listed" countries?
>
>Or is this just a matter of NAI cluelessness?


The usual principle of
"Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity"
applies here, though with governments having ample supplies of both 
commodities,
you can't always be sure.   NAI's US organizations can't sell directly to
anyone in countries on the Yanqui Enemies List, be they freedom fighters,
government thugs, or just everyday businessfolks, but even Official Enemies
can still download freeware off the PGPi non-US-owned sites.




Re: Who can tax a satellite?

2001-07-18 Thread Bill Stewart


>At 02:30 PM 7/11/01 -0700, Black Unicorn wrote:
> >No, the real question is who can knock down or render inoperable the OWNER
> >of the satellite.

But ownership is easily fixed - a few magic words from a lawyer
(ok, with a lot of expensive research into tax and accounting issues first),
and the satellite is owned by a Caribbean corporation owned by Hughes,
so it's no longer physical property subject to Los Angeles property taxes.
That doesn't mean a tax collector can't try to attach one of Hughes's
buildings near LAX, but it becomes a much different problem.




Re: Who can tax a satellite?

2001-07-18 Thread Bill Stewart

So how much does Cuban Air Traffic Control charge for U2 overflight support?
1960 - 2001, with some reasonable interest rates for late payments



At 07:53 PM 07/12/2001 -1000, Reese wrote:
>At 10:43 PM 7/11/01, Tim May wrote:
>
> >>One real world example of such.
> >
> >Learn to use a search engine. Search on the obvious terms, like
> >"airlines overflight payments."
> >
> >The first such hit you will find in Google, one of hundreds, is:
> >
> >"FAA ESTIMATES CUBA OWES US$1 MILLION FOR OVERFLIGHT FEES-
> >Information obtained from an inquiry to the Federal Aviation
> >Administration (FAA) within the United States Department of
> >Transportation by the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council shows that
> >Republic of Cuba government-operated Cubana Airlines and Republic of
> >Cuba government-operated AeroCaribbean Airlines were invoiced
> >approximately US$1 million by the FAA for the period May 1997 to 31
> >January 1998 for overflight fees."
> >
> >
> >Is this enough for the "one real world example"?
>
>Is that datum from cubatrade.org or cubaonline.org?
>How about from a real website?




Re: TIME.com: Nation -- Supreme Court: Relax. The Heat is Off

2001-07-18 Thread Bill Stewart

At 05:02 PM 06/14/2001 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:

>On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, cubic-dog wrote [incorrectly--wcs]
>
> > This type of surveillence is allowed without warrent
> > because it is non-invasive.
>
>How can any sort of search be 'non-invasive'?

Looking in your car windows is non-invasive.
Looking in your house windows with binoculars is non-invasive -
you're shipping photons to the public outside world,
and they're just picking them up the way they'd
go through your garbage cans, which is also non-invasive.
Shining bright spotlights in your windows at night to
see through your curtains is probably invasive.
Looking through your house walls with infrared goggles
strikes me as really tacky but in some sense non-invasive.

It's nice that the Supremes decided that seeing through walls
without a warrant is not ok, because normal people can't see through walls,
but it actually was a bit of a stretch.
And technology has moved from night-vision goggles being
used Russian military equipment at gun shows to
$100 things you can buy at Fry's (which work outside
but don't see through walls), but soon enough anybody
will be able to see through walls if there's enough market.

(Anybody can already do that just like police can now,
but the hardware's expensive enough that most people don't bother.
Steven Wright has a line about "I couldn't tell if they were
cops or just people dressed up as cops, but that's really
all that cops are anyway...")








Newsflash! Sklyarov Denied Access To Russian Consul

2001-07-19 Thread Bill Scannell

I just got off the telephone with Vladimir Katalov.

Katalov informs me that the Russian embassy has been denied access to Dmitry
Sklyarov, a flagrant violation of international law.  No Russian consular
official has spoken to Sklyarov since his detention earlier this week.

In addition, Sklyarov's wife and two children have not heard from their
husband and father since his arrest.  They are understandably worried sick
for his safety.

It is believed Dmitry Sklyarov is being held in solitary confinement.

As an American who honorably served in the armed forces,  I am ashamed for
the actions of my government.  This cannot stand.

Telephone numbers:

US State Department: 1-202-647-6575
Russian Embassy: 1-202-298-5700
Russian Consul (SF) 1-415928-6878

Call.  Get your friends to call.  Call again.

Please disseminate this information as widely as possible.

-Bill

 




judge downes rules

2001-07-26 Thread bill payne

Instead of remanding, Downes rules.

This means that Downes is going with the feds.

We need some help guys.

Please think some help up.

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/8327/

We are working on this.

So are they.

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/8327/buehlerpayne.html





Re: Assasination Politics in the Middle East

2001-07-26 Thread Bill Stewart

At 05:11 PM 07/23/2001 -0700, Mr. Falun Gong wrote:

>Ok, the Subject line is a bit of a stretch, as there's no anon payment,
>but it is interesting nonetheless.
>
>  Israel to look into Arafat murder ad
>  By SAUD ABU RAMADAN
>
>   GAZA, July 23 (UPI) -- Israel's attorney general on Monday said he
>would consider opening a criminal investigation into an advertisement that
>urged anyone who had the opportunity to murder Palestinian leader Yasser
>Arafat, the Haaretz newspaper reported.

I saw a wire-service article the other day that said that
Ariel Sharon's government had put out or endorsed a list of
radical fanatic extremist Palestinian group leaders who were targets for
assassination in revenge for the recent bombings in Israel.
Perhaps the article got mangled in translation or
I misread it because the train was noisy,
but it sure looked that way.  It didn't mention Arafat





Re: Re: Ashcroft Targets U.S. Cybercrime

2001-07-26 Thread Bill Stewart

I'm not sure which of the >s are Petro, Schliesser, Measl, or others,


> >> >> We still live in a country that has laws, and we *should* expect 
> the LEAs
> >> >to enforce all laws that are on the books.

I think this was Petro, who I think was a Marine, and therefore should know 
better.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice *requires* soldiers to
refuse to obey illegal orders.
Police generally are required to uphold the Constitution,
and no amount of weaseling about "I'm not the departmental legal counsel,
I'm the guy with the blue suit" relieves them of that responsibility.
There are substantial differences between these two situations -
usually an illegal order to a soldier involves shooting people,
while an unconstitutional action by a cop involves arresting people
or serving warrants on them, which can be argued about later,
so it's far more critical that a soldier individually do the right thing,
even though an inappropriate refusal by a soldier can result in lots of
dead people, while an incorrect refusal or inaction by a cop
only results in somebody not getting arrested or the
city's insurance company paying a bunch of lawyers for a lawsuit.

> >> >> If you have a problem with the laws, it's not the LEAs fault, it's the
> >> >legislature and the Executive branch.

It's both.  And enforcement of laws typically has a huge latitude -
the DMCA doesn't say anything about refusing to give Dmitri a bail hearing,
or whether to take every piece of electronics in a "hacker's" house.
The "I know it when I see it" test for obscenity is very broad.
And the property-forfeiture-for-drugs laws may allow police to
steal anything nailed down or not if they think they can make a case
that there might have been drugs around that the victim won't have
the resources to successfully defend against, but don't require it,
and enforcement seems suspiciously correlated with which police
departments make a profit from doing it.

> >>  In the grand scheme of things, Ashcroft believes (or appears to)
> >> in the Constitution. He may have some differences of opinion with many
> >> or most on this list, but he believes in it.
> >>  That is better than we've had in at least 6 years, probably more.

Certainly Janet Reno and Louis Freeh were a bad lot and we're well rid of them,
but Ashcroft's belief in the Constitution certainly appears not to
include the First Amendment.  We'll see how much he likes the others
as he goes along.

> My point, which I obviously did not make clearly enough,
>is that Ashcroft appears, unlike at least his immediate predecessor,
>to believe in rule of law, rather than rule by force.



> Another point you bring up is that a LEO should not enforce laws 
> that "clearly" violate the constitution.
>
> A LEO cannot do that *and still be a LEO*. He can refuse by 
> resigning, but if he simply takes the position that he will only enforce 
> laws he thinks are constitutional he causes a violation of one of the 
> fundamental underpinnings of the constitution, that all people are equal 
> under the law, and that the law is supposed to be equally applied.

I strongly disagree.
Let's start with a terminology rant -
Cops used to call themselves "peace officers".  Sure, it was propaganda,
but the point is that they're there to "serve and protect"  (at least for 
the upper classes.)
Or they claimed they were in the "Justice" business.
Now they're calling themselves "Law Enforcement", trying to use the
culture's leftover respect for "law" as a protection of individual rights,
rather than its current meaning of "whatever the legislature writes",
whether that's special-interest support like the DMCA or
religious/cultural preferences like the laws against some drugs,
and trying to use this to justify the use of however much force it takes
to force people to obey.  No different from what an invading army does.

If a cop believes that a law is unconstitutional or unjust,
then if anything his job is not to resign and let someone else enforce it,
but to prevent its enforcement, at least through inaction
if not through active reorganization of the police force.
If equal application of the law has a part to play here,
it's in getting other cops NOT to impose injustice,
not in copping out by imposing injustice himself or quitting.



> That may be less than clear, let me try it another way:

It was clear, just wrong - but go ahead :-)

> One of the fundamental features of a society that is built around 
> the concept of "rule of law" is that the law is knowable by the people, 
> and that they have a reasonable expectation of the consequences should 
> they break that law. When you have a situation where you give carte 
> blanche to LEOs to decide for themselves what is constitutional, you 
> violate that. What one LEO may decide is perfectly constitutional, 
> another may believe is unconstitutional resulting in even more uneven 
> application of the law than we have today.

  

Re: CDR-admin stuff

2001-07-28 Thread Bill O'Hanlon

I've set mine to 128.  It had been 12800.

I see duplicates from certain people very consistently.  I've
suspected that they address their mail to multiple CDRs and are
getting unique Message-IDs for each, but I've never checked into
it.


On Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 12:08:56PM -0500, Igor Chudov wrote:
> 
> 
> i had it set to 128000, changed to 128 (1 meg).
> 
> igor
> 
> Eric Murray wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > I've been seeing some duplicate messages from some of the CDRs.
> > 
> > I suspect that the massive increase in traffic has caused
> > one or more CDRs to overflow their procmail msgid cache.
> > I have been using formail -D 12800 msgid.cache
> > (cache size = 1280).Should we raise that?
> > 
> > Eric
> > 
> 
> 
> 
>   - Igor.




Re: CDR-admin stuff

2001-07-28 Thread Bill O'Hanlon

And, following up my own post:

The next two messages I read were from Eugene Leitl, who is someone
that I see duplicates from on every post.  His Message-Ids were 
technically the same, but they are long, and someone's server is
splitting them into two lines:

Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]   
  de>

I think formail should be concatenating the lines before making the
check, but I see that it has a -c option that may help.

-Bill



On Sat, Jul 28, 2001 at 10:07:36AM -0500, Bill O'Hanlon wrote:
> 
> 
> I've set mine to 128.  It had been 12800.
> 
> I see duplicates from certain people very consistently.  I've
> suspected that they address their mail to multiple CDRs and are
> getting unique Message-IDs for each, but I've never checked into
> it.
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 12:08:56PM -0500, Igor Chudov wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > i had it set to 128000, changed to 128 (1 meg).
> > 
> > igor
> > 
> > Eric Murray wrote:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > I've been seeing some duplicate messages from some of the CDRs.
> > > 
> > > I suspect that the massive increase in traffic has caused
> > > one or more CDRs to overflow their procmail msgid cache.
> > > I have been using formail -D 12800 msgid.cache
> > > (cache size = 1280).Should we raise that?
> > > 
> > > Eric
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > - Igor.




