Wednesday, October 31, 2001

A.I.'s last act, after a breathtaking twist and revelation, has been attacked as Spielberg's final seizure of the material from Kubrick, yet another fuzzy happy ending. Yet this ending -- the bleakest of any Spielberg movie and the sweetest and most sentimental of any Kubrick -- strikes me as far from happy. Instead, it's chilling, almost annihilating. And it is far from the only scene that may prove disturbing to young children.
NEW CONFORMITY aka(alex p. keaton is back!!!) Several writers of opinion pieces critical of President Bush�s leadership or U.S. foreign policy have been roundly criticized or have even lost their jobs. Some advertisers and local television stations dropped ABC�s �Politically Incorrect� after host Bill Maher referred to some past U.S. military actions as �cowardly.� College professors now worry that the new conformity is having a corrosive impact on campuses, eroding their historical place as hotbeds of debate and dissent. During the Vietnam War, college campuses were at the heart of the anti-war movement. But many speech advocates say campuses are now far less tolerant of controversy. �Obviously, the current situation has people really on edge,� said Harry A. Silverglate, author of �The Shadow University,� a book that examines incursions on campus free speech. �But it seems now the place where you see the most obvious censorship is on college campuses-the precise place where you would expect to see the least.�
http://ww.indymedia.org

Tuesday, October 30, 2001

ok then there's this
1,Baat Niklegi 2, Sarakti 3, Kagaz Ki Kashti 4, Meri Tanhaiyon 5, Chitthi Na Koi Sandesh 6, Dard Se Mera 7, Allah Jaanta
"Allah Jaanta Ha" Jahit Singh & Lata Mangeskar. Without compare. "Tere Bina Zindagi" Lata Mangeskar & Kishore Kumar. Unfathomable. "Ishq Mujhko Nahin" Jagit and Chitra Singh. Its True. "Chalte Chalte" Lata Mangeskar. Pure Power.

Monday, October 29, 2001

yes, that is a fact. it has been tested and confirmed by two employees(friends) i have who work there. both are audio designers with whom i talk often. when the messages are encrypted they are formatted properly. after being sent, they end up with the broken lines and have inserted "!"'s. this is not the case when the same people send messages from home. both are savvy pgp users as well. but hey f-them as it got figured out and we're back talking again. now truly we don't really know what they are running in the back-end to do this if anything. but it is possible using various software to scan for charaters in emails. and we know ea has the cash to hire some top notch programers. you should see the building/complex.
Do you meant to tell us that that EA sports DELIBERATELY corrupts pgp messages by adding characters to messages ??!!
pgp scrambling fixed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ok you guys, ck this out. i have a friend at EA sports who was always getting his pgp messages scrambled. consistent bad packet errors. we tried many things as we were sure ea didn't want encrypted messages being sent out of ea due to their game secrets being given away. so below is a message from him. you will notice that "!" have been inserted to scramble the packets. if these are taken out and the lines moved up to form a solid message then it can be decrypted!!!!!!! can i win the pgp prize now??????? thankfully it go figured out. if you guys ever run into this problem you know what to do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: PGPfreeware 7.0.3 for non-commercial use Comment: Support the freedom of expression, use PGP qANQR1DBwU4Do9YN/HCrC04QB/48FZk3yDaCgtBqm1+VUY7pKBb8pcNLvKU/DuC5 JrelqRqRNcwFfatQ+1MOY1bjJXCxmD9xjbje9QDZNEHicohaNkrZuNk4p9mphdzS j9MLq/NF6DbgK9f/DpKPkQleSl4o34P1ZQ07W66rEdQC3dOHYWXuIEyUL2rBBrVH E3ZN06FGoOgn7jePVM2RkMAHCsrKDrtgnhWTlay02mzw7COYB3KC/xFlUJPf65pb x9dA3do9z41ywmOpNLyuDDSCkLw/kTkOGtqlf7ejVCpkg24rzc0PA/m5OOntEbmu MvLhaiZGVGjtJuVnbdHBpcBAPaEk4D+k11YZ7/BkaGKZFTNgCACHJXfbiex5QfBU QLrRVnhb8CM4OBooM5bqELD4OhqSIPJrba3ir26ltcSdtXdRtrRdczWBU/Be6HH3 JxJPSlcKvSeIAX9rEMpzS4yczPQNv9Jyfz9ba9Vz8Rel4GFcOGLjGH7v/+rl70BO FeZU+GgBHCUyRq0czRi7uxVdQEQptwpQ91ZYQPkdnBL3BDvFTEgdQsFu8b2hYKK2 sX3tA5sbF4CcNOH7bcDx3+ARYLNkWQhiT+Zb2CVUD6Q1m6bpUyU5ZT0hVE1sIRcu Ccm8OZSkeoloG7xAEAIixZPVdQkFU/flvZ7YHERHxZrc/Jkp3k+uDcX/Q2/12ZAo Glosn44PycAt91LCA1OqmLuVigU/qbWf+OK8NgyvJdIqvJobJ0QRGBsYqm3jJnfF RBTVmHD/GFjjX7w/BODc7sc8t98NvuXqjcIyMxJndEsYVljNiJaXVKv0! XqiX7wdT h++4a45MmaUA/dJHIKxUObUoVDjZGE9NYGcFQs7VHpRJqzxKdgMxZ4wI/KIuTFWC RmyT1YvJeFLsy5vYK4lFKM/QWLMQK0G0rE9i5kMpVZr5tDvrPNRDKITfOOfT+Gug 44huMTyavCcSNBR/1oL3xTGj9VD2GRFnuN1dXoeAlMGuHuu7sds5AQqYK5KKwuwV LcYdlDai =dmUL -----END PGP MESSAGE----- 'She'd better be a red hot navigator..'
Shields Up! http://213.40.196.62/media/660.htm
NB: take a look at Softwar! NO XP FOR THE ARMY Dept. of Defense officials have nixed a large buy of the Microsoft XP operating system and any PCs that have XP installed. The U.S. military has determined that the online registration of the Microsoft operating system simply gives up too much information about the Defense Dept. computers and software. I CAN SEE YOU TOO The move by U.S. law enforcement to ban anonymous Internet Web browsing has had unintended consequences. Anonymous web browsing was very popular with U.S. intelligence agencies and government military users who did not want others to know exactly what information was being accessed. Although the government may now be able to more easily track U.S. citizens on the Internet - the same is true in reverse. For example, on Oct. 24 at 5:30 pm the Bush White House visited the http://www.softwar.net website and downloaded information on the China-Gate scandal.
The war against terrorism is a fraud http://mirror.icnetwork.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=11392430&method=full http://www.johnpilger.com

Sunday, October 28, 2001

"Professional terrorists know how to cover their tracks, for example they use pre-paid mobile phones once and throw them away," said Mr Bowden. "Reports of the September 11 hijackers indicate they used web-based email from public terminals. It is not persuasive to argue for privacy to be sacrificed in the name of fighting terrorism if the measures would not be effective."
You are running Mojo Nation right? http://www.mojonation.net
From refusal to obey, From the love of far away, From forgetfulness to pray, Save us Bid
"My Philosophy , in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpse of his life, with productive achievement as his nobelst activity, and reason as his only absolute" *
This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.
http://aqua-soft.micinc.com/
US special forces beat retreat as enemy 'fought back like maniacs' By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/10/26/war226.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/10/26/ixhome.html

Saturday, October 27, 2001

The real meaning of XP 1. XP is for eXPensive Never in the history of the PC has the part of the operating system been so pricey. 2. XP is for eXPires Microsoft has invented the software that eXPires as the customer can only install the software a certain number of times. If you have a virus, need to upgrade your hard drive, want to clean up your HD, add another component, change PC or any other reason to install, your software gets closed to death. 3. XP is for eXPloit Knowing the care microsoft gives to security, this meaning is close to become reality. 4. XP is for eXPlosion eXPlosion of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks as windows XP gives raw socket acces to the mass of home users. (read http://grc.com/dos/winxp.htm and http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/19332.html ) 5. XP is for eXPected It took 10 years to microsoft to deliver a operating system that doesn't crash or need a reboot multiple times a day. At last ! 6. XP is for linuXPreferred For all the above reasons. 7. XP is for eXPose your personal data to Microsoft. 8. XP is for eXperience Problems 9. XP is for eXtra Profits. 10. XP is for eXtraneous Programs Bloated beyond reason.

Friday, October 26, 2001

"We cannot as a nation allow very legitimate public anxiety to immunize the Administration and Congress from their obligation to protect the Bill of Rights and the fundamental values that document embodies," said Laura W. Murphy, Director of the ACLU's Washington National Office. http://www.aclu.org/safeandfree/index.html
http://www.infowars.com/
Got this on the (rather excellent) snuggles mailing list from http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/10/22/1636242&mode=thread Disney Channel cartoon portrays music downloads as evil Monday October 22, 01:09 PM EDT [ Multimedia ] - by Tina Gasperson - The Disney Channel cartoon series The Proud Family (Flash plugin helpful), aired an episode on Oct. 5 entitled EZ Jackster . In the storyline, EZ Jackster is a Napster-like site, and the show's little heroines get addicted to the service and play a part in the downfall of the music industry. Disney is one of the backers of the SSSCA proposed legislation that is scheduled for a hearing before Congress Oct. 25. The TV summary site, TV Tome, shows this synopsis of the episode in question: "After Penny spends $125 on CDs with her five-cent salary, she meets a boy, Mega, who tells her about a napster-like website he made called EZ Jackster. All weekend she was sitting at the computer, downloading music from EZ Jackster. Finally, Dijonay comes over and asks what she was doing over the weekend. Penny asks Dijonay if she can keep a secret, knowing that she can't. Penny tells Dijonay to tell everyone she knows about EZ Jackster. Her telling everybody about EZ Jackster has a ripple-effect all around the world. From India to Africa to Suga Mama! But rap singer, Sir Paid-A-Lot is threatened by this because he got a five-cents salary instead of his million-dollar salary. But suddenly, after wrestling, the news interrupted the next program telling about EZ Jackster. It shows a house of where the EZ Jackster-spreader lives. Oscar comments how ugly the house is, not realizing it was their house. Trudy is mad at Penny for stealing music so she takes away her computer. Later, Penny gets a call from Mega, asking if she is still using EZ Jackster. Will Penny listen to her parents?" A post forwarded to the Linux-Elitists mailing list from one of the show's viewers gave the rest of the details about the decidedly pro-SSSCA plot: 1. Girl working at her antiquated computer her dad gave her in her room. 2. Mystery guy (cool hip hop looking dude in black) shows up at her window and supplies her with an up to date computer, takes her into "the Matrix and shows her a web area called Free Jackster where she can get all the music she could ever want FOR FREE, 3. The girl asks if this is illegal and mystery guy explains it is our birthright to have free music, creativity should not have a price 4. Girl gets addicted to collecting free music, her obsession leads to telling all her friends. soon the site is getting millions of hits from kids to grandmothers. 5. Next scene at the The Wizard Record Label board room where "Sir Paid Alot" enters to complain his royalty check was only five cents. This alerts The Wizard (head of the label) that there is a retail problem he needs to look into. 6. Teen Girl's house is surrounded that night by police and press and she is arrested for illegal downloads, gets a warning,. The news makes it clear that millions of people can't be stopped, Parents take computer away from girl and explain why free downloads is STEALING -- kind of an abirdged explanation of how copyrights work. 7. Next scene, Asian Guy's retail record store is empty, guy is crying on the floor. Teen Girl who happens to work at the store show up to work, Asian guy fires her for supporting all the free downloads 8. Next scene charts showing record sales are down down down to nothing because people get the music for free 9. Mystery guy shows up at teen girl's window again to try and convince her to go back to downloading but she says NO 10. Guy: "You still downloading?" Teen Girl: "Downloading is stealin'." Mr. Guy from Free Jackster: "I know you are afraid I am trying to show you a world without rules." Teen girl says, "No, its wrong."
check this out everyone. please let me know your thoughts!

Thursday, October 25, 2001

doubles ok so, i am gettting married next week on nov. 3rd. this is a 'formal elopement' with only our families being invited. on feb 2nd we are having another ceremony for our friends et al blah blah. so..... 1. the date? 02-02-02 2. it is our second time getting married 3. it's two holidays(groundhog day's and kat's fathers birthday) 4. kat's father is a twin. 5. the wedding will be performed by a libra at a gemini's house. (i am a gemini and kat is a libra therefor: 2 libra's 2 gemini's) i know there was more but i can't remember them now. p.s. 11 is TWO one's. p.p.s. crass is nifty

Wednesday, October 24, 2001

The date of the attack: 9/11 - 9 + 1 + 1 = 11 September 11th is the 254th day of the year: 2 + 5 + 4 = 11 After September 11th there are 111 days left to the end of the year. 119 is the area code to Iraq/Iran. 1 + 1 + 9 = 11 Twin Towers - standing side by side, looks like the number 11 The first plane to hit the towers was Flight 11 I Have More....... State of New York - The 11th State added to the Union New York City - 11 Letters Afghanistan - 11 Letters The Pentagon - 11 Letters Ramzi Yousef - 11 Letters (convicted or orchestrating the attack at the WTC in 1993) Flight 11 - 92 on board - 9 + 2 = 11 Flight 77 - 65 on board - 6 + 5 = 11 Response: Oh my God! How worried should I be? There are 11 letters in the name "David Pawson!" I'm going into hiding NOW. See you in a few weeks. Wait a sec ... just realized "YOU CAN'T HIDE" also has 11 letters! What am I gonna do? Help me!!! The terrorists are after me! ME! I can't believe it! Oh crap, there must be someplace on the planet Earth I could hide! But no ..."PLANET EARTH" has 11 letters, too! Maybe Nostradamus can help me. But dare I trust him? There are 11 letters in "NOSTRADAMUS." I know, the Red Cross can help. No they can't... 11 letters in "THE RED CROSS," can't trust them. I would rely on self defense, but "SELF DEFENSE" has 11 letters in it, too! Can someone help? Anyone? If so, send me email. No, don't... "SEND ME EMAIL" has 11 letters.... Will this never end? I'm going insane! "GOING INSANE???" Eleven letters!! Nooooooooooo!!!!!! I guess I'll die alone, even though "I'LL DIE ALONE" has 11 letters..... Oh my God, I just realized that America is doomed! Our Independence Day is July 4th ... 7/4 ... 7+4=11! PS. "IT'S BULLSHIT" has 11 letters also.
The Foldover Game

Tuesday, October 23, 2001

heh... http://www.theregister.co.uk/media/657.zip
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----



		      Mad as Hell about the DMCA
			 By "Beale Screamer"


This document is intended as a position paper on copyright and the
abuses the copyright system has undergone, especially with the
introduction and abuse of the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (DMCA).  This document is originally distributed with software
that in fact clearly violates the DMCA, and so this gives background
on why I would write this software.  I hope that anyone who uses this
software reads the "README" and "LICENSE" files in the same
distribution, and respects my wishes as to how the software should be
used.  I do not want to create massive copyright infringement, but
rather hope to give people the tools to regain the rights that have
existed for centuries with respect to copyright, and are now in danger
of being taken away in a most uncompromising manner.

Copyright has always been intended as a balancing act between the
rights of authors/publishers and the rights of consumers.  Technical
advances are making it possible for publishers to take away
technically what they would have a hard time justifying legally or
morally.  And unfortunately, in a misguided attempt to address
copyright issues in the digital age, the U.S. government has given
legal backing to the technical means through the DMCA, outlawing
attempts at circumventing these technical protections.  In effect,
this gives publishers full and complete control over copyright issues,
without the annoyance of actually having to go through the usual
legislative debate and judicial review.  As a shock to no one, the
publishing industry (particularly the MPAA and RIAA) have used the
DMCA as a bludgeon to attack anyone who suggests that consumers and
citizens have rights too.  I hope people take my civil disobedience as
an opportunity to send a message to publishers.  To borrow words from
Howard Beale in the movie "Network," just yell to the publishers "I'm
mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"


DISCLAIMER

I am neither a lawyer nor a copyright expert, so my personal opinions
are really those of an "interested outsider."  I have done extensive
reading on the basis and history copyright, as well as following the
most visible current legal cases regarding the application of
copyright and the DMCA.  But clearly no one should take any of the
information or ideas of this document as legal advice or precedent!  I
*am* an expert on the technical issues involved, and plan on being a
thorn in the side of the publishers until they adopt a more reasoned
and reasonable approach.  The current climate regarding these issues
leaves me little choice except to remain anonymous.  I don't intend on
being a martyr, or on spending the next decade of my life defending
myself in legal proceedings.


HISTORY OF COPYRIGHT

The history of copyright has been written many times, but a good,
brief account is available from the Association of Research 
Libraries [1].  For the past several centuries, copyright law has 
tried to balance the rights of consumers with incentives to authors
and publishers for promoting their work.  It is quite explicit in the
intent of copyright that in the sale of a copyrighted work, "once
purchased the copyright owner does not control the use of the work" [1].
Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor and expert on these issues,
echoed this observation in an interview when he pointed out that "The
traditional idea of fair use - and the law has been extremely vague in
defining this - is that the copyright owners do not have the right to
perfectly control how you use their copyrighted material" [3].

However, the situation today with the DMCA is precisely the opposite
of this intent: the use of the DMCA often does not have to do with
limiting copying or distribution, but rather with restricting the use
of the copyrighted work.  The violation of this intent was described,
among many other places, in quote taken from a New York Times article
in which they wrote "In the past, when a company published a book, the
fair use rights of readers limited its control over the work. But if
the same company issues a book today and encrypts it, its control over
readers is far greater -- in fact, almost unlimited -- unless there is
a right of access to the material."