Inadvertently appropriate spam from TLAVIDEO.COM

2001-07-28 Thread Bill Stewart

TLA Video.  So *many* possibilities :-)

We've got your FBI surveillance videos, your NRO satellite photos,
CIA spy movies, KGB spy movies with similar plots, OMB fantasies, IRS S&M 
flix,
FCC bootlegs of "Seven dirty words you can't say on TV",
movies about chocolate from the FDA and NEA,
science fiction from the DOE and EPA (and the Warren Commission),
even a few old black&white WPA films.

And an 800 number just waiting for some 2600 kiddie to have fun with it

At 04:54 PM 07/27/2001 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

>Movie News From TLAVIDEO.COM
>
>Friday July 26, 2001
>
>We received your e-mail address from a movie website that got lost in the
>internet shakedown and would love to become your on-line source for
>VHS/DVD. TLA is an industry leader and we are here to stay! Everything is
>always on sale, and our reviews are original and honest. TLAVideo.com has
>been recognized as "Best of the Web" by Forbes Magazine and "Retailer of
>the Year" from video trade magazines and groups. We would love to be your
>source for all things cinematic: Quirky Indies, Hollywood Hits, Foreign
>Films, Children's Movies, Midnight Movies, Gay & Lesbian.

 [body of spam mostly deleted]

>TLA VIDEO'S 100% GUARANTEE
>
>We stand behind our products. If you have a problem with an order, feel
>free to get in touch with us immediately; we'll be glad to take care of
>it.
>Call us at 1-800-333-8521 (7 days a week, 8:30AM-12MID, ET) or email us at
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
>
>You can place an order with TLA Video by:
>1. Clicking on any of the links above and following all steps to the
>shopping cart.
>2. Calling our toll free number 8AM to 12 Midnight (ET) 7 days a week
>800-333-8521
>3. Visiting www.tlavideo.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>---
>You are currently subscribed to movie-madness as: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To change your mailing options go to 
>http://lyris.tlavideo.com/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=movie-madness





Character Assassination Politics: www.torricellideathwatch.com

2001-07-28 Thread Bill Stewart


>Sender: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "Stephen T. Middlebrook" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject:  www.torricellideathwatch.com
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>Republican "pranksters" have put up a www.torricellideathwatch.com web site
>letting readers predict the day Sen. Torricelli will be indicted.  The prizes
>look pretty good.
>
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41269-2001Jun24.html
>
>Gee, if the Barney parody site is cybersquatting, what's this?
>
>stm
>
>
>**
>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: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>**





FBI Scarfs up Scarfo's PGP passphrase, Federal Court Case

2001-07-28 Thread Bill Stewart

The article's somewhat long, and has quotes by David Sobel of EPIC
and various Feds.  The Feds didn't have a wiretap warrant,
only a search warrant, and black-bagged Scarfo's computer.

 "Armed only with a search warrant, the FBI broke into Scarfo's 
business
 and put either a program on his computer or an electronic bug in 
his keyboard -
 officials will not say which - and recorded everything typed by 
the son
 of the jailed former boss of the Philadelphia mob."

>Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 17:51:46 -0500
>Reply-To: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: Robert Helmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject:  FBI Surveillance of Computer Use
>
>"By bugging a keyboard or using special software, FBI agents can
>remotely capture a computer user's every keystroke.
>
>"With a black box, they can intercept e-mail from miles away.
>
>"In a van parked outside, they secretly can recreate the pictures on a
>computer screen from its electromagnetic energy.
>
>"The legal limits for these new investigative tools will get a test
>Monday when a federal court in New Jersey examines an allegedly
>mob-related case in which agents, without a wiretap order, recorded a
>suspect's computer keystrokes.
>
>"Privacy experts are watching the case of Nicodemo S. Scarfo Jr. with
>great interest because it could bring major changes to investigative
>tactics in the online age."
>
>  http://cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,303859-412,00.shtml
>
>Bob Helmer
>Webmaster
>Daily Rotation
>http://www.dailyrotation.com
>Shell Extension City
>http://www.shellcity.net
>St. Louis, Missouri
>
>
>**
>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: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>**




RE: Tampa using cameras to scan for wanted faces--

2001-07-28 Thread Bill Stewart

At 09:43 AM 07/06/2001 -0400, Trei, Peter wrote:
> > >One of the interesting things is that _ear shape_ is one of the best
> > >correlation features.
> >
> >   Hmmm...
> >   Maybe it's time to market a line of Privacy Ear Jewelry.
> > Shouldn't be hard with a couple piercing here, and some funny lumps
> > there to distort the profile enough.
> >
>Or just return to 70's hair styles.


Some of y'all still have enough hair to do that :-)




Re: Criminalizing crypto criticism

2001-08-01 Thread Bill Stewart

At 12:00 AM 07/31/2001 -0700, Alan wrote:
>I guess we *do* have the best government money can buy.  We just were not the
>ones writing the checks...

Naahhh...  You ought to be able to buy a much better government than that.  :-)

That actually is part of the problem - governments writing laws about things
they don't really understand.  It's most obvious in high-tech areas,
but even something as potentially simple as the tax code confuses them,
because there are thousands of pages of special cases designed mostly
independently to attempt to achieve various social goals or help various
special interests, too many for anyone to keep track of when trying to
band-aid the code to achieve the next social or political objective.

And the special interests who are successful in getting them to do things
generally aren't much more competent about it, and the unexpected
consequences may or may not help them.








Re: Stegotext in usenet as offsite backup

2001-08-02 Thread Bill Stewart

At 11:52 AM 07/31/2001 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>It would be handy, from my point of view, to use usenet as
>an "offsite backup" solution -- posting encrypted source
>for work-in-progress on binary newsgroups so I could just
>go back and nab it out of the archives if I ever have a
>disk crash or in case the computer gets stolen.

"Your message may cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars."
Usenet may be effective for Blacknet and samizdat and
unreliable storage of critical secrets where the Fedz won't
stomp them all out, but it doesn't scale well for normal backups.
You can use one of those "100megsfree.com" sites, or buy storage,
and use some anonymizer to stash your stuff there.
The real advantage of using Usenet as opposed to a non-broadcast medium
is that it's much harder for eavesdroppers to find the people reading it
when they're targeting the writer, so you can use a Blacknet service anywhere;
if that's not relevant, then don't bother.

A broadcast medium like Usenet used to flood the net with
huge numbers of copies for a week or so, and after that
only a few archive sites like Deja would have it in findable form.
That's probably less true today, since more people read it
with NNTP on their ISP's machine, and many non-huge ISPs
use a small number of NNTP service providers instead of doing their own,
while the Dejanews-like services are less dependable.

Stegoizing usually inflates your data by a factor of 10 or so,
if you're trying to use credible stego (as opposed to simply titling
your cyphertext as pic12345.jpg or maybe adding some file headers.)
The real problem is that most of the searchable Usenet archive services
ignore binary attachments, so they won't keep the contents of your file.
So you'll need to use a stego system that turns it into text,
like Peter Wayner's Mimic Functions or Dilbert's Pointy-Haired-Boss-Speak,
adding yet another layer of content inflation.

>Stegograms present an interesting copyright question for
>the legally inclined; if I'm using usenet archives as offsite
>backup via stegograms, I'm okay with the release and public
>use of the stegogram, which most folks will interpret as
>being the same as the covertext.  But would that entangle
>the copyright on the stegotext as well?  Or if somebody took
>the stegogram and figured it out, would I have legal recourse
>to stop them from doing anything with my code?

Anything you post on Usenet is pretty much toast.
If you make plaintext world readable, it's world copyable;
if you don't like that, only post cyphertext.
Maybe the Berne Convention theoretically protects you, but so what?
You're proposing putting this stuff on Usenet instead of a storage site
because it's too hot for you to handle, so don't expect the
US copyright system to help you much :-)
It's especially rough on any Plausible Deniability you might have had.




Re: Just because it is made public doesn't mean it's declassified

2001-08-02 Thread Bill Stewart

At 08:22 AM 08/02/2001 -0700, John Gilmore wrote:
>Just because it is public DOES mean it's declassified.  There are
>Supreme Court cases on this.  If the government can recover all the
>copies, then it can REclassify it.  But if it can't, then the document
>is not classified.

It's not that straightforward, because Postol has a security clearance,
so he's under more restrictions than somebody who doesn't.

If he obtained the information entirely from already-public sources,
as opposed to obtaining documents with classification markings
that don't also have declassification markings on them,
he should be safe from prosecution, but that doesn't mean they
can't pop his security clearance for it.





Re: Security Against Compelled Disclosure

2001-08-04 Thread Bill O'Hanlon

On Sat, Aug 04, 2001 at 08:29:55AM -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
> Actually they should ONLY be removing attachments to their subscribers, if
> they are removing attachments in general then they are breaking the
> contract.


Contract?




Re: Security Against Compelled Disclosure

2001-08-04 Thread Bill O'Hanlon

On Sat, Aug 04, 2001 at 11:54:35AM -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
> On Sat, 4 Aug 2001, Bill O'Hanlon wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, Aug 04, 2001 at 08:29:55AM -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
> > > Actually they should ONLY be removing attachments to their subscribers, if
> > > they are removing attachments in general then they are breaking the
> > > contract.
> > 
> > 
> > Contract?
> 
> Explicit written (ie email) contract at that.
> 

Sure.  And I could find such a thing...where?

It would seem that I ought to at least read such a thing, if I've
supposedly agreed to it.

--
Bill O'Hanlon   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Professional Network Services, Inc. 612-379-3958
http://www.pro-ns.net




Re: Demime & CDRs (was Re: Security Against Compelled Disclosure)

2001-08-04 Thread Bill O'Hanlon

On Sat, Aug 04, 2001 at 12:00:34PM -0700, Eric Murray wrote:
> 
> I've also found the source of the wrapped Message-Ids and I'll
> be fixing it soon.
> 
> 
> Eric
> 

That's good news.  The duplicated messages were confusing.

-Bill




Re: Stem Cell Speech?

2001-08-12 Thread Bill Stewart

>Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2001 01:10:52 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Charles Platt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: Matthew Gaylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: stem cell speech
>
>Matt, I am baffled that I have not read, anywhere, a suggestion from
>anyone that George Bush has no constitutional right to set science policy.
>His speech on stem cell research included a statement that he had decided
>to proceed cautiously. How does he have the right to make such a decision?

As Tim May pointed out, this isn't an issue of whether to ban the research,
it's an issue of whether to provide Federal Funding to pay for the research.

But the Feds are setting policy about privately-funded human cloning research,
and probably could set policy about embryonic stem cell research if they
wanted to.  The commerce clause is pretty much infinitely extensible,
or they could argue it's Protecting The General Welfare of US homo sapiens,
though of course the real issue is "Mah constituents think it's creepy and
keep rantin' at me about how Ah'd better do something, so of course Ah'll
vote for your bill."

The Equal Protection clause would even work, at least until somebody takes
it to the Supremes and says that Roe vs. Wade bans
Special Rights for Early Americans.

You could even stretch the DMCA far enough to cover it - either the
embryo or its parents owns copyright on the DNA, and there are technical
methods used to protect copying (so the cells only turn into the
kinds of body parts they're supposed to), and developing a mechanism
to evade that protection is a violation of the DMCA even if the
individual copyright owners participating in the research don't mind
having their DNA copied.