The DeCSS case is a particularly flagrant example of this: the DeCSS
code does not have any effect on DVD pirates, who can simply copy a
full disk as-is.  The entire purpose of using CSS by DVD publishers
seems to be to restrict how the material is used!  The purpose of
DeCSS was to allow legitimately purchased DVDs to be played on Linux,
a system that at the time did not support DVD playback.  It is
abundantly clear that this is 100% OK with respect to copyright;
however, it violates the DMCA, since the *use* of the material is in a
manner inconsistent with what the publisher desired.

The erosion of the reader's/listener's rights has been a steady process
for many, many years.  The limited time granted for copyrights has
been repeatedly lengthened, and now is a totally preposterous 70 years
past the death of the author.  While the "limited time" is no longer
terribly limited, the introduction of the DMCA goes even farther in
this extreme by allowing publishers to have an infinite-time monopoly
on a work: they can simply put technological protection measures on a
work, and the DMCA makes removing those measures a crime even when the
work is no longer covered by copyright!

The best treatment I've seen of these issues is an excerpt from Siva
Vaidhyanathan's book "Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of
Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity" that was
published on msnbc.com [2]. If the bulk of the book is as good as the
excerpt, this will be an outstanding book, and I take the liberty of
quoting quite a bit from this work here.  As an overall background to
copyright, Vaidhyanathan begins with the following:

    Copyright, when well balanced, encourages the production and
    distribution of the raw material of democracy. But after more than
    200 years of legal evolution and technological revolution,
    American copyright no longer offers strong democratic
    safeguards. It is out of balance. And our founders - especially
    Thomas Jefferson - would not be pleased.

    Copyright was created as a policy that balanced the interests of
    authors, publishers, and readers. It was not intended to be a
    restrictive property right.

I have to agree that the founders would not be pleased with what is
happening today.  Vaidhyanathan quotes the following passage from
Thomas Jefferson regarding copyright: "It's peculiar character, too,
is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the
whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction
himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine,
receives light without darkening me."

One of the big successes of publishers such as the RIAA and MPAA has
been a steady erosion and public brain-washing regarding the point of
copyright.  A simple but effective measure has been the modification
of terminology that is used for copyright violations: they speak of
people "stealing intellectual property" or "theft of copyrighted
music" in the trading of MP3s.  The wide-scale copying ala Napster
clearly is copyright violation, but "theft"?  The definition of
something being "stolen" means that it is taken from the rightful
owner - and the owner no longer has possession of that item.  As
Jefferson observed several centuries ago, this simply doesn't apply to
the types of material that are copyrighted.  Making a copy of an item
doesn't in any way remove that item from the original possessor, so
"theft" is clearly an inaccurate terminology.  However, the
publishers' insistence on using that word, and the public's acceptance
of it, means that a much more negative light is cast on an action
that, while wrong, is nowhere near the severity of a true "theft."

The use of terms "theft" and "intellectual property" cleverly casts
copyright issues as being "property" issues, although Jefferson and
other founding fathers explicitly did not accept the idea of writings
as property.  Remember: just because the publishers want you to think
of recordings and music as property does not make it so!

One final quote from Vaidhyanathan, this time talking directly about
the DMCA:

    This law has one major provision that upends more than 200 years
    of democratic copyright law. It forbids the "cracking" of
    electronic gates that protect works - even those portions of works
    that might be in the public domain or subject to fair use. It puts
    the power to regulate copying in the hands of engineers and the
    companies that employ them.

The last sentence is vital: the regulatory role regarding copyright
has now been fully turned over to the publishers and technology
producers.  Congress has explicitly written itself out of the loop on
such regulatory issues, and has thrown the balance between publishers
and citizens entirely to the control of the publishers.  The citizens
have lost their voice in these matters, and unless Congress acts to
drastically change the DMCA and reassert the consumer side of the
balance, we simply will have no say in what rights the publishers
deign to allow us to have.


HOW THINGS SHOULD BE

Any Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme has two sides: on the one
hand, the most obvious use is to take away the rights of the consumer.
On the other hand, it can in fact be used to give the consumer *more*
possibilities than existed before.  I think the idea of limited time,
full-length previews, or time-limited Internet-based rentals is
excellent.  If DRM was *only* used for this, in order to give us more
options than we previously had, I would not have taken the effort to
break the scheme.  What is bad is the use of DRM to restrict the
traditional form of music sale.  When I buy a piece of music (not rent
it, and not preview it), I expect (and demand!) my traditional fair
use rights to the material.  I should be able to take that content,
copy it onto all my computers at home, my laptop, my portable MP3
player, ...  basically anything I use to listen to the music that I
have purchased.  I can't do this at all with Microsoft's DRM scheme.
Ideally, I would see two types of sales: limited, clearly spelled-out
licenses for rentals and previews, and traditional sales, where the
content is not protected, and ideally is provided in an open,
non-proprietary format.  As long as publishers insist on removing our
rights in a traditional sale, we will continue to fight back with
technical and legal measures.

To complicate matters in the specific case of Microsoft's DRM version
2 technology, not only are licenses applied, but there doesn't seem to
be a clear way to even see what your license really enforces.  A
technically skilled person who knows how the scheme works can look
through the binary license file, find the ACTION strings, and figure
out what restrictions the license imposes, but the overwhelming
majority of people simply will have no idea what license they have
purchased.  If a publisher decided to hide a 5 year expiration date in
the license, for whatever reason, the average consumer would have no
way of knowing this.  And after 5 years, your license would go away,
and there would be nothing you could do about it.

Laws passed by the government should not simply do corporate bidding.
Congress is supposed to be there to protect *our* rights, but
unfortunately, money talks, and that seems to be the basis of the
DMCA.  Even with legal issues put aside, technology has the ability to
take away our rights, especially if cryptographic "secure hardware"
gets incorporated into devices.  The government should be using its
power to *limit* that, not enhance it!  In other words, the government
should be passing laws that guarantee that the citizens retain their
fair use rights, *regardless* of what the technology allows.  And laws
should somehow (escrowed keys for corporations, perhaps!?)  be in a
position to guarantee that technical measures expire at the same time
the copyright does, forcing the work into the public domain as has
been happened historically.  And finally, if the technology is used
for new services, laws should ensure that the technology should be
designed in such a way that full disclosure of license restrictions is
made to the consumers.

I'm not sure I hold out much hope of this happening.  The publishers
will certainly fight strongly against it.  But until such changes are
made, expect to see me and others like me doing acts of civil
disobedience in order to salvage what we can out of this travesty.


CURRENT ABUSES

The DMCA has been used in a reprehensible fashion in at least 3 cases:
the DeCSS case, the case of Edward Felton, and the case of Dmitri
Sklyarov.  The DeCSS case was mentioned above, where the MPAA used the
DMCA as a weapon to attack a tool whose primary use is to make legal
use of legally obtained material (DVDs).  However, since the
particular use is not sanctioned by the MPAA, they used the DMCA to
criminalize what would otherwise have been a perfectly legal use.

Increasing the level of appalling behavior, the SDMI Foundation
threatened to sue Professor Edward Felton for disclosing an attack on
several of the SDMI audio watermarking technologies, even though the
attacks were performed at the specific invitation of the SDMI
Foundation!  By participating in the SDMI challenge, and rejecting any
claims to the cash prizes offered, the challenge announcement clearly
allowed Felton to retain rights to publish details of his work.  In
the DeCSS case, Judge Kaplan decided that DeCSS could be suppressed,
despite first amendment concerns, because computer code was not
allowed the same rights as English prose.  This seems to contradict
the decision in the Bernstein case that source code is protected
speech, but this is just one of the many decisions Kaplan made in this
case that were very poorly thought-out.  Kaplan decided that code
wasn't protected speech, so Felton's paper carefully avoided including
any code, and stuck to straight English descriptions.  Even so, the
SDMI Foundation, in its initial threats to sue Felton and his research
group, was somehow trying to make the argument that English
descriptions are no longer protected speech.  This is clearly absurd,
and the RIAA and SDMI Foundation have apparently understood this and
backed off in their initial threats, now going so far as to claim they
never intended to sue.  However, their actions with Professor Felton
are clearly at odds with their later revised history of events.

Finally, the case of Dmitri Sklyrov is perhaps the most appalling of
all.  Among its other problems, the DMCA has taken what has
traditionally been a civil matter (copyright issues) and criminalized
certain actions.  Dmitri Sklyrov wrote a program that removes
protections from Adobe e-books, restoring traditional fair-use rights
to e-book owners.  Furthermore, he wrote this program in Russia, where
it is not illegal.  His company (and I don't believe there are any
claims that he did this personally) distributed his unlocking software
from a U.S. website, and on the basis of this Sklyrov was arrested
when he made a trip to the U.S.  Sklyrov has actually spent time in
jail on these extremely flimsy grounds, and faces a criminal
prosecution in the matter.  Despite the fact that Adobe has
subsequently said it doesn't wish for Sklyarov to be prosecuted, the
government is continuing in its case.  This is apparently the reward
that the government gives for people who stand up for their fair use
rights under copyright law, and is the primary reason I'm remaining
anonymous.