On a more serious note, I hope that any laws and policies they write
banning cloning are narrowly limited.  Lots of people get upset about
cloning *entire* humans, creating a new human being who's a pseudo-twin
of the original one, but that's much different from cloning body parts,
such as creating a clone of your liver or kidneys to replace the damaged ones.
A ban on the latter would be a real tragedy.




Re: Secret Warrants

2001-08-12 Thread Bill Stewart

At 06:50 PM 08/11/2001 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
>On Thu, 9 Aug 2001, A. Melon wrote:
> >What is needed, seriously needed right now, is some good, open source
> > surveillance dectection software. Something that would find key-logger
> > software or hardware, something that would check your phone line thru
> > your modem, maybe even could be used as a frequency analyzer with a
> > usb or serial port "antenna" connection for laptops.
> > I'm sure this would be a really good commercial hit.
> > Especially if the price could be kept under $500.
>
>Try more like $50-100k...it will also require specific/special hardware,
>software alone is not enough.

It's not a request that makes sense -
- you can detect electromagnetic radiation emanating from your house,
 if you're willing to look at a wide enough range of frequencies
 and can differentiate from other similar radiation, such as that
 from your computer or your tv or cabletv or vcr or power line or PDA
 (if you're not in a single-family home) your neighbors.
 Costs money, probably too much work, difficult, but semi-possible.
= you might be able to detect changes in the analog side of your phone line,
 at least if they're twiddling it nearby where you can watch them,
 but they can diguise that by working from a Phone Company truck.
 You've got no chance of detecting tapping on the digital side.
- Neither of these methods will detect equipment that lurks around
 waiting for commands before transmitting.
- It's also difficult to detect elint eavesdropping hardware in your
 neighbor's place that's pointed at you, especially if you have 
many neighbors.
- It's difficult to detect black-box jobs that add hardware features to 
your PC;
 you might see bump-in-the-cord keyloggers, but you probably won't see
 anything hidden inside the case itself.  Epoxying everything together
 can reduce this risk, and increase the chances that you'll notice,
 especially if your PC is a laptop that you stick in the safe when
 you're not using it or carrying it.  But you're not that paranoid.
- It's difficult to detect software changes - you can discourage them by
 using a Real Operating System instead of Windows, and running
 things like Tripwire that detect changes in critical files,
 and of course making sure that nobody's snuck in and swapped the
 CDROMs of software you're using for bugged versions so that the
 next time your hard disk crashes and you need to reinstall Red Hat 
or Win2001
 or applications get hosed and you need to reinstall Palm tools or 
other apps that
 you're not getting bugware as well.

A much easier approach is to bug your own place - set up your cheap camera
 pointing toward your PC desk, with that small pc running
 motion detection and tracking who's been there.
 Or at least use a burglar alarm that's got some off-site or
 other reliable mechanism for telling you when you've been burgled.
 In Nicky Scarfo's case, picking alarm companies is a tough decision -
 being in a Mafia Watch neighborhood is find for non-players' 
protection,
 but players have to worry whether they're being set up by 
ex-friends...






Re: Ex-MI6 agent put porn on police computer

2001-08-21 Thread Bill Stewart

At 09:30 AM 08/21/2001 -0400, Matthew Gaylor wrote:
>TUESDAY AUGUST 21 2001
>
>Ex-MI6 agent put porn on police computer
>http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-2001290847,00.html
>
>BY JOANNA BALE
>
>A FORMER MI6 agent is facing prison after he admitted yesterday downloading
>pornographic images of children on to his office computer while working at a
>police headquarters.

I guess that's another case of "Military Intelligence is an oxymoron"








Re: Bomb Law Reporter - special edition

2001-08-21 Thread Bill Stewart

At 03:31 PM 08/20/2001 -0400, Faustine wrote:
>Eugene wrote:
>
> > and switching to an emission poor system (chucking CRT for LCD
> > would do plenty for starters)
>
>Actually, that won't help you much: emissions from LCD screens can be
>easier to decode than those from monitors. Active matrix LCD screens create
>very strong and clear emissions--as long as a display uses some form of
>pixel sweep where each pixel is activated at a unique time, then the
>emissions are simple to decode. Though in theory LCD screens emit less than
>a VDU, recent EMC controls have greatly reduced emanations from VDUs--with
>the result that the graphics card will often be the greatest source of
>compromise.

Also, most laptops have a VGA connector on the back, which leaks heavily.
An external VGA screen might be a bit quieter, because the cables can be 
shielded,
but it still depends on how capable the attacker is.
And basically, if the Feds are sitting outside your house listening
to whatever they can from your computer, you've already blown your security :-)
Shoulda used Blacknet.




Re: Send Law Students, Idealists and Grant Proposals. Was: Re: Lawyers, Guns, and Money

2001-08-22 Thread Bill Stewart

At 10:30 PM 08/22/2001 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>You mean it wasn't like in "The Firm" where all the firms chase after you,
>offering you wads of cash? That's a bit disappointing.

The movie ending was an annoying wimpout compared to the book,
but there were some scenes that they did well,
particularly the one where Hackman and the other lawyers are
telling Cruz the importance of "Billing".
Directly applicable in parts of the computer consulting biz








Re: Lawyers, Guns, and Money

2001-08-22 Thread Bill Stewart

At 02:54 PM 08/22/2001 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:


>(and why does a *database* have XML-conversion functions??)

XML's a decent match with tuples, and providing an easily
standardized and malleable data interchange format is not only
an easy thing to bolt on but a potentially big win for usability,
as well as providing the lastest buzzword compliance.
Of course, just because you *can* use it to make things cleaner
instead of uglier and more complex doesn't mean you have to.

>I see a lot of engineering effort wasted on silly fads. Good
>people spending days and sometimes weeks reinventing wheels
>that represent problems that were solved decades ago, just
>because the solutions developed then, despite being proven
>and correct, are presently out of style. It's a waste of
>resources and it pisses me off.

Lots of the recent user interface trends are a waste of, umm, skins.
A certain 3.5-letter-acronym company or its suppliers recently
put lots of effort into enhancing its secure VPN dialer product,
and I *wish* they'd focused on testing the Mac product instead of
doing customizable look&feel for the Windoze versions...




Re: Bomb Law Reporter - special edition

2001-08-22 Thread Bill Stewart

At 07:07 PM 08/22/2001 -0400, Faustine wrote:
>Have you happened to have seen any good papers on constructing do-it-
>yourself cheap, effective, portable shielding? Probably might as well ask
>for the moon too while I'm at it, but it's worth a shot!

Back when I was playing with that technology,
there was no such thing as "cheap, effective, portable" :-)
The three main applications for shielding were
- FCC-grade quietness - so your neighbors don't complain about TV interference,
 but that's not enough to stop eavesdroppers
- TEMPEST-certified equipment, which not only needs the
 technical capabilities correct but also the testing and paperwork,
 which tended to add ~$5000 per PC.
- ElectroMagnetic Compatibility (EMC) testing, which uses
 big shielded rooms to make quiet environments for testing hardware in.
 The technology's pretty similar to TEMPEST-room shielding,
 except that you put the noisy stuff outside instead of inside,
 but it's the big expensive non-portable end of the product spectrum.




Re: Voluntary Mandatory Self-Ratings and Limits on Speech

2001-08-22 Thread Bill Stewart

>On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Tim May wrote:
> > Many of us don't believe this common belief today, that the First is
> > mainly about political speech, is consistent with the intent of the 
> Framers.

If you're talking about tobacco advertising or dirty pictures on the Net,
politicians will tell you "Oh, No, the Freedom-of-speech-and-press stuff
in the First Amendment isn't about that, it's about protecting political 
speech."
But if you're talking about campaign finance, "well, no, elections are too
important to let people with money pay to have their opinions published,
that would corrupt the election process."

We've got a current case in California, reported in the 8/21 SF Chronicle,
where Gov. Gray Davis is asking a judge to block psuedonymous TV ads
criticizing his atrocious mishandling of the electricity crisis.
This is pure political speech, not even mentioning elections or opposing 
politicians,
just slamming the "Gray-outs from Gray Davis".

According to the article by Ray Delgado, Davis's campaign committee sued,
complaining that the American Taxpayers Alliance, based in DC, broke
California law by not registering with the CA secretary of state
as a political organization and not disclosing the identities of its donors.
They spent about $2M, and it's headed by Scott Reed, a Republican
campaign consultant, and registed with the IRS as a non-profit corporation.
Delgado says that Time Magazine identified Reliant Energy as a big contributor,
and the Center for Responsive Politics says their prime donors are oil&gas 
companies
(big surprise there, eh?)  The Alliance's lawyer, James Bopp, says that this
ad is an assessment of the gov's performance in office, and protected by 
the First.
Davis's mouthpiece is Joseph Remcho, and the Judge is
San Francisco Superior Court Judge David Garcia.

(Of course, I'd be extremely surprised if the ad also criticizes Davis's
predecessor, Republican Party Reptile Pete Wilson, whose economic cluelessness
got us into this mess, leaving behind a system that would take *far* more
economic competence than any major Democrat can be expect to have to repair 
it.)




RE: "Space War"

2001-08-23 Thread Bill Stewart

Bamford's book "Body of Secrets" has a lot of good discussion on
moon-bounce work by the NSA.  As Phillip wrote, two of the main
applications were passive eavesdropping on Soviet communucations
(though satellites later did a *much* better job) and
very non-directional communications to/from spy ships.

At 04:03 PM 08/06/2001 -0400, Phillip H. Zakas wrote:
> > John Young Wrote: [...]
> > What else is being done there remains to be disclosed.
>
>Two applications I've heard of:
>
>1.  Here's an excerpt from a US Navy press release:
>"Jim Trexler was Lorenzen's project engineer for PAMOR (PAssive MOon Relay,
>a.k.a. 'Moon Bounce'), which collected interior Soviet electronics and
>communication signals reflected from the moon."
>URL: http://www.pao.nrl.navy.mil/rel-00/32-00r.html
>
>2.  On another site: "...The new Liberty was a 455-foot-long spy ship
>crammed with listening equipment and specialists to operate it. The vessel's
>most distinctive piece of hardware was a sixteen-foot-wide dish antenna that
>could bounce intercepted intelligence off the moon to a receiving station in
>Maryland in a ten-thousand-watt microwave signal that enabled it to transmit
>large quantities of information without giving away the Liberty's location.*
>*The system, known as TRSSCOMM, for Technical Research Ship Special
>Communications, had to be pointed at a particular spot on the moon while a
>computer compensated for the ship's rolling and pitching. The computers and
>the antenna s hydraulic steering mechanism did not work well together,
>creating frequent problems."
>URL: http://www.euronet.nl/~rembert/echelon/db08.htm
>
>phillip




Re: 10'th Anniversary

2001-08-23 Thread Bill Stewart

At 04:17 PM 08/04/2001 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
>What would be the 'official' crank-up date on the Cypherpunks mailing list
>in 1992? Time for a 10 year anniversary.


Cranks have been up on the list since pretty near the beginning

:-)





Re: Bomb Law Reporter - special TEMPEST edition

2001-08-23 Thread Bill Stewart

At 04:45 AM 08/23/2001 -0700, David Honig wrote:
>Faustine, look up Faraday cages, TEMPEST, and search the archives.
>As if you didn't know.  Succinctly, the electron gas in metals shields you
>from the electromagnetic antics of distant, radiating electrons, by
>shorting the
>ripples in the aether they make -and this shielding makes it harder to listen
>to your emissions, too.  The problem is that cables and ventilation vents
>are antennae,
>for sending and receiving both.
>
>Testing is key.  If you don't measure, you don't know.


This stuff was a *lot* easier when computers were slower.
I used to test my TEMPEST room at 450MHz, since that was high enough frequency
to cover any realistic level of emissions from the upper harmonics from the 
VAX,
and it was also a short enough wavelength that leaks were pretty detectable.
It doesn't take much to get a leak - copper foil on a joint wearing out,
or the copper mesh we'd stuff inside gaskets getting set unevenly.
The waveguides we used for fiber or air vents were typically 1/8 inch wide
and an inch or two deep - and if you pushed a paperclip halfway through you'd
twang the leak meter.

Well, that was fine for computers that were around 10MHz.
These days, when 1GHz is slow, there's tons of stray energy above that,
and that stuff is much more penetrating, plus you've got all the
100 and 133MHz memory and disk bus stuff.
Fortunately, the equipment runs at much lower power levels;
you can run on batteries instead of 208-volt 3-phase (:-),
but I'm still glad I don't have to design a room or even a box
for that level of tightness.

That room was still in active use with a VAX 8650; we retired it
about when we put in the Sparcstation 1 or 1+ - were those 25MHz?




Re: Top Firms Retreat Into Bunker To Ward Off 'Anarchists'

2001-08-23 Thread Bill Stewart

That's rather old news, and was even rather old news when the newspapers
discovered it; the "anarchist protestors" PR spin was just taking advantage
of current events to hook an article on.
Ben Laurie and thebunker.net are well known in cypherpunks circles,
and you'll find a fair bit of discussion in the cypherpunks archives.
IIRC, they were even bidding on a second bunker for expansion space,
though given the last 3 months' transition in the US internet hosting space 
market
(from "We're all building like mad!" to "Ohhh, n!  What a glut!")
I hope they're able to make the right financial choices.
The UK is probably not flooded with the things yet, and
while a nuclear-proof bunker may be overkill for offsite backup space,
you do need a certain level of security and reliable power
if you're in a business like banking that can't afford to lose data.

Also see the last month's worth of userfriendly.org/static cartoons

At 12:21 PM 08/22/2001 -0400, Matthew Gaylor wrote:
>From: "Moon Kat" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Top firms retreat into bunker to ward off 'Anarchists'
>Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 12:46:41 +
>
>Hi Matt
>
>Not sure if you've seen this one already but here goes.  Quite where the 
>anti-capitalists are going to get a thermonuclear bomb from isn't 
>explained in the article but surely such a device would compromise their 
>"Neo-Luddite" principles anyway?
>
>Yours, in a fallout shelter, somewhere west of London
>
>dK
>
>
>
>
>TOP FIRMS RETREAT INTO BUNKER TO WARD OFF 'ANARCHISTS'
>
>"Some of Britain's biggest companies are running their Internet operations 
>on systems installed in a 300ft-deep nuclear blast-proof bunker to protect 
>customers from violent anti-capitalist campaigners. They are renting space 
>in hermetically sealed rooms capable of withstanding a one Kiloton 
>explosion, electro-magnetic 'pulse bombs', electronic eavesdropping and 
>chemical and biological warfare."








Re: Security Against Compelled Disclosure

2001-08-25 Thread Bill Stewart

I realize this discussion was a couple of weeks ago, but I'm just catching 
up to it now :-)

Ignoring the flamage and the inter-listmanager discussions, if possible,
I'd like to address the problem of removing attachments.

Removing big attachments is one thing,
but there are a number of posters whose mail programs use MIME
in ways that are likely to get removed, even if they're just using it
for PGP signatures.  While I'd prefer to encourage such people not to
use formats like that, they *do* happen (especially on the 
remailer-operators list,
where each different sub-version of Mutt seems to use a different format...)

Tim May periodically flames the users of attachments, and while I agree that
binary attachments are often non-portable and non-readable by many people,
there are attachments that are just text with MIMEage headers around it,
which are perfectly fine - if your reader can't do anything useful to 
display it,
it *should* be able to show you the raw message body and let you read around
the junk, just as you'd probably read around PGP signature headers.

 Bill


At 08:29 AM 08/04/2001 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
>On Sat, 4 Aug 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
> > You fool. One of the cypherpunks nodes removed the attachment.
>
>Actually they should ONLY be removing attachments to their subscribers, if
>they are removing attachments in general then they are breaking the
>contract.
>
>More over, the size limitations for messages to the CDR's was agreed to be
>1M minimum over a year ago.
>
>Check the archives.
>
> > Sending attachments to the distributed cypherpunks list when at least
> > one node remove them is about as useful as, well, arguing with Choate.








Re: Secret Warrants and Black Bag Jobs--Questions

2001-08-25 Thread Bill Stewart

This discussion has touched on a variety of topics, some of them at cross 
purposes.
If you catch one cop in black ninja gear inside your house, and shoot him,
at least in California, you'll probably have legitimate self-defense claims,
and if he did yell "Police", well, dead men tell no tales.
Shooting a blue-uniformed cop inside your house will be much tougher
to get away with, even though it's legally not particularly difficult.

But it's extemely unlikely the cops would be doing a legally-authorized
black-bag job with just one person - much more likely they'd have
two or more, because sneaking into a Mafioso's house alone is dangerous,
and as Dr. Evil points out, they're going to try very hard to make sure
you're not home.  This will probably include knocking on your door under
some pretext, because if you *are* home, they'd much rather have you know
that they're watching you than that they're trying to sneak in and
black-bag your computer.  And it'll probably involve having lookouts
outside to radio the inside man with a "Cheese it, the Mafia!" warning
if you show up at an inopportune time.

Of course, if you shoot multiple cops in black ninja gear outside your house,
even if they're engaged in a military assault, it does tend to annoy
the rest of them leading to unfortunate consequences,
even if you're doing so purely in self-defense.

At 10:26 AM 08/09/2001 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>(Here in California, several recent cases in Stockton and Bakersfield
>where they got the wrong house. When the confused occupant moved in a way
>they didn't like, they shot him dead. "Oops."
>No murder charges filed against the SWAT members.)

I have had cops break into my house, looking for a neighbor who had used
my apartment number on his car registration instead of his,
and been the confused occupant acting in a way they didn't expect,
but they weren't a SWAT team; it was a 6am service of an arrest warrant,
with three cops, and they'd been pounding on the door for about 10 minutes
yelling for "Anthony"; I had gotten to bed at 3am, and when enough of the
racket got through to wake me up, I initially assumed it was the neighbor's
friends or non-friends looking for him, though the word "Police" got used
enough I figured I had to go see what was up and staggered down the stairs.
Cop was standing in my front hall, and I yelled at him to close the door so the
cats wouldn't get out enough times to back him outside before we resolved the
other issues.  Unfortunately, I was still asleep enough that I didn't check out
the warrant, so I don't know if he's a Home Invasion Robber or something else
dangerous I should know to avoid, or just was being busted for failing to 
appear
for a DUI charge which is no threat to me




Re: Jim Bell sentenced to 10 years in prison

2001-08-25 Thread Bill Stewart

Declan - I've found that "Irfanview" is an excellent tool for
reading lots of different graphics formats, including TIFF.
Available at the usual download sites.

At 01:00 PM 08/25/2001 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>John,
>Can you post that in another format? Individual JPGs or GIFs or PDF?
>My version of Photoshop can't open the TIFF file you posted.
>
>-Declan
>
>
>On Sat, Aug 25, 2001 at 12:12:03PM -0700, John Young wrote:
> > See 9-page judgment in TIF format:
> >
> >   http://cryptome.org/jdb-hit.tif  (262KB)




Re: Thinking About the Crypto Unthinkable

2001-08-27 Thread Bill Stewart

At 08:11 PM 08/26/2001 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>This said, I wouldn't advise _anyone_ to study "policy"
>(or its earlier incarnations, "Operations Research."
>"Systems Analysis," or the utterly execrable "General Systems," a la 
>Bertanlanffy).

Hey, I resemble that remark (Undergrad and Master's degree on Operations 
Research.)
Cool subset of applied mathematics - it touches on enough different fields,
including the algorithm-analysis stuff that overlaps computer science
and complexity theory, probability and statistics, simulation, scheduling,
inventory theory, graph theory, measure theory, abstract stuff like matroids.
Good for looking at systems design, and it worked well for me,
though you risk being too generalist and not specific enough at anything.

Unfortunately the whole field of Linear Programming changed just about
the time I left college :-), with Karmarkar's work showing that
LP could be done in polynomial time (though with a big ugly constant multiplier
that means that the theoretically-exponential Simplex algorithm tends to 
converge faster.)

There was work from operations research that was on the rather bogus side,
like the stuff that encouraged development of square pineapples because the
cans fit tighter on shelves than round ones




Chaum's Workshop on Trustworthy Elections - this week, Tomales Bay, CA

2001-08-28 Thread Bill Stewart

OK, so it's a bit late, but I was going through recent RISKS Digests.

-
Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2001 14:23:15 -0700
From: David Chaum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Workshop on Trustworthy Elections

26-29 August 2001, Tomales Bay, California: WOTE (Workshop on Trustworthy
Elections) is a small research-oriented workshop devoted to advancing
technologies for election integrity and ballot secrecy, organized by David
Chaum and Ronald L. Rivest.  Topics include: Cryptographic protocols,
computer security, audit, operational procedures, certification,
tamper-resistance, document security, integrity, ballot secrecy, voter
authentication, all as related to trustworthy elections.
http://www.vote.caltech.edu/wote01/index.html

--




Re: Borders UK and privacy

2001-08-28 Thread Bill Stewart

> > BORDERS U.K. USES FACE-RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY TO MONITOR CUSTOMERS
> > Borders Books in the U.K. is employing SmartFace technology to compare

Slashdot is reporting that they've backed off in response
to negative public pressure.
So for the moment you don't need to wear a mask to shop there,
though they're probably still using cameras,
and in many parts of the UK the local government is
also videotaping the street.

David Brin's book "The Transparent Society" suggests that you
might as well get used to it.  Technological change driven by
the Moore's Law effects in computing power are making
video cameras and computer image processing get cheaper rapidly,
so the marginal benefit of using them doesn't have to be very high
to outweigh the marginal cost.  The real issues are still getting data,
but the costs of sharing data are low and getting lower,
and the government intervention that forces everyone to use
picture ID to do almost anything makes it easier.
Brin's conclusion is that since we won't be able to stop it,
we should work to make sure government activities are
open and watchable by the public.

Similarly, the cost of correlating non-image data has decreased rapidly -
many of the information collection practices used today date from
the 1960s and 1970s, when a "mainframe" might have a megabyte of RAM,
less than 10 MIPS of CPU, 100MB of fast disk drive, and everything else
was tapes and punchcards, and it required a large staff of people to feed it.
These days you can get pocket computers with ten times that capacity,
and a $5000 desktop Personal Computer can have a gigabyte of RAM and
a terabyte of disk drive with the Internet to feed it data;
that's enough for the name and address of everybody on Earth,
or a few KB on every American, and online queries are much faster than
the traditional methods requiring offline data sets.
That means that not only can governments and a few big companies decide
to correlate pre-planned sets of data about people, but almost anybody
can do ad-hoc queries on any data it's convenient for them to get,
whether they're individuals or employees of small or large businesses.

So if there's any data about you out there, don't expect it to stay private -
even data that previously wasn't a risk because correlating it was hard.
European-style data privacy laws aren't much help - they're structured for a
world in which computers and databases were big things run by big companies,
rather than everyday tools used by everyone in their personal lives,
and rules requiring making them accessible to the public can be turned around
into rules allowing the government to audit your mobile phone and
your pocket organizer in case there might be databases on them.