FUTURE

What does the future hold?  Hopefully, the government will start
acting to protect citizen's rights instead of corporate interests.  If
this doesn't happen, expect to see many of the current DRM schemes
being very publicly broken as an act of protest.  I will stay quiet
for a while, until any publicity of this current work dies down, but
there are many, many others out there that have the ability to do
precisely what I've done, and are in fact doing so right now.
Remember: "We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take this any
more!"


REFERENCES

[1]  http://www.arl.org/info/frn/copy/timeline.html
 
[2]  http://www.msnbc.com/news/594462.asp?cp1=1
 
[3]  http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/01/30/lessig.html


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Some Personal Views from Around the World of ID Cards. Read it and weep. from Privacy International In 1994, in an attempt to discover the problems caused by ID cards, Privacy International compiled a survey containing reports from correspondents in forty countries. Amongst the gravest of problems reported to Privacy International was the over zealous use or misuse of ID cards by police - even where the cards were supposed to be voluntary. One respondent wrote : On one occasion I was stopped in Switzerland when walking at night near Lake Geneva. I was living in Switzerland at the time and had a Swiss foreigner's ID card. The police were wondering why I should want to walk at night to look at the Chateau de Chillon. Really suspicious I suppose, to walk at night on the banks of the lake to look at an illuminated chateau (I am white and dress conservatively). I had to wait for 20 minutes whilst they radioed my ID number to their central computer to check on its validity. Correspondents in most countries reported that police had powers to demand the ID card. A correspondent in Greece reported: In my country the Cards are compulsory. If police for example stop you and ask for identification you must present them the ID or you are taken to the police department for identification research. Police were granted these powers in the late 1980s, despite some public misgivings. Non European countries reported more serious transgressions, In Brazil, for example: They are compulsory, you're in big trouble with the police if they request it and you don't have one or left home without it. The police can ask for my identity card with or without a valid motive, it's an intimidation act that happens in Brazil very, very often. The problem is not confined to the police. Everybody asks for your id when you are for example shopping, and this is after you have shown your cheque guarantee card. We also other similar cards. Nobody trusts anybody basically. Predictably, political hot-spots have seen widescale abuse of the card system: One problem that Afghans encountered carrying these "tazkiras" (ID cards) was during the rule of the communist regime in Afghanistan where people were stopped in odd hours and in odd places by the government's Soviet advisors and their KHALQI and PARCHAMI agents and asked for their "tazkiras". Showing or not showing the "tazkira" to the enquiring person at that time was followed by grave consequences. By showing it, the bearer would have revealed his age upon which, if it fell between 16-45, he would have been immediately taken to the nearest army post and drafted into the communist army, and if he refused to show, he would have been taken to the nearest secret service (KHAD) station and interrogated as a member of the resistance (Mujahideen), imprisoned, drafted in the army or possibly killed. Many countries reported that their ID card had become an internal passport, being required for every dealing with people or institutions. In Argentina, according to this correspondent, the loss of the ID card would result in grave consequences: I got my first personal ID when I turned seven. It was the Provincial Identity Card. It looked like the hardcover of a little book with just two pages in it. It had my name, my photograph, the fingerprint of my right thumb, and some other personal data. I never questioned what was the logic about fingerprinting a seven-year old boy. It was suggested that identification was one of the major purposes for the existence of the Police of the Province which issued the card. It was required for enroling in the Provincial School I attended. Attending the primary school is compulsory, hence everybody under twelve is indirectly forced to have the Card.Well, this Book was required for any sort of proceedings that the person wanted to initiate, e.g. enrol at school, buy a car, get his driving license, get married. Nobody could do anything without it. In addition, it became a prerogative of the police to request it at any time and place. Whoever was caught without it was customarily taken to jail and kept there for several hours (or overnight if it happened in the evening) while they "checked his personal record". In effect, Argentine citizens have never been much better off than South-African negroes during the Apartheid, the only difference is that we Argentinians did not have to suffer lashings if caught without the pass card. As for daily life without the ID, it was impossible. Of greater significance is the information that ID cards are commonly used as a means of tracking citizens to ensure compliance with such laws as military service. Again, in Argentina: The outrage of the military service was something that many people was not ready to put up with. Nevertheless, something forced the people to present themselves to be drafted. It was nothing more or less than the ID. In fact, if somebody did not show up, the army never bothered to look for them. They just waited for them to fall by themselves, because the ID card showed the boy to be on military age and not having the necessary discharge records by the army. Provided that in the country you could not even go for a walk without risking to be detained by the police, being a no-show for military duty amounted to a civil death. Another respondent in Singapore noted that many people in his country were aware that the card was used for purposes of tracking their movements, but that most did not see any harm in this: If that question is put to Singaporeans, they are unlikely to say that the cards have been abused. However, I find certain aspects of the NRIC (ID card) system disconcerting. When I finish military service (part of National service), I was placed in the army reserve. When I was recalled for reserve service, I found that the army actually knew about my occupation and salary! I interpreted this as an intrusion into my privacy. It might not be obvious but the NRIC system has made it possible to link fragmented information together. The consequences of losing ones card were frequently mentioned: A holiday in Rio was ruined for me when I was robbed on the beach and had to spend the rest of the brief holiday going through the bureaucracy to get a duplicate issued. One way round this (of dubious legality) is to walk around with a notarized xerox copy instead of the original. The Brazillian experience shows that the card is often misused by police: Of course violent police in metropolitan areas of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro love to beat and arrest people (especially black/poor) on the pretext that they don't have their ID card with them. In some countries, denial of a card means denial of virtually all services: ID cards are very important in Vietnam. They differentiate between citizens and non-citizens. People without an ID card are considered as being denied of citizenship and all the rights that come with it. For example, they cannot get legal employment, they cannot get a business license, they cannot go to school, they cannot join official organizations, and of course they cannot join the communist party. They cannot travel either. (Even though in practice, they bribe their way around within the country, they would face big trouble if got caught without ID card.) The same problem occurs in China: I personally feel that the card has the following drawbacks: It carries too much private info about a person. We have to use it in almost every situation. such as renting a hotel room, getting legal service from lawyers, contacting government agencies, buying a plane ticket and train ticket, applying for a job, or getting permit to live with your parents, otherwise your residence is illegal. In a lot of cases, we are showing too much irrelevant information to an agency or person who should not know that. The card is subject to police cancellation, and thus without it, one can hardly do anything, including traveling for personal or business purposes, or getting legal help or obtaining a job. The government has been using this scheme too often as a measure against persons who run into troubles with it socially or politically. The identity card is showing your daily or every short-term movement, and can be used to regularize and monitor a person's behavior and activity. One Korean professor reported that the national card was used primarily as a means of tracking peoples activities and movements: If you lose this card, you have to report and make another one within a certain period. Since it shows your current address, if you change your address then you must report that and make a correction of the new address. If you go to a military service or to a prison, then the government takes away this identity card. You get the card back when you get out. You are supposed to carry this card everywhere you go, since the purpose is to check out the activity of people. There are fines and some jail terms if you do not comply. If you board a ship or an airplane, then you must show this card to make a record. You need to show this card when you vote. Former presidential candidate Kim, Dae Joong could not vote for his own presidential election because his secretary forgot to bring Kim's card. He had to wait for a while until somebody bring his card. Many government employees make lot of money selling information on this card to politicians during election season. Police can ask you to show this card and check whether your identity number is on the wanted list or not. There is a widespread prejudice between the people of some local areas. This card shows the permanent address of you. And it allows other people to successfully guess the hometown of your parents. One Portuguese man studying in the United States reported an obsession with identity in his country: I keep losing my ID. card, and people keep asking for it. It seems like it's needed for just about everything I want to do, and I should really carry it around my neck or have it tattooed on my palm. The information on it is needed for everything. Many buildings, perhaps most, will have a clerk sitting at a "reception desk" who will ask you for your id. They will keep it and give it back to you when you leave. Few people seem bothered with this, but then they don't keep loosing they're cards like I do. SO I usually threw a little tantrum "Are we under curfew? Why do I have to carry my id with me anyway?" Our tolerant culture invariably leads the clerk to take whatever other document I happen to be carrying -- usually my bus pass, which I loose less often. After a while I surrender and go get myself a new id. card. It takes 1/2 a day or more to do this and -- guess what -- you need your old id. card. It's more complicated if you've lost it. Then finally I am legal again for a while. It's partly due to the Portuguese obsession with identity. Everyone carries both they're mother's and father's last names. Others confirmed the traditional problem of counterfeiting: It costs only 300 rupees ($10) to get a counterfeit ID card. The system hardly works. We all know how fake IDs (one guy's photo, another one's name) can be obtained so people can have their friends take GREs and TOEFLs (national tests) for them.
PGParty Winners Message This message is encrypted to the 4 winners of the 5000 cash prize. If you can decrypt it, then you are a winner! If you cannot decrypt it, but you downloaded, installed and use PGP or GPG then you are still a winner, because you care about your privacy enough to try crypto! Watch this space for more PGP fueled competitions and antics, and even BIGGER cash prizez!
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Monday, October 22, 2001