American-style data privacy laws are seriously flawed also -
not the fluffy attempts at positive protection for privacy that
liberal Nader types and occasional paranoid conservatives propose,
but the real laws which require increasing collection of data
in ways that are easy to correlate, such as the use of a single Taxpayer ID
for employers, bank accounts, drivers' licenses, and medical records,
"Know Your Customer" laws, national databases of people permitted to work,
documentation proving you're not an illegal alien, etc.
There's lots more data that would be readily available, but the
bureaucrats that collect it restrict access or charge fees that
reflect the pre-computer costs of providing the information.
If you need a reminder, go buy a house and look at the junk mail you get,
or have your neighbor's deadbeat kid register his car with your
apartment number instead of his and see what shows up.




Scarfo Judge Politan lets FBI Not Tell how bugging was done.

2001-08-28 Thread Bill Stewart

Sigh.  The FBI buggers convinced Nicky Da Judge to let them slide.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/21296.html


FBI let off cyber snooping hook
By Kieren McCarthy
Posted: 28/08/2001 at 10:41 GMT

The FBI has been let of the hook in its court case against mobster Nicodemo 
Scarfo. US District Judge Nicholas Politan has now ruled that the Bureau 
will not have to reveal precisely how it managed to log evidence that Mr 
Scarfo was involved in illegal gambling and loan sharking.

Mr Scarfo's lawyers claim that the FBI bugged him without possession of a 
bugging warrant and so the evidence it gathered is inadmissible in court 
since it was obtained illegally.

Previously Judge Politan said the FBI would have to reveal how it managed 
to bug Mr Scarfo's computer after it had failed to unscramble encrypted 
files on his computer. Not unreasonably, the judge said that for him to 
decide whether it had been obtained legally or not, he would have to know 
the method that was used. This information would have had to be given to 
the defence.

But the US government has persuaded the judge that the defence should only 
get an "unclassified summary". How'd it do that? Well, would you believe it 
but there's some strange law that can be invoked at times such as this. 
This one is called the Classified Information Procedures Act - which 
amazingly allows information to be withheld if national security is at 
risk. The FBI also promised to give a secret meeting in which it would go 
into further details over how the system worked.

The FBI installed some kind of key-logging software on Mr Scarfo's machine 
after it failed to crack his encryption software. Since it didn't have a 
warrant to bug him, Mr Scarfo's lawyers say his constitutional rights have 
been infringed. The FBI says the technology it is using falls under current 
bugging legislation but many remain unconvinced and claim the FBI is going 
beyond current laws.

It doesn't inspire confidence either when the head of the FBI, Robert 
Mueller, testified to the Senate a few weeks ago that he was "not familiar" 
with key-logging technology. That seems about as likely as the Pope being a 
closet Jew, but then Robert wouldn't lie, would he?

Many observers will be concerned at the failure for the American legal 
system to bring out into the open the unnerving possibilities that the 
latest technology makes available to intelligence agencies. .

Related Stories
FBI chief Mueller lied to Senate about key-logging
Mafia trial to test FBI psying tactics




Re: Cypherpunks <> Crypto-Anarchist

2001-08-30 Thread Bill Stewart

 Some Zen Poetry
 Choat's Noh Crypto Anarchist
 An empty message

At 11:12 PM 08/29/2001 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
>  --
> 
>
> natsugusa ya...tsuwamonodomo ga...yume no ato
> summer grass...those mighty warriors'...dream-tracks
>
> Matsuo Basho
>
>The Armadillo Group   ,::;::-.  James Choate
>Austin, Tx   /:'/ ``::>/|/  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>www.ssz.com.',  `/( e\  512-451-7087
>-~~mm-'`-```-mm --'-
> 




Stealth Computing Abuses TCP Checksums

2001-08-30 Thread Bill Stewart

http://fyi.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/08/29/stealth.computing/index.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/29/199205&mode=thread

A group of researchers at Notre Dame figured out how to use the
TCP Checksum calculations to get other computers to do number-crunching for 
them.

"Below, we present an implementation of a parasitic computer
using the checksum function.  In order for this to occur,
one needs to design a special message that coerces a target server
into performing the desired computation."

The article has the amount of great mathematical depth you'd expect from 
CNN :-)
But it does say that the paper will be published in "Nature" this week.

It's a really cool hack, though not especially efficient for real work.

Of course, the Slashdot discussion follows typical structure -
there's an interesting technical suggestion (ICMP checksums may be usable
and are probably more efficient than TCP), some trolls and flamers,
the obligatory "Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of those!" comment,
and some speculation about the potential legalities and other uses for it.




China Stories - US Busting Crypto Exports, Fighting Censorship by Corrupting Safeweb

2001-09-01 Thread Bill Stewart

The NYT and USA Today both have articles about the
Customs busting two US Chinese guys for exporting US military crypto gear.
It's the KIV-7HS, made by our old buddies at Mykotronx (who made Clipper.)
The NYT said the Feds were worried that if the Chinese reverse engineered it,
they'd be able to crack lots of our crypto secrets.
Normally I'd say that if that's the case, it's really shoddy crypto -
but one of the interesting things Bamford mentions in "Body of Secrets"
is that one of the US spies, I think Hansen or Walker, had been
feeding crypto keys to the Russians, so the crypto gear they got from
the Pueblo made it possible for them to crack years of messages;
perhaps they're worried about the same thing here.
Eugene Hsu of Blue Springs, MO and David Yang of Temple City CA
face a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail and $1M fine.

Meanwhile, the NYT had a front-page story that one of the
US propaganda agencies is proposing to help fight censorship in China
by promoting Safeweb, which is partly funded by In-Q-It, the CIA venture fund.
They've apparently got about 100 servers, and the Triangle Boy feature
makes it possible for them to keep changing IP addresses to make
blocking harder.  I assume if there are also Chinese Spies using it,
the CIA will be able to get the operators to rat out their identities...
But the main use will be to feed lots of news into China.
I'd already mistrusted Safeweb - not their honesty, but their technology,
since they require you to enable Javascript to use their tools.
Yes, it makes it easy to write cool and powerful tools,
but even if _their_ Javascript is perfectly secure,
the fact that you need to have it turned on leaves you vulnerable
whenever you read other web pages.  (Also, their Javascript is slightly buggy;
I've had trouble with window size and positioning issues.)

A third China Card in the news is the GAO's announcement that they
suspect that Code Red originated at a university in Guangdong.
Keith Rhodes, GAO's chief technologist, gave written testimony to
the House Government Reform subcommittee, but didn't return US Today's calls.
Of course, the real blame belongs to Microsoft - and US Today,
who are getting surprisingly technical this week, has a couple of articles
about the recent Hotmail/Passport hacks, in which security consultant
and former Yahoo security advisor Jeremiah Grossman, who had recently
cracked Hotmail in three lines of code, now has it down to one line...
This is another cross-site scripting attack.




USA Today Editorial on Scarfo case, 8/30/01

2001-09-01 Thread Bill Stewart

On the domestic spying front, USA Today has an editorial
disapproving of the FBI's Scarfo wiretap, and an editorial response
by Edward Allen, former FBI deputy assistant director (the FBI can't
reply directly because of the judge's gag order.)  The FBI front
says predictable things about how the FBI needs to use advanced technology
to keep up with the high-tech dangerous criminals, and how asking for
technical information on sources and methods is going too far.

USA Today's editorial is on the right side of the issue, in some parts
aggressively so (yay!) though they soft-pedal the legal problems in
the FBI's warrants.   They do have a moderate level of
understanding of the technical issues, and make some nice points on the
value of open review of government activities, pointing out that the
outside reviews of Carnivore found flaws in it that were hindering the FBI.
"The FBI's record on computer-related privacy issues
leaves little reason to believe that the agency
can make reasonable choices without scrutiny."
They also say, after acknowledging that Scarfo is "unsympathetic",
"But a decision in favor of the FBI's secrecy stance would
have far-reaching consequences - not only putting regular
users' Internet privacy at risk, but also setting a precedent
that could allow the FBI to act with impunity in future disputes
over newly devised surveillance methods."




Re: secure IRC/messaging successor

2001-09-01 Thread Bill Stewart

At 06:41 PM 08/30/2001 +0200, Eugene Leitl wrote:
>Gale http://www.gale.org/ seems a well thought out infrastructure. Is the
>consensus "this is it", or have I missed any alternatives?

Jabber seems to be emerging as the main cross-ISP instant messaging platform.
I'm not sure how much security it offers, but I've heard that
somebody's doing something along those lines.




Re: Motives

2001-09-05 Thread Bill Stewart

At 08:00 PM 08/19/2001 -1000, Reese wrote:
>We assume the lamerz posting "h3lp m3 m4k3 b0mZ" queries are LEA's
>trolling, but are they?  Is posting bomb recipes a violation of
>some applicable law?  If so, what law?  If not, why do we assume
>those to be LEA trolls, and not some hopeless wank or kook who
>needs to get in touch with HisOrHer inner child and beat it up?

Our esteemed Senator Diane Feinstein from California,
occasionally along with other people such as Joe Biden from my
home state of Delaware, occasionally proposes laws against disseminating
information on the internet, particularly about bombs and such.
(By contrast, an elementary-school education in Delaware includes
a trip to the duPont gunpowder-making mills, learning about
local history, colonial industry, and safe explosives-making.)
So some of the bomb ranting is about her disrespect for the First Amendment.

Some of it's pretty clearly from people who troll for the fun of trolling.
Some of it might even be lam3r k1ddi3z trying to look k3wl.

Some if it, especially post-Columbine and post-J*m B*ll,
does appear to be from people trolling usual suspects on the net
hoping to find some of them who are scary or stupid enough to entrap
into some witch-hunt, a political speech, a newspaper story,
a criminal conviction, whatever floats their boat.
There actually are laws against blowing stuff up or
possessing tools to do so, at least in some circumstances,
or conspiring to do Bad Things, or corrupting minors into doing so,
and for many purposes an accusation is really more useful than a conviction.

Most of it's actually produced by the service* that the Cypherpunks Cabal
Central Conspiracy Committee hires to make the list appear to be
Mostly Harmless by posting a flood of decoy material and
other slanderous and evil material so that the few genuinely dangerous
messages can be dismissed as "oh, yeah, kooks troll us with stuff
like this all the time" or "Oh, yeah, and last week they claimed we were
conspiring with hizbollah.org and the Bilderbergers."

[*Plausible Deniability Inc.]




Cypherpunks 9/8/01 - GOLDEN GATE PARK - EFF Music Share-In

2001-09-07 Thread Bill Stewart

See http://cryptorights.org/cypherpunks/meetingpunks.html
for SF, Toronto, Seattle, & Bangalore Cypherpunks announcements.

SF Bay Area Cypherpunks September 2001 Physical Meeting Announcement

General Info:
DATE:   Saturday 8 September 2001
TIME:   1 - 6 PM (Pacific Time)
Location: Golden Gate Park, corner of Haight & Stanyan

"Our agenda is a widely-held secret."
As usual, this is an Open Meeting on US Soil, and everyone's invited.
The Cypherpunks Secret Cabal Meeting starts at 1:00,
so bring blankets, lunch, tape recorders, drums, etc.
The slightly-better-hidden agenda is at http://www.eff.org/events/share-in/ or
http://www.eff.org/cafe/share-in/20010823_eff_share_in_pr.html
It's the east end of the main part of the park (not counting the Panhandle.)

Music Share-in Festival in Golden Gate Park

   Hosted by Wavy Gravy and John Perry Barlow

EFF Music Share In
Saturday, September 8, 2001, 2pm-5pm PT
Golden Gate Park (corner of Haight & Stanyan)

Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation and ten Independent bands for
an afternoon of music supporting artists' rights. All bands performing
grant permission for their Share - In performances to be recorded and
shared with friends under EFF's Open Audio License. Tapers are
encouraged and welcome.

Ten bands will play in two stage areas in the meadow. Hosting the main
stage are Wavy Gravy and EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow. Musicians
performing at the event include singer/songwriter Adrian West, the
jazzy Alex Buccat Quartet featuring Sanaz, folk/pop band Atticus
Scout, high-altitude bluegrass string band Hot Buttered Rum, soulful
solo performer Michael Musika, the political satirists of The Planning
Commission, Berkeley-based party band Shady Lady, classical Indian
instrumentalists Srini and Raja, acoustic rock performer Vanessa Lowe,
and singer/songwriter Wendy Haynes.

Come with friends and family! Hear great music, feast on Ben and
Jerry's ice cream and support a great cause. Best of all, It's FREE!
There will also be booths, t-shirts and CDs. Visit our website at:
  http://www.eff.org/cafe
for more information or call +1 415-436-9333 x101

Directions: East end of the main body of the park.
http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?BFCat=&Pyt=Tmap&newFL=Use+Address+Below&addr=haight+st.+and+stanyon+st.&csz=San+Francisco%2C+CA+94117&country=us&Get%A0Map=Get+Map


>   Thanks!  Bill Stewart,   [EMAIL PROTECTED], Cell +1-415-307-7119.
>Dave Del Torto, [EMAIL PROTECTED]




Friday, 9/7 - International Day of Action Against Video Surveillance

2001-09-07 Thread Bill Stewart

Perform for a video camera today!   Or alternatively, go buy a cheap webcam
and surveil somebody who's already performing (oh, wait, that wasn't what 
they meant :-)

The EFF announced the following:
-

Friday, September 7 - International Day of Action Against Video Surveillance

   Join privacy-minded citizens in raising awareness of public video
   surveillance

 Electronic Frontier Foundation ACTION ALERT

 (Issued: Friday, August 31, 2001 / Deadline: Friday, September 7, 2001)

   Introduction:

On Friday, 7 September 2001, a variety of groups from around the world
will be collaborating on an international day of autonomous protests
against the constant, indiscriminate and technologically sophisticated
video surveillance of public places by both businesses and law
enforcement agencies, and in favor of the right to privacy, which is a
fundamental human right. The protests will take the form of short
skits and plays, the majority of which will take place in front of
"webcams," so that people all over the world can watch them via the
Internet.

   What YOU Can Do:

  * If you are concerned about surveillance cameras in your area, and
would like to get involved in the protests, then see New York's
Surveillance Camera Players' (SCP) "How to Stage Your Own
'Surveillance Camera Theater' in 10 Easy-to-Follow Steps!" at:
  http://www.notbored.org/scp-how-to.html

  * To add your group to the confirmed list of activists, email SCP
at:
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

  * Contact your legislators about online privacy issues. For
information on how to contact your legislators and other
government officials, see EFF's "Contacting Congress and Other
Policymakers" guide at:
  http://www.eff.org/congress.html

  * Join EFF! For membership information see:
  http://www.eff.org/support/

   Privacy Campaign:

This drive to contact the Judiciary bureaucracy about their invasive
policies is part of a larger campaign to highlight how extensively
companies and governmental agencies subject us to surveillance and
share and use personal information online, and what you can do about
it.

Check the EFF Privacy Now! Campaign website regularly for additional
alerts and news:
  http://www.eff.org/privnow/

   Background:

The proposal reads as follows:

  We propose --

 1. that an international day of action against video surveillance --
specifically: the constant, indiscriminate and technologically
sophisticated video surveillance of public places by both
businesses and and law enforcement agencies -- take place on
Friday, 7 September 2001;
 2. that people who wish to intensify the struggle to protect and
strengthen the right to privacy (a fundamental human right) should
undertake autonomous actions at the local level and in a
completely de-centralized fashion;
 3. that, if and when possible, at least some of these actions should
be undertaken in front of webcams that have already been installed
in public places by private companies that are insensitive or even
hostile to privacy concerns (in addition to disrupting "business
as usual" for these companies, the use of webcams will allow the
entire world to see 7s01 anti-videosurveillance actions as they
take place);
 4. that all individuals and groups participating in the 7s01 day of
action keep in touch with at least one of the groups listed below
and/or each other;
 5. that at least one Web site links to or actually displays images
from these actions as they take place;
 6. that this proposal should be posted on-line and sent to as many
people as possible and as soon as possible; and
 7. that this proposal be translated into as many foreign languages as
possible, but especially French, German, and Italian, for it is in
France, Belgium, Germany and Italy that the anti-videosurveillance
struggle is the most visible at the moment.

List of participating groups:
  http://www.notbored.org/7s01.html

EFF's action alert:
  http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010831_surveil_cam_alert.html

 Contacts:

  Bill Brown, Surveillance Camera Players
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
+1 212-561-0106
http://www.surveillancecameraplayers.org/

  Will Doherty, EFF Online Activist / Media Relations
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
+1 415 436 9333 x111

   - end -




Re: Slashdot | Texas Arabic Hosting Provider Shut Down By FBI

2001-09-07 Thread Bill Stewart

At 11:46 PM 09/06/2001 -0500, Jim Choate wrote to the Cypherpunks list
 > http://slashdot.org/yro/01/09/07/0048215.shtml

It's an outrageous story.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010906/us/business_raided_2.html
http://www.middleeastwire.com/newswire/stories/20010905_meno.shtml
http://www.txcn.com/texasnews/463428_TXCN_ba_FBIRaid.html
http://www.wfaa.com/wfaa/articledisplay/0,1002,31013,00.html - 9/5/01
http://www.wfaa.com/wfaa/articledisplay/0,1002,31120,00.html - 9/6/01
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010906/wr/mideast_usa_internet_dc_3.html

Infocom Corporation, http://www.infocomcorp.com/
is a web hosting and computer sales company based in Richardson, Texas,
supporting over 500 clients, particularly Arabic web sites,
which were shut down temporarily during the raid (many are back up now).
Clients include Al-Jazeera television and the newspaper Al-Sharq, both 
based in Qatar, and
several major Muslim American organizations such as the
Council on American Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America,
the Islamic Association for Palestine and the Holy Land Foundation.

On September 5, the FBI raided them, with a sealed search warrant,
looking for information on terrorist groups.
They also served subpoenas on the Holy Land Foundation,
based across the street, which some of the news articles say
the FBI suspects of having ties to Hamas.
FBI spokeswoman Lori Bailey said the investigation was not aimed at 
InfoCom's clients,
but she declined to say why authorities targeted the company.
80 agents were involved in the search of the files, and carried boxes of 
material
out of the building.  It was part of a two-year investigation by the
North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force (multi-agency incl. FBI, SS, Customs.)

The Reuters article on Yahoo describes Al-Jazeera as
"a major regional news source for Arabic speakers.
Often dubbed ``the Arab CNN,'' it has emerged as a major force in a
region where most broadcasters operate under direct state control."

One of the Slashdot commentators said it reminded him of the
Steve Jackson Games raid.  Given the presence of news organizations,
potentially including journalism work products subject to ECPA protection,
this is my reaction as well.

Later stories include the FBI denying accusations of anti-Arab bias,
and a statement by 10 American Islamic groups accusing them of an
"Anti-Muslim witchhunt promoted by the pro-Israel lobby in America".
The FBI denied the raid was any kind of witchhunt,
``We were executing a search warrant as part of a criminal investigation.
It had nothing to do with anti-Islamic or anti-Palestinian or
anti-Middle East issues or anything like that,'' said special agent Lori 
Bailey.






Fwd: Re: What's going on? World Trade Center, Pentagon,Old Executive Office Bldg

2001-09-11 Thread Bill Stewart

INteresting exchange from cyberia-l.

Mark was online earlier, and sent an article saying
 Try NYC traffic cams:  http://nyctmc.org/xbrooklyn.asp

>Sender: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "Ronald D. Coleman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Organization: Gibney, Anthony & Flaherty, LLP
>Subject:  Re: What's going on? World Trade Center,
>   Pentagon,Old Executive Office Bldg
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>"Sterilized."  No in or out of the City.
>
>Mark Milone wrote:
>
> > If anyone has info, please let me know what is the status of NYC 
> evacuation. I'm trying to get back to Brooklyn. I can be reached at 
> 212-935-6020 (the phone service is off and on) or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> > - Mark




Fwd: FC: Terrorists attack World Trade Center and Pentagon

2001-09-11 Thread Bill Stewart

>Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0.2
>Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 10:28:52 -0400
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>From: Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: FC: Terrorists attack World Trade Center and Pentagon
>Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>X-URL: Politech is at http://www.politechbot.com/
>X-Author: Declan McCullagh is at http://www.mccullagh.org/
>X-News-Site: Cluebot is at http://www.cluebot.com/
>
>[Police and other sirens are wailing in Washington, and high-profile 
>federal buildings have been evacuated. One of the Trade Center towers 
>apparently has collapsed, with a death toll I don't want to imagine. I 
>wonder if these attacks are over, and what kind of legislation we're 
>likely to see in response... --Declan]
>
>http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010911/ts/crash_tradecenter_dc_2.html
>NEW YORK (Reuters) - A plane struck the World Trade Center in lower 
>Manhattan Tuesday morning, an eyewitness reported.
>
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/evac.htm
>
>The AP and Reuters are reported the following D.C. area evacuations on
>the threat of terrorist attacks: the White House, the U.S. Capitol
>Building, the Pentagon, the State Department and the Old Executive
>Office Building.
>
>According to GSA press office, they are awaiting a decision on whether
>to close government agencies in Washington.
>
>The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market said trading in
>stocks would not open until at least 11:30 EDT.
>
>Also the Federal Aviation Administration has shut down all aircraft
>takeoffs nationwide and has directed all planes in the air to continue
>to their final destinations or land at the nearest airport.
>
>The Sears Tower in Chicago is also being evacuated.
>
>
>
>
>-
>POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
>You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
>Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
>To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
>This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
>-




Re: What's going on? World Trade Center, Pentagon, Old Executive Office Bldg

2001-09-11 Thread Bill Stewart

At 10:22 AM 09/11/2001 -0400, Seth Finkelstein wrote:
>  "Warren E. Agin"
> > I've been trying to get on a newsite, but abc.com, abcnews.com,
> > nbc.com, msnbc.com, cbs.com, foxnews.com and boston.com are all having
> > problems. Yahoo and MSN are up.
>
> I can attest that boston.com is functioning in Boston. Can't
>say if you could reach it from another part of the country.
>
> > I wonder if the problem is just server overload, or something else.
>
> There seems to be some major links out of action. I can't
>traceroute to cnn.com, for example. I *speculate* it's collateral
>damage from the explosions in Manhattan. That is, I sure wouldn't hang
>around to keep computer working in this situation.

Highly unlikely to be physical damage; it's just slashdotted
because everybody with an internet connection tried it first.
The San Francisco Chronicle is still working because it's early morning
on the West Coast; they're sfgate.com, picture on the front page,
and the AP story is at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2001/09/11/national0920EDT0530.DTL




Fwd: What's going on? World Trade Center, Pentagon, Old Executive Office Bldg

2001-09-11 Thread Bill Stewart

apparently two planes crashed into the World Trade Center,
and the top of one tower is gone.
another either crashed the pentagon or bombed it.
airports all closed.