http://www.libertarian.com/ and then: http://www.bcaplan.com/cgi/purity.cgi
Which amongst you do not think that this is insane/wrong/crazy/immoral/harmful/stupid/backwards/inflamatory/racist/inhuman/dumb/anti-christ/unbelievable speak now, and if you say that you think its ok, then I will just have to kill you. ********* From: Bretton Vine To: declan@well.com Subject: national ID cards Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 09:20:55 +0200 Declan Here in South Africa we are issued with an identity number at birth made up of date of birth, a number allocation for male or female, a number for race and another number for nationality. For example, a white male born born on 1 October 1999 would have a number such as: 991001 5000 08 2 The second number (4 digit) is for sex: 0001 - 4999 for females 5000 - 9999 for males The third number (two digit) is for race The last number for nationality, At age 16 an ID book is issued. This ID book has a picture, a page for record of voting, a page for endorsements, Drivers license page, Driver's license endorsements, and space for 6 firearm licenses. In order to get your ID book you must have your fingerprints recorded. Recently drivers licenses were made available in credit card format as well, but these are not accepted as proof of identity. ID Books must be presented in so many activities. * Opening a bank account, or a credit facility: present your ID book which is then photocopied and the copy stored with your application. * Hiring a movie for the first time at a video rental? Often you must leave your ID book with the shop. (Aimed at preventing theft apparently) * Stopped at a traffic roadblock? You must present your ID book and drivers license. * Buying a plane ticket? In some places you must present your ID book as well. * Going to a doctor for the first time, or to a hospital - present your ID book. Copies of your ID book exist all over the place. Even if you close a credit account or store account, they still keep the copy and application. And yet we have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world :-/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Its extremely important to READ when you try and talk about something important like PGP. Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD, or BULLSHIT) is extraordinarily damaging; it sends out false signals to the weak minded and damages the hard work that people do to try and get everyone on the same page as far as privacy and liberty are concerned. Anyone who can READ will know that GNUPG is an OPEN SOURCE PROJECT; that means that anyone can download the source code, read it, make sure that it is free of back doors, compile it and then run it. It doesnt matter who funds the development, because you (or someone you can trust) will always be able to read the source, and make sure that it does what it is supposed to do. The German Government in this case is acting in a very enlightened way. GNUPG cannot be sabotaged; they know this. They are supporting it as the only viable way to protect thier citizens against echelon. It is the stated recommendation of the EU in response to the Echelon threat that all EU citizens encrypt thier email and communications with a robust system, and to that end, the German Govt. is financing the development of GNUPG. PGP/GNUPG is not crippled, has no back doors, and can be trusted. Bullshit like this has been circulated since the earliest versions of PGP were released. READ ABOUT THE SOFTWARE YOU ARE USING and UNDERSTAND the people and motivations behind it. Once you do that, you will find that your feelings toward PGP and Open Source will grow exponentially stronger, as you realize just how important a resource this type of operation is, and how much the programmers are giving the community for free.

FBI to employ Torture: Civil Rights out the window

Silence of 4 Terror Probe Suspects Poses Dilemma By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, October 21, 2001 FBI and Justice Department investigators are increasingly frustrated by the silence of jailed suspected associates of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, and some are beginning to that say that traditional civil liberties may have to be cast aside if they are to extract information about the Sept. 11 attacks and terrorist plans. More than 150 people rounded up by law enforcement officials in the aftermath of the attacks remain in custody, but attention has focused on four suspects held in New York who the FBI believes are withholding valuable information. FBI agents have offered the suspects the prospect of lighter sentences, money, jobs, and a new identity and life in the United States for them and their family members, but they have not succeeded in getting information from them, according to law enforcement sources. "We're into this thing for 35 days and nobody is talking," a senior FBI official said, adding that "frustration has begun to appear." Said one experienced FBI agent involved in the investigation: "We are known for humanitarian treatment, so basically we are stuck. . . . Usually there is some incentive, some angle to play, what you can do for them. But it could get to that spot where we could go to pressure . . . where we won't have a choice, and we are probably getting there." Among the alternative strategies under discussion are using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those employed occasionally by Israeli interrogators, to extract information. Another idea is extraditing the suspects to allied countries where security services sometimes employ threats to family members or resort to torture..... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/specials/attacked/A27748-2001Oct20.html
The AF Creative Group Needs PR Consultants We have avaliable positions in our Linguistics Department for Arab speaking creative types. Do you have what it takes?

Sunday, October 21, 2001

Just in case you havent heard, Mozilla .95 is out http:/www.mozilla.org. Its the most excelent of browsers! When you download it, you MUST try Gestural Browsing http://optimoz.mozdev.org/gestures" Very cool, very modern, very efficient.
Media Pass? Pay $2.95 to read the full Article. Your payment gets you immediate access to this Brills Content Magazine article. It will only take you 20 seconds to buy it right now. Brills Content Magazine uses Media Pass? to process your transactions. Not even the Gods of Olympus would pay $2.95 for a single article. Thats more than a fucking whole issue of some magazines. When you said "micro" I thought that it was going to be some new micro payment system, through which you could pay .05c for an article. Two Ninety Five? Kiss my ass Brill.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/22331.html By Thomas C Greene in Washington Posted: 18/10/2001 at 12:08 GMT What a total idiot I am. I never asked Web anonymizer SafeWeb exactly what they mean when they say they "collect NO logs or user data beyond what is required for performance tuning and security monitoring of our servers. Any such data is carefully safeguarded, only analyzed statistically, and is destroyed soon thereafter." To me, 'soon thereafter' means 'during the next shift' when we're talking about a company that sells anonymity. And that's what I pretty well expected. And 'soon thereafter' is all you'll find in the company's privacy statement. Thanks to Cryptome's John Young, we now know that the logs are kept seven days. Seven days. Christ, I've 'researched' http exploits from behind SafeWeb. Long enough ago not to have anything to fear, but still, the idea that the logs live seven days is a jolt. That's not anonymity. It's a decent shot at anonymity. But who's got anything better? Anonymizer doesn't even mention logs in their privacy statement. God knows what that means. Do they have no logs? Do they not mind getting hacked? If you DoS them will they be content never to know it? That sort of obscurity is even worse. SafeWeb tells you they'll keep the logs briefly, though seven hours seems a lot briefer than seven days to me. Anonymizer won't dare broach the topic. Now that ZeroKnowledge has cancelled Freedom, where's the true on-line anonymity? Where the hell is Peekabooty? Where the hell is Steve Gibson when you need him?
This mail was generated automatically upon request from your friend:"irdial@irdialsys.win-uk.net" and its purpose is to inform people about violation of privacy and coressponding activities of NSA. You can learn more about interception system Echelon and about JAD(Jam Echelon Day) action at: http://www.uid0.sk/echelon/index_en.html . Received: (from JICC@localhost) by lVpQ.MIL (8.8.2/8.8.0) od BAA10810 for MP5K-SD@vx3Q.gov; Sat, 06 Oct 2001 17:11:13 +0000 Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2001 17:11:13 +0000 From: JICC Message-Id: <200110061711.BAA10810@lVpQ.MIL> To: MP5K-SD@vx3Q.gov Subject: Re: Siemens From: Lieutenant Colonel of Chief of Staff, TACCSF (Theater Air Command & Control Simulation Facility, Kirtland AFB, NM) To: Captain Ron S. Richards, Deputy Director, Security Awareness Division (M56) You should pay the GRU agent so he can get on with the job! He's got to break Al Gore out of federal custody and get him to Washington after the satellite has passed over. INR ps. Don't try to contact me
thank you ./a! i have sent that link to everyone i know. defeat it NOW!!

Saturday, October 20, 2001

Electronic Frontier Foundation ACTION ALERT Defeat the "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act" (SSSCA) Draft Bill Would Require All Software and Digital Devices to Include Federally-Mandated Copy-Prevention Systems
The Conet Project now on http://www.amazon.com

Friday, October 19, 2001

Tips for spotting suspicious activities October 18, 2001 Posted: 7:06 p.m. EDT (2306 GMT) (CNN) -- U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has told Americans to keep alert in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks and report anything suspicious to law enforcement agencies, with a "heightened sense of awareness." But a definition of suspicious behavior is difficult to establish, because there is no "cookie-cutter" behavior for terrorist activity, said Thomas Sweeney, co-chair of the private sector liaison committee for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, a group exploring the boundaries between private security and law enforcement, in order to improve security on both sides. However, there are several things to look for, added Sweeney, who is also the police chief in Glastonbury, Connecticut. It's better to spot things at the level of suspicion, before they become an incident, he said. Be sensitive to your environment. Watch for: 1. Someone attempting to gain access to something they shouldn't have or somewhere they don't belong. Examples include getting near chemicals, vehicles or buildings without proper credentials, Sweeney said. 2. Strange or frequent comings or goings 3. Someone carrying a weapon People should already be notifying police if they notice unauthorized people carrying weapons or using them threateningly, Sweeney said. 4. Someone who appears to be concealing something or attempting to put something over on somebody 5. Clues on the job Sweeney says some crime solving has come from tips by people at work -- for example, film processing or computer-repair employees who noticed something out of the ordinary. 6. Suspicious mail or packages (Read the tips) 7. Watch for people conducting themselves in a strange manner or making unusual requests Example: The case of a student pilot interested only in learning how to steer a plane, not take off or land. Sweeney said it might be something that strikes you as not appropriate for whatever environment you're operating in, or something that just seems abnormal. 8. Watch for someone listening to Shortwave Radio regularly at the same time of day, whilst writing down notes
http://www.insanely-great.com/news/01/1084.html Michael Flaminio, Insanely Great Mac, October 17, 2001 Mac OS X 10.1 users will want to take note of a local security hole. The X 10.1 bug allows anyone to gain root access via the Terminal. The security hole can be used on any Mac OS X 10.1 local terminal. Using the exploit, anyone can gain root access via the Terminal application. For most Mac users this may to be too big of a deal, since under OS 9, most anyone with access to the desktop essentially already has administrative level access. However, for those depending on OS X's security for either multiple user security or system integrity, may be in for a surprise. To access the exploit: - Log into OS X 10.1 under any user. - Open the Terminal application, then quit the application - Open the NetInfo Manager application and keep it as the foreground application - Open the Terminal application from the Recent Items Menu. You will then be logged in as root in the terminal.
National Journal's Technology Daily, PM Edition, October 16, 2001 HEADLINE: PRIVACY: FBI To Require ISPs To Reconfigure E-mail Systems PHOENIX -- The FBI is in the process of finalizing technical guidelines that would require all Internet service providers (ISPS) to reconfigure their e-mail systems so they could be more easily accessible to law enforcers. The move, to be completed over the next two months, would cause ISPs to act as phone companies do to comply with a 1994 digital-wiretapping law. "They are in the process of developing a very detailed set of standards for how to make packet data" available to the FBI, said Stewart Baker, an attorney at Steptoe & Johnson who was formerly the chief counsel to the National Security Agency (NSA). The proposal is not a part of the anti-terrorism legislation currently before Congress because the agency is expected to argue that the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) already grants it the authority to impose the requirement, Baker said. He added that some ISPs already meet the requirements. Baker, who frequently represents Internet companies being asked to conduct electronic surveillance for the FBI, made the revelation Tuesday in a panel discussion at the Agenda 2002 conference here on how the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are likely to affect the technology industry and civil liberties. He elaborated on the plan in an interview.
http://www.citypaper.net/articles/101801/news.godfrey.shtml Novel Security Measures A man was kept off a recent flight because of a book he was carrying.
From the priceless Iconocast: And speaking about looking back, here's the latest installment of the "Photoshop war" being waged online: Too bad those Imperialist Running Dogs cant spell "KABUL"!

Thursday, October 18, 2001

Attention Washington! You smell like rotten eggs. You are self defeating! Did YOU know that? The instant you started funding the Taliban** you sentenced yourself to murderous embarressment and inevitable economic faliure. Our weapons are bone age. Yours are big. I guess you are the man then huh? We think you should suck a lemon. We think you should give up and stop trying to rule the world. Surrender this school yard objective or we will all simply ignore you like the insecure bully you obviously are. **(on May 17th, 2001, US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, announced a gift of $43 million US to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan to help the US fight the "war on drugs".) -Robert Scheer LA Times May, 2001
"A Mercury News article reports Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and John Ashcroft have been meeting to discuss creation of a national ID database including fingerprints, facial scans, etc. Other supporters include Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy. They claim these cards would be 'voluntary', much as the act of leaving your home or purchasing groceries are voluntary activities." Update: 10/18 01:48 GMT by M: Hah! btempleton writes: "Here is a prototype of Larry Ellison's new national ID card." Someone Clever Said: This has a way of being inevitable unless you, the people, fight like grim death against it. Here in Australia we had a proposal for the `Australia Card' -- basically the same as this proposal, only not as technologically sophisticated. It was put to the people's vote (referendum or an election issue? I don't remember) and the people's response was to tell the proposers how to fold it into sharp corners, and where to stick it afterwards. That's Ok, though, because then they introduced the Tax File Number, which is a wannabe SSN -- you need it to earn an income (failure to provide a TFN is not illegal, but automatically results in you being taxed at 49.5%), to open a bank account, or just about anywhere else where you are using money in a non-trivial way. The TFN was possible because we (the Australian population) had just fought furiously and won against a more draconian scheme, and were tired. Also, this almost slipped under the radar without comment, as the parliament rushed it through with very little debate, in the house or in public. This may turn out to be another High Aim Tactic. Ask for something which is absolutely ridiculous, and let yourself be beaten back to what you wanted in the first place. Even if Ellison is serious (surely not...?) his overtures can -- and probably will -- be used by others with the same barrow to push. The question is where to draw the line. How much freedom from surveillance do you want? Once you have figured that out, don't settle for one jot less! As soon as you rationalise that `I don't really need to be able to X' and bargain away the right to be able to do so, then you have just lost something precious which you will never get back. Of course, things are rarely that simple, and some things are obviously stupid. (Such as, eg, `I demand the right to stockpile Anthrax spores'.) But the apparatchiks will use these examples to persuade you that the right to freely assemble, for example, is just too dangerous for you to have. It will not be put to you like that. It will be that some travel may have to be restricted, or that restrictions based on profiling [Hmm, you have travelled in the middle east, your family name is arabic, and you talk funny...] will be instituted `for the time being'. If history teaches us anything, it is that `for the time being' can be translated `for the foreseeable future', and that just means `until it is no longer profitable to do so'. Wasn't it a Founding Father who said `the Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance'?
CNN-- us millitary propaganda broadcast transcripts: Here's a complete text of one broadcast: "Attention Taliban! You are condemned. Did you know that? The instant the terrorists you support took over our planes, you sentenced yourselves to death. The Armed Forces of the United States are here to seek justice for our dead. Highly trained soldiers are coming to shut down once and for all Osama bin Laden's ring of terrorism, and the Taliban that supports them and their actions. "Our forces are armed with state of the art military equipment. What are you using, obsolete and ineffective weaponry? Our helicopters will rain fire down upon your camps before you detect them on your radar. Our bombs are so accurate we can drop them right through your windows. Our infantry is trained for any climate and terrain on earth. United States soldiers fire with superior marksmanship and are armed with superior weapons. "You have only one choice ... Surrender now and we will give you a second chance. We will let you live. If you surrender no harm will come to you. When you decide to surrender, approach United States forces with your hands in the air. Sling your weapon across your back muzzle towards the ground. Remove your magazine and expel any rounds. Doing this is your only chance of survival." http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/10/17/ret.us.propaganda/index.html
does anyone know much about the nmap -e switch for routing packets thru a specified device? more specifically, how to actually specify the device(ie: device #, pci slot, mac addy et al). please feel free to email me thanks