>Sender: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "Stephen T. Middlebrook" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject:  What's going on? World Trade Center, Pentagon,
>   Old Executive Office Bldg
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>I assume most folks are watching coverage of the plane crash into the World
>Trade Center in New York.  Here in our offices, however, we're watching 
>out our
>windows at thick black smoke billowing from the Pentagon building across the
>river.
>
>And word is that there was a bombing at the Old Executive Office building
>
>stm
>
>
>**
>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: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>**




Re: What's going on? World Trade Center, Pentagon, Old Executive Office Bldg

2001-09-11 Thread Bill Stewart

At 10:48 AM 09/11/2001 -0400, Greg Newby wrote:
>Everything's just slashdotted.  Forget the Internet, this
>is television's game, or try the radio (shortwave or
>domestic).

even Akamai is slashdotted  Here's the SF article printer-friendly version;
sorry about the formatting.

Planes crash into World Trade Center, creating horrifying scene; no word on 
casualties

Tuesday, September 11, 2001
)2001 Associated Press
URL: 
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2001/09/11/national0920EDT0530.DTL
 

(09-11) 06:39 PDT (AP) --
AP National Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- Two planes crashed into the upper floors of both World 
Trade Center towers minutes apart Tuesday in what the President Bush said 
was an apparent terrorist attack, blasting fiery, gaping holes in the 
110-story buildings. There was no immediate word on deaths or injuries.
The president ordered a full-scale investigation to "hunt down the folks 
who committed this act"
The twin disasters which happened shortly before 9 a.m. and then right 
around 9 a.m.
In Washington, officials said the FBI was investigating reports of a plane 
hijacking before the crashes.
Heavy black smoke billowed into the sky above the gaping holes in the side 
of the 110-story twin towers, one of New York City's most famous landmarks, 
and debris rained down upon the street, one of the city's busiest work 
areas. When the second plane hit, a fireball of flame and smoke erupted, 
leaving a huge hole in the glass and steel tower.
"Today we've had a national tragedy," Bush said. He called it "an apparent 
terrorist attack."
Ira Furber, former NTSB spokesman, discounted likelihood of accident.
"I don't think this is an accident," he said on CNN. "You've got incredibly 
good visibility. No pilot is going to be relying on navigational equipment."
"It's just not possible in the daytime," he added. "A second occurrence is 
just beyond belief."
The towers were struck by terrorist bombers in February 1993, killing six 
people and injuring more than 1,000 others.
All New York City-area airports were shut down, and several subway lines 
were immediately shut down. Trading on Wall Street was suspended.
"The plane was coming in low and ... it looked like it hit at a slight 
angle," said Sean Murtagh, a CNN vice president, the network reported.
"I was watching TV and heard a sonic boom," Jeanne Yurman told CNN. "The 
side of the World Trade Center exploded. Debris is falling like leaflets. I 
hear ambulances. The northern tower seems to be on fire."
Thousands of pieces of what appeared to be office paper came drifting over 
Brooklyn, about three miles from the tower.
A senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the 
agency is pursuing reports that one or both of the planes were hijacked and 
that the crashes may have been the result of a suicide mission.
The source stressed that the reports are preliminary and officials do not 
know the cause of the crashes.
"It certainly doesn't look like an accident," said a second government 
official, also speaking on condition of anonymity.
In 1945, an Army Air Corps B-25, a twin-engine bomber, crashed into the 
79th floor of the Empire State Building in dense fog.
In Sarasota, Fla., Bush was reading to children in a classroom at 9:05 a.m. 
when his chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispered into his ear. The president 
briefly turned somber before he resumed reading. He addressed the tragedy 
about a half-hour later.
)2001 Associated Press




Re: C-SPAN on Pentagon Renovation

2001-09-17 Thread Bill Stewart

At 10:29 PM 09/15/2001 +0200, Anonymous Coredump wrote:
>Plans for the renovation of the Pentagon are being discussed on C-Span
>right now. Interesting sound-bites. Costs of replacing the Pentagon vs.
>rebuilding are the current topic.
>
>The URL for the project reports a 500 error currently:
>http://renovation.pentagon.mil/
>
>"The Pentagon is not compliant with fire safety codes; the Pentagon is not
>compliant with *any* codes."
>
>--Lee Evey, Pentagon Renovation Program Manager

Many years ago, when I was a tool of the military-industrial complex,
I was part of a project that bid on replacing the communications
infrastructure of part of the Pentagon, which included bidding on rewiring it.
Yow, what an ugly and impossible job that was!
The prime contractor we were working for didn't win the job,
so fortunately we didn't have to deal with it.
Just because the Pentagon is not compliant with fire safety codes
doesn't mean there isn't a lot of asbestos all over the place -
running new wiring in the ceiling would have been very risky,
even if anybody *had* a complete picture of what's in the ceilings there.

Bidding on the job was, IIRC, entirely unclassified,
so there are large parts of the blueprints that don't
even identify what agencies control some of the blacked-out spaces.
George Bush doesn't have all the right clearances to all the
different projects that have stuck stuff in there,
and some of the wires were installed by people who are dead now
and will never be able to tell what they were for or whether
they're still in use, but you can't just fish new stuff in
next to them, because a lot of the wiring troughs and plenum spaces
aren't sufficiently clear.  It's kind of like an old-fashioned
computer room or telco building where you can't quite get the
floor tiles to stay down, because there's so much excess wire
that there's no room for the moat monsters
these aren't the skeletons you're looking for
There aren't a lot of wiring / electrician companies that have
general enough permissions to work on the place.

This was 1990-1991, around the beginning of the Desert Scam war,
because one thing everybody insisted on was that,
while the wiring plans couldn't overly violate TEMPEST by being antennas,
they *did* need to get CNN piped in to everybody.
I was commuting past many of the places you hear about on the
NYC traffic radio reports; stopping by the UN to do anti-war protests
on the way back from bidding on rewiring the Pentagon was
heavily into cognitive dissonance territory, and one of the things
that helped push me into finding honest work...




Re: SYMBOL

2001-09-17 Thread Bill Stewart

At 07:28 PM 09/15/2001 -0700, Eric Cordian wrote:
> > I agree with this.  The Twin Towers should be built bigger than before
> > (twice as big if it's feasible).  I know some people would be scared
> > to have office space in there, but that's fine, because people who are
> > not scared will take space there, and everyone will know it.  I would
> > take an office on the 200th floor if I could.
>
>Are you aware that India is going to open a 224 story  foot tower
>for business in 2008?
>
>It's the Center of India Tower, in Katangi, India.  I believe it has a
>webpage somewhere.

Wow!  Sounds like an amazing building.   Too bad it won't last.
If India doesn't straighten out their problems with Pakistan,
it sounds like it won't last long enough to get 50,000 workers
before somebody takes it out.  Any way to sell short on it?





RE: AP - Was Crypto-anonymity greases HUMINT intelligence flows

2001-09-16 Thread Bill Stewart


> > > Too bad that the infrastructure to successfully implement AP isn't in
> > > place. That $5mil reward for Bin Laden's head could be used by an FBI AP
> > > scheme, payable anonymously over the net to enterprising Afghanis.
> >
> > AP is a silly, unworkable idea.  However, $5,000,000 PLUS the Witness
> > Relocation program could be a winner.

AP was designed to implement several objectives:
- Let the customer or customers for the service remain anonymous
- Let the service provider get paid without getting caught,
which includes remaining anonymous to the customers,
where the primary threat is governments tracking the payment.
- Let the potential target know the depth of public opinion about
his/her actions, encouraging a change of behavior to prevent the
bids from becoming sufficiently high.

In this case, the Feds didn't feel the need to remain anonymous
when they put out their "Bring Me The Head Of Osama bin Laden" contract,
nor did the dot-com millionaire who recently bid $10M.
And if bin Laden hadn't figured out that the Feds disliked him
by the time they fired 75 cruise missiles with his name on them
after they accused him of the embassy bombings, sticking his name
up on a computer bulletin board system won't change that much.

While anonymous digital cash, if it existed, would make payment quieter,
that's not the real problem for the stoolie who fingers bin Laden.
The traditional "here's the number for a secret Swiss Bank Account"
should do fine, or handing over the Magic American Express Card.
The problem is that anybody close enough to bin Laden who suddenly
started spending lots of cash after the Feds moved in would
suddenly be a very obvious candidate for community disapproval;
that's one mujahid who's better off leaving a revenge/suicide note
followed by CNN reporting that a small explosives-laden Cessna
was shot down over the Potomac.

>Would you trust the Witness Protection Program with your life?
>Whoever opts to collect that $5,000,000 will forever live in fear.

Yeah - unlike Salmon Rushdie, there may be fewer people who want him killed,
but they'd be much more serious about it.

>Assuming only the use of mixmaster remailers for communication, and
>assuming an honest FBI, how could one collect a cash reward for tips
>satisfy the FBI's reward requirements?

Include a public key with the anonymous tip,
and have the Feds encrypt the Swiss Bank Account Number with it.
Or at least have the money-delivery instructions signed with that key.




Code Red seems to be back.

2001-09-18 Thread Bill Stewart

Seems like Code Red or one of its little friends is back.

I think breaking up Microsoft is a bad idea,
but there are days it would be nice to have their
Web Server and Email Worm-Propagators run by companies
other than the operating system company just so fewer people
would be running that dangerous dreck.  :-)

Somebody did a paper about a hypothetical "Andy Warhol Virus",
studying how long it takes to take over a server,
how many servers you can attack per minute, and
what it would take to coordinate an attack that really hit everywhere.
15 minutes is about enough to hit most of the net,
if you find holes in Apache and IIS that don't need manual tweaking,
and if you don't alert people by scribbling their pages with
"Hacked by Chinese" or "Reformatted by bin Laden" before you're done.
Our chief weapons are surprise, exponential growth and
dividing up target address space effectively,
with quick checks to make sure you don't waste time on infected machines,
and, purely optionally, an almost fanatical analysis of hosting center configs.


>Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 16:21:35 +0200
>Reply-To: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "[anton.raath]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject:  Re: Net problems?  Local?
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>Hosting companies and ISPs have been seeing Code Red-style attacks on
>their servers since early this morning. Pair Networks have reported
>receiving "over 8000 hits per second, from as many as one hundred
>thousand NT servers".
>
>A.
>
> > No problem here, although our bandwidth is as the bandwidth of ten,
> > because our hearts are pure. ;)
>
> > > I'm having trouble getting NYTimes, WSJ, Amazon.  Local outage?




Re: 419 letter (was Re: CDR Anonymizer ?)

2001-09-24 Thread Bill Stewart

At 04:29 PM 09/23/2001 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>On Sunday, September 23, 2001, at 04:25 PM, Karsten M. Self wrote:
>>on Sun, Sep 23, 2001 at 07:35:58AM -0400, Steve Furlong 
>>([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>>>Karsten M. Self wrote:
...neatly sidestepping the fact that fraud is a crime, stupidity isn't.
>>>
>>>Stupidity _is_ a natural crime. Mommy states have attempted to repeal
>>>that law, but succeed mainly in redirecting the costs of stupidity from
>>>the stupid to society as a whole.
>>
>>Oh.  So it *is* legitmate to swindle senile dowagers of their
>>investments?
>
>We didn't say it was "legitimate"...we said it is part of the natural 
>trend of stupidity.
>A "senile dowager" who mails some of her money to Nigeria has herself to 
>blame.

The 419 scam is a bit different from most "Can you help me get my money"
scams that need the mark to contribute some up-front money,
or too-good-to-be-true investments, or house-repair jobs that never get done.

In this one, the cons are pretty much admitting that the money
was stolen by some corrupt official who's their relative,
and they're asking the mark to help them get the loot.
So the mark isn't an innocent dupe, but a guilty dupe,
and has no business complaining about the lack of honor among thieves,
and if anything, the mark who complains to the cops about being ripped off
would deserve to be busted if there were in fact any stolen money in Nigeria.