Wednesday, October 17, 2001

What is amazing to me is that people are counting the numbers of people who were killed according to their nationality. One of the most serious complaints against Americans is that it is believed that they think that the lives of Americans are more valuable than the lives of people from other countries. When people are killed, human beings are lost, not the property of a nation, or members of an artificially constructed or imagined group. It doesn�t matter that there are more people from other nations that are missing, because all humans have the same intrinsic worth. And if there were more people who held non-USA passports/nationality, so what? Should Uncle Sam be doing anything different based on the proportion of "foreign nationals" that have been killed? Would there be any bombing if no Americans had been killled? What is the purpose of separating people in this way? Classifying people by nation causes enough problems when people are alive, but what can the gain be in separating people when they are dead, save as a way to seek a worldwide licence to extract vengence? Statistics are useful and enjoyable, but when applied to people, statistics become a very dangerous double-edged sword, that sends messages of a kind that the world needs to hear less of. Is it possible that the idea that American lives are more valuable than other people�s lives is something that is deeply encoded in the American psyche? So deeply that it just rolls off of the tongue without thought? Some would immediately argue that its people of other nations that do not value the lives of their own countrymen. This may or may not be true, but when a country takes on the responsibility of policing the world, and meting out punishments to entire countries, it needs to be extra careful about how it counts and handles the living and the dead, wherever they live and die. WORLD TRADE CENTER NON-US DEATH TOLL OUTNUMBERS AMERICAN Wayne Madsen What is being largely lost in the grief and sorrow following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center is the fact that the current count of dead and missing reveals more foreign nationals died in the attack than Americans. Although the major media has reported that other nations lost a number of their citizens, it is not being reported that their numbers, some 3061, are in excess of U.S. casualties, currently estimated at around 2589. These figures do not include any Canadians who may have been lost in the cataclysm. From information culled from a number of wire service accounts, the estimates of dead and missing by country are: Revised 16 October 2001 Great Britain 300 India 250 Chile 250 Germany 230 (+130) Colombia 208 (-) Pakistan 200 Mexico 150 (-350) Turkey 120 (-11) Philippines 117 Russia 117 (+21) Israel 110 (-23) El Salvador 101 (+30) Honduras 100 (-) Nigeria 94 (+) Canada 63 (+) Australia new: 55 (+) Bangladesh 55 (+) Brazil 55 (-) Greece 50 (+) Japan 44 (-26) Ireland 44 (+) Netherlands 43 (-360) Hungary 41 (+)(missing) Italy 38 (-) Dominican Rep. 31 (+6) Ecuador 30 (-4) Poland 30 (+) South Korea 30 (+) Guyana 25 (+20) new: 21 (-4) Austria 27 (-) Japan 23 (-) Cambodia 20 Hong Kong 16 (-3) South Korea 15 (-) Czech Republic 15 (+5) Slovakia 10 (+) France 10 Spain 8 Yemen 8 (+) Jamaica 7 (+) new: 17 (+10) Taiwan 7 (-) Guatemala 6 (+) Haiti 6 (+) (may be more) Zimbabwe 6 Switzerland 5 (-101) Yugoslavia 5 (+5) Iran 5 (+) Argentina 5 (+) Trinidad & Tobago 4 (+) new: 5 (+1) China 2 (-2) Portugal 4 (-) Egypt 4 (+) prob. more Belize 4 (+) new: 1 (-3) Malaysia 4 (-) Lebanon 3 (+) Panama 3 (+) Antigua & Barbuda 3 (+) new: 2 (-1) Grenada 3 (+) new: 2 (-1) Peru 3 (-) Belarus 3 (+) Venezuela 3 Barbados 3 (+) new: 4 (+1) Jordan 2 (+) New Zealand 2 Zimbabwe 2 (-) Thailand 2 Indonesia 2 (-) St.Kitts / Nevis 2 (+) new: 3 (+1) St.Vincent / Gren. 2 (+) new: 1 (-1) Paraguay 2 Ukraine 1 Ghana 1 (-) St Lucia 1 (+) Sri Lanka 1 (+) Uruguay 1 Bulgaria 1 (+) Belgium 1 Costa Rica 1 (+) Paraguay 1 (-) Burundi 1 (+) Kenya 1 Bahamas 1 (+) new: 0 (-1) Norway 1 Gambia 1 (+1) Sweden 1 Dominica new: 1 (+1) Guinea "Several missing" Senegal "Several missing" Denmark 0 (-1) Finland 0 (-1)
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 11:42:54 -0400 To: declan@well.com From: Duncan Frissell Subject: How many Divisions does Silicon Valley Have? A few weeks ago in the New York Times, the foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman attacked Techno-Libertarians for their lack of a sufficiently bellicose foreign policy. April 18, 1998, Saturday Section: Editorial Desk By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN I don't think I like Silicon Valley. That's all right, Silicon Valley doesn't like you either. Here's why: I'm as impressed as anyone with the technologies that Silicon Valley is producing and the way they are changing how we must think about economic power and how nations interact. But what is so striking about Silicon Valley is that it has become so enamored of its innovative and profit-making prowess that it has completely lost sight of the overall context within which this is taking place. It has not "lost sight of the ... context" so much as it sees the context all too well and has rejected it utterly. There is a disturbing complacency here toward Washington, government and even the nation. There is no geography in Silicon Valley, or geopolitics. There are only stock options and electrons. I wouldn't call it "complacency" so much as "rejection." Techno-libertarians (the true targets of this piece) are quite aggressive in rejecting Washington. When I asked an all-too-typical tech-exec here when was the last time he talked about Iraq or Russia or foreign wars, he answered: "Not more than once a year. We don't even care about Washington. Money is extracted from Silicon Valley and then wasted by Washington. I want to talk about people who create wealth and jobs. I don't want to talk about unhealthy and unproductive people. If I don't care enough about the wealth-destroyers in my own country, why would I care about the wealth- destroyers in another country?" Sounds like a perfectly straight-forward political position to me. Libertarians have always been anti-war and anti "entangling alliances.", even back during WWII. Leftists used to be anti-war as well but some of them have strayed from that position. Someone has to keep it up. What's wrong with this picture is that all the technologies Silicon Valley is designing to carry digital voices, videos and data farther and faster around the world, all the trade and financial integration it is promoting through its innovations, and all the wealth it is generating, is happening in a world stabilized by a benign superpower called the United States of America, with its capital in Washington D.C. Armed neutrality is a perfectly acceptable foreign policy. Super power and nation state politics have murdered 170 million human beings in this century alone (http://www.laissezfaire.org/pl7366.html). Until an alternative racked up that quantity of dead, we'd be well ahead of the game. Some people just don't like super powers -- however benign. The hidden hand of the global market would never work without the hidden fist. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps (with the help, incidentally, of global institutions like the U.N. and the International Monetary Fund). And those fighting forces and institutions are paid for by all the tax dollars that Washington is "wasting" every year. The *UN* and the *IMF* give me a break. There is little evidence that if those two disappeared anyone would notice save those who would miss a paycheck. As for the U.S. armed forces, there is no doubt that it is very convenient to have well-trained and equipped troops available from time to time but that says nothing about the organizational form that produces such forces. The U.S. military is impressive but it is also inefficient and expensive. A few years ago, the Economist (in one of its "Survey's of Defence" proposed an international regiment to suppress insurgency. Such an institution could be public or corporate. A mercenary regiment independent of national bureaucracies could produce a very effective force that could suppress "commerce raiding" without the high costs and risks involved government armed forces. A private "82nd Airborne", equipped with off-the-shelf technology, which would focus on the bottom line both in terms of money and men, could give everyone the protection they need without the high cost and high death rate associated with government armed forces. An armed civilian population in any country that would trust its subjects with arms would make any attack even more costly. Because of the intense competition here among companies, and the continuous flood of new products, there is a saying in Silicon Valley that "loyalty is just one mouse-click away." But you can take that too far. Execs here say things like: "We are not an American company. We are I.B.M. U.S., I.B.M. Canada, I.B.M. Australia, I.B.M. China." Oh yeah? Well, the next time you get in trouble in China, then call Li Peng for help. And the next time Congress closes another military base in Asia -- and you don't care because you don't care about Washington -- call Microsoft's navy to secure the sea lanes of Asia. And the next time the freshmen Republicans want to close more U.S. embassies, call America Online when you lose your passport. The techno-libertarians of Silicon Valley don't believe in passports. They are working to eliminate such inefficiencies. If government or private piracy picks up again on the "sea lanes to Asia", a simple restoration of licensed privateers could end that problem. Maybe Russia's Northern Fleet could find something more useful to do as privateers than they are now sitting around drinking, contemplating suicide, and juggling Russia's largest cache of nukes. Note that US Naval vessels can't sail these days without civilian electronics techs (contractors) to maintain and operate the intelligence and weapons systems. Privatizing the rest of the system is not as big a step as most people think. Mercenaries and privateers have a long history and can be easily put back to work. Note too that in spite of their reputation, mercenaries and privateers have (by any measure) killed fewer civilians and overthrown fewer governments than have military forces consisting of government employees. Harry Saal, a successful Silicon Valley engineer, venture capitalist and community activist -- an exception to the norm -- remarked to me: "If you ask people here what their affiliation is, they will name their company. Many live and work on a company campus. The leaders of these companies don't have any real understanding of how a society operates and how education and social services get provided for. People here are not involved in Washington policy because they think the future will be set by technology and market forces alone and eventually there will be a new world order based on electrons and information." The denizens of the Valley are well aware of how "education and social services" *fail* to "get provided for". They have to try and hire the illiterate output. Arguing the domestic policy success of government is even rougher than arguing its foreign policy success. They're exactly half right. I've had a running debate with a neo-Reaganite foreign-policy writer, Robert Kagan, from the Carnegie Endowment, about the impact of economic integration and technology on geopolitics. He says I overestimate its stabilizing effects; I say he underestimates it. We finally agreed that unless you look at both geotechnology and geopolitics you can't explain (or sustain) this relatively stable moment in world history. But Silicon Valley's tech-heads have become so obsessed with bandwidth they've forgotten balance of power. They've forgotten that without America on duty there will be no America Online. "The people in Silicon Valley think it's a virtue not to think about history because everything for them is about the future," argued Mr. Kagan. "But their ignorance of history leads them to ignore that this explosion of commerce and trade rests on a secure international system, which rests on those who have the power and the desire to see that system preserved." This is a fascinating historical debate but it can't have much to say about future security policy. We know that periods dominated by markets (the mid-19th century for example) have fewer wars while periods dominated by governments (most of the 20th century) have more wars. The record of nation states in managing conflict is not one designed to make us confident of future peace. Alternative methods of social organization have at least as great a chance at keeping the murder rate in the 21st Century a bit lower than the murder rate during this past Century of Blood. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tuesday, October 16, 2001