Ellison, National ID discussion on Slashdot

2001-09-24 Thread Bill Stewart

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/09/23/2235219&mode=thread

Most of it's not very deep...


 > > will you divest?
 > yes

Two months ago would have been better :-)
http://www.schwab.com/SchwabNOW/navigation/mainFrameSet/0,4528,529|3283,00.html
They've gone from about 20 to 10.7




FW: Registration Request for boycottoracle.com Received.

2001-09-24 Thread Bill Scannell

FYI.

-Bill

777 --- 777  777 --- 777
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin


-- Forwarded Message
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 03:35:02 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Registration Request for boycottoracle.com Received.


**Do not respond to this auto-generated email**
If you need to contact us, go to:
http://www.domainmonger.com/support.htm

William Scannell,

Congratulations! Registration of the domain name boycottoracle.com is
complete! As requested, your domain will be registered for 1 year(s).

If this is a Transfer, a confirmation email will be sent to the current
admin
email of record.  You must follow the directions given in the email ASAP.
Your current Registrar may send a second confirmation email to the admin
email of record.  Read the instructions carefully, they can be confusing.
The transfer process takes about a week.
If you are not sure what the admin email is, check the Whois on our site:
http://www.domainmonger.com/cgi-bin/whois.cgi

Below you will find a summary of your domain name registration
information.  If you have any questions regarding your domain name
registration, please go to:
http://www.domainmonger.com/support.html



Thank you for your order.


-- End of Forwarded Message




Re: Larry Ellison, Nazi Collaborator: Oracle for Natl ID

2001-09-23 Thread Bill Stewart

A system like this would certainly make sure that if you
walk into an airport, and say that you're Larry Ellison,
and want to take off in your private jet during evening quiet hours,
or your flight plan says you'll arrive at your destination
during that airport's evening quiet hours,
the airport won't unlock the big orange boot on your jet's tires.

Otherwise, it won't stop any terrorists from renting jets.

In our next edition, we'll explore the applications of
national ID cards into where you can sail and dock large boats...

At 12:34 PM 09/23/2001 -0700, Subcommander Bob wrote:
>http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/news/svfront/ellsn092301.htm
>
>Idea driven by security concerns
>
>   BY PAUL ROGERS AND ELISE ACKERMAN
>   Mercury News
>
>
>  ``We need a database behind that, so when you're walking
>into an airport and you say that you are Larry Ellison,
>you take that card and put it in a reader
>and you put your thumb down and that system confirms that
>this is Larry Ellison,'' he said.




Re: Op-ed on encryption: Privacy is no longer an argument

2001-09-23 Thread Bill Stewart

At 03:10 PM 09/23/2001 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
>On Sun, 23 Sep 2001, Bill Stewart wrote:
> > It is bait and switch, but the argument is that if the
> > cops have keys to the house of the guy who drove the car into yours,
> > they can go see if he's got any co-conspirators and arrest them,
> > so the risk of getting caught is a deterrent to wouldbe co-conspirators
> > in future wouldbe crimes, and meanwhile it lets the cops look good
> > by catching the guys who helped do it.
>
>I think driving through my house qualifies as 'probable cause' to search
>his house IF there is evidence or a clear line of reasoning that it
>couldn't be done alone...

Well, of course.
But the analogy here was comparing house keys to crypto,
which, unlike houses, can only be opened and searched if the cops
have access to the keys, or if somebody left the back door open
or used weak enough crypto for brute force to let them break in.







Re: FUCK ORACLE, FUCK LARRY ELLISON

2001-09-23 Thread Bill Stewart

At 01:32 PM 09/23/2001 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>On Sunday, September 23, 2001, at 12:31 PM, Bill Stewart wrote:
>
>>Was that Saturday's paper, or Sunday's?  What page?  It's not in the on-line.
>>
>>Anybody want to start boycott-oracle.org?  :-)
>
>
>As the D.C. types would say, "that has no traction."
>
>Interesting that the cyberliberties crowd was so eager to launch a 
>"Boycott Adobe" campaign because of their sin that they attempted to 
>defend their property rights, but no one is launching a "Boycott Oracle" 
>campaign over Larry Ellison's fascist support for mandatory citiizen-unit 
>ID cards.

Hey, it's today's newspaper, some of the cyberliberties crowd haven't
even gotten up for the morning yet...




Re: Cooksey: Expect racial profiling

2001-09-23 Thread Bill Stewart

At 12:26 PM 09/20/2001 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
>Somebody should impeach this asshole...
>
>http://www.theadvocate.com/news/story.asp?StoryID=24605
>
>--

 WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. John Cooksey, R-Monroe,
 told a network of Louisiana radio stations Monday that
 someone "wearing a diaper on his head" should expect to be
 interrogated in the investigation of terrorist attacks on the
 Pentagon and New York City.

and he jingoes on from there.  Cooksey doesn't say whether he was
including the KKK in the category of people with diapers on their head,
or what to do about politicians who need to change their own diapers.

He does acknowledge that some turban-wearers are Americans,
and some aren't Muslims or Arabs, but he still thinks they
need to be pulled over, because bin Laden and many of his followers
wear turbans.

Bin Laden has also been rumored to wear pants.

Cooksey won't be running for House again in 2002 - he's planning
to run for Senate instead.  I hope the Democrat's better,
though this is the part of the country that put out
"vote for the crook" bumper stickers when the crook's
opponent was (ostensibly ex-) Klansman David Duke.








Fwd: FW: there is no Keyser Soze

2001-09-25 Thread Bill Stewart

> >Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 02:13:47 -0700
> >Subject: there is no Keyser Soze
> >From: Faisal Jawdat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> > http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001320012-2001330486,00.html
> >
> > Article too long for me to meaningfully excerpt from.
> > It essentially says that terrorists we've caught are
> > not who we thought they are, and it implies that the
> > deception is apparently much wider and deeper than
> > just some FBI fumbling with mistaken identity.
> >
> > -faisal
> >
>
>
>
>For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/




Re: Muslims and Christians Stand United

2001-09-26 Thread Bill Stewart

CJ's one of the more colorful fiction writers on the list

At 05:00 PM 09/26/2001 -0400, Elyn Wollensky wrote:
>WTF is this?
>
>- Original Message -
>From: CJ Parker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Cc: Cipher SmartAss Punks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 7:01 AM
>Subject: Muslims and Christians Stand United




AL Digital Acquires Second Nuclear Bunker

2001-10-01 Thread Bill Scannell

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AL Digital Acquires Second Nuclear Bunker
Doubles Space Available for Security of Computer Assets

London, UK (1 October 2001)  AL Digital (Telecommunications), Ltd.,
a leading provider of secure computer hosting and owner of The
Bunker, today announced the purchase of a second nuclear bunker from
the Ministry of Defence.  The terms were undisclosed.

This second bunker now known as The Other Bunker will effectively
double the space available for the secure storage and hosting of
Britain's digital economic assets.  Located northeast of London, The
Other Bunker will undergo retrofitting before being deployed as a
computer co-location facility.

The Bunker and The Other Bunker were designed and built during the
Cold War as physically secure communications centres. Both offer the
ultimate in protection from a myriad of attacks including; crackers,
terrorist attack, electro-magnetic pulse, HERF weapons, electronic
eavesdropping and solar flares.

The rate of firms moving into The Bunker has accelerated dramatically
in recent weeks, creating the need for additional secure computing
space in the UK.  

"Increased demand has caused us to move forward our timetable ," said
AL Digital Director Dominic Hawkin. "The Other Bunker needs to be
open for business sooner than we planned."

The Other Bunker is scheduled to have its first client servers
installed by mid-2002.  The storage capacity of the The Bunker will
be able to absorb the needs of the market until that time. ENDS
About The Bunker and The Other Bunker
The Bunker is redefining the market for secure hosting. The facility
provides the physically secure environment needed to protect
digitally secure data.  All the encryption in the world can't stop a
server from being stolen, sabotaged or destroyed: The Bunker does.
For more information, visit The Bunker web site at
http://www.thebunker.net
About AL Digital
A.L Digital design, develop, deploy and run computing systems. These
range from sophisticated software applications, to online stores, to
custom designed hardware.
For more information, visit AL Digital's web site at
http://www.aldigital.co.uk

Contact:
Bill Scannell
The Bunker, Ltd.
++44 (20) 8742 5902
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Version: PGP 7.1

iQA/AwUBO7giZfUhQXH5dzNXEQKIQwCgp/NVeSk/I4Spw1FlGVKaRQrU7q4AoM09
TXtxLaFmMtZa1zKA+rQutYu6
=c0pE
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Re: Larry Ellison wants National ID Card database

2001-10-01 Thread Bill Stewart

Somebody on the list, promoting a total boycott of Oracle,
quoted Larry Ellison as saying:
>"We need a database behind that, so when you're walking into an airport
>and you say that you are Larry Ellison, you take that card and put it
>in a reader and you put your thumb down and that system confirms that
>this is Larry Ellison"

We need a database that knows,
when you walk into an airport and say you're Larry Ellison,
whether to take the big orange boot off your private jet's wheels that's
there because you keep violating the quiet-hour curfew at San Jose airport
And it needs to do this at every airport in the country so that,
if your flight plan gets you into San Jose too late at night,
they won't let you take off, even if you have caught up on your fines.




Re: Congress drafts new "anti-terror" bill -- with expiration date

2001-10-02 Thread Bill Stewart

It's nice that the proposal has a sunset clause in it,
to limit the amount of time that we're subject to the
various good or bad half-baked suggestions and the various
agencies' requests for powers they've always wanted.
Expect that the worst parts will get extended indefinitely over the years :-)

At 08:48 PM 10/01/2001 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -
>
>From: Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: FC: Congress drafts new "anti-terror" bill -- with expiration date
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2001 20:32:57 -0400
>X-URL: Politech is at http://www.politechbot.com/
>
>Text of the new PATRIOT ("Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept
>and Obstruct Terrorism") Act:
>http://www.well.com/~declan/sep11/patriot.act.100101.pdf
>
>Background on other legislation:
>http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,47199,00.html
>http://www.wartimeliberty.com/search.pl?topic=legislation
>
>-Declan
>
>*
>
>http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,47230,00.html
>
> Eavesdrop Now, Reassess Later?
> By Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
> 5:00 p.m. Oct. 1, 2001 PDT
>
> WASHINGTON -- House negotiators have drafted anti-terrorism
> legislation to grant police unprecedented eavesdropping powers that
> would automatically expire in two years.
>
> Leaders of the House Judiciary committee have crafted a new
> anti-terrorism bill, called the Patriot Act, that includes nearly all
> the surveillance abilities requested by President Bush -- but with a
> sunset date of Dec. 31, 2003. A vote on the bill is expected this
> week.
>
> A 122-page draft (PDF) of the Patriot Act, obtained by Wired News,
> says that police could conduct Internet wiretaps in some situations
> without court orders, that judges' ability to reject surveillance
> requests would be sharply curtailed, and that the powers of a secret
> federal court would be expanded.
>
> [...]
>
>
>
>
>-
>POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
>You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
>Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
>To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
>This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
>-
>
>
>- End forwarded message -




Re: cryptome down ?

2001-10-03 Thread Bill Stewart

Another useful stopgap is the dynamic DNS providers,
such as dyndns.org, which give you a third-level domain
and convenient tools for updating your information.
They're oriented towards the dial/dsl/cablemodem users
who want to run web sites and other servers from
machines that have dynamic IP addresses -
your machine keeps them updated with your current address,
so people who connect to yourmachine.theirservice.net
get to wherever you are now.




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