This week we are holding a PGP Party, with a special cash prize, sponsored by some concerned netizens with very deep pockets. Here is how to join in the party and win a huge cash prize: Go get PGP http://www.pgp.com/products/freeware/default.asp OR go get GNUPG http://www.gnupg.org If you opt for GNU Privacy Guard (GPG) and you run windoze, you might want to take a look at WinPT http://www.winpt.org/download.html which is a GUI for GNUPG. PGP is simpler to use than GNUPG so you may want to start with that.You can always adopt GNUPG after you are comfortable with PGP. Download and install PGP or GPG for your platform. Read the manual. Generate your keypair, and then sign the Irdial-Discs Key with your new key. Here is the Irdial-Discs PGP public Key:
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Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.2 for non-commercial use 

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Once you have signed the Irdial-Discs key, email it to irdial@irdialsys.win-uk.net. We will draw names of those that have successfully signed our PGP public key out of a hat. Four lucky Irdial-List subscribers will win 5000 in cash. If you have already signed the Irdial-Discs public key, you will be automagically entered into the draw. The winners of the draw will be announced on BLOGDIAL on Tuesday October 23 2001. Void where prohibited.
Press release: FOR IMMEDIATE USE : 16th October 2001 EMERGENCY POWERS ALLOW MASS-SURVEILLANCE FOR NON-TERRORIST INVESTIGATIONS
*) Home Office undecided whether ISP data retention to be voluntary or compulsory *) Data revealing who you talk to, what you read, where you are, collected for "national security" *) Data can be trawled for public order, minor crimes, tax, health and safety *) E-Commerce to bear open-ended storage and data-protection compliance costs
As part of an emergency package of anti-terrorism measures, Home Secretary David Blunkett announced yesterday (Note 3) that Internet Service Providers would be "enabled" to retain logs detailing the online activity of their customers (but NOT the contents of communications). Data protection legislation (Note 4) currently protects electronic privacy by prohibiting blanket storage by ISPs of logs recording such details as websites browsed, To and From addresses of e-mails, and which 'newsgroup' articles are read by a subscriber. Other "communications data", such as the telephone number used to dial-up the Internet, may be kept so long as it is relevant to billing or fraud control. Although Mr.Blunkett's use of the word "enable" (rather than "require") implied that compliance will be at the ISP's discretion, the lead official told FIPR that retention may be made compulsory, enforced through civil law. The same source said a ministerial certificate will assert "national security" exemptions (Note 5) so that ISPs and telephone companies will not be in breach of European Directives. The government will only specify later exactly what data may be collected and for how long in a Code of Practice in consultation with ISPs. No new legislation is necessary for police and intelligence agencies to collect the data once it is recorded by ISPs and telephone companies. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act 2000 (Note 5) allows records to be obtained for broad purposes including tax, health and safety, public order offences and minor crime. Although "communications data" provides a complete map of private life, revealing who you talk to, what you read, and where you go, the authorities can rubber-stamp compilation and trawling of large and detailed databases. In contrast, inspection of the contents of a single e-mail requires a warrant from a Secretary of State, and a search for documents requires a court order. Bulk requests can be made on groups or the history of an individual and kept by police and intelligence agencies indefinitely under data protection exemptions. This includes the exact co-ordinates of your geographic location - which 3rd-generation mobiles produce continuously whilst the phone is switched on. Computerised 'traffic analysis' (tracing links between individuals) is a powerful new form of mass-surveillance, but is only efficient at keeping tabs on the law-abiding. Professional terrorists know how to cover their tracks - for example throw-away use of pre-paid mobile phones. Reports of the modus operandi of the September 11th terrorists indicate they used Web-based e-mail from public terminals. Clearly it is not persuasive to argue for privacy to be sacrificed in the name of fighting terrorism if the measures would not in fact be effective. A leaked report from the National Criminal Intelligence Servcie last year revealed that police and security agencies are nevertheless pressing for a mandatory data retention law to warehouse the traffic data of the entire population for several years (http://cryptome.org/ncis-carnivore.htm). Blunkett's proposals amount to blanket 'dataveillance' for non-terrorist investigations, using the the tragic events of Sep 11 as justification. Providers of e-commerce authentication services could be affected as well as ISPs and telcos. Anyone offering "provision of access to, and of facilities for making use of...the transmission of communications" [RIP S.22(4) & S.1 defs] could face extra costs of providing suitable storage devices and media, and full compliance with data protection legislation. Quotes Caspar Bowden, director of Internet think-tank FIPR (Foundation for Information Policy Research) commented: "Sensitive data revealing what you read, where you are, and who you talk to online could be collected in the name of national security. But Mr.Blunkett intends to allow access to this data for purposes nothing to do with fighting terrorism. Minor crimes, public order and tax offences, attendance at demonstrations, even 'health and safety' will be legitimate reasons to siphon sensitive details of private life into government databases to be retained indefinitely. This would be in flagrant breach of the first and second Data Protection Principles." Contact for enquiries: Caspar Bowden Foundation for Information Policy Research www.fipr.org cb@fipr.org +44(0)20 7354 2333 Notes for editors ----------------- 1. The Foundation for Information Policy Research (www.fipr.org), is a non-profit think-tank for Internet policy, governed by an independent Board of Trustees with an Advisory Council of experts. 2. FIPR's analysis of the RIP Act (www.fipr.org/rip) stimulated media debate, and led to amendments ensuring that people who lose decryption keys or forget passwords are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and prohibiting detailed surveillance of web browsing without a full warrant. 3. Home Office Press Release 15/10/2001: "BLUNKETT OUTLINES FURTHER ANTI-TERRORIST MEASURES" (http://wood.ccta.gov.uk/homeoffice/hopress.nsf/50e2456405b67f7d802566b3 006819dc/2a5fc6811dec4c7180256ae6004fa4d3?OpenDocument) 3. The Telecommunications Data Protection Directive 1996, implemented in UK law as SI 2093 (1999). The Office of the Information Commissioner (contact Iain Bourne) has stated that ISP blanket (i.e. for all subscribers) logging and retention of online Internet activity is prohibited. Logging of telephone numbers is permitted whilst relevant for billing or fraud control. 4. Section 32. of SI 2093 allows a certificate signed by a Minister of the Crown to over-ride the prohibition on blanket data retention for National Security purposes (http://www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si1999/19992093.htm) 5. Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Part.1 Chapter.2, Section 22 (http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--c.htm#22). This Part is not yet in force and the relevant Code of Practice is open for consultation until November 2nd (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ripa/consultintro.htm) 6. Data Protection Act 1998, Schedule 1, (http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/80029--l.htm#sch1)
"In the week after the September 11 onslaught, the German avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, 73, was forced to apologise after describing the terrorists' actions as "the greatest work of art one can imagine". Four of his concerts were cancelled in the furore after his remarks." http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Monday, October 15, 2001

What if 100 people sent out 1000 dusted envelopes each?
Check it out: scrollbar on the left http://www.arabia.com/ No scrollbar not on the left, but this is the station with direct line to ObL http://www.aljazeera.net/
Lost & Fround Part 2: Found in a London street
re: WGET - This is because wget obeys robots.txt which was set to exclude all robots (to keep out search engines. I've changed it now so it should allow wget in. You might need need to use --user-agent=Wget if it still doesn't work. Other news: broadcast a lot of the moster music series over the weekend on Radio 4A - Brighton pirate, as well as doing two shows of my own. Not that I remembered to tell anyone here. I'm looking for collaborators for a game of radio consequences for the next broadcast if anyones interested. And now in all its cheapskate and geeky glory is my computer history. 1978? - saw my first computer, actually a keyboard and teletype printer connected via some incredibly sloow line to a main frame (and thence to another somewhere across the atlantic). Played star wars. 1978-80 - marginally involved in building various pre ZX81 homebrew boxes/kits -0 one of which came in a plywood case with a homemade keyboard arranged in alphabetical order because the owners couldn't type 1981? -TI-99A -uugh 1994/5 - got my first Unix account (and net access)- love at first sight! Actually preceded by a couple of months on an ancient VAX machine runnig openVMS. 1998 - given 386 with 4Mb of RAM - still running strong and in regular use today, it was actually in use as an intanet server running apache for a while. Teamed up with a 10" black and white monitor from a car boot sale - eventually replaced by a 16 colour grey scale monitor from a skip. Also set up my first production linux server for a cheap net access project that was employing me at the time. 2000 - 486 w/ 20Mb. Originally a donation to the net access project which was largely jerry-built out of bits of cheap and donated kit (including tyhe infamous giant bag o' random network cards that was the bane of my life for 6 months) but deemed too crap even for this. Needless to say this was a giant trechnological leap forward for me - still not powerful enough to run X-windows but then I've always had a bad case of terminal nostalgia. 2001 - finally moved into the world of colour when I found an SVGA monitor in the skip, and I 've even been vaguely promised a pentium machine. I also have root on 6 linux boxes and 3 sun boxes that don't belong to me so I'm very happy.